...Battle Balance...

[Duel]

Wow, this really is tough! Is it a good idea to have a magic attack that can defeat a boss in about 3 hits? Especially since the boss can deal over 10 damage?

I'm trying to figure out how to balance my non-random battles.


What is your take on battles? Post here.

[ErikaFuzzbottom]

Re: ...Battle Balance...

I'd say a magic spell should deplete a good chunk of a regular enemy's HP, and possibly one-shot the weaker ones.

[ChaosKnightXD]

Re: ...Battle Balance...

It's okay for a magic spell to defeat a boss in 3 hits if the boss poses such a major threat to the player that it must go down in 3 turns. It depends on what you perceive as fun really.

Would you rather to not risk fights becoming drawn out and monotonous? You could always make the boss so difficult that it must be defeated quickly by the player.

However if long fights are more of your thing, you might want to tone down the damage of the spell or increase the bosses hp. Also giving the boss in a longer fight more abilities can help mix things up and keep the fight from becoming monotonous as a boss that can deal damage to all targets, poison and silence players, guard, and attack normally might keep a player on their toes for those 10 or so turns it takes to defeat it.

[ErikaFuzzbottom]

Re: ...Battle Balance...

Also giving the boss in a longer fight more abilities can help mix things up and keep the fight from becoming monotonous as a boss that can deal damage to all targets, poison and silence players, guard, and attack normally might keep a player on their toes for those 10 or so turns it takes to defeat it.

I definately gotta agree with this. One of my complaints with a lot of final bosses (I forget the exact context) was that they tend to have only a few attacks, and tend to spam their biggest one.

[John Mora]

Re: ...Battle Balance...

Generally bosses should not be able to be beaten by doing the same thing three times in a row.

[Wavelength]

Re: ...Battle Balance...

Generally bosses should not be able to be beaten by doing the same thing three times in a row.

But... but...



...Everything I know is wrong!!

[orius]

Re: ...Battle Balance...

Depends on how strong you want the monsters and spells to be.

Physical damage isn't too hard to adjust, it's the the spells that are trickier. That's because they have a more or less fixed damage rate, so a spell that does 50 damage always does around 50 damage no matter how tough you want the enemy to be unless you're using elements.

So it becomes a matter of setting the spell damages and monster HPs in a way that spells are effective against most monsters and remain a viable combat option while not being powerful enough to quickly destroy bosses.

Also, the fact that monster HP is capped at 9999 doesn't help balancing things here either.

[ErikaFuzzbottom]

Re: ...Battle Balance...

Perhaps, but I find it more beneficial than restrictive. If you've got a game where you grow in strength so much that you'd need to be able to cause 500 or more damage per hit at the end of the game, you're probably growing too fast. You'll go from being at the right level for a dungeon to overpowering before you get through it. With the 9999HP restriction, you'll automatically adjust to getting the stat growth slower.

[ChaosKnightXD]

Re: ...Battle Balance...

Perhaps, but I find it more beneficial than restrictive. If you've got a game where you grow in strength so much that you'd need to be able to cause 500 or more damage per hit at the end of the game, you're probably growing too fast. You'll go from being at the right level for a dungeon to overpowering before you get through it. With the 9999HP restriction, you'll automatically adjust to getting the stat growth slower.

If you are making a game where the characters are going to have a high growth rate you can make the enemies a bit stronger than the players so at the beginning they have to struggle a little bit. Not much in the beginning but the difference in difficulty should increase throughout the game.

And another reason why I don't like random battles is that the player might intake too much exp especially at an early level so having enemies which don't respawn until you leave the dungeon or forest or whatever that they are in is a good way to stop the player from growing too much unless they do it on purpose through grinding, then it's their own fault that the place is too easy.

[Wavelength]

Re: ...Battle Balance...

Eh, if you can lay down the final boss in 20 hits (9999 divided by 500), but the battle is still tough (and doesn't devolve into repetitioin), I consider that an example of a really, really well-designed final boss fight.

Generally 3 hits is a little quick for any boss, unless it's done by exploiting some hard-to-find weak point or doing something in the story that made the boss easier to defeat. But that's not a hard-and-fast rule of thumb.

If you want the characters to grow fast (which I don't really recommend, but it can be really fun when done correctly), just have the enemies grow quickly in strength as well. No need to make the initial ones too strong!

[orius]

Re: ...Battle Balance...

Three hits is a bit too fast for a boss, that can be potentially done in a single round. That's anti-climatic. It is a bit tricky though to make things tough but non-repetitive in the default combat system though, because there's a somewhat limited number of options.

Really, you can crunch the numbers all you want, and it's probably a good idea to know the math when designing enemies, but you should also test the enemies as well in the combat test thing and by running through a test play.