balancing debuff spells that the player can use

[jonthefox]

for example, say your wizard has an "enfeeble" spell that drastically lowers the target's ATK. How do you balance this so that it is useful for non-boss battles, but not overpowered for boss battles?

Some options I can think of are:

1) the state lasts 3 turns against regular enemies, but only 1 turn against bosses.
-i don't think this is really that effective, since non-boss enemies don't always take 3 turns to dispatch, and even a 1 turn effect against bosses seems really strong unless the boss is mostly magic-based.

2) the state has 100% chance of working against regular enemies, but a 50% chance of working against bosses.
-this makes it useful vs. non-bosses in exchange for its MP cost, and allows it to work against bosses but not being completely reliable. The downside of this is that it's purely luck/RNG as to whether it succeeds/fails against bosses.

3) the spell is actually just less effective against bosses, i.e., against regular enemies it will lower ATK by 75%, but against bosses it will only lower it by 35%.
-this seems like the best option, although lowering ATK by 35% doesn't seem that useful. Also, it can be difficult to actually implement this type of design, since i'd probably have to use a lot of events and passive states and put a conditional on every kind of spell like this.

What do you think is the best way to approach such a spell?

 

[TheoAllen]

Why it needs to be less effective against boss though, you can just use exactly same strength. In my game, mobs and bosses have same/similar attack stats. So mobs also hurts you. Boss just have higher HP, so no reason to reduce the strength against bosses for 'special cases'.

I'd actually prefer applying a debuff to boss should be a viable solution to beat the boss. Like, you have to manage your debuff to the boss in order to win more easily. Mobs can just die without being debuffed, means it will be less effective / efficient to them. Personally I don't want to be overthinking of "how to make my players using debuff for mobs" for sake of using them.

 

[Grunwave]

I have made my bosses immune to any debuff that is too strong.

 

[Soryuju]

It really depends a lot on how you’ve structured your damage formula. -35% ATK can actually be huge against a boss depending on the base ATK/DEF values, whether you’re subtracting or dividing by the target’s DEF, what other factors are modifying ATK/DEF, when in the formula the debuff is applied, and what other multipliers come into play after the ATK/DEF calculation is finished. In some formulas, debuffs even smaller than 35% can be the difference between your characters taking thousands of damage from a boss’s attack and taking 0 (e.g. Bravely Default).

Personally, I think it’s desirable to keep the core rules and mechanics of combat simple and with as few exceptions as possible. If you have to ask players to memorize different potencies/success rates for skill classes because you can’t find a consistent way to balance the mechanics you designed, maybe you could benefit by revisiting the underlying design decisions. I think it’s okay if you need a handful of exceptions for specific mechanics here and there (e.g. instant death skills and long stuns don’t work on bosses), but if you need a major exception for an entire category of effects like buffs or debuffs, maybe there’s some room for improvement. Think how many complaints you tend to see here about bosses having global protection from all status ailments. Players often dislike when the rules arbitrarily change to neuter strategies the developer couldn’t accommodate more gracefully.

So, some sample questions you could maybe ask yourself:

What’s the intended role of debuffs in regular encounters? How does this compare to their intended role in boss fights?

Will it be normal for debuffs in your game to inflict a 75% stat reduction? If so, is that degree of reduction necessary to make debuffs worth using over regular attacks?

How expensive are the debuffs, and can they be maintained easily on targets?

Are regular physical enemies any threat at all after losing such a huge chunk of their stats? If they’re still a threat even after a 75% power drop, it seems possible that they’re doing some pretty crazy, boss-tier damage when they aren’t debuffed.

If they’re really not a threat after the debuff, and that’s your intended design, maybe you could accomplish that goal with a different type of effect (Blind, short-term stun on a cooldown, party buffs like shields which can take a certain amount of damage, etc.) and then rebalance debuffs to fill a different need that’s easier to balance between regular enemies and bosses. Alternatively, ease up on your debuff rates to keep both regular enemies and bosses relevant, and maybe package your debuffs with damage or other desirable effects if you’re worried players won’t use them.

On a different note, why do bosses have drastically different stats than regular enemies? Does this achieve a different purpose than raising the base power of their skills?

