ELITE AFFIXES

Back with another game design topic where I ask the community for ideas and then shamelessly steal them.

Or, uh, ask the community what they like to see in games and then humbly oblige them. Yeah, that.

So, I'm working on adding a new element of randomness and challenge to Thrall in the form of Elite enemies. Basically, enemies that have a small random chance of spawning in any normal group of enemies that are basically a buffed version of those enemies. They have higher stats, but also a unique reward with additional EXP, and a guaranteed rare item drop, with a decent chance of an epic or legendary item.

In addition to these buffed stats and rewards, I'm adding one more component to Elite enemies, which is a passive modifier that affects the entire troop. So if an Elite enemy appears, every enemy in that battle gets a buff.

My question to the community is, what are some ideas for good passive modifiers like this for a turn based battle system? What kind of tropes do you like to see in tough mini boss battles, or what unique mechanics have you seen in boss fights that you'd like to see in other games? I'm flexible, so anything goes.

Couple ideas I've already come up with:

Hearty: Enemies have double HP
Thorned: Enemies reflect 10% of all damage
Regenerator: Enemies regenerate HP each turn
Swift: Enemies get a significant AGI boost

author=AubreyTheBard
That's a very pie-in-the-sky idea requiring interference with the player's actions, of course.

Not at all! That's a good idea, those are kind of what I'm looking for. I'm a decent enough programmer and adept enough with the software that I can basically make the battle system do just about anything at this point. I'm using a heavily modified version of the Tankentai SBS for VX, but I've been using it for over 15 years and know it inside and out, plus enough Ruby to write my own scripts, so pie-in-the-sky stuff is not off limits.