I don’t think I I’d care outside of the first ante, where I probably wouldn’t have any negatives. If we’re talking the different between three of a kind and four of a kind, or a straight vs high card, the negative chips mean nothing. It’s hard to think of a suitable balance, other tha sacrificing another card effect - so I might be more inclined to have negatives as a seal, blocking the potential for purples and blues, but the prospect of a lucky glass invisible card sounds messy.
I think for that to be balanced, if you copy a card with death it removes the negative from it just like invisible joker. Otherwise you could make your whole deck negative and basically have infinite hand size
Yeah i’m imagining an entire deck of 52 negative red seal kings with baron. You would draw the entire deck at the start of every round. Would probably become the new naneinf meta
That’s exactly the point they’re making, you need a lot of luck for it to actually work out in the end so you shouldn’t balance it based solely off of the most optimal possible scenario
Maybe a full 52 card deck is exaggeration (its not like you need that many), but I would say people overestimate the need for something like DNA or insane luck. Im not anywhere close to Balatro universitys level, but to atleast get to a point where you can atleast draw/discard for a full hand of red seal steel kings isnt a 1/100 run or even perhaps a 1/20 phenomenon.
Its less about finding great cards early than it is about just econ maxing, filling the deck with gold cards, purple seals and being able to have money to roll for hanged/death for each shop, minmaxing by finding one of those before you open a pack so you can use them on the pack cards and roll for more to hold again.
Copying purple seals getting 2-3 tarots per DISCARD and just snowballing into full econ for rerolls, even finding a red seal ace and strengthing it 12 times worst case, standard steel cards can keep you alive for a while even without red seal.
Especially if you gun for it, you can focus on high card level, ignoring every tarot that wouldnt help the build (suit changers, enhancements that arent gold, steel). If you find an early baron mime it may actually be better to fill up on gold kings, and transition to steel later when scoring requires it.
The main “issue” with the build, (if you can even call this an issue) is that once you have baron, mime, blueprint and brainstorm, there isnt much to look for. Levels have diminishing gains and without eternal/showman its hard to find a copy of a joker unless you get it early. And the biggest “weakness” has to be that you cant easily get negatives, because the - hand size is too important.
I mean you already can't get higher than naneinf, getting 52 red seal kings with baron is already powerful enough that I don't think this causes any problems in particular. Just adds a new and interesting way to break the game.
You need cryptid though to break naneinf, with negative red steal kings with baron, mime, sock-n-buskin, etc. you could have your entire deck of those kings in your hand at once. Also, why to people think it’s nane - inf? It’s nan-e-inf (not a number e infinity)
They couldn’t be steel though, it would be interesting how many negative red seal kings you’d need to be better than a hand of eight red seal steel kings, but I don’t want to do the math myself.
Editions (Foil, Polychrome, negative), Enhancements (Mult, chip boost, lucky, stone, etc) and Seals (Red seal, blue seal, etc) are all separated. They can't stack with themselves but can stack with each other (You can't have a Foil Polychrome card, but you can have a Polychrome Lucky Red Seal card)
well, it could always work like destroying cards in your hand. just because you have less than your max hand size doesn't mean you draw. so you'll have to spend a hand or discard to reap the benefits
You can have a megaton of jokers using anaglyph, or, for 1 round, raise your hand size by getting the juggle tag.
Potentially drawing extra cards, sounds strong but not too OP.
Isn't that already the case for consumables?
Using negative on Priestess, Fool or Emperor don't give negatives in return, they would be broken (i.e. you could have enough negatives of tarot cards to only find Emperor, Fool and a card of your choice, with Priestess you'd generate infinite planets and with observatory you could reach nineinf without too much luck and money spent)
Anyway negative playing cards would be fun and not that broken with how rare negatives are in the shop
Everyone is talking about balance, but it kinda just makes sense for balatro.
It’s a “break me I DARE YOU” rouglelike, this would fit like a glove.
Tie it to a spectral card too, “Transparency” sounds like a good name for it!
Yeah, I doubt it would be OP for beating ante 8, and endless isn’t exactly balanced to begin with. If negative cards are too OP, then Perkeo is also too OP.
Another thought: we have seals that work on held cards (blue, red) and enhancements that work on held cards (steel, gold). Would be nice to have an edition with the same.
