RPG: Chunk 4 and Stat System

I hammered out a little bit of a stat system here. I know I’ve been rattling off high-low stats for all the characters, but I hadn’t actually given it any thought until a few days ago. Now I know which stats manage which attributes when it comes to battle. Here you are:

• Strength manages how many hit points a character has, as well as, obviously, how much damage they do in battle. It also manages how many techs a character knows, if they know techs, and adds a small amount to mana. Strength is important for everyone.
• Intelligence manages primarily how much mana a spellcasting character has, the number of spells they know, and how much damage those spells do. It also adds to how much damage a technique does, although it’s not the major determining factor.
• Defense manages how much damage a character actually takes from physical attacks and adds a small amount to hit points.
• Resistance (this one is new, because I forgot to add it until now) manages how much damage a character takes from spells and affects Mortal Damage (more on that later).
• Accuracy affects how likely it is for a character to hit with their physical attacks (spells always hit; none of that stupid IT FAILED crap like in pokemon).
• Evasion affects how likely it is for a character to dodge physical attacks.
• Luck has been beefed up heavily from what it usually is in other games. Luck is basically a secondary stat for everything. It manages the likelihood of critical hits, and then secondarily manages hitting, dodging, and special weapon effects. It also affects Mortal Damage.

Basically, my idea for luck is that when you fail an accuracy “check”, the game rolls a luck check, and if you make it, you hit anyway. Same with dodging.

Mortal Damage is lifted pretty much directly from Earthbound. When a character is hit by an attack, their hp doesn’t just immediately lose the amount dealt by the attack, it scrolls quickly. If a character takes enough damage to kill them, the game makes a few resistance and luck checks while the hp is scrolling, and if you’re really, really lucky, the character will survive with low health instead of dying outright. This is really handy.

Just so we’re up to date, Alarim has high resistance, Imere has average resistance, Alistair has high resistance and Enata has high resistance.

Anyway, here’s Chunk 4:

Story

Before going to Cilusia, the characters actually have the option to go to Lucan, but I’m assuming they didn’t. If you do go to Lucan, what basically happens is that the hereditary leader of the town, a monk named Vinan, tells you that Lucan has been withholding trade from its former ally, the southern city of Phyrenia, and forming an alliance with Cilusia. However, it looks like Cilusia is taking negotiations slowly, and Phyrenia is getting pissed, so he sends you to Cilusia to ask them to speed the hell up and send some protection over.

But you didn’t do that, so it doesn’t matter.

The city of Cilusia awards you for saving the outskirts of town from danger and saving the life of a little orphaned girl, gives you negotiator status, and sends you off to do its dirty work in Lucan for it. You head off to the tiny, pathetic mountain town of Lucan with only a vague idea of what’s going on. When you arrive, you find it blockaded by Phyrenian soldiers, who let you in because you’re an ambassador now.

The situation in Lucan is this: it’s been trading only with Phyrenia for a long time now, but just recently, it’s broken off its alliance and begun trading with Cilusia more and more exclusively, gradually edging Phyrenia out. Phyrenia, which claims it still has a binding treaty with Lucan on trade, has sent a detachment of troops led by Cathan, a man who was born in Lucan. When you reach the town’s central hall, Cathan and Vinan are arguing in the main room. It turns out that they’re brothers, which doesn’t make the situation any easier to deal with. Basically, they had a fight over the succession and the townspeople chose Vinan to lead, which led to Cathan leaving angrily. Vinan felt betrayed by his brother and has basically created his town’s anti-Phyrenian tendencies out of petty anger. Obviously this came to a head, which is where you are now. You have to choose which of them is right. On one side, Cathan threatens a declaration of war against Cilusia, and on the other Vinan implores you to back your new ally up. Basically, it’s a really awkward situation.

If you pick Vinan, a lot of stuff transpires and eventually the people of Lucan rise up and drive the Phyrenian soldiers out. If you pick Cathan, the Phyrenians strong-arm the people of Lucan into cooperation. Either way, before anything more can happen, a loud crash tears through the village and you get a report that the windows on the ancient temple to the north of the village have just lit up with some kind of unearthly flame. You figure that’s probably a bad sign, so you head up to the temple to see what’s going on, along with whomever you picked. The temple has been overrun by demons, as is becoming the norm, and they’re using it as a stronghold from which to attack west. You head over to the temple with whoever you sided with and kick the shit out of the demons, kill their leader, and then come back to Lucan, where some interesting stuff is starting to happen. If you picked Cathan’s side, he allows you to enter certain important parts of Phyrenia later on, and if you picked Vinan, you’re allowed to come back to Lucan later on. Both areas have an associated sidequest. Also, the dude you picked joins your party permanently, but that goes without saying.

