MAKING HEALING INTERESTING WITH MULTIPLE HEALING CHARACTERS

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unity
You're magical to me.
12540
I got to thinking about this due to the subject of skills in Mother 3 coming up in another thread, but does anyone have advice for making a party without a designated healer? I'd like to make a game where several characters have healing abilities, but without it becoming a FF6 type deal where the over-abundance of healing magic makes things too easy. Can you use variations in how each character heals to make things more interesting?

Also, if you make a character who can both dish out a lot of damage with offensive spells and also heal the party, can you encourage the player to use both rather than just saving all their MP for healing? I suppose you could have the two types cost different resources?
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
Call me crazy, but, I really liked how Suikoden 2's Forgiver Sign handles it. It's a healing spell that deals damage! Well, okay, it would be more accurate to say that it creates a HP pool, and uses what's in the pool and to heal your party. Then, whatever amount that's left over from that pool deals damage to a foe. Or, at least I think that's how it works? It's been a while since I've actually played that game.

*Edit: Along a somewhat similar train of thought is Might and Magic's Shared Life. Technically, it's not a healing spell. What it ultimately does is equalize the party's HP as much as possible. Which is to say that, most probably, it takes the HP from the more damage-resilient party members, and gives it to the more squishy party members.
Red_Nova
Sir Redd of Novus: He who made Prayer of the Faithless that one time, and that was pretty dang rad! :D
9192
If that's how it's handled, Marrend, then holy crap that sounds cool.

I have an idea: What if there were different types of healing? Each type is more effective at healing specific party members than others?

Here's the setup: A four character party consisting of two humans, an undead, and a Golem. The human characters have a unique healing spell each: one is Blood Healing, the other is Arcane Healing.

Blood Healing is an element that rejuvenates the blood in someone's veins, while Arcane Healing is more traditional (Final Fantasy's Cure) Blood Healing would be most effective with the human party members, have half effectiveness of the Undead Party member (as it has very little left) and completely ineffective for the Golem (as it is not even an organic being). Arcane Healing would be most effective for the Golem, slightly effective for the Undead (as it is being kept alive by magic) and ineffective for the humans.

With this setup, you can have AOE healing spells that you can't keep spamming because it doesn't help every character in the party, forcing you to use a party member to heal some of the party while the other attacks enemies, then switch duties with the other healer. There's no dedicated healer, and both humans can switch between offense and defense as the situation demands.
Here's ways that could work - personally, I usually find healers who can't deal damage and are paper-thin so bad I wouldn't want to use them.

1. Give your characters heals that work differently

A good way to keep healing from being dull could be making heals be more than just swiftly restoring HP on targets. Maybe your healer spills heals if he hits the enemy. Maybe you buff people with an HP drain effect. Maybe you could set up shields that absorb a certain element. The options are plentiful.

2. Make the player decide between two roles

If you spend a turn healing, you can't have that character deal damage or use other support skills at the same time. So healing means you have to forgo hitting someone's weak spot or debuffing a boss' attack. As a rule of thumb, you should have all characters have a damage and a support usage (it's no fun having a character idle since no one is hurt or there are no buff targets).

3. Give your opponents stall breaking tactics

You don't just have to tamper with your party, giving your opponents ways to counter heals can also be interesting. Some examples:

-The well-known Zombie status that makes the afflicted target get hurt by healing.

-Silence is also a popular status to prevent healing skills.

-Urge player offense by allowing your enemies to recover health as well.

There's also more heavy-handed methods of doing this:

-Opponents who counterattack those who use healing skills.

-Battles with a time/turn limit.
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
author=Red_Nova
If that's how it's handled, Marrend, then holy crap that sounds cool.


To be fair, Forgiver Sign is probably that game's have-all-108-stars-bonus-thing? Darigaaz, my memory about this is absolutely terrible.
I've been reading an LP of Chrono Trigger recently and there are like, four characters that have healing skills, each as good as (or situationally better than) Marle the 'designated' healer.