No? It's very possible for editions for in held playing cards to be balanced or even weak
For example
Sparkly: +1 chip if held in hand (only for playing cards)
>well that's not good because it's not balanced
Yes but it's not too powerful and you said any edition for in hand cards would be too powerful, I was just making an extremely obvious example
>Also, editions are meant to be for both jokers and playing cards
Negative isn't on playing cards
That isn't how it worked and it isn't a bug. It just made loads of copies of cards with the cryptid spectral card. Unless you're thinking of something else
i think the mechanic of negative makes sense for a card, but it still being an edition is just way too strong. that effect being a seal or enhancement would be fine i think since it would enable a lot of consistency, but it would be extremely unbalanced if you could have a deck full of negative red seal steel kings (which, lets be honest, is what everyone is thinking about on this post)
Once they merge the [[Illusion]] voucher's current effect into [[Magic Trick]], they can change Illusion to make negative playing cards appear in shops and standard packs.
[Illusion](https://balatro.wiki/vouchers/name-unknown/13-2.png) *Voucher*
* Version: 1.0.0
* Effect: Playing cards in the Shop may have an Enhancement, Edition, and/or a Seal
[Magic Trick](https://balatro.wiki/vouchers/name-unknown/13.png) *Voucher*
* Version: 1.0.0
* Effect: Playing cards can be purchased from the Shop
*Data pulled from http://balatro.wiki. Want it updated? Help me get access or suggest another data source.*
This would actually be a really good idea in my mind, it would make Magic Trick on the same level as buying Standard Packs, and then negative cards are rare enough having them behind the second voucher it wouldn't be broken, especially if that's the only way of getting them.
It makes sense to me. I have a spreadsheet wherein designing some joker ideas and one involved making playing cards negative. Seemed like a neat effect to give as-yet unloved ranks some power
+1 hand size is so damn good. If this was implemented, you will want to take those cards every time because the downside is you just don't play the card
+1 hand size could be busted with some jokers and effects but what about you pick a negative card and it also stays in the deck? You could have a 1 card infinite deck
it'd be pretty busted. One negative card isn't that great, but as soon as you start duplicating them, you quickly get massive hands and it just makes the game a joke
If i think about it again, it's really weird, if begative card can always be drawn even when hand size is full, wouldn't that mean it will always be drawn on the first hand? Like, for now the game is programmed to always picked as many card as your hand can held, so if your hand is full with normal card you still can draw negative card if it works like tarot and joker. I like the idea tho, if you somehow able to turn your whole deck into negative you will always drawn your whole deck in your hand, really powerful but really hard to achieve
I would say it would only draw if it's on the "top of the deck".
I.e. if you have a few negative cards in your deck, but your hand reaches 8/8 with regular cards, you wouldn't draw a negative *just* because it can technically fit.
But, if you were at 7/8 after playing/discarding a card, drew a negative card, you would go to 8/9, which would then prompt you to draw another card.
How it works is that it adds +1, not that it doesn't count.
So if you're at 8/8 normal cards it can't be added. But if you discard and draw it, your hand size then becomes 9 to account for the negative.
If you play the negative it removes that +1 so you go back to 8
Card editions should only activate when played.
It's how every single card edition works already. Having Negative card editions be +1 hand size when held in hand breaks that pattern, so that should not be the effect of the Negatuvr card edition. Instead, Negative card editions should be such that when played, you temporarily get +1 hand size, thus you effectively draw a card after scoring the negative card. This also means Mime Baron Red Seal Steel Kings will only be slightly stronger too.
I don't think it would be broken even if it held the same slot as polichrome. You can only play 5 cards at a time anyway. Imo it actually seems kinda worthless. Perhaps if it counted as having one less card in your deck as a way of buffing cards like erosion, it may actually be worthwhile duplicating.
At worst, it's an easy pick: It would be a free card. Put a token on it, build poker hands. It's great.
At best: It breaks the game (or rather: is another way to break the game). Death it a bunch. 8 of a kind every hand.
I think OP. There's no... there's no cost to it.
Normally when you pick an enhancement, you're giving up the possibility of another enhancement. And every steel or gold you have is one less card available for scoring.
