I'm figuring on how different weapons should be balanced between each other. I think I've got it figured out, but there's one thing I'm uncertain of, and that is the difference between a Katana and a Staff.

What I've got so far:
Staves cause around 80 damage. Katanas cause around 65 damage.

Staves are a blunt weapon, and enemies weak against blunt attacks would take 120 damage (40 points extra), yet a few other enemies might brush it off and only take 40 or even 20 damage.

Katanas are a basic weapon and would cause 65 damage all around no matter the weakness, but they can attack groups at once, so those instances where there are two or three slimes sitting next to each other (which generally would happen every few battles), it would cause 65 damage to each of them in one fell swoop (you do the math).

Between staves and katanas, which would you choose?

And more importantly, does either sound too powerful compared to the other? I'm wanting them to be comparitively equal, so that it becomes personal choice, and not the usual "this one will always be the more powerful option" deal.

EDIT: Okay, I'm glad that I decided to ask about this. After considering a couple comments, I decided to do some number crunching. And I discovered that yes, even though the club offers bonus damage against certain enemies, the disadvantage against other enemies just makes it weak again. Makes me wonder about the stats of my weapons overall. I did some retooling with weapon strengths, and I'd like you guys to take a look at this and tell me what you think.

(This is using RPG Maker 1, btw.)

• Axes: 84% Power. Single attack. Nothing special. Just consistantly hits hard.
  
• Swords: 38% Power. Can strike twice (for 76%). Weaker than the Axes overall, but if the first strike defeats an enemy, the next strike diverts to the next enemy. In essense, it will give you a head start in chucking out the next enemy's HP.
  
• Clubs: 100% Power. Single attack. Most powerful weapon against normal foes. Extra damage to armored enemies. Less damage to a few others.
  
• Katanas: 60% Power. Single attack. If multiple enemies are of the same type, it hits each of them in one fell swoop. (e.g. If the enemy party consists of a goblin and two slimes, you can attack both slimes at once.)
  
• Daggers: 36% Power. Can strike twice (for 72%). Same situation as the sword, but can be equipped by characters the sword cannot.
  
• Bow & Arrows: 65-77% Power. Single attack. Its power starts off weak, but as you find better quality arrows, it gets stronger. One character is able to use this weapon to strike enemies before the battle begins (but not for bosses).
  
• Claws: 35% Power. Single attack, but two can be equipped at the same time (for 70%).
  
• Fists: 45% Power. Single attack, but two can be equipped at the same time (for 90%). Like the club, it is a blunt weapon, and can cause extra damage on certain enemies, or less. (Think punching gloves.)

With that said, here's a possible situation that includes all weapon types. You've assembled a party of four.

• Member #1 can equip the axe, sword, or club.
• Member #2 can equip the katana, dagger, or club.
• Member #3 can equip the bow & arrow (in this scenario, at 73% Power) or club. This is the specialized character I mentioned.
• Member #4 can equip two claws, two fists, or a claw in one hand and a fist worn on the other.

Based on the information above, and assuming everyone has the same attack power and no magic (unlikely scenario, but work with it), what would you choose for all their weapons?

And do you think they're balanced against each other well enough?

Katana definitely sounds more powerful and would be my choice.

Average damage is generally better than the ability to do low or high in given situations.

Especially if the Katana can still deal 'good' damage.. and then deals lots of damage vs. multiple enemies.

On the other hand.. the Staff has a weakness.. severe weakness when it goes up against something that 'might brush it off' where as the katana has no weakness.

What I would say do is have it so that Katana's can't critically hit (if possible) so that they retain a nice average damage and can deal to multiple foes.. where the Staff can crit for 2x or some type of overcrit against weak enemies for 3x or 4x. This would give more option that yes, the Staff has a severe weakness in the fact that when it comes up against something that can brush it off.. that it does overly small damage to it.. but it means when it finds something it's strong against that it can quite nearly 1 shot it (depending on the values you choose).

Atleast then if you fight something and lose.. you can re-evaluate which weapon you use for the fight and come back the next time.

But, I still think to be on the 'safe' side.. the Katana seems to be the better choice since you can go into the fight blind and still deal damage.

My .02

Nah, crit hits are the same across all weapons, unchangeable, x2 damage.

I will say this, Dray.. Just kind of throwing it out there and not so much critiquing what you have up so far..

But, I wouldn't let a mage use the best (overall) weapon in the game: The Club.

Aside from that

It seems you really want a wooden weapon to deal some good damage.. and against armored targets..

See the thing I don't understand here is that the warrior gets use of the Axe/Sword/Club (atleast, and it may change).. but why would they ever use the axe?

What I mean is that you give them the option of the sword.. attack twice.. which is a nice compromise.. and the club which is the highest value rated damage. But, the mage can use it also..

