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[beri]

What I mean by special thing usually is "what’s printed under the horizontal line" but in some cases it may be sth else.

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One card that has a totally logical "special thing" imo is Herald.

Herald is an engine piece that works well with action cards. And it’s a cantrip action card. So you may want to spam Heralds to boost your engine. And the overpay ability is one thing that makes them easy to spam – you can buy a Herald at any cost from $4 up while still getting benefit for the extra money you paid. So Herald’s special thing seems totally consistent with Herald’s ability.
That’s why I’d call Herald’s special thing logical. It all loops well together.

Market square is logical too: it gets you Gold and the +Buy gets really good once you get really rich.

Split piles have a built-in logic, the second half boosting or being boosted by the first half.

However, other cards have special things, but I fail to understand the logic, as in, "why on these cards precisely?".

Examples:
- Duchess: I see no synergy between special thing and ability.
- Forum: +buy when you buy Forum looks like something for a card you’d want to spam, like Herald. But would you spam Forum as is? Would’ve seemed fun with something like Fisherman.
- Silk merchant
- Changeling
- Messenger
- Catacombs
- Debt-cost cards: I feel like you’d make a card’s cost debt-only if you want players to be able to buy them on any turn. Do Engineer/Overlord/Royal blacksmith/City quarter have the perfect abilities for this purpose? Why couldn’t they have cost normal dollars?
- Mechanical link between hermit/madman, pixie/goat, fool/lucky coin, secret cave/magic lamp (while Pasture has a logical link with Shepherd)?
- Night ability on Werewolf

Were the special things on these cards put there and not elsewhere "because they had to be on some card" or for some divine, perfectly logical reason?

Also, can you name other cards like Herald and Market Square that have the perfect special thing that perfectly complements their abilities?

[segura]

The general idea is that the stuff below the line is not directly related to playing a card. That is e.g. why you can Throne an entire Bridge but only the cantrip part of Highway, the below the line stuff is conditional on the card being in play and not executed when you play Highway.

It is a neat concept that prevents an abundance of blue.

[GendoIkari]

Don't forget VP as well... the 2 on Nobles qualifies as a "special thing" that somewhat feels just tacked on. While the 1 on Great Hall is not; the 1 is really the concept behind the card; while the +1 card +1 action makes it so that the VP doesn't take up space in your deck.

[GendoIkari]

- Debt-cost cards: I feel like you’d make a card’s cost debt-only if you want players to be able to buy them on any turn. Do Engineer/Overlord/Royal blacksmith/City quarter have the perfect abilities for this purpose? Why couldn’t they have cost normal dollars?

You missed one thing with Engineer... the debt-cost makes it so that you can't use Engineer to gain more Engineers; which changes the card a lot.

[D782802859]

Engineer costs deb so you can't gain it with itself, Overlord, Royal Blacksmith, and City Quarter aren't really something that can cost coins because they have to cost a lot, but then they don't get bought. Forum is spammable, since it is functionally a cantrip. The top half on cards with on-gain and on-trash don't necessarily tie in with the bottom half, that's not a requisite part of their design. There are mechanical links between Pixie and Goat (poor interactions with The Flame's Gift) Secret Cave and Magic Lamp (It gives you another card in play to activate the lamp) and there used to be a connection between Fool and Lucky Coin so the gained silvers would slow it down, but the card changed and the Heirloom wasn't removed. Duchess has to be a cheap terminal action so you don't always take it with a Duchy, and a friendly spy was being considered. Silk Merchant does have somewhat of an interaction, it's a terminal, which interacts with the villager. The night ability on werewolf isn't supposed to tie into the card, it's an additional option. If you have any curiosity about why any card has certain abilities, the Secret Histories give the development history of each set and its cards, which should any questions you have.

[GendoIkari]

Engineer costs deb so you can't gain it with itself, Overlord, Royal Blacksmith, and City Quarter aren't really something that can cost coins because they have to cost a lot, but then they don't get bought. Forum is spammable, since it is functionally a cantrip. The top half on cards with on-gain and on-trash don't necessarily tie in with the bottom half, that's not a requisite part of their design. There are mechanical links between Pixie and Goat (poor interactions with The Flame's Gift) Secret Cave and Magic Lamp (It gives you another card in play to activate the lamp) and there used to be a connection between Fool and Lucky Coin so the gained silvers would slow it down, but the card changed and the Heirloom wasn't removed. Duchess has to be a cheap terminal action so you don't always take it with a Duchy, and a friendly spy was being considered. Silk Merchant does have somewhat of an interaction, it's a terminal, which interacts with the villager. The night ability on werewolf isn't supposed to tie into the card, it's an additional option. If you have any curiosity about why any card has certain abilities, the Secret Histories give the development history of each set and its cards, which should any questions you have.

