I'm having some difficulty defining elemental properties such as fire, ice and lightning, and correlating weaknesses and affinities to these properties. RPGM PS1 has three such properties that can be enabled, referred to as MagicA, B and C. The problem here is that the affinities and weaknesses among these properties are not coordinated in such a way as to produce a sensible outcome. MagicA is weak against MagicC, while B is weak against A, and C is weak against B. No matter how you arrange the fire / ice / lightning order, you can't simultaneously have fire weak against ice, and ice weak against fire; fire, for instance, would simply end up being weak against thunder. Is there some kind of workaround here? Maybe there's some other way to tweak other system data and reproduce a similar effect. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

The other issue I'm having is two-handed weapons. The game includes animations for bow attacks, but curiously enough, treats every single weapon as one-handed. The result is that characters can wield two bows in both hands, or equip a bow and a shield at the same time. I can't find any way to specify that a weapon is two-handed. I thought about trying to place an invisible cursed "shield" on characters who would wield two-handed weapons, but this means introducing a couple of restrictions: 1.) Such weapons have to be restricted to that character. I can't have a flexible system where characters can equip and specialize in any weapon they want. 2.) I could never introduce spells or items that remove curses from equipment, since that would allow the player to circumvent the restriction.

Unfortunately, there's not real way to get around the rock-paper-scissors magic system. Finding three elements that will fit this isn't really that easy. For my game, I kind of gave up on it. I actually do what you suggested. I ended up with just accepting that lightning will be weak to fire. No, it doesn't make a lot of sense, but there's absolutely no way to change it. Though I did turn the fourth class (none) to Terra type magic. It deals normal damage across the other three elements. I try to rationalize it by saying that all elements exist on earth, so Terra magic is just kind of a neutral element.

If you (or anyone else for that matter) can come up with a trinity of magic that makes sense, by all means...

As for the two handed thing, I've always hated using cursed equipment. Not only does it make the player feel forced, but they actually have a status effect in the menus CRS (curse). And I can't stand that. So instead, there's an option to just completely turn off left hand (or right for that matter). It's not in system data though, it's in event. There's a system option in events that lets you turn on and off things about the game. Like gaining exp (which is good for dungeons once you hit over level 20 so players can't easily grind to max), or turning off random encounters entirely. But honestly? It's good that you turn off a hand anyways. It's not easy to balance battle when both hands are open anyways. YOU might program the game as if you only carried one weapon and a shield. But then it would be really easy if players just doubled up on weapons. But if you balanced battle as if people actually used two weapons, it renders shields completely useless. But at least turning it off, you can use anti-curse spells and items.

Well, this is a tough one. I would hate to have spells that very clearly suggest some kind of elemental property, yet the game treats them all alike. It limits how creative I can be with accessories, as well. I wanted to have rings that would protect against certain elements, for instance.

The holiest of trinities: Fire type, Water type, Plant type.

Fire: Ignus; Ustrina

Water: Aqua; Nympha (which could mean bride as well as water, so you could fit that into the mythos of the goddess of water)

Plant: Herba; Nepenthes; Cytisus; Colletis

Neutral: Neutra; Earth variants; spectral variants

Hey, that's not a bad idea. I'll have to give that some consideration!

Here's a possible arrangement:

I just used Fire > Ice > Water.

Sure, it's a bit redundant since Ice and Water are kinda the same thing, but Ice enemies and Water enemies live in very different environments, so it'd work.

Probably better than me just having the three basic elements and just not trying to tie logical sense to the weaknesses. They are what they are.

A bit of an addendum to my first post...

I'm designing a game were experience levels are disabled. Characters would raise their attributes by consuming items. (such as food and vitamins) Since the STA and INT attributes affect HP and MP growth, would they really serve any function in my game? If these attributes are still displayed even though the experience system is disabled, it might look kind of awkward. Any ideas on how to approach these attributes?

STA and INT increase alongside HP and MP.

Water (Ice is included here) puts out Fire.
Fire devours Wind (Air).
Wind stirs up and upsets Water.
Earth is evenly matched with all (control element, or "neutral")

Water spells include ice dagger, frost, frost breath for dragons, and like-minded water/ice stuff.
Fire spells include fireball, blaze, firestorm, blaze breath for dragons. The usual. Nothing special there.
Wind spells are gale force, lightning, tempest, gale breath for dragons.

