Alora Fane

I've been refining and implementing some of Divine Dreams' battle mechanics revisions that I presented in the previous post. Here's what I've got so far.

I know people are more interested in MARDEK than Divine Dreams at the moment, but this is still my current project, and I'm personally more interested in it because I love the active creative process. This post follows on from ∞ the previous one ∞, so you should read that if you haven't already.

I've streamlined some of the concepts presented in the other post, so they feel more like one unified system with some variation rather than two or even three competing systems with different rules.

Here are the (not fully finished) skills screens for both Mardek and Emeela (with mostly placeholder skills; I've not yet got to the point where I plan them properly):

Characters can learn a bunch of skills; I'm thinking they'll be acquired through dialogue - either via plot events or as sidequest rewards - rather than from random items. They can only use six of them in battle, but which six these are can be changed from the menu at any time (outside of battle).

Once acquired, skills are permanently available, but each has a level between 1 and 6, shown by the bars for each one here. Increasing these would empower the skill or add new effects. New levels would be 'bought' using items/currency acquired from killed or tamed monsters - and this can be reversed at any time to get the resources back - though I've yet to implement that (which is why they're all showing at level 3).

All skills have their availability tied to the arousal stat (the beating heart), so that'll play a pivotal role in managing both allies and enemies. The availability range is shown with the colour gradient: Emeela's Despair is available when her arousal is low, but Hate requires her arousal to be high, for example. Some skills would be available for the entire range, but they probably wouldn't be common. The Attack command would also be available regardless of arousal level.

Skills have a cost and an effect which both come in three flavours: Body, Light, and Dark. That is, you can have a skill that costs Body and affects Body, or costs Dark and affects Body, etc. So there are nine possibilities, though only five are actually used:

Skills that cost Body are similar to the old system, where they deplete the Body stat (HP) on use. Their damage is determined by the user's Attack stat minus the defender's Defence, altered according to any multipliers from elements, the skill itself, etc. Most 'special ability but not a spell'-type skills would be these Body-costing skills. Skills that cost Dark increase Dark (and deplete Light), though, and vice versa for Light. These use the corresponding Dark or Light stat to determine their power (altered by any skill multipliers).

On the skills in those screenshots, the icon shows what stat's being affected, and the colour shows the stat used to do it. The number on the right is the cost.

"Soothe" skills are the only ones to use runes, but I've not added that yet so it's not in these screenshots. These would be used both to tame monsters and to restore your allies' light.

"Vex" skills would most commonly be used by monsters, as they drive characters closer to madness - and making monsters more dark would only empower them - but Emeela's "Gloom" skill here could potentially increase Dark for everyone (and lower arousal), as she personally benefits from that since her Dark spells deal more damage the more Dark her mind is. I like the idea of skills like that, which have situational usefulness (maybe you want to get some allies' arousal down and Emeela's Dark up, but you have to pay the price of also losing access to high arousal skills or some tamed Light on enemies or tamed allies).

There are also buff/debuff skills - coloured light and dark respectively - which deal no damage and therefore neither use nor affect a stat.

Some - but not all - skills also allow reactions, which come in four varieties:

Characters can equip 12 pieces of equipment: two tools (usually a weapon and shield, but, like in MARDEK, some characters would work differently), an outfit (usually locked based on plot state; changes the character's appearance), three accessories, and six essences. The ones on the left mostly (but not exclusively) affect Body, while the ones on the right - the essences - mostly affect the mental stats (Light and Dark).

Each equipped item can have up to six properties, each of which has a type and a numerical value. Some properties are applied to the character's stat totals, while others only apply for successful reactions.

There are four flavours of reaction: Attack, Defend, Dark, and Light.

Attack reactions trigger when you're using a Body skill, while Defend ones trigger when you're being hit by a Body skill.

Dark reactions are offensive, and they trigger when you're using a Dark-cost skill; usually they'd increase damage etc.
Light reactions are defensive, however; they trigger when you're being hit by a Dark-cost skill.

It works this way because Light skills are positive (healing or taming), so there's no point buffing them offensively or defending against them. And using Dark and Light as reaction names seemed more aesthetically pleasing to me than something like "Dark Offence" and "Dark Defence", or "Mind Offence/Defence".

Not all skills allow reactions, and those that do have a ! of the colour of the reaction type they use.

I've mostly just worked on menus so far, but I've also begun implementing the changes in battles:

I've not done much with it though. I'll play around with implementing the actual mechanical effects next week.

Normally I'd start with those and make the menus last, but this was a strange case where I already had a working game to edit rather than starting from scratch. In hindsight maybe I should have made a separate prototype... but oh well, I'm here now!

I still have some more stuff to do with MARDEK, but I'll write another post about that once I've sorted it out.

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