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BATTLE SYSTEM STATES, RARE SKILLS/CONDITIONS, ETC...
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nogusielkt
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CloseI'm looking for examples or ideas for:
1) Character states (for example "in the air" state while jumping, or critically injured when down to 10% health and kneeling)
2) Combinations that produce new effects (for example, a one time heal effect combined with a haste effect could produce a regeneration effect), or combinations that create advantageous effects (for example, an effect that causes damage to enemy when they attack you combined with an effect to attract enemies to attack you more).
The purpose is to create a deeper combat mechanic environment.
1) Character states (for example "in the air" state while jumping, or critically injured when down to 10% health and kneeling)
2) Combinations that produce new effects (for example, a one time heal effect combined with a haste effect could produce a regeneration effect), or combinations that create advantageous effects (for example, an effect that causes damage to enemy when they attack you combined with an effect to attract enemies to attack you more).
The purpose is to create a deeper combat mechanic environment.
Have you thought about incorporating items with skills and combos? Using your example, say you have a minor heal skill but no type of speed enhancement skill yet, so you can buy/find items that give it. And when used with the minor heal you get the regeneration effect.
This way the player has limited resources, or it isn't as easy as stacking effects and combos every battle.
Especially if the benefit is really good, it's something the player will watch for and think about.
This way the player has limited resources, or it isn't as easy as stacking effects and combos every battle.
Especially if the benefit is really good, it's something the player will watch for and think about.
I had considered limiting the amount of items you can use in a battle, but I'm not sure yet. The combinations would be naturally limited, so I'm not worried about them being overpowered if used every battle.
RyaReisender
200
I don't think defining unique skills and conditions really is the solution to make unique and interesting battles. The whole battle system needs to be designed around the skills in the first place.
A simple system is always better because it's easier for players to understand. If you have 30 skills and all skills behave unique with no common damage type or anything, it will just force the player to try every single one on each monster to figure out what's best, I don't really think that leads to the goal.
So rather than making unique skills better make a unique battle system and then design skills around that battle system.
For example if you think about combining different base effects to get a stronger effect, this is a good idea for example for a card drawing system like in Baten Kaitos. Whereas in a simple turn based game it will just make battles take way to long (how often do you even use 3 skills in a single normal battle?).
A simple system is always better because it's easier for players to understand. If you have 30 skills and all skills behave unique with no common damage type or anything, it will just force the player to try every single one on each monster to figure out what's best, I don't really think that leads to the goal.
So rather than making unique skills better make a unique battle system and then design skills around that battle system.
For example if you think about combining different base effects to get a stronger effect, this is a good idea for example for a card drawing system like in Baten Kaitos. Whereas in a simple turn based game it will just make battles take way to long (how often do you even use 3 skills in a single normal battle?).
Drakonais
2787
I've been toying with a 1-2 skill idea. I have fire abilities that already do extra damage and an 'oil' state that slows enemies down.
If an enemy has the 'oil' state and is hit with a fire attack, however, the oil ignites and the attack hits all enemies on the field.
I'm still not sure if this has strategic value or is just a gimmick, still needs a lot of testing.
If an enemy has the 'oil' state and is hit with a fire attack, however, the oil ignites and the attack hits all enemies on the field.
I'm still not sure if this has strategic value or is just a gimmick, still needs a lot of testing.
author=RyaReisender
I don't think defining unique skills and conditions really is the solution to make unique and interesting battles. The whole battle system needs to be designed around the skills in the first place.
A simple system is always better because it's easier for players to understand. If you have 30 skills and all skills behave unique with no common damage type or anything, it will just force the player to try every single one on each monster to figure out what's best, I don't really think that leads to the goal.
I'm not sure you understand what I am going for here. The very thing I'm trying to avoid IS damage-types. There shouldn't be one skill that dominates an entire battle; finding out a zombie is weak to fire, and then using a bunch of fire isn't interesting. That's where the unique conditions come into play. The whole thing changes combat significantly.
author=Drakonais
I've been toying with a 1-2 skill idea. I have fire abilities that already do extra damage and an 'oil' state that slows enemies down.
