Problems with Magic and Non-Magic Classes

[Bluetoes]

I'm planning on having 8-10 classes, some of which are magic based, some are not. Each enemy in my game has 8 elemental stats which they are either strong, weak, or neutral towards. Here's an example of what an enemy's element stats might look like:

Fire - Strong

Water - Weak

Earth - Neutral

Wind - Neutral

Electric - Neutral

Dark - Neutral

Light - Weak

Physical - Strong

So using water or light techs will be useful in this case, which brings me to my problem:

A basic warrior or rogue class usually has nothing but physical based techs, which means it's really unlikely to find an enemy that is weak to physical compared to being weak to the other 7 elements that magic users will excel in.

Enemies will only be weak to 1-2 elements and strong in 1-2, with the rest being neutral, so a lot of the time they won't be weak to physical since it's only one element restricted to non-magic users.

This makes non-magic classes much less preferable, so I have a few work-arounds of my own which I'd love to get some opinions on, or other suggestions.

1. I could have non-magic users also have a variety of different element based techs as well as physical. Though I would try to use more realistic approaches like having skills such as Fiery Thrust (Fire), or Blade Volt (Electric) instead of warriors that throw fireballs.

Do you think this is a suitable approach? And would you as a player be fine with a warrior or rogue having fire / earth / wind etc based attacks?

2. My less preferable idea would be to have a set of general techs that any class can learn ranging from a bunch of different elements in addition to class specific techs.

What do you think of this one?

Thanks for any feedback.

 

[Euphoria]

Use skills like in example number one, but sparingly, you could also make multiple physical elements such as:

Piercing for Arrows/Spears/Etc

Slashing for Swords/Daggers/Etc

Crushing for Hammers/Staves/Etc

You could have regular "magic" attacks that don't do any elements damage but are just magic. You would have to make a magic element though.

There is a script by Tsukihime I can link you to that allows for an attack to have multiple elements (Fire Slash could be 50% physical and 50% fire). I recommend Tsukihime's Script though. It's pretty awesome.

 

[Kes]

I could see that if, for example, you have a very fast character using physical skills, then wind might be a legitimate option, or a dwarf character might have earth attributes, but I've never been completely convinced that e.g. fire sword, ice axe or whatever really work.  Poison blade might be a better choice, or blows which cause confusion, something like that, rather than stick just to elements

 

[Bluetoes]

@Euphoria

I toyed with the thought of having multiple physical elements, but I dont think it would work because you would have 3/10 elements as physical, which would still give a disadvantage to physical classes. Even having 4 physical and 4 magical elements would be problematic since it splits things up too much. Some bosses might be weak against fire and earth, but those 4 physical elements could be neutral or strong, and vice versa. 

I’m not sure if adding a magic stat would work in my system since everything has to have an element, the whole battle system is built around that.

I may take a look at that script to see if multiple types would fix the problem otherwise I think I’ll go with option one.

Thanks for the help.

@ksjp17

The whole battle system is built around elements so I literally have no choice but to have techs like Fiery Slash for physical classes, otherwise they become useless. I like the ideas you gave though they simply wont work because every class has to have at least more than one element, otherwise it throws off the balance.

 

[Lunarea]

You could also attribute qualities to the elements that translate into styles of physical skills.

For example, Earth is solid, hard and resilient. So it would translate into "tank" type abilities that are defensive. Fire is quick, out of control and destructive, so it translates into berserker type skills. Air is fast, subtle and sneaky, so it becomes rogue abilities. Etc etc.

You could even take it a step further and allow the elements to change how a physical skill behaves. Adding "fire" to "slash" makes it hit harder, while adding "air" makes the skill work faster. It really depends on the kind of flow you have with your battles.

 

[Euphoria]

http://himeworks.wordpress.com/2014/01/03/attack-element-modifiers/

Here's a link to the script as well as instructions and more information. This way if you do make "Fire Slash" type of skills it won't completely nullify the use of certain skills against an enemy.

I still think having piercing, slashing, crushing, and maybe another type of physical damage would work very well. But it's up to you.

 

[Bluetoes]

You could also attribute qualities to the elements that translate into styles of physical skills.

