Deckbuilding RPG ideas

Somewhat independent ideas. Please criticize to your heart's content. I'd rather discover the obvious flaws *before* I spend hours painstakingly building a prototype.

Goal: a hack & slash dungeon crawl boardgame-RPG with the tactical fun of D&D 4e or WHFRP 3e but more newbie-friendly and with less busywork. Easier to learn, faster chargen, fewer things to keep track of, no fiddly bonuses etc.

#1. Your special combat moves are written on cards and shuffled together. At the beginning of combat and at the end of each turn, you discard your hand then draw [some] cards. During your turn, you pick which card[s] you'll use this turn. (This is totally not gamist because, er, it simulates your enemy giving you openings but only for some of your techniques. Yeah, let's go with that.) Think deck-building games (the Dominion kind, not the MtG kind).

#2. If possible, *all* the math that goes into an attack should be printed on the card. What you see is what you get. No Str modifier, no buff, no whacky feats. Those type of things would instead affect other parts of the combat game, e.g. how many cards you draw each turn.

#3. Your starting deck mostly depends on the weapon you're using. E.g. halberds get reach attacks; rapiers get low damage but high accuracy; shields get a shitty shield-bash attack but also cards you can use during your enemy's turn to mitigate on of their attacks. (Yes, this means it's not trivial to switch weapons. I don't like this, but I still like the mechanic.)

#4. Your character has a Speed. Each attack has a Time cost on it. Big slow weapons that make big scary attacks are really slow. You can play multiple cards, just so long as you have enough Speed for them all. This creates different gameplay for different combat styles. The Greataxe fighter will draw [some] Greataxe attack cards and use the best one. The Sword & Board fighter will get less choice because some of his draws will be off-turn Parry cards. The Twin Daggers fighter will just play his entire hand of small cheap attacks.

#5. Some bad things that can happen to your PC can be modeled by adding useless or worse-than-useless cards to your deck. I'm not quite sure what I want to do with this ATM.

#6. Some things (stances, buffs, status effects..) can be modeled by cards that you don't discard at the end of your turn, but instead stick to your hand. The goal is to keep them in your face to avoid the "wait was I supposed to make a saving throw?" D&D 4e problem. E.g. "you're on fire" could be a card that deals [some] damage to you every turn it's in your hand, and that it costs [some] Time to get rid of.

#7. To use an attack, roll [XdY] and consult a small table on your card that says the outcome of each result class. Even a low roll does *something* though, because "you wasted your turn" sucks.

#8. Whenever you roll a critical hit or miss with an attack, you get to improve it by writing directly on the card. You can improve it in various different ways (which should either be memorable or written on the card), a sort of build-your-own-powers mechanic. Starting from a generic deck, players will eventually have much-beloved custom special attacks, their specialness doubling as a reminder of exciting rounds.

#9. This is distinct from Level Up, which happens at key adventure points (kill a boss, clear a level, whatever) and gives benefits like extra speed, extra card draws, card filtering etc.

#10. Hit point system is based on FATE's Stress system. You have a bunch of boxes, and when you take, say, damage 3, you cross out the third box (or the one to its right if it's already crossed out). If you fall off your boxes, that's when you start taking real wounds, with penalties and slower healing (and eventual death). It's a nice middle-ground between Last HP Is Everything and Death Spirals. It's also easier to track of for the GM, because you don't have to do any calculations right in the tensest moments of combat; just cross out boxes.

#11. It does mean big scary attacks don't synergise well with thousand-cuts. This can be designed around. E.g. minions do small damages, so you can choose to ignore them for a while but things will go south very quickly once you run out of small boxes. E.g. you can sacrifice low boxes for benefits, à la masochistic blood magic.

#12. Armour is damage reduction.