CHARACTER ABILITIES

Generally, when I design my own characters, I try to design them so that they're unique enough that they don't overlap with one another too much. Overlapping is going to happen at some point, especially if you have a lot of characters in the game, or if there's not that many different abilities (and even then, abilities will overlap to some degree). Really, is more of figuring out how you want a character's playstyle to be and going from there, for those who base abilities on purely the character and don't rely on classes or other methods of abilities not exclusive to characters.

But that's my two cents really I suppose.

This topic is probably too general to talk intelligently about.

BUT THAT WON'T STOP ME FROM RUNNING MY MOUTH

So uh, one of the keys to making interesting abilities is to make them be a legitimate choice instead of an inevitability. This is a concept I call tension. If you've spent three rounds preparing a massive attack, but the character who has been preparing the attack is also your only healer, and one of your party members is at critically low health, that's an excellent example of tension. The player doesn't want to give up his charged up attack, but he also doesn't want to leave the ally in danger. He has to weigh the two options and make a choice. And the better choice isn't necessarily obvious.

Another way to look at it is risk vs. reward. You have to build a risk into each option. If there's no possible down side, then the player doesn't really have a meaningful choice. Using the skill is just inevitable. And this is usually the default case for any skill unless you add complications.

Some versions of World of Warcraft have done a nice job of handling this. Let's look at priest healing, because I personally have the most experience with it.

Here are four basic priest spells used for healing:
Flash Heal - Heals a target for 1.6x your spellpower. 1.5 second cast time. 590 mana.
Greater Heal - Heals a target for 2.2x your spellpower. 2.5 second cast time. 590 mana.
Renew - Heals a target gruadually over 12 seconds for a total of 1.6x your spellpower. Instant cast. 260 mana.
Power Word: Shield - Buffs the target with a shield, preventing an amount of damage equal to 0.8x your spellpower. 610 mana.

Already here, there are choices in any situation. For a target near full health, you can choose between Renew and Power Word: Shield. Either will be wasted if the target doesn't take damage, of course. But even if you know it might be wasted, power word shield will still be worth the risk for many enemies, because preventing damage has a lot of nice side-effects for damage-dealing characters: if they take damage, they get interrupted and lose stealth. But the Renew spell heals for twice as much as Power Word: Shield, and is much cheaper! The main source of tension here is that you don't know how much damage your allies will take, nor which ally will be attacked. So you have to choose how much mana you're willing to spend to prevent them from taking damage. Mana is a valuable and resource that is very difficult to regenerate during battle, so you can't afford to waste too much of it. But these enemies hit hard - if a party member gets hit three times, they're probably dead. The point being that making the wrong choice actually matters, which is required to create tension.

For a target that's already badly hurt, Flash Heal, Greater Heal and Power Word: Shield are all valid options with different down-sides. Greater Heal preserves your mana in case you need it later, which you probably will. However, if the ally gets attacked again before you finish casting, they could die. Flash Heal does the opposite - it costs extra mana, but hits faster, almost guaranteeing that the target will survive. Power Word: Shield hits instantly and is thus usually the safest option but, once again, costs a ton of mana, might be wasted, and you have to heal the target afterwards. Additionally, if the target is at very low health and is being targetted by a powerful enemy, Power Word: Shield's mediocre amount of shielding might not be enough to keep your ally alive.

Tension inherently plays on unknown factors. If you know exactly what the enemy is going to do, there's no possible tension - there's exactly one best response and there's no question of what to use, so it might as well just be used automatically. The player's ability to predict the enemy's actions is therefore an important aspect of designing the player's skills. I've heard a lot that each skill needs to be useful, but there's more to it than that, of course. Each skill also needs to sometimes not be useful, and the player shouldn't always know when that is. In a game with well-designed skills, each skill is good in some situations and bad in others - and as the designer, you want the player to be able to guess what situations are probably coming up, but never know for sure. Figuring it out correctly will make him feel smart and successful. His ability to guess will improve over the course of the game as he gets used to how you design enemies, so you'll need to introduce either new situations or new skills or both as the game goes on.

@LockeZ: I think you just gave me a revelation regarding enemy design and AI for a project I'm working on. Thanks!

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The whole "perfect party" thing goes all the way back to DnD, where you could cover all your bases with a Fighter, Rogue, Wizard and Cleric. Each has a different playstyle and the playstyle should optimally feel unique for each class (imo).

So, here's some of the playstyles in RPGs I can think of, with related classes:

• Reliable (Warrior)- for players who to be the silent pillar of a party. Rarely the superstar, but rarely in last place.
  
• Brutal (Berserker) - for people who like to rush in passionately (and perhaps thoughtlessly?)
• Burst (Mage)- for people who play their best hand immediately. Subtlety is not necessary.
  
• Reactionary (Blue Mage, Fencer) - for players who like to outwit their opponents with counterattacks.
  
• Upper Hand (Rogue)- for players who like to kick opponents while they're down.
  
• Mass Control (Warlock, Wizard)- for players who like to hurt all enemies at once and dominate the battlefield with a fearsome presence.
  
• Protector (Paladin)- for players who like to step in and save the day.
  
• Savior (Cleric)- for players who like to be relied upon in tough situations.
  
• Supporter (Bard, Druid) - for players who like to be help others do their job even better.
  

These are just some of the many traditional examples. Often these motivations influence players to choose certain class types, and the character's playstyle (and theme, and personality!) should reflect those motivations.

author=Crystalgate
My rule of thumb is that characters should be able to handle more than one role, no characters who only heal or only uses physical attacks and so on, but they should not be able to fulfill every role.

Same for me. I like to have characters that can do more than 1 thing. Having the guy that can only hit stuff, or the girl that can only heal stuff bores me.xP

I haven't fleshed out the abilities in my game fully yet, but the way I plan on doing it is to give every character ways to support themselves, to support the party, to deal damage, and to deal AoE damage. It's just that some characters are better at a certain thing than others, but they all function well in their own way.

For example, every character gets skills to restore their own HP and MP. Every character has ways to grant buffs to teammates and to cure conditions (each character can grant different buffs, and cure different conditions). I'll also have unlockable skills in the game the player can give to any one character of choice (so the player can kind of build roles for characters if they wish to, or choose to balance out the characters even further instead).

Passive abilities.

That's all I'll say. If you want classes to be fresh and interesting start working out how to make certain traits constant, like having one party member lead create a no-traps effect. Or at least, have it work if they're in the party.