LOCKEZ DESIGNS A BOSS BATTLE FOR YOU

Hmm. Good question. I would make his first attack be the Summoning Ritual, for the purpose of conveyance - it's the most interesting thing that happens in the fight, so you want the player to immediately see that it's happening.

The other problem with items in FF9 is that, in the 90% of the game where you do have a white mage, you really can't possibly run out of items. You just have a ridiculously huge stockpile all the time, especially with Zidane on the team to steal them all the time. FF13 addresses this by making healing items useless after the first 25% of the game, while FF9 addresses it by distracting you with shiny-looking buyable equipment that teaches exciting new skills in every town and uses up 98% of your gil, in the hopes you won't notice the fact that you can become completely invincible if you spend your money on potions instead of armor. Neither design strikes me as particularly great, and on most days I usually think Secret of Mana's system is better - 3 of every item, so items serve the role of panic buttons to be used in emergencies when you mess up.

However, if you increase the number the player can carry to more than Secret of mana, but still keep them pretty limited, you could have them serve the role of panic buttons on normal enemies but reliable healing on bosses. But the reliable healing on bosses would disappear if you took too long and ran out of potions - basically working like a soft enrage for every boss in the game. This limitation could be done by having a low maximum number of items, or by using your crafting system and making the ingredients rare, or some other way.

For Milennin:

Tried to make a fight where the fire-elemental player could tactically use his fire skills to make the adds go supernova. To communicate how this works to the player, I made the boss do the same thing. The supernova skill hurts the player slightly no matter who triggers it, but the thing that happens after it is what's fun - it turns the add into a pile of ash, and whoever hits that ash pile gets healed and deals high damage to the enemy party.

If the silence status lasts more than a few rounds, you should probably either give the player a few silence-healing items before the fight starts or else make the electric char's silence-healing skill able to be used while silenced. Another option would be a piece of equipment that grants silence immunity, only usable by the electric char.

Flame Woman
Phase 1
- Extremely fast. We want her to be summoning lots of adds.
- Summons a minion called a Small Flame every second turn. Though you can name it whatever you want, of course. Can summon up to 7 of them at a time. The name of this skill, in Phase 1, should just be "Summoning Flames".
- Uses a scorch attack that hits one member of the player party and sometimes inflicts burn. Does this most of the time. Since she's so fast, this doesn't have to deal high damage. (This can't be used while silenced.)
- Rarely uses a healing ability on the Small Flames that has the same name and animation as a fire spell the player has seen before. To the player, it should look like she's attacking the Small Flame with a fire spell, but the Small Flame is being healed because it absorbs the fire element. This should be enough to heal the Small Flame to full health. This also doubles her agility until her next turn, making her get her next turn very quickly. (Making this a normal single-target healing spell will mean she sometimes uses it on herself instead, but that's fine. She absorbs fire too.)
- If a Soot Pile is present, she has a 100% chance to cast Smouldering Wind, damaging and silencing the entire player party, and also healing the Flame Woman by a moderate amount (and removing the silence effect from her). This destroys the Soot Pile.

Phase 2
Phase 2 starts at 50% HP. This is a short transitional phase. The boss repeatedly uses its skills that sacrifice the minions, ensuring that there are zero adds left before continuing to Phase 3. Basically it's wiping the board to a clean slate. If there are no Small Flames or Soot Piles when the boss hits 50% HP, it skips Phase 2 and goes directly to Phase 3.
- If a Soot Pile is present, she has a 100% chance to cast Smouldering Wind, damaging and silencing the entire player party, and also healing the Flame Woman by a moderate amount (and removing the silence effect from her). This destroys the Soot Pile.
- If there are no Soot Piles alive, she will always use the healing ability from Phase 1, making a Small Flame go supernova.
- Doesn't do anything else in this phase. Doesn't summon adds or use her scorch attack.

Phase 3
Changes from Phase 2 to Phase 3 as soon as the boss is alone, with no Small Flames or Soot Piles left alive. In this phase the boss starts going berserk, giving up on her normal scorch attacks and switching to riskier tactics in the hope of getting one giant hit in.
- She won't make her own adds go supernova any more, but she'll still use Smoulering Wind if the player makes ones of them go supernova.
- If a Soot Pile is present, she has a 100% chance to cast Smouldering Wind, damaging and silencing the entire player party, and also healing the Flame Woman by a moderate amount (and removing the silence effect from her). This destroys the Soot Pile.
- Otherwise, if there are fewer than 7 adds present, she summons a Small Flame every round. This will have a different skill name during Phase 3 than it did during Phase 1, though. It's now called "Summoning Flames: Meteor Barrage".
- If there are 7 adds present, and all 7 of them are Small Flames, she will sacrifice all 7 of them to use Meteor Barrage. This is the same kick-ass skill that the dragon used. It will damn near annihilate the party. The player's goal is to prevent this from happening by killing or supernova-ing the adds.

