What do you use Luck for?

[Wavelength]

I repurposed the LUK stat as DEX (Dexterity) in both of my Ace games, and it acts as the most important factor in determining Critical Hit rates.

The base chance of scoring a Crit in timeblazer, for example, is approximately 20% * the User's Dex / the Target's Dex... so if you have twice the Dexterity of your opponent, you'll Crit him 40% of the time and he'll Crit you only 10% of the time.  These seem like high Crit rates, but I changed the Crit system to do 50% extra damage (from 200% in the default engine) and provide bonus effects based on the skill used (many electricity skills restore Energy on a Crit, fire spells will Burn the foe on a Crit, etc.).

For my project I rewrote how status effects work and made the LUK stat drastically factor in to how well status effects are inflicted and resisted.

 

Basically, each of the main status effects has 5 stages of severity: 0, 1, 2, 3, and MAX. (Stage 0 doesn't actually inflict any ailments associated with the status effect, but it's different than not having any stage of the status effect in that it makes it easier to at least inflict stage 1 of the status effect on the target during subsequent attempts.) Furthermore, every skill that inflicts a status effect has a "Potency" rating for that status effect, the higher the Potency the better it is at inflicting the status effect. A skill that is completely dedicated to inflicting Poison might have a Potency of 100, while a melee attack that inflicts Poison as a side-effect might have a Potency of 35.

This sounds very cool and very smart - especially compared to the default system where huge swings in LUK only create tiny differences in how often states are applied (e.g. a 50% chance to inflict poison becomes a 53% chance if you have 90 LUK to the opponent's 30 LUK).

I'm interested how you created the stages (mostly from a game design point of view, but also from a technical point of view... could you find any way to take shortcuts or did you have to create 5 separate States for each one?) for the different states.  Obviously something like Poison could do 3%, 5%, or 10% damage each turn depending on the Status Stage, and MP Cost Reduction could reduce the costs by 10%, 25%, or 50%... but how do you work with something like Silence or Paralysis?  Do they last longer at higher stages, or maybe prevent the use of progressively more important abilities (so that Paralysis Stage 1 might prevent attacking, Stage 2 attacking and defending... up to MAX which skips your turn entirely)?  And does this system also apply to the application Positive statuses, where the caster's and target's LUK are combined (or similar) to determine which Stage of the Status will be applied?

 

[TheHonorableRyu]

This sounds very cool and very smart - especially compared to the default system where huge swings in LUK only create tiny differences in how often states are applied (e.g. a 50% chance to inflict poison becomes a 53% chance if you have 90 LUK to the opponent's 30 LUK).

I'm interested how you created the stages (mostly from a game design point of view, but also from a technical point of view... could you find any way to take shortcuts or did you have to create 5 separate States for each one?) for the different states.  Obviously something like Poison could do 3%, 5%, or 10% damage each turn depending on the Status Stage, and MP Cost Reduction could reduce the costs by 10%, 25%, or 50%... but how do you work with something like Silence or Paralysis?  Do they last longer at higher stages, or maybe prevent the use of progressively more important abilities (so that Paralysis Stage 1 might prevent attacking, Stage 2 attacking and defending... up to MAX which skips your turn entirely)?  And does this system also apply to the application Positive statuses, where the caster's and target's LUK are combined (or similar) to determine which Stage of the Status will be applied?

I found that creating different entries in the database for each of the stages was the simplest to manage. I added a new method to game_battler, which I called status_engine. The status_engine method is called in the custom damage formula box where two arguments are passed: the index of stage 0 for the status effect, and the Potency of the skill. In status_engine, a case-switch statement uses the stage 0 index to determine which status effect is being applied. From there it calculates what stage of the status effect (if any) will be applied, based on the target's current stage of the state, the user's and target's LUK, the Potency of the skill, and any weaknesses and resistances.

For Paralysis and Silence, in my project every skill falls into one of six "mediums": Physical, Energy, Organic, Aether, Mental, and Spiritual. Each stage of Paralysis has a percent chance of binding only Physical skills on turns on which one is used (that is, it has a percent chance of preventing the skill from coming out on that turn), and each stage of Silence has a percent chance of binding Aether skills on a turn on which one is used. At MAX stages, the percent chance reaches 100%, so building targets up to this stage should usually be the player's goal, with the intermediate stages being unreliable perks along the way. Most battlers have access to skills from at least two or three different mediums, so Paralysis and Silence are less about causing a unit to flat out miss turns, or locking out their only viable skills, than about shaping what kind of skills to expect from enemy battlers. (Also, every negative status effect itself falls into one of the six mediums--Paralysis is Physical-based and Silence is Mental-based--so this is where weaknesses and resistances come in.)

