STRONGER VERSION OF SKILLS; IS IT NECESSARY?

You could also add stronger skills with different traits that make them more situational/risky, as the following example in Pokémon:

Thunderbolt
Type: Electric
15 PP
90 Base Power
100% Accuracy
10% chance to paralyse the target.

vs

Thunder
Type: Electric
10 PP
110 Base Power
70% Accuracy
30% chance to paralyse the target. Hits targets using Fly, Bounce or Sky Drop. Never misses in rain. 50% accuracy in the sun.

An example where the stronger skill is not desirable for consistent damage, but in the right situations (it's raining or the foe is flying), Thunder is more useful than Thunderbolt.

This is where I mention the Might and Magic series. Before the sixth iteration, damage-based spells were either a flat number, or deal a range of damage "per level of caster". Intelligence and/or Personality had no bearing on anything, outside of giving a modifier to the amount of MP the caster gained each level. After the sixth iteration, damage-based spells were dependent on a skill's "value level" (for lack of a better term). Again, Intelligence/Personality had no bearing on how much damage a caster could do. They only modified how much MP the caster got each level.

Then there's the Shin Megami Tensei - Persona series. I'm only really familiar with the fourth entry, but, Persona can only carry 8 skills. When they acquire a new skill when they get to this point, players choose what skill they want to drop (including the one they are about to learn). So, if your list includes a single-target spell that deals "weak" damage, and you're looking at a single-target spell that deals "severe" damage...

It is a difficult issue. Usually, single/multiple targets are also upgrades for the spells (not only power itself) or side effects.

It also depends on the strategy of the battle. Chrono Trigger is a good example of that. Say, there were enemies that only reacted to certain magic so even having the big-destroy-all magic, you had to use the "weak" single target. Just to give an example. Chrono Cross, and the stamina issue; FFVIII and the junction powers. It's more about strategy than anything else.

In RM it may not be easy to make an intelliget system, like Zachary_Braun said

author=Zachary_Braun
You could even have the magic in question act as a class of magic, and the final spell is determined by the game just before casting the spell.

I've been facing that issue, trying to make spell upgrade (in my current project) has some kind of sense, even using only normal-not-programming tools. I suppose it is part of the challenges in game making if you want to break the pot.

Having stronger versions can either be a necessity or it isn't. I really depends on how you want the overall progression of power you want your characters to have.

Most RPGs are about leveling up to become stronger/better/faster than your early game iteration, so naturally, you'd get spells that deal more damage to bring it in line with the power of your enemies, rending your older spells obsolete.

If you want to work around this, you can have the damage of skills scale more closely to the party's stats, as oppose to relying on flat amounts or lack of influence from the party's direct stats. You could also use percentages in its calculations to keep the skills more consistently useful throughout the game.

Another thing, why go with the standard "elemental spells" that do nothing but different types of magic damage? Your weaker "early spells" could also have secondary effects, like a thunder skill which does low damage, but has a higher chance of paralyzing an enemy compared to a higher-damage skill which focuses more on raw power? Get creative! :)

Another thing I see from time to time, is that as your character gets stronger, rather than adding new, stronger skills, the old skills have growth and evolution.

Of course, as an old DM, in D & D you had spell levels but not higher versions of lower spells. Chromatic Orb: This is a level one spell that creates 1 d4 basic damage and an additional effect. For each level your character gains, Chromatic Orb gets stronger, level 2 is 2 d4 damage, level 3 3d4 level 4 4d4 and so on, and the additional effect changes, up to about 12 levels. You don't get a new spell. The old one evolves.

This is how Baldur's Gate did spell increase with level change.

Stronger versions of skills are not necessary, but they can have the advantage of making the player feel stronger. There are a lot of reasons you'd want to do that for example if you want shops to sell new spells and you want to give the player a reason to keep buying new ones despite already having a spell for each element.

Then there is another reason and that is strategy and battle balance. In some games the weaker spells are significantly cheapter in MP costs, double damage means quadruple MP costs for example. So a mage can use weaker spells on normal enemies and it feels less forced to keep all MP until the boss battle. Better than the mage doing 1 HP damage physical attacks until you reach the boss.

