UNITY'S PROFILE

author=LockeZ
The drain skill also being on the healer limits the situations where you'd use it. You'd need to be low enough on health that you need to heal, but you'd also need to be in a situation where it's important that you deal damage. Also, the healer has to be the one that's low on health.

author=LockeZ
Edit: If the player doesn't have a Defend command, give the self-buff to the minions instead of the boss, so that the player has a second way to survive the triple damage when the hero doesn't have enough TP to use his stun attack. (they can survive it by killing the minion before it attacks) I was kind of assuming the player had a Defend command, but I guess that's not necessarily a safe assumption. If the player has a Defend command then ignore this and leave it as is.

author=Crystalgate
I think that's rather pointless though, once characters have a three digit HP value, dealing 1 point of damage is meaningless.

author=Crystalgate
Rather, I change the formula entirely so defense no longer reduces damage to zero. For example, I change following:
a.atk * 4 - b.def * 2
to
4 * a.atk ** 2 / (a.atk + b.def)

This formula is more complicated, but it's however more balanced. You can have a greater variance in character and enemy attack and defense values without breaking things. The problem is that if you don't understand what the formula does, it's hard to figure out how other skills and spells should look like.

author=Crystalgate
Anyway, I think that first should you decide following:
1) How will spells progress? Will you get replacement spells like Fire, Fira and Firaga or will spells remain useful trough the whole game?
2) The same question, but with physical skills.
3) How are costs handled? As a rule of thumb, use MP cost for offensive skills that become outdated and TP cost for skills that remain useful.
4) How does stats progress? What values does characters start and end with?

author=Crystalgate

author=unity
So, if I simply substitute a formula like the attack skills but use it for the magic skills instead, like maybe a.mat *5 - b.mdf *2, would that put magical skills on the same playing-field as physical skills?

Yes, it would do exactly that.

Personally, I always ask myself what I want the formula to accomplish and then design one accordingly. For example, sometimes I want defense to be able to reduce the damage to zero and sometimes I don't.

author=Backwards_Cowboy
When it comes to magic, a lot of the skills seem more poorly scaled than physical ones because by default, there are multiple levels of each elemental magic. Physical skills don't usually get additional tiers, so they need to be usable for the entire game. Fire only has to be usable until you get Fire 2, so to avoid having a super great spell that will last you through the entire game, it's scaled to be less useful when you get to the point where Fire 2 is your main spell.

Of course, that's just if you keep the default spells and progression in the game. The hard part is figuring out a formula that won't overkill bosses while still being useful. You don't want a magic user to be able to kill a boss in just two or three spells, but you also want them to be better than just spamming the Attack option every turn.

author=Archeia_Nessiah
If it'll help, here's a few tutorials in regards to that!

Damage Flowchart
Damage Formulas I
Damage Formulas II

author=Crystalgate
The problem with damage formulas is that it's hard to even give basic advices. Let's take a very basic formula for the default attack as an example.

a.atk * 4 - b.def * 2

Now, we want to make a physical skill that's stronger than the basic attack. There are different ways to go about it, including, but certainly not limited to, following:

1) a.atk * 4 - b.def * 2 + 50
2) a.atk * 5 - b.def * 2
3) (a.atk * 4 - b.def * 2) * 4 / 3

So, which one should you use? Unfortunately, the answer depends one several factors, like how payment for using the skill is handled, how long the skill is supposed to be useful and overall how the game is planned. The first option is good if the player is meant to eventually get stronger skills the replaces earlier skills while the other options are better if the skill is supposed to remain useful trough the whole game. 2) and 3) are similar, but has (usually) subtle differences in how they interact with enemy defense.

Even this basic step can be complicated. However, I have one advice if you're not good at this; keep it simple.