RPG Maker Forums

Hi everyone, new to the forums and happy to be here!

I searched through plugins, tutorials, and posts but couldn't quite find anything that addresses this. I'm wondering if there's a way (either with or without scripts) to create a more extensive damage/healing/event-over-time systems for combat use beyond the classical "Poison" or "HP Regen" states. Ideally I would like to be able to use formulas to calculate the effects of these States. This isn't a new thing by any means, some of your probably already know exactly what I'm talking about, but if not, here's a rather lengthy-but-comprehensive explanation behind the logic.

TL;DR:

My asks:

1. Is there already a way to do this in the native engine? If so, how?

2. Is there already a script that can be used for this? If so, where?

3. Is there someone out there willing to write a script to enable this?

--- Explanation Disclaimer: long read ahead ---

From my understanding of the the default engine, "Poison" and "HP Regen" effects that are created through States can only be based off percentage gains/losses of the afflicted target's stats. (eg. A "Poison" State that causes loss of 5% total HP is set up with "Ex Parameter: HP Regeneration -5%"). I'm looking for ways to gain more control over the process. In particular, to utilize formulas to determine the State's effects. Here's some examples to illustrate:

1. Actor's Stat-dependent Healing-over-Time

Proposal: Instead of having a static 5%-of-max-HP-per-turn recovery rate, make it so that the potency of each Regen "tick" is calculated based off of some formula utilizing the caster's m.atk (or any other combination of) stats.

Reason: The benefit of doing this over using a percentage-of-max-HP approach is that overall damage/numbers can be better managed (from a developer's PoV) while allowing the skill to be scalable: If tanks have twice as much HP as non-tanks of the same level, a Regen effect based off of HP percentage will mean that its effects are twice as effective on the tank than everyone else. This creates the dilemma of either needing to set incoming damage to the point where enemies could one-shot all non-tank actors, or leaving the damage as-is but having the Regen being over-powered because now your tank is getting automatic healing every turn at way more than what enemies can cause per turn. 

I've considered setting up static heal-over-times, such as making it so that affected characters recover a flat 500 HP per turn. Of course, the problem with this method is that it doesn't scale, and therefore the spell quickly becomes obsolete as characters gain more max HP and enemies hit even harder.

By having Regen's State effect set up to be a formula calculation, for example 1/2 of whatever the formula you use for your standard healing spell, and hypothetically having the State last for 3 turns, then the value of Regen becomes "having an upside of costing only 1 turn to get 1.5x the effect of the regular Cure spell, but having the downside of needing 3 turns to pass in order to get the full effect."

In addition to getting rid of the tank-HP-enemy-damage dilemma above, it also makes Regen a viable skill for non-tanks for the same reasons; you wouldn't consider using Regen on a character with low max HP because your Cure is much quicker and effective to recover that small amount, but if Regen is based off of your stats just like Cure is, then its more tactically valuable and you might even opt to just use a Regen if the tank as a Taunt ability and you know for sure that the non-tank isn't in danger for the next few turns.

2. Actor's Stat-dependent Damage-over-Time

Proposal: Pretty much the opposite of the Regen example. Poison might not be a good example to use here because it deviates from the standard expected effect of Poison. The idea is to have a scalable fire-and-forget skill that would be expected to deal more damage while using less resources compared to others, but having the downside of requiring several turns to take full effect.

Reason: This actually directly addresses the "How strong should Poison be?" dilemma I saw elsewhere in the forum.

The reason why the whole dilemma of "how much %-damage poison should cause", "whether bosses are immune", "whether success should be based on chance", etc. exists is because by traditionally scaling the damage based on the afflicted target's max HP, you in essence lose control over the damage potential and balance of this skill; hence, you need to curb it by granting immunities, or using RNG in hopes of getting a more reasonable expected value (but statistically you are bound to annoy the very lucky/unlucky outlier players). 

The tactical value with a user's-stat-based DoT is very similar to the healing example above. Let's say our new DoT skill is 2x stronger than a regular attack, but takes two turns for the full effect. And let's say you run into a random encounter with 3 enemies, an Enemy A has HP equal to 2 regular attacks to kill, and two Enemy B's that have HP equal to 1 regular attack to kill. With the traditional max HP-based Poison, you wouldn't even consider using the skill because you know that you can win the battle in 4 turns of regular attacks. But with this new DoT attack, players who think this through will be able to win in 3 turns by using DoT skill on Enemy A on the first turn, regular attacking Enemy B1 on the second turn (at which point Enemy A and Enemy B1 dies), and then finishing off Enemy B2 on the third turn.

Building off this same example, you also don't have to worry about the DoT skill being overpowered for boss fights because the optimal rotation between your DoT and regular attacks (assuming you only have these 2 options) is an average of 1.5x worth of damage per turn, which makes sense because skills are supposed to be in some ways better than just regular attacks:

Turn 1 - Use DoT on Boss; Regular Damage 0, DoT Damage 1

Turn 2 - Regular Attack Boss; Regular Damage 1, DoT Damage 1 (DoT Expires)

Repeat...

   = 3 units of Regular damage / 2 turns = 1.5 Damage Unit per Turn.

--- End of Examples ---

Hopefully that illustrates why I think there's value in having such a system, and why I'm wondering if:

1. There's already a way to do this in the native engine?

2. There's already a script that can be used for this?

3. There's someone out there willing to write a script to allow this?

I've only raised two straightforward examples, but there's a lot of universally applicable potentials that can come out of this to allow for much more intricate and interesting battle designs.

Questions, comments, etc. are more than welcome. Apologies to the moderator if this needs to be moved. 

Thanks for reading! =)