Question about Ground's Effect.

[VanishMantle]

I'll be upfront about this, I have no idea what to name the topic but my question is that would it be possible to make a set monster immune to the 1 turn stun AKA Ground's Effect? I am wondering because I have a few moves in my mod, Fallen/Risen Star, that use this effect but it trivializes a lot of bosses. So I am wondering is it possible to make bosses or monsters immune to it?

If some Hex Editing needs to be done I understand enough to edit what I would need to edit. I just wanted to see if there is a way to change this as I am in the process of a big update for Risen Star and possibly a smaller update for Fallen Star. Thanks in advance!

[Aile~♥]

As far as I know, it is impossible to be immune to this effect. However, it fails if the target doesn't have any actions remaining in the round, so a decent way around it might be to have certain bosses spam Agility buffs on themselves and Agility debuffs on the party. This could work even better if the Agility-buffing move has increased priority to it (which requires hex editing).

Incidentally, I and others are of the opinion that Contractual Boss Immunity is a bad way of adding difficulty to boss fights, as it makes debuff/ailment-focused classes completely useless.

[Salanewt]

You would probably need to do a little assembly to accomplish something like this, but there are already existing examples that achieve this type of immunity in one form or another. For example;

- A list of monsters that can be affected by the Trident effect; fails for everything else (mostly works for sea creatures, though I can't remember what the effect actually is).
- A list of monsters that can be affected by the Cloud Brand's unleash effect; fails for everything else (mostly works for dragon enemies).
- Immunity to a select few effects with luck >/= 40 (universally applied).

Oh, and the affliction rates are separate from the code for the first two, if I recall correctly.

One could easily tweak one of the first two so they use different effects and lists of immune monsters rather than vulnerable ones. With just a tiny bit more work, one could copy some of the code and make multiple lists for multiple enemies/ailments. Seems like a fair way to balance ailments by making them much more useful as well, to be honest.


Edit: Looking at the code for the first two again, they are actually fairly small functions. It should be easy to combine them (making certain portions slightly more efficient in the process) and expand to allow for several different vulnerability/immunity lists. I think I'll give it a shot once I finish this animation thing; probably for a range of 20-25 different effects, with a few for vulnerability and the rest for immunity. Should I also include a few default effects, like death or venom, or should I only leave the original two effects in place as the defaults?

[VanishMantle]

I think that would be fantastic. My Goal with asking this question is so that I can try to introduce some new strategies to the game that it lacks currently. I would love to make certain status affects more useful during boss fights like poison/venom. Overall i was just wondering if it was a possibility. I like the 1turn stun effect because you can do some pretty cool strats for some fights. I definitely don't want to take it out of the game at least for my mod. I just don't want it to be so overpowered that it invalidates everything else.

EDIT:

As far as I know, it is impossible to be immune to this effect. However, it fails if the target doesn't have any actions remaining in the round, so a decent way around it might be to have certain bosses spam Agility buffs on themselves and Agility debuffs on the party. This could work even better if the Agility-buffing move has increased priority to it (which requires hex editing).

As far as move priority goes I would love to know how to adjust that. I have quite a few moves that I think would be much better if they had higher priority than they currently do.

Incidentally, I and others are of the opinion that Contractual Boss Immunity is a bad way of adding difficulty to boss fights, as it makes debuff/ailment-focused classes completely useless.

I understand you there I just want certain bosses to be "immune" if that makes sense.

[leaf]

Well, you can also look into having different tiers of infliction rates. If it's a djinni, leave it with a natural 100% infliction rate, but if it's from a move that also inflicts damage, the infliction rate should be something below 100%.

[Salanewt]

Eh, decided to get started on this today. So far, one can set up to 26 effects to be a part of this vulnerability overhaul thing (final name pending probably). Along with the effect ID, one sets an "immunity" flag and the number of enemies that are in that effect's enemy list; this list is read from a pointer bank, and the particular address is calculated depending on how many effect checks have occurred in the chain. Oh, and the immunity flag slightly changes the results of the sister function, meaning that it will either check for vulnerability (like Trident or Cloud Brand's unleash if set as 0) or check for immunity (if set as 1).