What I would personally do is make the club magical somehow.. maybe with an on-hit property like the ability to stun and cut it's overall damage to around 60% and make it better against armored targets.

I would also consider the dagger against armored targets or a much higher crit rate given that it really doesn't look appealing at the moment when a mage can use a club.

I would also switch the value of damage between fists and claws.. obviously if you're using fists (even if it's brass knuckles) you're going to get -more- power by putting blades on them (or claws, yeah?) and if you're going to put bludgeoning as good against armor.. it really makes no sense to use claws (as they are) because claws are 1.) Less powerful and 2.) not as good against armored targets.

Hope it helps to find a better balance.. you may be weighing some extra factors to why you've made the choices you have.. if you can give some more detail I certainly don't mind helping you out

Actually I'd find the club to be the perfect weapon for a mage. This way I can actually cause some damage when I don't feel like casting a spell!
Seriously, I'm always annoyed in almost every commercial RPG when I've got my heavy hitters causing hundreds or even thousands of damage, and my mage whose MP I'm saving hits the enemy for a WHOPPING....... 32 points.

As for weapon capabilities, I'm really limited to these options:
Boost the wearer's attack by some amount. (What weapons are for, really.)
Give it one of three elements or no element. (I'm giving the club the "blunt" element.)
Have it cast a spell when used as an item. (And anybody can use it as an item, even if they can't equip it.)
Attack once or twice per turn. (Each hit has its own chance of crit-hitting.)
Attack one enemy, one enemy group, or all enemies. (Enemy group = the same type of enemy standing side-by-side.)
And, a couple other options that are either minor or not worth considering (like cursed weapons).

Unfortunately, the only way to have a weapon cause a bad status effect is if you embed it with a spell and use it as an item. Incidentally, you can't cause bad status and inflict damage at the same time. Enemies can, though. The cheaters.


The logic a player might assume is the axe will cause more damage in one hit than the sword will in two. And though it's weaker than the club, it isn't succeptable to some enemies brushing off the attack like the club is. It ultimately depends on what the player finds more important: high consistant damage (the axe), the ability to carry an attack to another enemy (the sword), or the ability to deliver really powerful damage if used on the right foes (the club).

And that there is why the fists are stronger than the claws. I'm trying to make up for the fact that the fists are going to be weak against certain enemies, sometimes greatly so. If I leave the fists weaker than the claws, the only time they'd ever be stronger would be against the few enemies weak against blunt attacks.

I am still considering suggestions for changing power levels, though. Maybe the fists will be made weaker. Depends on what others have to say.

Definately have my work cut out for me.

After reading your edit, I think that it's just about as balanced as it's going to get, I really wouldn't change much of anything. I'm quite impressed. As for what I'd personally use? Well, it would just really matter how strong of weapon it is at the time, I think the balance is good enough not to really be able to pick unless I saw specific stats and maybe knew the enemies around the area. Like for Member #2, if there weren't a wide variety of enemies that lead to more grouping... I'd probably want a katana. But if they were never grouped, probably the club. And even then, I might choose daggers just depending on the situation.

Also, I've been meaning to ask. If you are using the elemental system in RM1 for your weapons... will all magic be generic?

I understand now, Dray

I do understand the commercial RPG stitch about mages using weapons and getting crap damage.. which was mostly changed with Final Fantasy XII when you could have your mages equip katana's and still retain their high magic and still deal good damage.

There are some games that allow mages to hit just as hard (if not a tiny bit under) warrior/rogue type classes and use magic for more 'devastating' damage. Reminds me a little of Golden Sun. All in all, though.. Sounds like you've planned it out.. the only thing I could think is when you start playing it and get actual numbers and data and tweak from there.

Yeah, was just thinking that last night. Sounds sound on paper, but I might have to actually see how well it works. I might bump back down the club and fists, though, to make them more comparable to the sword and claws, and make the axe top dog again like I wanted ('cause having a club cause more damage than an axe just doesn't seem right).

Lantis, we'll assume for now that...
Sword causes 18 damage twice...
Axe causes 42 damage once...
Club causes 50 damage once, and out of six enemies in a dungeon, one is weak against the club and two are strong against it...
Katana causes 30 damage, and you'll encounter a group set of enemies every few battles...
Dagger causes 16 damage twice...
Bow & Arrow causes 36 damage once, and it belongs to the person who can stike enemies before the battle starts...
Claws cause 17 damage individually...
Fists cause 22 damage individually, and you're still dealing with the same enemies as the club.

Again, I'm going to try to avoid having any dungeon favor a specific weapon, so that it's entirely up to player preference, so the 1:2:3 ratio of weak:strong:normal against Club is the norm, as well as having a grouped set of enemies appearing every few battles. Otherwise it'd be a case of needing to experiment and swapping equipment all throughout the dungeon, and that'd just take all the enjoyment out of it.

