No HP/MP, Status Based, Combat Mechanics

[LordQwert]

First time poster, experienced in game design, programming, etc.

Goal: Use RPG Maker VX Ace as the foundation for a fairly unique combat system.  
 

Now, I'm not asking HOW to do this, I just want to know if anything I'm hoping to do is impossible or requires so much work I would be better served starting from scratch.

Mechanics:

• Eliminate HP, instead having a coarse set of conditions like Wounded, Severely Wounded, Unconscious, and Dead
• Three fluctuating variables per character/enemy representing their current Stamina, Morale, and Focus.  These are not intended to replace HP.
• Heavy emphasis on status effects, some representing a coarse spectrum like Shaken, Afraid, Panicked, and others representing binary conditions like Burnt, or Crippled.
• Relative status effects between specific characters and enemies, such as Grappled/Grappling, or Threatened/Threatening.  For "simplicity" these are not binary pairs.  Someone Grappling is doing it to all members of the other team who are Grappled.
• Combat skills that have complex prerequisites for use, such as Pin which would require the character to have the condition Grappling, and can only target an enemy character that is Grappled, or Charge which would require a current minimum of 3 Morale and that the character not have the Close, Grappled, Prone, etc. condition.
• Three tiers of effects for each skill.  Automatic effects when used, which might include a Stamina cost or the expenditure of an advantageous status, or for any skill that occurs without opposition.  Hit effects which occur on a successful opposed roll between character and target.  Critical effects, which only occur if the Hit roll was successful and on a another (likely a different from the Hit roll) successful opposed roll between character and target.
• A leveling system which allows the player control over character's growth.  For example, upon leveling the player may add 1 point to the character's main attributes, select a passive bonus, and select an active combat skill.  The passive bonus and active combat skills should be from a list populated based on the character meeting the prerequisites.  Prerequisites might include minimum attributes, being a specific class, or having another active or passive skill.
• (Not required) Side view style combat as with the Final Fantasies.
• (Not required) Skills should display only when they are available and should be appropriately nested in sub menus.
• (Not required) Effective display of current status effects, mixing text in the status bar with sprite appearance to relay required information.

Again, I'd like to emphasize that I'm not requesting anyone do any of this for me or even tell me how.  What I want is to know if I'm just starting from the wrong point.  If anyone has any advice, links, or scripts to support my concept, that would also be vastly appreciated, but first and foremost I'm looking for naysayers and No Men.  I understand that a lot of this will eliminate my ability to use a lot of the basic database tools incorporated into VX Ace.

Thank you for your (requested to be pessimistic) feedback!

 

[Espon]

Is damage done based on a roll of the dice?

What are health conditions based on?  Does it drop from say Wounded to Severely Wounded if they take a hit? Or is there a hidden HP gauge and it only shows the player the general state (ie 33-66% = Wounded)?

 

[HumanNinjaToo]

It seems to me that you haven't eliminated HP, you've just crippled the player to having only four HP.

As far as all the conditions and status effects go...I'm not sure I get the point you're trying to make with all that.

Now if by the implementation of all those conditions and states, you are in fact trying to make combat more like a boxing/wrestling match (so to speak) then I can understand how you would be eliminating HP. For instance, player performs x move which puts opponent in state y. Opponent then performs z move but player counters with b move which worsens opponents state y into state yy and now opponent is inflicted with condition: wounded. So if your combat is set up some way similar to my interpretation, I can see your point: In which case, I believe you have a solid idea.

 

[LordQwert]

HumanNinjaToo, that's it exactly.  The idea is that you avoid taking hits and put your opponent in a position where he does.  Your basic attack move is very unlikely to actually wound an enemy (except under-leveled scrub enemies) until you've done something to deserve getting the hit in, like knocking them on their ass, or flanking them, or wearing them down to exhaustion.  I like your boxing analogy.  Jabs don't do a lot of damage and are unlikely to have any lasting effect, but they can't be ignored because they MIGHT.  It creates an opening, unbalances the opponent, and reduces his tactical position.  When you have the opening you go for the chin to knock him out, or give him one hard in the gut to wind him.

I'm going to test out the system I have in mind pen and paper style, but I don't want to get to into it before I know what I'd have to change, and what concessions I'll need to make to get it to work in RPG Maker.

 

[Zechnophobe]

I've actually designed a system a bit like this in the past, though not with RPG Maker.

The main idea is that you move the granularity of combat from HP (which is an abstraction of a players general health) into a complex matrix of health conditions.

Ultimately, I feel like having a numeric health indicator of some kind is still fairly important. Though it doesn't have to be HP.

What Human Ninja said is true, that you are basically giving someone 4 HP, but making losing them quite difficult. You can do this in RPG maker, but it will not be simple (By its nature you are opting for a complex system). I would stray from this if you aren't prepared to do some pretty in depth scripting.

 

[LordQwert]

Is damage done based on a roll of the dice?

What are health conditions based on?  Does it drop from say Wounded to Severely Wounded if they take a hit? Or is there a hidden HP gauge and it only shows the player the general state (ie 33-66% = Wounded)?

No hidden HP.  If you take a standard hit, it's initial effect would be to make you lose Focus.  If it then passed a second roll to do damage, you would receive the Wounded condition or worse.