For example, Earth is solid, hard and resilient. So it would translate into "tank" type abilities that are defensive. Fire is quick, out of control and destructive, so it translates into berserker type skills. Air is fast, subtle and sneaky, so it becomes rogue abilities. Etc etc.

You could even take it a step further and allow the elements to change how a physical skill behaves. Adding "fire" to "slash" makes it hit harder, while adding "air" makes the skill work faster. It really depends on the kind of flow you have with your battles.

I quite like that idea actually but it might have to be done slightly differently since that would still restrict physical classes to 2 elements. I think the perfect amount is 3 elements including physical, but a tank / Warden class might would only have physical and earth, but I need to justify one more element really.

As another idea I have thought of adding a sub class to my job system FF5 style, allowing a main class warrior to use spells from a magic class in a way that makes sense. Except why would your main class be a warrior and not a 2nd magic class since the warrior would be physical only in this case. I honestly thought a flaw of FF5s was that each individual class seemed quite pointless. The fact that you could have a black and white mage as your two classes made them (and especially white mage) redundant in their roles. - Why be a healer when you can heal and do amazing damage at the same time?

 

[Euphoria]

Sub classes begin to make things very complicated if you don't do it really well, but I do have multiple scripts that go together that make a decent system if you would like me to point you towards those.

 

[GammaVector]

Another thing you might think of is adding special equipment. Magic amulets that give the wearer the power of fire, for instance. And similar spells on some of your mage classes as well (eg, volt blade is a spell a mage casts on a warrior to give him the power o' lightning).

 

[Euphoria]

Enchanting spells is a great idea!

Edit: What are your classes if you don't mind sharing?

 

[GammaVector]

And really. In a game with magic and enchanting spells, it's not too much of a stretch to think there'd be pre-enchanted iceblade swords, you know? Maybe very expensive pre-enchanted swords, but hey. You can either give the player cues that enemies will be weak to a certain element ("dude, there's a lot of fire around here, better put on the waterblade) or you can pop in a script to allow changing equipment in the middle of battle. There are several floating around, so you should be able to find one that's compatible with your project.

 

[Bluetoes]

http://himeworks.wordpress.com/2014/01/03/attack-element-modifiers/

Here's a link to the script as well as instructions and more information. This way if you do make "Fire Slash" type of skills it won't completely nullify the use of certain skills against an enemy.

I still think having piercing, slashing, crushing, and maybe another type of physical damage would work very well. But it's up to you.

Thanks for the link, but I cant seem to figure out a way to successfully have multiple physical types. Lets break it out it down like this:

Party Member 1: Using a support or healer class - has no offensive techs.

Party Member 2: Using a magic based offensive class.

Party Member 3: Using a magic based offensive class (2 magic users is usually common)

Party Member 4: Using a non-magic based offensive class.

Since 7 out of 8 elements are magic based, Party Member 4 might as well skip a turn each battle until an enemy weak to physical attacks appears. Lets instead split the elements into 4 magic and 4 physical based ones. Now all of a sudden the Party Member 4 is useful in more situations, but Party Members 2 and 3 are less useful. Its just too hard to balance. You CAN switch classes out of battle but if you have the above setup and the enemy is weak against 2 of the 4 physical elements, then the 2 magic users arent very useful. Sure they might just deal neutral damage to the enemy or maybe weak damage but my battle system is built on successfully attacking an enemy’s weakness. So in this case the player would have to change all offensive classes to physical, which is bad design.

 

[Lunarea]

I quite like that idea actually but it might have to be done slightly differently since that would still restrict physical classes to 2 elements. I think the perfect amount is 3 elements including physical, but a tank / Warden class might would only have physical and earth, but I need to justify one more element really.

It really depends on what qualities you give to the elements. And you can also break it up further and have each element in charge of an attribute like Strength, HP, MP etc. If you have more attributes than elements, then you could do multiple attributes per element.

So a tank/warden becomes:

Physical (main) - type of damage

Earth (defensive) - DEF stat -- main stat

Water (high HP) - MAXHP stat -- secondary stat

And the player knows that he needs to invest in those stats for the class.

 

[Bluetoes]

Enchanting spells is a great idea!

Edit: What are your classes if you don't mind sharing?

About enchanting, it would spend a magic users turn to use it, when having more magic users would just be more sufficient.

