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Who is Lysander?
Holy crap, those shoulders. Is he wearing pads? Because I'm pretty sure that his right shoulder is much wider than his head, even accounting for perspective.
From this description, I don't see myself using Lysander much, just going off of what we're given. A breakdown of why:
- No ST healing past a certain point is a crippling problem. It forces you into a binary dilemma: One, use your MT heal like a ST heal, which means SP woes. Two, gamble, and potentially lose fights due to bad luck. Both of these are aggravating at best. The description makes me think that leveling him up to learn Media may make some boss fights at that point *harder*, because the majority of their damage is likely to be ST and therefore Media just tends to waste your SP. And Gaia Link exists on the main character, who you'll be using all the time, and it apparently lasts the entire battle. And all of his presented buffs work towards 'make one person target of everything and tough enough to take it,' which a ST healing situation. This is 'out of the party at the earliest opportunity' levels of bad. I cannot possibly hammer this home enough.
(Now, I know there's potential here with Gaia Link; just set it up on some other party member and suddenly Media is ticking twice on your tank. That's still costly as hell, though, and likely to be unnecessary. If it *is* necessary, and there's just no other way to get enough healing with the given tools, then a well-designed game will have someone else who can cast the Media, or you'll be at the point where using someone else isn't even an option.)
- Tactician would be "game-best" levels of great, but it has horrible, horrible synergy with his given syncs. If you're striking weaknesses consistently, then you've already discovered their weaknesses, and Data Dump probably isn't that useful to you. Additionally, if you're hitting weaknesses consistently, you're likely to be ending fights pretty quickly. Neither directly assists with that. (Data Dump does, but see point one.)
- His stats are going to make a difference here. In Personas 3 and 4, for example, Yukari and Yukiko had the best magic stats. They could heal and they could nuke, and while they lacked variety in either role, they had quite a bit of power. Does Lysander have that? If not, that's a problem. Even if he does, ST only? He'll be limited at best here.
- All of the mentioned buffs are trade-offs. Are they situationally useful? Yes, but not enough to redeem other factors that are lacking. And none of the ones presented help to end fights faster, only to make them easier to outlast. They don't add any new dimension to his character, they just deepen the already existing one, and the role in question is one I'm not fond of. And I've played SMT for ages, so buffs are typically in my "oh hell yes" list of wants in an RPG party.
Changeable Persona solve all of the aforementioned issues, but I think I'll be too turned off by him at that point to care much.
Harsh words aside, I'm enjoying reading the updates, and I'm quite looking forward to the game itself. SMT is my thing, as mentioned. Feel free to hit me up if you need a tester!
From this description, I don't see myself using Lysander much, just going off of what we're given. A breakdown of why:
- No ST healing past a certain point is a crippling problem. It forces you into a binary dilemma: One, use your MT heal like a ST heal, which means SP woes. Two, gamble, and potentially lose fights due to bad luck. Both of these are aggravating at best. The description makes me think that leveling him up to learn Media may make some boss fights at that point *harder*, because the majority of their damage is likely to be ST and therefore Media just tends to waste your SP. And Gaia Link exists on the main character, who you'll be using all the time, and it apparently lasts the entire battle. And all of his presented buffs work towards 'make one person target of everything and tough enough to take it,' which a ST healing situation. This is 'out of the party at the earliest opportunity' levels of bad. I cannot possibly hammer this home enough.
(Now, I know there's potential here with Gaia Link; just set it up on some other party member and suddenly Media is ticking twice on your tank. That's still costly as hell, though, and likely to be unnecessary. If it *is* necessary, and there's just no other way to get enough healing with the given tools, then a well-designed game will have someone else who can cast the Media, or you'll be at the point where using someone else isn't even an option.)
- Tactician would be "game-best" levels of great, but it has horrible, horrible synergy with his given syncs. If you're striking weaknesses consistently, then you've already discovered their weaknesses, and Data Dump probably isn't that useful to you. Additionally, if you're hitting weaknesses consistently, you're likely to be ending fights pretty quickly. Neither directly assists with that. (Data Dump does, but see point one.)
- His stats are going to make a difference here. In Personas 3 and 4, for example, Yukari and Yukiko had the best magic stats. They could heal and they could nuke, and while they lacked variety in either role, they had quite a bit of power. Does Lysander have that? If not, that's a problem. Even if he does, ST only? He'll be limited at best here.
