Way to make this complicated ability work?

[ZackNH]

In the game I'm making, one of the party members is a carnivorous shape-shifting monster that takes the form of a human. She has a bite ability that absorbs HP, but there are skeletons, plants, and other such enemies without meat on them. I want the attack to do damage to those enemies without stealing HP, and ideally inflict negative statuses on the user if it's something like a ghoul or another gross creature.

I have a possible solution to the negative status effect problem. Have the bite ability inflict an invisible status on enemies that trigger a common event with conditions set up for the 8 enemy slots that say if they've been inflicted by the status, set the debuff on the attacker, then remove the status from the whole enemy line. I could make most enemies immune to the invisible status so it only works on specific ones, but I'm not sure if there's an easier way to do it.

I have no idea how to make the absorb attack do damage without absorbing. I thought about having the ability do % damage so I could put it into the Effects box and make the absorb formula in the Damage box under a new damage type so I could make the non-absorbable enemies immune to it while still doing damage, but I made ghosts immune to physical attacks, so if the bite does % damage it would ignore the immunity. Also, the ability would be useless vs a lot of low-level enemies and could be overpowered vs ones with a lot of armor.

 

[Heirukichi]

The solution would be to create Elements for those enemies and set the skill to normal damage instead of absorb. You can then use the formula box to heal the caster:

var r = yourFormula; a.gainHp(r * b.elementRate(yourElementId)); r

If the element rate for the said element is 0 on that enemy (skeletons, plants, etc), the caster will not receive any healing from this attack. You can leave the attack element as it currently is, the element rate is only used in the formula to check if the caster can gain health from the attack.

 

[ZackNH]

The solution would be to create Elements for those enemies and set the skill to normal damage instead of absorb. You can then use the formula box to heal the caster:

var r = yourFormula; a.gainHp(r * b.elementRate(yourElementId)); r

If the element rate for the said element is 0 on that enemy (skeletons, plants, etc), the caster will not receive any healing from this attack. You can leave the attack element as it currently is, the element rate is only used in the formula to check if the caster can gain health from the attack.

Thanks a ton. It works perfectly.