LIGHTNINGLORD2'S PROFILE

On optional challenges - First, there's a thing called the Oberoni Fallacy which states that a ruling is still bad even if it is optional or can be removed. It shouldn't need to be removed if it were intact. Still, I'm fond of gameplay altering settings that can provide greater or different kinds of challenges.

On combat vs. exploration - The simplest way to ensure more exploration would be to portion the dungeon into more areas/maps/regions etc. which have different encounter tables. Another is to simply make more bosses - World of Warcraft has 4+ bosses even in the lowest level instances. Beating bosses for dungeon loot rather than collecting treasure chests is both more challenging and more satisfactory. Not to mention WoW doesn't let you get xp on mobs 5 or more levels below you.

I've said this on page 1 already, but there's one thing you can do in turn based games that you'd be hard pressed to get done right in a real-time game system, which is micromanagement. Handling 4 characters in as real-time environment with unique stats, equipment and skills is already pretty daunting in real-time even with a pause function, but it surely will become nigh impossible if you have to control 15+ at once. Yet Fire Emblem, Advance Wars and Battle for Wesnoth can handle this amount (and more!) perfectly well.

author=Shinan

author=Zachary_Braun
It should be noted that the random encounter is not a technical limitation at all, seeing as to how it originated in an environment completely devoid of technical limitations: the tabletop RPG.

Though let's be honest tabletop random encounters are also incredibly outdated.

I'd agree that handcrafted encounters are not only more fun to players for the most part, it's also much more fun to design as a DM than filling up encounter tables (and also much easier). Randomness used sparingly can greatly spice up otherwise mediocre encounters, though (what if that orc's battleaxe turns out to be a +2 Two-hand axe of Inferno? How about the forest where you fight off a wolfpack has a bunch of traps set by hunters or fey?).

PSA: Menu-based combat and Turn-based combat are two different things. Kingdom Hearts is the former but not the latter, while Hearthstone is the latter but not the former.

Still, discussing turn-based gameplay is better for another topic.

First of all, there's nothing wrong with taking away player control - enemy behavior, hazard placement, hit stun, NPC actions, fundamental forces such as gravity etc. are all things the player has no control over. The problem with randomized things is that in the above examples, the player is able to read these uncontrolled properties and can play around them.

I really do agree that the fundamental problem is not the encounter method, but rather combat itself. Many old school RPGs give you far too few options and don't give the enemies anything interesting either, meaning that combat is almost entirely determined by stats alone.

I'd rather not use the subtractive formula for calculating hit rates - having too high AGI can easily make your character become impossible to hit! Instead, you could use (self.agi+10)/(user.agi+10) as a multiplier to add to the hit rate. It makes a difference depending on whose AGI is higher and prevents AGI stacking from going out of control. The +10 is there to prevent an advantage at low levels from being too severe.