Creating a Good Battle System

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Author: Cernus
Posted on 12/26/2004
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The battle system is just as important as the storyline. Battles are where all the action takes place.

I

n many ways the battle system is like a storyline; it is something that involves your characters, something that develops and opens up as the game progresses and to make a good one you have to use originality and creativity.
There are many RPGMaker games out there that have a good storyline that are let down by a poor battle system. In these types of games you find yourself running constantly from battles just to get to the next town to find out the next bit of story. An RPG where the battles become boring is quite possibly the worst thing that can happen to your RPG because the battles are supposed to be the part of the game where the player is excited and having the most fun. And this is rarely achieved when all you can do is cast magic and physically attack, and the only way to gain more skills is to level up. We all know that excessive use of RT in RPGMaker games is always looked upon critically. Well doesn’t the battle system count as RT? It is the default system that too many games have. Don’t be fooled, a good battle system is not easy to make but I think I can break it down into three main elements; tactical, simplicity and customisation. Basically you want a system where the player can dictate to some extent how your characters grow, it mustn’t be linear, it must require some skill to use the system and not be a system where the best spells are easily learned, it must also be relatively simple so that the majority can understand it.

Let’s look at some battle systems used in some of the more popular RPG’s.

Baldur’s Gate – You design the main character from scratch and choose all his/her attributes and abilities. The other characters are fixed single or multi-classes and gain spells from scrolls. You have to choose which ones your characters can use. The descriptions are extensive and there are many status changes.

Baldur’s Gate is an excellently made game, it allows massive customisation, not only in your characters abilities but in the storyline too. It is completely original in many ways. However the downfall is that it was so complicated. I know very few people who actually understood it. Descriptions of spells could be many 100’s of words long and most of it didn’t help to explain the nature of the spell. There were far too many status changes and it was difficult to understand what all of them did. In short, it was so complicated that only an elite few understood it so they greatly narrowed the amount of people they were appealing to. Personally, I think that if they made the battle system simpler then it would take Final Fantasy’s place as the most popular RPG.

Final Fantasy 10 – You’re characters skills and attributes are displayed on a sphere grid, by moving round the sphere grid and activating nodes you increase your characters’ attributes and learn new abilities.

The system of Final Fantasy 10 was an original one and scores full marks for customisation as any character can become anything provided you follow the right path, It certainly is simple once you get the hang of it, all you do is move then use a sphere to activate a node. The big downfall for me was the fact that it was too easy and required virtually no tactics at all. It didn’t take me long to figure out that the best strategy was to make each character follow their own path as any attempt to cross over to the other paths meant that your team was missing some skills and the character that was following a different path wasn’t becoming as affective as they could have been. The battles were too easy in Final Fantasy 10 and you could teach every character every skill apart from summons, they easily maxed out all stats apart from HP and MP to 255 and the only ‘tactical’ thing that you could do before entering battle was to alter the character’s weapon or accessory. Everyone has their own opinion but I thought that Final Fantasy 10’s system was fun for a while but the lack of challenge or tactical element brought it down.

Legend of Dragoon – you gain spells with your dragoon form by levelling up. Instead of the ‘attack’ command you have ‘additions’. Using an addition you have to hit the X button at the right time to get all the hits in. 20 successful additions results in a level up for that addition.

Well the additions were a nice touch, it livened up the dull attack command, and it was certainly simple and therefore easy to understand. The battles were somewhat challenging as you had to gain enough SP to transform into a dragoon and you could only have one active addition at the time so you couldn’t swap in battle. But there was no customisation! You could play through the game 1,000,000 times and every time your character will grow exactly the same, the only variant is which addition you choose first. This really brought the game down as no customisation means that the replay value is very low.

Breath of Fire 3 – You gain abilities by levelling up. Ryu finds dragon genes around the world and mixing these he can transform into a variety of dragons. By using ‘examine’ you can learn skills off certain monsters. There are also masters, where if you become their apprentice your attributes grow in a different way, you also learn skills from them. Learned skills can be exchanged between characters using ‘skill ink’.

Breath of Fire 3 has all three elements. It is simple, you increase in level to gain more skills, use examine to learn new skills, your attributes change and you learn new skills when studying under masters, and you can mix dragon genes to get different affects. It has customisation as you can choose how your characters grow and what skills they learn, aswell as which dragon form Ryu turns into. It also requires skill, you have to think which skills you are going to give to each character and you have to choose carefully as skill inks are rare. You also have to think carefully about which master you study under. Make Nina study under Bunyan for example will halt her intelligence, which is her greatest asset. Make her study under Mygas though and her AP and intelligence will rise making her stronger.

