[RM2K3] VARYING BUFF AND DEBUFF STRENGTHS

You'll likely just use an empty state that doesnt do anything, and then every turn (using the Battle Events editor of the Troops with Turn x1) use a common event to check the state of every hero, and if there is a state, do your stat calculation and manually do it through Change Parameters. You'll probably need to detect when the state is off and what happens when the battle is over. Keep in mind you'll have to copy paste the battle events for every battle you have (which isn't a big deal unless you can't rely on common events as much).

Also Change Parameters is kind of shit since it can only increase or decrease, you'll probably just have to store the stat you want to change, decrease by the stat (setting it to the lowest possible) and then increase it with another variable with the calculation you want to come up with. Another thing that comes to mind is you probably want to store the original stat value at the beginning so that you can reset whenever you want.

If you'd be able to elaborate on how I'd use the Common Event to check the party's states, that might help. I'm not familiar at all with the syntax used in RPG Maker

Basically you use something called a Conditional Branch (page 3, topish right). If you go to page 2 and check Hero is... there is a bunch of stuff you can detect what's happening to the hero and at the bottom is condition. Whatever event commands you put within the branch will only happen if what you specified is happening.

I can't find the Change Parameters option, but I might just be blind.

Which RPGMaker 2003 are you using? (Commercial or illegally translated) It's either called Change Params or Change Character Base Statistics in the bottom left of page 1 of the event commands.

Again, I have no idea how CE's work, but would it be possible to create a Common Event for decreasing a stat by a set amount which could then be called by any Monster who can apply the buff or debuff? There doesn't seem to be any way to call CE's directly from Skills, so I'm not sure if it would be possible to make this work seamlessly without using Skills, but if I could simply make it possible for certain Troops to use a buff or debuff in battle, I could live with that.

Yeah there's no way to trigger a common event directly with skills. You can trigger switches which then triggers CEs (by making the skill type Switch). But there's a bunch of work arounds in figuring out who casted what and who you're targeting, specifically this tutorial: https://rpgmaker.net/tutorials/536/. However using a dummy state is kind of the easiest method I can think of for your case since the monster can cast the skill and you'll know who it happened to by checking someone's state every turn. As for the other way around when a character wants to debuff a monster, you might have to rely more on battle events since common events can't reference monsters I don't think.

And yeah there is a Stat Increase/Decrease option for skills but it's pretty damn limiting since it only does a value you've set it to, (and a very VAGUE variance depending on a stat). I assume the OP wants direct control like raw percentages like 33% or something.

To make sure my idea worked I decided to test it and elaborate further. Here's an image guide of basically how it works out. I have 3 variables called:


(The third variable isn't really needed, but helpful) and a switch called
kind of a bad name but whatever

Then I make a Dummy state that does nothing and ends after 3 turns for example's sake.


First is to set Turn Count to 0 for one of the Battle Events. This will happen at practically the first frame of the battle. So I just make sure to store hero's ATK to the first variable starting out. The show message there is to just keep track of what that number is.


Next Event Page is setting the Turn Count to x 1, this means whatever code is in here will run every turn of the battle (including the start of the battle, but the turn 0 page will happen first regardless). I set a common event to State Check. Then afterwards a test variable that constantly checks for the Hero's current attack, then a test message that just keeps track of all the variables. The main thing is just the Common Event call though. Technically you could just dump everything you want to do in this one common event for most of the stuff you want to happen every turn, just something to keep in mind.



Here's where all the magic happens. Make a conditional branch that's set to asking if the Actor's state is 'Dummy' (and make sure the 'Set handling' option is turned on so that you get an else statement).

Then make another conditional branch asking if the Buff switch is OFF, this is so that it'll only do the calculation once the state is added (don't need an Else for this).

Then I basically do all the calculations on the second variable, setting it to the original atk and then multiplying it by 133 (for 133% which is 33% added on the original ATK) and dividing it by 100 (rm2k3 can't really do decimals so you have to workaround when it comes to getting percentages).

After that it comes time to apply the actual Parameters, BIG HUGE NOTE: I don't think decreasing it by 999 will be a guarantee stat reset since weird stuff happens when you go past the negatives. I think stats can be negated past -1 but the engine doesn't want to show it. So it's best to always decrease the stat value by itself.

Since you turn the switch on, it won't bother doing the calculations again during the Dummy state.

The Else statement is where the Dummy state isn't on the Hero. So you'll want to do another conditional branch to check if the Buff switch is on within the Else. To basically explain the logic, the buff may be gone but you still have the stat change enabled. The switch is there to reset the stat to its original form and also enable the state to function again if it's applied later on.

I hope this makes sense? You'll have to do this with every hero, and any other buff you'll want to do. Again there might be more battle eventing you'll have to do if you want this to work on a monster.