Skill System Advice

[Wavelength]

I've got a decent baseline skill system for my XP game, but I want to mix it up a bit, and I'm torn about how to do it, so I'm hoping you guys can chime in with some great advice.

Guess I should give a bit of background into the system first: most of the people in the story are magi, and therefore spells are the heart of your repertoire. You can attack enemies with weapons too, of course, but they pale in comparison to the effects of your magic. The main character gets spell points as he accomplishes goals, and uses them to buy spells and other buffs on a "skill tree". The other playable characters gain their spells and skills as they level up in battle or their relationship with you grows.

Each character has HP (health), MP (mana), and AP (adrenaline) - adrenaline points are gained each turn in battle, and are forfeited at the end of battle (similar to SP in Skies of Arcadia, but not shared by the party). Your spells can be cast using either MP or AP - you'll want to use AP if possible, since MP can only be restored by getting a good night's sleep or using expensive special items. Of course, MP doesn't need to be built up over time, so it can be used to fire off spells immediately if the battle looks too tough. Spells can be used outside of battle using MP - even attack spells can be used to solve puzzles or find extra goodies.

I'm using a bunch of scripting on the spells to make sure they're varied and interesting, but to mix things up even more, I want to add a couple of characters that don't really fit the mold at all. Problem is, I feel like they're either going to destroy the balance I've got in place for my magi, or they're going to feel too much like the magi in playstyle.

One character has no magical powers, but is an experienced martial artist. I don't really think it would make sense for her to have MP, so that just leaves AP for skills. I was having a hard time figuring out a way to compensate for that. I thought maybe I'd make her attacks more powerful, and more importantly, make the skills considerably cheaper in AP cost than most characters' spells (and just a little less powerful), so you could chain them together early on rather than waiting for your AP to build. But aside from balance issues, I also have no idea what to do as far as use of her skills outside of battle, since she has no MP.

Another character is a faerie, and so her entire essence is magical. Made sense to me that she'd always be casting spells from her MP pool, but that left the question of how to work the mechanic, when MP is normally so hard to restore. At first I thought she could regain some after each turn or battle - but that would be tough to balance and might be too similar to the AP mechanic. Then I thought maybe simply make the MP cost of her spells much cheaper - she'd be great for short, tough treks; not so good for longer ones. Now I'm thinking maybe allow her to learn a few "free spells" (0MP cost; slightly more powerful than regular attacks) to use anytime; she'd also have powerful "normal" spells but the drawback is that she cannot cast them using AP. But again, I'm not sure what to do about the use of those free spells outside battle; seems broken.

So, I'd love to hear any suggestion you might have for me. Nothing's too big (or small) of a change - whether it's balancing, restricting, or completely reworking the way I'm doing things here - or even coming up with a character with a completely different playstyle altogether.

[Karr Lord of Chaos]

Re: Skill System Advice

i think you have the right idea already.

your martial artist would value from a very low mp gain so that as the battle starts she would be able to fire off a spell once her level has built up. make it very low like a point per level or something like that. this way she doesnt have an unfair advantage. draw from the sp like you thought

as for the faerie i think you can definitely give her some free magic attacks. why are mp healing items so expensive? why not drop their price and encourage a more frequent use? can you make a healing point in a long dungeon that restores mp? if your going to retard her attack abilities then you need to make mp more available. otherwise very high mp might be a solution and then you just need to shrink down the spell dmg.

[Ryner]

Re: Skill System Advice

When I'm trying to think up skills, I ask myself "What do I WANT from this character, and want MAKES SENSE for them to do." I can't answer the first for you, but the second is a little easier.

The entire basis for the MA character is adrenaline, so she should use it differently than the others. You could make some of the martial artist's attacks increase AP, which I think makes sense in a storyline way (punching and kicking a monster in the face gives you more adrenaline than casting a spell from a distance!). This will keep the character active in battle rather than spending turns waiting for it to increase automatically.

For the faerie, why not have her only use of AP to be restoring MP? This will keep her in the fight even when she uses MP faster than all the other characters?

I'm not sure about the outside battle stuff since I don't know what you're doing with non-combat.