It's still a work in progress though... it should be much easier to explain once I actually finish it. All I can confirm so far is that ailments are currently broken; anything not in this code has a 100% success rate, while anything in it has 0%.


And what leaf said, yeah. A perfect example of something like that happening is Bind/Seal/Whatever, which has the 100% djinni and lower rate spell despite both having the same code. Plus you can always play around with luck values, enemy vulnerabilities in the editor, and maybe even tweak a couple formulas.


Edit: Randomly solved an issue, no idea how. Looks like I may be able to have this patch out for tomorrow if all goes well.

[VanishMantle]

Sweet Looking forward to this! Really looking forward to it.

[Salanewt]

That's great to hear! Now for some progress:

- Ditched the flag thing in favour of adding another sister function, though I may combine those two and figure out yet another efficient solution.
- Still have 100% success rates for effects not in the list, but now those in the list will actually read from their enemy lists and decide immunity from there. This seems to be what I am having the most trouble with, and I have absolutely no idea why. Oh well.
- Maximum effect count is 32; more could be added, but I won't bother because 32 is a lot already and it would require restructuring the code again; that will be up to whoever uses this patch.

The end goal is to make it so any effect that is not checked off as an enemy immunity will use its own success rate, rather than be a flat 100%. I might also throw in a bit that allows for text/dialogue indicating immunity, but that will also take a little extra time to do.

[VanishMantle]

That's great to hear! Now for some progress:

- Ditched the flag thing in favour of adding another sister function, though I may combine those two and figure out yet another efficient solution.
- Still have 100% success rates for effects not in the list, but now those in the list will actually read from their enemy lists and decide immunity from there. This seems to be what I am having the most trouble with, and I have absolutely no idea why. Oh well.
- Maximum effect count is 32; more could be added, but I won't bother because 32 is a lot already and it would require restructuring the code again; that will be up to whoever uses this patch.

The end goal is to make it so any effect that is not checked off as an enemy immunity will use its own success rate, rather than be a flat 100%. I might also throw in a bit that allows for text/dialogue indicating immunity, but that will also take a little extra time to do.

that sounds great! I am really looking forward to this. It definitely helps a lot with what I want to do with my mod.

[Salanewt]

Edit: Posted! The patch is up and ready for download. Let me know if you need any assistance with it, but please read the post thoroughly first.


Definitely! Well anyway, some progress by using an example:



I used the Cloud Brand's effect (91 - ignore defence) enemy list and just swapped out the effect for Break. Since Cloud Brand is basically a wyrmslayer, this means that Break failed on the bird despite the standard flat 100% success rate it has.

The new code can best be divided into three parts:

The first is where up to 32 effects can be assigned "enemy immunity" lists of two different types (the very first effect can only use one type though, I overlooked a spacing issue that hardly matters at all). The first list type makes it so everything that is not in the list is immune to that effect, much like how Trident and Cloud Brand work now, while the second type makes it so everything that is in the list is immune. Both effects use the success rates that are set by the code in the event that an enemy is vulnerable to something. Oh, and you also write the number of enemies that are in your list; lists are assigned in the next part. Users should change the following values:
- Enemy Count (used in sister functions)
- Effect ID
- Branch (they are all set to the first immunity list type by default, but changing this is remarkably easy)

The second part basically assigns the enemy list, and there is one subsection for each of the immunity list types. Both subsections are identical, save for the sister functions (part 3) that they link to. This also marks the end of the new function, after which is a pointer list; you change or add pointers to enemy lists here, and it will use the pointer that corresponds to the current effect from part 1. Oh yeah, the very first pointer in here is used for a simple calculation and should not be changed; the rest are cool though.

The third part has the two sister functions, but these can be ignored for the most part; all they do is decide whether or not to change the effect's success rate to a flat 0%, which depends on whether the target's ID matches one of the entries in that effect's enemy list. It no longer sets anything to a flat 100% rate.


Well, it's pretty much done. I'm uploading it right now. I also cleared up some room in the base function, so I may decide to write something more in there someday... Only time will tell. I have an idea for a luck-based immunity overhaul at any rate. Also one for equipment-based immunity lists, but that would probably be based off of the changes from this hack and as such require it. May be quite a little smaller though.