A few survey-like questions for my game

[Deleted]

I'm undecided on a few things and want to get your input:

1) Do you think it's better for Poison to damage a % of your current HP, or your max HP?

2) Do you think it's a good idea to allow Extremes (limit break like moves) that do status effects like Poison/Stun/Paralysis connect on bosses?

My thoughts are:

1 - Both are good and bad. % of Max HP makes it so poison is a real threat and will kill someone in x amount of turns no matter what, but this may make poison to powerful of a move. % of current HP makes poison less deadly for everyone and allows people to leave it on for ever since it'll take a HUGE amount of turns to actually die by it. Of course the poison still lowers the current HP and makes them more succeptable to death by other means. Nonetheless, which to do I don't know.

2 - Don't worry, I'd prevent Petrify, Flee, and KO from connecting and maybe half Paralysis and Poison chances. I think it'd be good because it would make the Extremes with status effects be effective on bosses. I've also been thinking of letting the less severe status effects connect from normal moves too, but I'd have/thrid/whatever the chances of success on bosses (and more of a reduction than the extreme moves). I don't know which to do, but I'm leaning towards (a) always cancelling Petrify, Flee, and KO on bosses, (b) halving Paralysis and Poison chances on Extremes for bosses, (c) not halving Stuns that come off when attacked like Stun/Sleep on Extremes for bosses, (d) quartering Paralysis and Poison chances on normal moves for bosses, and (e) halving Stun/Sleep type effects chances for normal moves on bosses. Bosses will likely also be faster and have higher charisma than normal enemies, and more so if the boss is only one enemy unit. Oh, I'd probably also halve/not-halve-with-extremes the chances on Stat-Down status effects. The final boss, or other BIG bosses in the story, will probably get a bonus halving, unless there stats and moves and whatnot make up for the status succeeding chance.

Doing both of these is easy for me to do, just a little additions to the status succeeding formulas.

[WarDragon]

i like

2) Do you think it's a good idea to allow Extremes (limit break like moves) that do status effects like Poison/Stun/Paralysis connect on bosses?

[The Final Rune]

1) Personally I like poison to be threatening condition, thus I lean more toward using a % of the Max HP. But, under this circumstance poison should wear off quicker. If you use the other method, a % of current HP, the poison condition should last until its cured or the battle is over.

2) I always hated that bosses could not be afflicted with status effects. I think a boss should be susceptible to all types of status effects. At the end of the game, the hero's are usually just as or more powerful than the previous bosses. So, anything they are susceptible to, so should be the bosses, except maybe for the final boss.

[Tinbok]

1. Maybe you could make two poisons, name one lesser and one greater poison. One would affect Max and the other, Current. Just a thought. Or you could do it like EQ and have a status effect called Disease that takes damage over a long period of time and a Poison effect that takes a lot of damage in a short time. As for me, I say maybe affect the person for 3 turns taking 1/6th of his/her life each turn. I feel poison should make you feel poisoned. Just me though. ;D

2. I personally don't care for limit breaks too much, so I can't really opinionize this one...

[KingSpoom]

I think one of the main reasons that bosses are immune to status effects is because it makes it too hard to calculate for. How can you make a boss that won't outright kill the party, but will still be challenging while poisoned, slowed, weakened, cursed, muted, etc... Even totally disregarding effects like paralyze, stone, and confusion... it does make it tough. If it can be assumed that all bosses are suseptable to status effects, then it can be assumed that all players (unless wanting a challenge) will use said status effects against them. Then it boils down to how they work, and will vary from system to system.

It does beg the question "What good are status effects for if they don't affect bosses, and the peons die too quickly to waste them on?" Well, the short answer is THE PLAYERS! I think status effects are more created to hinder the players than to help them against monsters. Likewise, positive status effects are there to help the player more than help the enemy. Enemies that buff themselves seem rare. Or, at least, that is how it always turns out. I plan to allow players to poison my bosses.

1: % of max health... somewhere between 5 and 10% maybe.

2: Since it's only a limit break, and is likely to only happen once or twice in a battle... I'd probably do what you are thinking. Allow the effects to work, but at reduced chances or effectiveness.

[Dungeon Warden]

1) I don't know what's wrong with poison doing X amount of damage reguardless of HP. As you meet tougher enemies, the X will become larger. If you do a %, maybe the % could be based on the characters fortitution, i.e. tougher character can resist the effects of poison better than weeker ones. This would go for bosses as well.

2) I like your ideas, they should work fine. You could also make a few bosses (or mini-bosses) that are weak to certian effects. A clue to this weakness should be give at some point (perhaps from a NPC in a nearby town), so that the party isn't killed repeatedly while trying to find the weakness that will make the boss easier to defeat.

[BloodKnight]

I use Max HP % for my poison effect. So, no matter how strong a character was, they'll still be threatened when they are poisoned. You can always have poison stop when their HP reaches 1.

As for status effects on bosses, I give the party penalties for abusing them on bosses, like a boss will cure itself to full HP if blinded, or they'll do a highly damaging move if they're poisoned.

[Dungeon Warden]

like a boss will cure itself to full HP if blinded, or they'll do a highly damaging move if they're poisoned.

Doesn't that make it even more pointless to use status effects on bosses? I though the point was that in most RPGs it was useless to use Status effects at all because most common enemies were too weak to bother wasting a special ability/ item on, while most bosses were immune to statue effects.

