ENDERX'S PROFILE

One thing I've played with on this topic - why does an elemental weakness have to be directly related to HP? Corfaisus gave one example above - having an element-based creature being susceptible to an opposing element status effect. Similar logic could be carried out otherwise. I've discovered that, for me at least, it helps to consider the elemental field as a space of planes, rather than a grid of lines.

My own take is, for lack of a better phrasing, elemental 'allergies' on characters and monsters. Independant of damage (or healing if absorbed), the attack element could trigger other effects. A simple example: Perhaps have a monster (or hero, if you so desire) who absorbs water attacks - but also gets put into one or more negative status effects by them, irrespective of whether the attack delivered a status or not? Or the converse - a creature that took extra damage, but also gained a positive status boost, from some element.

Another idea I've been playing with for this is field element - I've seen other games that do this as well. Even Pokemon has a few variants - harsh sunlight (Fire attacks double in power, grass-type solarbeam loses its charge time requirement, water power weakens) and rain (fire attacks weaken, water strengthens, Thunder hits perfect accuracy barring blocking moves) come to mind.

Unless you're actually using Jan, Ken, and Pon as your elements, though, it's generally a good idea to provide something to enhance the elemental rock-paper-scissors most games throw forward.

My own preference for this would be support skills - add (or remove) special skills that take advantage of each other's abilities based on the relationship stat.

post=204757
Okay. Have fun recoloring your bears as frogs or something.

Um, no, the purpose to recoloring in an RPG is more properly compared to recoloring your 'bear' sprite so that the black (Black Bear) version becomes the yellowy-white one (Polar Bear) becomes the dark brown one (Grizzly of Doom), etc.

The purpose of using recolors is to tie together different types of enemies into some form (or forms) of logical unit. Unless your world's frogs have a tendency to bear fur, are omnivorous, and simply sleep out rather than truly hibernate during the winter (oh, and are mammalian/beast instead of amphibian), then there is no such tie, and your comparison fails even if taken as reductio ad absurdem.

@Tardis:
That's actually correct grammar. 'The enemy' can be singular or plural, and that battle did have multiple individual enemies in it.

I've posted this on another forum, but it's valid here, so-

My preference for that kind of thing is dealing with Binary Status Effects and their variants.

A basic Binary status effect is really a set of three effects, as follows:
Effect X might be a weak attack down (10% decrease) effect.
Effect Y would be something similar targeting defense.
Individually, these two effects aren't very powerful, but...

When both Effect X and Effect Y are on a single battler, they get replaced (via either scripting or eventing) with Effect XY - in this sample condition, a case where both attack and defense values, instead of the weak 10% drop, get hit for 50%, 75%, even ~100% (depending on personal tastes).

Subsets of the binary effects are catalytic effects, metabolic effects, and anaphylactic effects for the seriously vicious.

Catalytic effects are binary effects where one state is 'ordinary' and the other is designed solely to hype it up (Poison(5%) + Miasma(No Effect) = > Poison(25%): turn a 5% HPDmg per turn poison effect into a 25% HPDmg per turn poison effect)

Metabolic effects are binary effects where one of the components is a normally helpful one, but the cumulative effect is harmful - or where a second harmful effect partially cancels the first one out. That Poison(5%) example above, in a metabolic pair, might be mixed with Haste(AgiX2) to yield a Poison(10%), or mixed with Slow(Agi/2) to yield a Poison(3%)

Anaphylactic effects should be used with care and probably only in specific cases - an anaphylactic effect is one where, regardless of what the original two effects were, the 'cumulative' effect is Instant KO/Death regardless of HP...or normal resistances or immunities to such conditions.