- All of the mentioned buffs are trade-offs. Are they situationally useful? Yes, but not enough to redeem other factors that are lacking. And none of the ones presented help to end fights faster, only to make them easier to outlast. They don't add any new dimension to his character, they just deepen the already existing one, and the role in question is one I'm not fond of. And I've played SMT for ages, so buffs are typically in my "oh hell yes" list of wants in an RPG party.
Changeable Persona solve all of the aforementioned issues, but I think I'll be too turned off by him at that point to care much.
Harsh words aside, I'm enjoying reading the updates, and I'm quite looking forward to the game itself. SMT is my thing, as mentioned. Feel free to hit me up if you need a tester!
Preventing grind: Why? And how?
Hmm. I like this from a philosophical standpoint, but I'm not so sure that it will interact well with the skill sparking system you mentioned in a previous post. As the systems currently interact, fights will have two objectives:
1) Win the fight with a minimum of consumed resources.
2) Skill X should be used Y times so that you can progress towards learning Skill Z.
The problem is, if battles aren't repeatable, then objective 2 has to take priority against non-boss enemies; if you don't learn new skills, you're eventually going to hit a brick wall against harder enemies, and you don't have the luxury of going back to easier areas to grind out skill uses. (If you don't hit that brick wall without skills, then your game has no tactical element and point 1 is moot regardless.) So you end up having to balance the game around the expectation that the player is going to be grinding out skills, which I think is going to ultimately result in less satisfying battles.
I'd honestly just suggest a point-based skill tree. That allows you a great deal of control over what the player has access to while still allowing for customization and averting grinding. If you dislike grinding battles, why are you including grinding skills?
YMMV, of course.
1) Win the fight with a minimum of consumed resources.
2) Skill X should be used Y times so that you can progress towards learning Skill Z.
The problem is, if battles aren't repeatable, then objective 2 has to take priority against non-boss enemies; if you don't learn new skills, you're eventually going to hit a brick wall against harder enemies, and you don't have the luxury of going back to easier areas to grind out skill uses. (If you don't hit that brick wall without skills, then your game has no tactical element and point 1 is moot regardless.) So you end up having to balance the game around the expectation that the player is going to be grinding out skills, which I think is going to ultimately result in less satisfying battles.
I'd honestly just suggest a point-based skill tree. That allows you a great deal of control over what the player has access to while still allowing for customization and averting grinding. If you dislike grinding battles, why are you including grinding skills?
YMMV, of course.
Masterful Marlowe: Potent Magic with a Weak Frame
Marlowe... Hmm. Does damaging enemies break Sleep in this game? I think Arrest might be a bit of a balance issue waiting to happen. If immunity to it is common, then it's worthless and two of Marlowe's spells suffer. If things aren't immune to it regularly? Hoo boy. Free, highly accurate disabling status does bad things to games; see the original Shin Megami Tensei, where Bind and Charm destroy the game almost single-handedly.
Multiple enemies? Arrest the ones you're not fighting and burst them down one at a time. A single enemy? Any time you need a breather to buff or heal, Arrest. Even if damaging enemies causes them to break out of Sleep, manage to get Marlowe faster than the enemy and a damage dealer slower and they're stun-locked any turn they can't resist the status. Even if it doesn't succeed at any of the above, he's buffing himself while your allies build Burst, and then he can use that buff to blow things the hell up. Even if they resist Sleep, so long as he can get Pale Mist up, then he can shut down any single enemy reliably so not as they're not outright immune. There's even a stat you can raise to increase its hit chance!
I mean, it's an elegant design, and I like it; Arrest being good would make Marlowe very interesting due to its sheer utility, and status is incredibly underutilized in RPGs (in the hands of the player, anyway; enemies use it to annoy you just fine). I just think that Arrest is possibly frighteningly binary: The line between "worthless" and "best attack in the game" may just be whether or not they're immune.
(Marlowe's old group-sleep spell was good times in old V&V, the game's best "I don't want to deal with this right now" random encounter button. Easy to get, decently cheap, reliable.)
Outside of my Arrest concerns, two other thoughts:
1) I'm guessing Shield of Shalom doesn't void currently present statuses, judging by the description. Does it expire naturally? If it doesn't, damn, that's one hell of a reason to use him; Status Lock *and* Permanence.
2) If buffs/debuffs are additive in this system, Witness Protection's drawback is going to be incredibly easy to circumvent if any "increases healing received" buffs exist.
These blogs are fun. They push all of my RPG analysis buttons. I'm looking forward to more!
