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Alright folks, it's time we get serious. There's a boss on these here forums, and we need to figure out... Is the intro the same as a common encounter? Do they need to be? Well, let's come to a consensus and go from there, right? (List is from my opinions, please don't hurt me.) Atmosphere As it looks in today's games, whether it be as subtle as Undertale, as drastic as Bowser, cunning as Eggman, brutal as Ganon, there's always five ingredients to a boss encounter. Music, which has to fit the mood and style of the boss at bare minimum. In the case of multiple bosses, whether it be the Chaotic Gore Magala from Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate or the Axem Rangers, it has to sum up all the parts. For example, The Chaotic Gore's theme is its own theme mashed up with its counterparts Gore and Shagaru Magalas, and plays with the power that it has as you try to take on a frenzied, infectious dragon. The next ingredient is location. Undertale has the habit of placing bosses in their home field, like Papyrus in Snowdin and Undyne in the caverns. The feeling both give reflects how you, the player, are treated by them before the encounter. Papyrus will react in either a scared or pompous demeanor when he decides to spare/subdue you. In Undyne's case, she hunts you down before cornering you multiple times, finally going all out in a flurry of spears or by lifting a boulder. The third is surprisingly timing. Does the boss you encounter attack right off the bat? Does the boss never show themselves until the end? Well, either way you look at it, some, like N from Pokémon Black and White and Eggman from Sonic, start their final assault with a subtle first encounter, measuring your strength and wits at the beginning, to test if you have your bearings. Then, in the end, a full on assault is launched as you start your last fight with them. (This is a bit of an overstatement for Pokémon, but then again, having stairs plow through a building wasn't exactly something small scaled when a castle towered over the Unova League.) The next is style. Is it a simple jump, a swing, a Rev-Roll? Only the style of the boss will tell you how to approach the situation. The last ingredient is portrayal. All games use this, even the ones we make to show the MC's obstacle they must overcome. Examples can be Sora's experience in fighting everything to Xemnas in Kingdom Hearts II, or your gain in knowledge and strategy in Mean Bean Machine. Idealism/View/Goal Regardless of the game, there is a goal that will be reached. All the protagonist does is sway it into their favor when there's some powerful enemy involved. An example from my game, Dark Tides, comes from Xerian and Xex. While Xerian wants to gain that "ultimate power" he's been trying to achieve by summoning the World's Edge, and Xex wants to find the answer to how the world can be reformed, the heros stop both while learning both how the constant cycle of life will keep reshaping where they live, indirectly showing that their adaptations lead the their highest potential without aid from an unworldly entity. Other examples come from Eggman's obsession for world domination, or Gruntilda's attempt to become beautiful again. Another great example comes from Darkrai from Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky and Dark Matter from Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon. In the long run to achieve dominance, Darkrai causing Dialga to become aggressive and cause time to slowly slide into a standstill, and while Dark Matter was simply a collection of negativity from everything living in the world, it had tried to crash the Tree of Life AND the planet into the sun. Talk about large goals that almost succeeded if it wasn't for their defeats. I would state Kingdom Hearts' overall story as an example, but there would be a week's worth of typing to do at that point. Role Moving on, every antagonist has a role. The Fairy God Mother from Shrek 2 wanted Prince Charming to be married to Fiona, and let's not forget games like Asura's Wrath. (I'm just going to keep to my cup of tea. There's way too much going for AW that I wouldn't finish this XD) Xemnas, Bowser, Sephiroth, The Ghost (Chameleon Twist), Spooky (Pac-Man World 2), the list just rolls off our screens. Something that always stands out to me, however, is that their role is used through the entire story. Technically speaking, these roles normally only benefit the "creator" of said role, but in some cases, like in Lok's Quest, the roles were to try and help in the end. Entry Flashing screens, eerie music, scolding the player for cheating, breaking the fourth wall... Giygas! Every single boss had some entry that made them unique, outstanding, and/or fitting for the encounter, whether it be Team Rocket's multiple encounter or the Koopalings. I gotta hand it to game developers here, this is normally how they sell some of their games in some scenarios, and more importantly, give you your bill for learning the game to that point. Hope you have cash/Rupees/Coins/Rings/Souls ready! These are what I felt are primarily used to introduce bosses, and while I tend to simply use the story to go "Oh hey, see me? Yeah, I'm the head honcho in these parts. Let's tussle." kind of route, I wonder if I need to spend a portion of my game just letting the antagonists be them, give them the keys to the screen time, and go from there. What are your thoughts?

