MP for Characters Who Don't Use Magic

[TMS]

Typically in RPG games a character's MP is depleted in order for them to use magical attacks. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this seems to mean that characters without the ability to use magical attacks have no use for MP. Yet the example classes that the database starts out with all have Max MP that increases as they level up and differs between classes even if neither class can use magic. Is there a point to that?

 

[Tsukihime]

No, there is no point to it.

 

[TMS]

Thanks. Now I wonder what people do with their games as a result of that. It would seem weird for a character to have an MP bar the whole game and never use it.

 

[Warpmind]

Well, you CAN set the MP bar to 0 all the way, OR you can use it for something else entirely.
A swordsman without "magic", for example, could use his limited mana (well, more limited than a mage's supply, anyway) to heighten his focus in battle - say, a small reaction, damage and accuracy boost for a little while, perhaps - as an expression of pure martial skill, as opposed to use those similar reserves to fuel a ginormous fireball.

It's an available resource, like anything else, but you don't HAVE to use it. It just might make the game world and mechanics flow a little more sensibly if you do. Or if you don't.

 

[Kes]

If you are using Yanfly's Battle Engine script, it doesn't show the MP bar for characters who don't use it, only the TP bar. I have characters like that, and it works fine.

 

[kerbonklin]

MP doesn't literally have to be for "Magic".  That's a horrible misconception to make. That MP value can be an available resource (and even re-named to something more proper for your game) so the character can do special actions instead of Normal Attack spams and the like. And because it's a resource, the player cannot spam the better abilities and must manage their MP.

Your argument (no offense) is kind of like saying having "Level Ups" in Minecraft is pointless because it doesn't provide any kind of statistical growth. However those "Level Ups" are a resource that is spent on things like enchantments and repairing tools, and some Minecraft servers use Levels as a currency for various functions. (Like warping to saved coordinates of the world like a spawn or set-home area)

 

[Chaos Avian]

Aye, I also think MP has other uses. I always relate to Focus or mental ability, not necessarily magic. Let's say a Warrior wants to use a skill to double their ATK for the next attack, it makes sense that this would be a mental ability right? So it uses up X MP. Heck Yangus in Dragon Quest 8, can share his (albeit very small) MP and give it to another character who would need it in certain situations (i.e. Angelo ran out of MP and you have no Magic Bottles) as well as using it for his non magic skills.

 

[Probotector 200X]

There are several things I think of when I see characters who don't use magic to have MP still.

This is assuming you keep it called MP.

So, story-wise, everyone has magic potential, but they can't use magic and thus spend MP unless they learn magic. Some characters would be fully aware of this and still not learn magic, despite having a pool of mana of their own being untapped. (that sounded like Magic the Gathering on accident). So, there would be some characters who don't use their MP for anything, but still have MP to fit the lore of the world.

You could give the characters no MP. Or hide it as some scripts do. I often give robots no MP, as magic typically can't be used by machines. And a cyborg would lose magic power and MP the more cybernetic parts they have. But I love magi-tech so sometimes robots can use MP.

Have some "generic" set of skills anyone can use. Either from equipment (accessories granting a few techniques is kinda fun) or some kind of spell shop or whatever. This would enable some peculiar characters, who have mostly "fighter" type stats, but have a large amount of MP, making them good for casting generic spells, especially spells that aren't dependent on their own magic power (most buffs and such)

You could have some kind of "MP kill" mechanic. Where if you run out of MP, your character is KO'd. So, when facing enemies that attack your MP directly, you'll have a use for the brawlers' MP.

MP-empowered weapons. That is, weapons that consume your MP for extra power. There's a weapon like this in FF6, thought it was interesting.

 

[Wavelength]

First of all, Probotector just gave you some awesome ideas, so definitely consider those.  I particularly love the "MP kill" mechanic, as seen in Star Ocean 3.  Having weapons drain your MP to increase their effects is an extremely cool idea too.

Assuming that you don't use scripting to entirely change the way that HP, MP, and TP work, then you should think of MP as a fixed pool of resources that enable a character access to skills that they need to conserve across battles (as opposed to TP which only needs to be conserved within a battle).  Unless you're doing some seriously awesome stuff with TP, your characters will all be more interesting if they have cool skills that are powerful enough to justify limiting their use across battles.  And you do this with MP.  You don't need to call it Mana or Magic - feel free to rename it as Energy Points or Stamina Points or whatever.

In timeblazer I did indeed give my martial character 0 MP (but lots of TP skills) and my mage character only a single TP skill (which drains all her TP and converts it into MP) - but in that game there was no need to conserve anything across battles since every battle was a boss fight and you received a full heal before each one.  For a more traditional RPG I would almost never recommend giving a character 0 MP, nor would I recommend giving them MP but making it useless.

 

[whitesphere]

You can think of "MP" as some type of Mental Potential.

So, Mages and the likes channel that energy into casting overt spells.

However, Monks could certainly use that to, say, strengthen their attacks or defense (buffs/debuffs), or even for a Ultra-Powerful Mega Strike. 

