PROTECT, SHELL, AND MORE IN RM2K3

Make a protect status that actually causes half damage, which "double defense" doesn't do.

  • LockeZ
  • 11/18/2010 02:32 PM
  • 15937 views
So here's the problem: the defense formulas in RM2K3 are kind of lame, and status effects are limited to halving or doubling stats. Doubling the player's defense stat doesn't halve the physical damage they take. Halving an enemy's attack power also doesn't halve the damage the player takes. Here's why.

The formula for physical damage from a normal attack is:

Damage = Att/2 - Def/4

If you make a physical skill, you can set it to be a percentage of this. So if you set a skill to be 60% physical, the formula becomes:

Damage = (Att/2 - Def/4) * 0.6

In skills, you can also add a flat number to this damage. This number is not affected by anything at all. So if you make a skill that's 60% physical and has a damage value of 300, the formula becomes:

Damage = 300 + ((Att/2 - Def/4) * 0.6)


Magical skills work the same way, but the base formula is different. The base formula for magic skills is:

Damage = Mag/4 - Mag/8

The fact that the magic stat only has half as big of an effect is designed to make up for the fact that it acts as both magical attack and magical defense.

If you actually want someone to take half or double damage, you can't use status effects. You can't use the defense, attack, or magic stats at all. You have to use elements.

Now that I've explained the problem, I'll explain the solution.

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RM2K and RM2K3 use two types of elements: "weapon" elements and "magic" elements. The difference is that if a skill has a certain weapon element, then for a character to use that skill, the character's equipped weapon must also have the same element.

The point of using weapon elements is this: If an attack or skill has multiple magic elements, only the highest number among those magic elements is used. If an attack or skill has multiple weapon elements, only the highest number among those weapon elements is used. The highest magic and weapon elements are multiplied together.

So imagine a skill is fire, ice, and sword elemental, and fire and ice are magic elements while sword is a weapon element. The target takes 150% damage from fire, 0% damage from ice, and 50% damage from sword. But fire and ice are both magic elements, so only the higher one - fire - is used. The fact that the target is immune to ice is totally ignored. Fire and sword elements are multiplied together, and the target takes 75% damage from the attack.

OK, now that I've explained it, let's move on to the crazy hack.

Stuff to do on the "attributes" page of your database:
- Make sure all your existing standard elements are magic elements. Fire, ice, lightning, etc. should all be magic elements. The percentages on these can be whatever you want.
- Add another magic element: non-elemental. Every skill that's not another element should be non-elemental. Make all five of the percentages on it be 100%.
- Add three weapon elements: Physical, Magical, and WeapnFix.
- The percentages on Physical and Magical should be, from top to bottom: 0, 100, 100, 70, 70. The 70% is the amount of damage that a protected or shelled character will take. If you think that's too high or too low, adjust accordingly.
- The percentages on WeapnFix should all be 100.
- Add two more magic elements, Deprotct and Deshell.
- The percentages on both of these should be, from top to bottom: 130, 130, 0, 0, 0. The 130% is the amount of damage that a deprotected or deshelled character will take. If you think that's too high or too low, adjust accordingly.
- If you want to actually use weapon elements the way God intended, to limit the skills players can use depending on their equipped weapon, you'll need to add additional weapon elements for each type of weapon. Make sure all their percentages are 100 or higher. You won't be able to make enemies that resist certain weapon types, sorry, but you can make them weak to certain weapon types.

Stuff to do to equipment:
- Every weapon needs to have all three weapon elements. Physical, Magical, and WeapnFix.
- Every weapon also needs to have the Deprotect element.
- If you want a weapon to do elemental damage, like a fire sword, you can give it a magical element like fire no problem. Otherwise, give all your weapons the non-elemental element.
- If you want to actually use weapon elements the way God intended, to limit the skills players can use depending on their equipped weapon, give weapons the weapon elements you want.

Stuff to do to monsters:
- If you want a monster to be naturally immune to physical attacks, give it A resistance to physical.
- If you want a monster to be naturally immune to magical attacks, give it A resistance to magical.
- If you want a monster to be immune to deprotect, give it D or E resistance to deprotct.
- If you want a monster to be immune to deshell, give it D or E resistance to deshell.
- Otherwise, all monsters should have C resistance to all the weird elements we made.
- Monsters can have whatever resistance you want to the "normal" elements (fire, ice, etc.). If you want a monster to be weak to fire, make it weak to fire. It'll work normally.