Robo, Marle, Frog and Ayla all have healing abilities while Lucca, Crono and Magus do not.

CT was one of the best games when it came to party dynamics, battles and giving each character a distinct style.



Forgiver Sign is a plot-relevant skill that is only unlocked if, at a certain point in the game, you have all 108 Stars of Destiny. It's the first sign that you can get the best ending (though it's not a guarantee of it).

In fact, all of the Bright Shield Rune's skills are really interesting, especially in counterpoint to it's brother-rune, which is physically damaging. (Most magic runes have four spells you can unlock over time/story.)
Great Blessing restores around 70 HP to the whole party and removes negative states. Early stages of the game, that's a full heal, but later on it's around 1/4 or 1/6th depending on your party.
Shining Light is a damage skill that hurts all enemies for around 130 damage.
Battle Oath is the skill that is most useful. It not only heals your party for 300, but has a chance of Berserking them (basically just increases their attack damage by quite a bit). You can get lucky and have the whole party Berserked or, alternatively, none. Being that you have 6 people to a party, there's almost always a chance you'll get at least on Berserk, though.
Forgiver Sign recovers all HP and status of characters, and causes around 1500-2000 damage on an enemy group (split). So it doesn't take from the enemy and heal, but it seems to do so, which is still cool.
There's also the rune's in-war use - it heals any unit within two places of the hero.
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
My biggest suggestion for anybody struggling with trying to make their battle system more complex is to add additional resources. I made a topic on this a loooong time ago, it could very suck so I won't bother digging it up... but adding new resources means new things to "heal."

Anyway, including and not including the above ideas: A LIST! When applicable, let's consider Agnes the more defensive/slower healer and Ring the more aggressive/speedy one.

> Agnes heals single targets efficiently and potently. Ring inefficiently heals the entire party.

> Agnes adds a regen effect to her healed targets. Ring adds a physical or magical damage buff based on the skill.

> Agnes can heal a little, but primarily fills up an ally's Shield. Ring transfers Shield into potent HP recovery for allies.

> Agnes gets a low-damage DoT effect that drains a little bit of the afflicted target's mana every turn, letting Agnes slowly refuel. Ring has more expensive heals, but he refunds half of his heals' mana costs when he completely heals an ally.

> Agnes can enter multiple forms that let her passively regenerate the entire party or raise their magic defense. Ring has an attack spell that marks a target; allies who hit that target are slightly healed per hit.

> Agnes heals more to low-HP allies. Ring gains a healing potency bonus after using an attack spell.

> Agnes can wipe an ally's Break% (at 100% you're stunned) with one moderately expensive move. Ring can disperse half of your Break% among all enemies present.

> Agnes has short cooldowns on her heals. Ring has longer cooldowns, pushing him to attack more.

> Agnes has cheap but small heals that she needs to use almost every turn to keep the party safe. Ring has delayed, more potent heals that he can set on allies.

> Agnes spends her own HP to heal allies, but has skills that greatly lower her aggro. Ring has more threatening heals and an attack spell that lowers that enemy's aggro toward him.

> Agnes's "weapons" actually are meant to hit allies to provide beneficial effects. Ring has a pet that automatically heals a low-HP ally as a free action every other turn.

EDIT:

So I think the bigest thing that the Mother 3 discussion brought up (without being said directly iirc) is that actions cost turns, not just mana. Something I've struggled with in my own games is "even if I make this self-buff skill cost almost no mana, is it still better than just attacking an enemy"? Turns are the most important resource because they not only mean you're doing one thing but not another, they cost time on the player's end as well. Why spend a turn healing when you can cast Firaga and end it?! Make it worth the player's time, both in reality and in the battle system, and you're on your way to creating a fun game!