[Shard]

Re: Skill System Advice

Another character is a faerie, and so her entire essence is magical. Made sense to me that she'd always be casting spells from her MP pool, but that left the question of how to work the mechanic, when MP is normally so hard to restore. At first I thought she could regain some after each turn or battle - but that would be tough to balance and might be too similar to the AP mechanic. Then I thought maybe simply make the MP cost of her spells much cheaper - she'd be great for short, tough treks; not so good for longer ones. Now I'm thinking maybe allow her to learn a few "free spells" (0MP cost; slightly more powerful than regular attacks) to use anytime; she'd also have powerful "normal" spells but the drawback is that she cannot cast them using AP. But again, I'm not sure what to do about the use of those free spells outside battle; seems broken.

You could turn the faerie's AP into a support skill. The player might have the option to spend a turn in battle channeling AP into MP. If you find the faerie is unbalanced then you could just tweak the rate of MP gain to higher or lower levels.

If, as you said, 0 MP spells would unbalance the non-battle elements then force the player to make a choice to spend MP out of battles, thus losing turns inside them trying to regenerate MP, or be conservative with MP outside of battle.

Edit: Just realized Ryner said the same thing, s'what I get for skimming.

[Mcardy]

Re: Skill System Advice

You could have each character raise AP at a different rate--so the Faerie would have to take multiple turns before she could cast a spell for "free," while the Martial Arts dude gets a bonus and can thus use them more often.

It could work well because in normal encounters the faerie might not have enough turns to cast free spells, but against boss fights, it would be tactically useful to save it up for a free mega-heal or some other attack if she was running low on MP at that time.

You could also have her 0MP spells have a downside to avoid misuse. For instance, maybe a spell that costs 0MP restores her MP, but puts her asleep for a few rounds, or an attack has a small chance of causing small splash damage to the party.

[Ryner]

Re: Skill System Advice

You could also have her 0MP spells have a downside to avoid misuse.

Cooldowns! I love cooldowns. Make the 0MP skill only usable every 3 turns or so,

[Wavelength]

Re: Skill System Advice

Thanks so much, guys. Please keep posting ideas and advice. I've read this thread through several times and I'm still digesting what you've written.

[Ryner]

Re: Skill System Advice

Also think about the characters and their stories. Do faeries in the game world have certain traits? Is she part of a tribe? You could get good ideas for how a character will act in battle based on their background.

[Shard]

Re: Skill System Advice

Cooldowns! I love cooldowns.

This might be a solution to your, "What do I do with my martial artist outside of battles?" question.

Instead of having AP immediately reduced to 0 after a battle, it could tick down over time. You could do this for your whole party or just the MA. I figure if it's party-wide then the MA probably has a larger stock of it anyway, so is more likely to have AP available for the next battle, puzzle, etc. It also introduces a time element to the player, rewarding him for efficiency and speed, both in and out of battles. Or, AP could tick down at different rates, faster for something like the faeries and slower for the MA.

You could work persistent AP into battle initiative as well, the higher the stock of AP, the more likely a particular character gets to go first. /spitballing

[Karr Lord of Chaos]

Re: Skill System Advice

that is a surprisingly interesting solution to this problem. good job.

[Wavelength]

Re: Skill System Advice

Oh my God, has it really been four months since? Wow.

First of all wanted to say thanks again to everyone. I've used a lot of the ideas and I'm getting a grasp on how to alter the default battle system and create some really unique spells. Still got a long ways to go, though.

Wanted to respond to your suggestions and throw a couple ideas of my own...

as for the faerie i think you can definitely give her some free magic attacks.

Yup, I'm starting to lean this way too, wouldn't want to make her too weak. Now the challenge becomes making it something different than attacks, yet not broken.

why are mp healing items so expensive? why not drop their price and encourage a more frequent use? can you make a healing point in a long dungeon that restores mp?

This is a great question, and the answer might not be what you expect.

The game I'm making has two sides to it; one is kind of a persistent world where your ordinary life plays out, and the other is where you'll do most of your combat, exploration, and so on. Time basically stops while you're there, but I want your story and progress to play out over weeks, seasons, years - without making the player feel like they're forced to hold back.

This MP mechanic, along with the expense of healing items, is one of the ways I'm trying to encourage players to pace themselves. You can handle a bunch of short trips into this "second world" easily, but to progress through a quarter of it in one run would be much harder. Leaving and resting up in the "real world" restores your MP.

