[Z Gravity]

Well the idea's been tossed around among the members of our team for a while, so I thought I'd post up the basic idea for people to comment on. It seems a bit cluttered at the moment, but the thing is that most characters will specialize in one type of ability, so not every character has an overwhelming amount of options.

All characters (with a few exceptions) have two different weapon types available to them. The main weapon will usually be the most powerful, and you can equip different accessories to it, like magical runes, or different types of ammo. The secondary weapon isn't quite as strong, but offers slightly different advantages, like range, extra defense, etc. Severin uses handguns as his main weapon, but can also use a chainsaw, which sacrifices speed and range for attack power.

The main element of combat is choosing one of three "stances", either aggressive, defensive, or normal. Aggressive improves attack damage, but has virtually no defense. Defensive stance gives you lots of protection, but you can't perform regular attacks, and special moves are less effective. This is still a bit undecided though. One idea is to just have a paper-rock-scissors strategy, where aggressive attacks are very effective against a normal stance, but pretty much nullified by a defensive stance, and so on. I don't like it much because I think it'll involve too much changing of stances and slow down combat.

To go with the stance system, you'll also be able to equip 2 different "fighting styles" (I think they need a cooler name), one for each weapon. You can switch weapons in mid-battle, so if one style is ineffective you can have a backup, but you can only reassign styles outside of combat.
Each style has built-in advantages like stat changes, magic resistance, and reaction abilities. Plus, some styles have the effect of replacing one of the three basic stances with a special technique. Some styles, like "Counter-attack" will be available to most characters, but each character will also get a bunch of unique styles that only they can use. Connor, the martial artist, will probably capitalize on lots of special fighting styles and have moves like "Striking-Serpent Palm" or "Phoenix Wave" (mostly animal-based stuff, he's kinda fun).

There's no set "magic" system, since not everyone has magic. But each character does have a few unique skills, which can include magic. It's more like FF9, where there's a designated "black mage", "white mage", etc. unlike FF7 or 8 where everyone can use magic if they're properly equipped/junctioned. Sylvie has a "summon" ability, Saike can throw weapons, Katie can steal items and do other thief-like things, and so on.

There's a balance involved too, so that characters that have a whole lot of special skills (like Ross, the black mage) will have only a few basic combat styles. On the other hand, Connor's "magic" skills will be nothing more than a few basic energy attacks (Kamehameha!).

Then again there are the totally unique ones that can't quite be classified either way. Jonas uses a shotgun as his primary weapon, and has only some basic styles and a few special shots (kinda like Mustadio in FF Tactics). But he's the only character that can change his weapon's accessory (in this case, ammunition) in the middle of a battle, and so he makes the best of it by having a huge stock of different shells for every situation.

Other things we might add are a sort of "limit break" system (although I think it might be a bit overused), and some special refinements for one-on-one battles. But those are the main points of it. At the moment I just wonder about the relationship between stances. If the aggressive stance is obviously superior then there's no reason to use anything else. Likewise, if the defensive stance isn't able to do damage it might never get used.

EDIT: Forgot to put this all in context. Combat will happen in Final Fantasy-like turn based fashion, with active time bars that recharge according to speed, etc. Changing your weapon or stance requires a full turn to complete, so it's something you want to avoid doing too often. Everything will be viewed from a side perspective, with your party on the right and enemies on the left. Given the potential complexity of the battles, random encounters should be relatively rare, so we can get away with things being slightly more slow paced than usual.

Any thoughts?

[Ironshins]

I can't think of anything I'd really suggest to add to that, it sounds great; like it has a lot of depth but is also fairly logical and easy to use.

I suggest steering clear of the limit break style thing though, it's not really neccessary considering the skills you've outlined, and it might be just a bit overdone.

[Mobius]

concerning limit break:

I would think that this would be over done also instead you could do a Crono Cross/Seiken Dentsu 3 sort of thing and each sucessful attack raises a power bar allowing a charater to do a more powerful special


stances:

this reminds me of a MUD I used to play (I sure others have it but I didn't play those) where you can use different stances and such and so on, the stances where like Viper ,Crane, Tiger, Dragon, Crab, Ram and such

you where given 4 basic stances and if you maxed a certain combo of them you "unlocked" a more advanced style that is a semi-combo of the two

ie crane = fast weak moves, low def
bull = slow strong moves, high def

put the two together open

crab = fast meidum moves , high def


sound good?
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