HOW IS THIS FOR MY FIRST BOSS?

So how do you beat him

author=psy_wombats
no sleep prevention seems to make the whole thing kind of meaningless.

Indeed. This fight just sounds like "ARGH" over and over until you get lucky resisting sleep or w/e. The BASIC idea is good - here is a boss whose attacks are not overwhelming, but he pulls a stall tactic for recovery. Sleep is just one form of stall tactic. You should consider giving the player ways around this that are involved in their skill sets and not just equipment they can find/buy, and by considering stall tactics that are not paralyzing the player. What if he uses a curse on you that cuts your ATK to almost nothing, then starts healing himself, but is still really vulnerable to MAG-based spells or the curse can be cured in the meantime? etc

The sleep thing could work; it tests the player's ability to adapt and overcome situations when he has little to work with.

An 'all party' sleep spell vs. the heroes COULD work. One of Breath of Fire III's earliest bosses had a sleep-all spell, and that was considering the player only has access to two people in a three person party setup. That boss (one of the ghosts, I forgot his name. Dokson? Torast?) was simple because it was a test of the player to CRUSH HIM as quickly as possible before he could put you to sleep and pimpslap the shit out the player.

But the boss above couldn't heal himself, which makes your boss significantly harder. One solution to this is to make exactly one sleep accessory available to the player, and therefore the player has to carefully allot said item to who he feels is the most valuable team member to give it to.

Or you could make the sleep skill one person target only.

It sounds like most of your do not have a sleep status in your game.

Wait, wait, wait... you have to POISON YOURSELF so that you automatically wake up from a sleep spell? This is the dumbest idea for a spell combo I've ever heard.

This whole concept of a boss healing himself so much sucks. No boss EVER should heal himself, it's a virtual middle finger to the player and his efforts to kill the boss. "HAHAHA you've spent 5 minutes chipping away at the giganto beast, but now it's going to recover half its health and you'll have to do it all over again!". FUN! (not!).

If you want to make a boss fight longer (and for what reason I do not know, but let's say this is what you want) simply increase his HP and don't torture the player with this recovery bullshit.

Oh, and mass sleep spells is dumb too. It is so awesome to be playing a game that suddenly grinds to a halt, shuts down player input and forces him to stare blankly at a screen and watch the game play itself.

I'd really like for game developers (not just amateur developers) to get rid of such tedious boss battles where nothing is really going on, and which remind of those boring lectures on topics that nobody cares about and everyone's half asleep, and instead be more dynamic and exciting, like, you know, real battles are (one of the reasons I like Romancing Walker so much, dynamic battles).

author=PsychoFreaX

author=DE
Wait, wait, wait... you have to POISON YOURSELF so that you automatically wake up from a sleep spell? This is the dumbest idea for a spell combo I've ever heard.

I don't know how it sounds dumb. The strategy is effective, not obvious and the player is given enough hints from the gameplay mechanics to figure it out. I thought that was the criteria for good strategy.

It's dumb because it's illogical, it's counter-intuitive, and it makes no sense - try taking a lethal poison and a sleeping pill at the same time, let's see if you'll magically wake up when the poison starts to take effect in time to take an antidote.

author=DE
This whole concept of a boss healing himself so much sucks. No boss EVER should heal himself, it's a virtual middle finger to the player and his efforts to kill the boss. "HAHAHA you've spent 5 minutes chipping away at the giganto beast, but now it's going to recover half its health and you'll have to do it all over again!". FUN! (not!).

Hey and what about when the player keeps healing themselves to full health which is a virtual middle finger to the boss and his efforts to kill the player. Bosses are people too. Anyway I find that I actually need to give a lot of bosses healing abilities so they won't be too vulnerable to percentage based attacks. Other than this boss though. Healing is quite nerfed in my game.

Because the game is played by the player, not the digital construct that is an RPG boss? And the player needs to win to advance the plot and thus enjoy the game? Reason enough for you?

The player needs to heal because the PCs usually have less than 1/10 of a boss's HP each, and the player cannot afford to lose a character, as it results in greatly diminished damage output and survivability, and eventually a game over screen. Monsters are not people (dumbass), they are obstacles for the player to overcome, and they don't care if they're shot, immolated, decapitated, disintegrated, or erased from existence - they're just sprites with number attached. Furthermore, if a boss losess 99% of its HP chances are it will not only NOT be any less dangerous, but more.

