Dark Souls 2 Mechanics and Set Feedback and Questions

hi cardist, here my feedback:

Bleeding: This mechanic seems "overkill" for what it does. There is a specific reason why you want your damage to affect the toughness of creatures? This can be a lot of confusion for nothing (especially having in the same set -1/-1 AND -0/-1 counters: I discourage you on doing so)

Hollowing: A persist type of effect which requires mana to go is interesting. I probably would get rid of the number param and put it always on 1.

Dark sigil: What is a hollow counter? I assume is the -0/-1 counter you are talking before. Anyway, I reckon that keeping track of all this counters and buffers produces really messy and probably unfun games. And again, be careful mixing too many tipes of counters in your set!

Dark magic: cool idea but very very little space design. You probably would put this on a couple of burn spell, and that's it.

Sorry for the initial confusement over what is a hollow counter. The original mechanics are posted in the webarchive link. I'll post them in the OP for easy viewing.

        ► Do you suggest I add "Flame" as a keyword? Would that make the card unbalanced?
        ► It's colorless because it hangs out in deserts and wastes, e.g. colorless environments. If there's another color that would suit a desert creature (red?) I would like to know. Thanks.
        ► You are right, I will stick with lowercase for "hollow" if it isn't at the beginning of a sentence. I think the confusion for me was when I was deciding whether or not to make it a creature type. I decided not to do that in order to avoid more confusion.
        ► I will take your suggestion for the rarity and syntax of the creature's ability, thank you. "Undead" is a deprecated type of the first set that carried over. EDIT6 in the OP for more details about that. I will be replacing it with Zombie for this card.
        ► Thanks for the feedback on both the syntax and balancing. I will nerf this card's ability to make it more balanced.
        ► It is the only colorless card in the set. This is a big project so things like that tend to escape my awareness. I will change it from to . The vigilance ability isn't meant to be permanent, no. I will make that more clear in the text, thank you. I have three lands that tap for . One is combining it with to tap for .
        ► I didn't know that. How do you think I should modify this ability to be more inline with its color type? Dealing damage after tapping it seems overpowered.
        ► I forgot give this card that formatting, thanks for noticing.
        ► Will fix this syntax and typo.
        ► Thanks, I didn't know white cards couldn't deal direct damage at all. I will think of a creative way of changing this ability that isn't dealing direct damage.
        ► I didn't know about eblems being a thing. I also noticed that loyalty counters should probably implemented more in the planeswalker cards I created. Thank for bringing this to my attention. I will change this ability to better match planeswalker syntax and play.
        ► Noted, will make it cost more and drop the "All".
        ► Thanks, will change the syntax to better match MTG syntax.
        ► I like the idea of it not being mandatory, so will be changing that now. How much more should it cost or how much less should be its power/toughness be?
        ► I didn't know that ability was black specific. What do you suggest? Destroy a large creature with sacrificing or discarding something the player owns? The desertwalk will be change to wasteswalk. If you think I should shift from  colorless to something like red for all things desert related, I will do that and make this ability mountainwalk instead. However, "Jugo" is more of a wastes environment than a mountainous environment by its description.
        ► I didn't know enchantments don't tap. What do you suggest should replace damage prevention to convey a healing spell?
        ► Technically, Undead is an umbrella term that includes multiple creature types. It is a deprecated creature type. I will change the "Undead" creature types left over from the previous set to reflect the newer rules. I must of misread how battalion exactly worked. I will change it to include two instead one other creautre(s). I will also change the syntax to better reflect MTG syntax.
        ► I will remove the "Threshold" keyword then and just leave the ability text as is. Hopefully it isn't unbalanced/broken in real play.
        ► I didn't know that's what qualifies as a legendary card. I will change that then, thanks for the info. I will change the syntax of the ability.
        ► You are right. That was strange to make Undead and Zombie separate. Since Undead it technically now an umbrella term. Maybe it should then read as "Destroy up to three creatures that are undead." instead. Do you have a suggestion to make this not so niche? The fact that "undead" could be seen as an umbrella term is interesting, and maybe make it not so niche.
        ► There are a select few white cards that do grant haste (I think the fulfillment conditions balance it out though). However, it is not common to have haste as an ability in white cards, and when it is present it is usually something that is high cost or is hard to trigger the ability that grants haste. I will change this to something more inline with this cards color type, and also increase the casting cost requirement, thanks for helping.
        ► I will take this suggestion and make the changes. You might be right that is a bend for a solely white colored card. So perhaps I should make it multicolored. However, I have been struggling to find cards that could be considered a white color because this game (Dark Souls) is a dark fantasy themed game. Most things in it are dark fantasy themed, tending to lean towards black color's aesthetic. Perhaps a cost will make this more canon to MTG. But that also doesn't make it strictly a white card, which could be a problem for balancing out the distribution of the separate colors in the set. Should I change it and search for another thing to turn into a white colored card? I'll think about it. Thanks for helping a bunch with this cards syntax.
        ► Could you please elaborate how that would be typed out? Something like, "As long as you have three hollow counters, this creature gets a +1/+1 counter"?
        ► I will change this, thanks for helping me understand these rules and syntax.
        ► As mentioned before, "undead" is considered an umbrella term. I'm simply using it in the ability text. mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Undead  That's 12 creatures types in total. If you have a suggestion to make this less niche/situational please share.
        ► Keep the advice coming. I need it (am MTG noob). It's been very informative. Btw, I've updated the OP to include a text only version of my cards. So you can more clearly see the mechanics and keep giving this noob some more advice on how the syntax and abilities should be formatted. Thanks again for all the feedback!