Ofcourse these four are professional and well known games. They all very enjoyable and even though the first 3 lack one of the elements, they are still good as the other elements are really strong so you can probably get away with it. Let’s look at some other battle systems that are often created on the RPGMaker.

Your characters’ stats rise when you level up, levelling up also may result in you learning a new skill.

This is the most commonly used battle system and the fact that it’s been used over and over again does not help it at all. It’s simple which is one good thing. But it lacks two vital elements; customisation and tactical. How much better would it be if it was something like this?

Your characters’ stats rise in a certain way depending on which weapon you have equipped. You find gems around the world that you can use on your characters to teach them skills.

Now it has all the elements. It’s still simple, each weapon will tell you which attributes it will cause to rise and you teach characters skills by using gems on them. You can customise your characters as equipping different weapons will change how they grow and you can choose which skills your characters learn. It also requires some tactics, do you give all the MP raising weapons and magic spell gems to one character? Or do you share them out? And if you share them out, will you share them out equally, or will one character get more magic than another?

Let’s take a look at another system.

You find magic scrolls around the world that only one character can use. When used, they learn a new skill. On low HP your character unleashes their Limit Break.

This is a little better. The programmer has tried to make it more interesting but has not yet made a good battle system. The fact that magic scrolls can only be used only be accessed by one character means that each character has a set list of skills that they can use which means there is no customisation. The limit break is a good idea apart from the fact that it rips off Final Fantasy. When doing this, you have to be very careful. Fan games have an excuse to do this but I have seen too many games that rip off Final Fantasy and not only is it something that we’ve seen before but it isn’t even done as well as Final Fantasy. Let’s apply the three crucial elements to this system and remove the Limit Break.

You find magic scrolls around the world that only one character can use. Using a magic scroll causes a certain skill to level up by 2 but another skill’s level to be reduced by 1. On low HP a character goes into berserk and while in this state has access to all of their potential skills, which they unleash randomly.

Customisation does not always require all the characters to have access to all the skills. All you have to do is make it so your character’s can grow differently each time you play the game. By increasing one skill level by 2 and decreasing another by 1 that character will never master every skill which means you have to be tactical about your choices. The ‘Limit Break’ idea has been refined and is now more acceptable. Using their potential skills randomly means that you have a great variety of what they might do and they are not limited to a single move like in most of Final Fantasy’s Limit Breaks.

Let’s look at a final example:

At each level up your stats are reduced to ‘1’. You spend ‘attribute points’ on customising your attributes. At each level up you have access to more attribute points. Every time you level up you can choose from any ability to learn. Every monster you encounter can suss out your weaknesses and it’s attributes and skills match yours.

Heh heh, okay I haven’t seen this sort of thing before but the point I’m trying to make here is not to go overboard. It is very simple how the battle system works, although it will be very boring having to go through the same routine constantly. If you allow too much customisation then it can become very confusing and it feels a lot more secure to have characters that are set in a class originally but can be altered over time. If you allow complete customisation then you don’t know what sort of abilities and attributes your characters should have at this stage. This certainly requires tactics but it would take ages to sift through all the abilities and find out which ones each character should have and what attributes your characters should have. It would also be a hassle to have to change your attributes at every level up. Having monsters with skills and attributes at your level, aswell as being able to suss out your weaknesses? Apart from being annoying to program, wouldn’t it make every battle seem like a boss battle?

You need to strike a balance, have your game too easy and the player will lose interest, have it too hard and they’ll get frustrated. Customise everything and it can appear overwhelming, customise nothing and it will seem boring. Make it too simple and it will be boring also, make it too complicated then a large number of people won’t know what’s going on.

Okay, we’ve seen a few examples. Now let’s try to create our own system using these three elements. When creating your system try to think tactical, simplicity and customisation all at the same time. Three is a good number, when trying to create a system try to think of three different sections of it, each, which have these three elements. Take my and Tidus10’s game “Divine Darkness” for example. We have the “Soul Anguish” system. You gain ‘energy’ from battles. After acquiring a certain amount of a certain type of energy you can unleash a powerful attack called a “Soul Anguish”. Energy is difficult to get so you have to think carefully which attack you’ll use, keeping in mind that using one Soul Anguish will cause another to disappear until you get enough energy again. We have the Item Stat System. Monsters drop ISS Items. ISS items permanently raise your character’s stats therefore you can customise their stats as you wish. There is also the Workshop where you can create special equipment, spell books, and create or break down potions and orbs.