To answer your question, magic won't be completely generic. There will be three types.

The first is Magic, which is HP-consuming and uses the second element type. There's only one set of attack spells, but I'm trying these a bit differently than most games. The "low-level" spell causes 99 damage against one enemy at a cost of 30HP. The "medium-level" spell causes 99 damage againt an enemy group at a cost of 60HP. The "high-level" spell causes 99 damage against all enemies at the cost of 99HP. So rather than the spells becoming obsolete as newer spells are gained, all three can be useful depending on the situation. To make it a little easier, they're heat-based spells, so it'll be a little more obvious which enemies might be damaged with this type. And of course there's a whole bunch of other spells to go along with these, like cure-all and poison-all. In fact, almost all spells of this type affect multiple targets. Gotta make it worth the HP consumption. (Plus you're much more likely to use a Poison spell if it can poison the entire enemy party.) Anybody can learn these spells, but they're most useful on characters whose HP-growth you've given high priority.

The second type is Craft Magic, which is stored in items and equipment (thus its name) and uses the third element type. These spells are weaker than the powerful HP-consuming spells, partly to balance out the fact that they have no cost to use. I haven't quite figured out how much damage or whatever they will cause, but right now they seem to be notably electrical. I'm hoping to avoid weapons that break when using these spells, because I get so annoyed when games give me items that have random breaking points. I wind up so afraid to use them because I don't know when they'll break and I might want to save them for later. And at this point it's probably becoming noticeable that I'm creating this game to please myself, which is what creating our own games should be about, right? (Incidentally, Mario RPG's been annoying me with its randomly not-breaking items. Come on, my inventory's full, again, lemme clear some space!)

The third type will be the various skills that are character-specific, and aren't elemental, like Mick's shuriken.

The only thing that I can see at this point.. is.... can you change weapons while in combat?

If you can.. then that pretty drastically changes what's favored and what isn't.. someone going against an armored opponent will take the Club.. someone going against two-three enemies will take the swords/katana's/daggers.. People may go into the battle all using Bow & Arrows (if they can) so they can get a lot of shots off first and then switch weapons mid-fight. So on and so forth.. and it actually sounds quite fun

@ Synth - Offhand I want to say yes, you can... but it may take your turn for the round.

@ Dray - With your examples I'd probably go:

Member #1 - sword
Member #2 - katana
Member #3 - bow & arrow
Member #4 - claw in one hand, glove in the other.

That's just personal preference. I don't think any one is really that much better or worse that the other. I guess price of said weapons might change what I eventually go with, or if I notice a dungeon I'm in following a pattern that would make something slightly more useful. But for the most part, I think I'd keep at least one of each in case I felt like switching.

I had to double-check this. No, you cannot switch equipment mid-battle. There's an "Equip" option in the battle menus, but it's for using equipment as items, if they have an embedded spell.

Okay, so it's been a while since I've talked about this game. I've cooled down enough that I'm willing to talk about Slayers' Reign, again (though I'm not about to go back and re-edit all those posts in my Dev Studio, yet).

This was one of the big reasons why I got fed up with Slayers' Reign. Trying to figure out how to balance all these weapons was hard as heck... whatever that means. The staves were the main culprit. I want so much for staves to be useful, but considering how more enemies would be strong against staves than weak, I just couldn't get it balanced.

Well, I finally figured out what to do. I'm going to make it so that nothing is strong against staves; enemies will either be weak against staves or they'll take normal damage. Doing this means that the spells in the game won't have any advantages of weak vs strong, but spell types in my game were more about their potency, rather than whether an enemy is weak to them or not. Not sure how strong staves will be compared to other weapons, yet, but this'll make things considerably easier for me.

This doesn't mean I'm gonna get back to work on SR, though. There's still the major obstacle that is the huge gap in the quest not far from where I left off. No idea what should happen. Besides, I'm curious whether this Dungeon Crawled project will get anywhere.

Glad to hear you are starting to gain a bit of intrest in it agian. And that DOES seem like a rather logical direction to balance your problem. Just do whatever and see where it goes.

balancing is a major part of any game. currently im focused on trying to balance the first 3 card as its my last chance to set a standard for the remaining portion of the game. staffs are one of my biggest problem too, so ive resolved mine by making it behave more like a club with half decent attack then a weak weapon. my mages will do damage comparable to my main attackers but slightly weaker due to their smaller strength increases. the distinction is in their lower hp and the dmg they will take.

have a vision for what kind of raise you want in your characters, then set everything to that vision. i wanted over 1k hp for my characters so i had to bump up everything else to accommodate it. i wanted to keep my preferred final level lower and thus wanted my stats to not be in high triple digits so i adjusted those to meet that expectation. follow the balancing guide for everything else then tinker it to your desire. planning is key else your just wasting time fumbling around.