Delayed Blast Kabooming

[Warpmind]

So, idly wondering...

Has anyone actually successfully made a game involving delayed-effect spells and such? By which I mean, a character casts a spell on round one, and then it actually hits a couple of rounds later; comparable to D&D's Delayed Blast Fireball, which can detonate up to five rounds after casting.

Seems it wouldn't necessarily be difficult to do - the spell only triggers a common event, the initial common event sets a variable, all the Troops have two Battle Events they all share; one which lowers said variable by 1 each turn, and one which activates the spell effect when the variable in question reaches 1...

It'd certainly make for more complex battles, if the players could time their strongest all-or-nothing combos to all go off in the same round...

Not saying I'll do this myself anytime soon, but has something like this actually been done, successfully, in RPG Maker to date?

 

[Chaos Avian]

I personally haven't used it in any RM games but it is something I've given thought to every now and again. Though it is something I'd only give to a character or two, not an entire cast. I do like how Etrian Odyssey: Untold handled a charge skill with the Highlander class.

 

[Warpmind]

Yeah; it would probably be a mechanic best suited to, say, the party's Wizard or somesuch... Or perhaps a Druid, who needs the time for clouds to gather and trees to take root and such...

 

[Chaos Avian]

And even perhaps a ranged class like a Ranger or Gunner. Even a warrior class gathering his strength for an attack that needs to be charged (with some justification). It isn't TOO different to using a self buff then using a skill afterwards, but I guess the added benefit is the ability to act between the turns it takes before the skill is used.

 

[Kvich]

I haven't made a spell like that before, but have made certain skills have a charge period, where the skill the first round will not do much other than display a text, and the next round the enemy or character use the skill.

But could be a interesting concept, and may be something worth exploring.

 

[Wavelength]

Taking it one step further, I've made the Charge take several turns by, for example, adding a two-turn Paralyze-style state to the user (where they can't take action) and a three-turn Add Skill state to the user (so they can use the charged-up skill).  This doesn't force the action three turns later, but gives them one chance to use it before they lose it, and lets you have a greater than one turn Charge time.

Beyond that, you could even do something fancy with a conditional Force Action in Troop Pages to make it exactly what you're envisioning.

 

[Warpmind]

I'm not talking about an effect like you're describing, Wavelength - what I had in mind is that the casting is completed in the round the skill is used, but the *effect* only happens two or three turns later. Not charging up, not forcing action, just lighting the fuse and going on to do other stuff in the meantime.

 

[Eurgh]

I've set up a 'perish song' ability. Where if they cast the ability, it sets off a common event where if the fight isnt ended in 3 turns EVERYONE dies.

 

[Chaos Avian]

@Eurgh, it would suck if the enemy had the Soundproof ability

I'm trying to set up a skill where a user fires an energy bolt into the air on one turn, then 3 turns later it scatters and rains down on all enemies.

 

[Wavelength]

I'm not talking about an effect like you're describing, Wavelength - what I had in mind is that the casting is completed in the round the skill is used, but the *effect* only happens two or three turns later. Not charging up, not forcing action, just lighting the fuse and going on to do other stuff in the meantime.

OK, I see what you're saying, although my system is effectively the same thing if a forced action is used at the beginning of the turn and the character still gets to move on the turn the effect activates.

I've actually created a skill like this in "How Badly Do You Want It" - Ismaria, the time mage, has a spell called "Time Bomb" that applies two states: one state provides a huge amount of degen and lasts ten turns; the other state is hidden (Priority 0) and provides an equal amount of regen and lasts nine turns (one less than the degen).  The apparent effect of the skill is that nothing happens for a while and then the target takes a giant amount of damage after ten turns.

By cleverly using the different state messages, you can make it look like the effect is only being triggered on the tenth turn.  For example, the hidden state's remove message is "(Battler Name) is staring down a ticking time bomb!" and the visible degen state's remove message is "(Battler Name) takes massive damage from the time bomb!".

You might also be able to do this for things like delayed petrification, inflicting a Petrify state as well as a Petrify Resist state that lasts just a few turns.  I forget exactly how State Resist features work.

There are a few drawbacks to this method, the biggest one being that there's no way, in the default system, to have a dynamic amount of Time Bomb damage based on the user's stats.  You could run a common event that checks the user's MAT, for example, and apply one of five different pairs of degen/regen states based on how powerful the caster is.  I've also got a "Utility Scaling" script that I plan to release in a few months which is perfect for this kind of thing - it lets you change any feature (such as the amount of degen per turn) on a state based on any stat or formula you'd like.