If an enemy has the 'oil' state and is hit with a fire attack, however, the oil ignites and the attack hits all enemies on the field.
I'm still not sure if this has strategic value or is just a gimmick, still needs a lot of testing.
It has value, but only if the oil state is caused by the enemy himself. Too bad I don't think I have any machines in my game.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
This topic is pretty general; I could probably list like 60 pages of "unique skills and status effects" just that I've personally put in my games. I guess I'll talk about a class I just put into one of my games that's build around multicasting, since it has some interesting combo skills.
The game has 30 different classes, and each character can use skills they've learned from a secondary class in addition to their current class, so some of the abilities are built around that. This is a Squaresoft fan game, so uh, a lot of these skill names will be familiar even if they don't quite work the way you remember. The core class concept is "who the hell needs other people when you can do dual techs with yourself?"
Multicasting:
Double
Triple
Dualcast
X-Magic
Double and Triple are buffs which make any spell you cast get cast one or two extra times for free on the same target. They have short durations and long cooldowns, and a character can only be affected by one of the two at a time, so the result is that you'll be either doubled or tripled one third of the time. Skill cooldowns in this game continue from one battle to the next. Double and Triple work with any magic-using class.
Dualcast lets you cast two different spells this round, but they must be spells from this class. This skill also has a cooldown, but it's shorter.
X-Magic is a passive skill you can equip that gives all your spells a 25% chance to be doubled, just like the Double buff. It stacks with Double and Triple. It works with any magic-using class, but works best with this class, because as you'll see below, the skills are designed with multicasting in mind.
Elemental spells:
Chain Fire
Chain Ice
Chain Bolt
All three of these spells, normally, do single-target damage.
If you try to cast Chain Fire when you've cast Chain Ice on the current round or previous round, or vice-versa, you'll instead cast Antipode, which does AOE dark damage.
If you try to cast Chain Bolt when you've cast Antipode on the current round or the previous round, you'll instead cast Delta Force, which does AOE non-elemental damage. This is better than the dark damage because lots of enemies resist dark but none are weak to dark. It's also just another round of AOE.
Healing:
Double Cure
If you cast Double Cure twice in one round, by any method, it will reverberate and heal the target for free a third time on the following round. This lets you potentially go an extra round without healing even against very tough enemies.
This also makes the multicasting skills into very effective panic buttons for healing, if you can manage to not get greedy and use them for damage.
Twin Magic:
Twin Flare
Twin Comet
Twin Meteor
Twin Wall
Twin Flare/Comet/Meteor do nothing at all the first time you cast them per round. But if they're cast twice in one round - either by two different characters, or by a single character using the multicasting skills - they hit for large amounts of damage (one is single-target, one is random-target, and one is area-target).
If you cast them more than twice in one round, each additional cast will continue to do damage, so you can potentially hit the enemy five times in one round if you are buffed with Triple and you use Dualcast to perform Twin Flare twice. Potentially up to eleven times if you also have X-Magic set as your inherent ability and it procs on every single hit. (Originally I only had every other cast working, but it felt really bad when you got an odd number of casts due to X-Magic or Triple, and the last one was wasted.)
Twin Wall is basically the same, except instead of dealing damage, it buffs the party's defenses.
I'm pretty happy with the way the various types of combo magic came together here, though it ended up being pretty overpowered against certain bosses - I had to delete another multicasting skill I wanted to add, and also change a couple high level bosses, to make sure the player couldn't kill bosses in just two or three rounds once they'd mastered this class.
The game has 30 different classes, and each character can use skills they've learned from a secondary class in addition to their current class, so some of the abilities are built around that. This is a Squaresoft fan game, so uh, a lot of these skill names will be familiar even if they don't quite work the way you remember. The core class concept is "who the hell needs other people when you can do dual techs with yourself?"
Multicasting:
Double
Triple
Dualcast
X-Magic
Double and Triple are buffs which make any spell you cast get cast one or two extra times for free on the same target. They have short durations and long cooldowns, and a character can only be affected by one of the two at a time, so the result is that you'll be either doubled or tripled one third of the time. Skill cooldowns in this game continue from one battle to the next. Double and Triple work with any magic-using class.
