So, I've been doing a bit of creative thinking (shocking, I know), and the way I see it, there's a few things you can do to expand GS's battle system a bit. The first is the overhaul I've been doing, of course. But the other thing is something that can't be done globally - something that needs a personal touch, and is unique to each person - Fighting Style Skillsets.
I've got a few that I've come up with on my own listed below, as well as what they do. What about you guys? What can you come up with?
Blink Assault (By Rolina)Rolina is mainly about a full force offense, completely embracing the philosophy of a blitzkreig. Her circuit spell allows her to close in on an enemy quickly and start up an unrelenting assault. This is very powerful, but also incredibly costly - she burns out quite quickly in battle, and is at a severe disadvantage in prolonged fights. In game, this is reflected by the Blink set of skills. It's a passive effect, allowing her a decent chance to counter priority moves, a near-zero chance to counter physical attacks, a low chance to counter spells, and a high chance to counter summons. This style has two main weaknesses - durable foes, and fast foes. Durable foes are able to simply outlast the assault. She burns through PP reserves like it was nothing, after all. Anything faster than her will actually cause her abilities to trigger less, to the point that a for who's Ivan-fast may very well drop her summon-counter chance to as low as 40%, putting her at a disadvantage.
[spoiler]Blink Assault revolves around the Circuit field spell. Ordinarily, this spell works similar to the Grip spell in Dark Dawn in terms of functionality - teleporting the caster from point a to magnetic point b. In combat, though, a lesser form of this known as "blink" can be used. That technique is how this style works. Here's the associated abilities:
- Blink Cancel - Medium Chance - When an enemy uses a priority move, there a chance for the adept to take their turn instead, cancelling the priority status of the enemy's turn. In this manner, things such as quick attacks, healing, or barriers can be delayed, and not only can the caster get in their turn first, but all allies faster than the target can strike before it as well. This can only work on one foe at a time, so if two foes have a priority move, this can only steal the priority of one.
- Blink Counter/Attack - 0 Chance - When an enemy uses a physical attack or a power spell (ex: Ragnarok) on the adept, there is a base zero chance that the adept will blink, causing the attack to miss. They then retaliate with a standard physical attack. This attack can critical, but it cannot trigger an unleash. This can only occur once per turn.
- Blink Counter/Spell - Low Chance - When an enemy uses a base attack spell (ex: Gaia) on the adept, there is a low chance that the adept will blink and the spell will miss. They will then appear behind the enemy and will cast their strongest base attack spell, but will only hit the target they're retaliating against with it. This can only occur once per turn.
- Blink Counter/Summon - High Chance - When an enemy moves to use a summon (both in the Mk1 and Mk2 systems), the opening they present allows the adept to punish their action. The adept has a high chance of blinking, causing any actions the summon does to miss them, and will then retaliate with the strongest power spell in their arsenal. This has no limit to how many times it can happen in a turn.
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The success rate of blink skills is based on two things - the base chance, and differences in agility. The faster the adept is compared to the target, the more that gets added to the base chance. The lower it is, the more that gets removed from the base chance. This is done on a percentile basis, and the widest range one can expect is an additional +/- 25% chance to trigger the blink. Furthermore, blinking cannot occur if the caster does not have the PP to preform the action. Blinking in and of itself also casts PP, equal to that of the cost of the Circuit spell (2PP).[/spoiler]
Artificer's Arsenal (By Rolina)Robert Joe is a crafter, and one of the people leading the big push to integrate psynergy into technology. This premier forger of magitech gear not only has the ability to make artifacts, but to also modify them to magitech versions of themselves, and even modify them to change and enhance their properties. These skills aren't all that much for combat, but that's why he builds drones to assist him in battle, and is able to make a decent variety of them for whatever situation comes up.
[spoiler]While there are many artifacts in the world of Weyard, there are also too many people who make these artifacts. These are known as Artificers, those whom have the ability to craft wonderful pieces of equipment. Their skills revolve around item creation and modification, and have interesting effects in battle as well.
