Battle/Magic/Skill Formulas

[Neo Samurai]

What are you guys doing? Just wondering.

[Dungeon Warden]

I am modifing the battle system along with the magic and skill formulas. I have alread changed some of the formulas (Int has a bigger effect on magic damage for example) and plan on changing a few other things (I want to make my own [well, not my own. I got the idea from a book] magic system and will need to make some changes to the formulas to make it work). There are a lot of other things I need to do in my game so it depends on time constrants when, if ever, I do this, but I hope to sometime.

[Doan the Nado]

I'm trying to avoid default stuff as much as possible, so I will be writing my own.

[Deleted]

Re-writing your own phys damage, magic damage, and magic heal formulas is quite easy in my opinion once you get the basics down (like switching to and from the Instigator and Target and loading their variables). The tougher thing I did was rewrite the formulas for hitting/missing with normal attacks, physical skills, magical skills, and status effects. Overall, making your own battle formulas isn't hard, just making everything work correctly afterwards is. I vote for definitely modifying them at least, or writing your own, but not uaing them as is. The important thing is that they work well, aka the abilities, characters, etc. are well balanced.

Oh, I recommend you write them out short-hand first and then question if they're good or not and what else you need to take account for first. For example something like

Damage of Physical Skills =
(Instigator's STR 100%) - (Target's DEF 50%)

Say if you wanted LUCK to affect damage you would add

Damage of Physical Skills =
[(Instigator's STR 80%) + (Instigator's LUCK 20%)] - [(Target's DEF 40%) + (Target's LUCK 10%)]

But perhaps 20 and 10% is too high so you change it. This'll save you the trouble of editting in RPGM2. You should write it on paper/computer/mind however it's most easily readable to you. This'll also help to keep your scripts easy to read and well-organized.

[vespuleth]

a good idea is to gauge the difficulty level of your game, and base things on that.

for example:

in a hard game, it would take 4-6 hits to kill you, and 2-3 spells, assuming spells probably did twice as much damage (youd have to modify somehow to make melee still worth using, like a wait time or mp)

in a medium challenging game, it would take somewhere between 7-10 hits to kill you (leaning more toward the lower), and 3-5 spells.

in an easy game, it takes around 15 hits to kill you. if it ever takes more than that, the game is ridiculous *in my opinion*.

also, taking into account whether missed swings count in this or not will adjust it some, as well as how much you allow healing to affect you. if healing will heal .5 to 1.5 of a hit, than it should take more hits to heal you (i suggest never making a heal work less effectively than a hit). also, speed is a major determanite. these balances are suggested on the idea that the player gets a turn everytime the enemy does.

finally, how hard the enemy is to kill is important. in a hard game, the player should be able to go through 2 or 3 normal battles (ff style) without needing to heal or rest. 4-7 for a medium game, and 7-12 for an easy game. anything above that is too much, in my opinion. that ratio will help you develop the hit ratio to kill an enemy. for example, using this and the to kill the character ratios, you would know that in each battle the player should only take 1 or 2 hits, meaning that he will have to be able to kill the enemies in one or 2 rounds. meaning he should be both a little faster than them, and able to kill them in one hit, barring a miss. even though that seems easy, it makes for a very challenging game.

[vespuleth]

oh, and since that long boring post didnt answer the question:

as im writing my own combat system, im using my own formulas. im trying to get away from hard wired numbers, aside from stats. that way everything (including spells) depends on the individual using it.

as for the current game im making (Fawleh: Pheonix Pinion) i havent thought about combat too much, so i dont know what ill be doing yet.