Multiple enemies? Arrest the ones you're not fighting and burst them down one at a time. A single enemy? Any time you need a breather to buff or heal, Arrest. Even if damaging enemies causes them to break out of Sleep, manage to get Marlowe faster than the enemy and a damage dealer slower and they're stun-locked any turn they can't resist the status. Even if it doesn't succeed at any of the above, he's buffing himself while your allies build Burst, and then he can use that buff to blow things the hell up. Even if they resist Sleep, so long as he can get Pale Mist up, then he can shut down any single enemy reliably so not as they're not outright immune. There's even a stat you can raise to increase its hit chance!
I mean, it's an elegant design, and I like it; Arrest being good would make Marlowe very interesting due to its sheer utility, and status is incredibly underutilized in RPGs (in the hands of the player, anyway; enemies use it to annoy you just fine). I just think that Arrest is possibly frighteningly binary: The line between "worthless" and "best attack in the game" may just be whether or not they're immune.
(Marlowe's old group-sleep spell was good times in old V&V, the game's best "I don't want to deal with this right now" random encounter button. Easy to get, decently cheap, reliable.)
Outside of my Arrest concerns, two other thoughts:
1) I'm guessing Shield of Shalom doesn't void currently present statuses, judging by the description. Does it expire naturally? If it doesn't, damn, that's one hell of a reason to use him; Status Lock *and* Permanence.
2) If buffs/debuffs are additive in this system, Witness Protection's drawback is going to be incredibly easy to circumvent if any "increases healing received" buffs exist.
These blogs are fun. They push all of my RPG analysis buttons. I'm looking forward to more!
James's Techniques: Lightbulbs
My main problem with the skill sets here is that they lack coherent internal themes. With this sort of incremental skill set, where gaining further access to the skills requires you use ones earlier in the sequence repeatedly, you want coherent themes so that a player can decide what they want from the character and specialize in trees appropriately. The first two to three skills in each tree should give me an idea of what the tree is about and what it's useful for at its higher levels.
In the Tales games, for instance, if you want better versions of your Demon Fang projectile, or another attack that does the many weaker hits of Sword Rain, you use Demon Fang or Sword Rain. In FF7, you get Fire 2 from the same materia that gives you Fire. And in Saga games, the weapons have small sub-specialties; Swords and Bows tend to have multi-target attacks, Staves have status debuffs, Axes and Spears are high DPS with few frills...
But here, your themes are all over the place; they seem more based on the flavor of the tree than the mechanics it uses. Martial is good - it's the debuff/status + damage tree, with a skill that complements that well. Ki and Dark sort of have buffing and sacrifice themes going. Sword is just all over the place. (Phoenix Wing smacks of 'well, I have this, where should it go? eh, here will work, I guess' design.)
I'd suggest running with the themes I identified.
Keep Martial as it is; the theme is good.
Make Ki the self-buffing set.
Make Sword the heavy general DPS; give it a strong single-hit attack (high defense enemies), a multi-hit attack (lower defense enemies), an attack-all skill (many enemies), the Quick Hit skill you currently have... Make it so it does one thing, but it can do so in many different ways for fighting different opponents. Depth not breadth.
Make Dark more the weird conditional set. Sacrifices for benefits, preventing enemies from taking certain actions, Ebon Defilement, maybe something that triggers based on dead allies... It's not as directly powerful as the others, but in the right situation it's more powerful. (You'll have to make learning higher levels require less uses here than other trees, though.)
Or run with completely different themes. The specifics don't matter, so long as the theme is well-chosen. Just *have* themes. Internally consistent philosophy makes a real difference.
In the Tales games, for instance, if you want better versions of your Demon Fang projectile, or another attack that does the many weaker hits of Sword Rain, you use Demon Fang or Sword Rain. In FF7, you get Fire 2 from the same materia that gives you Fire. And in Saga games, the weapons have small sub-specialties; Swords and Bows tend to have multi-target attacks, Staves have status debuffs, Axes and Spears are high DPS with few frills...
But here, your themes are all over the place; they seem more based on the flavor of the tree than the mechanics it uses. Martial is good - it's the debuff/status + damage tree, with a skill that complements that well. Ki and Dark sort of have buffing and sacrifice themes going. Sword is just all over the place. (Phoenix Wing smacks of 'well, I have this, where should it go? eh, here will work, I guess' design.)
I'd suggest running with the themes I identified.
Keep Martial as it is; the theme is good.
Make Ki the self-buffing set.
