Main project: Characters and Skills

[orius]

Going to introduce the cast of characters and the skills for my main project in this thread. Today's post will be the cast.

The characters were based on the old 35-point rule for character creation. This was a tip for game balance that I read back on the old original Pavilion (or maybe it was another early RPG Maker community) many years ago that suggested that the number of points a character starts with should add up to 35.

Stats: some stats were renamed from RPG Maker default.

• STA = Health
• INT = Magic
• AGI = Speed
• Luck = Evade
• MDEF = Resist

I think I used the same names in Demonslayers too. Anyway, I renamed them to reflect the function of the stats better.

Weapons and armor will be explained in another thread.

Hero
Str: 6
Def: 6
Health: 6
Magic: 6
Speed: 6
Evade: 6
Resist: 60

Weapons: All

Armor: All

Skills: All

This is the main character. The character isn't named Hero, I have it listed that way because the player can choose a male character (Garen) or female character (Mara) at the beginning of the game. The choice will only have some small effects on the storyline, but for the most part the game should play the same regardless of choice. As you can see, the main character breaks the 35-point rule with the stats totalling 42 points, but is meant to be the best overall character. All the stats are averages, since the player will be able to choose (by selecting skills) the character's growth to some extent. The main character also will be able to use all the equipment, isn't restricted in skill use (but might not be able to take some skills because of stat requirements), and will be able to learn all the spells. It might seem a bit overpowered, but we'll see how it turns out.

Rast
Str: 6
Def: 4
Health: 5
Magic: 3
Speed: 7
Evade: 5
Resist: 40

Weapons: Daggers, bows, shuriken

Armor: Leather, hoods, bucklers

Skills: Warrior, barbarian, thief, monk, necromancer, ninja

Rast is the first character to join the party. He's a sharp-tongued thief the hero meets in prison, and they escape togther. Rast is the fastest overall character, and his skills generally reinforce his speed. His equipment is generall somewhat weak, and he'll have some limited spell use.

Ariel
Str: 3
Def: 4
Health: 4
Magic: 7
Speed: 5
Evade: 5
Resist: 70

Weapons: Rods, staves

Armor: Robes, hats, capes

Skills: Wizard, cleric, druid, necromancer, archmage

Ariel's the main damage-dealing spellcaster. As such, she's not a strong fighter, and has the weakest equipment, but she starts with the highest Magic stat and with the bonuses to magic in all her skills, she should have one of the largest MP pools in the party. She joins the main party to escape the persecution of spellcasters occuring in the hero's home kingdom.

Bordar
Str: 7
Def: 4
Health: 7
Magic: 2
Speed: 6
Evade: 6
Resist: 30

Weapons: Axes, hammers, flails.

Armor: Mail, leather, helmets, hoods, bucklers

Skills: Warrior, barbarian, thief.

Bordar will probably be the most annoying character in the game. He claims to be the rightful king of the dwarven kingdom, but most people just assume he's a belligerant drunk. He's the strongest overall character, and probably will have the most HP, but he isn't the best fighter. He has some of the strong equipment, but not the best, a relatively low defense, and a limited selection of skills, none of which are the best skills in the game. Between his very low magic stat, and the magic penalties on his skills, he should pretty much spend the entire game with 0 MP. Not that it matters much, because he's too stupid to learn any spells to begin with.

Seth
Str: 4
Def: 5
Health: 5
Magic: 6
Speed: 4
Evade: 4
Resist: 70

Weapons: Hammer, flail, rod.

Armor: Mail, helmets, shields.

Skills: Paladin, monk, cleric, druid, wizard, archmage.

Seth is a cleric who joins the party on a quest to retrieve a relic for his church. He remains with them to fight the forces of the game's antagonist, as his church is opposed to the antagonist. He has somewhat average stats, with spellcasting being slightly favored over combat abilities. Most of his skills are magic-based, but he has decent equipment. Most of his spells will be healing magic.

Barivar
Str: 6
Def: 8
Health: 6
Magic: 4
Speed: 2
Evade: 4
Resist: 50

Weapons: Swords, axes, hammers, flails.

Armor: Armor, mail, helmets, shields.

Skills: Warrior, paladin, monk, cleric, samurai.

Barivar is a holy warrior who belongs to the militant arm of Seth's church. He's ordered to accompanny Seth on his mission, and will follow the party for the same reasons Seth will. He'll be one of the best fighters in the game. He has a pretty good strength, uses the strongest weapons, and will have a good number of HP. He also has the highest defense in the game and uses the best armor, which will probably make him an excellent tank. He can also use some basic healing magic, but it's not his strength.