Small Flame
- Absorbs fire damage.
- Starts out at 75% health. One absorbed fire attack from the fire-elemental character will heal it to full health, unless it's been damaged.
- If it reaches full health, it explodes using a skill called Supernova, dealing minor fire damage to the player party. This kills the Small Flame and replaces it with a Soot Pile.
- Very low speed. If left alone for several rounds, it will finally act.
- When it acts, it deal heavy fire damage against one member of the player party.
- If silenced, it will simply attack instead for low damage. Give the normal attack a priority much lower than the fire damage skill, so that the attack'll only be used when the fire skill is impossible to use.

Soot Pile
- Performs no actions.
- Has a ton of HP and no immunities.
- The Flame Woman can and will destroy Soot Piles if they're present by casting Smouldering Wind, damaging and silencing the entire player party, and also healing the Flame Woman by a moderate amount.
- If a Soot Pile is damaged by the player, Smouldering Wind is used in reverse, damaging and silencing the entire enemy party, and healing and removing silence from the entire player party.
- Either way, no matter who triggers Smouldering Wind, it causes the Soot Pile to vanish.


-------

Several of the skills will definitely need to be evented since they affect both enemies and allies. Sorry! Fortunately I don't think any of it is very complex, except for the Flame Woman detecting that the Soot Pile is present. It will probably help to use a variable for each add that keeps track of whether it's dead (0), a Small Flame (1), or a Soot Pile (2). When you summon or transform them, set them to 1 or 2, and then use a battle event that runs each turn to detect when they're dead and return them to 0.

I made the triggerable skills of both the Small Flame and the Soot Pile happen while they're still alive so that it'd be easier for you to detect when to do them. When detecting that an enemy died in RM2K3, I know there are problems with detecting what type of enemy it was before it died. This method should make that easier.

As always, if you run into problems, let me know! A lot of the time I can help you with them, and a lot of the other time I can tell you how to change the fight to get a very similar result within whatever limitations you have.

Turn-based, huh? I guess you're not strictly using the default battle system in RM2K3. OK, we can compensate for everyone being the same speed, and for only having a maximum of 3 flames. Not too hard.

- Since there are only three flames at once, they're going to need more HP. Enough HP to survive five hits should be fine. This will make it almost impossible to kill them before the next one is spawned, which will make area attacks useful.
- Make them start at about 80% to 90% HP now. This should cause the fire skill to still heal them to full health.
- Since the boss will be using its scorch attack much less often now, it can be stronger. The only reason it was so weak was because it was being constantly used over and over really fast. It should be pretty powerful now.
- It would be possible to slow the flames down so they only attacked every other round, by having them spend every other round restoring their MP. But it's probably not worth it now that the boss's scorch attack has been made to hit harder. Just make them do a more normal amount of damage every round.
- The way the ash piles work is just absolutely not going to work in a turn-based system, sadly. The player and boss targeting them both become way too difficult. I'll need to redesign it:
- Instead of exploding into ash piles, just make it so when the small flames are healed to full by the player, they instantly attack+silence the enemy party and heal+unsilence the player party. Name the attack something like Lens Flare or Eclipse, so that it doesn't sound fire-elemental.
- Instead of having the boss heal the small flames on one round and utilize the ash pile on the next round, just have it happen all in one round, since there are no ash piles any more. The boss will get one skill that heals a small flame to full HP, uses the Lens Flare or Eclipse skill against the player (damaging+silencing the player and healing+desilencing the boss), and then despawns the small flame. This is unfortunately kinda a lot of stuff to do in one turn; sorry!
- Since there are no longer any soot piles, it's no longer possible for the boss to get a lucky turn in before the player and use Smoulering Wind with a soot pile in Phase 3. The means that the boss can no longer desilence herself during phase 3, so make sure Meteor Barrage is usable while silenced.
- Even though there are no soot piles any more, and thus your technical problem is solved, I would definitely still only have a maximum of three flames now. The boss's slowness makes it problematic to have more than that.

author=Milennin
Another thing I don't know how to deal with is with making fires turning into soot piles, or soot piles activating their effect, if I use one of my character's AoE attacks, since RM2K3 can't detect the use of individual skills.

You don't need to detect when the player performs a skill. You only need to detect when the enemy's HP changes. Run a battle event each turn that checks the HP of each flame that's alive. If a flame is at full HP, make it use its attack, heal the player, and despawn it. (If we were still using the soot piles, you would do the same thing for them - just use a battle event to check if their HP is less than full. But we're not using them any more, so it doesn't matter!)

author=Milennin
One other question, how do you make enemies absorb an elemental attack?

There's a tab in RM2K3 where you can set the A B C D E numerical values for each element. I think it's the Attributes tab. If you set E to -100% for fire, then any enemy with E resistance to fire will absorb fire spells.

