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Trilogy Battle System For Simple Emergent Complexity (Creative Commons) EDIT: so after doing a little more work on this, I am starting to notice an emergent pattern of complexity with this system that makes it very Its very easy to use to make certain situations arise. I encourage people to play around with it to discover what can be done with this game type. So I've been doing some work the last little bit on how to make enemies that make things interesting and really make the player learn how to use their skills and force them to use different skills, not just spam the same string of skills again and again so this is my idea I have been operating with so far: every time a player uses a skill on an enemy, they de-buff an enemy skill AND buff an enemy skill. I was thinking along the lines of making a cross between a fighting game and an rpg and how each move has a risk and reward attached to it, whether in the context of leaving the attacker vulnerable to skills based on position while also hampering the offending parties incoming attack . The monetary buff/de-buff , SO FAR only lasts the one turn with all enemy attacks based on a stat, attack, speed, A-S-D. A Skill = - Speed, + Defense, S Skill = - Defense, + Attack D Skill = - Attack, + Speed It's still in the early phases, but the idea I have so far is for enemies attack patterns to be based on this triangle. For example A Dwarf's skill patterns ( / designates randomly which attack it will do) : A, S, S/D, D/A, A, S,S, D/S/A/ Other elements of this battle system Battle actions fall into three categories: Skill, Ability, Enchantment. Skills build TP for Abilities and Skills, Abilities would be considered magic, special abilities, extra strenuous abilities (example: Warriors, big wild and meaty can use war cry as an innate skill but Squires, timid , innocent and coffee boys probably need to work up the courage (through multiple encounters of combat) to execute such a move, thus for the squire, it is an Ability) and enchantments effect all users, I'm thinking flipping stats characters are proficient in (still under development) Probably not with all battles, but my end goal is for battles to build up to a climax moment, a big burst attack / or burst attacks similar to how in golden sun, the player had the option of strategically playing djinn in certain combos, building them up to when they can unleash the summon. I am working on a demo where I am experimenting with trash mobs but of all trolls/dwarfs/slimes. Also currently, because I just began this demo, battles are 1 v 3 , player vs Mob. This is just the rough Idea so far and I am curious as to what the community thinks, potential pratfalls, or problems.

Whether they raise a protective shield around your party, or give them superhuman strength, buffs are present in almost every RPG. In most games, we see the Shell or Protect variants, which reduce incoming damage and are usually essential for (what seems like) every boss fight. You just have your healer (or whoever can cast the spells) plop them on at the start of the fight and recast them when they run out. No drawbacks, other than the short (usually) amount of time it takes to cast the buffs on everyone. Even better, the buffer often also has variants of the spells (protectga, shellga) that cast it on all allies to reduce the time even more. The result of this is that the standard strategy for most players will involve maintaining the protective buffs, and as a developer, you have to keep that in mind; however, the developer would often just make enemies more powerful to counteract the lowered difficulty of using shell or protect. After this happens, you end up with a narrowed strategy that basically forces players to have to use the buffs in every single fight, which severely harms the game design in terms of flexibility and diversity. It could ruin the balance... it makes things bland. Speaking of balance, this applies to offensive buffs as well. You have the usual Bravery and Faith buffs, which raise someone's attack or magic respectively. If they are overly effective, you'll also be using them every fight to finish them faster. It doubles your damage and lasts fifteen turns, right? Sweet, you'll chop them up real good. Sometimes, If they aren't that effective, they become rather useless and neglected. Why burn your turn (that rhymes) casting Bravery, which only increases your attack by 1.3x and only lasts three turns, when you can just attack the enemy and finish them off next turn? Decision-making is a very important lesson in video games. Should I slip two attacks in, or wait to hit a stronger one later? Then comes more balance issues. You have multiple attack-boosting buffs that can be cast on the same character? They stack? So their original strength value starts to increase exponentially, and eventually they start hitting for 20 times more damage than they did without them. Instead of making buffs as just a cheap way to tweak strategy by having them necessary for a character to perform well, which essentially ends up merging buffs with characters and assumptions (an issue caused by many MMOs where you just stack on the buffs and attack away), how do you guys spice up the way buffs are handled? Maybe they can result as a bonus of pulling off combos, or something. I'm just kind of tired of the standard buff at the start and strategy comes after "strategy" because, well, if every single strategy has to involve the buffs, why do you even need the buffs at all? Why can't more thoughtful strategy mechanics be implemented? What do you guys think? TL;DR: Traditional buffs are generally a false sense of "strategy". Let's hear some ideas as to how buffs can be made more strategic and less bland. As a side note... how long do you guys like to make buffs last?