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I'm trying to design a concept for a Trading Card Game and I've got this thing thought out, but I'm unsure how to name it.

The concept:

Creatures can be divided into several parts that can be independently destroyed when a creature enters combat.

A few examples of these parts that make up a creature are the following:

  • Orc with Spear, consists of Orc and Spear
  • Bear, consists of Head, Body and Legs
  • Mechanized Bear, consists of Head, Body, Legs, Armor and Rocket Launcher

As you can see sometimes every part referred is a whole entity, sometimes it's a body part and sometimes it is an attachment or a tool.

I've come up with the following names, but none of them quite cuts it:

  • Part
  • Piece
  • Component
  • Modification

Someone also suggested me to use Fragment, while it sounds really cool, I'm not quite sure how I can justify that it means something like a part, a piece, etc.

Is there a word that covers what I mean?

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    What about element: a fundamental, essential, or irreducible constituent of a composite entity. thefreedictionary.com/element
    – user66974
    Aug 7, 2015 at 10:18
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    Component and part are perfectly fine. Piece is too generic. Fragment does not really work. Modification does not work at all. But why not say target? When you can target a creature in various different places and destroy the targets independently, then well, they are targets.
    – RegDwigнt
    Aug 7, 2015 at 10:21
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    Target leaves a lot of room for sillyness. If I targeted your spear with my rocket launcher, would it really make sense to only destroy your spear?
    – insidesin
    Aug 7, 2015 at 10:37
  • Can you, uh, recycle bits? Or build creatures from different cards? Because if it's just to destroy something, "target" would do just fine.
    – PixelSnader
    Aug 7, 2015 at 10:42
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    A unit? (single thing, person or group, which is part of a larger entity)
    – Julie Carter
    Aug 7, 2015 at 11:38

3 Answers 3

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So we can say that your creatures might be destroyed piecemeal?

American Heritage dictionary 3rd ed.

adj. Accomplished or made in stages.

adv. By a small amount at a time; in phases; one part at a time.

Piece by piece; by degrees; unsystematic or random partial measures taken over a period of time.

For the components or add-ons perhaps:

facets; aspects; assets; composites; increments; fractions

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  • +1 If you would like to add 'unit' to your answer, you are welcome to do so:)
    – Julie Carter
    Aug 9, 2015 at 8:08
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If this were MTG, the orc would always be a creature and the spear either a token or an artifact.

The mechanized bear might be an artifact creature with tokens on it.

There is also a subset of artifacts called equipment.

To describe that "even more" part, all of these things are considered permanents.

Now that that's out of the way, the only new thing I'm seeing here is to be able to split lifeforms into body parts. Build your own chimera type stuff. I like part for this. Or get real specific like hing legs, mandibles, ect. because I'd assume you'd have to state in the rules "only one per type of augmentation is allowed". Ah, there it is:

augmentation

noun; something that augments –TFD

augment /ôɡˈment/verb –Google

make (something) greater by adding to it; increase.

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The unassuming word, "PORTION(S)" in gaming world with verbs like --- 'strike, hit, thawck' to join or disjoin--- can convey the concept of whole of the stuff the item of any description is made of.

The word, "STUFF" may be a fair candidate in the race as it means "the tangible substance that goes into the make up of physical object" but dropped on the ground that it sounds odd if applied to human limbs.

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