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I'm not suggesting it works perfectly with canon as-is, but then canon doesn't really work perfectly with itself so not much is different there.

Regardless of whether or not Psynergy Stones affect everyone, the idea is that only someone or something with trained (or otherwise "unlocked") Psynergy will absorb all the energy from them (thus causing them to destabilize and shatter) with mere physical contact.

Honestly, I would prefer a text intro to deal with all the past stuff, but I can definitely agree with your fan prologue being better than what was actually in the game. And also the way you resolved some of the other issues with the plot as well.

Dora sends an unnamed NPC to go to the plaza and bring back Psynergy Stones for the rest of them so they can save Felix.

Although in this instance, Dora sending Jenna out would probably be better than some random NPC. She could even be attacked and/or halted by some monster, which would explain why she never returned in that scenario.


Also, everything that happens with Tret and the purple-haired chick may be a tad harder to explain unless you trim those parts of the story a bit. It would probably make the plot better as a whole if everything could be trimmed down a bit, but still.

Dora sending an unnamed NPC (the same one who, in the original prologue, is already at the plaza Psynergy Stone when Isaac gets there) works better because Jenna wouldn't be sent to retrieve Psynergy Stones for the same reason Isaac wouldn't be: she's just a kid. Having Jenna be told to go with Isaac and get out of the village would work as well, though, since it results in the same scenario but with one more kid to carry Psynergy Stones and explains why Jenna's still in the village rather than being rescued and held hostage post-boulder impact as with her parents.

Forgot to add an "under ordinary circumstances" to my second point regarding not-yet-Adepts not absorbing Psynergy Stones. In this case, being hit on the head by a Psynergy Stone traveling at a high enough velocity to shatter on impact even without being absorbed would not be "ordinary circumstances".

Um... I don't know about young kids not being able to absorb them... Perhaps it'd be better to say that the ability to absorb is slow enough to bring them...
They might not have any learned abilities or any class, but they do have a small amount of PP, right?

That's pretty much what I was getting at. Mostly that the rate at which they absorb them is super low; so low as to be basically nonexistent with essentially no development of Psynergy ability or training.

— GS1's intro scene, where the Boulder falls and strikes Vale. The whole scenario is badly executed, and that has a lot to do with the large Psynergy Stone at the centre of the plaza.

• First change: Vale does not have a large, permanent Psynergy Stone in the plaza.
• Second change: Even if an individual possesses the potential to develop Psynergy use, if that potential is entirely untapped (such as in the case of a very young Adept) then that individual will not absorb the smaller Psynergy Stones on contact.
• Third change: The people of Vale (or Adepts in general) have developed tools to allow Adepts to transport small Psynergy Stones without absorbing them. This would probably take the form of specialized containers and a lift system of some sort to pick them up with, quite possibly just a seesaw-like lever device that can be easily transported, accompanied by a large board used to push Psynergy Stones onto the lever so they can be deposited into the containers.
• Fourth change: Very minor eruptions of Mount Aleph are common. There's not really much ceremony to them: there's a tiny amount of lava flow and the volcano spits Psynergy Stones all around the immediate area.
• Fifth change: The plaza contains a storehouse where Psynergy Stones the volcano spits out are stored, along with the equipment used to collect them.

Suddenly, a lot of things are able to make sense. Dora sends an unnamed NPC to go to the plaza and bring back Psynergy Stones for the rest of them so they can save Felix. She sends Isaac in the same general direction, telling him to leave the village and get to safety. As in the original scenario, Isaac encounters Garet along the way. Upon arriving in the plaza, Isaac and Garet overhear a conversation between the unnamed NPC and the mayor in which it is revealed that one of the many smaller boulders crashed into the Psynergy Stone storehouse and wrecked the transportation equipment. The unnamed NPC then notices Isaac and Garet and requests that they carry some Psynergy Stones back to Felix's family, since the pair haven't tapped into their Psynergy potential yet and thus can carry Psynergy Stones without absorbing them. The NPC then heads into the storehouse to replenish his own Psynergy with one of the stones, then immediately runs off to the north again. Isaac and Garet each grab a Psynergy Stone, and the player is left to take them back to Dora and co.. Scenario proceeds basically as normal from there. (Though a full-village camera pan after the boulder falls to show the full scope of the devastation might be in order.)