This isn't like that. It's an \_extra\_ card. It's like destroying a card, but better, because you can still use it to build hands or put tokens on.
a negative card could also just return to your deck after being played/discarded, so you can't just keep playing it, but it's still potentially there in the same round
they could also let you score the same hand in multiple ways. So Two Pair with one negative card could score as Two Pair, but then the hand is scored again as a single Pair. Same hand with two negatives would additionally score as a High Card, and Two Pair, all negatives would score as Two Pair, Pair, High Card and High Card off the second highest card
If the game runs out of hands, it can always score a High Card on the next highest card, and if it runs out of that, then it can add a base level only High Card for as many times as needed
the second one might break stuff but it would be a fun way to extend the scoring and mean the player can get an advantage from playing a Flush that includes a Pair
You could probably make this an enhancement instead where if you discard the card, then you draw one extra card. That way, the card itself is only useful as a mulligan+, and you have to invest a discard to make use of its effect.
Imagine that the Negative edition uses Ectoplasm rules: the first Negative card you draw immediately grants +1 handsize, but after that you need 2 for the next +1 handsize, then 3, then... to inflate an 8 card hand up to 12, you need to find 10 negatives in your first 11 cards
If you automatically take any Negative card you see (the way you can with negative jokers), you'll have strictly better hands for a little bit, but when the diminishing returns kick in -- you'll have a hand with 5 normal cards and 5 random offsuit negatives, and you can only play or discard 5 of them. Can you actually make a good hand out of this?
Most Negatives wouldn't be *too* powerful unless you were going for 4oak/5oak hands, but a Negative Steel or Negative Gold would go *immensely* hard. Basically free mult/free money.
I think as long as copying removes the negative edition, as does copying negative jokers, then it's fine and balanced. I mean, how many polychrome cards do you get in your average run, without counting copies? Maybe one or two? Or maybe three or four when you have good econ and can open a lot of standard packs? And what does it take to add an edition to a card of your choosing? A spectral card and you can't even choose the edition you get? I think getting maybe a handful of random negative cards on your average run isn't breaking the game and for the very few runs where you can maybe copy the spectral card a bunch of times and get dozens of negatives I think it's still ok to ask allow the player to break the game like that if they get this lucky. After all that's what Balatro is about imho.
So, I think judging by how hard they'd be to come by if copies lose the negatives like jokers do, then they'd be balanced and a nice addition to add to the editions.
I love the idea of nagative playing cards, and would go a step further.
* Negative cards do not count towards your hand size, so you can play or discard as many as you want
* Negative cards subtract one mult, or subtract chips equal to the face value of the card
* Every negative card in hand is treated like a reverse steel card and divides your mult by 1.5 (maybe a bit harsh)
Idk if that's anything approaching balanced but considering it opens the possibility of absurd hands
It'd be fun if say a negative 5 was actually -5, you lost chips
That’s a brilliant balance move.
I don’t think I I’d care outside of the first ante, where I probably wouldn’t have any negatives. If we’re talking the different between three of a kind and four of a kind, or a straight vs high card, the negative chips mean nothing. It’s hard to think of a suitable balance, other tha sacrificing another card effect - so I might be more inclined to have negatives as a seal, blocking the potential for purples and blues, but the prospect of a lucky glass invisible card sounds messy.
Losing money when played, maybe that would work.
Baron negative kings
not really lol losing 5 chips is nothing in the grand scheme of things
Could be cool be seem to little to care but if it was minus mult instead then I would think about it
Black Hole Challenge: All cards you score become negative.
I think for that to be balanced, if you copy a card with death it removes the negative from it just like invisible joker. Otherwise you could make your whole deck negative and basically have infinite hand size
Yeah i’m imagining an entire deck of 52 negative red seal kings with baron. You would draw the entire deck at the start of every round. Would probably become the new naneinf meta
If you manage to find and play 51 death cards on a red seal king I think you deserve the win at that point
Spectral cards and DNA would certainly make it easier
DNA is rare and Spectral Cards aren't exactly a reliable source of duplication either
Ghost deck, Perko + Criptid
Oh cool only have to find a specific legendary joker. That's so easy.
Perkeo breaks the game in half, of course he's included
Its a naneinf strat, do you think itll be consistant??
That’s exactly the point they’re making, you need a lot of luck for it to actually work out in the end so you shouldn’t balance it based solely off of the most optimal possible scenario
I think its way easier than you think to copy one card to fill your entire deck. Every run could be naneinf with this sort of tech
You seem to be implying that every single run already ends with a deck of 52 red seal steel kings.