Make Sword the heavy general DPS; give it a strong single-hit attack (high defense enemies), a multi-hit attack (lower defense enemies), an attack-all skill (many enemies), the Quick Hit skill you currently have... Make it so it does one thing, but it can do so in many different ways for fighting different opponents. Depth not breadth.
Make Dark more the weird conditional set. Sacrifices for benefits, preventing enemies from taking certain actions, Ebon Defilement, maybe something that triggers based on dead allies... It's not as directly powerful as the others, but in the right situation it's more powerful. (You'll have to make learning higher levels require less uses here than other trees, though.)
Or run with completely different themes. The specifics don't matter, so long as the theme is well-chosen. Just *have* themes. Internally consistent philosophy makes a real difference.
Ordinary Ox: Straight-forward Tanking and Attacks
Ooh. I admit, I'm not too interested in Ox (be fast or gtfo, tia), but I like the Traits. Are there slots, or are they all strict always-on upgrades? Is there a progression where Trait A unlocks Trait B for purchase, or are they all available from the get-go?
I also like the idea of having few "small fry" enemies; if it's not a straight-out dungeon crawler, boss and mini-boss battles are where all the real game play is, so it's good to hear there's more focus there. (Of course, the original V&V was basically a dungeon crawler, what with its focus on conserving resources so you could maximize exploration before sleeping and ending the day. I liked that, too.)
I also like the idea of having few "small fry" enemies; if it's not a straight-out dungeon crawler, boss and mini-boss battles are where all the real game play is, so it's good to hear there's more focus there. (Of course, the original V&V was basically a dungeon crawler, what with its focus on conserving resources so you could maximize exploration before sleeping and ending the day. I liked that, too.)
Healbot Express: Convincing Players to Drop the Healer Chick
Oh, right, five-person party! And that's one of the details I liked seeing, too. I'll have to play around and find my fifth, then.
I see the tending towards "Use The Healer Because They Are The Healer" as something you design around. My feeling on balancing that: Make "The Healer" someone with a lot of healing power, and focus it on the reactive, while making a couple of secondary proactive healers. A reactive healer can work without a great deal of foresight, but they're weaker than the proactive healer, because the proactive healer generally does other things better.
A reactive healer has high-power heals, full party healing, and revival. Their role is to heal you to full even from near-death, to heal the entire party when you haven't been keeping people healthy, and to revive people when you really screw up. A proactive healer has weaker heals that they can cast faster and more often, and they often lack full-party healing or revival. If you don't screw up, then they're generally better, because healing is a secondary job and they're better at something else. (Notably, a good stock of items makes any fast character a powerful proactive healer.)
People gravitate towards the reactive healers, which is good, because they're more mistake-friendly, but don't mistake that tendency for a sign that they're inherently better.
Just my two cents as a veteran game-breaker and an amateur designer. I don't know how applicable it is to the big skill sets we're working with here (which I definitely like), though! Maybe there's something in there you can use.
I see the tending towards "Use The Healer Because They Are The Healer" as something you design around. My feeling on balancing that: Make "The Healer" someone with a lot of healing power, and focus it on the reactive, while making a couple of secondary proactive healers. A reactive healer can work without a great deal of foresight, but they're weaker than the proactive healer, because the proactive healer generally does other things better.
A reactive healer has high-power heals, full party healing, and revival. Their role is to heal you to full even from near-death, to heal the entire party when you haven't been keeping people healthy, and to revive people when you really screw up. A proactive healer has weaker heals that they can cast faster and more often, and they often lack full-party healing or revival. If you don't screw up, then they're generally better, because healing is a secondary job and they're better at something else. (Notably, a good stock of items makes any fast character a powerful proactive healer.)
People gravitate towards the reactive healers, which is good, because they're more mistake-friendly, but don't mistake that tendency for a sign that they're inherently better.
Just my two cents as a veteran game-breaker and an amateur designer. I don't know how applicable it is to the big skill sets we're working with here (which I definitely like), though! Maybe there's something in there you can use.
The BoFII:TFC(XP) Custom Sound Test Menu
I enjoy reading all of the updates, even if they're not particularly big ones. For what it's worth, I'd be happy if you continued updating at your current pace!
Healbot Express: Convincing Players to Drop the Healer Chick
To use a familiar game as an object lesson:
Lyla wasn't the best healer in V&V original, not by a long shot. That was the Wanderer. He was almost always faster, his heal was better and gave a great buff, and his abilities gave him considerable staying power even without items. I mean, hell, his best skill unlock gave him a party heal on the negative side; this both gave him a heal to use on each side and allowed you to shift Negative to healing duties and Positive to the attack ability you unlocked at the same time. He literally had everything you wanted from a healer, short of revival and a little more predictability.