Classes (Still very much WIP, havent fully decided yet):

Warrior

Mage

Rogue

You eventually loose the above base classes to specialize in more defined roles:

Alchemist

Champion

Bard

Trapper

Time Mage (unique mechanics, all offensive spells activate repeatedly after a delay and become part of the Conditional Turn Based Act List)

Gambler (still unsure on this class)

Necromancer

Cleric

About sub classes, I feel like it would be too messy with the above classes, afterall usually you combine a mage and a warrior class to create a spellblade class, sort of similar to the champion.

 

[Euphoria]

You could make party member 4 have some support type skills, that way he isn't completely useless, and the mages wouldn't be less effective if the physical element was split? At least I don't see how. Don't limit yourself to the number 2 for all enemies strengths and weaknesses, make it an enemy by enemy decision. 

So if you're facing a giant robot, he might be weak to crushing/water/lightning and strong against wind/something else. lol. Adding further restrictions on yourself will just make things harder. The game can still be balanced that way.

 

[Bluetoes]

It really depends on what qualities you give to the elements. And you can also break it up further and have each element in charge of an attribute like Strength, HP, MP etc. If you have more attributes than elements, then you could do multiple attributes per element.

So a tank/warden becomes:

Physical (main) - type of damage

Earth (defensive) - DEF stat -- main stat

Water (high HP) - MAXHP stat -- secondary stat

And the player knows that he needs to invest in those stats for the class.

Im a little confused on matching stats with elements. Are you saying since classes naturally focus on certain stats (rogue - agility, luck, dexterity or w/e) they have skills with elements that best match those stats?

Agility = Wind

Luck = Electric

Dexterity = Physical 

So a rogue would naturally excel in those stats and has Wind, Electric, and Physical abilities. Did I get that right?

If so a slight problem is that many magic based classes have similar stat growth, meaning they would have similar if not the same access to elements

The bottom line is that usually 3/4 party members are offensive based, so no matter what class (assuming they are all different) each one is, all 8 elements need to be covered, with roughly 3-4 elements each, some being unique among the 3 party members and some being shared.

 

[Bluetoes]

You could make party member 4 have some support type skills, that way he isn't completely useless, and the mages wouldn't be less effective if the physical element was split? At least I don't see how. Don't limit yourself to the number 2 for all enemies strengths and weaknesses, make it an enemy by enemy decision. 

So if you're facing a giant robot, he might be weak to crushing/water/lightning and strong against wind/something else. lol. Adding further restrictions on yourself will just make things harder. The game can still be balanced that way.

I guess having 4 Physical and 4 Magic elements could work if every enemy is weak to atleast 1 Physical and Magic element. Though this would reduce the amount of combinations that enemies are weak to. For example, I cant make an enemy strong against 1 physical element and neutral against the other 3 otherwise Physical classes would be ineffective against that enemy.

Sorry if I didn't make much sense there.

 

[Euphoria]

Neutral doesn't mean ineffective? If an enemy was neutral against slashing attacks a swordsman would still be useful, just not as useful as if he were against an enemy weak to slashing. And you don't have to do 4-4, you could do 3-5 like Piercing/Slashing/Crushing/Fire/Ice/Lightning/Dark/Light. It won't unbalance your game. The balancing will depend on how you implement these ideas and how you make your skills and enemies.

 

[Bluetoes]

Neutral doesn't mean ineffective? If an enemy was neutral against slashing attacks a swordsman would still be useful, just not as useful as if he were against an enemy weak to slashing. And you don't have to do 4-4, you could do 3-5 like Piercing/Slashing/Crushing/Fire/Ice/Lightning/Dark/Light. It won't unbalance your game. The balancing will depend on how you implement these ideas and how you make your skills and enemies.

The problem is that the battle system is heavily built around building up a gauge that increments when you exploit enemy weaknesses. Every offensive party member needs to have something to exploit a weakness in most enemies. So neutral, while still dealing good damage doesnt build up the gauge.

Edit: Im considering multiple physical elements, but Im also trying to think of a unique way for physical classes to build up the gauge and to have only magic elements as a result.

 

[Euphoria]

Hmm. Well then you could use multiple elements per attack with the script, that way you would reach at least some of the damage to the weakness. Or you could allow equipment changes during battle. So if you find out an enemy is weak to piercing attacks you switch to a spear with your warrior.