How should 1-hit K.O. skills work on bosses? I'm not a fan of making anything not work on bosses. While I prefer that all mechanics work the same regardless of whether the target is a trash mob or a boss, this is obviously a mechanic that shouldn't be allowed to work as-is. Any ideas on alternatives or how this ought to be handled?
I'm thinking of removing 1-hit K.O moves altogether. That's the easy way out of course, lol.
Personally, I say take instant kills out. Typically, the only way to try to balance them is to make them have a high rate of failure, which means a large percentage of the time, trying to use this is just wasting my turn. So why should I ever choose the skill instead of doing something that I know will hit and have an effect on the enemy? (I actually don't understand what's interesting about including them in the first place)
As far as bosses are concerned, I don't understand what other options you can have than the ones you stated in your post. They work normally, and have a whatever percentage of neutering your boss fight. Or they don't work normally (do high damage instead or something).
There's the lore route, e.g. certain vital points being in different locations on different enemies, which could theoretically extend to "it's not immune because it's a boss, it's immune because trees don't have carotids to slice." This effectively makes it "Sure, we could theoretically assassinate the boss with a precision strike to its weak point, but do we know where that is?" and actually opens up some options for lore quests that could serve as interesting alternate routes to bypass the overwhelming firepower option.
EDIT: There's also the option to make the OHKO only work on enemies the player has defeated before.
Variance: 0
Damage formula: b.mhp (capped at 9999) - within an assumption that no normal encounter has more than 9999 max hp and your boss has around 99999 max hp.
I solved this problem in my game with following assumptions:
1. Player as well rest of team and all enemies level ranges from 1Lv to 10Lv.
2. Enemies below level 5 can be affected by any special effects, including instant K.O.
3. Because instant K.O is very OP feature let it have fixed value (optimal value is 3% to trigger it)
4. Creatures with level 5 or higher cannot be affected by instant K.O with exceptions:
- scenario plot
- special rare item
- relation of enemy type with skill type of player (example: Lv. 6 - ghost can be affected with instant K.O if skill type is shamanism or holy, or exorcists item (holy water, salt) - other kind of magic/items don't do it).
5. BOSSes cannot be affected by instant K.O at all - they're totally immune for this.
6. If in your game there are demi-bosses, then instant K.O setup like in point #4.
7. I recommend to experiment with probability to affect with instant K.O, but keep in mind that even 3% may sounds very low, believe me, you can during a battle hit with instant K.O very often, so according to my calculations keeping instant K.O probability no more than 5% is safe value.
8. It would be also a nice addition to game if instant K.O wouldn't be given right away at the beginning of game, but unlocked at some point. (Actually I didn't do that point in my game, yet)
You can also increase further probability for instant K.O (even to 30%) but if the player has HP lower than 25% ( $gameParty.members()[x].isDying() ) and return to it's original value, when players HP returns to safe value ( more than 25% )
I really love the idea of OHKO skills, and I'm always like, "Oh I wanna use this!" And then I find out it's next to useless. Like, Death never works (unless the game's glitched like that and you can OHKO enemies that are Vanished). The only skill I remember using is mebbe Cyan's ultimate skill in FFVI? But that took so long to charge up it was pretty useless too. Still, I powered it up whenever I could, 'cuz I thought it was cool.
What I'd love even more is when I can OHKO the boss! And I wanna make it so it's feasible!
Like, in Mass Effect 1 you could kinda sorta talk the final boss to death. I thought that was awesome. But it was like, only if you put all ya points into the talk skill, and you chose the right options during the pre-battle talk... (And even then you had to fight the final form of the boss, which was a low blow!)
Soo... bottom line is, I kinda really love OHKO skills but I haven't played a game that woulda done them well.
At the moment, I'm kinda toying with the idea of a game, where the hero has an OHKO skill that's pretty effective against normal enemies, but to use it on bosses, you hafta set it up first... Like, mebbe before the fight even starts, you hafta talk to the local wise dude to figure out the boss's weakness? Or during the fight, you hafta inflict some specific states on the boss before the OHKO works... kinda sorta Undertale style? I dunno, still cookin' my stew on this one.
Or maybe I just make it so bosses can be killed pretty easy with OHKO? Kinda like, do bosses always hafta be hard? I'm kinda toying with the idea that my game would have pretty easy fights. But I dunno if this is a good idea.
I really love the idea of OHKO skills, and I'm always like, "Oh I wanna use this!" And then I find out it's next to useless. Like, Death never works (unless the game's glitched like that and you can OHKO enemies that are Vanished). The only skill I remember using is mebbe Cyan's ultimate skill in FFVI? But that took so long to charge up it was pretty useless too. Still, I powered it up whenever I could, 'cuz I thought it was cool.
What I'd love even more is when I can OHKO the boss! And I wanna make it so it's feasible!
Like, in Mass Effect 1 you could kinda sorta talk the final boss to death. I thought that was awesome. But it was like, only if you put all ya points into the talk skill, and you chose the right options during the pre-battle talk... (And even then you had to fight the final form of the boss, which was a low blow!)
