LOCKEZ DESIGNS BOSS BATTLES FOR YOU

Hey, this looks really interesting! I love this sort of discussion. If you're avalible, I'm interested in having you fleshing out a few of my battles that I've been stumped on.

The Boss

The boss I'm planning is Lucidrake (big guy). He's a magical creature that can send people into deep sleep, and feeds on their dreams. The little guy is Dreamon, and is pretty much the "pre-evolution" of Lucidrake, and would likely act as minions in the battle. One other note, the battle itself is actually taking place in another character's nightmare.

Game Info
At this point in the game, you’ll have access to 4 characters.

Characters:
Merric: The main character. He’s a well-rounded mage that utilizes Destruction and Illusion magic. This means that he’ll be able to reliable exploit elemental weaknesses, and reliably affect the emotions of the enemy (explained under mechanics). Additionally, he has a couple self buffs.
Maria: She’s your main healer, and has several support options. She can cast direct healing spells, or grant regeneration over time (more effective, but takes a while), and can cure basic status effects. Her buffs are almost exclusively single-target, but have a good duration, and are pretty potent (they can also be stacked for greater effect, see mechanics for stacking states). She also can Stance Change from a Cleric to a War Cleric mid battle. As a War Cleric, she gives up most of her naturally high magic defense, and some of her magic attack, in exchange for a major strength buff. In this state, her basic attacks with a staff have a chance to stun the enemy (skip 1 action).
True: She’s a rogue/assassin. She’s easily the fastest of the main party, but also pretty frail. She has plenty of ways to increase her critical hit chance, and most of her attacks add additional effects if they crit. Most of her attacking skills have chances to inflict a negative state, and she also has ways to lower her agro rate.
Matthew: He’s the team’s archer, and can act as a secondary support option. He has a range of skills to add elements/effects to his basic attack, and can combo these with a double/triple shot. He also has access to rally skills, which are smaller, short-lived boosts to the whole party *(as opposed to Maria’s single target, longer lasting, and more powerful buffs). He has a few other support options as well, such as increasing his agro rating. Not exclusive to him, but anyone with a bow can use special, but consumable arrows to utilize powerful attacks.

Mechanics:
ATB: We use an ATB battle system, allowing actions to happen immediately as they are chosen. It’s a “wait” mode though, so you won't lose time selecting your actions.
Emotions: One of the main battle mechanics is Emotions. Enemies have 4 emotions, Anger, Fear, Joy, and Sorrow. These emotions don’t do anything on their own, but instead change how the enemy acts in battle. (In the background, it’s really just an invisible stacking state. At 3 stacks, they get Rage 1, and at 6 stacks, Rage 2. I chose these numbers, as this way, a player can affect the emotions of one enemy on the first turn, if they specifically focus on them).
Stacking States: Most states (both positive and negative) can stack, refreshing their timer, and making the effect more potent.
Elemental States: Most elemental attacks have a chance to inflict their respective elemental state. For example, firebolt has a 25% chance to inflict a stack of Sear. These states can stack up to 5. With each stack, the opponent becomes weaker to the respective element. At stack LV.3 and higher, a secondary effect is also applied (in the case of sear, the enemy will start to take burn damage with each action). These states do have a timer, and will wear off eventually if not continually applied.
Elements: Just in case you're wondering, the elements are Fire,Water,Ice,Thunder,Wind,Earth,Light,Dark. At this point in the game, the only one the player's won't have any experience with is dark.
Agro: Pretty straightforward, but attacking causes you to draw in a little bit of added agro. Basic attacks draw the most, followed by most offensive skills. The exception being bows, which draw no agro. You can lower agro by just getting beat up a bunch, or guarding.

In general, I'm pretty comfortable with complex eventing, so go all out! :)

Oh geez, I completely forgot I posted here. :p

I came across the thread again, and it seemed really familiar. Lo and behold, there I am. Sorry about that...

I don't know if you're still interested in doing this thread, but if by chance you are, I could write up an updated version of the battle system, as it's changed quite a bit since my last post.

Ended up taking a little longer than expected to get everything put together, sorry to keep you hanging (again...). Anyway, here's an updated version of the old synopsis. While the boss monster itself is similar, many of the game's mechanics have been changed or tweaked since then.

The Boss:


The boss I'm planning is Lucidrake (big guy). He's a magical creature that can send people into deep sleep, and feeds on their dreams. The little guy is Dreamon, and is pretty much the "pre-evolution" of Lucidrake, and would likely act as minions in the battle. One other note, the battle itself is actually taking place in another character's nightmare.

