In the early
stages of Tensai's design (well, early is relative, I spent less than
a week on the actual core systems design on Tensai before going
straight into content design of moves, creatures, and the items), I
made the decision to give each creature two equippable items: a
Weapon and a Trinket.
Trinkets were
essentially Pokémon held items. There were analogous ports such as
my own version of Leftovers, Life Orb, and the Choice items from
Pokémon, but of course... because of the good ol' trusty ACTION TYPE
SYSTEM I've been beating an entire graveyard of dead horses about...
there were some unique additions to the system.
The Primordial
Switch and Reversal Charm trinket would be announced when a critter
holding them swapped into battle, because their effects were QUITE
important. The Primordial Switch trinket reversed the elemental
hierarchy (so Fire would no longer be strong against metal, ice, and
wood, but instead be strong against rock, water, and air.) The
Reversal Charm would do the same for Action Types, reversing the flow
into the opposite direction.
Pokémon's Arceus
“Plates” made their own analog home in Tensai's treatment in the
form of Amulet trinkets, which boosted the power of elemental damages
by 20%. Of course, since elements aren't the only damage types it
meant I also got to make Trinkets for...ACTION TYPES! These trinkets
carried a bonus effect in addition to boosting damage of that Action
Type: the creature holding that item would enter the battlefield in
the Stance of their Trinket. (This Stance ONLY applied on entering
the battlefield, not when idling on a turn, so if a Creature had a
passive stance already, the Trinket wouldn't overpower the Creature's
innate ability.
I tried not to go
too heavy-handed with Trinkets, and stick close to the proven designs
from Pokémon; with plans to balance or make additional
creations/subtractions after playtesting to see what worked and what
didn't. With trinkets out of the way, it's time to talk about the
other items: Weapons.
I created the
Weapon slot as a second answer in addition to Action Types to help
alleviate problems of being in an elementally disadvantageous
situation. Basically, Weapons were a generic move that is available
to all creatures, regardless of their element. There were Rods,
Halberds, Shields, Clubs, and Slingshots (to represent Magical,
Aerial, Defensive, Melee, and Ranged action types) of each of the
seven elements as generic 25 Essence-cost moves.
The general
expectation behind the standard weapon choices was that players would
look to equip a weapon that fully covered their type weaknesses (A
Fire creature would want a Wood weapon to have strength against
Air/Water/Rock creatures that counter it.) Of course, with Pokémon
moves like Toxic, Substitute, and Rest being prevalent in TMs and
able to be learned by nearly all Pokémon, there were weapons like
the Kitchen Knife, Decoy, and Panacea respectively to translate those
moves into a Weapon option for critters of Tensai, at the opportunity
cost of type coverage.
But the buck
doesn't stop there for items. I'd added one additional battle
command option for players that didn't exist in Pokémon: The ability
to swap items between your Critters. For example if you had an
active creature that was getting low health (but likely able to
survive an idle turn), you could swap your damaging weapon with a
Panacea to fully heal and fall asleep for a few turns. If you had a
creature with the Flying passive (Aerial Stance) that also relied on
Aerial moves for its best damage, and had reason to fear your
opponent's ranged moves, you could use your turn to swap your Trinket
for a Reversal Charm held by another member of your team, adjusting
your strategy on the fly.
If you wanted to
bring in a creature with a Choice item in Pokémon, after using the
move you are locked into using that same move until you swap out the
Pokémon, sometimes losing a type advantage you'd backed the opponent
into just because you couldn't undo your move selection. With the
ability to swap items in Tensai, bringing out a creature with a Curse
of Speed (Choice Scarf) could enable you to use your superior speed
to knock out an enemy, then instead of swapping out your creatures,
simply swap your Trinket to another member of your team, freeing up
the ability to use any of your moves. While it would cost you a
turn, you would not forcibly lose any positional advantage you had
earned through the use of the Choice item.
The ability to
change weapons also gave one other option: to sacrifice the elemental
advantage your weapon was intended for to ensure you had Action Type
coverage over your opponent's creatures after scouting his moves.
Say, for instance, your opponent favored a Magical move for damage,
and you did not have a Melee move in your creature's 3 move set, and
currently had the Flowing Halberd (Water Aerial) weapon equipped.
You could trade the Halberd to a creature with the Stone Club (Rock
Melee) in order to get access to a move to negate the incoming damage
of their largest threat, either forcing them to use a less efficient
move by threat of you having a counter or forcing them into a game of
chicken.
This ability to
trade items between creatures could allow a player to cover
situations their team was not truly prepared for by giving creatures
action types that weren't prepared in team creation, and created
dynamic customization as the battle unfolded.
I was a bit
worried that even with the weapon slot, players might feel only 3
moves per creature was a little underwhelming, so I also made sure to
design each creature with its own Signature Move. The giant flaming
bear zodiac (I'll go into this when I talk about the world design of
Tensai) creature Guiredaro had the ability to use Bear Hug, grappling
its opponent and transferring any other negative status effects from
the user to the target. Guiredaro was designed around setting
himself Aflame (a damage-per-turn status effect) and then
transferring that status to the opponent. The other fire zodiac
creature, the Firefly, was designed around setting itself Aflame to
heal itself, as fire-elemental moves healed it. Its signature move,
Burn Up cured negative status effects and THEN set it Aflame.
One of the metal
zodiac creatures was a squirrel themed around magnets; its signature
move was called MagLev, which inflicted the status effect “Juggled”
for one turn – a status effect that tied back into my Action Type
system by ensuring if an Aerial move hit the target next turn, it
took double damage (similar to a critical hit, only specific to one
Action Type). If your creature was Juggled, you had to be extremely
wary of an incoming Aerial attack. So you could prepare a Ranged
attack...but again, the layers upon layers prediction come forth.
By making
Signature moves for each of the creatures, it also adds a specific
expectation of what the Action type that creature will use for its
primary damage source once a player becomes familiar with the game.
If you see a Guiredaro Aflame, you know he wants to Bear Hug you, a
melee move. This preconceived expectation of a player's moves helps
dictate the flow of an average battle, but as players become more
intimately familiar with both the game and one another, it adds
inherent depth into the possible interactions.
Combined back with
the ability to swap out items, the semi-scripted nature of battle
created by Signature Moves helps allow a player know what's coming
before it comes and prepare for it by getting their items where they
needed to be before they needed to be there. Or after. Whatever.
Regardless, the
Action Type horse army has been sufficiently beaten to death, so my
next blog on Tensai is going to focus on something else. Not sure
yet what it will be. Could be the Astral Gate world in which Tensai
is set (a fantasy world I've been worldbuilding for nearly 6 years
now.) Might be just the Zodiac alone. We'll see when I get
inspiration to write again. Thanks for reading!
Part 2
Part 3
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