CRYSTALGATE'S PROFILE

That makes Amalie's tanking easy to use again. Even better, it should get even more effective if having the other characters spend their sp reduces their chances of being targeted instead of Amalie.

Something interesting about punishing bad playstyles, it can come of as poor balance. I recall back when the optimal strategy was to stack three Guerilla Vests on all characters, that I found the Chain Mail with Mia and noticed, without even trying it on, that it was complete garbage. I thought it was poor balancing, as in the armor was made underpowered, but you explained that it was on purpose, Mia is not supposed to be good with heavy armor.

Anyway, the reverse targeting algorithm and lowered damage reduction does seem like an improvement, but I'm curious to see how it holds up compared to the old subtractive SP.

Often, the idea is that the character is forced into the hero's journey due to the circumstances. This is not always the case of course.

I do tend to go with young adults as I like to use heroes who needs to learn the necessary skills and think young adults work best for that. Usually, they are for one or another reason still rather trained in a skill needed for the adventure, like a squire nearing knighthood or a mage apprentice. I have a difficult time buying into a farmboy becoming the hero, although in reality nobody can become the type of hero we see in fiction.

I'm playing Bloodborne for the first time. I'm doing a skill build and my weapons of choice so far are Threaded Cane and Rifle Spear. Between the Cane's range and Rifle Spear's charge attack, I can cheese over half of the enemies.

The game is awesome so far. I'm currently at the forbidden woods.

Why is Arthur a farmboy if his father is not just a knight, but a famous one even? Shouldn't he be a Page? If a man turns out to be an excellent knight, chance is the people in power will bet on his sons (at least the oldest one) also becoming at least good knights. Is it even important to the story that Arthur is a farmboy?

In case you're open for changing that part, traditionally is goes like following: Page at 7, Squire at 14 and Knight at 21. Your setting does of course not need to follow those steps.

Problem 1:
A lot of the problems can be solved by just not causing them. If you don't want the story to be too angsty, paranoid and depressing, then don't make it so. Likewise, while you can't get away from the horrors of war in your story, you don't need to gorge on them. Most important, you don't need to preach.

Problem 2:
This problem is related to a contradiction that occurs when people put a modern armchair interpretation of chivalry and fighting with honor into a setting where people actually fight in deadly battles. In short, knights supposedly were chivalric and fought with honor and that's true, but it was according to that time's idea of chivalry and honor, not the modern interpretation.

Chivalry primarily meant being a good knight and fighting with honor meant bringing victory to your lord. For example, fleeing from battle before your commander orders a retreat is dishonorable since it can both endanger your comrades in arms and hurt your lord's war effort. However, the idea that knights would not attack an enemy in the back is complete bollocks. As a rule of thumb, a soldier's code is for the benefit of his lord and comrades in arms, not for his enemies. The code will include how to behave in times of peace as well since misbehaving soldiers can cause great damage to the society, but it will certainly not instruct the soldier to be inefficient in battle.

Chivalry is not a dying art in battle, it just wasn't what people think it was.

If Arthur refuses to kill and even hurt his enemies, he cannot feasible defeat them. Usually, the author has to writer's fiat in a way for it to work for the heroes. I'm thinking of Ys VII and VIII where the world threatening villains had to kill the corrupt politician villains because the heroes just wouldn't do that.

The only suggestion I have here without access to more information is for you to dial back on his pacifism.

When it comes to the attack command, I'm in the opinion that it's not about making it useful, rather it's about not obsoleting it in the first place. I think that for a lot of games it's useful to remove it altogether, but not having it left in but obsoleted.

When the attack command is obsoleted, that's because the characters have other skills available which are both stronger than the attack command and spamable. However, if that happens, you have actually made something worse than attack spam. Now the player spams something else, but that something else is less convenient. The attack command is typically free and fastest to use. A player spamming "Crosscut" instead of attack has to do more menu navigating and occasionally even more menuing to deal with the SP/MP cost, assuming the skill has a price. So you have a system that is equally boring, but more annoying to use than attack spam. Ideally, the characters should not spam the same command over and over, but if there is spamming, it's best it's attack since that one is the most convenient to use.

One way to not obsolete the attack command is to follow one of Red_Nova's suggestion and make skills have other effects than more damage. You can have one skill that deals the same damage as attack, but also stuns an enemy and another that draws enemy aggro towards you. Later the player can even learn a skill that both stuns an enemy and draws aggro, very useful since a character gets to tank, but also disable the enemy you don't want to attack that character. For example, if you have a character with high defense do the tanking, a mage enemy or an enemy that uses defense reducing attacks is probably one that you want to disable.

Another way is to give the characters skills that are stronger than attack, but cannot be spammed. You need a way for the player to still dare use them outside of boss battles. Something like binding then to the VX Ace TP system and not have TP restoring consumables may work. The fact that TP keeps replenishing decreases the feeling that you have to conserve the TP for bosses while still being a limitation to the skill uses. Binding the skills to the MP/SP system rarely works though. Typically the cost will either be so affordable the player can just spam the skills with impunity (other than the annoyance of occasionally popping some ethers) meaning you now obsoleted attack, or it's so prohibitive the player will conserve it for bosses, meaning you can just remove the skill altogether and reduce boss HP a bit to compensate.

As for healers, who says they have to deal crap damage with attack? You can let them deal say 60% or so of the fighter and their attack will be useful. If the fighter, other than dealing 67% more damage, also has more HP, defense and skills with extra effects like stun, then the fighter will remain a much better fighter.

When it comes to defense, I think it's harder with the rules in this topic. You are giving up attacking for taking less damage. You have to attack in order to win, so defending is usually only useful if the battles gives you a time where doing so is more useful than usual. But there should be ways to change defense to make such situation easier though.

One thing I think you should not do is to make defending restore MP or HP unless said resources are replenished after battles. Usually, either the effect is unneeded and defense is still ignored, or the effect is needed and the player leaves one enemy alive and then spams defense before killing it. A good example of a game where both happened is Legend of Dragoon. At the beginning of the game, I used the "leave one enemy alive" strat. Then, once I got an accessory which replenished MP, I gave it to a healer and forgot that defending even existed.

One game that made defending useful is Seventh Saga. In that game, defending not only halves damage, but also makes your attack 1.5 times as strong the next turn, which coupled with a subtractive defense system means you usually do about twice the damage. However, that combo was so powerful it became the default strategy for physical attackers when facing hard enemies. Defend -> Attack -> Defend -> Attack -> Defend -> Attack and so on.

So I'd propose a boost to defense that is more situational rather than universally good. For example, instead of boosting attack, it could set up a counter move that only triggers under the right conditions, ideally conditions that the player can also set up with good tactics. Or you can make it so that when you defend, you get to choose a character as target. The character who defended will also protect the target from attacks. Heck, you can combine the ideas and make it so that if the defender chooses another character, it protects that character and if it chooses itself, it sets up a counter move.

Then you get to the point where you have to look at enemy behavior and other factors outside this topic.