- Forge - the art of creating an Artifact. This is typically done by taking a mundane item, adding a base material, and adding an enhancing material. Through this, a wide variety of artifacts can be made, from arms and armor, to even special items unique to the artificer.
- Convert - converts a piece of equipment into a moddable form (think magitech). This gives arms and armor slots that allow an artificer to add interchangeable tweaks and enhancements - two for weapons, and one for each piece of armor. This usually has a material cost associated with it based on what is being Converted into moddable form. Converted weapons retain their unleashes, though mods can override their element and effect. Converted armor tends to simply get additional effects via mods.
- Modify - installs a forged mod into a slot on any given weapon or armor. The psynergy cost depends on the mod being installed and the artifact it's being installed into (ex: Modding a Sol Blade would be quite pricy indeed).
- Mods - a type of artifact unique to artificer use. By using the Modify ability on a converted artifact, mods can enhance or changer the attributes of the artifact. For example, installing a Celestial mod into the Sol Blade would cause Megiddo to drop a miniature star onto the enemies instead, dealing jupiter damage instead of venus. Added a Stone mod onto Excalibur could cause it to do venus damage with the Legend unleash, essentially sending 1-3 ragnaroks into the enemy.
- Adds - a type of artifact unique to artificer use. Adds are miniature drones that an artificer can send into battle by using them as an item. Up to three drones can be active at once (using another will deactivate the first one), and each will give a slight passive buff to the party (ex: Buff a stat by 10%). Ordinarily, that's all they do. But when an unleash is triggered by the adept, the adds will open fire as well, causing a small multiplier in damage to the attack (10% per add).
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Artificers are all about item creation, and are basically the way to go if you want to have a more magitech-themed golden sun character. [/spoiler]
Blaze Burner (By Rolina)Kale is a fire mage, and a pretty good one. Having been to an area like Magma Rock and learning Blaze, he felt it initially useless... but inspiration struck as he tried it out in battle. He's now able to direct the blaze spell to increase the radius of his spells, cause them to focus down on a single target, or even linger around a bit longer than normal. It's all about killing things with fire for him, so by utilizing this spell into his fighting style, he's able to expand on anything and everything flame based to take down his target. Of course, the obvious downside to using blaze as often is that it'll drain him faster, so he practices a healthy doze of strategy in his application of it.
[spoiler]So, Blaze. That useless spell that Jenna got at Magma Rock, right? Well, this style puts that spell to good use. A blaze burner learns to cast blaze to enhance their own flame-based spells, giving them more power.
- Blaze Extend - Extends the radius of any flame aspect spell by one size. This can apply to bestowed unleashes, power spells, base attack spells, anything that uses the flame aspect. As such, spells that once strike 3 enemies now strike 5, spells that once struck 5 now strike 7, etc. The magnitude of these spells is unchanged, though.
- Blaze Focus - by lowering the magnitude of a spell, the actual power of the spell is enhanced by 20%. If the spell's magnitude is already Low (ex: power spells, bestowed unleashes), then the range is reduced by one (minimum of 1).
- Blaze Burn - by lowering the power of a spell by 20%, the caster causes the area to catch aflame, causing damage equal to 25% of the spell's strength over four turns. This does not stack - additional spells will overwrite the effect.
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Blaze only works on flame aspect spells - acidic and explosive spells are unaffected. As blaze is an active-use skill, it also will not work on howling unleashes. When selecting a flame aspect spell, the option will be given to cast it normally, Extend it, Focus it, or Burn it. The additional cost is equal to the cost of blaze times the number of default targets that a spell has (ex: Blaze costs 2 PP. using Blaze Extend on Inferno will cost an extra 10 PP to cast).[/spoiler]
So what do you think? Got any styles you want to suggest or post? They don't necessarily have to use spells that exist in GS proper, just describe what the new spells do so we get the gist of it (ex:What I did with Circuit).
