Miniguide: Basic attributes and what they do.

This is a guide to the RPG maker's basic attributes, how they work, and how they impact your game. It also covers some tweeks that can be made to various attributes with the script editor.

Purpose

I just wanted a way to get this out of my head and learn a bit more about it in the proccess. Along with showing how attributes work, this guide may show where to find places to tweek them in the script editing window. (I make no garuntees that my suggested tweeks will not harm your game. I suggest making a copy of your game to test tweeks in.)

The intent of all this is to get a little bit deeper into how the attributes work- into the "why" of the attributes. I hope that it is accurate, clear and complete enough to be useful to those who choose to view it.

HP MP TP

You probably know how these work, but I'll go over them anyway:

HP: Health Points, Hit Points, ect.

A resource which can be depleted without reducing the maximum HP. If this resource reaches zero then the first state in the list of states ('Death') will be applied. If all actors in your battle group (in combat) or in party (when in the field) are under Death state, the Game Over screen will be called ending in a return to the title screen. If all enemies are under this state, the battle ends in victory.

HP and map range

A player can only travel so far from a healing point before they will start to get run down. Eventually they will die if they cannot find an alternate source of healing. By knowing approximately how many battles the player can fight before needing healing you will have a better idea how large to make your dungeons and overworld maps.

If each battle is a challenge the player's map range will likely be very short. consider scaling monster effectiveness based on the number of expected encounters; it's not always necessary for each encounter to be difficult provided the dungeon is challenging to complete on the whole.

You can have some sources of damage be non-lethal such as slip damage (or damage over time,) floor damage and damage caused by events. Unfortunately, slip damage and damage over time cannot be set on a case-by-case basis or changed during gameplay without scripting. Event-driven battles may also end without causing the player to game over by checking "continue even when loser" when editing the custom battle (this works like a condition branch; put any death-exclusive events after the "If death" branch and before "end branch.")

If you start a battle and everyone in your party is dead or if you have no actors in your party at battle start you will automatically game over. If an actor (by application of "immortal" state for example) resists (has immunity to) death state the player may have zero HP without gaining death state.

Relevant Parameters:

• MHP or Max Health Points applies a direct percentile modifier to the max HP of the player. Note that buffing MHP does not improve current HP (making it look like you're wounded after using a MHP buff.)
  
• HRG or Health Regeneration Rate will passively regenerate or degenerate a percent of HP each combat round or every 20 steps.
  
• REC or Recovery rate modifies non-HRG||MRG||TRG healing received by the affected actor.
  
• PHA or Pharmacy modifies item-based "recover" effects (effects window, first tab) of items used by the actor (outgoing). Damage formula is not affected.

MP: Mana Points, Magic Points, ect

A resourse that is required and depleted by some skills. The only consequence for running out of MP is the innability to then use abilities that require them. Skills that require MP to cast are generally significantly more potent or posessing of more special effects than skills that do not owing to the added restriction.

MP and training range

Although less critical than HP, having low MP places some restrictions on the player as well. in the absense of a method to recover it, players that rely on MP will become less effective as they range further from the nearest sourse of healing.

Because of this, players with high burst damage spells will tend to stay close to a recovery point when practical. Think about how far this range is when designing a zone for the player to train and farm in.

Healing spells, on the other hand, are useful for extending the player's HP map range.

Because MP can ususally be used to recover HP, sourses of MP healing should generally be rarer than HP healing.

Relevent Perameters:

• MMP: Max Mana Points applies a percentile modifier to your current maximum MP. Note that bufing MMP does not improve current MP.
  
• MRG: Mana Regeneration will passively regenerate or degenerate a percent of MP each combat round or every 20 steps on the overmap.
  
• MCR: Modifies the mana cost of abilities by a percent. Skill costs that are reduced less than 1 will cost no MP (for example, any ability with 1 MP cost costs 0 MP with any reduction to cost.)
  
• REC or Recovery rate modifies non-HRG||MRG||TRG healing received by the affected actor.
  
• PHA or Pharmacy modifies item-based "recover" effects (effects window, first tab) of items used by the actor (outgoing). Damage formula is not affected.

TP: Tech Points, Time Points, Tactical Points, Technique Points

Tech Points are like MP but reset at the beginning/end of each battle unless Preserve TP flag is active. A random amount between 1? and 25 will be added at battle start. This can be tweeked here:


You will gain TP as you use skills that grant TP on hit and when you take damage. How much you gain from taking damage should also be able to be modified just a little below the above example. I am unclear on exactly how the math on this formula works, but everything after the += affects the gained amount.

Unlike HP and MP, Nothing exists in the game that can damage or drain TP directly because TP is intended to be a % value not a flat number. It is, therefore, a very secure resource that cannot be damaged or drained, and can only be reduced by degeneration over time effects or expending it.

Outside of battle, Preserve TP is needed to have TP in stock, so TP skills are generally restricted to combat. TP can be healed out of combat if you have preserve TP, allowing for some heavy-hitting battle starts.

Relavent Perameters:

Preserve TP - allows field TP use.
TRG -regenerates or degenerates TP over time. Unless preserve TP is active, only affects combat.
TCR - Reduces the TP costs of skills. May allow skill use out of combat if it reduces it by 100%.
(PHA - As it is a % value, PHA does not improve TP healing.)

The virtue of TP

As I have been discussing map range a lot in this segment, I felt that I should point out that TP is the one resource of the three that does not depreciate as you travel further afield. It is easy to acquire (if not always in the quantities you would like) so skills and classes that rely on TP tend to perform well on long journeys. In particular, TP abilities that recover HP and/or MP will greatly enhance the power and range of a group. The downside is that players may be tempted to keep a monster alive to build up TP and recover some of their other resources rather than ending a battle, which detracts from the fun and challenge of your game.

