Great power comes with great headaches. How should i make a strategic magic system that *seemingly* punishes player?

[Conflictx3]

Hello, hope all are safe and healthy aswell as your loved ones!

Getting right down to it,
My project uses a materia plugin so players equip items known as fallen feathers to use magic. Due to my story theres a hard limit of 4 feathers you can equip at once per character but ofcourse you can swap on the fly. Still, to add depth to the game I wanted to add a bit more complexity to it.

so for the last few days I was thinking of setting up a sort of checks and balances magic system but had 2 ideas on how to implement it, any help on deciding on one and how to go about would be much appreciated!

-Idea 1: Persona esque weaknesses-
In the persona series you can swap personas on the fly with the MC and each persona has a certain element type and an opposing weakness. When you use the right persona on an opponent and exploit their weakness it'll do a critical however the same can be done to you.

My idea was to do something similar where if you equipped say the fire feather you do critical damage to wood type creatures however ice types and water types would do critical damage to you as long as the fire feather was equipped. An obstacle that increasingly grows difficult where with 4 feathers you have 4 weaknesses that are exploitable. With a total of 20+ types of feathers it would be a game of using the best feathers for the situation. (Equip the fire feather in the forest, unequip it in the ice cave!)

-Idea 2: infinity stone style-

Ok maybe not as extreme as gaurdians of the galaxy with the power stone but I was thinking of possibly setting up each feather that has a drawback in exchange for its power.

Equip the fire feather, gain fire magic + 10% resistance to fire attacks but reduce your strength by 3 pts as long as feather is equipped.

Equip the ice feather, gain ice magic + 10% resistance to ice attacks but reduce your speed by 2 pts while equipped.

Now MC can use fire and ice but his strength and speed are compromised.

So on so forth, with 4 feathers equipped your handling 4 handicaps and not using feathers your at peak stats but obviously no magic to use.

I'm personally leaning towards idea 2 but idea 1 is more in line with my story of a world of opposing sides.

Look forward to everyones input!

 

[magnaangemon01]

I like the Persona idea. Although me, if I wanted to make it punishing, would use HP for magic

 

[Kupotepo]

Idea 1: Persona esque weaknesses, I lean more to that because I like the magical stone aspect stuff than weapon/equipment. if I wanted to make it punishing, I would use reduce the actor's permanent stats. The law of equal exchange for me on this subject matter.

If you are really want to actually punish the player, you should just let them let read the info dump or really do a long tutorial.

 

[Nohmaan]

You could so something like this:

Equip Fire feather, deal 2x damage vs Ice but take 1.5x damage from ice.
Change Feather to Ice, deal 2x damage vs ice but take 1.5x damage from fire AND ice.

So equipping the feather penalizes you less in damage up front but swapping means that you don't lose the weakness. In a fight with multiple types you would need to prioritize or choose which order to tackle the enemies to avoid the highest penalty.

If a second wave of enemies shows up, the choice to swap feathers could come back to bite you.

You could add skills or conditions (like limit break style) that allow you to reset the weaknesses as another layer of strategy.

 

[Dororo]

Mumble mumble. Interesting.
How to make a punishing magic system? And why?
Spells are the wildcards you'll use to avoid risking your HP in a longer brawl. The MP cost is already punishing - you don't have infinite spells and you must balance use and wasting before the next checkpoint.
IDEA ONE sound good but is spoiled by the chance of switching everything on the fly. If in need to make an actual punishing system, probably I'll go by no switching at all.
The more: once you assign a feather you can't remove it until expired by his amount of limited uses - you can somehow "recharge" feathers outside danger zones, but you can't switch or remove an active feather. That way it will be punishing - it does punish you by dumb magic setups for that area, and the choice will be more strategical/crucial.
This pair up with possible stats effects too. Anyway if you want to go for them, I'll do something really more drastical than some percentile penalty - more like negating cure spells, lock criticals, no flee action and more dramatical and substantial effects, in such a way picking a given feather will be more important. And no added bonuses - or the "punshing" thing will be spoiled (the ice resistance will be benefictual with no strings attached for an area where you meet just ice monsters...).
Just ideas.

 

[Conflictx3]

Anyway if you want to go for them, I'll do something really more drastical than some percentile penalty - more like negating cure spells, lock criticals, no flee action and more dramatical and substantial effects, in such a way picking a given feather will be more important. And no added bonuses - or the "punshing" thing will be spoiled (the ice resistance will be benefictual with no strings attached for an area where you meet just ice monsters...).
Just ideas.

i REALLY like that idea! its a bit more outside of the box with sealing type punishments and as someone earlier said its equivalent exchange.

i do want to keep the freedom of swapping magic on the fly as its one of the things i loved most about ff7 and would like to keep that intact but you did raise some great points, i'll play around with a few ideas presented here and see if its even worth adding any further punishment with mp in and of itself is "punishing".

 

[mlogan]

I've moved this thread to Game Ideas & Prototypes. Thank you.