I was doing some work with events in the troop event page and battle-testing this boss I've created. I thought of an interesting question hat deals with this boss. How do you guys feel about multi-strategy bosses? For example, the boss I'm talking about. Let's call him Man 1. Man 1 A boss who has 10 spells/skills. He has no pattern to his moves so you can't predict when he'll use them. You can't use long term strategies since Man 1 inflicts the ailment, fell, a lot. You can't inflict any ailment that keeps him from attacking except for the ailment, Disarm. Unpredictably, he'll act as a combo-maniac and do vicious combos, and then, the next minute, he's not a combo-maniac. If he fight you individually, he can easily rip you apart. When his health reaches half-way, he uses a move that decreases everyone's MP to 0 and it doesn't increase until after 10 turns. You can get around this by using Leo's and Patricia's invisibility spell and you're warned of this ability before fighting him. He has a special combo he doesn't use often but does great damage. It's a combo that consist of four skills and the combo is done during one turn. It takes 1 turn to activate it so it can get you if you're not paying attention. This will cause you to grind through a lot of it but it's surprisingly fun because this boss is unpredictable, and when you do manage to outsmart him in anything, it feels great. This boss forces you to create multiple strategies and switch between them to go with the flow of battle. Basically, you're trying to beat him at his own flow. How do you guys feel about multi-strategy bosses?

So long title aside anyone know a way to do this?

All right, this is an idea I've been toying with doing for my own game much later on, but I'm trying to get a feel for how well it would be received by people playing the game. Several people I've run it by before have liked it- but then most of those people are the kind of gamers who would play a game on a literally unwinnable difficulty level if they could get away with it, so I take that with something of a grain of salt... ________________________________ So, at the end of the game, you come back to one of the earliest towns you visit near the beginning. Depending on your actions, the town is either a charred ruin or a last safe haven where you can purchase items and synthesize some of the strongest weapons and armor in the game. You go through the town to the shore of the lake adjacent to it, and are very clearly warned multiple times in the character dialogue that once you cross this lake, there is no turning back. After this point, you lose access to the save option, as well as any synthesis options that could have been accessed from the menu. As the party crosses the lake on a boat, they are attacked by the first of the nine bosses: a stronger version of an angelic foe they faced earlier in the game, the patron saint of Guidance and the Sea. Stronger because, now that they are on its territory of water, it has gained certain bonuses to its stats it didn't have previously. That boss is defeated, and then the party arrives at the lake's shore, crossing to the entrance of the final dungeon- in front of which stands the first of the four villains, who wields a zweihander and is a berserker- needless to say, the guy hits like a truck if you aren't prepared with your skills and defense. The first and second floors of the dungeon are safe havens, where plot-related dialogue happens and you realize the way is open before you. No one bars your path. This is disturbing, as before, there were plenty of people running about the place. You find the occasional dead NPC, and your last glut of abandoned healing items. The party makes it halfway across the third floor when they are challenged by another stronger redux of a boss they faced earlier, one who is based off of thunder and lightning. Woe be unto the player who neglects to take off any water-based anything they had on them before this fight, as the damage toll mounts very high here. As does the paralysis count. On the fourth floor, another being they'd earlier defeated comes before them, seeking vengeance. While this foe has less HP than last time, its attacks are even faster and it is able to heal itself. The fifth floor bears the glut of dead NPC bodies and the second of the four main villains you have to fight. And to open the battle, he uses a Doom-like status effect. This has a high chance of missing, but if it hits, it is very difficult to dispel, and his AI will actively target the healer attempting to use the blessing to dispel the Doom effect. On the sixth and seventh floors, the final two beings previously defeated await their arrival. One is incredibly magically-defensive, but has pretty sucky physical defense so well-equipped melee characters can make short work of her as soon as her magic shield is down. The other has horrible stats but afflicts the party with a multitude of status conditions that make hitting the darn thing really tricky. On the eighth floor, the player is confronted by the third of the four main villains, an old man leaning on his staff for support during the fight. It is hinted that attacking him might not be the best idea. If he is attacked, after about five turns, he will reveal his true power. The man is a defensive wall, and his counter-attacks are painful, but he is slow to move, so with a faster party, he should be short work. The ninth floor is where the final boss waits, and in grand JRPG tradition, he's a multi-former. Five forms, to be precise, each with its own strengths and weaknesses that must be accounted for in-battle- many of which mirror earlier boss fights in the game. __________________________________________ So for a final count, this is a grand total of (counting the different forms as separate bosses) 13 bosses in a row. And for added fun, if a character isn't alive at the end of one of these battles, that's it. They're dead and gone. Permanently. You don't get them for the rest of the dungeon. Since the puzzles were already solved during your first romp through here, it won't render the dungeon unwinnable- but it will make your life a lot more difficult. I do plan on having a 'skip cutscene' option so you don't have to sit through all the cutscenes again if you should happen to fail, but I was just wondering if there were any thoughts on this. Do you think its a good idea to have a no-save boss rush at the finale of the game if the player is explicitly warned about it? Or do you think, even with an option to skip cutscenes, it would prove too punishingly difficult and would just get people to turn it off?

