Why does Chandra, Torch of Defiance use Energy?

sunprincess

Eleven-year-old Chandra Nalaar climbed through a shower of sparks. One or both of her parents were welding somewhere up the mine shaft from her and she grinned as the little flecks of fire bounced off her red hair. She climbed hand-over-hand up the web of scaffolding that clung to the walls of the tunnel. Today was finally the day. Her parents were inventors, her grandparents had been inventors, ancestors throughout Chandra’s family had been inventors. Today was the day she would finally embrace what had always been her chosen destiny: to become a deliverer of canisters.

Inventing had never been her strong point.

It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate devices. Her world was full of wondrous inventions and marvels of clicking, gear-driven artificial life. It was just that somehow her patience seemed to end sometime before her projects did. And somehow, sometime during the construction phase, her fist almost invariably wound up colliding with the face of someone who deserved it.

It was a personal failing. She accepted it.

This is the very first few paragraphs from Chandra Nalaar's origin story. It is made clear that she has no affinity to artifice, and unlike her parents and their parents before her, she is not adept with the use of artifacts. In fact, she grew up so rambunctious and feisty that she would usually sock someone out of frustration, rather than learn her parent's craft, a craft so widespread on her plane that it took place of most magic there.

Moments later, she would be confronted by consulate guards, and rather than just rely on fists and fiery temper, she manifests her pyromancy for the first time, and what she realizes stuns her:

There was no sign of the self-immolating craziness from moments before. It wasn’t that she hadn’t seen magic before; inventors regularly built creations that defied explanation, made even more wondrous by the power of Æther. But conjuring fire without the use of a device—that was new to her.

Aether is a commonality in her world, but manifesting magic without it was not! She had none of the talents to use artifacts to harness aether, but all the innate talents to use magic without it!



Featured here is a freshly reprinted card, "Negate," which will be reappearing in Aether Revolt, the soon to be newest magic expansion, and the second expansion in the Kaladesh block. The flavour text in this new reprint has Jace stating:

"It is fascinating to see how the people of this plane replicate magical techniques without a natural gift. Also frustrating."

So here, we can see that there is a distinct difference between the average artifice using aether powered citizens of Kaladesh, and the limited few like Chandra who can use magic without technology. In fact, later in her origin story, her mother, Pia Nalaar explains to her:

“Listen to me,” her mother said. Her eyes were intense. “This is a gift. You have something special, something that’s not been seen in many years.”

Chandra heard this, but the words didn’t latch onto anything in her mind. She searched her mother’s face for some clue.

“I don’t understand.”

“Your fire,” her mother said. “It’s a form of magic. A special kind. But it’s something that intimidates them. If it’s something you can do without machines, without the need for Æther…you do it your own way, you see? And they hate that.”

What's so special about Chandra's magic isn't even that it's tricky to perform fantastical feats on Kaladesh, but the fact that she does so without aether! But this isn't a minor or pedantic bit of detail, it is one of the main tenets to Chandra's origin story!

“Your parents’ crimes are many, but your crimes are far worse, pyromancer. You’re an instrument of chaos and death."

Because of Chandra's rare talent, Baral, a Consulate ajudicator, hunted her down, framed her for arson. Framing her for these crimes, he captured her for the purposes of a grand execution; Baral, a sadist, seemed to take pride in exterminating mages with talents - out of envy, or an inferiority complex, it is not clear.

In a slow instant, the blade arced down through the air toward her neck. Chandra felt the prickling sensation wash over her like a wave of coals. Her vision flickered at the edges, blurring out Baral and the announcer and everything around her. The arena and the crowd warped in a molten haze. She felt the sputtering steam from her vent pack turn to white-hot liquid, barely aware that the pack had melted into slag, and was dripping down her leg and burning through the stone dais.

The smoke cleared enough for her to see the people who approached her. They didn’t look like consuls’ enforcers, or like anyone she had ever known: tall and noble, robed like monks, with ash streaked on their faces like ornate masks. Behind them rose a hilltop of roughly sculpted rock, with stairs leading up to a monumental archway leading into the mountain. Craggy stone architecture bloomed from the mountain, lit by brazierless trails of fire, and the air smelled of hot gases and baking earth.

The arena was nowhere to be found. The entire city, her entire world had abandoned her—or she had abandoned it.

In a last ditch attempt, she used every ounce of power to resist Baral's devices, which were suppressing her pyromancy for her execution, and in doing so also ignited her planeswalker spark.


The result ended up with Baral's face being hideously disfigured, and a grudge being placed on Chandra.



When she awoke, she had planeswalked to the Plane of Regatha, where she was surrounded by the Monks of Keral Keep, who trained and honed her pyromancy.

You could say the fact that she did not use aether (or energy), was the whole reason her planeswalker spark lit up to begin with.

Chandra is no artificer, in fact, if she had been slightly better at using them, or the aether that powers them, she wouldn't be impulsive red planeswalker we know now at all. She wouldn't have been persecuted by Baral, and her father, Kiran Nalaar, would still be alive. What Chandra uses is mana, and pointedly not aether.

As I mentioned in my post about Saheeli, I understand the urge to make planeswalkers that correspond with a particular magic set incorporate the key words of new sets, however, in this case, it's like ripping up a stack full of Chandra Planeswalker cards, and then scattering them over her father's grave with a hefty helping of piss from a nondisclosed species of animal.

