Castle Paradox

[Moogle1]

(reprinted from the ohrrpgce lj community)

While I'm not officially doing anything, Shadow has planted the idea into my head to make a tactical RPG. I have a concept that I've been thinking of since before he mentioned the idea to me, but no development on it. If I don't end up making a tactical RPG, we'll just consider this good game theory practice. (Besides, I will have to make one sometime in my career. HAVE TO.) Please answer the following questions.

1. What character class is the most fun to play as in any tactics game and why? (Special classes and monster classes included.)
(Good example: "Calculator, because I liked trying to calculate my spells just right." Bad example: "Calculator (Orlandu, Martial Arts Ninja, etc.), because he PWNED ALL THE BATTLES LOL.")

2. What ability/abilities (any kind: action, reaction, support, move, or other), if any, did you always want to see in a TRPG?

3. Same question, what character class(es)?

4. Same question, what feature(s)?

5. What makes a TRPG good? Bad?

If your answers involve a game other than FFT, FFTA, TO, or OB, please give context so I'll have a good idea of what you're talking about.
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Slime Salad :: Independent Game Design

[Iblis]

1. I really liked the Geomancer. Their abilities were unique and cool.
Also liked Time Mage. It was good to see effect magic that was actually really useful.
Mediators were also cool. It was useful being able to get enemies onto my side, and some of their other skills were good too. I think mostly I just liked the idea of the job more than its actual implementation, it was a neat idea.

The following may be in some TRPGs, they're just ideas I'm getting right now.

2. A reaction ability that lets you move a space or two after getting hit (could be called "Escape" or something, probably a Thief ability).
- An action ability (for a Ninja probably, maybe Time Mage) that turns the character invisible unless an enemy is standing right next to them.
- A Ninja support ability that lets them do extra damage when attacking from behind (more so than normal), with a small percentage of the time killing the target instantly.
- An action ability for a Time Mage that lets you swap the CT-meter of two characters.

3. Ninja, except with cool abilities instead of "throw" which is boring. They should have stealth, maybe some dark magic, and/or knife/sword abilities.

Gambler:
* Action ability: Dice. Uses non-elemental attack and effect skills, with targets chosen by a dice roll. Like with the calculator, targets can be anywhere on the battlefield.
* Support abilities include: Lucky (higher rate of using reaction abilities)
* Reaction abilities include: Counter-roll (upon being attacked deals damage to a random enemy, chosen by the dice-roll)

4. One problem I had with FFT was that the easiest way to get levels and abilities was to just sit around and accumulate or yell or something like that. I don't think the game should be able to be abused like that. A good way to fix that is to make it so that with repeated use of a single ability, the amount of EXP and JP you get from it is reduced. It makes sense too, I mean if you accumulate a hundred times in a row, are you really still going to be learning anything from it? Probably not. If you used an ability in moderation then this would never happen, and if you did use it too often after a certain amount of time not using it your ability to learn from it would return. This would encourage the player to actually have fun with the battles instead of sitting around for hours accumulating (yes, I know people who do this for hours). Also, the amount of JP required to get skills should probably be a bit less than in FFT. If the JP requirements were a reasonable amount, nobody would want to go to these lengths to learn skills. Also, there should be no JP or EXP gain from attacking allies (or healing enemies).

Also I'd like to see giant army battles (I'm not sure if they'd work well, but I'd still like to see them), where you have everyone out on the battlefield instead of the 5 you get in FFT. You'd have to have a huge map and a lot of enemies too. if you wanted to really go large-scale there could be a bunch of guests too, that could be lesser soldiers in your army. Your characters could be like the commanders, giving directions to the guests (not specific commands, but things like where they should go and something like the tactics you can assign in Ogre Battle).

I'd really like to see something kind of like a Koei-style strategy game but that uses FFT-style battles. I don't know how practical it would be, with how many units you'd have there's have to be a lot less individual customization (except for the generals, it'd be good to be able to customize them). You'd have to be able to hire specific classes of soldiers into your army, and maybe you could get special classes from random events or something. I don't think it would be easy (if even possible) to make this idea work well, but it would be amazingly cool if it did.

5. Good: Variety in job/class choices, variety in battlefields, the FFT system of being able to equip extra abilities rather than just having abilities from a single job/class, challenging but not overwhelming battles, and all the same things that make any game good (music, graphics, etc...).
Bad: The opposite of all the stuff I just said.

