I'm wondering if this even possible right now? I'm trying to figure out a way, when an actor has a certain item/weapon/armor equipped that an attacker will be dealt damage on their attack in progress before calculating damage for the target.
I'll try to paint a scenario using my intended use. It's possible in my game to have multiple weapons. One such weapon-type is a polearm for anti-cavalry, its primary purpose to dig into the ground and use against charging monsters of a certain size or otherwise. Depending on the size and agility of the charging monster (big onerous lumbering monsters having 0% change to evade) they will take damage from the equipped polearm (presumably being impaled by it through the weilding actor) before any damage is calculated to the target (in this case actor). What this would accomplish is the battler could potentially die before the attack is finished, negating any and all damage done to the actor. The polearm's primary purpose.
I did some searching around and couldn't figure this one out. If this is super simple I apologize I just am missing it!
Thanks in advance.
EDIT: So it seems my inquiry about this mechanic is that it isn't possible right now. So to outline in specific detail the request:
It would be nice if it were possible to have an item/weapon/armor force a damage calculation against an attacker in battle prior to calculating target damage. For instance, actor 1 has polearm weapon equipped with the notetag "<anti-cavalry>" which would signify its intended purpose (as opposed to a polearm like a Dory-spear used by Hoplites in traditional close combat), an enemy and/or skill with the notetag "<charge>" or "<big>" could be used to indicate that all or in the case of a skill notetag one of their physical attacks will come in one variety (that is, the beast must charge the attacker to close distance). This would trigger the actors equipped weapon "<anti-cavalry>" and the beast/battler would have a damage calculation.
It would be nice if this damage calculation functioned independently of the weapons primary damage formula when used directly in battle, so that charging could be a seperate affair. For instance I might want to take the beast's agility into account in the calculation against a static number inherent with the polearm equipped, or I might want to cause the polearm to fail completely if the monster is basically a leviathan, too big to care about polearms.
As far as animations go, in a perfect world it would be nice to have the actor show a spear while the battler attacks into it (successful or not). But if you're at all interested in making this plugin I don't need this part to be satisfied. The actual damage is more important to me, but that leads me to my next potential issue...
I'm using Yanfly's Action Sequence Pack for all of my skills as of now, and let's say this plugin is made to specification but is totally incompatible, I would not be able to use it personally which sort of defeats the purpose of this request on an individual level. So, hopefully if you have an interest, making it compatible would be a godsend.
In terms of compatibility maybe injecting a new sequence command into the <setup action> area of Yanfly's plugin would suffice like "check anti-cavalry" and then simply run the requested plugin. I feel like that would be plenty good enough.
All in all I think after the heavy lifting is done through code, the implementation through notetags should be simple enough. Essentially assigning a flag to items/weapons/armors and then also assigning tags to enemies/actors/skills.
If I'm forgetting any details I'll try to make myself available as best I can. Thanks in advance to whomever is interested.