Combat System Design Need Help

Zizka · 2020-02-06T11:47:07

Hello again, I thought about updating my other thread about combat layout but decided instead to create thread because it's not really the art part I need help with but rather the mechanics. The screenshot above displays where I'm at the moment. This is the latest version. I'll do my best to explain everything as clearly as possible. Hero's Health: Represented by white hearts and broken hearts. Represents the hero's health. When all hearts are gone, it's game over, the hero is dead. This is fairly simple and common so no extra information is really needed. Enemy health: The enemy equivalent. When the enemy takes damage, hearts are lost. When all hearts are gone, the enemy is dead and the battle is won. Energy: Energy is the battle's currency unit. White bolts are unspent while the dark bolts are spent energy. More on energy later. Dice (skull): battle is determined by the results of 5 dice. Above is an example of a skull result. In order to determine the outcome of a round, the player decides which dice he wants to keep and which one he wants to re-roll and then consult the battle chart. Above is an example of a chart. So if the player rolls the five dice and gets: That's three of a kind. According to the chart, both participants lose one health and the round is over. However… Rerolling: Suppose the player rolls the five dice and ends up with: He can choose to re-roll certain results to try to get a better result, provided he has dice (using he here for simplicity, not sexism). As you can see, the player has decided to re-roll the ‘gun’ result' and the ‘energy’ result. He could then get a better result. But… if the player isn't satisfied, he can re-roll again but this time it'll cost 2 energy per re-roll instead of one. So re-rolls can be attempted for as along as the player has energy in store or unless… The hangman's noose: 1 out 6 sides is the noose. It's unlucky as it can't be re-rolled. Note: I'm at a point where I have no ideas on how to implement the other sides of the dice. This is what I need help with. Some other sides could potentially include: The horseshoe: Something positive (the opposite of the noose). 1 out of 6 sides. I first wanted to make this ‘wild’ (can be any result for combinations) but that would end up being too strong. An idea I'm toying with is that re-rolling those are free and cost no energy. Suppose I stick with that, that's 2 sides done. 4 remain. Chains: Another potentially negative result. I thought that maybe re-rolling those would require one extra energy but it's not very original. I wish I could find something more unique about that result. Skull: The skull is meant to be my neutral result. No special effect attributed to it. 2 out of the 6 sides. This would mean that 2 sides remain. Gun: I'd like the gun to have an offensive impact on the round. Some ideas I had: a. increases by one damage to the enemy per gun. So three guns would add 3 damage to a regular chart result. For example, in the chart above, the result would be 4 heart loss for the enemy instead of one. I think this is too powerful however and have since scratched that. Maybe 3 ‘guns’ would increase the chart damage by 1 for that round, 4 ‘guns’ by 2 and 5 ‘guns’ by 3? Even then, that would be really powerful as a 5 guns would deal 8 hearts of damage in the example above which is huge in a game which uses small units for monsters and the hero. So this one remains unsolved at the moment and I'd like help for this. Bullet Vest: Would like this one to grant a defensive bonus. Again, I don't know how to implement it without it being too powerful or not powerful enough. I need to be very careful that the rng swing is very limited. Need help with that one also. Brain (energy): I thought this one would grant 1 bolt per brain. So a pair of two ‘brains’ would grant 2 energy to the player as well as the chart result. This one is easier to implement BUT if I do implement this one, I'm stuck with having to choose between the ‘gun’ or the ‘armor’ and I don't see how they could go without one another. Another possibility is to keep: horseshoe+brain (positive) chain+noose (negative) and skull for neutral for a total of 6. So that's where I'm at now. One more thing I'd like to have an impact is weapon and armor as displayed in the mockup… that's also something I come up with a good solution for yet. I think I'm easy going and interested in what people have to say so anything goes really.