Should Skills/Spells/Specials Have Recoils?

[Rezanta 373]

Heya folks! I was curious about a function I'm currently using in my game, which is recoil. Before I explain, I'll provide some examples.

 

Earth Shatter- While it's a weaker version of Talon Shatter, this attack hits hard and causes a recoil status that drops 15% of your other party member's HP off each time you use it. Useful as it may be, it is an Earth element dragon skill that will still have no effect on air element enemies. In that case, testing elements of your foes could cost you a game over once or twice. (I plan on adding a little skill/spell/special information building so that the player can check up on parts of the techs that aren't stated by their description, and the level they learn said tactic.)

 

Rounds of Flame- A gun skill that Drake uses that hits four random targets nine times. It also has a small chance to burn per hit (Degrades HP over time and decreases attack by 25%). This is one of the few recoils that do not hit the party, but mainly Drake, as it works like a cool down for a while before he can use gun skills again.

 

Poison Aerie- This poisons all enemies, and while poison may be a fun status to pull off to help you in battle, the recoil also poisons most of your party members. (You only have two that are immune to poison and one that can, while healing off another ally's HP, remove poison.)

 

 

Are recoils worth the trouble? Are they a good idea? I feel as if they are to keep players from spamming the best attacks, so attack also has use as well.

[lonequeso 1,921]

Personally, I don't like skills like that. There's always plenty of ways to deal with foes w/out friendly fire. It does present an interesting choice for the player. Using such a skill will do some dded damage, but you run the risk of getting an ally killed. My thing is if I damage my allies then another character or characters will likely have to use a turn to heal instead of doing anything else, party buffs, damaging, debuffing or afflicting states on the enemies. To me that makes it a wash or even slightly disadvantageous to me. 

 

That's my take on them. Maybe other people like them, but I've never been a fan, 

[+ Takeo212 1,079]

If the skill is really strong, then a recoil seems pretty interesting. Kinda like the Earthquake thing in Pokemon. Take down 2 enemies at the cost of an ally essentially.

 

If the balancing is good, then I think it would be a good mechanic, but if every skill has a recoil against the party, it can become tedious. 

if you have a move that deals x amount of damage to your entire party, then having a healer with a heal that can cure all members at once can be a good balance (not heal them exactly for the same, but more or less to prevent the player hating the combat). I'd save this type of stuff for high level moves though. Maybe low MP/ect cost, but a big recoil on party/user makes up for that.

 

In short; if done correctly then yea, I think it can be a good mechanic, but it can quickly become tedious, so balancing is essential.

[Kayzee 4,032]

By recoil do you mean hp damage to the user? Eh, sure. I wouldn't do it for very many skills, but one or two isn't that bad.

[Shiggy 630]

Some actions use TP, MP or items . HP is just another kind of resource you can use . The hard part is to balance things out.

For every skill you make , try to ask yourself a few questions:

 

-is there situations where this skill is the best option ?

If it doesn't, it won't be used or at least it will only be used until the players find the better option.

Note that you can deisgn specific encounters for this to become the best option

But a skill can be there for other reasons

 

-what does a skill say about the character?

Maybe you want a skill with recoil to show that a character doesn't care about his/her own life.

 

-is it cool?

see TV tropes about rule of cool : http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RuleOfCool

You will need good animation/ sound effect for that

[Scarlet Flames 2]

If you mean Drawbacks, I would restrict them only to Gear (Armor, Weapons and Accessories) and try my best not to make Skills that have Drawbacks. Most of your examples seem like you are adding a Drawback just for the sake of it. Instead, Try thinking of reasons to add them for a reason and make them more rewardng for the Player. Also, Think of ways so that Player can negate the Drawback.

 

Example of a Badly planned Drawback on a Buff Skill : 

Convert 50% Defense to 50% Attack.

 

This Buff is bad !!! Why ? Because it makes Player lose Defense for Attack and grants nothing else in return. Attack alone isn't much of a reward, You need a Greater Reward to use this Buff. Also, Knowing balance in RPG Maker Games, Players would end up dying or come close to dying. This is not a good feature.

 

Rework to make it a more Fun and Rewarding Skill : 

 

Convert 50% Defense to 50% Attack.