Sure, Lyla got a party heal earlier, but that party heal was trash - expensive, not that powerful, and it slowed your actions. If anything, it was *underpowered*. I used her, but my party also included Telia and Elena: between the Wanderer's heals, Telia's heal buff effects, and Elena's minor regen ability and item lore, Lyla was the worst healer in the party at end game!
(She was there because Orbs were the second-best weapon in the game and she was the best with them, and because hey, even bad healing is still healing. Bows were the best. Work off of the same stat as speed, elements are useful and action abilities can circumvent them when they're a problem, they give you speed bonuses, the Cherub improves CHA for Telia... Damn.)
What makes a healer good:
- Speed
- Sustainability
- Power of heal
- Versatility in healing
Speed is most important. It doesn't matter if the heal is weak or if it's strictly ST so long as you're fast enough to cast it when and where it's needed. Sustainability matters just as much. And those were the areas Lyla lacked, compared to alternatives. I don't think that will greatly change.
So, yeah. For the love of everything holy and otherwise, please do not resort to artificial penalizing of the healer. Provide alternatives and it'll work itself out, at least for the players who aren't lazy about it. And it sounds like your game isn't exactly catering itself to them.
(Current party plan: Wanderer, Telia, Elena, Sybil. I figure that the first three will probably still have enough healing, and my parties tend to be fast and support-heavy.)
Lyla wasn't the best healer in V&V original, not by a long shot. That was the Wanderer. He was almost always faster, his heal was better and gave a great buff, and his abilities gave him considerable staying power even without items. I mean, hell, his best skill unlock gave him a party heal on the negative side; this both gave him a heal to use on each side and allowed you to shift Negative to healing duties and Positive to the attack ability you unlocked at the same time. He literally had everything you wanted from a healer, short of revival and a little more predictability.
Sure, Lyla got a party heal earlier, but that party heal was trash - expensive, not that powerful, and it slowed your actions. If anything, it was *underpowered*. I used her, but my party also included Telia and Elena: between the Wanderer's heals, Telia's heal buff effects, and Elena's minor regen ability and item lore, Lyla was the worst healer in the party at end game!
(She was there because Orbs were the second-best weapon in the game and she was the best with them, and because hey, even bad healing is still healing. Bows were the best. Work off of the same stat as speed, elements are useful and action abilities can circumvent them when they're a problem, they give you speed bonuses, the Cherub improves CHA for Telia... Damn.)
What makes a healer good:
- Speed
- Sustainability
- Power of heal
- Versatility in healing
Speed is most important. It doesn't matter if the heal is weak or if it's strictly ST so long as you're fast enough to cast it when and where it's needed. Sustainability matters just as much. And those were the areas Lyla lacked, compared to alternatives. I don't think that will greatly change.
So, yeah. For the love of everything holy and otherwise, please do not resort to artificial penalizing of the healer. Provide alternatives and it'll work itself out, at least for the players who aren't lazy about it. And it sounds like your game isn't exactly catering itself to them.
(Current party plan: Wanderer, Telia, Elena, Sybil. I figure that the first three will probably still have enough healing, and my parties tend to be fast and support-heavy.)
One sentence blog post
Out of curiosity, why did you add back the AP costs to the travel spells? I can think of several reasons you might decide that, but I'm interested in the specific rationale. (I'm assuming that you haven't added them back to the movelists of non-Ryu characters.)
Dragons use all of Ryu's AP. You can't exactly dial back the spell cost to leave enough AP for either utility spell. The others who had it don't have this problem. This is especially annoying in the case of Exit, which serves the same "oh shit button" functionality as the Dragons do: "I screwed up and I'm going to die, so I'm going to (kill these enemies/leave this dungeon)." And in the event that you don't auto-leave a dungeon area after killing a boss, there's also the possibility of you not using the Dragons as an anti-boss measure because you want to be able to Exit afterward without using AP items.
I mean, considering Bleu/Deis had both and she was pretty solidly the best character, I think this change means I'll be using the skills *less* in this version than I would in the original, because they're actually substantially less convenient for a big part of the game. Which seems like a problem when the change is a matter of accessibility. And even if you added them back to the others' skillsets, then the end result is me never using them on Ryu as soon as Ryu has dragons and anyone else can cast.
