GIMME YOUR THOUGHTS ON THIS DAMAGE MITIGATION IDEA

I'm facing a design conundrum at the moment concerning damage mitigation. I'm working on a little project where avoiding and reducing damage taken is very important, because HP recovery is limited. Consequently a lot of combat involves keeping your character defensively ready through buffs and shields.

I have a buff named Dodge which automatically reduces the damage from the next attack to hit the character to 0. I like the idea of it - if you know an enemy's big attack is coming, you can counter it by making sure you have Dodge ready. However, if a smaller enemy attacks before the big one, the dodge will be consumed by the little attack and the big one will still hit.

Enemy attack order is immediately obvious and unchanging (they stand in a very obvious line) so you'll know if a little guy or a big guy will attack first (assuming they attack and don't heal or buff themselves). However, there's not much you can do about it besides kill the little guy first or just not rely on Dodge. If Dodge is the only form of defense you have available*, this poses a pretty big risk.

Is this shitty? Unlike my other forms of defense**, which reduce damage dealt by a flat amount, Dodge completely nullifies one attack and potentially prevents enormous amounts of damage... but the caveat is that it can be wasted on weak attack. Does that seem like a fair trade-off? Especially considering you can make a reasonable guess at which attacker will activate Dodge?

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*You can only equip 4 attacks at a time, and depending on which attacks you're lucky enough to discover on a playthrough, you have to adapt your strategy. I just don't want Dodge to be useless.

**For reference, the other forms of damage mitigation I have implemented are Shield Points, essentially temporary HP, and a debuff named Weakness, which decreases damage dealt by one attack by a flat number (like 5).

author=LockeZ
The key is, I guess, how often will it be useful? Often enough to make it worthwhile? How often are the other defensive skills worthwhile, in comparison? Will the player be recasting them every time the effect runs out, or are they only useful in certain situations also?

Yea, I think this is going to be the key. I think there's a few good ways to balance the game around this - either make big attacks more common and predictable (a situation where Dodge excels) or make Dodge easier to get than Shield Points or Weakness.

What concerns me more is that you're wasting your entire turn to prevent only part of the enemy party's turn.

Haha, this is a very good point. I considered this and my plan was to make almost all defensive abilities secondary effects of other attacks - you attack and get a buff or shield. There's a trade-off, since purely offensive abilities are going to do more damage more quickly. I s'pose the best player will perfectly balance offense and defense to take as little damage as possible by ending the battle quickly while still keeping defenses high.

As a side thought, a one-target stun tied to a damaging attack would be really powerful in this game... I hadn't actually considered that yet. A counter-attack could be really cool as well... hmm.

The basic combat layout is more or less a copy of Paper Mario. It's round-based, so you and any allies go, then any enemies go, then you, etc. The enemy closest to the middle always goes first, so if he decides to attack then he's going to use up your dodge.


(this doesn't actually show dodge at all)

Ah, I should've mentioned this in the main post - Dodge (and most forms of defense) are secondary effects of attacks that already do damage. So your basic attack might grant you Dodge or Shield Points, but it also does damage, so you're not blowing your turn completely to dodge one attack (and taking two others anyway, I agree with you that that would be totally dumb).


The biggest choice every turn will be how much you want to focus on offense or defense, and you'll have varying degrees of control over that, based on your current set of abilities, for example:
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Double Strike: Hits an opponent twice.
Sword & Board: Hits an opponent once and grants three Shield Points.
Knife Combo: On first use, hits an opponent once. On second use, hits an opponent once and grants Dodge. Cycles between the two.
Hero Sword: Hits an opponent once and grants Force (+damage).

None of these use any MP, so the biggest question is "How do preserve as many Hit Points as possible?" You can spend your time building up Shield Points and whittling down the enemy with small attacks, or you can play more offensively by using Double Strike or Hero Sword . You can use the first hit of Knife Combo early in the battle, so later on it's already in its second phase and you can grant yourself Dodge against a big attack.... etc.

I want to spend a lot of time balancing so every ability presents you some interesting opportunities, not only on its own, but in combinations with other abilities (ex. the Force from Hero Sword gives you +damage to each attack in Double Sword). Part of that will also be the player's responsibility - when choosing what abilities to equip, you'll have to come up with a skillset that provides a good mix of utility and offense. Double Sword + Hero's Sword gives you the most damage, but neither ability provides any sort of defense. You'll have to remember that in some fights Dodge will excel, and in others Weakness or Shield Points will. In some cases it will be better to just go full offense.


My current plan is that you'll have a decent pool of HP, like 100. If you're still learning, you may take 10-15 damage from a battle. If you play really well, you might take 5-10, which means you can sneak an extra 5 fights in or something before you have to recover. "Playing well" is going to be 50% strategically balancing offense/defense and 50% timing hits (ala Paper Mario). Or maybe 70/30, but you get the idea.

(You'll probably also have other party members too, although I'm not 100% on how I'm gonna roll that just yet.)

You two are probably right... I like the flavor of a character who focuses on dodging attacks rather than blocking them, but mechanically Dodge is likely too irritating and not reliable enough.

I like Lockez's one-turn knockdown idea. It works very similarly to Dodge by preventing one attack from hitting you, but you have control over who you knockdown. I think I'll revise Dodge, make it very hard to get and have it provide an entire round of immunity, to remove the random "hope I dodge the right attack" feeling.

LENUS looks like a neat system. On paper it seems a little complicated at first but I figure once you got used to it you'd get the hang of it pretty quick. Kinda reminds me of Golden Sun's mid-combat class-changing, but more critical to the combat.