Stat Growths

[Myrmidon]

Is there a way to make a MA stat growth scale with level, to make, say, a single fire spell be worthwhile the entire game?

for example, having MA rise every few levels at a seemingly ridiculous rate, so it can keep up effectively with weapons?

also, is it possible to make it doable in such a way that an oak staff with doesn't outpower Excalibur incredibly quickly.

would high base damage be better, as it means spells would be ridiculous earlygame, then balance out lategame?

[formerdeathcorps]

That's not a stat growth problem; it's a formula problem.  Good to see you've been keeping up with my balancing topic, but what is needed is for spell damage formulas to be MA * ( (LVL / X) + Y) rather than simply MA * Y.

[Myrmidon]

...and that's ASM hacking, isn't it?

...crap...my simple mod keeps getting more and more complex...

also - I assume you mean the newly-sticked post in Help!?  I skimmed through it and bookmarked it, and I'm planning on giving it another reread at a later time.

I've been trying to design a game for a long time (RM2K, I admit...), and I'm constantly trying to find a way to balance my characters...it always bugged me about games how you get a skill at one point, then immediately discard it 8-10 levels later.  It's...wasteful.

I'm trying to remedy that in my patch...assuming I can find a way to make it without too too much difficulty.

For example: I'm condensing WM's skillset in healing -

Cure Light Wounds
Range 3, effect 2, Power low

Cure Medium wounds
Range 3, effect 1, Power medium

Cure Serious Wounds
Range 3, effect 0, Power high

This seems to be to be a more effective use of 3 skill slots, rather than Cure 1/2/3/4.  By having the power scale with level, I give the player to have a cure spell for any situation, AND eliminate the need for this CT5 BS by keeping everything with reasonable casting times.

[ArkthePieKing]

You know, a thought occurs. Another way to go about doing this might be to try and make weapons scale off of weapons as well, and tweak the rods and staff values. That would probably be easier in the long run instead of trying to do an overhaul of the game's formulas. *Disclaimer: I know nothing about balance, but am merely trying to offer another way to look at things*

Also consider me subscribed to this school of thought. I'd love for your spells to scale in a way more similar to FFTA, in that even basic spells late game where useful. I agree that the early spells are so negligible late game, and it's a shame.

[formerdeathcorps]

Weapons scale off of weapons?  Do you mean lower (or nearly fixed) WP values with only weapon effects and elements to distinguish them?

As for scaling spells closer to FFTA, the two ways to do that are to use an additive formula (MA + Y) for damage or to give humans higher MA and PA growth (but lower the * Y values on spells and the WP on weapons).  I believe Raven experimented with the latter in Redesign and CoP uses the former.  Both work, just HP growth needs to be tightly controlled or it will grow much faster than your damage output because HP will typically increase by a factor of at least 10 from Level 1 - MAX (a rate way higher than PA or MA), essentially forcing you to either have bad HP gear, no HP growths, or to use RAven's double support system (where units can equip 2S and Attack Up) to keep maximum damage output on pace with maximum HP over the course of the game.

[ArkthePieKing]

That was a typo. I had meant magic scale with weapons. Although the static weapons mods goes give me some interesting ideas. I think I may toy around with that idea a bit. I wonder how many interesting weapons you'd be able to make out of that, and I wonder if there are any classes you could create to take advantage of the unique changes. That's for another thread though. 

[Myrmidon]

actually, bad HP growths/equips sounds good t'me - I've always been a low-numbers kinda guy anyways, so hitting for 50 damage against a foe with 200 HP definitely sounds better than hitting for 200 damage against a foe with 800 HP.  I can reign in MP growths as well and keep everything nice and tightly knit...4 MP cost, but you'll be capping out at, like, 100MP...

...muahaha...I love this idea - many thanks!