That's what I did with "Raiders Of Lekunder" and "Warriors Of Altos". But those were on RPG Maker 3, which provides just enough by way of effects for all of that stuff. In my CBS there, the player's characters have the same weaknesses that monsters have (Water monster will attack your Fire dude, and so on).

If you want to get technical about it, Wind can also put out Fire. I'm reminded of this every time I try to light a cigarette while there's wind rushing in through the car window. Fire can also turn Water into steam. Ten or so years ago I was working on ideas for a tactical game with a friend, and we came up with antipodes for each element. Water and Fire combine to form Lava, for example. Water and Wind combine to form Glacier (Ice stuff). And Fire and Wind combine to form Lightning. That required removing the Ice stuff from the Water category since Ice stuff is now in its own class. And the removal of Lightning type stuff from the Wind class. Interesting stuff there, but I never did anything with it and never did make that tactical game I was working on ideas for.

Another question...

I'm a little confused with how abilities / skills work. From what I do understand, you can give one to each player character. What I would like to do is tie some skills to equipment. (for instance, I would like to have a sword that can counterattack) When I go into the skills menu, I see a "Conditions" sub-menu. Here, I see the option "Has equipment." I assume that, when you select a piece of equipment, this means that equipment grants the skill to whichever character has the equipment. Is this correct? When I do a test play and examine the equipment and character status, I don't see any indication that these skills are active on that character.

Can someone explain this and its limitations in more detail?

Skills are RPGM's equivelant of Final Fantasy's jobs and Dragon Quest's classes. You know, if you want stuff like healer, wizard, brawler, etc.. The option you found about equipment simply means that the player can give a person that skill once they've obtained that equipment. Basically, it'd act as a prerequisite.

In order to give the player that skill, you'll either need a Skill Shop, or you'll want to force the skill on the player yourself.

I'm still not sure I understand. Honestly, this skill and ability menu has been extremely confusing.

In the character editor, there is a selection that allows me to give a skill (only ONE skill) to a character. Does this mean that any given character can only have a single skill, ever? I can't place a skill onto a weapon, equip that weapon on a character, and allow the character to use the weapon's skill so long as the weapon remains equipped?

When I check the status menu while playing the game, the character's ONE skill is listed in a small box. If the character is able to learn additional skills, would they appear here? Is there a limit as to how many total skills a character can simultaneously possess? (I'm not sure how many of them would be able to fit into such a small box)

If I understand your response correctly, what you're saying is that characters can learn additional skills, but only if events grant them to those characters. All the conditions in the edit menu only act as prerequisites.

Have you ever played Final Fantasy 3 DS, or Final Fantasy 5?

Or better yet, have you played through RPGM1's sample game? That uses the skill system.

Basically a skill is like saying a class. Like if you wanted a warrior skill set. A character will have it's basic stats which I'm sure you are used to. So let's say you named a skill "Warrior." And you added maybe plus 3 to attack and added a bit of HP to it. If you equip that "skill" to a character, they would get those stat bonuses. On top of that you can give them special abilities through this like double attack as well as the ability to learn spells the longer they have the "skill" equip. So you could have a mage "skill" and have special spells you can only learn through having this equip.

You can force characters to have these skills (I really do like referring to them as job classes than skills) or you can set up a shop (just like an item shop) to let the player pick which classes to equip on which character. It's actually really powerful feature to be in RM1.

So, a character can only equip one skill at a time then? If I assign a skill to a character, then they purchase another skill from a shop or receive it from an event, this new skill replaces the one that I had originally assigned to the character?

I'm familiar with how character classes and the like work; I'm just confused about how skills can be allocated. Rather than use the skill system to create something similar to character classes, I simply wanted to tie abilities to equipment. (e.g. have a sword that can counterattack, or an accessory that gives the party first attack) When I saw "Has equipment" as one of the options under the conditions sub-menu, I figured this might allow me to do that.

Yes.



Unfortunately, I don't think you will be able to do that. You can give equipment certain abilities like double strike and even go so far as make weapons cast magic spells if used as an item. But what you were seeing is a condition for being able to equip said skill. If you want specific weapons to have certain abilities, that's all handled just under the item options in system data.

Oh, well...

I think I have a handle on it now. Thanks for clearing that up.