im making a turn based rpg but i dont have any engaging mechanicsi have 4 stances, in each stance you can do one secondary effect, fire stance does a timed attack, water stance does a parry, you do that to get an orb of that elementi have skills that move you into those stances, you use mana for the skill and it changes your stancei have a skill that you can only use in a single stance, you use the orbs for thosei dont know how to make it fun. tell me mechanics and i'll just add them to my game. honestly just tell me the funnest turn based rpg game youve played and i'll steal mechanics from it. im using godot.
>>738486481There needs to be at least 1 status effect that fucks with that system. One that locks you into one stance. One that makes you randomly shift stances. One that makes orbs get pooped from the wrong stances.
>>738486481So you have a system where players have to make decisions to affect their abilities in later turns. This means your players will be thinking at least one move ahead. You can focus on that aspect by giving the player "tells" about enemies (e.g. Fire golem is weak to water), and use multiple enemies at once so the player has to figure out an ideal "order" to deal with them, e.g. who to attack first, and with what.This is pretty standard of turn based games but the mechanics you describe seem unique enough to start working from there. Maybe add more stances, or fusion stances, whatever. But focus on making the ideal order of attack a puzzle that the player has to figure out with each battle.
>>738487174im planning on having it be that if you have 5 orbs of the same color you get stunned and lose a turn + orbs to encourage either using skills or changing stances, but maybe actual status effects could do do something similar (or "elemental lock" of a stance)>>738487661i wanted some degree of this but with enemies like "goblin" or "snake" just being defaulted to "earth" then rock paper scissoring it seemed a little plain, i wanted the stance trees to express ideas like fire=aggression water=reaction and you use the tool you want for the situation, but then here i am asking on /v/ since i cant make it really work that well
>>738486481>funnest turn based rpg mechanics DOS2 surface effects and AP systemIf it’s not too much of a design shift, add in some positioning elements. Also, how does initiative work in your game? That’s an important thing many designers forget about.
>>738489448i do actually have 3d space traversing in combat and youre constrained to your "player circle" for your turn, you can position freely (usually closer to an enemy), your turn ends when you use an attack or skill or skip your turn (no ATB no AP system implemented), the player circle is recalculated next turn from your current location turn order is: pick the highest "speed" stat from the enemy lineup, compare vs player for deciding the first side that goeswhen the enemy side goes, the entire team goes one by one, then the player, repeat. you only control one character, so you're either last or firsti guess just writing all of that out an AP system for movement or skills seems natural to consider, but the combat itself is still pretty flat. i'll steal some DOS2 ideas.
>>738489304My man I think you are way ahead of the game when it comes to coming up with mechanic ideas compared to most of /v/. I'd recommend checking out the agdg general on /vg/, it's a good place to ask questions as a total beginner.
>>738490308Adding ways to manipulate initiative in combat can easily get broken, but can be very fun in its own right, to the point that FFX built itself around that. Not saying go full hog on it but ways to manipulate the speed stat for players and enemies could be interesting Also don’t forget that even if your mechanics are solid, your combat might still feel kinda bad until you clean up the animations, and make combat feel ‘impactful’. RPGs as a whole feel bad in testing until all the systems start coming online. Look at DO2 and BG3 for inspiration on how to make turn based combat feel satisfying for the average player. Of course, you won’t be able to replicate their production level, but things like animation speed and sound effects you can pick up on if you need it. Good luck anon!
>>738490308That reminds me of Quest 64. It's not a particularly good game but the mechanics are delightfully simple and might be worth checking out just how it works. It's turn based but you can move freely in a limited space.
I love that in Paper Mario, you can look ahead so many moves because the damage numbers are always exact. You can be like, Okay, this guy has 1 def and 4 hp, and my attack does 3 damage. So it will take 2 turns of dealing exactly 2 damage to take him out. It's not like most RPGs that roll damage, often in the double and triple digits early on, making it impossible to calculate exact damage numbers. In Paper Mario, the super hammer always does 4 damage, for example.
>>738486481Has there ever been anything like a turn-based bomberman strategy game? Like where you take a turn placing bombs in certain spots, and they'll detonate after so many turns. Different bombs have different timers, some go off after 1 turn. The idea would be to logically trap your enemies into standing on the detonation zone on the turn your bomb goes off.
>>738493567Yeah, Bomberman Wars for the PS1 and Sega Saturn. There's also the board game that got canned and reborn as Blast Tactics.
>>738493706That looks neat, is there an english patch?
>>738493925yeah
>>738486481AOE chaining effect. One character uses an element, and the characters standing to their right and left switch to the stance associated with that element: add spells that can act as guards against this if the player doesn't want them to switch stances.For added fun, turn it into a solitaire situation, where the player can keep attacking as long as a chain is maintained; add dual element spells that can chain into other elements, like earth/water, water/wind, fire/earth, ect (Heart, Spade, Diamond, Club).>but wouldn't that make every fight easy?Add an action gauge that depletes on every action used and replenishes slightly for every successful chain. Add weird multipliers, status effects and other things that mess with this momentum: also make enemy groups that do the same thing and can party wipe you in one turn. Make it so the player has to prioritize certain enemies each encounter.
