Final Fantasy Hacktics

Hi !

There's something I have in mind...

I've always been a bit frustrated to end up with the same team at every FFT run. A bunch of badasses with top brave and either top faith or minimal faith.

I like to imagine a system where having minimal brave could be an advantage (other than finding objects on the maps). It would require a lot of ASM coding, but also find something other than bravery and faith as stats name.

For bravery, I was leaning towards a couple of aggressivity/control.
- Above 50 a character would be aggressive and could receive bonuses for damage and certain offensive techniques. (and defensive maluses)
- Below 50 the character would have more control and would receive bonuses in hits, parry/blocking and certain defensive/monk/thief techniques. (and offensive maluses)

For the faith I imagined a couple of concentration/instinct.
- Above 50 the character would receive bonuses for the classic school of magic (= able to memorise and cast spells in the middle of the battlefield to the detriment of his sense of observation)
- Below 50 the character is instinctive and would gain bonuses in dodging (or even reduce the dodge of others) and would receive bonuses in "shamanic" magic (geomancer?).
This would suit Malak and Rafa quite well.

I'm not very satisfied with the terms I found (mainly concentration/instinct).
If someone has a an idea, I'm curious.
If someone has other ideas on how to change this faith/bravery system I am very curious !

My take on brave/faith is that the major issue is at the extremes, or at one extreme or another.
* 100 Brave means reactions always trigger, 0 means they never do.
* 0 Faith means total immunity to Faith based skills, and you are nerfed if that's all you got.

Solution which minimally affects the game is to set a floor, ceiling, or both to brave and faith wherever they're used.

Reaction trigger rate - vanilla:
Brave / 100
Min: 0%
Max: 100%

Reaction trigger rate - mod:
(Brave / 3) + 34
Min: 34%
Max: 67%

Note that the modded min/max are roughly equidistant from 50%. If you want the average to be lower, then lower the floor, change the divisor, or both. If you want it to be higher, then increase the floor, change the divisor, or both.

If you want more variance, reduce the divisor and reduce the floor. I wouldn't go above a 75% maximum reaction trigger rate.

I recommend you make successful reaction triggers decrement Brave by 1 to 4 Brave, the amount up to you.

Things that don't trigger - like Abandon, which is a 2x bonus to all evasions - should be Support skills. Weapon Guard should be innate to all... by removing the check for the Weapon Guard skill in the evasion routines, not by giving it to everyone. Otherwise you end up with Monks using it as it's cheap and Monk is just beyond Knight.

Unarmed formula - vanilla:
Current PA * Current PA * Brave / 100
Min: 0 damage
Max: 999 damage (at 100 brave and 32 PA, lower if you add berserk, doesn't count zodiac compats)

Unarmed formula - mod:
Base PA * Current PA * ((Brave / 2) + 50)
Min (worst case): 1 damage (Female Wizard at level 1 with 2 base PA, 1 current PA, 0 Brave - this minimum increases with base PA)
Min (realistic): 2 damage (Male Knight at level 1 with 5 base PA, 1 current PA, 0 Brave)
Max: 999 damage (at 100 brave, 19 base PA, 52 current PA, lower if you add berserk, doesn't count zodiac compats)

Much more reasonable damage.

You can add checks to skills that modify SP/PA/MA so they fail if the new value will be outside a certain range of the base stat plus gear bonus. The acceptable range depends on what you're doing with base stats, growths, and gear stat bonuses. If you're sticking with vanilla it's hard since they vary so much, you'll need to do some multiplication to get at anything within 20% above or below the base stat plus gear bonus. If you reduce the stats as I plan to, +- 3 for PA/MA and 2 for SP is good.

With current PA limited to +-20% of base PA + gear PA bonus, maximum damage for a human is:
Max: 513 damage (at 19 base PA, +3 gear PA bonus, 27 current PA, 100 Brave).

That's still a lot of damage, which is why I want to reduce most PA/MA growths and multiplier to max out at maybe 12.


This is another example of problems at the extremes.

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As for alternate mechanics for Brave, I had some interesting conversations elsewhere about making brave affect critical hit, status proc, skill proc, and knockback rates; and evasion. I prefer additive bonuses/penalties because multiplicative ones add up very quick and I want to turn Invisible into Blink without making "Abandon + Blink + Blind your enemies" into "hold A to win" for FFT.

Critical, status/skill proc, and knockback bonus formula:
Base rates + (Brave / 8)
Min: Base rates + 0
Max: Base rates + 12

Evasion bonus formula:
Base evasion totals + ((100 - Brave) / 8)
Min: Base evasion + 0
Max: Base evasion + 12

tl;dr

Higher Brave:
* Critical hit, status proc, skill proc, and knockback rates bonus increases.
* Evasion bonus decreases.

Lower Brave:
* Critical hit, status proc, skill proc, and knockback rates bonus decreases.
* Evasion bonus increases.

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Faith damage/healing/hit-rate modifier - vanilla:
Faith / 100
Min: 0% of original value
Max: 100% of original value

Faith damage/healing/hit-rate modifier - mod:
(Faith / 3) + 67
Min: 67% of original value
Max: 100% of original value

This retains the vanilla mechanic of faith being a buff or debuff, depending on the situation. If you use a hack that makes only caster or target faith matter, then you reduce the complexity/severity of this mechanic and in some cases remove parts of it. Not making a value judgement, it's your show.