CRYSTALGATE'S PROFILE

Typically, I try to keep stats as low as I can without getting into situations where I'd want to upgrade something by half a point. For example, I once found out that one equipment piece needed to gain 1,5 times the defense of another equipment piece. This means they should at minimum get 2 respective 3 defense per tier. Then their starting defense will be that times the number of tier upgrades it takes to double their defense. From that I can also calculate how much defense characters need to naturally have. Usually I have already made a decision in line of 1/3 defense natural and 2/3 defense from equipment or whatever numbers I choose.

However, I also want characters who are supposed to be good at a particular stat to gain some every level. I don't care if a mage sometimes gain no attack at all from a level up, but fighters should always get at least one point of attack every level up. This gives me a minimum natural stat value.

If starting with minimum equipment values gives me unacceptable low natural stat values, then I try double up or maybe even triple up equipment values until the natural stats meets their minimum values. Occasionally, I have to rethink the ratio between the various equipment pieces and the natural stats of the characters to get values that I like.

Once I have attack and defense and their magical counterparts, I look at HP. I always have a damage algorithm in mind before I go into detail with stats. This lets me make a guess how much HP the characters need in order to survive the right number of blows. The exact values will have to be tested, but a fairly accurate estimation can be made. If I find out that their start HP has to be too high for my taste, I can slap on a /2 at the end of the damage algorithm. However, I don't want to slap on a higher division. Just like my taste says a character should gain at least one point in a stat it's good at per level up, my taste also says that at the minimum, two points of defense should reduce damage by one. That is, unless enemies are using an attack with a special "ignores 50% defense" property or something like that.

Basically, I go for the minimum values that gives me neat whole number.

author=Ratty524
Another thing, why go with the standard "elemental spells" that do nothing but different types of magic damage? Your weaker "early spells" could also have secondary effects, like a thunder skill which does low damage, but has a higher chance of paralyzing an enemy compared to a higher-damage skill which focuses more on raw power? Get creative! :)

Make them functional before you get creative. An underpowered creative skill will not be used and an overpowered creative skill will obsolete several other options available, just like generic skills will.

Anyway, you can do either way when it comes to whether or not you have multiple tiers of spells. However, a common approach is to make some skills tiered and other skills nicely scale up all the way to the endgame. More precisely, attack skills and healing spells have multiple versions, while other skills such as status effects and buffs, remains as useful or useless regardless of where you are. For example, a fireball that deals 100 points of damage will be more useful when enemies only have 200 hp than it will later when they have 500 hp, while a spell that increased defense with 50% will scale up in power as the characters gain more defense and that way remain useful.

This wrecks the mp system. The skills that remain useful will either be too expensive at the beginning of the game or too cheap at endgame. I try to make either all skills require an upgrade or no skills does. There are other options though. You can provide stronger versions for attack and healing skills, but give the upgraded versions the same cost as the lower tiered ones. Or you can use the most common method which is to say "screw it" and just throw in ethers, thus making the mp cost matter less and therefore obsoleting the issue off balancing it.

Assume each level increases you damage output and survivability with 10 percentage points instead of 10%, meaning level 3 lands you at 120%, not 121%.

Anyway, most JRPgs may increase stats somewhat linear over time, but in terms "what level range is an enemy neither unreasonable hard nor trivial" you can't count it that way. Typically, in JRPGs when you level up your damage output will increase, you take less damage due to increased defense and your hit-points has also increased. A linear increase in stats leads to a cubic increase in advantage. Actually, it's often worse than that since JRPGs tend to use a subtraction formula which makes each point of defense give more advantage the more of it you already have. Reducing your damage taken from 5 to 4 is a 20% reduction while reducing it from 4 to 3 is a 25% reduction.

If you want to make your game a bit more free roaming than in the average JRPG, you need to pay careful attention to what advantage a player gets from leveling up. I'd recommend a "low, but noticeable" approach.

If you're making a free roaming game, you should probably keep the power growth much lower than in an average JRPG. Let's say you level up from 1 to 2 and both your survivability and damage output increases by 10%, that makes you 121% as strong right there. That's very little compared to the average JRPG, but two or so additional levels is enough to trivialize the starting area assuming the same growth.

"Why should the player care about the protagonists wife?" is probably what he should have asked. It did look really funny to me too.