Soo... bottom line is, I kinda really love OHKO skills but I haven't played a game that woulda done them well.
At the moment, I'm kinda toying with the idea of a game, where the hero has an OHKO skill that's pretty effective against normal enemies, but to use it on bosses, you hafta set it up first... Like, mebbe before the fight even starts, you hafta talk to the local wise dude to figure out the boss's weakness? Or during the fight, you hafta inflict some specific states on the boss before the OHKO works... kinda sorta Undertale style? I dunno, still cookin' my stew on this one.
Or maybe I just make it so bosses can be killed pretty easy with OHKO? Kinda like, do bosses always hafta be hard? I'm kinda toying with the idea that my game would have pretty easy fights. But I dunno if this is a good idea.
I like the idea of having to set up an instant-kill on a boss. In my case it gels well with the guard break system I have in mind where you have to gradually break a strong enemy's defenses with states or stuff like that.
This feels like the logical extreme of that mindset and tbh it would be really cool for bosses to get one-shot by a chain of you using certain skills on them. Or you have something that breaks their shield once and then they get blitzed to zero HP. People tend to really like those kinds of exploits for speed-running.
I never make moves whose only purpose is to OHKO enemies for this reason. I just have a couple of skills that are capable of causing OHKO to different types of enemies as a side effect, so they are still usable on the bosses as a regular attack skill.
If your going for something like final fantasy's recurring death spell, the low success rate can be what keeps it in check, depending on how the bad a lose state is, like for example losing the boss would set you back a few minutes vs maybe throwing you into a retry screen. It might deter the player from carelessly spamming the insta-win button.
You can also just employ boss design, like giving them periods of immunity, spell reflection or powerful attacks to disrupt player strategy/formations, so the player just won't be able to comfortably repeatedly use low success rate 1HKO moves.
Another deterrent can be reduced rewards from killing with the move, treat the killing of enemies with this skill as an ejection from battle, leaving the player with no rewards as opposed to if they were defeated normally.
I like the idea of having to set up an instant-kill on a boss. In my case it gels well with the guard break system I have in mind where you have to gradually break a strong enemy's defenses with states or stuff like that.
This feels like the logical extreme of that mindset and tbh it would be really cool for bosses to get one-shot by a chain of you using certain skills on them. Or you have something that breaks their shield once and then they get blitzed to zero HP. People tend to really like those kinds of exploits for speed-running.
Sounds like a 'puzzle' boss. Which I like better than framing it as an "instant KO". It takes several turns to set up dealing 'enough' damage to drop the enemy. One could choose to hit the enemy with super strong attacks for effectively the same result. But the brainier and lower level runners can opt to take the clever path.
I have an insta-kill passive on a character's Attack that gains higher chance to succeed, the lower the boss's HP is. But it's also a game in which you can't save before the boss, so it's a high risk move, generally best used as a last resort if you feel you're not gonna make it the normal way.
In a normal game, I'd replace the insta-kill effect with something that just does a good amount of damage instead, when used on bosses.
I'll throw my hat in to the vote of "Remove Instakills"
In my...uh...25? Maybe 23 odd years of RPG gaming insta kills have always seemed neat but almost never work and just feel like a wasted turn. It's almost instinct for me to actively avoid using them these days because they don't feel like a smart use of time nor a fun use of time.
But I will say I do enjoy the finisher skills. Skills that deal more damage the more HP a target has lost so they're functionally an execution skill after weakening a foe.
My last game I made a boss weak to one skill in my game. See I had a skill that did damage equal to the monster's full HP if they were robotic and I had a boss late game that was robotic so if you caught the cue (the cue was a SE that played at the start of the battle) that it was you got a one hit kill on the boss.
Lead to an interesting moment too when a streamer played my game and figured it out too: https://www.twitch.tv/hawkzombie/clip/AdventurousStormyVelociraptorSoonerLater?filter=clips&range=all&sort=time
You'll have to copy and paste that link to see it, for some reason twitch clips do not paste correctly here.
I like the idea of OHKO moves. One of the fun things for players to do is make clutch plays with apparently subpar skills. In the context of regular JRPGs, I just make it so such skills deal some damage, but have a chance that that damage either one-shots the target, or deal extra damage based on a multiplier (this what I'd do for bosses). For extra fun, I'll let players stack that chance in exchange for the user to be debuffed, living on the edge.
What if, instead of instakilling bosses, it just did a huge amount of damage to them instead? It turns into a different sort of skill when you use it on a boss-type enemy.
I ment low rate, to make it a success so it doesn't always happen.
you need to be lucky to get it work n stronger foes with thick armor
or high HP for example.
I was surprised to see a email from Safeway that my grocery have been delivered when they have not. The email was a noreply message. So enjoy the $88 of free food random person.
Well friends, I'm happy to announce that I've officially completed 1 plugin and am running compatability tests and writing the documentation for the second tomorrow morning!
Vegan post. Pic of a pig in a suit and tie like he is laying in a coffin but it's a sandwich. 'One meal soon forgotten, in exchange for a whole life." Really don't think rolling around in poop your whole life would be so valuable.
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