Hit the Road debuffed by Plant boss

[mangonaise]

Was running a Hit the Road joker ("provides an additional temporary x0.5 Mult per discarded Jack") build. Had DNA, blueprint & brainstorm, and merry andy (+3 discards) so felt like a badass creating and discarding tons of jacks each round.

Then the Plant boss came around (no opportunity to reroll). Plant debuffs all face cards - fine - but as I discovered, also completely disables Hit the Road, preventing it from scaling. Immediately killed my run which was otherwise on track for an easy win.

Anyone agree or disagree with this behaviour? I feel, based purely on the description of Hit the Road, that there's no indication that debuffs should have any effect. The joker says that it scales when jacks are discarded. Discarded debuffed jacks are still discarded jacks imo.

[Goblin]

Debuff stops any joker from activating from that card. Suit jokers can't activate when debuffed cards of that suit are played, raised fist can't add double a card's rank if the lowest held card is debuffed (if you have two of that rank, you can manually reorder them so the non-debuffed one is to the right), a debuffed 4 can't activate Walkie Talkie etc.
Why would jacks be any different?

[Mailer]

Originally posted by mangonaise:

Discarded debuffed jacks are still discarded jacks imo.

What happened is consistent behavior with the game afaik. It's like with the Baron Joker where, a debuffed King will not proc the extra 1.5X multiplication from it, because, as far as the Baron is concerned, that is now a King that can't be interacted with.

Debuffed cards simply cannot cause effects or abilities out of any jokers you have, no matter if you play or discard one or leave it in your hand. Their original identity stays, as a Jack or any other card, like you said, but it is still a silent Jack that can't score or speak to any of your jokers, as I understand it.

[kone]

It's such a shame, but debuffed cards factor into ALL interactions like its suits, ranks, whether they're played, in hand or discarded.
Jokers like Castle, Raised Fist, Seeing Double and most tragically Flower Pot all have to risk getting debuffed despite the effects seeming like they shouldn't care.

[Spawnling]

Debuffed cards can be pretty tough to deal with. I just got a real nice face deck (All cards are face cards [with +10 mult], retrigger face cards, +30 chips for each face, +2$ for each face) and got the boss that debuffs all face cards.
I spent $150 on rerolls, hoping to get the disable boss blind joker, but no luck. (still won, but it hurt to sell my joker)

[mangonaise]

Originally posted by Goblin:

Debuff stops any joker from activating from that card. Suit jokers can't activate when debuffed cards of that suit are played, raised fist can't add double a card's rank if the lowest held card is debuffed (if you have two of that rank, you can manually reorder them so the non-debuffed one is to the right), a debuffed 4 can't activate Walkie Talkie etc.
Why would jacks be any different?

I guess it helps to think about it in terms of "debuffed = any and all joker interactions are disabled".

I guess my intuition has been trained on the fact that I've only ever seen debuffs taking effect when a card is "triggered" (e.g. debuffed heart won't
gain +mult from a lusty joker when triggered in play, debuffed king won't gain x1.5 when triggered from baron, etc.) The difference with Hit the Road is that the card isn't being triggered. It's being discarded.

I don't mind the behaviour to be honest. Just looking for the pattern. Thanks everyone

[Spawnling]

Originally posted by mangonaise:

Originally posted by Goblin:

Debuff stops any joker from activating from that card. Suit jokers can't activate when debuffed cards of that suit are played, raised fist can't add double a card's rank if the lowest held card is debuffed (if you have two of that rank, you can manually reorder them so the non-debuffed one is to the right), a debuffed 4 can't activate Walkie Talkie etc.
Why would jacks be any different?

I guess it helps to think about it in terms of "debuffed = any and all joker interactions are disabled".

I guess my intuition has been trained on the fact that I've only ever seen debuffs taking effect when a card is "triggered" (e.g. debuffed heart won't
gain +mult from a lusty joker when triggered in play, debuffed king won't gain x1.5 when triggered from baron, etc.) The difference with Hit the Road is that the card isn't being triggered. It's being discarded.

I don't mind the behaviour to be honest. Just looking for the pattern. Thanks everyone

As a little side note, debuffed steel or gold cards wont trigger and neither will queens with shoot the moon (+13 mult per queen held in hand).
So debuff kind of disables the card.

[mangonaise]

Originally posted by kitten exterminator:

It's such a shame, but debuffed cards factor into ALL interactions like its suits, ranks, whether they're played, in hand or discarded.
Jokers like Castle, Raised Fist, Seeing Double and most tragically Flower Pot all have to risk getting debuffed despite the effects seeming like they shouldn't care.

Thanks for sharing these other examples! I suppose it's easier to mentally process that debuffed cards just wipe all joker interactions (rather than having to learn all the weird exceptions) so I think it's well designed overall.

I do think that just the possibility of the Plant boss discourages me from experimenting with certain builds. I enjoyed this hit the road run because it was a nice change from the high card builds I've now played over and over again. Just a shame that you can get burned so easily for trying out different play styles. Still love the game though

[Godhand]

I'm sure it's just bad luck but very often I get a boss blind, which seem to actively counter whichever decision I made a few turns before. As if the game has a higher chance of serving you the worst option more often.