Dualcast lets you cast two different spells this round, but they must be spells from this class. This skill also has a cooldown, but it's shorter.
X-Magic is a passive skill you can equip that gives all your spells a 25% chance to be doubled, just like the Double buff. It stacks with Double and Triple. It works with any magic-using class, but works best with this class, because as you'll see below, the skills are designed with multicasting in mind.
Elemental spells:
Chain Fire
Chain Ice
Chain Bolt
All three of these spells, normally, do single-target damage.
If you try to cast Chain Fire when you've cast Chain Ice on the current round or previous round, or vice-versa, you'll instead cast Antipode, which does AOE dark damage.
If you try to cast Chain Bolt when you've cast Antipode on the current round or the previous round, you'll instead cast Delta Force, which does AOE non-elemental damage. This is better than the dark damage because lots of enemies resist dark but none are weak to dark. It's also just another round of AOE.
Healing:
Double Cure
If you cast Double Cure twice in one round, by any method, it will reverberate and heal the target for free a third time on the following round. This lets you potentially go an extra round without healing even against very tough enemies.
This also makes the multicasting skills into very effective panic buttons for healing, if you can manage to not get greedy and use them for damage.
Twin Magic:
Twin Flare
Twin Comet
Twin Meteor
Twin Wall
Twin Flare/Comet/Meteor do nothing at all the first time you cast them per round. But if they're cast twice in one round - either by two different characters, or by a single character using the multicasting skills - they hit for large amounts of damage (one is single-target, one is random-target, and one is area-target).
If you cast them more than twice in one round, each additional cast will continue to do damage, so you can potentially hit the enemy five times in one round if you are buffed with Triple and you use Dualcast to perform Twin Flare twice. Potentially up to eleven times if you also have X-Magic set as your inherent ability and it procs on every single hit. (Originally I only had every other cast working, but it felt really bad when you got an odd number of casts due to X-Magic or Triple, and the last one was wasted.)
Twin Wall is basically the same, except instead of dealing damage, it buffs the party's defenses.
I'm pretty happy with the way the various types of combo magic came together here, though it ended up being pretty overpowered against certain bosses - I had to delete another multicasting skill I wanted to add, and also change a couple high level bosses, to make sure the player couldn't kill bosses in just two or three rounds once they'd mastered this class.
Drakonais
2787
@LockeZ: Those multicast ideas are really cool. For some reason (probably classic RPG boss fights) Double Cure seems like the handiest addition.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Most of the time I tend to use simple one-two combos that encourage skills to be used one after another by more natural methods, instead of actually adding special effects to specific combos.
For example, in other cases, I have combos like these:
1) Debilitator - Makes the enemy weak to one of six random elements
2) Mako Gun - Deals damage to one of three random elements; twice as likely to choose an element if the enemy is weak to it
1) Face Smash - Deals minor damage and makes the enemy take 50% more damage for one round; medium cooldown
2) Knuckle Remedy - Deals more damage the more status ailments are on the enemy, but heals the enemy of those ailments
1) Animals - Furry critters appear to do stuff for the next three rounds, alongside whatever else you do; you can choose three different animals for different effects, but you can't choose what order they show up in
2) Charge Attack - Prevents you from acting for several rounds, then deals massive damage
This type of simple combo doesn't usually create a ton of depth. What it does create is a little tension in the player's skill choice, though, because using a combo like this encourages them to not stop and heal when they otherwise would. It also lets you create enemies that use strategies that prevent or interrupt specific combos - an enemy that randomly changes its elemental immunities, heals itself of status effects, or changes in and out a defensive stance will affect how the player uses these skills. And those kinds of player reactions are a little more interesting than just responding to the enemy's elemental weakness, to me, because they're less black and white. Plus they affect the battle in other ways besides just making those skills weaker, so it feels like a less artificial change to the player's strategy than elemental resistances. And although "oh, this enemy heals its ailments, I should probably use Knuckle Remedy the moment a status hits it instead of waiting for several statuses" is easy to figure out for an RPG veteran, for novices it's an interesting puzzle.