Yeah, I start with the player's abilities first and then do the enemies after. You have to start somewhere. Either side of the battle (player or enemies) will become much easier to design when the other side is already done, so it makes sense to do the smaller side first. Though I do design the player's abilities with some basic ideas of the kinds of challenges I want to use in potential bosses (and normal enemies) in mind. So I'll give three of the classes MP drain skills so that I can make enemies that rely on MP, or give the main character a buff-dispelling ability so that I can make enemies that buff themselves, etc. And often I'll go back and modify the player's skills later (or add weapons and consumable items that do what I need).

Unity, I promise I'm not ignoring you, I just haven't had time because I released a new beta version of my own game.

Sorry for the delay. Time Boss incoming.

Tried to come up with a mechanic that could be consistent across all three time periods while still turning them into three distinct fights. You will end up fighting this boss in the future first, then the present, then the past. They'll be three distinct battles at different points in the dungeon, but the battles will be linked via the boss banishing some members of the player party to other time periods.

Time Boss - Future
- Has enough HP to make sure it always lasts at least 8 rounds, and usually longer unless the player goes all-out offense.
- Gets two actions per turn.
- His first action always goes first, before anyone else. His second action goes at a normal time during the round, according to his speed.
- First action: Every other turn, the boss uses the skill Send Back in Time on a random member of the player party. This skill will be used a maximum of five times during the battle. The targeted character will be removed from the battle and from the player's team. You can either make a random party member take the banished character's place in battle, or let the player change it manually on the next turn, whichever your party-changing script supports more easily.
- First action: On turns when the boss doesn't send someone back in time, he uses Undo, reversing the last action the player performed on the previous round. If possible, it would be fantastic if this played the animation of that skill backwards. If not, just show a clock winding backwards.
- Second Action: Randomly uses one of the following skills.
- Doomsday: Fast-forwards to the end times, destroying the planet. The boss and all players take big damage, but not deadly. Four round cooldown.
- Reset: Dispels all buffs from a character.
- Clock Drop: Clocks fall from the sky, dealing light physical damage to two characters. This should do just enough damage that it would be deadly to most characters if they took damage from both this and Doomsday without healing in-between.
- Slow Burn: Deals light fire damage to one character and drastically lowers their speed, causing them to almost certainly act last. Slow status lasts two rounds. Similar damage to Clock Drop.
- Stasis: Deals light electric damage to one character and paralyzes that character for one round. Similar damage to Clock Drop. (If the boss is too difficult, change this ability to only inflict paralysis and not deal damage.)

Time Boss - Present
- Extremely similar fight to the future version.
- Keep track of what round the characters in the future battle were banished on.
- Make them reappear on the same round in this battle. So if during the future battle Rackward was banished on the fourth round, he'll rejoin the party during the fourth round of the present battle.
- Of course, to make room for them, the boss will banish someone else. He uses the same skills in this fight, including Send Back in Time. Whereas in the future battle the banished characters had to get replaced by whoever you had left on your team, in the present battle, any character who is sent back in time is immediately replaced by someone who has been sent from the future.
- Ideally, it would be nice if the characters who appeared mid-battle had the same status effects they had when they disappeared in the first battle. However, this may be impossible in your battle system, and it's not really necessary.

Time Boss - Past
- Extremely similar battle again.
- The boss no longer uses Send Back in Time. He hasn't learned that spell yet at this point in his life, I guess? Or maybe this battle takes place at the beginning of time? Whatever.
- The characters that were sent back in time in the present battle will reappear in this one on the same rounds that they disappeared, just like last time.
- However, since no one is getting banished, the characters that reappear will need to go into your reserve units, not into the active party.
- On the turns when the first two versions of the boss would have used Send Back in Time, this version uses a new skill, Countdown. However, unlike Send Back in Time, which is used a maximum of five times per battle, the boss will keep using Countdown every other round until the end of the battle.
- Countdown inflicts an unremovable status on one character that lasts 5 rounds. When the countdown reaches zero, the character takes more damage than they can easily survive, but it should be just barely survivable if they're at full HP and defend, if they have proper armor.
- This final version of the boss should have about twice as much HP as the first two versions. This is partially to make it feel like the real final boss of the dungeon, partially to give the player some time to fight with their full party, and partially to make absolutely sure that everyone who was banished in the present version has time to reappear in this fight before the battle ends.

--------------

Of course, this leaves the problem of what to do if the player tries to leave the dungeon halfway through. Having to do the normal battles inside the dungeon with five fewer characters is one thing, since you can balance them for that, but some players might want to leave and do a different sidequest, especially once they realize they're going to have to use only part of their party. You *could* just make the player finish the dungeon to get their party back, of course. But if you find that distasteful, here's an alternative:

If the player leaves the dungeon between bosses, the characters who were banished should be waiting at the entrance, about to enter it, and confused as to why you're leaving the dungeon when they think they haven't entered yet.
"<Banished Character>! There you are! We thought you were gone forever!"
"What? Why would we be gone?"
"Didn't the boss send you through a time portal?"
"What boss? We haven't been inside yet. Were you inside already?"
"...Um. You know what? Never mind. Let's get out of here."

And then when you re-enter, they'll just vanish in a puff of logic.