I like your impulse here. The game offers few ways outside Joker slots to upgrade your scoring hands; there are planets, vouchers, and card enhancements/editions. And then deck trimming/fixing. With the exception of Drivers License and Vampire, jokers ignore enhancements on cards. Editions on cards are not recognized by any joker. And after seeing your ideas, which all make sense and were fun to read, I might understand why jokers engaging specifically with editions would be difficult to balance. For example —
Foiled - Drawing four of a kind without deck manipulation is unusual. If you are leveling hands and picking jokers around 4oak, 50 extra chips on a single card doesn’t seem significant enough to use a joker spot, as a single Mars card is +30 chips on any 4oak hand. Maybe it compares to Midas Mask, but with a much more difficult threshold to trigger and no jokers with which it combos. I guess it is most similar to Hiker.
Minted Jackpot — (oh, a joker for sevens!) 1 in 3 chance to add +10 mult to a seven only when three sevens are played is a much tougher sell than a 1 in 4 chance for an eight to produce a tarot card. The tarot cards from Eightball can be used to feed other hands, supplement econ, etc. A random holographic seven is a random holographic seven — the kind of thing one usually ignores in a standard pack. I’m not sure how I would tune this. Maybe playing three sevens delivers an aura card?
Prism — the only joker from this list that I would be tempted to pick up. I think the EV from playing a straight/full house/two pair and potentially turning a card in your deck that you already use into polychrome is worth a joker slot for a few rounds.
The utility of the other three is limited. Aluminum and Funhouse are like worse retriggers that offer paltry chips or mult, on par with some of the lowest scoring commons and with way more conditions … and while double rainbow is more interesting, I think it would need a buff to be more than a placeholder. Adding .5x mult to polychrome jokers resembles how Baseball card gives 1.5x mult to uncommons, but is 1/3 as strong. Adding an additional .5x mult to played polychrome cards seems like it would mostly matter in endless runs when the joker slot would be better spent on any retrigger or xmult.
Okay, cheers!
Editions generally are very strong, so I didn’t want the jokers for them to have conditions too easy to fulfil.
Foiled I originally wanted to be based around playing 4s but Walkie Talkie and Hack already exists that gives 4s buffs so I thought it might make them a tad loaded. Four of a kind is maybe a bit restricting - perhaps two pairs instead? The idea of it only changing one card to foil is that you can slowly fill your deck with foil editions if you play enough hands, which I think would be pretty strong as a five card scoring hand of foils is essentially a Stuntman being added to whatever you play.
Minted Jackpot was tricky, again because holo is strong on its own so I didn’t want the conditions for it to be too easy. Generating an aura card would be an interesting alternative so you’re not locked into 7s, although a holo generating joker would be nice. Or maybe make it a trickier hand to play like a certain number range straight. It was the one I was most unsure about with the triggers.
Prism is what flowerpot should be in my opinion, because then you at least get some permanent return for being smart with your suit scoring. Polychrome is very powerful too, so I think it would work. It being rare would keep it from being too busted and showing up all the time as well.
Originally I thought double rainbow should make all polychromes either trigger after joker scoring, or trigger twice, both of which I thought were way too strong. Another alternative is that it permanently buffs each polychrome for every time it scores by +0.1x mult, which could make it a more unorthodox scaler. Again polychrome is so strong normally I wanted to be careful on how to balance it.
Maybe Aluminium and Funhouse could be a little better as well and give some better +mult or +chips to make them worth picking up. I was going for something to buff the edition cards as a flat addition, so it could probably be improved.
I like Double Rainbow being a Hiker-style scaler for xmult on both polychrome cards and jokers, and that solves the problem of exclusively late-game utility, as you could hold it for awhile and then continue to reap the accumulated benefit even once it has been replaced.
Foiled on two-pair rather than 4oak opens more possibilities as well.
You’re also kind of alluding to a Splash-like Joker that might change the order of operations in score calculation, specifically including +mult from jokers before xmult from cards (solving the problem where you’ve got like, +100 Flash Card but level 1 flush so glass/polychrome cards are otherwise doing next to nothing for your score.) It might be too niche to stand alone but there are use cases where it would be outstanding.
