Feedback wanted: comeback mechanic for my TCG — shared Soul Point pool with a "Rebirth" trigger
Hey all, working on a mythology-themed TCG with a small team and want outside eyes on our core comeback mechanic before we lock it in for playtesting.
How the Soul Point (SP) system works:
- Both players share a single 80-point pool
- It's zero-sum — both start at 40, and when one player gains a point, the other loses one. The pool always totals 80
- First player to push the pool to 80 (their opponent hitting 0) wins
The Rebirth trigger:
- If a player pushes the pool to 60 in their favor, their opponent (sitting at 20) triggers Rebirth
- Rebirth doubles the losing player's SP gain going forward, and unlocks a once-per-game God Skill — a powerful leader ability that costs half their current SP to activate
What I want feedback on specifically:
- Does a single shared zero-sum pool feel more interesting than separate health/score tracks, or does it create weird incentives (e.g. only attacking the pool instead of the board)?
- Is the 60/20 threshold the right point to trigger a comeback mechanic, or does it risk triggering too early/late to feel meaningful?
- Does doubling SP gain plus a discounted ultimate feel like enough of a comeback, or too strong/weak as currently scoped?
Genuinely trying to stress-test this before more development goes into it — appreciate any thoughts, including "this sounds broken because X."
EDIT 1: One thing I should have clarified in the original post — the leading player's SP gain is frozen on the turn Rebirth triggers. This prevents anyone from camping near 59 points and spiking to 80 in one turn without giving the opponent a chance to respond. After that turn the freeze lifts and normal play resumes. This is the main counterplay mechanism against deliberate threshold camping.
EDIT 2: A few people have asked how SP is actually gained since I didn't explain it in the original post — my bad. There are a few ways to gain SP:
- Start of turn — you gain SP for each unit you have on the board at the start of your turn, so maintaining board presence matters
- Unit attacks — whenever one of your units attacks, you gain SP. Units can attack face directly if your opponent has no units on the board, so aggro decks always have a way to generate SP even against a passive opponent
- Destroying an opponent's unit — you gain SP when you kill an enemy unit