How would those work? Could you go into it more in-depth? What allows accuracy to work the way it does? I'm guessing mind read, since that'd make sense. After all, blinking isn't just a dodge - it's a teleport. The whole schtick with that fighting style is teleport spam. Also, countering a single specific style is kinda... wasteful. What if it it's just a general answer to counters? You'd be able to have it be a good counter to defender style characters that way - essentially, having a chance to not only increase accuracy and evasion for the character, but also a chance to bypass cover/counter style spells/skills.
Summon Resistance - what allows this to work? What would you do about the GS Mk2 system I'm using, where summons don't work like in cannon, but instead are summoned as a "guest character" for 4 turns? There's no HP scaling at all in the MK2 system I'm working on.
Affinity - what allows this to work? What else does it do? Is it part of the above summon resist skill? Perhaps a fighting style revolving around summoning itself?
Awareness - this thread isn't really about stats. Would this work similarly to how I suggested Accuracy? Perhaps an action that is done via Mind Read in battle?
Mastery - How does this work? In the Mk2 System, scythes are an entire weapon class that serve this role - how would it compare? What else would it do? I imagine this is a control type style that does this - does it have other effects for other things, such as debuffs and positive effects?
How are these balanced? Is it a cost-per activation like Blink Assault? An additive cost like Blaze Burner's? Are they Passive use like Blink Assault, Active like Blaze Burner, or Field-based like Artificer's Arsenal? Could you go into more detail? I'd love to hear more about these ideas.
Drug Dreamer
Alcohol - Lowers your accuracy, but increases your attack/power stat.
Sleeping Pill - Makes the user go to sleep. May increase defense, and also be immune to any status ailments.
Coffee / Caffeine / Sugar Rush - Increases your accuracy, speed, and attack/power, and decreases next turn. (Below what it would have been if the buff was simply removed?) ; (I think?)
I randomly just thought of these, so they could need some tweaking? (Not even sure if these should be grouped together like that or not.)
Dark Prayer- Lulls all enemies and party member attack lowers.
How is this idea?
@Summon Resistance: Er, no you were pretty clear on it. I'm saying that in the system I've been working on, summons don't work that way at all. instead, the summon is summoned behind the character and works like a guest character, similar to Isaac and Garet in dark dawn. If the whole party summoned, you'd have 8 characters attacking at once on the next turn essentially. This, of course, means that you're left in a weaker state for longer - it's not until turn 5 that your djinn begin to recover, since the summons would be out for 4 turns. In that situation, would it just be a flat reduction in damage to the damage you take from summoned creatures?
@Affinity: What spell triggers this? Is this part of the summoner style?
@Mastery: This really isn't the tread for stat ideas. Stats are more of a global thing, whereas this would be something specific to an adept. It's more about the creative use of field skills in battle, which is why I suggested that the Accuracy/Evasion/Re-counter group use mind read, since you're literally reading the target's mind. For stats, such as my Casting and Warding as psynergy attack and defense stats, you'd probably want to either find a thread for new stat ideas, or create one if one doesn't currently exist.
@Fox: Eh, I think just plain building an Chemist-based style would cover that - something that increases the effect of items used in battle, and a way to "craft" new items and the like. It'd be like the consumable version of the Artificer. I could see that being quite an extensive style - good idea. ^-^
@Dark Prayer: Sounds more like a spell than a whole style.
Edit: Do you guys mind if I add flesh out some of these and add them to the first post? Credited to you, of course...
...Not sure how that would constitute an entire battle style. Those just sound like simple mechanics. A battle style is something specific to a single character, and influences how they fight. Often times, it's them taking a signature field spell and applying it to combat purposes (ex: My character with the teleport spam style via Circuit). Sometimes it's more item-crafty focused, such as the Artificer build for Robert Joe, and Fox's Chemist idea. It's more than just a single ability - it's a whole group of related abilities that heavily influence how an adept plays/fights. Oh, it got edited. I'll take a look at the edit at the end of the post.