I thought of having Paralysis binding more abilities as it progressed, but I already had mechanics in place for countering these other abilities. For example, one advantage of choosing Hammers as a weapon is that their attacks "break" Physical guard stances. Energy-based beams can "break" Energy-based guard stances. And more generally, each guard stance reduces damage from the six mediums at different rates, so the effects of enemy guard stances can be bypassed by skills of a medium that the guard does not reduce damage for.

With other status effects, the effect does change more with severity. For example, with Sleep (an Organic-based status effect), Stage 1 and 2 only reduce the target's evasion. Stage 3 actually causes the target to fall asleep and miss turns in addition to the reduced evasion, but any hit will cause them to wake up immediately (return to Stage 2). At stage MAX, the target falls asleep and hits won't wake them up. 

Both the user's and target's LUK factor into the effect of regular buffs, as well as for skills that cure stages of negative status effects. However, two categories of states have only one stage and always work when used: "Auras" (state with multiple effects; only one can be applied to a battler at any time) and "Awakened" states (a state a battler must spend a turn and resources to enter into before using its set of powerful abilities). So the user's and target's LUK do not have any effect on these.

 

[Leaferson Kenraise]

For my game, sense it mostly effects state chances, I just renamed it to resistance. Not to be mistaken for defense, but the ability to resist being poisoned, stunned, etc. :3

 

[Wavelength]

...For Paralysis and Silence, in my project every skill falls into one of six "mediums": Physical, Energy, Organic, Aether, Mental, and Spiritual. Each stage of Paralysis has a percent chance of binding only Physical skills on turns on which one is used (that is, it has a percent chance of preventing the skill from coming out on that turn), and each stage of Silence has a percent chance of binding Aether skills on a turn on which one is used. At MAX stages, the percent chance reaches 100%, so building targets up to this stage should usually be the player's goal, with the intermediate stages being unreliable perks along the way...

That sounds superb, Ryu!  What a clever re-think of some of the classic status effects.  I really like that your characters will usually be reliably inflicting something on their enemies when they use a dedicated status effect move, with the potential to build it up to something very debilitating (but only with a large turn commitment or a huge LUK advantage).  That kind of commit makes it totally feasible to allow status effects to target bosses normally, too (so long as you give the bosses appropriately high LUK stats), which I think players will love.

If I understand it right, in your system there's essentially no upper or lower limit (beyond like a 16x discrepancy, where one battler could probably one-shot the other with a similar MAT/MDF advantage anyway) beyond which building up your LUK becomes almost useless - correct?

Did you decide against an "Instant KO" status, or do you have a way to build up to that, too?

For my game, sense it mostly effects state chances, I just renamed it to resistance. Not to be mistaken for defense, but the ability to resist being poisoned, stunned, etc. :3

Interestingly, while some games do this, other games (NIS games like Disgaea and Phantom Brave come immediately to mind) use RES/Resistance their term for magic defense.

 

[Leaferson Kenraise]

Interestingly, while some games do this, other games (NIS games like Disgaea and Phantom Brave come immediately to mind) use RES/Resistance their term for magic defense.

I never really played those kinds of games, sound fun though.

I never saw RES/Resistance as a Magic Defense. My influence on making LUK become RES was mainly from Dark Souls. RES made it possible to resist poison, toxics, etc. when I researched and found out that luck does the same, the idea struck me to change it to RES. As far as Magic Defense, I've renamed it to Ward, previously Willpower.

 

[Wavelength]

I never really played those kinds of games, sound fun though.

I never saw RES/Resistance as a Magic Defense. My influence on making LUK become RES was mainly from Dark Souls. RES made it possible to resist poison, toxics, etc. when I researched and found out that luck does the same, the idea struck me to change it to RES. As far as Magic Defense, I've renamed it to Ward, previously Willpower.

Yeah, I don't think there's really a wrong answer, so long as the terms are clear to the player.  IIRC, Disgaea (you should try it out, by the way!  It's a cool series) doesn't have status effects in the traditional sense, so it didn't need a term for inflicting/resisting them.  Phantom Brave did have status effects but I don't think they used stats in determining their application, and if they did, I forget what the applicable stat was named.