Game Info:
At this point in the game, you’ll have access to 5 characters. Only 4 characters can enter battle though, so one of the following will have to set out. As a quick note, even though Merric is the "main" character, he can indeed be swapped out of the party, if so desired.

Characters:
Merric: The main character. He’s a well-rounded mage that utilizes Destruction and Illusion magic. Additionally, he has a couple self buffs. His main selling point is that he can conjure one of several AI controlled ally monsters, but only one at a time (they can be dispelled, though). Besides that, he has skills to bolster his summoned ally, and can either be build as a pure mage, or spellblade style character (ATK and MAT are roughly similar, and some of his basic attack skills become physical if equipped with a sword).

Maria: She’s your main healer, and has several support options. She can cast direct healing spells, or grant regeneration over time (more effective, but takes a while), and can cure basic status effects. She also has access to party wide buffs in the form of hymns. Hymns only last 1 turn, but are apply to the full party, and are cheap to cast. She also has a gimmick passive ability called Echo, which grants her 1 Echo charge after using a song-based skill (all the hymns, plus one or two others at this point in the game). These are used as a casting cost for some of her later skills, but for now mostly act as a passive buff to her healing output.

True: She’s a rogue/assassin. She’s easily the fastest of the main party, but also extremely frail. Her main attribute is stance changing, an action that does not consume her turn or MP, and changes some attributes on her skills. She has plenty of ways to increase her critical hit chance, and most of her attacks add additional effects if they crit. Most of her attacking skills have chances to inflict a negative status, depending on her stance.

Matthew: He’s the team’s archer, and can act as a secondary support option. He has a range of skills to add elements/effects to his basic attack, and can combo these with a double/triple shot. He also has access to some status inflictions. He has a few other support options as well, such as having a taunt.

Nalah: She's an alchemist, and acts as the team's main buffer/debuffer. She has access to several multi-target buffs/debuffs, and status inflictions, but has very little in terms of damage.

Mechanics:
CTB: We now use an CTB battle system, meaning actions happen immediately as they are chosen, with the turn order being determined by agility. The turn order is visible on the side of the screen, so players can prepare for an enemy's turn.

Elements: Elements work simularly to Pokemon, where every monster has either 1 or 2 types. Weaknesses deal x2 damage, while resistances deal x0.5 damage (or x4/0.25 for double weakness/resistance). I could provide a type chart if you're interested. There are 18 elements, in which the player will have access to roughly half of them by this point in the game.

Wisps (Out of Battle): These fellas are the new central mechanic. They are these little spirit fellas hat can be found hidden throughout the overworld, 5 for each of the 18 elements. In addition to those you find, most characters start with a few. Out of battle, you can equip up to 3 wisps to each character. Each wisp gives a small boost to one or two stats (intended to allow players to create customized classes, as there isn't a traditional class system), but more importantly grants a small subset of skills, that are unlocked depending on the level of the equipped character.

Wisps(In Battle): In battle are where wisps really shine. For each element of wisp a character has equipped, they gain access to a Call command (having at least 1 fire wisp equipped gives access to the "Call Toasty" command). Call skills are free of cost.
What does calling wisps actually do? It's actually pretty simple. Each summoned wisp of a given element adds to a multiplier, that is activated the next time a skill of that element is used, be it friend or foe. Up to 4 wisps of a single element can be active at once. 1 wisp gives a x2 bonus, 2 is x4, 3 is x8, while 4 is a whopping x16 damage multiplier! Scary stuff!
Additionally, characters have access to a Call All command, that while costing 20% of their max MP, allows them to call up to 3 wisps, corresponding to those they have equipped.
A big thing to note though, is that enemies are just as capable of calling wisps, and setting off wisp combos. Most enemies have AI checks that will act accordingly if you start to get greedy, and pile up a bunch of wisps. They can even have skills that convert active wisps into another element, if you'd like to go that direction.

Battle Pouch: players can place up to eat items into the battle pouch from the menu. These are the items the player will have access to during battle. Being more limited on items places more importance on healers burn longer boss battles.

Hopefully that gives you a good idea of how everything it set up, but certainly let me know if there's anything else that you'd like to to explain in more detail. I tried to keep things brief, to prevent this from being an even longer wall of text. I'd be more than happy to have a deeper discussion about any of these mechanics, though. In general, I'm pretty comfortable with complex eventing and using scripts, so go all out! :D

Thank you :)