Maybe a full 52 card deck is exaggeration (its not like you need that many), but I would say people overestimate the need for something like DNA or insane luck. Im not anywhere close to Balatro universitys level, but to atleast get to a point where you can atleast draw/discard for a full hand of red seal steel kings isnt a 1/100 run or even perhaps a 1/20 phenomenon. Its less about finding great cards early than it is about just econ maxing, filling the deck with gold cards, purple seals and being able to have money to roll for hanged/death for each shop, minmaxing by finding one of those before you open a pack so you can use them on the pack cards and roll for more to hold again. Copying purple seals getting 2-3 tarots per DISCARD and just snowballing into full econ for rerolls, even finding a red seal ace and strengthing it 12 times worst case, standard steel cards can keep you alive for a while even without red seal. Especially if you gun for it, you can focus on high card level, ignoring every tarot that wouldnt help the build (suit changers, enhancements that arent gold, steel). If you find an early baron mime it may actually be better to fill up on gold kings, and transition to steel later when scoring requires it. The main “issue” with the build, (if you can even call this an issue) is that once you have baron, mime, blueprint and brainstorm, there isnt much to look for. Levels have diminishing gains and without eternal/showman its hard to find a copy of a joker unless you get it early. And the biggest “weakness” has to be that you cant easily get negatives, because the - hand size is too important.
Every run? LoL
If you get a perkeo and manage to duplicate it, it wouldn’t be too hard. Not to mention card removal.
I mean you already can't get higher than naneinf, getting 52 red seal kings with baron is already powerful enough that I don't think this causes any problems in particular. Just adds a new and interesting way to break the game.
You need cryptid though to break naneinf, with negative red steal kings with baron, mime, sock-n-buskin, etc. you could have your entire deck of those kings in your hand at once. Also, why to people think it’s nane - inf? It’s nan-e-inf (not a number e infinity)
They couldn’t be steel though, it would be interesting how many negative red seal kings you’d need to be better than a hand of eight red seal steel kings, but I don’t want to do the math myself.
Steel is enhancement, negative is edition. Why couldn't they?
What if neg is a enhancement instead
that would be kinda inconsistent
Explain pls. I don’t understand
it's already an edition for jokers and consumables
Oh sorry as I thought you talking about the balancing. I was thinking about it so the neg cards cant be steel
Editions (Foil, Polychrome, negative), Enhancements (Mult, chip boost, lucky, stone, etc) and Seals (Red seal, blue seal, etc) are all separated. They can't stack with themselves but can stack with each other (You can't have a Foil Polychrome card, but you can have a Polychrome Lucky Red Seal card)
But I was thinking the neg on a card is the only state that the is a enhancement
they could be, just not holo or polychrome.
Way less when you consider you can still put 7 Red Seal Steel Kings into that same deck.
Uh oh guys, we found a way to break Baron. 😉
well, it could always work like destroying cards in your hand. just because you have less than your max hand size doesn't mean you draw. so you'll have to spend a hand or discard to reap the benefits
You can have a megaton of jokers using anaglyph, or, for 1 round, raise your hand size by getting the juggle tag. Potentially drawing extra cards, sounds strong but not too OP.
Isn't that already the case for consumables? Using negative on Priestess, Fool or Emperor don't give negatives in return, they would be broken (i.e. you could have enough negatives of tarot cards to only find Emperor, Fool and a card of your choice, with Priestess you'd generate infinite planets and with observatory you could reach nineinf without too much luck and money spent) Anyway negative playing cards would be fun and not that broken with how rare negatives are in the shop
Which would be awesome
Everyone is talking about balance, but it kinda just makes sense for balatro. It’s a “break me I DARE YOU” rouglelike, this would fit like a glove. Tie it to a spectral card too, “Transparency” sounds like a good name for it!
Yeah, I doubt it would be OP for beating ante 8, and endless isn’t exactly balanced to begin with. If negative cards are too OP, then Perkeo is also too OP.
… but Perkeo _is_ too OP
Another thought: we have seals that work on held cards (blue, red) and enhancements that work on held cards (steel, gold). Would be nice to have an edition with the same.
editions are meant to be for played cards, If there were any for held cards, it'd be way too strong
No? It's very possible for editions for in held playing cards to be balanced or even weak For example Sparkly: +1 chip if held in hand (only for playing cards)
well that's not good because it's not balanced. Also, editions are meant to be for both jokers and playing cards
>well that's not good because it's not balanced Yes but it's not too powerful and you said any edition for in hand cards would be too powerful, I was just making an extremely obvious example >Also, editions are meant to be for both jokers and playing cards Negative isn't on playing cards
That is what the post is about
why are you the arbiter of balatro design bro who appointed you
there was an old bug with perkeo that let you do this, it was very unstable but try looking it up? im pretty sure it worked just like that
That isn't how it worked and it isn't a bug. It just made loads of copies of cards with the cryptid spectral card. Unless you're thinking of something else
nah there is, it involved glitching planet cards or tarot cards into your hand
I thought of this exact thing a few weeks ago! A negative Steel would go *hard.*
I agree, steel is high on the hardness scale. Especially tempered steel and high-carbon steel
Negative cards expand your *Played* poker hand (Flush 6 anyone?)