Let's look at the application of these:
Rolina is mainly about a full force offense, completely embracing the philosophy of a blitzkreig. Her circuit spell allows her to close in on an enemy quickly and start up an unrelenting assault. This is very powerful, but also incredibly costly - she burns out quite quickly in battle, and is at a severe disadvantage in prolonged fights. In game, this is reflected by the Blink set of skills. It's a passive effect, allowing her a decent chance to counter priority moves, a near-zero chance to counter physical attacks, a low chance to counter spells, and a high chance to counter summons. This style has two main weaknesses - durable foes, and fast foes. Durable foes are able to simply outlast the assault. She burns through PP reserves like it was nothing, after all. Anything faster than her will actually cause her abilities to trigger less, to the point that a for who's Ivan-fast may very well drop her summon-counter chance to as low as 40%, putting her at a disadvantage.
Robert Joe is a crafter, and someone who is doing the main push to integrate psynergy into technology. This premier forger of magitech gear not only has the ability to make artifacts, but to also modify them to magitech versions of themselves, and even modify them to change and enhance their properties. These skills aren't all that much for combat, but that's why he builds drones to assist him in battle, and is able to make a decent variety of them for whatever situation comes up.
Kale is a fire mage, and a pretty good one. Having been to an area like Magma Rock and learning Blaze, he felt it initially useless... but inspiration struck as he tried it out in battle. He's now able to direct the blaze spell to increase the radius of his spells, cause them to focus down on a single target, or even linger around a bit longer than normal. It's all about killing things with fire for him, so by utilizing this spell into his fighting style, he's able to expand on anything and everything flame based to take down his target. Of course, the obvious downside to using blaze as often is that it'll drain him faster, so he practices a healthy doze of strategy in his application of it.
Luck isn't "hardly a stat". It's ailment resistance. Assuming we have the ability to change how it works (and it's looking like we do, even in vanilla), luck will easily be a very important factor, especially as we increase the power of ailments. Luck is your main stat if you're a supporter. A healer's no good if they get pegged with ailments every three seconds, after all. Consider Luck to be your defense against battlefield control. It's an important stat, just often misunderstood.
Mastery sounds like Use Mastery from Disgaea. Basing an entire style around that is... well, it doesn't really showcase what the character can do. Sure, they can learn things a bit faster, but that just gives it a single passive skill. If it's part of something else, say a "Prodigy" style, and there's more aspects to it, then it could work if there's a mastery stat. If there isn't, mastery would have to work a bit differently, such as adding an additional 1% damage and 0.5% effect chance per character level above the level the spell was learned.
I like how you included downsides to these. It really helps to point out the strengths and weaknesses of the style. ^-^
Psyched Up Protector by FrozenWrathType: Combat
The ability to conserve one's mental stamina is an ability not well known. This Style allows those who have trained their body, mind, and spirit to gain back some mental stamina. However, the uses of this Style are limited, as practitioners of this Style sacrifice a secondary role classification.
[spoiler=protecting allies over crushing foes]The
Psyched Up Protector Style is exclusive to Pure Physical Defenders. The Mercurian Willow 'Los is a known user of this style.
- Focused Defence - Restore a small amount of Psyenergy Points upon taking damage for an ally.
- Energy Soak - Restore half of a spell's cost to Psyenergy Points when being hit.
- Spell Dampener - Enemy spells that have this Adept as the main target will be slightly weaker. This does not affect spells that are of the same element or ones the Adept are vulnerable to (for example, a Mars Adept cannot activate Spell Dampener on Mars or Mercury Spells).
[/spoiler]
... Does this meet the criteria to become a style, Lady Rolina? Or is this perhaps far too powerful?
Your role is defined by your spells - a fighting style has nothing to do with it. For example, Isaac is a Striker primary (focus on offensive spells) and Supporter secondary (main support spells are healing and revival).