Do you think it's good to have guest characters from one of ur games to another game?

I know, I know, I know.. you're probably tired of seeing this question asked. " How do i get the enemy/boss to do an attack that causes all my players to have 1 hp left." well i'm gonna show you how to do this for both players and even for enemies. why enemies just so you can have that one scene where the "super strong mystery guy saves the day".. you can thank me later, and please do thank me if you happen to use this method. first for players. I honestly have no idea why this question keeps arising though starting to annoy me very much. and now just so this tutorial does more than answer a simple request here's how you could do this for enemies. again not super complicated although it does take a bit longer to set up the enemy version than the character all in all eventing this shouldn't take more than 10 mins even for the newbie-st of us all.

I had this odd skill idea that I felt the need to bounce off of you guys. This is a boss skill, 100% unavailable to the party: It's a skill that targets one character, heals the target for 20% of their HP, then the next turn lowers all of their stats except MHP and MMP, along with reducing how much healing magic effects them. That is until they suffer 40% of their HP in damage.

So today, I happened to be on YouTube watching the . It's a popular boss fight amongst players and non-players, though I'm not sure whether it's because of the strategy involved or because of the music. As I was watching the boss fight, I started thinking about how I could replicate something like that in Ace, minus all the aesthetic candy. For those not familiar, the Seymour Omnis fight basically involves elemental switching. Seymour has 4 circular glyphs each with four coloured node at 4 sides of each glyph. The colours represented the primary elements of the game (in order): Red (Fire), (Light Blue) Ice, (Yellow) Thunder and (Dark Blue) Water. What ever colour node was aligned would be the magic he'd cast, and he'd cast this FOUR TIMES. He'd also absorb the element if used against him, and would be vulnerable to the opposite element. Each time a magic of a certain element was used, Seymour would automatically rotate the glyphs behind him so that the nodes that were aligned would the next element in line. For example, if the all the nodes aligned were red, then he'd be casting Firaga (the game's highest tier Fire spell) four times, whilst absorbing any Fire attacks flung at him, and would take heavy damage from Ice attacks. If Ice were to be used at this point he'd switch over the nodes so that the light blue ones were aligned, making him use Ice attacks and be weak against Fire. It's important to note that what I'm about to explain here may not be an exact replica of how the Seymour Omnis fight works, mainly because I haven't played the game myself in a long time, and I'm not particularly sure if what I just explained is how the battle actually works. That was just from one observation. None the less, this tutorial will teach you how to make a boss that will change it's elemental attributes upon being hit with a certain element. WHAT YOU WILL NEED: - RPG Maker VX Ace, of course. - Victor Engine - Element States (by Victor Sant) - Victor Engine - Enemy Attack Conditions (by Victor Sant) - Yanfly Engine Ace - Element Absorb (by Yanfly) [Optional] - Knowledge in notetagging. - Ability to follow instructions well. PREPARATIONS: Now for starters we will need to download Victor's Element States and Enemy Attack Conditions scripts as this wasn't possible (for me at least) without those two scripts. Place them where they need to be. I personally have Victor's scripts above everything, and Yanfly's scripts below his. Though, if you experience any problems with Element States, such as states not being applied when they're hit with the element, if you're using Yanfly's Lunatic Damage script, place it under that script. Next we will need to set up your elements. Elements would be found in the top left box under the System tab of the database. You would probably have all your elements there already. With the first two being Physical and Magical and the rest being the actual elements. Whenever I mention Element IDs, remember to refer back to this. Now head to the States tab. For this tutorial we're going to utilize Fire, Ice, Thunder and Water as our 4 primary elements. (Fire vs Ice, Thunder vs Water). So what we're going to do is make 4 new states, one for each element. Name them '[Element] Alignment' ([Element] being...the element or attribute xD). Or you can name them whatever, but just know which one is which. Now leave the main settings blank, but in the Traits section, under Attribute Efficiency, put [Element] as *200%. So for example, for the 'Fire Alignment' state, in the trait section I would be put under Attribute Efficiency, Ice, *200%. Doing this will make the battler with this take twice the damage from Ice attacks when under the state. Do the same for the rest of these new states. OPTIONAL: If you have Yanfly's Absorb Element script, you can add this bit of code to each state's Note's section to make them absorb an element. <element absorb: x> x = the Element ID. So essentially, for Fire Alignment state, you want x to be the Element ID of whatever the Fire attribute is (by default it should be 3). ENEMY SETUP Here's where there's a lot of notetagging involved so try and bear with me here. Note that in the video of the Seymour Omnis fight that I watched, Seymour only quad-cast the magic element he was aligned to. He only used a Dispel spell on one occasion and an Ultima spell on one occasion (though this was used when a summon was out). Reason why I mention that is because this is where Victor's Enemy Attack Conditions script comes in. This script allows for a bit more flexibility regarding the conditions of enemy attacks and when they attack, whilst also bringing back some functions from RMXP. Now the idea is that the enemy is going to quadruple cast his elemental magic. So in the enemy's Traits section, put in Additional Actions as 100% and then do this another 2 times, so that you have 3 of them there in the Traits tab. This will make the enemy attack 4 times without fail. You can make this lower or higher if you want. <enemy action: x, y> conditions; </enemy action> X = the Skill ID Y = Skill rating/priority conditions = the condition that must be met for the skill to be used Refer to the script's instructions for more details at the script's header, however the condition we're going to be using is this one: state?