Crimsonomen20 wrote:

Okay, seriously, I haven't seen this suggested but I would to have some animations having you 'draw' a card and the effect happening on the opponent.

While it is a very cool concept, in practice it will be quite underwhelming. The reason I say this is because the animation of drawing a card won't be associated with the effect of the power. This is one of the downsides of aesthetic decoupling. So your card drawing animation will end up looking pretty lackluster. If they put some prop-associated effects in the game that activate every time we hook the prop's animation to an ability, then it could be good. Does anyone know if MWM will be doing this? Is my question even clear?

Let me phrase it another way with something even easier to picture. Let's say we have a sword in our hand. If we have a ranged attack, we can choose to have the sword be a point of emanation for it. So rather than coming from the palm of our hand the beam and particle effects come from the tip of the sword. My question is: When we have associated the sword as a point of emanation, will there be any sword-specific effects in addition to the effects that come with the power? Will the blade glow?

So I hope this question is clearer now. Coming back to the topic of cards. If we use cards as a prop, I figure that we would first need an exaggerated body motion for the act of pulling the card. Otherwise it would just look like you're thumbwrestling yourself. Second we would need some effects associated with the cards so we know that the power is coming from them. Now that I think about it, I suppose the simplest solution would be to hold the card in our extended hand and just use it as the point of emanation like any prop.

Take a look at the Astrlogian class in FFXIV:
[youtube]B3djtDqEN9I[/youtube]
This is a card-weilding class and you can see the visual effect is pretty obvious when cards are played. I'm pretty sure a six foot image of the card over your head is a bit much for CoT, but at least it has bling.

Crimsonomen20 wrote:

I also have another idea. This may be more complicated. Could we, say, mimic using a sword, and instead having like a shadowy figure or something, envelope our character a nd do the attack instead? Hm. Not sure that's clear.

Off the top concepts - Someone possessed by the spirit of a dark knight, calls on his aid during the fight. Swings an imaginary sword, an d the result is a massive, dark figure with red eyes striking out with his sword. Not sure that's any clearer.

Very cool.
I think there are enough ways to RP the origin and look of such an aesthetic that it could be very popular.

Here's one from the X-men using psychic energy:
[url=http://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Energy_Exoskeleton][img=480x640]https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/powerlisting/images/e/ee/Armor_vs._Wolverine.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/515?cb=20130328190109[/img][/url]
Granted, this example is a bit too large for CoT, but I think I got the gist of the concept.
If MWM doesn't have this as an aesthetic option for launch, I hope they put it in some future update.

Too large? Let's not jump to conclusions. You could also move the card so it appears in front of the player character. Still six foot tall but easier to fit in a room with 8ft ceilings.

Sudden vision for Commander class where they summon up playing cards ala the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland.

Kiyori Anoyui wrote:

I think that would be a pretty cool way to summon your minions. Lay some cards down or paint symbols on the ground and your pets/minions appear

Really not too unlike demon summoning in CoX.
[youtube]pqO347HN3fQ[/youtube]

I really miss that whip. One of the most fun animations I remember. All those sounds... memory lane. Especially the mission complete riff at the end.

This discussion just reminded me of a [url=https://cityoftitans.com/comment/134298#comment-134298]post[/url] I made in the prop suggestions thread last November:

Huckleberry wrote:

I really want to see a satellite constellation prop. You can customize it to be from three to around ten satellites that constantly orbit around you. The reason I don't say one or two is because one satellite is a special use-case and would fall more into the animations accorded to shoulder-pets or one-pet commanders.

So with the ability to customize our particle effects, these satellites could be anything from daggers, to fairies, to chainsaws; maybe jedi training drones, spirit skulls or ravens. Whatever you customize them to be, these orbiting satellites would make a great prop to be our barriers, our ranged attacks, our heals, and even our melee attacks. I hope we see something like this in game.

Now, if your prop was a constellation of Tarot cards or playing cards flying around you, then when you attack with the prop default animation they would fly out and strike your target; but if you choose the prop as an emanation point for your abilities instead, then I imagine they would cycle around you a bit and the effects would originate from the one in front. Or something somewhat like that. I know this idea isn't actually pulling a card from a deck, but it does have the visual [i]bling[/i] that holding a deck of cards lacks.

[hr]
Now I want to re-address the OP's idea for a second, because I've some more time cogitate on it.
The idea is...

Crimsonomen20 wrote:

to have some animations having you 'draw' a card and the effect happening on the opponent. possibly a brief shadowy creature attacking the foe before dissipating.

So just about any of the [url=https://cityoftitans.com/content/ranged-sets]ranged power sets[/url] would be appropriate. But in this case we don't want an effect that acts like a beam, we want one that appears at the target, or could appear at the caster and then jump to the target. So some Support and Control power sets could also be candidates.

Once we have a power effect that behaves in such a way, associated the ability with a card prop is an academic exercise.

So let's say as an example, that we are using the Lethality ranged power set because that one seems to match best what the OP was putting forth. But for the power effects we pick an animation that would better fit the illusions control power set. In other words, the power effects include a radiant aura at the emanation point and a phantom object at the target location. Now, we choose the deck of cards as our emanation point and the animation has us grabbing a card from the deck and holding it up, facing away. (or it uses the constellation idea from above) Once we've selected that prop as our emanation point, the radiant aura comes from the card. In your power customization, you make the colors black so it looks like the card glows darkness for a moment before you see that shadow figure at your target's location.

I think that is certainly in the realm of feasible.

So the next question is whether or not a sword-wielding knight will be one of the aesthetic choices for the phantom we called forth.