The idea is to make combat more of a puzzle than a straight numbers game.  Levels give you more options, and a better chance to succeed, but I don't want anyone winning the final fight without thinking, no matter how high their level.

 

[Zechnophobe]

No hidden HP.  If you take a standard hit, it's initial effect would be to make you lose Focus.  If it then passed a second roll to do damage, you would receive the Wounded condition or worse.

The idea is to make combat more of a puzzle than a straight numbers game.  Levels give you more options, and a better chance to succeed, but I don't want anyone winning the final fight without thinking, no matter how high their level.

So, they suffer wounds based on focus, and most hits cause them to lose focus? If you are going to add a new combat attribute that damages 'focus', you could do that, though how well that would display in combat is up in the air. Just for the sake of bouncing ideas, around, the combat system I used in another game:

Characters have Balance that represents how close they are to falling over. They had three basic defense types: Block, Evade, Parry. Evade was a % chance, and if you succeeded, would lower the balance of the attacker, while if you failed would lower your balance and be more likely to incur a wound. Blocking was more strictly defensive, no matter success or fail, you would lose a little balance, but on success there would be no wound chance. Parry was in the middle and more complicated (Based on comparative weapons and such).

Sounds like you are using a similar idea with focus. As your characters lose their ability to focus in the combat, they are more likely to let through a strike. Maybe they are Ninja's who do a lot of fighting before landing a successful hit (or even boxers that dance around and then BAM knockout).

If you want to make this tactical it will need to have a reaction system right? As in, an enemy can get into a certain state (say, 'well positioned') and if you attack them in certain ways while they are there, they may gain focus instead of losing it (perhaps you would lose focus). This is doable, but I rather doubt RPGM will easily handle it.

 

[LordQwert]

That's very close to what I'm planning.  Getting hit degrades your state SOMEHOW depending on the nature of the attack, but likely will not actually wound you.  Getting wounded is terrible.  Once you've lost all focus, morale, or stamina, your odds of taking serious wounds is much higher.  Having positional advantage (abstractly) increases your combat options to more vicious or complex maneuvers, which cause even worse effects on the enemy, are easier to land, or give worse wounds.  I haven't elaborated on many "reaction" type skills yet in my design docs, but it's early.  Here's a possible example of combat flow:

Rogue type uses the Hide ability, which is his maneuver vs. the highest wits on the other side.  If successful, he gains Hidden.  If he gets a critical success, he gains Hidden AND advantageous position.  An enemy may try to use Search on the Rogue to cancel his Hidden status.  A critical success on this might add Focus to that unit as well, or perhaps increment his next action sooner.  Let's say he fails though.  On the Rogue's next turn he can use "Take Hostage", which immediately ends his Hidden, and if successful gives him the Protected and Close traits and the enemy the Entangled state.  A critical would give the rogue Threatening, and the opponent Threatened.

I'm not too worried about it being hard to implement, but I'm not familiar enough yet with RPG Maker to know if it's just not doable.

 

[Zechnophobe]

That's very close to what I'm planning.  Getting hit degrades your state SOMEHOW depending on the nature of the attack, but likely will not actually wound you.  Getting wounded is terrible.  Once you've lost all focus, morale, or stamina, your odds of taking serious wounds is much higher.  Having positional advantage (abstractly) increases your combat options to more vicious or complex maneuvers, which cause even worse effects on the enemy, are easier to land, or give worse wounds.  I haven't elaborated on many "reaction" type skills yet in my design docs, but it's early.  Here's a possible example of combat flow:

Rogue type uses the Hide ability, which is his maneuver vs. the highest wits on the other side.  If successful, he gains Hidden.  If he gets a critical success, he gains Hidden AND advantageous position.  An enemy may try to use Search on the Rogue to cancel his Hidden status.  A critical success on this might add Focus to that unit as well, or perhaps increment his next action sooner.  Let's say he fails though.  On the Rogue's next turn he can use "Take Hostage", which immediately ends his Hidden, and if successful gives him the Protected and Close traits and the enemy the Entangled state.  A critical would give the rogue Threatening, and the opponent Threatened.

I'm not too worried about it being hard to implement, but I'm not familiar enough yet with RPG Maker to know if it's just not doable.

In programming, almost everything is doable. Are you willing to write a bunch of custom scripts to handle these complex states? Or are you hoping to do it all with events and skills?

 

[LordQwert]

In programming, almost everything is doable. Are you willing to write a bunch of custom scripts to handle these complex states? Or are you hoping to do it all with events and skills?

I was under the impression I would have to do a lot of scripting.  I've been looking at some of the other things people have done with RPG Maker and I'm beginning to get a good impression of the flexibility.  What I want to do seems complex, but mostly on the logic side, not the "shoehorning it into where it doesn't belong" side.  Still, it's going to take me awhile to familiarize myself with the implementation of scripts.  I'm not in a rush.  Hopefully I'll be able to find good scripting examples that do stuff similar to what I want. If I get this done, I'd be perfectly willing to release the full suite of modifications.

 

[Zechnophobe]

Well I would suggest starting with getting a deep understanding of what you plan to do. Sounds like you have a good, but not complete, model of how things work. Trust me, get that model down on paper, and be as careful as you can, before doing the scripting. Re-writing code takes much longer than re-drawing some lines between things!