RPG Maker Forums

Take Tsukihime's Enemy Reinforcements and Yanfly's AI Core, and you'll find that there's a little catch to them:
The AI core causes enemy Turns to be evaluated midway through the turn, as opposed to working like the player and having them at the start.
Enemy Reinforcements can be used to call adds into a fight as part of a Skill.

Together they... aren't too "fair".
The newly spawned enemy takes it turn THAT TURN.

I realized this in a boss fight I had designed [boss was supposed to work like Star Magician, but I can't work out how to limit the number of adds correctly without it getting really convoluted. So instead, the boss spawns 4 at the start on Turn 0 before all actions, then has a common use ability that brings in 1 more (that uses Yanfly's Cooldowns to not be used more than once/turn)].

Of course, I have an enemy that can HEAL THE BOSS OR OTHER ADDS. The AI core is set up for this enemy to, 100% of the time, if there's an enemy at less than 50% max HP, to heal the lowest current HP (as % of max, not value) enemy.
Which can mean, if there's no Adds, and you've got the boss to a sliver of HP left... it calls in the Elemental, and boom, gets a free 50% HP Heal.

Obviously bad behavior, would seek fix because bug/unintended... at first glance.

But the more I think about it, the more I like this.

And here's why: The Elemental won't always target the boss. It targets, with its heal, the LOWEST % of Max HP Enemy.

There's the counterplay.

That's it. Right there. There's a strategy to be used here.

Don't think "Gotta rout the adds because the boss is kicking me arse" all the time, like MMO Players do.

[but you can't tunnel vision the boss, else adds swarm and take you down. Especially since one of the adds is a bomb...]

You need to keep an Add alive at all times, at LOW HP to bait the Elemental's Heal away from the boss. Which is good, because it forces strategy beyond hammer the enemy.
And if you ignore it, you play with fire during a fight where prolonging the fight is going to be incredibly taxing on you, since you'll actually need to use your healing items.

Of course, that strategy belies leaving an add alive.
So it's a pick your poison type thing. [Which do you leave alive? The Slime that doesn't do much damage, but has Enrique (SoA)'s Shield of Justice and spams it like you're Black Pirates? The Bat that can't hit things... except when it does, it can 2 hit your casters? Oh it always double swings? The Sharkman that can AoE your entire party with Poison? Obviously not the Elemental or the Bombfish (Former makes for bad bait since it's what you're baiting, the latter... kills itself)]

So any thoughts on things like this?

Unintended things spinning in the right direction.