If you want the boss to beat the player to a bloody pulp then make it cast a mass instant death spell in the first turn, I bet your game will be wildly popular.

If you're worrying about percentage-based attacks then a) don't give them to the player, b) make the boss invulnerable to them.

author=DE
If you want to make a boss fight longer (and for what reason I do not know, but let's say this is what you want) simply increase his HP and don't torture the player with this recovery bullshit.

What if I don't want the boss fight to last longer for everyone? Just people who don't know what to do.

A *good* boss battle is one where a player who does not know what to do LOSES THE GAME, not is punished by wasting his time staring at the screen feeling bored at this stupid game. A player who knows what to do simply wins.

author=DE
It's dumb because it's illogical, it's counter-intuitive, and it makes no sense - try taking a lethal poison and a sleeping pill at the same time, let's see if you'll magically wake up when the poison starts to take effect in time to take an antidote.

Really? Your using logic to prove your point about a video game? Whyyyyyyyy?

Using poison to counter sleep is not a new concept, it exists in games and makes perfect sense. It's done in FFxi. It's all inherit to the laws of the video game world; while asleep damage wakes you up and since poison causes damage it will wake you up.

Who pissed in your Lucky Charms this morning, geez u.u

Yeah, let's forget real life logic even in video games, it'll make them sooo much better. Like in that adventure games where you send your mouse to fetch you your wallet that's underneath the couch, instead of simply MOVING THE COUCH. Yeah, so much better!

Using poison to counter sleep is not a new concept, it exists in games and makes perfect sense.

Your forgot to include arguments in your post. Why does it make perfect sense? Because it's used in FF11? Yeah, great argument.

There is always a way to accommodate a concept and make it make sense in the context of your fictional universe. Say, you encounter a boss that emits pheromones or ultrasounds or whatever that make your party drowsy... and he kicks your ass (this is part of the story). Later on you're forced to fight the same boss and you know you will lose, but let's say the party finds out about a drug that makes one restless (or simply keeps one awake indefinitely), but it's such a strain on the body that it makes one extremely exhausted (which, in game terms, makes a character take damage). Before that battle the player can choose to make any or all characters take that medicine and become immune to the boss's special attack. A simple scenario that makes the boss something more interesting than a guy who casts MASS SLEEP, makes perfect sense, and is fluffy (i.e. fits the setting). Lots better than "cast Poison on yourself to make you wake up from the Sleep status! Why? Because that's what you do in Final Fantasy!". It's so fucking gamey, I hate this kind of strategy that only makes sense in the context of the games battle system and not... logic (I know you hate that word).

As for boss healing self, I agree, it can work, but requires some thought. For example, imagine a boss, say, a troll, that regenerates rapidly, but if you hit him with a certain spell it loses regeneration. Or a boss that casts healing on itself which you can neutralize by silencing/zombifying/reflecting him.

The reason why the OP's example sucks is because the OP doesn't understand the concept of motivation. It's too complex to elaborate on in this short post, but the main conclusion is this - the player needs to be rewarded for playing good, not punished for playing bad (or at all!). He needs to feel like he's making progress, by having a boss that heals himself you're punishing the player by making part of the progress he made meaningless. A boss with 2000 HP is better than a boss with 1000 HP that heals itself to full once. The boss with 2000 HP will go down once his HP's reach zero; the player knows this and this is his goal. Once he achieves it he feels sense of accomplishment. Every time he deals damage to the boss he is closer to his goal. With the boss with 1000 HP and healing the moment the boss heals the player feels cheated - all the damage he's done so far is neutralized and all the time and effort spent dealing that damage is wasted. There's no sense of achievement, there's sense of disappointment. It doesn't matter that both boss fights are essentially the same and take the same amount of time, what matters is how the player perceives them. In the second case the player's reward for reaching the goal (dealing 1000 damage) is a kick in the nuts and being moved back to the starting point so that he can reach the same goal AGAIN. Do I have to explain why the second boss is bad, and the first one is good?

author=PsychoFreaX
Well the idea is to poison yourself so that when he puts you to sleep, the damage from the poison will wake you. Also I just figured it should only take until he heals to almost full health before he attacks you again. Just to avoid bugs.

Though I'm really not sure about this being a first boss now because I would have to provide the players with a really overpowered spell already near the beginning of the game. But I can't have him too late when sleep prevention accessories become available or the battle will be too easy. Well as I said WIP. I'll figure it out.

Wow, that's REALLY smart, I love THAT kind of boss!