It's ridiculous to use Magic IP like this. I don't always think that orthodox adherence to plot is super necessary, but literally building Chandra Torch of Defiance's abilities around the /one/ thing that she literally never could do, at the crux of her origin story's conflict, is just a joke.

I really, REALLY hope that you fine folks at D3GO will consider these concerns, because I am a huge fan of the game, AND of Chandra, and it is a real darn shame that you took her in this direction

THEMAGICkMAN

I wholeheartedly agree, I always prefer a thematically correct card to a overpowered one. Chandra being a thematically incorrect terrible planeswalker is almost an insult. I have chandras paper card, and it's thematically correct and OP. After seeing what you did to C2 in Puzzle Quest I wanted to simply go and use my good, thematically correct card instead of this version of Chandra.

Rant over.

sunprincess

Do the developers even read this subforum??? I wish that there could at least be some clarity that they read this.

Alve

sunprincess wrote:

Do the developers even read this subforum??? I wish that there could at least be some clarity that they read this.

On weekends they most likely don't.

madwren

Thanks for taking the time to research this. While I think it probably falls on deaf ears, I also appreciate the lore and have been disappointed that they're shoehorning in subpar mechanics rather than letting us enjoy more faithful depictions of the planeswalkers.

Morphis

Alve wrote:

sunprincess wrote:

Do the developers even read this subforum??? I wish that there could at least be some clarity that they read this.

On weekends they most likely don't.

To be noted that this very statement by logic does not imply that they do read the subforum outside of the weekend.

Just saying

sunprincess

Well, it's not the weekend anymore...

wereotter

This thread along with another in the general discussion was forwarded to the devs

Alve

sunprincess wrote:

Well, it's not the weekend anymore...

https://d3go.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=56559&start=20#p621708

Brigby wrote:

Lagartha wrote:

If you guys are interested, sunprincess wrote up a really good reason why she should be changed for other reasons.

https://d3go.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=56918#p620787

That's definitely a great write-up! I've actually gone ahead and taken that thread, as well as this one, and passed it along to the developers to get their thoughts on the subject. I'll let you all know if they have any information to provide.

orgazmo

Just want to say this is a great thread.

majincob

I am putting my response to JC's comments about the design decisions for the Chandra's abilities (found in this thread) here instead of making yet another chandra thread because I really think the original post is relevant to my suggestions for her abilities.

Quoting from the above linked thread:

Hibernum_JC wrote:

...
And now that Dovin Baan, C2 and N2 are out, I can share a bit the philosophy behind their design, the energy/overload relationship and their design themes.

These 3 Planeswalkers were designed to be a rock/paper/scissors type of deal, with Energy as the central mechanic. Basically, this is what it's meant to look like:

Dovin Baan: Energy generation/Overload (the most straightforward one)
Chandra: Energy removal/destruction
Nissa: Energy scaling

With this, the goal is as such: Dovin Baan beats Chandra who beats Nissa who beats Dovin Baan.

Dovin Baan is strong against Chandra because while she can remove energy efficiently, he is self-sufficient and will always put out more than needs to survive, but is weak against Nissa because since she scales with Energy, she will easily dispatch him as he generates a lot of it.

Chandra is strong against Nissa because she actively works to REMOVE the energy that Nissa works to put on the board. All 3 of her abilities are designed around removing Energy (although the first one will also put some out to ensure that she can fuel herself). Building a low-cost deck with her (and with red that's not necessarily too hard) lets you effectively remove Energy, keeping Nissa in check. She is weaker to Dovin Baan since he doesn't scale with energy, he just needs a bit to be able to survive and use his stronger abilities.

Nissa is strong against Dovin Baan because she scales ridiculously strongly with Energy, making her a force to be reckoned with. With Dovin Baan's huge energy generation potential, all Nissa needs to do is build up her third, get 3 creatures on the board and she wins. However, against Chandra, it's a much more uphill battle, as Chandra will actively remove the Energy Nissa feeds off of, severely weakening her.

That's the design *intent* behind these three Planeswalkers. The execution might be a bit off (especially in Chandra's case) but that's the idea.

*emphasis added

If C2's design was to cut energy just change ability 1 to destroy 4 gems and remove up to 4 energized gems, and 2 and 3 to "remove up to x energized gems" instead of "remove x energized gems". The AI spams ability 1, so that means if you face a C2 with N2 she will constantly be putting energy on the field for instead of cutting the energy like she's supposed to. It would really make her the "anti-energy" PW instead of the "anti-energy, but you have to run a bunch of energy to play her" PW

Reducing the cost would also be nice. Ob's ult is similar in effect except it is way better because it triggers on both players draw and there are lots of draw cards/spells in addition to the one drawn each turn; it only costs 18 vs C2's 24 + 2 energy. Not to mention 5 shield vs 3. I'd love to see C2 be a red Ob. Everyone loves Ob because as an opponent he isn't that scary since the AI almost never gets the Ult ability off but playing as him he is the boss.

As for ability 2: 15 damage to a creature (only) for 15 + 2 energy is way above the cost curve for any other removal-type ability. Nahiri has a game ending Ultimate for 15. At least make it creature or player.

blacklotus

My 2 cents: reduce the loyalty costs of c2 to 6/12/18.

this is more comparable to the costs of similar abilities of other pw, which are in fact better and cheaper.

see Koth's 1st, Ob's 2nd and 3rd for comparison.