Stuff to do to damage spells:
- Every magic spell should have three elements. The first two are magical and deshell. The third one is either the spell's real element (fire, ice, etc.) or non-elemental if the spell doesn't do elemental damage.
- Every physical skill should have three elements. The first two are physical and deprotect. The third one is either the skill's real element (fire, ice, etc.) or non-elemental if the skill doesn't do elemental damage.
- If you want to actually use weapon elements the way God intended, to limit the skills players can use depending on their equipped weapon, give these skills the weapon elements you want.

Creating Protect, shell, deprotect, and deshell spells:
- Make a spell called Protect that increases resistance to physical elemental.
- Make a spell called Shell that increases resistance to magical elemental.
- Make a spell called Deprotect that decreases resistance to deprotct elemental.
- Make a spell called Deshell that decreases resistance to deshell elemental.
- Make a spell called Armor Buster that does damage. Give it two elements: deprotct and non-elemental. Make it decrease resistance to these elements. This spell is now a version of Deprotect that also does damage.
- Make a spell called Faith Buster that does damage. Give it two elements: deshell and non-elemental. Make it decrease resistance to these elements. This spell is now a version of Deshell that also does damage.

Posts

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This looks quite interesting, but I've also done some testing in my game in rm2k3, the protect and shell spells/conditions actually do work, somewhat. I cast protect on a character (making sure it raises the intelligence stat of course, since the intelligence and defense stats were reversed for some weird reason in the conditions tab, so the right stat actually gets raised), and the damage does decrease from physical enemy attacks, although slightly. I remember an attack that did 121 damage to a character does about 90~ The shell doesn't do much to actually reduce damage from spells, but I have noticed a difference in spell damage on those you cast. Again, its a slight change like above, but its there. You way does sound like it'll work, but I like having enemies have resistances to various weapons as well as weaknesses, but you said I wouldn't be able to do that with this system. It kind of defeats the purpose of having different classes with different weapons having you to utilize your members for their weapons for certain enemies.
This is a pretty good tutorial, but all of this is assuming "normal" elemental damage is 100%. If you're using higher numbers (like 200% for attacks or 400% for magic), this probably wouldn't work.

EDIT: Also, with your elemental setup, you can only use Protect and Shell once; you can't use them to counter Deprotect/Deshell. And why, why, why do Protect and Deprotect not share the same element?
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Good questions.

Darkflamewolf:
Yes, doubling the defense stat reduces damage. But not by any sort of useful, standardized amount. Take a look at the defense formula I listed at the top of the guide: Damage = Att/2 - Def/4.

This means that if you have 100 attack power and the enemy has 16 defense power, you will do 46 damage normally, 48 damage with a half defense effect, and 42 damage with double defense effect. Meanwhile, if you have 200 attack power and the enemy has 200 defense power, you will do 50 damage normally, 75 damage with a half defense effect, and 0 damage with a double defense effect. It's pretty awful, thus why I came up with this alternate method.

As for the weaknesses to weapon elements, making an enemy weak to everything but blunt element is the same as making it resistant to blunt element. It's not like I'm imposing a restriction on how you can build your enemies; just a restriction on the way you handle the technical details.

mirageman613:
If you want "normal" elemental damage to be a higher number, you need simply increase the numbers. Either double the numbers of all the weapon elements, or double the numbers of all the magic elements. That was easy, right?

The reason they don't share the same element is actually a technical reason. It would be nice if they could, but then they wouldn't work. Since your characters' weapons have to have all the weapon elements attached to them, combining the buff and debuff elements would mean that your normal attacks do extra damage to enemies with deshell. So deshell has to be a magic element, and deprotect has to work the same way so they match. So yes, as a side-effect, this means that protect and deprotect work independently instead of undoing each-other. RM2K3 isn't perfect.
It's been a while since I've posted here, but I also have found another problem with this method.
author=LockeZ
The fact that the magic stat only has half as big of an effect is designed to make up for the fact that it acts as both magical attack and magical defense.
No. Just no. The magic stat should be worth as much as the physical stats (Attack and Defense, if you were wondering). That way, the mages of any given game would actually be able to keep up with the physical fighters in terms of damage output.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Yeah, I know. I wasn't saying that making it half as effective was a good idea. Just stating a fact: this is how RPG Maker 2000 and 2003 calculate damage, and "this one stat controls both offense and defense" is Enterbrain's official reason for why the magic stat works that way.
I ~think~ it'd be nice to note in-tutorial (I don't know if there's an edit feature for tutorials) that, for magicks to work properly, it would be wise to make their effect rates double as big as phys. effect rates (so that the formula becomes (mag/4 - mag/8)*2 ) and to halve base power on the database. Otherwise I absolutely love and adore this tutorial and I think you are god for doing this. Yes I am that grateful.