Something else to potentially re-examine, depending on your damage formula, is why you decided to base your debuffs off of ATK instead of making them % reductions to the final damage dealt. There can be good reasons for each, but a debuff which affects the final damage output may have more consistent effectiveness if your bosses have drastically different stat values compared to regular enemies (though again, depends on your damage formula, and this may not actually apply). Furthermore, the outcome is generally going to produce a more predictable and transparent result for players.

I wish it were easier to just lay out a concrete answer for you, but there are tons of conditions to consider which will vary depending on the game systems involved. Some of what I mentioned here may not even be relevant for some games, and there are certainly concepts/mechanics I didn’t touch on here which could have an impact as well (intended overall difficulty, the importance of attrition between fights, different resource types, etc., etc.). There are lots of different “right” answers, so the best you can really do is try to analyze what type of approaches to combat your existing mechanics promote, and then try to design something useful and nuanced within that framework.

 

[Aoi Ninami]

A well-balanced debuff system such as that in Legends of an Otherworld can add a lot of fun and depth to a battle system. What I remember from playing Legends is that I rarely debuffed regular enemies, because I preferred to use that turn to lay down extra damage and end the battle sooner. Against bosses, they were frequently useful, simply because some bosses were really hard hitters, and debuffing them could make them manageable without making them pushovers. Then, to increase the challenge level in the late game, some bosses would straight-up be immune to debuffs or, more interestingly, would be capable of dispelling them, giving me the choice whether it was worth reapplying them (and often it was, especially as dispelling would use up one of the enemy's turns).

 

[jonthefox]

@Soryuju you raise some good questions. i think, at least for me, the main intended role of debuffs is giving strategic diversity and depth to the game, which in my opinion is what makes a turn-based combat system interesting and fun. what i mean by this is that there isn't only one way to solve the combat puzzle - you can brute force it with defensive items/skills and heals, you could go for glass cannon optimizations as a way to kill the enemy before they wipe you, or you could go for an overload of utility that allows you to negate and/or withstand the different threats from the enemy. I also think it's fun to create the possibility of innovation and synergy between skills...for example, say you have a skill "Weaken" that debuffs the target's DEF. Then a fighter character has a skill that will automatically critically strike if his ATK is higher than his target's DEF. Combine that with a buff spell that gives your critical strikes a bonus effect...you can get some really satisfying combinations. Of course, the enemy is also equipped with lots of tools that can ruin your day, so you have to weigh your offensive options against defensive measures.

But, I don't want to get too deep into discussing my specific project, but rather just the general considerations when balancing these types of debuffs in general.

 

[Uzuki]

I think it mainly comes down to how regular battles go and how your debuff skills work. If it's just a DPS race then yeah you wouldn't find an attack debuff that useful especially if it's not doing damage, but if you have enemies that exclusivity use heavy attacks or multiple attacks then a debuff would be more useful to minimize unavoidable damage.

 

[Milennin]

You're not thinking about this the right way. If your boss is nullified by a single debuff, it means your boss isn't powerful enough. Instead of arbitrarily changing the rules and disincentivicing the use of debuffs, you should make the boss threatening enough that using debuffs may become valid tools for survival.

 

[lianderson]

Go with 3.

 

[Countyoungblood]

Attack debuff in a single enemy battle is somewhat like buffing the whole partys defense and 3 turns of taking 25% damage is op in itself. I wouldnt worry about making an alternate version for bosses id just nerf the debuff all together.

 

[MMMm]

Keep your boss the same, but give them some helpers. One ally who serves to feed the boss some buffs and another who cures them of negative status effects and grants regen. Round out the group with one that deals burst damage but requires charge up time to execute attacks. Could allow the player to interrupt the charge by dealing a certain amount of damage, too.

If your party of presumably 4 is going to attack the dungeon boss, and they had to destroy a ton of monsters to get here, why would the boss fight alone?

You don't have to give the boss special privileges or make it operate under different rules if they're more like the player's party.

Because if my statuses are unreliable, I'm just going to use damage, every time. Already status ailments have a bad stigma in RPGs since they're usually 50% all or nothing skills that the bosses are immune to every single one of them. If the player learns they aren't useful on bosses, they'll just never use them on bosses.

 

[ShadowHawkDragon]

The main point of basic battles is to prepare the player for what's to come. A well designed dungeon teaches you how to fight the boss through the mooks. The more you treat the two as separate entities with their own rules the less these skills and tactics become transferable. This includes how giving bosses immunity to all ailments leave those same skills completely unused.