Dragons use all of Ryu's AP. You can't exactly dial back the spell cost to leave enough AP for either utility spell. The others who had it don't have this problem. This is especially annoying in the case of Exit, which serves the same "oh shit button" functionality as the Dragons do: "I screwed up and I'm going to die, so I'm going to (kill these enemies/leave this dungeon)." And in the event that you don't auto-leave a dungeon area after killing a boss, there's also the possibility of you not using the Dragons as an anti-boss measure because you want to be able to Exit afterward without using AP items.
I mean, considering Bleu/Deis had both and she was pretty solidly the best character, I think this change means I'll be using the skills *less* in this version than I would in the original, because they're actually substantially less convenient for a big part of the game. Which seems like a problem when the change is a matter of accessibility. And even if you added them back to the others' skillsets, then the end result is me never using them on Ryu as soon as Ryu has dragons and anyone else can cast.
Battle system updates and suggestions
My thinking on the physical reactions is that it effectively allows you to scale how extreme your character's build is, moving them one way or the other on a "accurate&weak" to "strong&inaccurate" scale. Seri can obviously go further on the "accurate" side than the "strong" side, since she can move on that scale on top of her natural character build, but if the enemy is particularly inevasive, she could adjust to do more damage. Similarly, if Vanquish is having a hard time hitting an enemy, then he can take a damage penalty for more consistency. It's not particularly interesting, though, so other ways are definitely preferential for balance.
Hmm. Ray's charge moves... One would definitely have to scale with remaining HP, doing more damage when he's closer to death, that's an obvious one. One that does more damage while he has a status, maybe? And then one that scales up with the number of unconscious party members. That's three abilities with a consistent theme that fit inside his character model, and there's probably room for more in that style. (And it also fits his occasional story tending towards "crouching moron hidden badass.") Make his decently powerful normally but especially powerful when the situation is bad.
Multi-hit sounds good for Blaise; since his crowd control ability is one of his selling points, a random-target multi-hit ability would be an interesting one. Potentially also one that does more damage if the enemy is buffed, or if they attacked him personally last round? (The last two going off of his in-story short temper.) But multi-hit sounds like the way to go for general purpose.
Laaik would probably be a good choice for a "does damage and heals self" Charge move. Maybe a "damage and buff self" move, kind of like an inverse of Curse? Moves that complement his "balanced offense and support" build by doing both.
If you implement Vel's transformation as an in-battle ability, why not make it so it only gives access to the character's skillset while keeping her stats? That makes it powerful but not excessively so, while cementing her role as "best overall support." If she has the ability to outright sub as another character, then she's a shoe-in unless the cost is really exceptional. (Two copies of end-game Seri or Auria? That would do horrible - if enjoyable! - things to balance.)
And yeah, I knew Blaise could equip the sidearms as well, I meant "the only character other than Blaise." I did forget about the Guest Star; it was part of the reason I ranked him highly, to think about it... They're excellent offensive items.
Hopefully this gives you an interesting idea or two!
Hmm. Ray's charge moves... One would definitely have to scale with remaining HP, doing more damage when he's closer to death, that's an obvious one. One that does more damage while he has a status, maybe? And then one that scales up with the number of unconscious party members. That's three abilities with a consistent theme that fit inside his character model, and there's probably room for more in that style. (And it also fits his occasional story tending towards "crouching moron hidden badass.") Make his decently powerful normally but especially powerful when the situation is bad.
Multi-hit sounds good for Blaise; since his crowd control ability is one of his selling points, a random-target multi-hit ability would be an interesting one. Potentially also one that does more damage if the enemy is buffed, or if they attacked him personally last round? (The last two going off of his in-story short temper.) But multi-hit sounds like the way to go for general purpose.
Laaik would probably be a good choice for a "does damage and heals self" Charge move. Maybe a "damage and buff self" move, kind of like an inverse of Curse? Moves that complement his "balanced offense and support" build by doing both.
If you implement Vel's transformation as an in-battle ability, why not make it so it only gives access to the character's skillset while keeping her stats? That makes it powerful but not excessively so, while cementing her role as "best overall support." If she has the ability to outright sub as another character, then she's a shoe-in unless the cost is really exceptional. (Two copies of end-game Seri or Auria? That would do horrible - if enjoyable! - things to balance.)
And yeah, I knew Blaise could equip the sidearms as well, I meant "the only character other than Blaise." I did forget about the Guest Star; it was part of the reason I ranked him highly, to think about it... They're excellent offensive items.
Hopefully this gives you an interesting idea or two!
Games - Tester
Games - Other