For example, in other cases, I have combos like these:
1) Debilitator - Makes the enemy weak to one of six random elements
2) Mako Gun - Deals damage to one of three random elements; twice as likely to choose an element if the enemy is weak to it
1) Face Smash - Deals minor damage and makes the enemy take 50% more damage for one round; medium cooldown
2) Knuckle Remedy - Deals more damage the more status ailments are on the enemy, but heals the enemy of those ailments
1) Animals - Furry critters appear to do stuff for the next three rounds, alongside whatever else you do; you can choose three different animals for different effects, but you can't choose what order they show up in
2) Charge Attack - Prevents you from acting for several rounds, then deals massive damage
This type of simple combo doesn't usually create a ton of depth. What it does create is a little tension in the player's skill choice, though, because using a combo like this encourages them to not stop and heal when they otherwise would. It also lets you create enemies that use strategies that prevent or interrupt specific combos - an enemy that randomly changes its elemental immunities, heals itself of status effects, or changes in and out a defensive stance will affect how the player uses these skills. And those kinds of player reactions are a little more interesting than just responding to the enemy's elemental weakness, to me, because they're less black and white. Plus they affect the battle in other ways besides just making those skills weaker, so it feels like a less artificial change to the player's strategy than elemental resistances. And although "oh, this enemy heals its ailments, I should probably use Knuckle Remedy the moment a status hits it instead of waiting for several statuses" is easy to figure out for an RPG veteran, for novices it's an interesting puzzle.
RyaReisender
200
I don't think how condition make each battle different, though? I mean even if you do it so that when a zombie is hit with fire it becomes a burning zombie and then it's weak to ice instead, it will only change that the player uses "fire -> ice -> fire -> ice" instead of "fire -> fire -> fire -> fire", but in the end each battle against the Zombie is the same again.
Unless you mean conditions in the sense of weather. So that you have an encounter and the encounter gets a random weather condition that also randomly changes during battle in random intervals. I guess that would work.
Unless you mean conditions in the sense of weather. So that you have an encounter and the encounter gets a random weather condition that also randomly changes during battle in random intervals. I guess that would work.
author=RyaReisender
I don't think how condition make each battle different, though? I mean even if you do it so that when a zombie is hit with fire it becomes a burning zombie and then it's weak to ice instead, it will only change that the player uses "fire -> ice -> fire -> ice" instead of "fire -> fire -> fire -> fire", but in the end each battle against the Zombie is the same again.
author=nogusielkt
I'm not sure you understand what I am going for here. The very thing I'm trying to avoid IS damage-types. There shouldn't be one skill that dominates an entire battle; finding out a zombie is weak to fire, and then using a bunch of fire isn't interesting. That's where the unique conditions come into play. The whole thing changes combat significantly.
One of the things that is an important component of this system is to take control over the conditions out of the players hands. From Lockez example, the character able to chain from fire to antipod, to delta and it's up to the enemy to interrupt that, which can cause frustration. Instead, I want the player to be taking advantage of things out of his control.
RyaReisender
200
So yeah basically a "weather" system with randomly changing weather in random intervals on which the player needs to react.
Or call it "field effect" system, it's basically like in Alter AILA Genesis, except out of player control.
Of course you can imagine a lot of things from, making certain attacks do more/less damage over 10 times damage from poison effects to certain buffs will do something different.
Or call it "field effect" system, it's basically like in Alter AILA Genesis, except out of player control.
Of course you can imagine a lot of things from, making certain attacks do more/less damage over 10 times damage from poison effects to certain buffs will do something different.
author=RyaReisender
So yeah basically a "weather" system with randomly changing weather in random intervals on which the player needs to react.
Or call it "field effect" system, it's basically like in Alter AILA Genesis, except out of player control.
I'll take a look at that.