What I like to do is to make each spell kind of unique by adding bonus effects to it. Like instead of having spells for elemental damage and spells for status changes, you combine both. So you additional to your basic fire damage spell you also have one that causes the burning status at the same time. You also have an electric-elemental spell that causes blind at the same time. And maybe a ice spell that slows the enemy down. If even more strategy is needed stat changes can also be added. Like if you freeze an enemy if he gets hit by a physical attack afterwards he will take double damage but a fire spell will hardly damage him as the ice works as heat protection. And then I add another skill that is particularly useful on frozen enemies. And so on.

author=Ratty524
Another thing, why go with the standard "elemental spells" that do nothing but different types of magic damage? Your weaker "early spells" could also have secondary effects, like a thunder skill which does low damage, but has a higher chance of paralyzing an enemy compared to a higher-damage skill which focuses more on raw power? Get creative! :)

Make them functional before you get creative. An underpowered creative skill will not be used and an overpowered creative skill will obsolete several other options available, just like generic skills will.

Anyway, you can do either way when it comes to whether or not you have multiple tiers of spells. However, a common approach is to make some skills tiered and other skills nicely scale up all the way to the endgame. More precisely, attack skills and healing spells have multiple versions, while other skills such as status effects and buffs, remains as useful or useless regardless of where you are. For example, a fireball that deals 100 points of damage will be more useful when enemies only have 200 hp than it will later when they have 500 hp, while a spell that increased defense with 50% will scale up in power as the characters gain more defense and that way remain useful.

This wrecks the mp system. The skills that remain useful will either be too expensive at the beginning of the game or too cheap at endgame. I try to make either all skills require an upgrade or no skills does. There are other options though. You can provide stronger versions for attack and healing skills, but give the upgraded versions the same cost as the lower tiered ones. Or you can use the most common method which is to say "screw it" and just throw in ethers, thus making the mp cost matter less and therefore obsoleting the issue off balancing it.

My personal idea with the subject is thus: if the spell is more powerful, have it hit just a single foe. If it's weaker, have it hit many foes. For instance, in Super Mario RPG, Mallow's Thunderbolt is his first Special. However, later on her learns Shocker, a stronger version that only hits a single target.

Up until you get Star Rain, his ultimate power, if you wanna do lightning damage, then it becomes a tactical choice. Do you zap all enemies for less, or smite one enemy for more? To go off on a tangent, I also like the FP system of SMRPG and Paper Mario -- sure, you can blast enemies with spells, but as each hero shares the same magic points, would it be better to use a melee attack?

One other thought that comes to mind is also using a system akin to either D&D/Wizardry or Dark Souls/Pokemon -- have either levels of spell power, or each spell having its own MP level, respectively. Weaker spells could have more uses "per day", while stronger ones can be used less than them.

Last thought -- if you want a low-tier, single-target spell, maybe give it a chance for a status ailment or other debuff? Maybe something that chains into other abilities, such as a fire bolt that ingites enemies, making them take slip damage and lowering their Fire resistance? Thus, you could then follow up with a party-burning fireball, or even burn the weakened foe to ashes with a fire tornado or something.

EDIT: Looking at Halibabica's post, I concur -- a weaker spell made obsolete isn't necessarily useless. I have a habit of buying a crap-ton of weaker potions so, outside of battle, I can heal my team to full HP after a rough battle by having them chug potion after potion. This also applies to characters with plenty of MP and a weak healing spell. Just cast Cure en masse outside of combat, and save Cura and Curaga for battles where bigger application of healing matter.

author=Crystalgate
I would advice against giving skills a low chance to inflict something. In my experience, a low chance to inflict something causes the skill to be treated as if it had zero chance. If the lightning skill has a 30% chance to paralyze, I must assume it fails to paralyze the enemy and plan accordingly.

This is often, but not always the case. I'm currently playing a game (will have a review when I'm done) where, at the point I'm at now, I have a skill with a chance of paralyzing an enemy, and a weapon which also has a chance of doing so. Even if neither one constitutes a majority chance, the two of them together do, and while fighting a powerful enemy, it's possible for me to prevent it from attacking most turns by using the skill and the weapon in concert between two characters.

These kinds of setups, where a chance of inflicting a status effect makes a significant impact on your strategy, are easy to arrange in principle, where they have a marked effect on your expected result averaged over several turns, but in practice, most games avoid situations where this would be useful; more often than not the battles where you have to make meaningful choices about your expectations several turns ahead are ones where status effects don't work anyway.