It's insanely common that you'll various elemental types, and each of these types also have attack/defense bonuses against each other. I consider this an interesting design in some cases but want to slightly change it. Rather than having attack/defense bonuses each individual character when attacked by an element that you have a defense/weakness to trigger a status effect. For instance using a fire attack on an ice mage will trigger this effect: -20% damage of triggering attack(only triggering attack), -20% damage of all this characters damaging attacks for 3 turns and -1 duration length for non-damaging attacks for 3 turns. Using a fire attack on a fire mage will trigger this effect: Next attack costs -10% energy(still take normal damage). Essentially the typical attack/defense weaknesses are there. However instead of being a straight forward, you end up instead having a tactical layer that lets you have non-obvious strategies(for instance using an ice mage as a tank even though there's technically a weakness against fire), also makes it tactically sound in some cases to fight through your weakness rather than a retreat, and also offers ways to negate weaknesses by buffing yourself or healing afflictions. Design wise it also lets me simplify the "elemental table" because I can just say Earth always interacts with Fire and Water somehow. However if I create a earth based character that doesn't make sense to have a large weakness to fire I can(rather than making a new sub type, for instance the ice mage is labeled as a water+air type caster).

How to hanle mixed elements?
(fire + water) = smoke
(fire + earth) = magma
(air + water) = ice
etc....

Effects matrix can get quite big with just small number of elements,
and balancing it might take some time.

And how to handle growing stats on leveling character?
(same penalty on level 3 and on level 98 ?)

/Tyrian

Mixed elements aren't really "mixed" they just have two elements that they use.

Essentially an ice mage would get a lot of moves that mostly do water or physical damage. but would have the mixed effects of wind and water for for their defenses/weaknesses(Water resistance to fire, Air weakness to fire).

I don't see any reason to increase or reduce the strengths and weakness effects as a character levels. I feel it would essentially reduce the whole reason for the system of elemental weakness/strengths(fight stronger enemies, or fight longer than you could have).


In the design most weaknesses/defenses aren't guaranteed, just tendencies. Water types will virtually always have a some type of defense against fire attacks. Most fire elements will tend to have some type of "growing" attribute when attacked with wind. Occasionally you'll have quirky weaknesses/defenses(like the ice mage) when looked at the system as a whole.