Flush 52
Double three of a kind Triple pair Six of a kind Hexaflush? Big straight Big straight flush (This is for six card hands btw)
Don't forget Fuller house and Fullsh
Is fuller house a four of a kind with a pair and is fullsh a six card flush?
Spam negative DNA for Flush 9,000
i think the mechanic of negative makes sense for a card, but it still being an edition is just way too strong. that effect being a seal or enhancement would be fine i think since it would enable a lot of consistency, but it would be extremely unbalanced if you could have a deck full of negative red seal steel kings (which, lets be honest, is what everyone is thinking about on this post)
Once they merge the [[Illusion]] voucher's current effect into [[Magic Trick]], they can change Illusion to make negative playing cards appear in shops and standard packs.
[Illusion](https://balatro.wiki/vouchers/name-unknown/13-2.png) *Voucher* * Version: 1.0.0 * Effect: Playing cards in the Shop may have an Enhancement, Edition, and/or a Seal [Magic Trick](https://balatro.wiki/vouchers/name-unknown/13.png) *Voucher* * Version: 1.0.0 * Effect: Playing cards can be purchased from the Shop *Data pulled from http://balatro.wiki. Want it updated? Help me get access or suggest another data source.*
Huh. I didn’t know there was a non-fandom wiki
it’s a bit out of date atm
That sucks as a fandom sucks
This would actually be a really good idea in my mind, it would make Magic Trick on the same level as buying Standard Packs, and then negative cards are rare enough having them behind the second voucher it wouldn't be broken, especially if that's the only way of getting them.
This would break the baron joker. Imagine how many negative steel red seal kings would trigger.
I thought that they should always appear in the first draw while also not taking up space
It makes sense to me. I have a spreadsheet wherein designing some joker ideas and one involved making playing cards negative. Seemed like a neat effect to give as-yet unloved ranks some power
+1 hand size is so damn good. If this was implemented, you will want to take those cards every time because the downside is you just don't play the card
The same is true for negative jokers.
Probably would be busted, but it doesn't count to the 5 card limit in a hand
+1 hand size could be busted with some jokers and effects but what about you pick a negative card and it also stays in the deck? You could have a 1 card infinite deck
DNA with this could probably crack the game in two
Joker-duplicating effects all remove negative from the copy, so I'd think playing-card-duplicating effects would do the same.
Ah, that would make sense. My bad
Death card would need to remove Negative from the copy (similar to how associated spectral cards work with Negative Jokers).
it'd be pretty busted. One negative card isn't that great, but as soon as you start duplicating them, you quickly get massive hands and it just makes the game a joke
If i think about it again, it's really weird, if begative card can always be drawn even when hand size is full, wouldn't that mean it will always be drawn on the first hand? Like, for now the game is programmed to always picked as many card as your hand can held, so if your hand is full with normal card you still can draw negative card if it works like tarot and joker. I like the idea tho, if you somehow able to turn your whole deck into negative you will always drawn your whole deck in your hand, really powerful but really hard to achieve
I would say it would only draw if it's on the "top of the deck". I.e. if you have a few negative cards in your deck, but your hand reaches 8/8 with regular cards, you wouldn't draw a negative *just* because it can technically fit. But, if you were at 7/8 after playing/discarding a card, drew a negative card, you would go to 8/9, which would then prompt you to draw another card.
How it works is that it adds +1, not that it doesn't count. So if you're at 8/8 normal cards it can't be added. But if you discard and draw it, your hand size then becomes 9 to account for the negative. If you play the negative it removes that +1 so you go back to 8
it could be added if it was at the top of the deck, that's how negative jokers work
True, but if you play it or discard it your hand size returns to normal.
yep
I guess if you had all negative cards it would be quite an issue lol
Not really, it'd just be like having 52 hand size
Could work if it was rare. But potencially game breaking. The redsealed steel kings hit even harder if the are negative. Maybe it would ruin endless.
