Suggestions for Spells/Abilities

[Vaylen 11]

A few small~ish suggestions for some spells, mainly to improve their usability

Drain-Type Spells

Due to how drain-type spells work, their potential is pretty much capped. It's especially annoying with things like Rage and Dance, as the drains they have are often just dead turns.

I'd suggest making all hp-draining spells/effects, except for the OG Drain Spell, work off their base power alone and not factor in missing HP. This would make Love Sonata as well as some Rages way more appealing to use, in my opinion.

Surge

This is specifically for Mog's Dances - Water Rondo and Snowman Jazz. While making sense aesthetically, I don't believe Surge should be a ground-based attack. It's a problem for Surge, as it heavily reduces the reliability of the aforementioned dances in a lot of encounters, as quite many enemies are floating. If enemies aren't floating, a magic-based Mog can hit them quite well with Quake in the first place. I'd slightly decrease the base power of Surge to compensate.
 

Reflect

Reflect is always a bit of a contentious effect. It can be amazingly powerful, but there are a lot of factors to consider when using reflect. Most importantly: Does it do anything in the battle at hand?

I noticed that far more abilities than I previously assumed can be reflected. It'd be nice to have some sort of indication of that - like a blue dot.

Additionally, if desired to make reflect a tad easier to use, one could make certain buff spells ignore reflect. Safe, Shell, Float and maybe even Haste come to mind.
 

Fractional Damage

Is it possible to let fractional damage work on max health instead of current health? If it's possible, I think this would open up some interesting changes for some rage or dance skills.

 

That's about it. Thanks for reading and please tell me what you think.

Edited May 1, 2021 by Vaylen

[SirNewtonFig 21]

6 hours ago, Vaylen said:

Drain-Type Spells

Due to how drain-type spells work, their potential is pretty much capped. It's especially annoying with things like Rage and Dance, as the drains they have are often just dead turns.

I'd suggest making all hp-draining spells/effects, except for the OG Drain Spell, work off their base power alone and not factor in missing HP. This would make Love Sonata as well as some Rages way more appealing to use, in my opinion.

I definitely sympathize with this, though there's two issues here that I can think of. One is that these effects all use the same branch of the damage formula currently, so differentiating between OG Drain and the others would require implementing a secondary one (it's not as easy as unchecking a "cap damage to current HP/MP" flag on each effect, sadly). This would not be an issue if removing this constraint across the board, however, as a single subroutine could simply be skipped.

However, the larger issue is that there's no differentiation between spell power for the HP side vs the MP side for the effects that concern both (e.g. Empowerer, Bedevil, Raid). As such, something that is balanced to restore up to 1000HP would also mill the enemy of 1000MP, which intrudes heavily on the value of Rasp and pretty well renders Mindblow utterly obsolete not long after you get it.

I'm not actually sure how complicated it would be to have separate calculations for the HP and MP portions, using a reduced (maybe 1/4 or 1/8) spell power for the MP portion. Probably more effort than it's worth for the sake of 4 Rages and 1 Dance 

 

6 hours ago, Vaylen said:

Reflect

Reflect is always a bit of a contentious effect. It can be amazingly powerful, but there are a lot of factors to consider when using reflect. Most importantly: Does it do anything in the battle at hand?

I noticed that far more abilities than I previously assumed can be reflected. It'd be nice to have some sort of indication of that - like a blue dot.

Additionally, if desired to make reflect a tad easier to use, one could make certain buff spells ignore reflect. Safe, Shell, Float and maybe even Haste come to mind.

The general rule of thumb with Reflect is that it protects against anything magical that is single- or free-targeted, whether it is a "dot" spell or not. There are some exceptions to this, such as Lifeshaver, Barrier, Discord, Blow Fish, Refract, and Atomic Ray (there are probably more, just pulled these few from where they were mentioned in the Readme/Printme specifically). Conversely, if an effect is not capable of hitting a single target, it is unreflectable as a general rule.

As such, I think Float should already ignore reflect? If it doesn't, it may just be a vestigial holdover from when it was a free-targeting spell.

Safe can be set on reflected targets using the Shield lore or Monet Brush, and Shell can be set on reflected targets using the Zoneseek summon or Dali Brush. Rerise can be set on reflected targets with Seraph, for Regen there's Stray or RegenX, and for Haste there's HasteX.

The limitations imposed by the Reflect status are deliberate: it is an inconvenience to both you and your enemy. This isn't FF9 where you can just Reflect your whole party with no drawbacks. As I've highlighted, though, there are ways to work around these limitations, and having to rely on those is the cost of having a very reliable safeguard against some very dangerous effects.

 

7 hours ago, Vaylen said:

Surge

This is specifically for Mog's Dances - Water Rondo and Snowman Jazz. While making sense aesthetically, I don't believe Surge should be a ground-based attack. It's a problem for Surge, as it heavily reduces the reliability of the aforementioned dances in a lot of encounters, as quite many enemies are floating. If enemies aren't floating, a magic-based Mog can hit them quite well with Quake in the first place. I'd slightly decrease the base power of Surge to compensate.

As we touched on with Reflect above, limitations are not necessarily a bad thing. Water Rondo and Snowman Jazz are both very good, and Water and Ice weaknesses are quite common. The grounded nature of Surge reigns them in a little. In terms of boss battles, this really only impacts Gold-D, who is water-weak but flying (so 3 of 4 Rondo steps are still applicable, 3/16 chance of a whiff – not terrible); Red and Brown can both be affected by grounded attacks.