(this is why wine & roses did the thing with the ap)
Versalia
must be all that rtp in your diet
1405
I've done a lot of effects with "sharing" and conditional healing. FOR EXAMPLE --

-Aisling gains the ability "Cold Steel" which converts her weapon to deal Water damage
-Aisling also gains the ability "Lifespring" which heals her whenever she deals Water damage
-Rylan gains the ability "Overgrow" which is a buff that heals all allies for 50% as much whenever the recipient is healed
-Rylan uses Overgrow on Aisling, Aisling uses Cold Steel and Lifespring, so whenever Aisling attacks she gains 50 HP and all allies get healed for 25

You don't necessarily need more resources to make Healing interacting and interesting. If you purposely design skills to be able to do some form of conditional recovery or enhance each others' form of recovery you immediately add several layers of complexity. Maybe Aisling has super high armor so she doesn't actually need to get healed very often, so you want to combine Overgrow with the party member who can Regenerate themselves instead? It doesn't need to be a complex number of actions to create a complex thought process behind which actions in which order.

Guild Wars Mesmers had particularly interesting support and healing mechanics (and Guild Wars as a whole had a refreshing take on heals in general but I degress). EXAMPLE:

AUSPICIOUS INCANTATION - Enchantment Spell. Your next spell restores you for 200% of its MP cost. That spell gets +5 cooldown.

CHANNELING - Enchantment Spell. You gain 1 MP for every enemy in the area when casting spells (OR! you can flip this and make it 1 MP for every enemy hit by your spells - it's a form of MP Efficiency based on the number of enemies you can hit with a single ability; MP Efficiency and HP Damage Prevention are very valid 'healing' tools!)

DRAIN ENCHANTMENT - Destroys one of the target's buffs and heals you for HP and MP

ENERGY TAP - Deals 7 MP damage, you gain 2 MP per point of damage dealt
ETHER FEAST - Deals 3 MP damage, you gain 50 HP per point of damage dealt

MANTRA OF LIGHTNING - Stance (Long-duration self-buff) - +50% Lightning Resistance and you regain 2 MP when being hit with lightning damage


There are a ton of very simple tricks like the Mesmer support spells that you can layer together for increasingly interesting effect~

Oh, I actually removed the cost of a turn for item use in one game. Basically each character gets to use one item per turn for free if they need to. This means that healing will rely more on items than having skills that heal, but also means that you need to keep an eye on your item stock.

People will use my items, god damn it! XD


But yeah, that could be an interesting idea - removing turn use for healing. Of course, you'd have to balance it so that the player doesn't just spam heal (like having healing be over-time buffs or have a limit on how many uses you can have of a heal - say a counter that lets you 'save up' points for healing and each one being used per heal) or, if they did, they had a reason to do so (each turn being like a battle itself, where the aim is to get from turn to turn and the very real possibility of being almost destroyed every turn of the fight - though in that case you could take out the middle man and just full-heal automatically each turn I guess.)
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Removing turn use for healing seems like a good way to make sure the player is invincible. I mean that's not the INEVITABLE outcome, but it certainly seems like it's making it unnecessarily hard to avoid.

The way I balance multiple healing characters is by making there be several other things that each one has to do, and having the outcomes of battles actually rely on those other things. For example, most of these characters can cast several buff spells, and different ones will be important in different battles. Some enemies buff their damage for one round and have to be stunned before they can act again or they'll kill you. Some enemies summon allies or heal themselves, so you need to deal a minimum amount of DPS to them just to break even, which possibly might be easier to do with a certain character's element. Someone has to restore your shields and someone has to inflict ailments and someone has to steal from the enemy before it dies. And so on and so forth. While all of this is happening you are gradually running out of MP. So you COULD heal with everyone, but you need to spend a lot of your time not healing if you want to win.