I just got a substantial PM on this topic, so I'd like to take skills off the table for now, and just look at "states" (specifically not the classic status effects) or combinations (specifically not math based).
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
If you want the player to be responding to things out of his control, things like weather conditions and field effects are a pretty roundabout way to do it. The simpler way, which is just as effective, is to make enemies do things that the player has responses to. This requires coming up with player skills specifically designed to respond to enemy skills... and, if you don't want the game to be extremely simple, the opposite should probably be true too.
An extremely simple example is an enemy that changes elemental resistances. The player must choose the right skill for the moment, or possibly decide whether to use a non-elemental attack instead.
A slightly more complex example would be to make a battle against three enemies that all change elemental resistances, and then give the player both single-target and area-effect spells of different elements. The player would have a slightly more complex choice, especially if hitting enemies with the wrong element caused the enemy to counterattack, or if the area-effect spells had a very high MP cost, or all AOE spells shared a cooldown, or there were some other penalty to using AOE at the wrong time. The player now has to decide choose whether the AOE attack is worth it.
More complex or unusual examples will get the player thinking a little more...
Simple: Make an enemy use magic, but give the player a way to silence the enemy.
More complex: Make the enemy use medium-powered magic normally, but become enraged and use high-powered magic when it's the last enemy remaining. Give the player a way to silence the enemy, but the silence only lasts for a couple rounds, and the ability that inflicts silence can only be used once per battle.
Morer complex: Make a second enemy who is a healer, who can also be silenced. The player can only silence one of the two enemies, and will need to choose which one to silence based on whether he needs offense or defense more.
Even morer complex: Give the player a second skill that reduces the amount of healing an enemy takes, but the player doesn't have enough MP to use both this skill and the silence skill unless he spends a round regenerating MP.
Even morest complex: Make a different character able to transfer his own MP to the MP of the character who knows the silence and healing-debuff skills, but doing so will drastically reduce the new character's ability to deal damage, so the battle will take longer and become more dangerous.
Double even morest complex: The mage enemy also sometimes drains the player's MP, changing the amount of time each of the above strategies takes.
The more layers you add, the more the player has to think instead of just react. The player needs to have reactions to all the enemy skills, but for those reactions to add meaningful tactics instead of just variety, they need to interfere with each-other, and some enemies need to have ways to limit the player's ability to react. Variety is good - add it when you can - but I've found it's not enough. Using fire instead of ice isn't a very meaningful reaction if the only difference between fire and ice is which enemies they work on.
And if you do things like this for every enemy, instead of just bosses, then your enemies become a lot less monotonous. Especially if the things the enemies do are somewhat randomized in non-boss battles. The enemy might drain MP twice in one battle but not at all the next time - this makes the two battles different. One battle might have one healer and the next battle might have two or three. If you are making the player repeat battles against the same enemies, randomness is your friend.
An extremely simple example is an enemy that changes elemental resistances. The player must choose the right skill for the moment, or possibly decide whether to use a non-elemental attack instead.
A slightly more complex example would be to make a battle against three enemies that all change elemental resistances, and then give the player both single-target and area-effect spells of different elements. The player would have a slightly more complex choice, especially if hitting enemies with the wrong element caused the enemy to counterattack, or if the area-effect spells had a very high MP cost, or all AOE spells shared a cooldown, or there were some other penalty to using AOE at the wrong time. The player now has to decide choose whether the AOE attack is worth it.
More complex or unusual examples will get the player thinking a little more...
Simple: Make an enemy use magic, but give the player a way to silence the enemy.
More complex: Make the enemy use medium-powered magic normally, but become enraged and use high-powered magic when it's the last enemy remaining. Give the player a way to silence the enemy, but the silence only lasts for a couple rounds, and the ability that inflicts silence can only be used once per battle.
Morer complex: Make a second enemy who is a healer, who can also be silenced. The player can only silence one of the two enemies, and will need to choose which one to silence based on whether he needs offense or defense more.
Even morer complex: Give the player a second skill that reduces the amount of healing an enemy takes, but the player doesn't have enough MP to use both this skill and the silence skill unless he spends a round regenerating MP.