 

8 hours ago, Vaylen said:

Fractional Damage

Is it possible to let fractional damage work on max health instead of current health? If it's possible, I think this would open up some interesting changes for some rage or dance skills.

My concern with this would be for the player. So many fractional damage enemy attacks would have to be rescripted to avoid easy wipes. I think they're fine as is.

[Vaylen 11]

57 minutes ago, SirNewtonFig said:

I definitely sympathize with this, though there's two issues here that I can think of. One is that these effects all use the same branch of the damage formula currently, so differentiating between OG Drain and the others would require implementing a secondary one (it's not as easy as unchecking a "cap damage to current HP/MP" flag on each effect, sadly). This would not be an issue if removing this constraint across the board, however, as a single subroutine could simply be skipped.

However, the larger issue is that there's no differentiation between spell power for the HP side vs the MP side for the effects that concern both (e.g. Empowerer, Bedevil, Raid). As such, something that is balanced to restore up to 1000HP would also mill the enemy of 1000MP, which intrudes heavily on the value of Rasp and pretty well renders Mindblow utterly obsolete not long after you get it.

I'm not actually sure how complicated it would be to have separate calculations for the HP and MP portions, using a reduced (maybe 1/4 or 1/8) spell power for the MP portion. Probably more effort than it's worth for the sake of 4 Rages and 1 Dance 

On the issue regarding infringing on Rasp territory: I don't think that will be that big of an issue. The amount of MP stolen is far lower than the amount of HP stolen. My Strago with around ~100 Magic can still up to ~500 MP, but more health(At least around 700).
Looking at the Character Planner, Cyan can steal up to 314 MP. And against undead foes, he'd also kill or heavily damage himself. So Mindblow would still be as useful as ever.
Bedevil has the same base power as Raid.

That said... how about making all of them not depend on max health?

1 hour ago, SirNewtonFig said:

The general rule of thumb with Reflect is that it protects against anything magical that is single- or free-targeted, whether it is a "dot" spell or not. There are some exceptions to this, such as Lifeshaver, Barrier, Discord, Blow Fish, Refract, and Atomic Ray (there are probably more, just pulled these few from where they were mentioned in the Readme/Printme specifically). Conversely, if an effect is not capable of hitting a single target, it is unreflectable as a general rule.

As such, I think Float should already ignore reflect? If it doesn't, it may just be a vestigial holdover from when it was a free-targeting spell.

Safe can be set on reflected targets using the Shield lore or Monet Brush, and Shell can be set on reflected targets using the Zoneseek summon or Dali Brush. Rerise can be set on reflected targets with Seraph, for Regen there's Stray or RegenX, and for Haste there's HasteX.

The limitations imposed by the Reflect status are deliberate: it is an inconvenience to both you and your enemy. This isn't FF9 where you can just Reflect your whole party with no drawbacks. As I've highlighted, though, there are ways to work around these limitations, and having to rely on those is the cost of having a very reliable safeguard against some very dangerous effects.

The rule of thumb is not all that intuitive. Many things look or sound like spells, but aren't spells. More clarity is a good thing, isn't it?

And yeah, I get that the limitations are deliberate and generally agree with them. Lifting some of them is more about broadening the use-case for Reflect and making it a bit more appealing, but by no means something I'd push for.
Oh and yeah, Float goes through reflect. I thought it wouldn't, cause you can use single target Float in the menu.

1 hour ago, SirNewtonFig said:

My concern with this would be for the player. So many fractional damage enemy attacks would have to be rescripted to avoid easy wipes. I think they're fine as is.

That's probably true, but if you could have both(current and max health fractional damage, depending on ability), it'd open up more options. I'm guessing this isn't possible/feasable for one reason or another.

1 hour ago, SirNewtonFig said:

As we touched on with Reflect above, limitations are not necessarily a bad thing. Water Rondo and Snowman Jazz are both very good, and Water and Ice weaknesses are quite common. The grounded nature of Surge reigns them in a little. In terms of boss battles, this really only impacts Gold-D, who is water-weak but flying (so 3 of 4 Rondo steps are still applicable, 3/16 chance of a whiff – not terrible); Red and Brown can both be affected by grounded attacks.

I believe the limitation on Surge to not be necessary and just complicating an already rather complicated playstyle. Ultimately, removing the grounded-limitation is more of a QoL than a big change in power, in my opinion. Incidentally, it would also buff up a few enemies.

[SirNewtonFig 21]

1 hour ago, Vaylen said:

On the issue regarding infringing on Rasp territory: I don't think that will be that big of an issue. The amount of MP stolen is far lower than the amount of HP stolen. My Strago with around ~100 Magic can still up to ~500 MP, but more health(At least around 700).
Looking at the Character Planner, Cyan can steal up to 314 MP. And against undead foes, he'd also kill or heavily damage himself. So Mindblow would still be as useful as ever.
Bedevil has the same base power as Raid.

That said... how about making all of them not depend on max health?

Ah, right you are – I just found the special routine used for Empowerer (I assume the others are doing something similar), and it does reduce the power to 1/4 for the second "hit". Wouldn't be hard then.