The question becomes, how can you balance boss fights around massive debuffs?

One simple method is through the addition of adds, if the boss isn't alone (especially if those adds can remove those debuffs) then hitting the boss with such effects means less.

A more in depth method which may require careful planning is to make it so no boss is dependant on any one stat and/or has a way to self-cleanse. So you've debuffed the Vampire Lord's attack by 75%, good for you, all you've done is dulled his fangs. While his bite might not hurt much that 'bleed' status he inflicts will as its 'magic' based. What's worse, if a team mate is already 'bleeding' he can transfer a random debuff from himself to them using your own spells against you.

 

[Wavelength]

I feel the best "simple" option for this kind of debuff would be the use of Absolute Debuffs rather than Percentage Debuffs. Instead of your state reducing the enemy's ATK by a certain percentage (such as 50%), it reduces it by a certain amount (such as 50 ATK points). This means that although the skill may have different tactical uses against different types of enemies (a complete shutdown against a weak monster, versus a bit of sustained damage reduction against a big boss), the expected value that you get out of the spell will at least be in the same ballpark against any type of enemy. It pretty much solves the issue you're having.

One issue with Absolute Debuffs (as well as Absolute Buffs) is that the relative value of a '-50 ATK points' debuff will get lower and lower throughout the game as both character and enemy stats grow in magnitude. There are two ways to solve this. One is to have multiple, progressively stronger versions of the debuff skill learned throughout the game, just like you do with attack skills: a 20-point debuff, a 50-point debuff, a 100-point debuff, a 200-point debuff, etc. The other is to use Utility Scaling: having utility skills scale in power with one of the user's stats, so for example, the ATK Debuff skill might reduce the target's ATK by 20 points, plus 1 additional point for every 3 points of MAG the caster has. This not only keeps the skill relevant all game, but also solves issues inherent in stat allocation for characters who offer both damage and utility.

Absolute Buffs can't be done by default in RPG Maker, but they're easy to script in yourself in any version (from XP onward), and I think are trivial to implement with the use of Yanfly's States & Buffs Core.

While I believe that Absolute Debuffs are 'absolutely' (groan) the best way to handle this problem in most games and most skill systems, here are a few other approaches you could also try for your debuff skills:

• The debuff is moderate in its power, but affects the entire enemy party, making it more similarly useful against large, weak mobs and lone, powerful bosses.
• The Debuff skill combines a long Cooldown (e.g. 10 turns), a short Duration (e.g. 2 turns), and a high Power level (e.g. 75%). This specific combination means that in standard battles, where the battle probably won't last more than a few turns and you're likely to face at least a few enemies, you're getting a very powerful debuff against one of the enemies for most or all of the battle, whereas against bosses, where the fight is going to last a long time, this very powerful debuff is only going to be active for a small portion of the battle and you'll need to find other tactics while it's on cooldown.
• Battlers can only be affected by each debuff once per battle, or the power of each debuff is progressively weaker each time when applied multiple times on the same target during a battle. This allows you to start with very high power levels on the debuffs (good against mobs), while making sure it can't be spammed to cheese long boss fights.
• The debuff scales with the total number of battlers in the target's party (at the time the debuff is applied) - for example, the debuff percentage is (10 + 10X) where X is the total number of battlers in the target's party. In general, this will mean that large parties of weak enemy monsters will have you reduce one of those weak enemy's ATK by 50-80%, whereas you'll only reduce the ATK of a lone, powerful boss by 20%. For bosses who have minions alongside them, this also creates an interesting incentive to leave those minions alive.

 

[Countyoungblood]

Taking inspiration from these replies id be amused to see a boss who'd respond to the applied states with different and potentially worse attacks which is built into the monster mechanics and would make bosses seem a little smarter.

Reduce attack by 75% boss uses magic or recovery or defends or applies its own buff/debuff (buff would be especially tasty since it can be silent through x.add_state and add more branches secretly)

 

[jonthefox]

@Wavelength i love the absolute buff/debuff idea! feel like making a script for that for VX Ace? i also thought of the cooldown option - that works fairly well. making it affect all enemies and lowering the effectiveness also works well - but i really think the power fantasy of these kinds of skills involve really crippling a target's statistic whether it be ATK, DEF, AGI, etc.., so I like the other options better.