You have to try to be creative, do something that no-one else has done before. Creativity cannot be taught but I can give you a few simple tips. I think this is the easiest way to create a good battle system. I created a battle system purely for the purpose of this tutorial, it’s called the Fusion System.

Step 1: Make it so stats OR skills are customised

This is a good start. You don’t have to make it so stats or skills can be customised, you can do something else if you like, but it is very difficult to go wrong if you customise atleast one of these. If you want you can find something else to customise. Here are a few ideas of what you can do to allow the player to customise stats and skills:

1: Use items to increase stats rather than levelling up
2: Depending on which weapon you have equipped, your stats will grow in a different way as you win battles with your weapon.
3: Stats are fixed. However when you learn a skill, depending on which skill it was, certain stats will increase. Skills must also be able to be customised in this case otherwise the stats will not be able to be customised.
4: Slaying a certain monster or healing a certain ally will cause your stats to rise in a certain way.
5: Set up a class system where your characters can alter which class they are. Whenever they level up in a class then their stats permanently rise in a certain way. Even if you switch to another class this rise in stats will be noticeable.

6: Have scrolls hidden around the world or for sale in shops. Each scroll contains a skill. Use the scrolls to teach your characters skills.
7: Depending on which weapon type you have equipped your character will learn a skill. Winning battles with that weapon type will cause you to learn more skills with that weapon type that can only be accessed when that weapon type is equipped.
8: At each level up you get AP (Ability Points) There is an ‘Ability Tree’ Using your AP you have to choose which path you will take. At each point in the tree there is a choice to which skill you learn. Ultimately you will be able to access any of the abilities but you will only be able to follow one path and therefore you will miss the majority of the skills.
9: Each character starts off with ‘Base Skills’ such as ‘Fire’ or ‘Double Slice’ Using these skills in battle a certain number of times causes that skill to upgrade. Skills will only upgrade if you use them.
10: You learn skills as normal, by levelling up. However, the skills you learn by levelling up are weak. There is a magic shop in every village where you can combine two skills together. Say if you know ‘fire’ and ‘earth’ you can combine then to learn ‘molten rock’ but you forget ‘fire’ and ‘earth’.

You are free to use these examples or invent your own if you wish. You can also try to mix some of these together if you think it’ll work. For my Fusion System I decided to use the system where you gain stats by winning battles with a variety of weapons. At this point you should really be thinking about how many characters you have and what classes they start out as. Let’s say so far my system looks like this:

Character 1:
Cernus
Swordsman (Physical fighter)
Equips Swords, Axes, Spears

Character 2:
Ruby
Shaman (Healer)
Equips Rods, Staves, Spears

Character 3:
Silver
Magician (Magic caster)
Equips Rods, Staves, Knives

Character 4:
Yong
Monk (Fist fighter)
Equips Gloves, Claws

Character 5:
Nurem
Sniper (Long-ranged)
Equips bows, knives, guns

Character 6:
Punji
Beast (All-rounder)
Equips Ancient Artefacts, Claws

Characters’ increase their stats by winning battles with a certain weapon equipped. Some characters are unable to equip certain weapons. Skills are learned by levelling up.

Already it looks promising. Notice that if you allow your characters stats to be varied then it doesn’t matter if you learn skills by levelling up. I also put a limitation on how my characters can develop by making it so certain characters can’t equip some weapons. This is often a good idea as at the beginning of the game you can prevent the player from deviating the characters’ stats too much from their roles. Ofcourse later you can make staves that increase strength greatly or something. But at the beginning of the game it is often a good idea to gently ease the player into the system, don’t bombard them with the full system to begin with. If you decide to put a limitation on, don’t make it too heavy. A limitation can make it more challenging but you don’t want to go overboard.

So overall, in this step you should:
· Allow the player to customise the characters stats or skills
· Think up your characters’ style of fighting or class.
· Put on a gentle limitation to ease the player into the system and later provide more of a challenge.

Step 2: Designing your characters’ skills

There is nothing more boring than having a game where the skills are just magic and a steal command. In this case you find yourself casting the same spell over and over again and making the rest of your characters physical attack in every battle. Try to think of some interesting skills that haven’t been used to death. Skills such as; steal, scan, jump, double cast, guard have been used too many times. However if you provide some skills that aren’t often seen then using these skills aswell will not matter. Here’s a few examples of skills that aren’t often used.