@Healing stat:  No?  Healing's actually OP in GS. The way it's handled right now is pretty good, I think.  Who does and doesn't get healing is a matter of dev philosophy at this point, so all you really have to do is better balance the cost to power ratio.

On that note:
— Flat value healing. The Tales series sans Zestiria does healing the best out of any RPG I've played, and it's the only series I've run into that does all healing that way. While in Golden Sun strictly percent-based healing has the problem of ignoring the Elemental Power stat, that could easily be factored in anyway. Calculate the amount healed based on percent of target's max HP, then multiply by (Elemental Power/100) as normal. (Though you get effectively the same result by multiplying the percentage by (epower/100) and then taking that percent of the target's max HP. For example, with the usual base 104 EPower in primary element, 30% x (104/100) = 31.2%.) Though perhaps something like ((EPower + 100)/200) might work better for the sake of balance.
(That would be a really cool patch to have, by the way. Replace the current "restore X% of HP" effects with one that actually uses the ability's power value to determine the amount healed, as (base power/10)%, and factors in elemental power with heal% * ((epower + 100)/200). This would be even cooler if it diminished over area as the healing/base damage formulae normally do.)

In fact, the flat-value healing is an even bigger issue in GS's engine due to the lack of dedicated Psy Attack/Psy Defence stats, since that means that tanking base damage vs. tanking physical is based on max HP relative to Defence.

— Lack of any sort of magic damage stat is up there. In GS1 it's somewhat made up for by the existence of a physical defence stat, which can lead to Psynergy actually dealing more damage than physical attacks. In GS2 and Dark Dawn, defence stats are universally too low.

— Piers. Just Piers in general. He shows relatively little personality, levels up stupidly slowly, has terrible stats in his base class, has mediocre base stats, and has very limited access to physical alt classes.

— Ridiculously low base activation rate of many status effects. With Luck having as much of an influence as it does and normal enemies dying in 1 to 2 turns anyway while bosses have such high Luck, a higher base activation rate would do a lot to make status effects more useful overall.

Actually, I think it would work really well if the standard attack accuracy check (including Delusion-induced miss chance) applied to all abilities with a target of Enemy and a PP cost of 0. That way, if you wanted to make something not have a miss chance (for item effects, unleashes, etc.), you just give it a PP cost and it won't miss, even if that PP cost doesn't actually end up applying. Plus, it would make it possible to have mage-type weapons that always unleash a base power move, but don't ignore miss chance as a result.

[random damage variation]

The ability to change random damage variation, as well as minimum damage, would be appreciated. There have been times where I try to make hacks using a significantly lower overall power level (think Paper Mario style), but they've been ruined by attacks randomly doing up to double their normal damage, as well as continuing to deal damage against targets whose defence is high enough to block them outright.

Also, "if new classes are too OP, i'll just make enemies harder" is a dangerous way of thinking that could trap you in an endless loop (classes OP -> strengthen enemies -> enemies too strong -> strengthen classes -> classes OP).

Another issue with that is that you risk having certain classes fall behind in terms of overall power, if you make a few classes that turn out to be OP and then buff the enemies to make up for it.

That said, I'll disagree with what Caledor said on one particular point: power is relative. That said, stat caps exist, as does random damage variation (from +0 to +3 over the actual damage result), so there's a limit in how much you can do with that. And even if the stat caps can be modified within certain limitations, the absolute cap for boss HP is just over 16000 so you're still stuck either way.