If the player were guaranteed to be able to heal with every character on every round, this kind of system would utterly fail and you'd need something different to prevent the player from healing for the max amount every round and thus being invincible. Probably this would take the form of a much more complex style of healing, involving cooldowns and healing buffs and additional resources and so forth.
I second what LockeZ is saying. The best way to make healing interesting is to make sure there are a lot of other things the player wants to do and healing then becomes an issue of figuring out which character(s) can best afford to spend a turn doing so. The title says "Making Healing Interesting with Multiple Healing Characters" but I think it's actually harder to make healing interesting with only one healer. If you only have one healer, then it's obvious who will heal.

author=unity
Also, if you make a character who can both dish out a lot of damage with offensive spells and also heal the party, can you encourage the player to use both rather than just saving all their MP for healing? I suppose you could have the two types cost different resources?

Most RPGs are set up so that healing is the most cost efficient way to spend MP. However, there's no rule saying it has to be this way. You can change around the MP cost of skills so that an offensive spell is more MP efficient, at least when used in a smart way.
slash
APATHY IS FOR COWARDS
4158
Also, if you make a character who can both dish out a lot of damage with offensive spells and also heal the party, can you encourage the player to use both rather than just saving all their MP for healing? I suppose you could have the two types cost different resources?

For sure!

One way to go about it is to give the player combined support/attack spells. For example, an attack that deals less damage than normal but heals the party, or leaves Regen on the user. It's a good mix that most players will have no problem using, because it doesn't feel like they're sacrificing too much.

Extra resources are never a bad idea - Shield Points (temporary HP that you can store up before you take damage, and are reduced first) are a simple and fun way to encourage proactive healing.

The other thing you could do is design a combat system that allows you to use support moves and attacks in the same round. Wine & Roses gave you 3 AP a turn to spend on abilities (which usually cost between 1-3 AP) so spending some AP to buff or heal didn't feel as bad as "wasting" a whole action.

One idea I've been kicking around for a while is a system where each character gets two actions a turn - one for supports/heals, and one for attacks. That way, the player isn't forced to skip an attack to use a less directly beneficial action.

The real trick to getting people to heal is to design battles that require them to heal. Typically if you can heal outside of battle people will prefer to do that (since it doesn't waste precious in-battle turns) but if the battles are challenging enough that players can't put off healing, they'll have no choice. Interesting combat in turn-based RPGs is usually about forcing the player to make difficult choices, and healing's a part of that. Players should having mini-debates in their head - "Do I heal my dying mage, or hope they don't get hit? Is the boss low enough that I can skip healing and focus on damage? Will the Paladin's heal be enough?"

Good luck!! I'll see if I can think of some more ideas - this is like, my favorite part of game design XD
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
slash, i think the topic was actually asking the opposite -- trying to get healers to use their offensive moves more often!
slash
APATHY IS FOR COWARDS
4158
Ohhhhhh... I think maybe I got distracted by... something... I read the topic last night and thought of all sorts of ideas, but I was pretty tired at the time ;^^

Well, the principle's the same! If healing is spread across multiple characters, then you can create some interesting decisions where healing isn't always the best way to spend your turn and MP.

Actually, as a first step, you'll probably want to reveal enemy HP bars. It'll give the player an easy way to gauge how much damage regular attacks deal vs. special abilities, and the player will be able to see "hey, if I use Explodaga 3 this turn, the enemy will probably die, and I won't need to heal~"

Skills that mix healing & damage are still a good bet - players will definitely use those when they want to deal bonus damage and also get some light healing in, instead of spending the turn on a full heal.

"Offensive defense" situations are great too - for example, glass cannon mobs that are easy to kill with some strong spells, but deal a lot of damage if left alone. In pressure situations like that where a mob needs to die fast, players will learn that dealing damage fast means saving time AND saving MP.

In addition, usually you can deal damage without MP, but you can't heal without MP, so MP is better off being used for healing. If some characters had a weak healing spell they could cast for free, similar to the basic "attack" action, that would reduce the need to spend MP solely on healing.