Unique Feature : Your Attacks always Critically Strike and you regenerate 5% HP every Turn.

 

This Buff is good !!! Why ? It not only makes the Loss of 50% Defense seem like its nothing, It also offers Crazy damage potential with its "Criticallt strike always" Feature and at the same time, address the problem of Lost defense by regenerating some of your HP. This would mean Player is tempted to use this Buff more, Even if they have to lose the defense. Further, You can even design armor based on granting 50% Bonus Defense for that specific character to completely negate this effect when using the Skill.

 

Remember, Drawbacks should be fun for the Player and should make their experience great, Not feel like a pain. You can also look up things like Skill Warmups, Cooldown Reduction and Restricting skills to few times in Battle to set limitations on Powerful skills. So use your Imagination, Make your skills Fun, Extremely Rewarding and force your Player to actually use these skills and feel Glad, Not Ragequit out of frustration because of Drawbacks !

[lonequeso 1,921]

That's a good example. Lemme try one. Hmm...

 

User's ATK doubles, but then he dies.   

 

...  ... ...well that one wasn't very good, was it? 

 

I agree that you have to make skills with negative effects worthwhile to the player just like any skill. Skills like these in particular need to have some pretty great benefits for jaded people like me to use them. A skill liek the above Convert 50% Defense to 50% Attack isn't very appealing. It might be worth it on occasion if the player knows they're fighting an enemy with high DEF and low ATK, but in anything other than maybe in a very simple system a skill like that will have little strategic use or value. 50% DEF being sacrificed for 100% attack is much more beneficial while still making the player decide if the risk is worth the reward. I'd use a skill liek that frequently as long as I know I can mitigate for defense loss or the character will survive anyway.

[Shiggy 630]

Converting 50% def to 50% attack can be good in several situations:

 

Maybe def is irrelevant because another character can taunt or enemy only uses magic attacks

Maybe character has high crit chance or has other way to scale much efficiently on this stat making attack much more valuable than defense

 

(PS: default RM damage formula is 4 times attack - 2 times defense so by default the difference between bonus damage dealt and bonus damage received is positive)

 

Last situtation let's say you have two characters A and B 

A has 10 ATK and B has 100 ATK

you will deal much more damage with A buffing and healing B while B is attacking than with A and B attacking .

This works as long you know B won't be one shot.

 

There are lots of factors to take into account but I do find this skill appealing.

 

I don't really understand the point of "drawbacks are frustratin"g. If everything in your game has a drawback , yes it is. But if you have a choice between a standard option and a superior option witha  drawback, it's just a matter of being able to evaluate when does the bonus outweights the drawback . And f the player isn't sure, s/he can choose the safe option. But if the bonus always outweights the drawback, there is no choice either.

[lonequeso 1,921]

^^I don't disagree, but personally, I never really liked skills that harm the user or the party. Like I said before if I have to (and probably) will have to use another skill to compensate for the negative effects, I'd rather just use a skill w/out negative effects and free up one my next moves to do anything else I want/need to do. an even conversion is good in certain situations, but it's not something I'd use heavily. 

 

I'm not saying either of the above are necessarily bad. I just don't like them personally. There's always exceptions though. Like Takeo's example of Earthquake in Pokemon. If your ally is a flying type or has Levitate, then they're safe. If they are a grass or a bug type the damage is halved. I've done that plenty of times. Also using Rest while holding a berry to wake the Pokemon up. 

 

If I can find a way to make a skill with negative effects worth my while, I'll use them. I've run into many in my day that haven't though. Most games I've played work out like this:

 

All the regular enemies are defeat to quickly and easily to waste time with any strategy other than smash them until they die.

Bosses are either the same or always seem to make me instantly regret using a skill with negative effects.

 

So if you're going to create such skills it'd be wise to create a handful of enemies, and maybe even a boss where that skill is one if the better strategies. Give the skills some more purpose. Also, pleeeaaaseee pretty please don't reduce all the regular battles to smash them until they die. That gets really boring really quickly. It's my biggest pet peeve in RPGs especially turn based ones.(at least in action RPG's my avatar looks cool slashing the shit out of things  )

Edited May 12, 2017 by lonequeso