A fighting style is based usually based around a support spell and using that in battle, such as the Blaze Burn and Blink Assault styles. Alternatively, it could be a series of supports that have utility effects, such as the Artificer's Arsenal and the Chemist ideas above. Styles also aren't infallible - each have their strengths and weaknesses. For example:
Blink Assault - Circuit spell
- Pros:
- Very high damage output
- Effects add to defense as well as offense
- Cons:
- Burns through PP quickly
- Hard Countered by Defenders and Controllers
- Less effective vs speedy foes
Blaze Burner - Blaze Spell
- Pros:
- Allows for on-the fly modifications of spells
- Notable increase in power for flame aspect spells
- Cons:
- Only works specifically on Flame aspect spells
- Very costly at higher spell ranges
Artificer's Arsenal - Forge, Convert, Modify spells
- Pros:
- Allows for crafting and modification of equipment
- Drones allow for both passive buffs and offensive options
- Cons:
- Limited direct influences in battle
- Drones sacrifice turn to set up
As such, think about what
Hmm..
What if a fighting style worked like this:
You get hit by an enemy, depending on what elemental energy was used on you, depends on which stats go up or down...
Neutral = Not sure yet? (Nothing?)
If hit by Venus energy = Could raise Attack, and lower Defense.
If hit by Mars energy = Could raise Defense, and lower Attack.
If hit by Jupiter energy = Could raise Agility, and lower Luck.
If hit by Mercury energy = Could raise Luck, and lower Agility.
Not sure if the other 2 unaltered stats for each change or not. (Or even if two stats get raised, and two get lowered?)
Of course, this is just an example... perhaps it would affect elemental power/resist instead, but...
What spell does it work on?
I haven't decided that part yet. As this is a WIP idea. (Maybe all offensive elemental spells?)
It could probably work both ways.
1.) The adept as a defender converts recieved energy into stats for themself...
2.) The adept as an attacker converts the energy into stats for the target...
Got it. Well, it'd probably be a field spell that has an effect on all elements. Perhaps something that allows you to not take damage from field hazards?
Or a Jupiter psynergy, since Jupiter has stat boosting/debuff psynergy?
Hmm... Does Magic Circle sound interesting enough? Since it's like a magnetic field. It could last for a couple turns, and that could be how the elemental energy from other spells get converted to stats?
I had originally thought of it as the adept's built-in feature... specific to an adept. (Probably Jupiter adept.) But Magic Circle works too. (Or we could do both, and Magic Circle would strengthen the effect.)
Eh, I don't think so - the thing about Jupiter, I mean. The way I see it, any of the elements can utilize buffs, not just jupiter. Himi shows this with Weapon Grace, for example.
As far as magic circle/magnet is concerned, I could see it being a togglable effect, but something that would be a constant drain on PP as you're using it/receiving the effects. I'd not have any lowering of stats, though. Instead, when the effect is turned off, how about having the effects go with it?
QuoteEh, I don't think so - the thing about Jupiter, I mean. The way I see it, any of the elements can utilize buffs, not just jupiter. Himi shows this with Weapon Grace, for example.
Perhaps... (Did not know about Weapon Grace, since I haven't bother playing Dark Dawn aside from the one or two tests I gave it on emulator way back when it first came out.)
Either way, when looking at the Magic Circle... forces like magnets and electricity/lightning still make me think of Jupiter.
However, I am now just seeing "Magnet", as a Venus Djinni from Dark Dawn...
Hm... abilities that have both good and bad effects on them? Well then...
[spoiler=some other idea for a Style]Note: This style only works on Ice-Aspect spells.
- Freezing Burden - By lowering the range of a spell, the caster has a chance to decrease the Speed of the targeted enemies by 25%. Does not work on single-target spells.
- Blunting Rime - The caster's spell has a chance to decrease the Attack of the targeted enemies by 25%, provided that that the caster supplies more Psyenergy to the spell(4 more Psyenergy Points for every targeted enemy.)
- Debilitating Frost - Through holding back on a spell's power, the caster is able to focus the energy on the ice generated, allowing a chance for decreasing the Defense of the targeted enemies by 25%.
[/spoiler]
It's not necessarily good and bad effects, but rather strengths and weaknesses. Some, such as Blaze Burner, have certain sweet spots they use in terms of ideal AoE sizes, while others such as Blink Assault are very limited by how much PP you have.
Also, still have to ask this - what spell are you using to make that style work?