Only one member can you items in battle?

[omen613]

For the sake of discussion.

What your thoughts on only having 1 playable character having the ability to use items in battle?

Lets assume consumables are abundant in the game.

Could this build more strategic choices in battle? Or just cause frustration not having the item command crutch we have all come to expect and love?

 

[Shaz]

All things are okay as long as there is a valid, sensible reason for it.

 

[TheoAllen]

Once the character has been knocked out, you will not be able to use item anymore. And s/he can not revived. Unless you have a character which has revival skill. I guess, it would be frustating. It defeats the purpose of having item in game. Item give you alternative if the character has no particullar skill.

But it really depends on how your concept is. I assumed that you gonna use standard battle rules.

 

[omen613]

Once the character has been knocked out, you will not be able to use item anymore. And s/he can not revived. Unless you have a character which has revival skill. I guess, it would be frustating. It defeats the purpose of having item in game. Item give you alternative if the character has no particullar skill.

But it really depends on how your concept is. I assumed that you gonna use standard battle rules.

Yes this would make being knocked out a serious punishment to the player.

It can be a good and a bad thing depending on how difficult you want your game to be... I personally think having 2 people that can revive is more than a reasonable challenge if your group is 4 members...otherwise it's just a crutch based on how many revival items you have gathered

"item gives you alternative if the character has no particular skill"

if an item can replace a nich for a character....again sounds like a crutch. Like having a healer character and not use them because everyone can just use potions. Options are always good tho, but limitations inspire creativity imo.

 

[TheoAllen]

The limitation of using item is the amount of item itself. Restock the item from the shop, you bought 10 potions. Now, you can only heal 10x times. While using skill, you can use the skill depends on the game concept itself. If it using TP, you have unlimited time to use heal skill yet can only activated when the requirement is met. 

If you want an alternative of using item, I personally prefer if each character carry different items. Like having item to equipment slots

But a little problem would be its micromanagement. You need to equip items before the battle, and it might tedious.

 

[Another Fen]

Limitating use of items does not necessarily mean limitation of healing or reviving, as these can be (and often are) covered by skills or other game mechanics too. It heavily depends on which impact items actually have in a game and how they are achieved in comparison to other ressources.

It may also end up in characters that rely on alternate (probably self recharging) ressources and you have to run back to town either way because one character still needs consumeables to be useful in combat (which I'd imagine could be quite annoying).

It would probably also reduce the effectiveness of consumeable items, making the player less motivated to spend money for them.

I personally like the idea of having a set of items for each battler.

For example you could give each actor a medical bag that holds a certain amount of items which are then automatically recharged after combat or at checkpoints.

 

[Clord]

I just had an idea. A game where you are Knight's squire and your master is too lazy to carry almost anything by himself, outside of his equipped armor. Success in combat would rely on your ability to bring his stuff.

 

[Scott_C]

Have you ever played any of the alchemy games by GUST, like Atelier Ayesha: The Alchemist of Dusk?

In these games the main character alchemist is the only person with the skills needed to properly use alchemical healing and attack items. Everybody else is stuck using nothing but attacks and skills.

This made for an interesting game mostly because:

- Item crafting meant that restocking on healing and attack items was more interesting than just constantly visiting town to buy more cure potions. You instead had recipes, ingredients and the ability to create items with custom bonus effects. Walking into battle with a full set of potions that also boost attack and a bunch of ice bombs that also deal electric damage was very satisfying.

- Alchemical items were very powerful, making item use a truly valuable skill. A magical demon summoning jar could be just as deadly as any special hero attack. This kept the item-user from feeling like a boring walking medicine cabinet.

- There were a ton of different alchemy items, making item use an interesting combat skill. You weren't just throwing the same old cure potions; as the game went on you unlocked interesting new recipes leading to interesting new healing and attack items with their own animations.

- There were a couple non-alchemy healing and revive skills, meaning that you didn't automatically lose just because your alchemist got taken out (which would be frustrating). Even if you didn't want to add the healer to your group you could still build auto-revive items to prevent your alchemist from getting taken out of battle too early.

 

[whitesphere]

Dragon Quest IX did something where the party had a large shared inventory, which could be accessed out of battle, and each party member had a much smaller private inventory, which could be accessed in battle. 

Personally, as a player, I found even this mechanic annoying.  It's frustrating to find you desperately need to heal someone but forgot to give some healing potions to this particular character. It required too much micromanagement of each character's battle inventory.

So I'd feel saying only one member can use items would be even more annoying.  It would introduce that character as a single point of failure --- if s/he goes down then who can revive him/her?  A revive spell would need to be fairly common and it would need to restore most of the recipient's HP.  If it didn't, you get into the "Revived the player---oh, crap, player's back down before I could heal him/her fully next round"

But doing that would limit the usefulness of that single item using character, anyways. 

I do like the alchemist idea Scott_C suggested, since at least it makes the item using character much more useful than just an item carrier.

 

[Wavelength]

I enjoy this kind of mechanic in games where one character was kind of a "master" of the others, like in Pokemon or Jade Cocoon.  I think it probably doesn't work quite as well in a normal RPG, although like Scott C mentioned, the Atelier series of games kind of made it work.

I think it would work better though to have that one class have item-using specialties, whether they have spells that consume specific types of items to unleash really powerful damage/healing/etc., or whether they have passive abilities that make items they use on party members X% more effective, or what have you.  This feels a lot less restrictive to the player in most cases than limiting items to a single party member.