There are lot of RPG's which have largely automated combat. The player chooses a target and perhaps has some range of special abilities to inset into an action queue, but largely the action is determined under the hood an the player can spend a lot of time left clicking. Generally these systems have attack cycles that are independent. Meaning one combatant rolls his attack against his target's defense while his target does the same, but they don't interact in any more complex way. I wonder if it would be possible to change this so that for example being attacked could interrupt your attacks, or so that attacks could be parried or countered. I've been playing a lot of Street Fighter 4 lately and I really like the "mind games" you get when you have an array of moves with different counters and I don't know if it would be possible to replicate that effect in a slower paced top down game. I'm not sure how I would want special moves/abilities to work. Generally I dislike how they are often implemented where the warrior has a mana bar basically, and can do a "super damaging attack" periodically, which I don't think makes much sense, why doesn't he just attack like that all the time? I suppose instead of mana you can call it fatigue or something, I think Guild Wars had an adrenaline meter, which is an improvement. But it'd be nice if it could be made more tactical, where perhaps doing a move exposes you to counters or something. But I'm not sure if it could work without the immediacy of a fighting game, anything too sensitive to timing or movement could be really awkward in an rpg. An obvious issue is that in games like SF4 it's always one on one, whereas in RPG's you'd have to account for multiple enemies, although you have abilities and classes that are more tailored to that. In any case I think I'd generally prefer a game to give you a smaller number of more significant enemies. Another problem I can see is that parries and counters and similar things might require synced animations which I imagine are a bit of nightmare. But I don't think that would be necessarily true for all of it. It's quite difficult. On the one hand I don't want the player holding down the left mouse button all day, but they don't want to be overwhelmed with options either. I'd also want to really hold their attention, so they have to be a bit watchful and know that the same tactics won't always work, but you don't it to be too frantically twitchy or else you might as well just make an action game. Thoughts welcome.

You should take a look at Spellbinder. Not as a system to copy exactly or even closely (to my mind, it's way too abstract for inclusion into a larger game) but for some ideas on how delayed actions--and information about those delayed actions--can seriously increase tactical depth.

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Original post by Somnia But I'm not sure if it could work without the immediacy of a fighting game, anything too sensitive to timing or movement could be really awkward in an rpg.

If being different were a problem, then everything would be exactly the same.

I've played The Last Remnant recently, and I noticed your action could be delayed when you get attacked.
You also have counter chances and the like.

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Original post by Sneftel You should take a look at Spellbinder. Not as a system to copy exactly or even closely (to my mind, it's way too abstract for inclusion into a larger game) but for some ideas on how delayed actions--and information about those delayed actions--can seriously increase tactical depth.

Looks interesting thanks, I'll have a read.