[TMC]

Wait, I'm confused. I thought you already made a tactical RPG?
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"It is so great it is insanely great."

[Moogle1]

Heh... well, technically. OHRT has 1 1/2 battles, not nearly enough to develop ability systems, classes, and the like.

If I were going to make another TRPG, though, it wouldn't be for OHR. I'd make it 2-D on 3-D, like FFT. (I wanted to see if this was even feasible, so I made a little demo today. The load time is awful, but it looks really nice.)

The responses for this have been really insightful, by the way. (Check the link to the LJ post for the rest.) Keep them coming.
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Slime Salad :: Independent Game Design

[Iblis]

Another class idea: Weather Mage

* Action ability: Atmospherics. Changes the weather on the battle field, affecting all units on the map. Effects could be:
* * Rain - All units receive more damage from attacks.
* * Snow - All units receive movement penalties, but any water becomes ice and can be crossed by walking on top of it.
* * Wind - Ranged attacks hit less often.
* * Fog - Non-ranged attacks hit less often.
* * Heat - Charge time for non-immediate attacks increases.
* * Lightning - Random lightning strikes the ground, doing lightning damage to surrounding units.
* * Sandstorm - Combines effects of heat and wind.
* * Blizzard - Combines effects of snow and wind.
* * Thunderstorm - Combines effects of lightning, rain, and wind.

* Support abilities: Adaptation (is unaffected by the weather)

* Reaction abilities: Breeze (evasion against ranged attacks increases each time the character is hit by one), Mist (evasion agaisnt non-ranged attacks increases each time the character is hit by one).

*Movement abilities: Cold Feet (forms ice under the character's feet when they step onto water, letting them and others walk across, though the ice only lasts a short while).

I will probably continue to post ideas as I receive them, if I think of any more.

[Gizmog1]

I'd hope it'd run faster than OHR Tactics, for one. But, I like Thiefy classes, things that can spark ambushes. Perhaps you could give each type of terrain a "Cover" statistic, for how good of a hiding place it is, and then the Thief, or some kind of class would have an "Ambush" ability where he tries to hide on a tile, and then when an enemy moves past, he can attack. It'd be useful for moving your people into a place where they can't be gotten to by the enemy, or hiding at the end of a bridge, and then attacking the first person to come out. You'd have to have the chance of successfully covering yourself be related both to statistics (Maybe), Ground type of the hiding square, and proximity of enemy forces.

I also really liked "Dancer" type classes, who could do a little bit of damage to a lot of enemies, or help everyone out a bit, and who could dodge attacks left and right. Evasion % is my favoritest of all favorite things.

[Rpeanut]

In FFTA paladin's were nice - once equipped with high movement stuff and two awesome double swords they were effective tanks, I dislike magic, the only magic i use are for healing or if they actually will do more damage than a normal attack eg . Ultima Shot ---> 999 dmg yay

I think you should open up different styles of playing eg. fast and sneaky, strong and slow, but be able to mix it up and make it still a challenge even if your opponent is still 10 lvls lower than you, (I'm a compulsive level upper - FFTA boss had no chance )
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...eh?

[Sephyroth]

I can't say I'm too happy about getting competition for making the First OHR Tactics Game With More Than 1.5 Battles. Nonetheless...

Feature(s) I'd like to see in a TRPG:

Traps - Similar to the kinds found in Bahamut Lagoon (the cannons) and Fire Emblem (the floor tiles that occasionally shoot fire). I've never actually seen one of those in FFT or the like.
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im realy ded

[Moogle1]

Sephy, there were traps in FFT. Not enough, but they were there. Most famously, the Degenerator, which sucked a level, letting tweakers have a heyday.

And the FFTA boss had no chance even if you were at a low level. Gimme a break. Only slightly harder than Altima.
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Slime Salad :: Independent Game Design

[Sephyroth]

True, but the Level degenerator sucked, since you can't tell where they are. It'd be better if the traps were visible but placed at strategic parts of the map.
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im realy ded

[JSH357]

Level Degenerators are a good thing in FFT!

Level down as a Calc, then level back up as a Mime/Ninja. You barely lose any stats because Calcs have crappy growths, then get huge rewards from the relevelling!

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