1: Fatefull Bullet (A physical attack where the damage is completely varied)
2: Healing Wave (A healing spell that targets both enemies and allies (you would need to use a battle event for this))
3: Ask for Advise (Ask for advise from one of the other characters. They will give you advise for a good strategy in the current battle)
4: Fear (Inflict ‘fear’ on an opponent which prevents them from using any physical abilities)
5: Mirror (Turn into the opposing enemy for the remainder of the battle)
6: Preparation (Call the menu during battle so you can swap characters, change equipment etc before resuming the battle)
7: Unwritten fate (Restart the battle again with the same stats you had when you entered the battle)
8: Fire Magnifier (Lower the fire resistance of one enemy)
9: Rolling Flame (Summon a flame that comes back to attack all enemies every 3 turns)
10: Mana Blast (Uses up all MP. The more MP that was used, the more damage is inflicted)

Just look at the skill section in the rpgmaker and look at all the options, there are loads more that you can think of. How much more interesting is a black mage with elemental magic along with ‘Rolling Flame’ and ‘Mana Blast’ than a Black Mage without?

However your creation of interesting skills should not end here. These are just a few examples of what you can put in instead of the usual steal, jump etc. What you want, is a theme. This theme can be as dominant as you like. Think about Breath of Fire 3, it had a completely unique skill system of transforming into a dragon, but it had normal skills like “typhoon” and “double strike” along side it. Then think of something like Final Fantasy 7 where the entire system was dominated by materia. The only commands you could use without material were ‘attack’ and ‘item’. Both these systems work well and that fact that they’re unique makes them great.

This is where you have to be creative. When creating your theme, think of an idea that no-one has thought of before. Keep in mind the three key words; tactical, simplicity, and customisation. You want a system that’s easy to use but is not linear and also requires skill.

Think of a simple idea then build on it. I thought of a system where the active characters could merge together to create a large monster. Then I thought about giving each character 3 fusion skills and each combination of fusion skills that are used will result in a different fusion. I finally thought of hiding these fusion abilities around the world so you had to find them before you use them. Each character starts off with 1 and has to find the remaining 2. Three each doesn’t sound much but that’s 729 different combinations if you have 6 characters. If you use this system, it would be a good idea to make, say 40 different combinations do the same thing, unless you have the patience to do 729 lol! Now that you’ve thought of your theme you have to make sure it would make sense in the story. You don’t often see 6 people who can fuse together, walking around in a modern city do you? So let’s say that this fusion system is part of an ancient legend and these 6 are the prophets or something. Yes, I know. It’s a clichéd storyline but this isn’t a storyline tutorial :P So now with this Fusion theme our battle system looks like this:

Character 1:
Cernus
Swordsman (Physical fighter)
Equips Swords, Axes, Spears
Fusion Skill: Fire Fuse, Sword Fuse, Hero Fuse

Character 2:
Ruby
Shaman (Healer)
Equips Rods, Staves, Spears
Fusion Skill: Holy Fuse, Godly Fuse, Celestial Fuse

Character 3:
Silver
Magician (Magic caster)
Equips Rods, Staves, Knives
Fusion Skills: Mana Fuse, Elemental Fuse, Sorcerer Fuse

Character 4:
Yong
Monk (Fist fighter)
Equips Gloves, Claws
Fusion Skills: Combat Fuse, Focus Fuse, Ancient Fuse

Character 5:
Nurem
Sniper (Long-ranged)
Equips bows, knives, guns
Fusion Skills: Gunner Fuse, Accuracy Fuse, Assasin Fuse

Character 6:
Punji
Beast (All-rounder)
Equips Ancient Artefacts, Claws
Fusion Skills: Demon Fuse, Darkness Fuse, Hellish Fuse

Characters’ increase their stats by winning battles with a certain weapon equipped. Some characters are unable to equip certain weapons. Skills are learned by levelling up. Each character initially knows 1 fusion skill and additional fusion skills are hidden around the world. Depending on which combination of fusion skills you use in battle, your characters with fuse together into a certain giant monster.

This now looks like a good battle system for a game. Since there are 729 fusions to test, the player will probably never do each combination. The fusion skills also add a new element to the RPG that has never been done before. This creates a sense of originality about the game. When creating your theme, ask yourself “Would I enjoy this system if I played the game?” I once created something called “The Field System” which had all the elements required, the problem was it was just boring, lol! The Fusion System means that you always have a last resort if things get tricky in battles and it can be fun controlling a giant monster depending on what your view is.

