A BALANCED THREE-HERO PARTY

author=edchuy
You should also consider using TPs that are gained or used up depending on the choice made for the party member. You could either use them up for special skills which have a high TP cost or for non-magical/healing skills which have a lower cost. Also, have items that boost TP to speed things along for a party member. That would give your players more choices to make during their turns, especially for your CTB and make them more tactical.

Oooh, that'll layer the strategy even more. Nice! I'll have to play around with TPs as this is the first time I've had access to them, as this will be my first VX Ace game and my last game was in XP.

author=RyaReisender
In SaGa games more often than not, the monster damage usually exceeds the power of your healing spells. Like for example you can heal for 260 HP but the boss can do two attacks per turn for 180 HP damage. So healing there is more for managing even HP distribution, as in healing weaker characters so they don't get unconcious too early, but will never increase the total remaining HP of your group on a turn. That means there is automatically some time limit until which you need to win the battle (SaGa games have full HP recovery after each battle).

I also noticed in Saga Frontier that I didn't come across a "heal the entire party" spell. Which def. made things more tense as there was no quick-fix for healing up everyone. I may want to incorporate that, or at the least, if I do make a heal-party spell, put some big limitations on it.

author=JosephSeraph
I personally think it's odd to stick with a 3 man band for the whole of the game and, all of a sudden, a fourth character appears. But that's particularily me.
Most games that do that make you get used to it by having guest characters and things of the like.
But hey

Yeah, I know it seems weird. But since I'm trying to make this pretty short, I'm not sure there'll be time in the game for any guest characters. And the fourth party member joining is very tied to the plot, and it's a character you'll be seeing throughout the game who just has no intention of joining you until the end.

author=GreatRedSpirit
I know this adds nothing to the discussion but there is Healing Rain in SaGa Frontier which heals all party members. I forget who gets it but I think some monsters can pick it up too. Also it costs 1 LP which is kinda significant!

Oh, you're absolutely right! I had forgotten! I just didn't use it because of the LP cost. The LP system is a pretty unique and interesting change to the gameplay in itself.