Two cards have names that already exist in MTG, "Ogre" and "Firestorm". I decided to change these two to "Drangleic Ogre" and "Pyromancer's Firestorm".

There's a lot of awkward templating on the cards in this set, but most of that is nit-picking except for the reverse hollowing keyword. It's clearly meant to be a keyword action (though, I would argue doesn't need to be keyworded or is better as an ability word), but it often appears on permanent cards as it's own line with no surrounding text, the same as instants and sorceries. Permanents can't have effects that just happen (like instants/sorceries), there needs to be an activation (like on Amana Shrine Maiden) or a trigger (like Alonne Knight). The most commonly used method to emulate this is "When ~ enters the battlefield, reverse hollowing.", though "When you cast this spell," is an exceptible alternative. Do be warned that it's rarely used for a reason. (The ability goes on the stack before the spell resolves, which means it's unaffected by countering the spell, among other interactions.) "As ~ enters the battlefield," and "As you cast this spell," are theoretically possible but strongly advised against as they are static abilities that just happen, without the ability for players to intervene.

That's just the thing that stands out to me most (along with the keyword soup, but that's only problematic if you intend on emulating Premier-set (standard-legal) levels of set complexity); I can give a card-by-card critique if you'd like more.

I happy to be of assistance in your growth as a designer.

Starting from the top, Flash Sweat still has a couple problems, one minor and one major. The minor problem is that the damage prevention would be better templated as “Prevent all damage red sources would deal to enchanted creature.” The major problem it the reverse hollowing ability: abilities that begin with the word “if” are replacement effects—abilities that cause something to happen instead of something else happening—if you want it to still actually leave the battlefield, you would use “When this leaves the battlefield, reverse hollowing.” so that it would be a triggered ability that enters the same interactions as spells and activated abilities do upon the removal of the Aura. I also think this should cost one white mana instead of two generic as the card as a whole is very mechanically a white card. If you want reverse hollowing i all colors, there are better ways to go about that.

Next, the reverse hollowing keyword itself. This really shouldn’t be a keyword; hollow counters are already themselves the mechanic that the card is interacting with. Darksign makes perfect sense as it’s a very specific way of getting hollow counters that indirectly gives the counters non-arbitrary meaning. Reverse hollowing, on the other hand, is just removal of hollow counters with nothing else to it. If reverse hollowing had a cause that was consistent across cards, like darksign does, that’d be fine, but as-is, it’s a) not enough to be it’s own keyword, and b) a little to much “jargon” (for lack of a better term; ironic, I know) for one mechanic (that being darksign and hollow counters as a single mechanic). Just because it’s terminology used in-universe, isn’t enough justification to get a third name to interacting with the same mechanic.

This post is getting a bit long, so I’ll cut it here and wait for your thoughts on my thoughts before continuing.

Ah; I thought that's what I was looking at. Still, a good place to improve in said sequel set.That's not a good justification. It's important to remember that the needs of Magic as a game outweigh strict adherence to the accuracy of the adaptation. Using isn't any better, either. Cards that represent spells which are easy and simple to cast draw you a card to replace themselves (known colloquially as "cantrips"). Considering how small and niche Flash Sweat's abilities are, you could reasonably get away with adding "When Flash Sweat enters the battlefield, draw a card." while keeping the mana cost down to a single white mana.

If you still want it to be in all colors, then I suggest splitting it into five cards, one for each color, with each preventing damage from a different color based on the color of the Aura. I understand there's probably not any equivalents in the source material (unless you're willing to be more loose with how certain elements are adapted), but a blue that prevents damage from green sources, a black that prevents damage from white sources, et cetera, sounds like a nice cycle of cards to have as one-mana cantrips at common.

Reality Glitch Thanks for all the help you've provided, I really do appreciate it. I'm a noob when it comes to MTG rules, but I'm now reworking all my cards because of all the constructive feedback. I've been looking at the keywords I've used, different wrong mechanics I had implemented, and I've been changing them all. It will probably be finished by tomorrow. So I would like to hear what you think of it once I'm done. There will also be new and WIP cards in the mix, so please ignore the WIP cards. Thank you again, Reality Glitch thaneofglamis galva94

I'll keep the updates posted in the OP. I've worked on almost all of my cards to make them have better mtg syntax and mechanics. I also help work on Cajun's templates. So if I don't show activity as much on this for a while, it's probably because of that. I've got some progress on a promo template I'm working on, but I'm having trouble with it working without being borderless or frameless. Here's an example:


Still a WIP as is evident by the power/toughness box being a different color 
EDIT: Ignore the "1 mana", I just realized that was a syntax error of mine.

Looking at Dragon Acolyte, here’s what immediately comes to mind (I know this isn’t helpful with the template, but that’s outside of my skillset.):
• That first ability is better as a 2/3 with “Dragon Acolyte gets +1/+0 for each spell you’ve cast this turn.”; no need to specify “until end of turn”. I know this doesn’t cause their power to fluctuate while not on the battlefield, but that’s a reasonable sacrifice for cleaner wording with how the rest of the card is set up.
• The activated ability should have the return-to-hand effect as a cost to activate, an the rest read “Draw a card for each Dragon creature on the battlefield.”
• That triggered ability is way out of color; “add one mana of any color” is squarely in green with few exceptions, all of which have very specific reasons. Maybe adding ::C::, but would usually need a restriction on what you spend the mana. Also, “to your mana” is no longer written on cards.

That first ability should still say “cast” instead of “played”, as “played” is only used when it’s land or could be a land, and “cast” when only spells. The last ability is also still solidly in green; if you’re dead set of this being mana accelerant, then “Add U. Spend this mana only to cast instant or sorcery spells.” is the most appropriate for blue.