SHOGUNGARI'S PROFILE

I'm currently working on the first boss of the game, who has minions that can cause AOE sleep with one of their skills. Sleep in my game is what you'd think it is- all movement is halted until the afflicted character is attacked, which causes the effect to be removed. They also recover a little bit of HP while in this condition.

However, when I try the battle out and both my characters are hit with the condition, I get an instant game over. Even when the characters are at full health, if they both get sleeped, the game acts like they both died. I'm trying to figure out why it's doing this, I even added a second recovery condition that causes sleep to go away after 5 turns or something. But it still treats this like death. Here's a screenshot of the condition in question the way I had it intended:

http://imgur.com/AbDDa52


I'm sure it's something really simple, but I can't figure out. Does the game count any situation when the player is unable to move any character, even when there's a way to recover, a Game Over? If so, is there a way to make it so only death is a game over and not other conditions directly?

Edit: This also seems to occur with the Stun condition, which causes no action for one turn in battle. This leads me to believe the game considers "no action" for anyone in the party an instant game over, which doesn't make sense to me. What also doesn't make sense is poison causes damage each turn taken by anyone in the battle, but stun doesn't go away at all, even if you set it to go away after a single turn. How does the game decide what a "turn" is?

I'm currently working on a small project in my spare time using RPG Maker 2k3. However, I've run into a problem with two events I really want in the game but can't figure out. The first is more difficult to describe so I'll start with that:

One of the characters the player uses is supposed to become more and more outclassed as the game goes on by her allies. In a particular battle she gets a major power upgrade and becomes just as powerful as her allies if not moreso. I had wanted the character herself to be statistically inferior to her allies so the player will actually feel she's not strong enough as opposed to her just saying so. The problem is I can't figure out how to do that in the battle she's supposed to get her upgrade. The idea I had was to create two separate Heroes in the database with identical appearances but one with better stats and skills, and mid-battle have her switch to her better self, if that makes any sense. I can't do this because I can't figure out how to keep the equipment she currently has equipped. I can equip specific pieces of gear to her, but I can't assume the player will even have those pieces of equipment. I don't want to add brand new equipment either because the player will wonder where it came from. I also don't want to add stuff like classes and titles because no other character uses them- there's no need. For this one character to have a class while everyone else doesn't will become suspicious, and to add repetitive classes when it's obvious what each character is meant to represent just means more work for me that could be avoided.

A friend suggested I force the player to equip a specific item to her that can be replaced when she's switched out for her superior self. In the context of the story it makes perfect sense- around this time she starts to feel like a burden to the team so she'd be willing to do this to prove otherwise. However this means she wouldn't be at full power for the second half of the battle so the player won't feel like she's actually gotten stronger. It's a serious case of "Do, don't show". Is there a way to store the current equipment of a character and to equip them to another version of said character mid battle? Assume the gear is equippable for both.


The second question's easier, but I'm still stumped. I had intended to make the final boss difficult by adding five invisible enemies to represent the various parts of the boss that can be targeted (as in, assuming the boss is a giant dragon that covers half the screen, his head, claws, feet, and body can all be selected to attack and all have separate HP meters and attack sets). What I had hoped would happen would be to have the main boss- the body- be invincible until the other parts of his body are destroyed. I had also hoped each part would regenerate to full health, but that's just extra. If the boss can't be made invincible (at least can't be selected in battle) until specific enemies are defeated, then is there a way to make the boss remain on the screen until all enemies have been destroyed, but with no way to target him directly? That way when the main sprite dies the player won't wonder why they're selecting empty space.

I apologize if I'm asking for a lot. I'm trying to work on work-arounds for both of these problems but so far nothing comes up that beats these particular methods. The first example could easily be worked around by changing her class, but I really don't want to add classes into the game when there's only four characters. Especially when one class is "pirate cleric". If there's any way to achieve either of them, I'd really like to know. Thank you.


Edit: scratch the first question, I think I found a better scenario that takes care of this problem. Still stumped on the final boss thing though.