The New Mechanics

[SentinalBlade]

Alright, with the addition of all of razele's ASM hacks, i thought its time i take a public opinion on my own asm hacks specifically for SoR, i need to hear your thoughts on them before i work on any of them any further, as they may conflict with gameplay as it is now or will be...all in all, i want ot know hwo you think they will all work together with everything that is in game already.

1. Soul
2. Endurance, also known as Rage for Bloodmancers
3. Elemental Affinities
4. Expansive Terrain
5. Spell Criticals
6. Fear


1. Soul, it has its own topic, but just for the sake of it...
Soul is like a backup HP. Your hp takes damage as normal, but once it reaches 0, you do not die. instead the next time you are attacked, you will take soul damage. When you soul counter reaches 0. you then die.
The premise behind this is to make battles last longer and provide a chance to resist the OHKO crap in alot of games. Or even allow you to move at least once before your whole team is raped by an All-Ultima.

Your soul cannot be healed.
When you use a phoenix down you come back with no hp and 1 soul.
Hp is still recoverable.
Your soul may be used for special moves, in exchange for a large chunk being taken out.

when you attack someone who will take soul damage, the damage is cut by 50%.

all units start with 100 soul a battle.


2. Endurance/Rage
This is a realistic mechanic.
The lower your hp, in % of your max, the lower the damage you deal. if you are at 70% hp, you will only do 70% of your damage.
This is to counter Zodiacs fury hack i have put in, which increases damage depending on your brave.

The opposite happens fr a bloodmancer, who has greater control over their body. the lower their hp, in %, the higher their damage will be. if you are at 70% hp, you will do 15% more damage. The formula for this is basically (100-Current % of hp) / 2

so... (100-90%) / 2 = 5
at 90% of your max hp, you will gain a 5% damage bonus.

3. Elemental Affiinities
This is going ot replace the zodiac compatability system.
When you enter teh academy, or hirer units from their, you choose one of the "Symbols" that the story is based around. If you choose "Tranquility" you gain an effect akin to move-mp-up. if you choose "Water" then you you get a boost to your water damage. This is interesting, but i admit, some can break the game.

There are several options to fix that. since there are 8 symbols based on elements, and 4 that are based on emotion/personality, i can make the last 4 avaliable late game. or i simply give them unique but not as powerful as i mentioned above, effects.
Although, Tranquility was intended to only give 1 mp for each tile moved.

The elemental 8 would increase your attack with the respective element. possibly half damage from it, and increase damage recieved from opposing element.

4. Expansive Terrain
What i mean by this is im expanding on some of the tiles in game.
Lava will have more use, such as if your standing on it without float or move on lava, you will take damage. im open to suggestions to all terrain for this one.

5. Spell Criticals

Just as the name implies.

6. Fear

Here is what ive managed to come up with for the Fear Monger.

Fear is a new status taking the place of oil.

When you are afflicted with fear, all damage you deal is reduced by 25%, and your character evasion bonus is removed.

Progress on these are as follows.

Soul - 30%
Endurance - 0%
Elemental Affinities - 10%
Expansive Terrain - 0%
Spell Critical - 12%
Fear - 0%

[Skip Sandwich]

The fear status reminds me of the Fear status from Super Mario RPG, only the fear status in SMRPG reduced damage dealt by 50% and increased the damage you received by 50%

So, for the elemental affinities, would the elemental sysmbols also grant innate abilities or would that strictly be the province of virtue symbols? Have you decided on what terms you are going to use for those? Because i've always been fond of the terms used for the virtue traits you assign to character in the Exhalted system, Compassion, Conviction, Temperence, and Valor.  I also go a step further and suggest removing Holy and Dark from the Elemental symbols, leaving us with 6 physical elements, 6 spiritual virtues, and 2 celestial/devine powers that govern mankind in this setting (the last of which can be consolodated into a single symbol representing divnity or absoluteness or union/yin-yang/whatever, that takes the place of the serpentarius symbol).
so, in summary
Elemental Affinities: Fire, Ice, Thunder, Earth, Wind, Water
Spiritual Affinities: Valor, Temperence, Compassion, Conviction, and uh...two more...hmmm...can't think of anything right now that'd be a good fit
Universal Affinities: Positive/Light/Good/Life/Order/Creation VS Negative/Dark/Evil/Death/Entropy/Destruction

[SentinalBlade]

Wow skip, that is excellent.

Only problem i see with no holy/dark element is that there are TONS of undead in SoR..

regardless, i do plan to go with your idea, and will probably think of 2 more to go into spiritual affinity

[DarthPaul]

Hey Sentinal how a bout a set of magic skills for bosses and maybe a hard to unlock class that is All-mighty based.