Finally, I think one of the biggest things that discourages spending mana on things other than healing is the traditional dungeon design of RPGs. Usually you go into a dungeon and think "okay, I can stay in here as long as my MP holds out, because I can heal". Because your players' HP bars feel permanent (they stay the same between battles) and enemy HP bars feel not-permanent, healing feels more useful than bonus damage. In "heal-after-battle" type games, spending MP on offensive skills makes more sense and feels better. You don't have to conserve MP to heal after the battle, and any MP you have at the end is wasted anyway, so you might as well use it on big attacks!


whew~
What if you gave one of your healers a AoE heal that recovers a moderate amount of HP and grants a "Veil" or "Barrier" effect, perhaps to the effect that it reduces the damage of the next attack taken by some amount (30%? 50%?) and then disappears. If you use that move to heal this round, then the barrier could provide enough cover that you don't have to heal next round, and then you have more actions available to your healer.

Granted, I'd recommend some sort of cost-inhibitor (relatively high TP? cooldown?) to avoid just spamming that move every round regardless of whether the barrier was needed or not.
"Also, if you make a character who can both dish out a lot of damage with offensive spells and also heal the party, can you encourage the player to use both rather than just saving all their MP for healing? I suppose you could have the two types cost different resources?"


Using offensive spells power up the next healing spell you use and/or vice-versa.

A offensive spell that can heal you for the damage done if a certain condition is met.

A spell that makes you and the target swap HP, maybe temporarily... that's both an offensive and defensive spell.


There are many ways, try to make offense/defense dependent on each other.
This is kind of a break from the original topic, but I think it's worth considering the potential of a game without in-battle healing. It's such a convention of the genre that we might ignore the possibility of doing without it, but I think it opens up a lot of potentially interesting and mostly unexplored forms of combat tactics.
author=slash
In addition, usually you can deal damage without MP, but you can't heal without MP, so MP is better off being used for healing.

Not necessarily. I mentioned earlier that a game doesn't have to be balanced so that healing is the most cost efficient way of spending MP. Let's clarify.

You can deal damage for free, but if you spend MP to deal damage, you will deal more damage than if you pick the free option. Now, since you deal more damage, you kill enemies faster which in turn means they get less turns to deal damage to you. So, spending MP to deal damage means you take less damage.

Now, count the amount of damage you prevented and compare that to how many HP the same amount of MP would have healed you. If the prevented amount of damage exceeds the amount of HP you would have healed, then spending your MP of damage is more cost efficient than saving them for healing.

In all RPGs I've seen, MP costs are balanced so that spending MP on healing is practically always more efficient than spending them on damage. There is however no rule saying it has to be so.
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
Desertopa
This is kind of a break from the original topic, but I think it's worth considering the potential of a game without in-battle healing. It's such a convention of the genre that we might ignore the possibility of doing without it, but I think it opens up a lot of potentially interesting and mostly unexplored forms of combat tactics.


http://rpgmaker.net/games/3135/

Versalia
I've done a lot of effects with "sharing" and conditional healing. FOR EXAMPLE --

-Aisling gains the ability "Cold Steel" which converts her weapon to deal Water damage
-Aisling also gains the ability "Lifespring" which heals her whenever she deals Water damage
-Rylan gains the ability "Overgrow" which is a buff that heals all allies for 50% as much whenever the recipient is healed
-Rylan uses Overgrow on Aisling, Aisling uses Cold Steel and Lifespring, so whenever Aisling attacks she gains 50 HP and all allies get healed for 25

You don't necessarily need more resources to make Healing interacting and interesting. If you purposely design skills to be able to do some form of conditional recovery or enhance each others' form of recovery you immediately add several layers of complexity. Maybe Aisling has super high armor so she doesn't actually need to get healed very often, so you want to combine Overgrow with the party member who can Regenerate themselves instead? It doesn't need to be a complex number of actions to create a complex thought process behind which actions in which order.


i'd love to see more of this on rmn
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