So overall, in this step you should:
· Think original and creative. Keep the three elements; tactics, simplicity and customisation in mind when creating a part of your system that is completely unique to your game.
· Would your idea appeal to you if you found it in another game?
· How dominant is this theme? Does it dictate every move or is it just another section of skills?

Step 3: A final touch

Repetition of the same thing over and over again is not looked upon very well. Now some things you can’t avoid very easily. Most RPG’s have HP, MP, random battles, save points etc. Just adding one concept that varies from every other RPG can make the battle system seem much more unique. Again, here are a few ideas:

1: Don’t have MP at all. Make weak spells take one turn to cast and stronger spells take longer, say for a level 2 spell it takes 2 turns to cast.
2: If you don’t defeat all the enemies within a certain number of turns then more monsters join the battle.
3: If you escape from battle, once you’re back on the field your character runs back 20 spaces.
4: Each character carrys their own items, meaning that in battle every person’s item list is different.
5: Have the option to ‘haggle’ with shopkeepers.
6: Don’t have a main character. Give the player the option to choose their own leader.
7: Have a few bosses that appear in random battles once.
8: Make status changes contagious
9: Allow your party to divide into two groups so you can explore twice as fast.
10: To increase the mystery, every time you find a new item it is displayed as “???” and there is no description. Only after you’ve used it do you get a description.

Well you get the idea. Just add something that makes your battle system different. For example, in “Divine Darkness” there is a workshop where you can make weapons, armour, potions, spell books etc. It can make a heck of a difference and force the player to think more strategically or make the game outside battles more fun. I chose to use the idea of having monsters join the battle if you don’t finish it fast enough for my fusion system, this way it adds to the excitement of the battle, you can’t hang around, you have to eliminate the enemies as quickly as possible! So the final overview of the system looks like this:

Character 1:
Cernus
Swordsman (Physical fighter)
Equips Swords, Axes, Spears
Fusion Skill: Fire Fuse, Sword Fuse, Hero Fuse

Character 2:
Ruby
Shaman (Healer)
Equips Rods, Staves, Spears
Fusion Skill: Holy Fuse, Godly Fuse, Celestial Fuse

Character 3:
Silver
Magician (Magic caster)
Equips Rods, Staves, Knives
Fusion Skills: Mana Fuse, Elemental Fuse, Sorcerer Fuse

Character 4:
Yong
Monk (Fist fighter)
Equips Gloves, Claws
Fusion Skills: Combat Fuse, Focus Fuse, Ancient Fuse

Character 5:
Nurem
Sniper (Long-ranged)
Equips bows, knives, guns
Fusion Skills: Gunner Fuse, Accuracy Fuse, Assasin Fuse

Character 6:
Punji
Beast (All-rounder)
Equips Ancient Artefacts, Claws
Fusion Skills: Demon Fuse, Darkness Fuse, Hellish Fuse

Characters’ increase their stats by winning battles with a certain weapon equipped. Some characters are unable to equip certain weapons. Skills are learned by levelling up. Each character initially knows 1 fusion skill and additional fusion skills are hidden around the world. Depending on which combination of fusion skills you use in battle, your characters with fuse together into a certain giant monster. You have to win the battle in a certain number of turns, otherwise more monsters will join the battle.

Now with just that little bit added, it makes the battle system seem really unique and makes the feel of the battles different from every other RPG. This one change will effect how the player will think tactics wise. Now, if they are short on time, they might rely on ‘fusion’ to end the battle quickly. It will also force people who usually spend ages setting up defences, to be more aggressive. Think of your own variation that will make the game more interesting. You’d be surprised how much the smallest change can affect the overall gameplay.

So overall, in this step you should:
· Think of an idea in or out of battle that makes the game seem more unique.
· Think about how it affects the gameplay. Does it make it more challenging and more interesting?

Conclusion

Well I think I’ve waffled on too much now. I hope this tutorial is help to some people and feel free to e-mail me if you have any further questions, my e-mail is pkitching86@hotmail.com.

Remember, the key to a good battle system is something that is original and contains something that makes it different from all the other RPG’s. Your battle system should contain the three vital elements; tactical, simplicity and customisation and you should make sure you don’t go overboard with any of these. But most importantly, it should be a battle system that is fun to play.

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