(x) This will check if a certain state (x) is applied. So essentially, what we're going to put in the enemy's Notes section is this <enemy action: x, 10> state?(z) </enemy action> X = will be the elemental skill/magic the enemy will use 10 = this will set the priority rating to 10 making it so the enemy will use it for sure. Z = will be the state ID. You want this to be the state for the element she's going to use. So let's say X was 52 (by default this is Fire II). By putting this notetag in the enemy's Notes section, if the enemy has state z (whichever is your Fire Alignment state) applied, then Fire II will be used 4 times (because of the enemy's Trait settings we edited earlier) with a priority rating of 10. Make four of these. One for each element. By the end, you should have it so that when the enemy has any of the of '[Element] Alignment' states applied, the enemy would use the corresponding skill. Next it's time to work on making sure these states are applied correctly during battle with the Element States script. We're going to be using these two notetags. <element state add x: y> <element state remove x: y> X = Element ID Y = State ID With these we can contol which states stay on and which states go away. This is to prevent multiple different '[Element] Alignment' states piling on, making things awkward and silly...and wrong. This is where the notetagging gets a bit confusing so I'm gonna layout some ID examples of mine. Going by default, Element ID 3 = Fire, 4 = Ice, 5 = Thunder, 6 = Water. Going by my setup in my project, State ID 46 = Fire Alignment, 47 = Ice Alignment, 48 = Thunder Alignment, 49 = Water Alignment So let's say that our enemy is currently under the Water Alignment (State ID 49), and we attack with Thunder (Element ID 5). If I were to use use this notetag: <element state add 5: 48> We change the enemy's state to be under the Thunder Alignment. But what about the Water Alignment state? Won't that still be there? This is where I would use this notetag: <element state remove 5: 49> This would remove the Water Alignment state upon being hit with the Thunder element as well. Of course, we have to do this with the other element states as well. So in this case we'd have to remove State IDs 46 (fire) and 47 (ice) as well, just in case they were applied instead of State ID 49 (water). So using my own ID examples I'd have something like this: TROOP EVENTING I hope I've made some sort of sense so far. Feel free to comment if I haven't. Almost done here, and this section is partially optional. Everything should be set up to get the fight to work the way it should by now, but obviously we need to start the battle with the enemy already having one of the '[Element] Alignment' states applied. You can simply do that by using the Troop event page, and adding a Change Enemy State event command, so that the enemy has whichever element state you want applied. You could also randomize it a bit, by using a randomizer variable that will determine which element the enemy will start off aligned with. Victor Sant explains that by using his State Auto-Apply script, you can set it up so that a state will automatically be added to the start of a battle. Read his post for more details. And to be honest, it's all customizable from here, really. Even the way the battle works. With the right understanding, you can make it so that instead of a A vs B, C vs D, elemental system, you can have a A > B > C rock-paper-scissors sort of elemental system which would work great with this. FAQ I didn't understand a part of this tutorial! Please post in this thread with your concern and I'll try and clarify myself. I tend to get a bit long-winded in my explanations and sometimes they seem rather complex ><. I'm holding off making a demo unless there's like pandemonium and a desperate cry for one. I want my enemy to use another magic/skill/attack just once. I mentioned somewhere in this tutorial that in the video I watched of the Seymour Omnis fight, Seymour broke out of his element quad-casting routine and casted dispel once and Ultima once. I've not figured out the kinks just yet but if you want your enemy to be able to do this, then you can try putting the three 'Additional Attacks: 100%' traits in each of the '[Element] Alignment' states instead of them being on the enemy's traits. That way it'll only quad-cast the magic. Then to have the enemy cast something else, I can only think of manually removing the state(s) through events, allowing the enemy to use something else. OR you can Force Action it through the troop events and conditions. The scripts needed for this have bugs/incompatibility issues/etc! Essentially not my problem. The only problem I had was with Victor Engine - Element States, and that was an issue with Yanfly's Lunatic Damage scripts. I solved the problem by putting the Element States script under that. As for bugs please use Victor's Bug Report page and/or if you're using the optional Absorb Element script by Yanfly, use Yanfly/Archeia_Nessiah/Yami's Bug Fix Report page. This doesn't work exactly the way the Seymour Omnis fight did! Though I have played the game myself, that was years ago and this system was conceived after only one observation of the video I watched of the boss fight (had no internet soon after), so therefore there are things that are wrong/missing/different from the actual fight. But the main thing about this is the ability for enemies to change elements via being hit with an element. How do you make those glyph things from the Seymour Omnis fight? That isn't what this tutorial is for. Heck even I'm thinking about a way I could represent the elements visually. I'm not so good when it comes to graphical things and aesthetics in RM'ing. I'm using certain scripts that cause the name of the state to pop-up when it's afflicted! I would suggest leaving the state names blank in the database. That way, it won't pop up in battle and also this way, you can keep what elemental alignment the enemy has changed to a secret. There are simpler ways to go about this/I have something to add. Post it here, I'll add it to a certain part of the tutorial crediting you. THANKS Victor Sant - for his Element States and Enemy Action Condition scripts that made this possible and his contribution to the tutorial Yanfly - for extra options in adding an element absorb feature with his Element Absorb script Chaos-Avian - for helping me out and contributing ideas into making this work