My game doesn't directly use stats in applying status effects (they are either 100% apply rate, or they are conditional on something, such as scoring a critical hit or being below a certain % HP), so the only way to not being afffected a status effect is to have an item which renders you immune to it (and I call it "Immunity", so "RESistance" is freed up to you as a term for magic defense, which I really like).

 

[Leaferson Kenraise]

 

Yeah, I don't think there's really a wrong answer, so long as the terms are clear to the player.  IIRC, Disgaea (you should try it out, by the way!  It's a cool series) doesn't have status effects in the traditional sense, so it didn't need a term for inflicting/resisting them.  Phantom Brave did have status effects but I don't think they used stats in determining their application, and if they did, I forget what the applicable stat was named.

My game doesn't directly use stats in applying status effects (they are either 100% apply rate, or they are conditional on something, such as scoring a critical hit or being below a certain % HP), so the only way to not being afffected a status effect is to have an item which renders you immune to it (and I call it "Immunity", so "RESistance" is freed up to you as a term for magic defense, which I really like).

"Immunity" I kinda like that. But I do like having a sense of having chances of getting poison or any other state. Sense I do have a random loot system in my game, having better equipment, such as a ring that grants a large amount of immunity towards poison, is vital for gameplay.

As far as Luck goes, I really love TheHonorableRyu's idea.

For my project I rewrote how status effects work and made the LUK stat drastically factor in to how well status effects are inflicted and resisted.

 

Basically, each of the main status effects has 5 stages of severity: 0, 1, 2, 3, and MAX. (Stage 0 doesn't actually inflict any ailments associated with the status effect, but it's different than not having any stage of the status effect in that it makes it easier to at least inflict stage 1 of the status effect on the target during subsequent attempts.) Furthermore, every skill that inflicts a status effect has a "Potency" rating for that status effect, the higher the Potency the better it is at inflicting the status effect. A skill that is completely dedicated to inflicting Poison might have a Potency of 100, while a melee attack that inflicts Poison as a side-effect might have a Potency of 35. 

 

If the user uses a skill with Potency 100 on a target that has roughly the same LUK as the user, the skill will have a good chance of applying stage 1 of the status effect (before resistances are calculated), with a slight chance of inflicting stage 0 or stage 2. If the user subsequently uses the same skill on a target that has stage 1, the skill will have a good chance of advancing the target to stage 2 of the status effect, and a slight chance of advancing to stage 3 or reapplying stage 1.

 

However, if the user's LUK is double that of the target, the same skill will have a good chance of inflicting stage 2 right off the bat, with a slight chance of inflicting stage 3 or 1. On subsequent attempts on a target with stage 2, the skill will have a good chance of advancing the target to stage MAX or at least stage 3.

 

And if the user's LUK is half that of the target, the skill will either only apply stage 0, or not apply any stage at all, and after two attempts user would only be able to get the stage as high as stage 1. 

 

[Geriancomp]

I normal used Luck for dot effects like using the caster's luck against the enemy's luck to see how much damage the dot state will do.

 

[S.Court]

I renamed Luck as Vitality (VIT) and it has the next effects

• Vitality helps to decrease the chance to be affected by a negative state. Having a bigger Vitality stat will make it less likely for enemies to cripple your character with any negative state. This Vitality protection also works for attacks that fraction HP damage (To give an example, attacks like Gravity from Final Fantasy or Super Fang/Nature's Madness from Pokemon), and attacks that deal MP or TP damage as well.
• Vitality also reduces the enemy's effect of HP draining attacks, the more Vitality the character has, the less HP the foe will recover (the damage will be the same, it'll only reduce the HP the foe recovers)
• Vitality increases the effect of Regen effect. That includes the effect of HP regen state you can get, and the inherent MP regen each character has. It’s important to clarify this game doesn’t offer MP items, so this inherent MP regen is the only way to recover this stat. Vitality will also decrease the damage of HP leaking stats.
• Vitality helps to increase the Tension Points (TP) you win each time you’re hit with an enemy attack. It’ll also decrease the TP leak present during Nova Mode

I'll quote my own post in Ideas and Prototypes to explain how Nova Mode works

Spoiler: Nova Mode

Nova Mode is a feature that can only be used when the character’s TP bar is fully charged. Once it’s used it’ll give access to a special skillset. Once the user activated Nova Mode, it’ll start to deplete the user’s TP, and when it arrives to 0, the Nova Mode and the access to this skillset is removed. To take the best advantage of Nova Mode, it’s necessary to invest in Vitality, which will make easier for the character to receive TP when the character is being damaged. And once Nova Mode is activated, a higher Vitality stat will reduce the TP leak, increasing the duration of this mode.

