Need some advice on technique chaining in a diceless skirmish game with standard playing cards for resolution

TLDR: Should the requirement to increase the efficacy of an action be based on the action itself or the unit taking that action?

Ok I'm at the last decision i need to make before i write my rules down and start blind playtesting :) would appreciate some feedback from you guys. My question pertains to chaining cards. First allow me to explain some other relevant mechanics so this will make sense. This is a cyberpunk skirmish game with 4-12 models per player. Alternating activations.

Context: my game sees each player using a standard deck of playing cards and starting each round with a hand of 7 cards. For actions like throwing grenades, or jumping over gaps, or healing an ally, Players make an *Unopposed Check*. After declaring an action, if the action has a cost, the player must pay it by discarding cards of equal value. The player then performs a skill check by flipping from the top of their deck and comparing the card value to the success chart.

0-6: Failure 7-12: Succeed, but take 1 stress 13+: Succeed, draw one card

Example: Player declares they are using their Jumper's Flash ability, which allows them to move 12 inches in any direction. Flash has a cost of 5, so the player discards a 4 and a 3 from their hand. They then flip the top of their deck and get an 8. They make the move, but take one stress.

For actions with an enemy target like shooting, melee attacks, hacking etc, the player declares an action. The target declares a reaction if possible. Active player Draws cards equal to their units skill level in the declared action. Pay the action's cost if necessary, and both players take a **Reaction Check.** Same as skill check, except Whoever passes the check *and* gets higher than their opponent wins, and takes their action **first** (so both actions will happen if the second unit survives the action of the first). Upon a success, the active player plays a card from their hand to determine the damage, or **the force** of their attack.

I.E. Player activates their sniper and declares they are shooting at an enemy with its back to it. The enemy cannot declare a reaction because the sniper isn't in its LoS. Next, because the sniper has a 2 in ranged attacks, the active player draws two cards. The sniper is taking a regular shot, so there is no cost. Player makes a check and passes. He then plays a 10 of hearts, so he deals ten damage to the enemy.

Damage works like so: if a unit takes damage, it's player may discard any combination of cards with a value equal to or greater than the damage taken. Otherwise, the unit takes a wound.

So that brings me to my main question, Chaining Cards.

When taking certain actions, like attack actions for instance, you may increase the **force** of the action by chaining cards together. To chain a card you may play an additional number of cards as long as they are of the same suit as the first card played (some special abilities allow you to play cards of a different suit within the chain, but the first suit must still be the proper one in order to initiate the chain). So if you played a 10 of hearts to snipe an enemy, you could add the 5 and 4 of hearts to increase your force to 19.

Okay, so here's my question: should suits be attached to units or to actions? As of now suits are attached to actions. This means ranged attacks are hearts, melee is clubs, hacking is diamonds. **You can play any card you like when declaring those actions**, but you can only **chain** if you first play a card with the associated suit. So you can play a club first when taking a hacking action if needed, but you can only chain if you first play a Diamond, or chain a shooting action if you first play a heart. Spades are wild. So no matter what unit is taking a shooting action for instance, they can always chain shots if they play a heart. The con with this is it seems like chaining doesn't happen as often. The pro is it allows me to add special abilities in technique chains (adding a club into a chain of hearts wouldn't increase the force, but it would grant armor piercing).

The alternative is attaching suits to specific units. For example, Sniper A is diamonds but Sniper B is clubs. So when sniper A shoots, or melees for that matter, they can chain on diamonds. That means no matter what action Sniper A takes, if they want to chain, they must play a Diamond. When Sniper B shoots or hacks etc, he chains on clubs. If i do this, it makes me want to add tiers to units. So a tier C unit would be able to chain on one suit, a tier b unit would be able to chain on two suits etc. higher tier units would have far more opportunities to chain.

The downside to this is it seems like every unit having a different group of suits to keep up with could be hard to remember. It also changes how id approach special abilities. If i could figure out how to make special abilities work with this how i mentioned above with the armor piercing example, I'd go this way.

Thoughts?