Even morest complex: Make a different character able to transfer his own MP to the MP of the character who knows the silence and healing-debuff skills, but doing so will drastically reduce the new character's ability to deal damage, so the battle will take longer and become more dangerous.
Double even morest complex: The mage enemy also sometimes drains the player's MP, changing the amount of time each of the above strategies takes.
The more layers you add, the more the player has to think instead of just react. The player needs to have reactions to all the enemy skills, but for those reactions to add meaningful tactics instead of just variety, they need to interfere with each-other, and some enemies need to have ways to limit the player's ability to react. Variety is good - add it when you can - but I've found it's not enough. Using fire instead of ice isn't a very meaningful reaction if the only difference between fire and ice is which enemies they work on.
And if you do things like this for every enemy, instead of just bosses, then your enemies become a lot less monotonous. Especially if the things the enemies do are somewhat randomized in non-boss battles. The enemy might drain MP twice in one battle but not at all the next time - this makes the two battles different. One battle might have one healer and the next battle might have two or three. If you are making the player repeat battles against the same enemies, randomness is your friend.
author=LockeZ
The simpler way, which is just as effective, is to make enemies do things that the player has responses to.
Yes, this is what I'm doing.
author=Lockez
More complex or unusual examples will get the player thinking a little more...
The more layers you add, the more the player has to think instead of just react. The player needs to have reactions to all the enemy skills, but for those reactions to add meaningful tactics instead of just variety, they need to interfere with each-other, and some enemies need to have ways to limit the player's ability to react.
What kind of interference are we talking about here? Further detail in this area of discussion would be appreciated.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
In my example above, the silence skill can only be used once per battle, but there are two enemies that need to be silenced. Also, there are two skills that can be used to disable healing, but the player doesn't have enough MP to easily cast both of them. These are both examples of the player's skills being interfered with. The main benefit of this is that it adds more meaningful combat tactics to the game, by making the player's reaction to a given situation become something that has to be decided instead of something that's practically automatic.
Some other examples of this would be:
- In Wild ARMs games, you have a resource called FP that increases each turn and resets at the beginning of each battle. Some abilities cost FP to use, while other abilities require a certain amount of FP to use but don't actually use it up. This creates an interesting dynamic between abilities where using one ability can temporarily prevent you from using many others. Additionally, the first time per battle that you reach 100 FP, you're healed of all status ailments - so you may change how you use your other abilities to try to save this effect for when you need it (or use items to quickly restore the FP of a character just for this purpose).
- Many games have adopted the idea of limit breaks, to the point where it's now a base system included by default in RPG Maker VX Ace. Limit breaks are similar to skills that share a cooldown, except that the limit break happens more often the more damage you take, which effectively means that the cooldown is shorter when you need it more (a damned clever idea, honestly). Limit breaks are most interesting when each character has multiple limit break skills that are useful in different situations, so you have to weigh your current needs against potential future needs. If fighting a boss, where the battle is long enough that the gauge will fill up multiple times before the fight is over, it's best if these situations can happen at different times in the same battle. Against normal enemies, you probably only get a limit break every few battles, so one situation per battle that can be escaped by a limit break is plenty.
Another very obvious method, though not quite the same, is to have different party members, or give the player a choice of which skills to learn with his party members. This creates a long-term interference rather than a short-term one. The player has to build a team capable of doing all the things he needs it to do.
As far as actual situations you can escape with the use of specific types of skills, I've rambled enough, so here's just a bullet list of random ideas:
It's important to convey to the player what's happening, though. If they fail to react properly because they can't read your mind, that's bullshit.
For example, there's a boss in FF12 that fully heals itself when it reaches low HP. The only good way to stop this is to let the boss go into magic-berserk mode, and then not silence it, and let it annihilate you with fire magic. This will cause it to run out of MP so it can't use its full-cure ability. But most enemies in FF12 don't stop casting magic when they run out of MP, even when using skills that cost MP - they use fake versions of magic spells that cost 0 MP. And that particular healing ability doesn't even cost MP when used by the player. Plus, the magic-berserk only happens once, and it happens before you realize that the boss is going to repeatedly heal like that. The boss also heals at a different amount of HP each time, tricking the player into thinking that something other than just low HP must have triggered the heal. It's just stupid and random, and a great example of a boss that could have had a decent strategy but was ruined by terrible conveyance.