Essentially, the battle system is based around AP, and the MP is there as a last resort if you really need to cast something quickly.

Well, that, and I never liked how you can undo anything with a 5-Gold Revive Item.

When I'm trying to think up skills, I ask myself "What do I WANT from this character, and want MAKES SENSE for them to do." I can't answer the first for you, but the second is a little easier.

That's some really good advice.

The entire basis for the MA character is adrenaline, so she should use it differently than the others. You could make some of the martial artist's attacks increase AP, which I think makes sense in a storyline way (punching and kicking a monster in the face gives you more adrenaline than casting a spell from a distance!). This will keep the character active in battle rather than spending turns waiting for it to increase automatically.

Good point about the importance of keeping her active in battle. My first instinct is to make the special attacks cheaper or allow them to chain together somehow. I need to see how that plays out, I guess. Because if it's still not enough, I like the idea of having her normal attacks fuel AP gain. It's actually something I might want to do with all the characters...

For the faerie, why not have her only use of AP to be restoring MP? This will keep her in the fight even when she uses MP faster than all the other characters?

You could turn the faerie's AP into a support skill. The player might have the option to spend a turn in battle channeling AP into MP. If you find the faerie is unbalanced then you could just tweak the rate of MP gain to higher or lower levels.

It's because I need MP to be a hard-to-renew resource, for the reasons above. I'm really hesitant to have her naturally recover even 1 MP per turn!

You could have each character raise AP at a different rate--so the Faerie would have to take multiple turns before she could cast a spell for "free," while the Martial Arts dude gets a bonus and can thus use them more often.

It could work well because in normal encounters the faerie might not have enough turns to cast free spells, but against boss fights, it would be tactically useful to save it up for a free mega-heal or some other attack if she was running low on MP at that time.

I think this is a cool thing to keep in mind if things become too unbalanced.

You could also have her 0MP spells have a downside to avoid misuse. For instance, maybe a spell that costs 0MP restores her MP, but puts her asleep for a few rounds, or an attack has a small chance of causing small splash damage to the party.

Cooldowns! I love cooldowns. Make the 0MP skill only usable every 3 turns or so,

And I like these both a lot. Right now I'm learning toward giving her a bunch of 0MP skills, so I'll pepper some with slight negative effects, some that are very situational, and some which require cooldowns of all 0MP skills once used.

Also think about the characters and their stories. Do faeries in the game world have certain traits? Is she part of a tribe? You could get good ideas for how a character will act in battle based on their background.

So in a basic sense, the Fae have an obsessive interest in humans and their stories. Time is irrelevant to faeries, as are most of our basic needs. They like to transform into the guise of humans or other elements of our world, and spend years meticulously acting out our lives, our legends, and our fantasies, never breaking character. The most powerful Fae can weave entire worlds in tribute to an element of our society they find interesting.

I spent some time thinking about what would make sense for a character who has some of those traits. And I like the idea of having her be able to consume a lot of MP (half of it or so) to transform into different legendary beasts for a few turns, entirely changing her stats and moves. I remember you did something like that early on in Simple Man's Quest and I loved it

This might be a solution to your, "What do I do with my martial artist outside of battles?" question.

Instead of having AP immediately reduced to 0 after a battle, it could tick down over time. You could do this for your whole party or just the MA. I figure if it's party-wide then the MA probably has a larger stock of it anyway, so is more likely to have AP available for the next battle, puzzle, etc. It also introduces a time element to the player, rewarding him for efficiency and speed, both in and out of battles. Or, AP could tick down at different rates, faster for something like the faeries and slower for the MA.

You could work persistent AP into battle initiative as well, the higher the stock of AP, the more likely a particular character gets to go first. /spitballing

I think this is a really awesome idea, and I'm going to try to implement it. I love the idea of the AP ticking away, forcing you to act quick and maybe set yourself up strategically before/during battle. I'm definitely going to use this if I can. I like it so much that I'm trying to think up a good second character to implement this kind of mechanic on - maybe someone who fights using machines or something?

As for the other characters, I'm torn between the potentially gamebreaking effects of letting even mages use this, versus the amount of fun it would be both from my perspective and the player's.