 

[Aesica]

for example, say your wizard has an "enfeeble" spell that drastically lowers the target's ATK. How do you balance this so that it is useful for non-boss battles, but not overpowered for boss battles?

How drastic are we talking?

That said, my method of balancing this kind of effect is to pretty much balance enemy stats around it. So instead of the huge dragon hitting like a pansy when affected by an ATK reduction, the dragon hits for the intended amount of damage when affected by the ATK reduction. When not debuffed, the dragon's attacks will probably kill people in 1-2 hits, so players will need to include in their party someone capable of debuffing enemies.

Note that each enemy will have a success rate of either 100% or 0% to emphasize strategy over RNG. If you balance stats around reduction abilities, yet give the necessary debuffs a random chance to hit, you're giving players another way to die to RNG and that's no fun.

 

[Grunwave]

This is another of those really great threads where you get great insight from this community. Love reading everyone's thoughts on topics like this.

 

[Wavelength]

((Note: This post discusses implementation of a design idea I mentioned a few posts above, at the OP's request. I thought it might be useful to multiple people so I posted rather than PMing it. If you only want to read design stuff, just ignore this post entirely. Thanks!))

@Wavelength i love the absolute buff/debuff idea! feel like making a script for that for VX Ace?

I've actually been trying over the last few hours to create a standalone script for this, and so far I've failed The way they handle the collection of Features (in features_pi, etc.) is pretty opaque, and I'm having a hard time picking out certain features to reverse into absolutes. I know it's doable, and I think I'm capable of doing it, but I've hit a lot of roadblocks on Attempt #1.

For now, one workaround if you want to play around with skill design is through the use of my Utility Scaling Script. In add_state (line 418), 'target = nil' should be changed to 'target = self' (unless I've already found my way back into pastebin and made the change there). Then, you can enter a notebox like:
<scaling>
1: (b.mat + 30.0000) / (b.mat * 1.0000)
<scaling end>
which would increase the target's MAT by exactly 30 points. Those trailing zeroes are necessary to prevent precision issues; I recommend using at least 4. A formula like this doesn't actually utilize the concept of Utility Scaling (though it easily could by, for example, multiplying the whole result by the user's MDF or whatever stat you want to scale it on) - but what my script is doing is providing access to the target's stats so that it can adjust the % increase/decrease to whatever it needs to be to raise the target's MAT by 30.

Two problems inherent here are that multiple states affecting the same parameter on the same target (e.g. a -30 ATK state and a -50 ATK state) will provide a slight multiplicative effect with each other (reducing the target's ATK by a little more than 80), and the fact that Utility Scaling may be incompatible (won't cause crashes, but may cause strange behavior) with other scripts you might be using to affect the way that States work. That's why a stand-alone script would be better for a final product, but for design testing, it should be a good tool to play around with.

 

[Countyoungblood]

I had a similar problem with health regeneration and changed the function from a decimal to a flat number by changing (mhp * hrg) to (100 * hrg) so any regen i apply is actually 1:1.. id have to add +100 health regen multiple times to get more than 100 regen but it works for me.

would there be something similar you'd be able to access easier?

 

[BK-tdm]

I find a 75% reduction ridiculous, that leaves a 1000 hit on 250, if your party members can take a 1000 hit then balance wise id say the hp pools are around 5000, a 250 hit on a 5000 hp pool is negligible, we went from 5 turn kills to 20, adding healing spells and said debuff as renewable, your party cant lose against any melee attackers, period.

If the -75% debuff is either necessary for survival or turns normal decent attacking enemies into wet noodles then i would rebalance said debuff since that single skill is making or breaking the game and you end up with two scenarios:

The party member that causes debuffs died? Game Over enjoy normal enemies 1-2 hitting you.

The skill is broken and a crutch ability that will turn any and all non-boss encounters into "debuff=you win" and thats boring, not to mention it forces all balance to be made around one skill, thats bad design in my book.

I would leave it at -20 to -30%, and make it universal for mobs and bosses, make it a useful tool not a necessary one and make some bosses outright inmune to it or be able to dispel it.
Make it -30% ATK and MATK to make it a more universal one.