So while I've recently started working on a Boss Design (and How to Implement Complex Boss Encounters) tutorial and while I was writing up my outline for it I came to a cross roads: Which is better for an RPG, easy bosses that allows the story to flow uninterrupted or difficult bosses that pose a serious challenge for the player? On a related note, how much challenge is too much? If the player ends up failing once or twice at the "recommended character level" is it too difficult for a challenging boss? What about 5+ times? Are there situations where one would be better than the other, with the exception of a final boss ALWAYS being a difficult boss? Now, I'm not talking about the kind of challenge that you can merely bypass by grinding out a ton of levels. What I mean when I say "challenge" when I talk about a boss is its complexity and how easy and difficult it is to learn the appropriate strategies to defeat the boss. Not "Aw man this boss kills me too fast!" but rather "Aw man this boss 1 shots me when I allow him to charge up his attack without interrupting it!" type of challenge. Anyways, I was wondering what the community's preference towards boss battles? Are there any boss battles that stand out in your memory as particularly entertaining or rewarding? If so, why?

I've decided to make a return to the forums by asking this question, that has been hovering my mind. During my course of planning an RPG game, i've come to implement a villainous character, who will bother the same character repeatedly over the course of the game. This character will come back again and again, trying to beat the heroes, but fails everytime. Everytime he/she occurs, they're be stronger, having new set of attacks, more stats, etc. Eventually, before the resolution of the game, he/she will be beaten officially, and will never bother the heroes again. I, for one, like such an antagonist, especially if they're comical. I find them to be challenges of the players, an evaluator of some sort, to test the players if they're good enough to advance, or need improvements in their playstyle. Most recurrring bosses i've met aren't important to storyline, but they're there nonetheless. However, from what i've seen, some people don't like this character due to him or her returning on most vital points of the game, mostly when the characters are damaged or just not ready. Most recurring bosses aren't even necessary in the plot of the game. They're just there to mess with you. So I came to a decision, which I want to ask to the community. Should I implement such a character in the game, or should I remove them entirely? Are they necessary in any RPG game, or not? I haven't given any major roles to the character I have in mind, in terms of story, but what do you guys suggest? Give your thoughts about this. I want to know!