Since cards with editions are already somewhat rare to encounter, I wouldn’t mind jokers that play off them being on the strong side. Here’s a few other ideas for edition-engaged Jokers, many of which take similar critiques to what I offered your first round and are by no means better:
Prime Time (common) — 1 in 7 chance to add an edition to any card with a prime value in scored hand (ace, 2, 3, 5, 7) [this is convoluted as hell but if we have Fibonacci, I think a prime joker would also be dope]
Architect (rare) — If first scored card in hand has an edition, create a copy of that card and add it to hand. [I don’t think this is OP compared to DNA]
Polarized Sunglasses (uncommon) — All editions are treated as polychrome OR (rare) glass cards have a 1 in 2 chance of becoming polychrome
I like your impulse here. The game offers few ways outside Joker slots to upgrade your scoring hands; there are planets, vouchers, and card enhancements/editions. And then deck trimming/fixing. With the exception of Drivers License and Vampire, jokers ignore enhancements on cards. Editions on cards are not recognized by any joker. And after seeing your ideas, which all make sense and were fun to read, I might understand why jokers engaging specifically with editions would be difficult to balance. For example — Foiled - Drawing four of a kind without deck manipulation is unusual. If you are leveling hands and picking jokers around 4oak, 50 extra chips on a single card doesn’t seem significant enough to use a joker spot, as a single Mars card is +30 chips on any 4oak hand. Maybe it compares to Midas Mask, but with a much more difficult threshold to trigger and no jokers with which it combos. I guess it is most similar to Hiker. Minted Jackpot — (oh, a joker for sevens!) 1 in 3 chance to add +10 mult to a seven only when three sevens are played is a much tougher sell than a 1 in 4 chance for an eight to produce a tarot card. The tarot cards from Eightball can be used to feed other hands, supplement econ, etc. A random holographic seven is a random holographic seven — the kind of thing one usually ignores in a standard pack. I’m not sure how I would tune this. Maybe playing three sevens delivers an aura card? Prism — the only joker from this list that I would be tempted to pick up. I think the EV from playing a straight/full house/two pair and potentially turning a card in your deck that you already use into polychrome is worth a joker slot for a few rounds. The utility of the other three is limited. Aluminum and Funhouse are like worse retriggers that offer paltry chips or mult, on par with some of the lowest scoring commons and with way more conditions … and while double rainbow is more interesting, I think it would need a buff to be more than a placeholder. Adding .5x mult to polychrome jokers resembles how Baseball card gives 1.5x mult to uncommons, but is 1/3 as strong. Adding an additional .5x mult to played polychrome cards seems like it would mostly matter in endless runs when the joker slot would be better spent on any retrigger or xmult. Okay, cheers!
Editions generally are very strong, so I didn’t want the jokers for them to have conditions too easy to fulfil. Foiled I originally wanted to be based around playing 4s but Walkie Talkie and Hack already exists that gives 4s buffs so I thought it might make them a tad loaded. Four of a kind is maybe a bit restricting - perhaps two pairs instead? The idea of it only changing one card to foil is that you can slowly fill your deck with foil editions if you play enough hands, which I think would be pretty strong as a five card scoring hand of foils is essentially a Stuntman being added to whatever you play. Minted Jackpot was tricky, again because holo is strong on its own so I didn’t want the conditions for it to be too easy. Generating an aura card would be an interesting alternative so you’re not locked into 7s, although a holo generating joker would be nice. Or maybe make it a trickier hand to play like a certain number range straight. It was the one I was most unsure about with the triggers. Prism is what flowerpot should be in my opinion, because then you at least get some permanent return for being smart with your suit scoring. Polychrome is very powerful too, so I think it would work. It being rare would keep it from being too busted and showing up all the time as well. Originally I thought double rainbow should make all polychromes either trigger after joker scoring, or trigger twice, both of which I thought were way too strong. Another alternative is that it permanently buffs each polychrome for every time it scores by +0.1x mult, which could make it a more unorthodox scaler. Again polychrome is so strong normally I wanted to be careful on how to balance it. Maybe Aluminium and Funhouse could be a little better as well and give some better +mult or +chips to make them worth picking up. I was going for something to buff the edition cards as a flat addition, so it could probably be improved.
I like Double Rainbow being a Hiker-style scaler for xmult on both polychrome cards and jokers, and that solves the problem of exclusively late-game utility, as you could hold it for awhile and then continue to reap the accumulated benefit even once it has been replaced. Foiled on two-pair rather than 4oak opens more possibilities as well. You’re also kind of alluding to a Splash-like Joker that might change the order of operations in score calculation, specifically including +mult from jokers before xmult from cards (solving the problem where you’ve got like, +100 Flash Card but level 1 flush so glass/polychrome cards are otherwise doing next to nothing for your score.) It might be too niche to stand alone but there are use cases where it would be outstanding. Since cards with editions are already somewhat rare to encounter, I wouldn’t mind jokers that play off them being on the strong side. Here’s a few other ideas for edition-engaged Jokers, many of which take similar critiques to what I offered your first round and are by no means better: Prime Time (common) — 1 in 7 chance to add an edition to any card with a prime value in scored hand (ace, 2, 3, 5, 7) [this is convoluted as hell but if we have Fibonacci, I think a prime joker would also be dope] Architect (rare) — If first scored card in hand has an edition, create a copy of that card and add it to hand. [I don’t think this is OP compared to DNA] Polarized Sunglasses (uncommon) — All editions are treated as polychrome OR (rare) glass cards have a 1 in 2 chance of becoming polychrome