EDIT: Doubling MAG would make weapons do double damage too. So in such a case you'd have to actually leave magic the same but do a magical version for every Magic element you have.

So it'd make

Phys Fire
Mag. Fire
etc.
(and of course non-elemental versions for both magic and physical Non-Elemental)
In elemental weapons & phys skills you'd tick phys. while in magic you'd tick mag. elementals. This further doubles the ammount of Attributes in the database but the player won't see so yeah, this allows for a much cooler approach to Magic within the DBS.

I... I actually made it go as far as 1000% being the "normal" damage output for magic.

Now that I think of it, physical attacks should be halved due to the Deprotect status, shan't they?
I mean, 100 (physical) + 0(deprotect) / 2 = 50% power, ain't I right?
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Looking back at this tutorial, it'd probably work a little more cleanly if you gave every non-elemental weapon the "non-elemental" element as well. So I'm adding that to the tutorial. That'll keep non-elemental weapons from doing, uh, either half or zero damage, depending on shenanigans.

If it bothers you that raising your magic stat only has half as much of an effect on your damage output as raising your attack stat, there are multiple ways to fix that. I'm a fan of just handing out twice as many stat points to mages, but your idea of making twice as many magic-type elements works also.
I think it looks ugly to straight out double the mage's stat points, since the player feels the difference =D
Editing the elements results in a change in the battle formulae, wich feels a lot nicer than opening the status screen and:

ATK 12
MAG 192834792387
DEF 13
AGI 10

And the non-elemental added to weapon really does fix it, why thank you =D
I never thought meddling with elements could be this exciting, hahah.
Also, do element resistance / weakness stack? Such as casting Fire Wall twice would take my Res rank down from C to E?
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
In-battle buffs and debuffs will only move a character's elemental resistance a maximum of one step away from where it started the battle at. (My method of giving monsters physical or magical immunity relies on this fact.)
Oh, good, I was wondering this. Then it explains so. Wich means that it's likely that there are no bugs left in this system ^^ <3
Okay wait....so what if you came into battle with a piece of armor that pure Fire Damage from C to D on resistance. But then you buffed up, would it then put it from D to E and thus absorb fire damage?
author=Darkflamewolf
Okay wait....so what if you came into battle with a piece of armor that pure Fire Damage from C to D on resistance. But then you buffed up, would it then put it from D to E and thus absorb fire damage?
Yes, it would. Any given character's resistance to an element is considered as such:

actual resistance = character's base resistance + resistance given from armor*

*Note: I think armor resistances only apply once (e.g. if a character with C resistance to Fire wears two items that grant resistance to Fire, then the character's Fire resistance only goes from C to D.)

EDIT: So maybe this info may or may not actually be related to your question, but I hope it was still nice to know anyways.
Yeah...so doubling up on resist armor isn't really going to help you.
author=Darkflamewolf
Yeah...so doubling up on resist armor isn't really going to help you.
Or screw up the code =D
One error here, only four of the nonelement should be 100%. The last should be 0%, so you can make puzzle enemies that are only weak to a certain element. Also, deprotect is a horrible idea. There is no way to have some enemies resist it, so EVERY enemy is vulnerable (game breaking). The only ones that should be able to use this stuff is enemies.

Forever's End had a number of armor break enemies, which used switches or something. After fiddling around with it awhile, I arrived on this thing.

Make an enemy that is immune to all but like one element (or make a Armor Break status, as you say, but don't lower immunity). Next make a condition Monster HP is 1-99 (in other words, when you get damaged). You can do this in the battle events or the monsters itself. Anyway, you Transform Monster to one with weakened resistance. This helps a bit for monster customization.



This is actually very helpful to me. I'm trying to create a CBS for Dragon Quest + and these algorithms just made my life a bit easier. Thanks.
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