Characters

Vinan – A physically powerful man who has had the leadership of his town thrust upon him before he was really ready for it, but is trying to make the best of the whole situation. Vinan has always been seen as the more responsible of the two brothers, which contributed to his brother’s disgust with the whole situation. He’s fairly soft-spoken, which belies his ability to deal extremely large amounts of damage. He has high strength, accuracy, evasion and speed, average defense, and low luck, intelligence and resistance. He can’t equip any weapons whatsoever – he just has extremely high attack unarmed.

Cathan – A man sick of living in the shadow of his brother, Cathan left his hometown after his father died and was shortly put in his unenviable current position by the military of Phyrenia and the cruel twists of fate. Cathan seems to have something to prove: his brother had the title of “responsible” clinched, so Cathan decided to join an army and is now in command of a major detachment. He has high accuracy, defense, strength and resistance, average speed, and low intelligence and luck. He can equip spears and swords.

Lucan

Lucan is pretty damn small. I’m thinking a winding mountain road over two screens with a few houses on the side, and then the town hall-type building, which will take up two screens – one for the main room with all the rabble in it, and one for the back room with Cathan, Vinan and their honor guards. The houses near the entrance to town are barely populated, but the people in them will sell you weapons and armor and let you sleep for free, which is nice.

Lucan Temple

This dungeon is a tower, so it’s formatted as less of a sprawl and more of a stack. There are three towers in the temple. The main floor has one passage on each side, and these passages lead to smaller side towers that need to be completed before the main tower can be climbed. The puzzle mechanic for this dungeon is the statues – in the religion that proliferated in and around Lucan at the time this temple was built, it was apparently considered important to have statues strewn around your temples, everywhere. So expect a lot of statue-pushing to sort out mazes, as well as some Dominion Rod-style statue escort missions. The catch is that a lot of the statues are different sizes – some of them are up to five times as big as the player, so sorting the mazes out is made harder by that. Also, expect some out-of-doors scaling and ladder-climb bits.

One of the things about this dungeon is that there are no random encounters – just bad statues. Not all the statues are pieces of scenery; in fact, many of them are malevolent critters who would like to jump on you when you press A to push them or whatever. This can be a serious problem when they’re, as previously mentioned, five times your size.

Monsters

Lucan Temple contains Homunculi, Ravenous Idols, and Golems.

Homunculi are the smallest statues. Normally an entire party of them will attack you when you touch a bad small statues. They can Attack, Latch On to party members (long-lasting drain effects, take party member health and gives it to them), and cast Thorn.

Ravenous Idols are the generic middle-of-the-road statues. They can Attack, cast Stun, and use Armor (halves damage for two turns).

Golems are the big statues. There are only two of them, and they’re the minibosses of the two side towers. They can attack, use Armor, cast Pit and Landslide, and Turn Away (negates all damage for one turn)

Boss – Abyssal Icon

The Abyssal Icon is the obligatory Bitchy Boss You Can’t Usually Hurt. He’s in perpetual Turned-Away status, which means he can’t attack, but you can’t hurt him, either, and then when he turns back around he fucks you up and you don’t really have a chance to hurt him much because you’re too busy healing and trying to stay unfucked-up. He acts twice on his turn, and he can Attack, cast any first- or second-tier earth-aligned spell, along with Stun. Spells aside, he can Devour a party member, which has a chance to instantly kill them, and he can use Quake, which I guess consists of him jumping up and down. Basically, it shakes the whole temple and Stuns your whole party for a turn. He’s pretty well-armed. Killing him gets you a Relic Sword, which has to be reforged by a blacksmith in Lucan, but does heavy damage in both Earth and Holy forms, which is very very nice.

I’m sorry this has taken so long. I don’t really have an excuse except that I haven’t really been playing that many RPGs. Saps my creativity or something. Whatever. Anyway, now I have FF4 DS, so I’m alright.

~ by pieboy on July 29, 2008.