 

[Aesica]

In my game, Luck has been repurposed into Spirit. Spirit is the stat healing spells are based on--nice and straightforward, just how I like my stats to be.

Right now, I'm toying with the idea of having it affect both incoming and outgoing healing strength, just so it's more than just "that thing only characters with healing abilities care about." More research will be needed.

 

[atoms]

Same as Aesica, an increase in healing. But also with a thief character I let is give them extra damage with some skills.

That way luck has a better use for more than one character.

I also use Yanfly's Extra Parameter Formula's

http://yanfly.moe/2016/02/12/yep-69-extra-parameter-formula/

and make Luck effect critical rate and critical evade. But critical attacks deal * 1.7 damage instead of 3.

 

[Lonewulf123]

I completely ditched LCK and renamed it to SKL (Skill) instead. It works like the SPD stat in Suikoden III, where as it gets higher, your characters can attack more than once per Normal Attack.

I typically do something like this, but it’s more like skill in fire emblem. Which effects some damage formulas and critical chance

 

[lianderson]

I use luck for crits, status chance, status resist, bomb effectiveness, and one element of spells.

 

[Eurgh]

I renamed my LUK stat to Faith/FTH and it is used to calculate the effects of 'Miracles' which is an alternate to magic. And with the build in mechanic that LUK dictates the chance of states being inflicted, it can be turned around to say that God intervened to benefit the user.

 

[udime123]

I used Yanfly's Parameter plugin to remove LUK's effects on states, and renamed it "[C]". It's a cute gimmick, but the [C] stands for a different word for each character, and it works as a miscellaneous stat that independently affects each character's unique mechanic. For example, one character has a cooldown system where powerful spells require him to wait a couple turns between casts. The [C] stat ties directly into the damage formula for these spells, and he can reduce his [C] by one to reduce his cooldown by one turn. With him, [C] ranges between 1 and 9 as he levels up.

Meanwhile, another character uses a type of Blue Magic system. For her, [C] is used as the success check for her learning a spell, so it ranges between 25 and 99. There's a vast difference between the scopes of the stat for each character, and I kinda like how quirky that is.

 

[Tai_MT]

I use it as a defensive stat. Several skills that I have use "Agility" as an attack stat. "Luck" has been changed to "Reflex" and is the defense stat against Agility based attacks.

Oh, I also use it to roll for treasure in certain chests. You can't ever "fail" to roll treasure, and you'll never know how "well" you rolled for it... But, you'll get one of five rewards from each of these specific chests based upon the "Luck" stat and the "roll" you automatically make by trying to open it.

 

[Gummiwyrmz]

I couldn't figure out a good use for luck in my current project. I've always been a fan of games where theres still more do once you beat the big bad if you enjoy playing, so I transformed "Luck" to an end-game specific stat called "Might". It's function is a general (and significant) increase to the potency of whatever skills the actor uses; more damage or healing, stronger barriers, increased chance to apply debuffs etc. The stat can only be increased by equipping "Legendary" items the player only has access to after finishing the main story by fighting through difficult dungeons and defeating what I refer to as "Challenge Bosses", which are far more difficult versoins of the bosses you encounter during the game.

 

[Geriancomp]

Really good ideia Gummiwyrmz!

 

[Countyoungblood]

In my game, Luck has been repurposed into Spirit. Spirit is the stat healing spells are based on--nice and straightforward, just how I like my stats to be.

Right now, I'm toying with the idea of having it affect both incoming and outgoing healing strength, just so it's more than just "that thing only characters with healing abilities care about." More research will be needed.

Same here luck to spirit mostly to separate mages and healers and since my design allows any class to equip any equipment and said equipment adds skills the classes are only distinguished by stat %. You could have a warrior or a mage cast a weak heal or just bring a priest

 

[FirestormNeos]

Now that I've put "#"s over the parts of the game_battler script where the luck stat is called (so it doesn't cause minor hiccups with state applications), I've renamed the stat to "Happiness" which only affects the story.