Overlord's debt cost also allows it to say "costing up to " instead of "costing less than this" like Band of Misfits does; to prevent infinite loops... although the Command Errata fixes that anyway.

[Titandrake]

If you can't think of a reason, it's probably because it makes the card a bit more interesting, or because the below-the-line text was the point of the card and it had to be attached somewhere. The Secret Histories will often explain this.

Changeling: For a while this was just the top, a sleek simple classic card. We liked it but Matt's group not so much. I tried putting the gained card on your deck, but I like to go light on that as it's easy to forget and a more complex concept. Then I thought of the bottom as a way to hit the flavor harder; your Skulk is swapped at birth for a Changeling.

Forum: This started at $2 with +2 Cards instead of +3. There were several possible ways to do "when buy +buy" to try to not empty piles too quickly; the solution here was, a more powerful card costing $5.

Spamming Forum is fine, if you get enough of them you can sculpt the 5-card starting hand you want, while almost always getting to the end of the shuffle.

[pubby]

Dominion is a game about card interaction. Why in the world would you want cards that self-synergize? We already have Minion Strategies are more interesting when they require multiple non-obvious pieces.

[Donald X.]

- Duchess: I see no synergy between special thing and ability.
- Forum: +buy when you buy Forum looks like something for a card you’d want to spam, like Herald. But would you spam Forum as is? Would’ve seemed fun with something like Fisherman.
- Silk merchant
- Changeling
- Messenger
- Catacombs
- Debt-cost cards: I feel like you’d make a card’s cost debt-only if you want players to be able to buy them on any turn. Do Engineer/Overlord/Royal blacksmith/City quarter have the perfect abilities for this purpose? Why couldn’t they have cost normal dollars?
- Mechanical link between hermit/madman, pixie/goat, fool/lucky coin, secret cave/magic lamp (while Pasture has a logical link with Shepherd)?
- Night ability on Werewolf

Were the special things on these cards put there and not elsewhere "because they had to be on some card" or for some divine, perfectly logical reason?

Sometimes I have a below-the-line ability as a premise, and then there has to be a top, and the top just has to be simple enough to fit the bottom. There is not always a connection; there isn't always any possibility of a connection.

- Duchess: No connection. It just had to be weak enough to not buy much normally (but didn't need to be as weak as it is).
- Forum: The card had to be worth picking up with the extra $, and not too cheap.
- Silk merchant: No connection, beyond, it wanted to be terminal.
- Changeling: Flavor connection.
- Messenger: No connection.
- Catacombs: No connection.
- Debt-cost cards: Engineer costs debt so you can't gain Engineers with it. Overlord costs debt so it can't ever play itself. Royal Blacksmith and City Quarter are trying to cost a lot of debt, and to make that work, they had to have abilities that you wouldn't want turn one. So Royal Blacksmith punishes you for having Coppers, and City Quarter depends on you having a bunch of Actions. They could have had normal costs... but, the entire idea was to have debt. People loved debt so that all worked out, it's okay that I made cards with debt costs.
- Hermit/Madman is just flavor. Madman had to be hard to get to not be a problem, so it's hard to get (and still strong). Goat is paired with Pixie so that hitting Flame's Gift with Pixie isn't game-winning. Lucky Coin is paired with Fool in order to speed up a game slowed down by "get 3 boons." Secret Cave is just what Magic Lamp wants to see, a cheap cantrip duration card. The Secret Cave is in play on two turns to help cracking Lamp, it's a cantrip to help you play another card with it, it's cheap so you can get it easily.
- The whole premise of Werewolf was an action card that could also be played at Night. It very specifically wanted to be a smithy, so you would draw them dead and then hey, they aren't dead. Action-Night suggested a Werewolf, and then a Werewolf has to attack, so the Night part attacks.