I will start posting skills later.

[orius]

Skills Part 1

Skills I approached like character classes. As you can see from the character descriptions above, most of the skills aren't exclusives and can be taken by several characters. Those of you familiar with creating content for RPG Maker probably know that character stats can be adjusted under skills. I view this as modifiers to the character's stats, and my rule is to have all the modifiers add to 0. There are three "elite" skills which are intended to be available later in the game and have a stat total greater than 0.

Most skills have a different ability, and all will have special attacks as well.

I'll start with the more combat-oriented skills. I'm only listing modified scores, stats that were left at 0 aren't going to be listed.

Squire

Str: +1
Def: +1
Health:+1
Magic: -2
Resist: -10

This is one of the two skills you can choose for the Hero at the start of the game. The Squire is a basic warrior type skill, and by choosing this, the Hero will probably qualify for more of the combat skills rather than the magic skills at first. The special attacks will include some basic stat buffs as well.

Warrior

Str: +2
Def: +1
Health: +2
Magic: -3
Speed: -1
Resist: -10
Ability: Attack +1
Special attacks: ?
Requirements: Level 10, Str & Def 70, Health 80

This is the standard fighter skill for most of the game. Boosts physical capability, at a cost to the character's MP, speed and resist. Gets an extra attack each round. There should be some group of special attacks, but I can't find them in my notes, maybe I wasn't planning any for this skills, which seems a little strange.

Barbarian

Str: +2
Health: +3
Magic: -4
Speed: +1
Evade: +1
Resist: -30
Ability: AI
Special attacks: Increase attack
Requirements: Level 10, Speed 60, Str 80, Health 100

The barbarian gets a decent bonus to Strength and HP, and a small bonus to speed and evasion, but at with a huge cost to MP and resist. It also has the AI ability, meaning you can't control the character in battle. However, the skills gets special attacks which boosts the attack of both individual characters and the party as a whole, and I'm going to make sure the boosts are worth it. Remember above when I said Bordar was going to be annoying? Well, this is his starting skill, so the player'll have to put up with not being able to control him for a while on top of his other fine traits.

Paladin

Str: +2
Def: +3
Health: +1
Speed: -4
Evade: -3
Resist: +10
Ability: Counter Attack
Special attacks: Increase Guard
Requirements: Level 10, Str & Def 70, Health 80

The paladin is basically a tank skill. It's got the 2nd best defense bonus in the game, gets a slight resist bonus, and can boost the defense of party members and the party. It has a crappy speed and low evasion though. Also gets the Counter Attack ability. This is Barivar's starting skill.

Thief

Def: -1
Magic: -2
Speed: +3
Evade: +2
Resist: -20
Ability: Treasure Find Up
Special attacks: Increase speed
Requirements: Level 10, Speed & evade 60.

The thief gets some of the best speed and evasion bonuses at a cost to MP and resist. The skill gets better monster drops, and speed boostsing buffs for the characters and party. This is Rast's starting skill

Monk

Str: +2
Health: +1
Magic: -3
Evade: +2
Resist: -20
Ability: Critical Hit Up
Special attacks: Decrease Attack, Defense, Speed
Requirements: Level 10, Strength 50 & speed 50

The monk gets some bonuses to strength, evade, and HP at a cost to MP and resist. It gets more crits, and has a variety of stat debuffers to use against enemies.

[orius]

Skills pt 2

Now for the magic based skills. This time, I think I'll state less of the obvious than I did above. Even I was getting sick of it.

Apprentice
Str: -1
Def: -1
Health: -1
Magic: +2
Resist: +10
Special attacks: Some basic spell-type things

This is the other of the Heros' two starting skills. This one is to steer the Hero to a magic-oriented career. No ability like the Squire, and special attacks will probably include a basic damage-dealing spell and a simple heaing spell. Maybe a couple of other really basic things.

Wizard
Str: -3
Def: -2
Health: -2
Magic: +3
Speed: -1
Evade: +2
Resist: +30
Ability: 1/2 MP
Special attacks: Non-elemental spells
Requirements: Level 10, Magic 70, Resist 700

Ok, this is the main powerhouse caster, hit to combat abilities with a boost to magic and half MP cost. Wizard is Ariel's starting skill.