Kind of like godlike skills that cannot be made stronger or weaker by any other game mechanics.

They will always do a set amount of damage.

[SentinalBlade]

Sounds good to me. I can probably figure something out.

[Vanya]

4. Expansive Terrain
What i mean by this is im expanding on some of the tiles in game.
Lava will have more use, such as if your standing on it without float or move on lava, you will take damage. im open to suggestions to all terrain for this one.

That's a great idea. Like I mentioned in Razele's thread. I think the game would benefit from more terrain related things. Plus it would help to make better movement abilities if there are more things to overcome.

One idea I mentioned over there was to give ice (as rare as it is) a chance to make you slip during your movement phase and cut it short. In fact any terrain with loose footing can have a chance to make you slip. Moss is usually slippery too.

Maybe sloped terrain can have a chance to make you fall down to a lower panel like as if you were knocked off a ledge?

Terrain with lots of plants like thicket and ivy should hamper movement and maybe cause more fire damage in dry weather conditions.
Swamps, marshes, snow and sand are also hard to walk through.

Hard surfaces like stone floor, iron plate, & brick can be made to increase fall damage.

Soft surfaces like grassland, rug, snow and sand should reduce fall damage, too.

[Skip Sandwich]

Well, I don't mean remove the Holy and Dark elements entierly, I just think that since they are so pervasive and encompasing, they shouldn't be part of the whole "governing affinities" system you'be come up with, but the elements themselves would still be present.

[SentinalBlade]

Well, would they make good boss elements? so that they have unique weaknesses and such...priests would be holy element, demons dark and such. i know you didnt mean remove them frmo game, just the affinity system

[Skip Sandwich]

sure they could be used for boss elements, though I personally like to add additional elemental resistances to being that are classified as primarilly Holy/Dark element, to help maintain the "Holy/Dark as 4th tier of affintiy" flavor, you can see what I mean in the Elemental Affinities thread I posted in the general FFT Hacking board, basicly, if a unit has holy/dark affinity, I added resistance/immunity to all other elements depending on the strength of that affinity. Obviously, this results in some very hard to damage characters, so feel free to tone down as desired, I favor associating Thunder, Ice and Wind with holy, and Fire, Water and Earth with Dark.

[SentinalBlade]

I read through the topic, and will most likely do that.

though in the above post; is there a real reason that ice is with holy? water seems more holy than ice, and ice is used alot in simile to death...just a thought

anyways, the affinity is to increase damage with that spell element, not just give a weakness or resistance to other elements. though i am going ot incorperate that suggestion in, the holy affinity will boost damage by 25% for a holy spell, regardless if the target is weak to it or not....he is weak to it, he might as well say his prayers

[Skip Sandwich]

I put Ice with holy because holy also generally has conotations of order, to which I feel that ice fits very well, also, Ice is the polar opposite of fire, which I placed with Dark in the above post. Water got placed with Dark because it both opposes Thunder and the water is where Cuthulu dwells :evilgrin:

[SentinalBlade]

Dont some of the undead you came up with for SoR have some ice based attacks related to death?

other than that i totally agree with yer reasonin

[Skip Sandwich]

you know, I totally forgot about that until you mentioned it just now...ah ha ha ha...ha...

[Dormin Jake]

Why can't all six elements be covered under Holy and Dark affinities?

For example, fire: it can of course be a wild, scary, destructive force (Dark), but then you also have things like sacred fires (Holy), and its various domestic uses in torches, hearths, cooking, and heating.  Also take candles, which are strong symbols of fire; candles have many purposes, among them both holy prayer and worship, and unholy invocations of demons in a summoning circle.

Just an idea.  As for the other elements, I don't know so much.

Element: Holy vs Dark

Ice: order vs cold
Lightning: natural vs arcane or man-made
Water: cleansing vs foul
Earth: nature and growth vs tectonic upheaval?
Wind: um...

[Skip Sandwich]

In my original elemental affinities topic, I did have holy and dark affinity grant resistnace/immunity to ALL other elements, and I'm fine with that, in the post above I even referenced that topic, and merely added those toned-down versions posted here as an alternative to that, since there were some to felt that the original levels were overpowered (which, obviously, they were/are, but less obviously, that was/is the point, to seperate them as being an order above the physical elements)

[SentinalBlade]

Agreed, i think im going to end up giving holy/dark 15% resistances to all those elements, rather than just immunity or halfing it. we will adjust the numbers if need be when it comes time ot test how it works with the new skills.