Some other examples of this would be:
- In Wild ARMs games, you have a resource called FP that increases each turn and resets at the beginning of each battle. Some abilities cost FP to use, while other abilities require a certain amount of FP to use but don't actually use it up. This creates an interesting dynamic between abilities where using one ability can temporarily prevent you from using many others. Additionally, the first time per battle that you reach 100 FP, you're healed of all status ailments - so you may change how you use your other abilities to try to save this effect for when you need it (or use items to quickly restore the FP of a character just for this purpose).
- Many games have adopted the idea of limit breaks, to the point where it's now a base system included by default in RPG Maker VX Ace. Limit breaks are similar to skills that share a cooldown, except that the limit break happens more often the more damage you take, which effectively means that the cooldown is shorter when you need it more (a damned clever idea, honestly). Limit breaks are most interesting when each character has multiple limit break skills that are useful in different situations, so you have to weigh your current needs against potential future needs. If fighting a boss, where the battle is long enough that the gauge will fill up multiple times before the fight is over, it's best if these situations can happen at different times in the same battle. Against normal enemies, you probably only get a limit break every few battles, so one situation per battle that can be escaped by a limit break is plenty.
Another very obvious method, though not quite the same, is to have different party members, or give the player a choice of which skills to learn with his party members. This creates a long-term interference rather than a short-term one. The player has to build a team capable of doing all the things he needs it to do.
As far as actual situations you can escape with the use of specific types of skills, I've rambled enough, so here's just a bullet list of random ideas:
- Enemy heals / player has a healing debuff
- Enemy uses an ailment / player can remove or prevent the ailment
- Enemy prevents the player from using a certain type of skill (i.e. magic) / player must use other skills instead
- Enemy summons an ally / player must deal heavy single-target damage in a short time
- Enemy summons a bunch of allies / player must deal heavy area-effect damage in a short time
- Enemy dispels the player's buffs / player must rebuff
- Enemy drastically lowers the strength of all but one character on the player's team / player must make his other characters buff and heal the one character who can still deal damage
- Enemy focuses all damage on a single character on the player's team / player must buff the defense of that character and use heavy single-target healing
- Enemy uses a powerful attack when it reaches full energy / player must buff the party's defense and heal them to full beforehand
- Enemy enrages after a certain amount of time passes / player must use his best offensive skills to win before that
- Enemy removes one of the player's characters from the battle / player must make up for whatever that character did
- Enemy summons minions that explode, damaging both the player and other enemies / player must try to survive until this happens and then also survive through this, possibly by killing some enemies himself
- Enemy goes into a sort of berserk state, using a powerful skill continuously until interrupted / player must stun the enemy
- Enemy charges up for a powerful attack next round / player must either stun the enemy or defend
- Enemy lowers the player's defense / player must find a way to survive
- Enemy temporarily absorbs lightning damage / player must use other elements
It's important to convey to the player what's happening, though. If they fail to react properly because they can't read your mind, that's bullshit.
For example, there's a boss in FF12 that fully heals itself when it reaches low HP. The only good way to stop this is to let the boss go into magic-berserk mode, and then not silence it, and let it annihilate you with fire magic. This will cause it to run out of MP so it can't use its full-cure ability. But most enemies in FF12 don't stop casting magic when they run out of MP, even when using skills that cost MP - they use fake versions of magic spells that cost 0 MP. And that particular healing ability doesn't even cost MP when used by the player. Plus, the magic-berserk only happens once, and it happens before you realize that the boss is going to repeatedly heal like that. The boss also heals at a different amount of HP each time, tricking the player into thinking that something other than just low HP must have triggered the heal. It's just stupid and random, and a great example of a boss that could have had a decent strategy but was ruined by terrible conveyance.
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