Cleric
Str: -2
Health: +1
Magic: +2
Speed: -2
Evade: -1
Resist: +20
Ability: Battle heal
Special attacks: Group HP recovery
Requirements: Level 10, Health 60, Magic 50, Resist 600

The basic healing spells in the game will be single target. The cleric gets Special Attacks that allow the entire party to be healed at once, and also recovers a few HP each round. This is Seth's starting skill.

Druid
Str: -2
Def: -2
Health: +2
Magic: +2
Speed: -1
Resist: +30
Ability: No Class
Special attacks: Group status curing
Requirements: Level 10, Magic 60, Resist 800

The druid was designed to be a slightly unusual and interesting type of caster. It has No Class, so attack spells can be used regardless of element. Status curing spells, like HP recovery are single target, and the druid can cure the entire party at once with its Special attacks. No one starts with this skill.

Necromancer
Str: -3
Def: -3
Health: +2
Magic: +3
Speed: -2
Evade: +2
Resist: +10
Ability: HP Drain
Special attacks: Group status-inflicting spells, MP Absorb
Requirements: Level 10, Health 90, Magic 60, Resist 600

A nasty caster that can inflict statuses on multiple monsters and steal MP. No one starts with this skill.

Bard
Ability:Random ability
Special attacks: Special
Requirements: Level 10, Resist 600, all other stats 60.

The bard is a unique job that can only be taken by the Hero. I have no idea how Random Ability will actually work in the game. I wanted the Special Attacks to include stuff like Escape Dungeon and Teleport, unfortunately, they would be useless since they're only used outside combat and Special Attacks can only be used in combat. Sometimes I HATE RPG Maker's limits. The only such ability that I know can be used like this is the one that lets the player see the enemy HP. Note the bard also gets no ability adjustments, so if the Hero takes this, he or she will get the normal 6 points per stat each level.

If anyone has any comments or questions, feel free to speak up.

[Ωbright]

Re: Main project: Characters and Skills

Oooh, ok. When you say 'skills', you mean 'classes'. I kept waiting for you to list the skills and spells.

Looks good to me, but nobody will ever really know until you've playtested at every character level, against several different enemies. I've found it's best to just start with a basic framework (which you have done. Kudos), and just tweak as you go.

Nice work!

[orius]

Re: Main project: Characters and Skills

Oooh, ok. When you say 'skills', you mean 'classes'.

Yeah, I mentioned that. Skills = classes in my game, because that's how I'm conceptualizing their use in the game.

I kept waiting for you to list the skills and spells.

Hard to list the spells when I haven't even created them. They won't be made until after I finish coding the main scenario, I don't need them yet. Scenario coding including dungeon creation is really the biggest chunk of work that a game requires. The skills and characters only took me a few days to set up a few years ago.

Anyway, skills get Special Attacks by level, over something like 7 levels. Skills cannot learn magic though, that's done by individual levels. Both can also be taught through events (and I'm planning to have magic taught through events in the game). Anyway, that set up does annoy me a bit, because it's a bit rigid.

Looks good to me, but nobody will ever really know until you've playtested at every character level, against several different enemies. I've found it's best to just start with a basic framework (which you have done. Kudos), and just tweak as you go.

Most of it should work. If I notice anything seriously broken while I test it, it'll get fixed. Otherwise, I'll tweak them game with feedpack from players after I release it if needed.

[orius]

Re: Main project: Characters and Skills

Most of it should work. If I notice anything seriously broken while I test it, it'll get fixed. Otherwise, I'll tweak them game with feedpack from players after I release it if needed.

Yup, I'm a Western developer all right, release the game half-assed, then fix it.

Anyway, I should probably finish this topic already.

Last are the elite skills. These are the strongest skills in the game, and instead of the normal skills which have a net modifier of 0 to all scores, they have an overall bonus.

Ninja
Speed: +5
Evade: +5
Ability: First Attack
Special attacks:
Requirements: Speed 200, Evade 150, Level 35

Samurai
Str: +2
Def: +5
Health: +3
Ability: Reflect attack
Special attacks:
Requirements: Str & Def 150, Health 200, Level 35

Archmage
Magic: +5
Resist: +50
Ability: x2 Magic Damage
Special attacks:
Requirements: Magic 200, Resist 2000, Level 35

[orius]

Re: Main project: Characters and Skills

Given Draygone's recent thread on M DEF, I've adjusted all Resist values in the game by a multiple of 10. The above posts have been edited to reflect that. Well, the characters have been adjusted, I have to check the skills to see if the modifiers were adjusted too. Also, I probably have to check the skill requirements as well, but I changed them above to because it's on the agenda. The requirements may get changed when I take a closer look at things in the game if they're too high.