Interestingly, in real life, one monk threw a punch in which he literally moved his hand ONE INCH (his body didn't move much either).  He did this in New York City, in a testing facility.  His punch went into a crash test dummy which was being monitored.  The result showed he put as much force behind that punch as a 3,000 pound car moving 20 MPH.    This video is on Youtube somewhere.  And it shows the absolutely amazing potential we have, even in real life for stuff like this. 

So it's easy to see in a high magic world (i.e. classic fantasy), how Warriors could channel their MP into devastating attacks or ultra-powerful one-use Defense moves.

Also, maybe characters can Share their MP, so a Magic User might even give some of his MP to the Warrior who will use it to Ultraslash the entire enemy group.

The game Dragon Quest IX does exactly this.  Pretty much ALL of the most useful and powerful attacks and buffs/debuffs take MP to use.  Yet only a few classes use that potential for actual spells.

In novels, the Codex Alera series has everyone (except the main character who doesn't seem to have any MP) using their MP for a variety of mundane and combat specific abilities.  And only a handful of abilities would resemble actual "spells," so 95% of what people do with them, even in the midst of battle, we would classify as buffs/debuffs.  But they are used to devastating effect.

So, really, MP can be used anytime you want to have Powerful Abilities which are limited in their use but which can be used at the start of battle.  Even in a modern, science-based setting, MP makes a GREAT stand-in for ammo --- say every Gunshot takes 1 MP (which would be renamed something like "Ammo", or "AM" for short).

 

[TMS]

Interesting ideas, everyone.

Wavelength brought up TP. I'm not exactly clear how it works (would anyone care to explain?), but my assumption was that TP would be used for physical skills while MP would be used for magic. So a class might use one or the other depending on its fighting style. Is that not the way to go?

 

[whitesphere]

TP is almost the reverse of MP.

TP starts out at 0.  Every time a character is attacked, or executes an attack, the character's TP goes up, until it reaches 100.  It is capped at 100, regardless of level.

Now, unless a character has the special attribute "Preserve TP between battles," the TP is always reset to 0 at the start of a battle.

Basically, think of TP as "You can't use this awesome ability until some later point in the battle."    If we had the Ultraslash example, if it took 50 TP, then the party really couldn't use Ultraslash until, say, 8 rounds into the battle.  This would effectively restrict it to boss battles.

For low TP skills, that just prevents the party from spamming the skill indefinitely, since the TP would be drained faster than they'd be accumulated.

Mages could use TP for things like Summons or powerful rituals, say "Block Magic", again for powerful abilities that you want to make players wait a few rounds to use.

 

[TMS]

Thank you for explaining! So TP is basically bloodlust. I had considered renaming it Energy or something like that, with characters using it for physical attacks and replenishing it with food and rest. I'm not sure I'd want to implement that in my current game (especially now that I realize how complicated it might be to set up a system like that), but it's what I'd had in mind. Now I'm thinking about just ignoring TP in this game and having characters use MP (probably renamed) for any kind of skill.

 

[Kes]

Actually, TP  can work differently.  I personally find it tedious beyond belief that a game developer gives me TP using skills and then denies me the choice of using them because he/she insists that I have to start from 0TP each battle.  In my games I allow characters to keep their TP so that the skills can be used strategically, rather than teach the player from the off that they will have to spam Attack, because that's all they can do for the first 4-5 turns (by which time most battles are over and done with) and only then do those useful and/or awesome skills become available.

So to reduce it to merely some equivalent of bloodlust is to give up a potentially flexible and interesting tool at your disposal.

 

[TMS]

I agree. If I did want to rework the default TP system, what section of the Script Editor would I look in?

 

[Maliki79]

I simply made MP into SP which means Special Points (or Stamina Points or whatever).

What you call them is irrelevant.  It's what you choose to do with them that counts.

Almost all skills in my game require MP.  It's simply a measure of how many special attacks a character can do before they can't anymore.

If you want "realistic Stamina points, you could always make it so all characters regain a small amount each turn.

And for the record, I changed TP in FP which are Focus Points.  

They have different uses, one of which is increasing attack power as it rises.

Again, it's all in how you use them.

 

[Diretooth]

I either rename MP as Stamina or something like that, or I come up with a basic excuse that everything requires MP to use effectively.

 

[Wavelength]

I agree. If I did want to rework the default TP system, what section of the Script Editor would I look in?

Game_Battler and Game_BattlerBase.  You can do a search for a keyword (like "tp") in all sections of the script editor by clicking Ctrl + Shift + F.

As far as going with MP only and ignoring TP... that's perfectly fine for some games.  The important thing is that battles are interesting and present real decisions for the player to make.  When RPG battles are boring, they are worse than worthless.

 

[Shinma]

So if an actor does not have MP at all, is there a way to hide it in the menu? Due to Yanfly's battle engine, I already don't have it displaying in battle if no one has a skill the uses MP, but it is still displayed in the main menu.

 

[reno385]

So if an actor does not have MP at all, is there a way to hide it in the menu? Due to Yanfly's battle engine, I already don't have it displaying in battle if no one has a skill the uses MP, but it is still displayed in the main menu.

I don't know if this'll conflict with Yanfly's battle engine, but if you drop this code in Materials it should remove the MP bar.

class Window_Base  def draw_actor_mp(actor, x, y)  endend