Attack Unleashes ignore PP cost and range - you could make Megiddo cost 999 PP and hit a range of 9, but an attack unleash would only hit one target and would cost nothing.  However, if you use PP to channel it...

There's a GS2 patch up that lets Unleashes use range, actually. PP cost is still ignored, however.

A few notes:
— The game can't display more than 2 digits for a spell's PP cost. This means that if an ability costs either 100 or 200 PP, you'll just see 00 in the PP cost.
— The absolute highest you can possibly make an ability's PP cost is 255.

Fulminous Edge has a multiplier of 2.8, that coupled with dullahan's 845 attack is bound to hurt. Raising defense or elemental resistance does not affect it that much, BUT... [spoiler]dully has a vulnerability too...[/spoiler]

Actually, the effect of Defence on a multiplier-type attack should be greater the higher the multiplier is. Reason is, it calculates the damage the attack would deal with a 1.0x multiplier and then multiplies that.

You could increase the PP reserves of the Thunder/Anger Balls to increase their damage output? I dunno.

...Huh.

Seeing it laid out in minecraft like that really hits home about how small many of these maps were...

Yeah, TBS and TLA were really good at making you take the long route through a room, or doubling back through the same room multiple times.

I don't claim to know the class sorting code in depth, but I can't imagine there's anything that associates any particular character with an element. AFAIK those elemental values are all the class sorting has to identify a base element, and what little testing I've done supports this notion. For example, if you give Ivan or Sheba the elemental value set for Venus, their classes will work exactly like Isaac's and Felix's classes normally would.

Yeah, but what Rolina's saying is that doing that causes weird behaviour when giving them Djinn of their original element due to the order in which the game checks for classes. I don't see how it could, but there you go.

You can't tweak elemental values without screwing up any and all semblance of order in classes

There is already an elemental value setup that works for each of the four elements, why would you want to tweak them?

Because it makes no sense for a character's symbiotic element to be their elemental weakness?

You can't change a character's element without a ton of trail and error overhauling of the class system

Copy the elemental values of a character who is of the element you want to change them into.

And Rolina's saying that doesn't work and causes class glitches for whatever strange reason.

Wait, so you mean the game basically determines classes not using, for example "Venus primary, Mars secondary" but rather "Venus primary, weakness secondary"? That's pretty weird. And really quite stupid. I'll have to test it out.

Yes, there is a reason for that.  That reason being you changed Ivan's elemental stats.  Turns out that changing them causes a huge impact on how it reads classes.  For example, changing element values so that the weaknesses of characters is their opposing element instead of their symbiote just flat out breaks the class system.  Simply changing his element like that probably triggered that. 

Basically, instead of doing something smart and associating classes with equipped djinn, they have this convoluted system that goes off of element level instead, meaning that:

You can't tweak elemental values without screwing up any and all semblance of order in classes
You can't create an item to add effect accuracy without screwing up classes
You can't change a character's element without a ton of trail and error overhauling of the class system

Inefficient, unwieldy, and a colossal pain in the butt, amirite?

Wait, what? I've never seen the class system break because I changed a 3 to a 1 and a 1 to a 3 in the characters' element levels. I also, one time, swapped Felix and Sheba's primary elements (so Sheba is Venus and Felix is Jupiter) along with swapping characters' weaknesses to their opposing element, and I didn't notice the class system getting particularly broken (although I was having serious trouble with a dual Mars/Jupiter class I was trying to get to work properly, but that was for Jenna).

Does the Burning Pepper actually trigger Impact when used, or does it trigger a new ability with the same effect as Impact? 'Cause if its use effect is actually Impact, that might explain something. In particular, if the Burning Pepper's use effect actually is Impact, try making the shield item's effect an already-existing shielding move, such as Guard Aura.

I think the freeze was most likely caused by Impact's animation trying to run over top of itself.

Just have to make sure it doesn't result in a game freeze. Attempting to use Megaera's summon slot for a double Impact to the whole party seems to like freezing the game.