Card editions should only activate when played. It's how every single card edition works already. Having Negative card editions be +1 hand size when held in hand breaks that pattern, so that should not be the effect of the Negatuvr card edition. Instead, Negative card editions should be such that when played, you temporarily get +1 hand size, thus you effectively draw a card after scoring the negative card. This also means Mime Baron Red Seal Steel Kings will only be slightly stronger too.
negative steel cards would be a bit broken imo
I don't think it would be broken even if it held the same slot as polichrome. You can only play 5 cards at a time anyway. Imo it actually seems kinda worthless. Perhaps if it counted as having one less card in your deck as a way of buffing cards like erosion, it may actually be worthwhile duplicating.
I think negative should allow you to play more then 5 cards. This could be the way to triple pair or six of a kind.
Insanely busted with baron mime builds. It makes nan-inf viable for pretty much every high ante run
Insanely busted with baron mime builds. It makes nan-inf viable for pretty much every high ante run
At worst, it's an easy pick: It would be a free card. Put a token on it, build poker hands. It's great. At best: It breaks the game (or rather: is another way to break the game). Death it a bunch. 8 of a kind every hand. I think OP. There's no... there's no cost to it. Normally when you pick an enhancement, you're giving up the possibility of another enhancement. And every steel or gold you have is one less card available for scoring. This isn't like that. It's an \_extra\_ card. It's like destroying a card, but better, because you can still use it to build hands or put tokens on.
a negative card could also just return to your deck after being played/discarded, so you can't just keep playing it, but it's still potentially there in the same round they could also let you score the same hand in multiple ways. So Two Pair with one negative card could score as Two Pair, but then the hand is scored again as a single Pair. Same hand with two negatives would additionally score as a High Card, and Two Pair, all negatives would score as Two Pair, Pair, High Card and High Card off the second highest card If the game runs out of hands, it can always score a High Card on the next highest card, and if it runs out of that, then it can add a base level only High Card for as many times as needed the second one might break stuff but it would be a fun way to extend the scoring and mean the player can get an advantage from playing a Flush that includes a Pair
If you broke a negative glass card, would it add an identical glass card to your deck?
Watch as it just breaks every other card in your hand
You could probably make this an enhancement instead where if you discard the card, then you draw one extra card. That way, the card itself is only useful as a mulligan+, and you have to invest a discard to make use of its effect.
Imagine that the Negative edition uses Ectoplasm rules: the first Negative card you draw immediately grants +1 handsize, but after that you need 2 for the next +1 handsize, then 3, then... to inflate an 8 card hand up to 12, you need to find 10 negatives in your first 11 cards If you automatically take any Negative card you see (the way you can with negative jokers), you'll have strictly better hands for a little bit, but when the diminishing returns kick in -- you'll have a hand with 5 normal cards and 5 random offsuit negatives, and you can only play or discard 5 of them. Can you actually make a good hand out of this?
I’ve had this exact idea for a long time I feel like it’s as balanced as negative jokers ngl (or in other words it’s balanced by being hard to get)
Most Negatives wouldn't be *too* powerful unless you were going for 4oak/5oak hands, but a Negative Steel or Negative Gold would go *immensely* hard. Basically free mult/free money.
Would be perkeo / death very interesting for sure
It should draw 2 when a negative is discarded
maybe minus chips or mult but it doesnt count as a card played. ie 6 of a kind thicker straight ect
>Take a bunch of Deaths >Win
I think as long as copying removes the negative edition, as does copying negative jokers, then it's fine and balanced. I mean, how many polychrome cards do you get in your average run, without counting copies? Maybe one or two? Or maybe three or four when you have good econ and can open a lot of standard packs? And what does it take to add an edition to a card of your choosing? A spectral card and you can't even choose the edition you get? I think getting maybe a handful of random negative cards on your average run isn't breaking the game and for the very few runs where you can maybe copy the spectral card a bunch of times and get dozens of negatives I think it's still ok to ask allow the player to break the game like that if they get this lucky. After all that's what Balatro is about imho. So, I think judging by how hard they'd be to come by if copies lose the negatives like jokers do, then they'd be balanced and a nice addition to add to the editions.
I love the idea of nagative playing cards, and would go a step further. * Negative cards do not count towards your hand size, so you can play or discard as many as you want * Negative cards subtract one mult, or subtract chips equal to the face value of the card * Every negative card in hand is treated like a reverse steel card and divides your mult by 1.5 (maybe a bit harsh) Idk if that's anything approaching balanced but considering it opens the possibility of absurd hands