Do I wish debuffed cards would work in certain instances? Yes, but I think Mailer is right. It's more consistent this way. I see a debuffed card and I know it will be a useless piece of virtual cardboard.

[mangonaise]

Originally posted by Spawnling:

As a little side note, debuffed steel or gold cards wont trigger and neither will queens with shoot the moon (+13 mult per queen held in hand).
So debuff kind of disables the card.

Yep. Although I guess the discrepancy for me is that, with the examples you shared, the card is the one that's triggered, whereas with Hit the Road, (in my head at least) it's the joker that gets triggered.

It makes a bit more sense to me know considering that it also affects other discard-based jokers e.g. castle. But damn debuffed cards can be rough

[Spawnling]

Originally posted by mangonaise:

Originally posted by Spawnling:

As a little side note, debuffed steel or gold cards wont trigger and neither will queens with shoot the moon (+13 mult per queen held in hand).
So debuff kind of disables the card.

Yep. Although I guess the discrepancy for me is that, with the examples you shared, the card is the one that's triggered, whereas with Hit the Road, (in my head at least) it's the joker that gets triggered.

It makes a bit more sense to me know considering that it also affects other discard-based jokers e.g. castle. But damn debuffed cards can be rough

Maybe this line of thought helps:
Shoot the Moon: Each queen held in hand triggers the joker.
- Debuffed cards do not trigger a joker.
Hit the Road: Discarding a Jack triggers the joker.
- Debuffed cards do not trigger a joker.

[mangonaise]

Originally posted by Spawnling:

Maybe this line of thought helps:
Shoot the Moon: Each queen held in hand triggers the joker.
- Debuffed cards do not trigger a joker.
Hit the Road: Discarding a Jack triggers the joker.
- Debuffed cards do not trigger a joker.

This seems to be it generally... But I was watching Balatro U's latest video today, and at 1:07:49 (https://youtu.be/BLIz4eKWNwY?si=urvQLxxj94PvnTpI) he discards a debuffed card, and you can see this triggers the Trading Card joker (as the total deck size decreases).

Honestly wish that your "debuffed cards do not trigger a joker" was just universally applicable. It would make the game more consistent overall. Idk, just seems like these edge cases are a bit inconsistent

[Spawnling]

Originally posted by mangonaise:

Originally posted by Spawnling:

Maybe this line of thought helps:
Shoot the Moon: Each queen held in hand triggers the joker.
- Debuffed cards do not trigger a joker.
Hit the Road: Discarding a Jack triggers the joker.
- Debuffed cards do not trigger a joker.

This seems to be it generally... But I was watching Balatro U's latest video today, and at 1:07:49 (https://youtu.be/BLIz4eKWNwY?si=urvQLxxj94PvnTpI) he discards a debuffed card, and you can see this triggers the Trading Card joker (as the total deck size decreases).

Honestly wish that your "debuffed cards do not trigger a joker" was just universally applicable. It would make the game more consistent overall. Idk, just seems like these edge cases are a bit inconsistent

Maybe they just don't trigger any modifiers?
That would make it consistent.

[Goblin]

Originally posted by mangonaise:

This seems to be it generally... But I was watching Balatro U's latest video today, and at 1:07:49 (https://youtu.be/BLIz4eKWNwY?si=urvQLxxj94PvnTpI) he discards a debuffed card, and you can see this triggers the Trading Card joker (as the total deck size decreases).

Honestly wish that your "debuffed cards do not trigger a joker" was just universally applicable. It would make the game more consistent overall. Idk, just seems like these edge cases are a bit inconsistent

Good catch. It would be slightly more consistent if this didn't happen, although since this edge case doesn't make those jokers OP (although they aare strong) I personally wouldn't want to debuff them. Complain about inconsistencies that hurt you, be thankful for inconsistencies that benefit you, I guess.

Originally posted by Spawnling:

Maybe they just don't trigger any modifiers?
That would make it consistent.

Nah, as I said before jokers can't trigger based on the rank or suit of a debuffed card either - mostly. E.g. Lusty Joker can't trigger on a debuffed hearts card, Odd Todd can't trigger on debuffed odd ranked cards, etc.
Trading Card and DNA are just different: they don't trigger based on any aspect of the card, but on the composition of the hand. Same way you can trigger for instance Sly Joker with a pair of debuffed cards - it's still a pair even if the joker "can't access" the details of the cards involved.

But interestingly enough, Flower Pot in the experimental branch was changed to still consider debuffed suits in a hand. That's more inconsistent, yet that card could use the buff honestly. Game balancing is more important than full consistency in the end, I guess.

[phantom]

For trading card I guess it is because it is a removal regardless of the type of card? That actually is a bit odd. even as a just delete card it does give more for doing it.

Originally posted by Godhand:

I'm sure it's just bad luck but very often I get a boss blind, which seem to actively counter whichever decision I made a few turns before. As if the game has a higher chance of serving you the worst option more often.

It is likely just you imagining it.