I think you should go the other way, and have statue effects do special effects on bosses. Ex. The boss always cures the effect the next round giving the party a free round of attacks. Blind causes a boss to be unable to use its petrification attack. Silence works like blind on a boss that has no eyes. Things like that encourage the player to learn and use status effects and it makes them more useful.

[BloodKnight]

I was just using those as examples. But yeah, what I was trying to convey was that status effects should have an yin/yang effect on bosses, and not just terribly cripple them.

[dragaron]

This was a tough one for me to figure out in my game. I finally decided to have the poison damage by Max HP %.

I like the idea of bosses being completely immune to status effects. That's just my preference, I guess.

[Deleted]

Good ideas everyone. I'm thinking I'll do poison with two different strengths of poison, one that's 5% other that's 10%, and when poison's applied it can be either and the player won't necessarily know. I think I'll wait to decide on max or current and for how many turns till I get to test playing the game and see how dangerous enemies and bosses are and how fast (# of turns) normal and boss battles go. I like the idea of mixing physical defense into the poison formula, so I'll start thinking of how the formula should go. Thank you DW.

I also like the idea of certain bosses being more suceptable to certain status effects (DW), but I'll probably take the easier way that requires less work and just alter the chance of connecting based on who the enemy is; the best way to go about doing this in the DBS is to find the target name and sort the common name and alter the overall success chance for the certain effect, right?

And thank you, everyone, for all the responses. I'm glad to know we're all mostly thinking along the same lines.

If anyone else has anything they'd like to say still, please do so.

[Doan the Nado]

I think your current ideas are good. I like the idea of poison damaging a percent of the Max HP, because I think poison is too unimportant in most games. It seems that the main goal is to get out of battle quickly and ignore the poison. As long as there are plenty of antidote-type items and poison-resistant accessories, I think it would be great for poison to be more harmful. Besides, it's not like every enemy will be capable of poisoning you. So I would say 5% of the max HP.

As for boss status effects, I think they should work in some cases. I like the idea of certain effects working on certain bosses, but the player should have to think about what might work, using reasoning. Obviously, a Spirit enemy will not be affected by a sleep spell, a heavy magic user should not much be affected by Stun, and a fighter will not care if he's silenced. Some enemies should be resistant to some effects, and some should be affected but not negatively.

At any rate, plenty of play-testing is the only sure way to know that everything works okay for you.

[vespuleth]

wait, limit breaks that do damage AS WELL AS cause status affects? it seems to stack the deck too much. especially if i remember your damage ratios for limits right. if your going to do this, may i suggest having limit breaks that maybe only deal w/ support? like, perhaps, have a limit break that weakens the enemy, and increases the players teams defenses by that amount? or casts poison on the enemy and regen on the party? something that is not both directly and indirectly damaging to the enemy. if your going to make it both directly and indirectly damaging, you should model after the weapons of fft, and their status affect ratios.

as for the poison, do whatever fits the game. i havent given this enough thought to give a qualified opinion. if you are doing it to where it is a percent of max hp, it should only last for one or two rounds more then it would take to kill the character (ie, if it is 10% of max hp, it should only last around 12 rounds, and even that seems ridiculous length) that way, if the player heals at all, the player is safe, so they do not need to dedicate a unfair amount of time into healing the character, should they not want to 'antidote' him. but if they dont antidote him, he is left in a weekend position. if they dont heal hi, he dies. make sense? anyways, save throws. these should be included, if your dealing w/ poison. and if your wanting other stats to be important, maybe making a fortitude/luck roll for 'immunity' which will mean that for a prescribed time, the character cannot be poisoned again (somewhere between 3 rounds and 3 battles).

[Deleted]

I like that immunity idea too, thank you. I know how to set it up so I'll take a looksees and give it a try probably. This is starting to sound pretty cool. I'm thinking I'll go with % of max, 5 and 10 (player doesn't know till they get damaged), with 6 turns till it wears off. This is subject to change during test-playing though. Thank you everyone!

Every character has 3 attacking Extremes and 2 assisting ones, either in the order Attack(1)-Assist(2)-Attack(3)-Assist(4)-Attack(5) or Assist(1)-Attack(2)-Assist(3)-Attack(4)-Attack(5), so that their ultimates are all offensive and otherwise they have 2 of each that alternate. I do mix effects, but one gets hindered because of the other if so. I actually don't have any attacking combined with other effect Extremes. I think the most combining with status effects I have on Extremes and normal moves is Fear or Sleep with Poison (which disables and damages them while they're disabled).

[Draygone]

1) Max, 'cause poison is supposed to be a threat. If you're worried about it being too big a threat, make it at the most take off 10% of max HP.

2) Yes, 'cause bosses are where these effects would be most useful.

It does beg the question "What good are status effects for if they don't affect bosses, and the peons die too quickly to waste them on?" Well, the short answer is THE PLAYERS!

It's annoying enough when these spells effect the monsters 20% of the time but works on the party 100% of the time. Besides, if you don't allow the party to have these spells, that kinda limits the spells they can learn. Not that that's not workable, but in a regular battle system, it'll seem kinda limiting without having one spell effect be done in 15 different ways.

I don't know what's wrong with poison doing X amount of damage reguardless of HP. As you meet tougher enemies, the X will become larger.

That would take a bit of work without it being a %. You'd either have to create a bunch of poison effects, one for each poisonous monster, or you'd have to throw in a bunch of branches that check what monster caused the poison and give damage based on such.

wait, limit breaks that do damage AS WELL AS cause status affects? it seems to stack the deck too much.

I dunno, I kinda liked how Cloud's Cross-Slash in FF7 had a chance of stunning the enemy as well as cause major damage.