TP caps at 100 and cannot normally exceed this cap. If you would like to have more than 100 TP this cap can, of course, be altered but the script lines that modify the TP cap seem to be spread accross several modules and thus can't be captured in a single screenshot. Further, I'm missing a piece (how to allow you to gain more than 100 TP at a time) so I can't tell you how to raise it in every respect. Open the script, press ctrl+shift+f, search for TP and edit each value that equals 100. That's about the most I've been able to do thus far.

If an ability requires both TP and MP only the TP cost will be displayed by default. I don't know if there is a method to change this.

The colors of HP, TP and MP bars can be altered here:

Bars will change in color from the first to the second color gradually accross the legnth of the bar. Here are the colors available (If I have the right of it:)

ATK DEF MAT MDF

These attributes are used for calculations in battle. Their function is defined by the formulas in the skills and items tabs. If not for the default item and skill damage formulas these attributes could be freely interchanged or entirely ignored with no concequence.

Axis of balance: Abilities, Attributes, Opposition

Attributes, in general, provide the player a way to proggress through the game and give life to abilities by altering their effectiveness over time as the player aquires additional levels and gear.

Although damage is typicaly based on ATK and MAT you can insert other basic attributes (HP, AGI, ect) into damage formulas as well; I like doing this to make sure classes which are theemed around a non - ATK attribute have a reason to equip gear that stregnthens their key attributes (rather than imposing strict equip-type restrictions per class.)

Damage formulas

As all of these four attributes are only given relevance by damage formulas I can't properly discuss them without touching upon the mechanics that make damage formulas work.

Axis of balance: Abilities, Attributes, Opposition

Abilities do many things: they apply buffs/debuffs, Apply/remove states, call common events and alter current HP or MP. (such as by healing or inflicting damage.)

Combat abilities create the rules that the player (or monster) must follow or react to in order to win a battle. They have a strong influence on which attributes the player will need to aquire in order to win a given fight.

Some abilities come pre-linked to scripts (attack, defend.)

Click on the first skill in the skill list and it should read:

Attack

Attack is the skill that triggers when you make a basic attack.

This is the important part:

4 * a.atk - b.def * 2

"a." is followed by an attribute of the user and "b." is followed by an attribute of the target(s). The rest is a standard mathmatical formula with the result being varried based on the varriance setting.

This formula states that this skill will deal 400% of the user's Attack Power (atk) minus 200% of the target's Defence Value (def)

It may seem strange to you at first that damage is rated as twice as effective than DEF, but If they scaled equally defence would negate attack completely. ATK should always either be higher or more effective per point than DEF unless some othersourse of damage is present in the formula.

Fire I

Magic Attack (mat) and magic defence (mdf) function in the same way ATK and DEF do. The difference is how the default magical skills scale. Magical abilities will deal a base damage value plus 200% of the user's MAT minus 200% of the target's MDF. This allows magical attacks to be potent without being heavily gear-dependent. On the other hand, they will tend to not scale well leaving you with some useless abilities during the late-game

If you hover over the formula itself a tooltip will display to help you interpet it:



These formulas formula can, of course, be used to determine more than just HP damage:

• none (formula is ignored. Used for skills that call events or apply states.)
• HP Damage
• MP Damage
• HP Recover
• MP Recover
• HP Drain
• MP Drain

The damage formula can use if-then cases if you know how to set it up it correctly.

if a.atk * 1 <= b.def * 1; 1; else; a.atk * 1 - b.def * 1; end;

This is one I used (prompted by a forum thread) to create artificial 'scratch damage.' This formula wasn't enough to create true scratch damage though; damage is still increased and reduced by percentile reductions (elemental, PDR, ect.) and can thus still be reduced to zero or increased beyond 1.

Note on "quick settings:" Damage formulas come with a quick settings button which scales based on the default ATK and MAT interaction. They are percent-based: each physical/magical point is 1% of the strength of a standard attack or standard magical attack respectively. Use 100 as a baseline and increase or decrease it accordingly.

Default Function and Recap

ATK: Used by default skills to determine physical skill's effect (HP/MP drain, damage or heal.) In the default attack it has 400% effectiveness compared to the base stat, reduced by 200% of the target's defence. The lack of a flat damage amount makes ATK and DEF highly dependent on the player's attributes (level and gear.)

DEF: Used to mitigate the effect of most physical skills. Physical skills may ignore defence value by omitting defence from the formula. In the default attack it has 200% effectiveness compared to the base value. The effectiveness of DEF may varry from one skill to another.

MAT: Used by default skills to mildly improve the effect of magical skills. Most of the damage from the default skills is not from MAT, but rather, from a flat numeric amount added to the formula. Both MAT and MDF have 200% effectiveness for most magical skills.

MDF: somewhat mitigates the effect of magical damage. By default this has 200% effectiveness.

AGI LUK

Agility and luck both have unique effects, and yet do not have a strong impact on the game in most cases.

Agility:

Agility affects many tactical aspects of battles; it affects turn order, chance of pre-emptive strike or supprise in the field and chance of success when escaping. The impact on chance to escape can be tweeked if desired. It is worth noting that speed (as opposed to agility) has no effect on escaping a battle.

Often it is the party's collective agility that is calculated rather than individual agility. The only exception is with determining the order that actions will be executed in in combat.

Dump Stat?

Agility's value to the player depends largely on how long a fight lasts. The longer the fight, the less impactful agility becomes. Agility is a key stat for some actions, such as healing and disabling, but otherwise is fairly modest as an attribute.

Turn Order:


Chance of pre-emptive strike:


Chance of escape:

In another location, this is further increased by 0.1 per attempt (which resets at battle end.)

Relevent Perameters

• AGI: Modifies current agility by a percent.
  

  Other Modifiers:

• Escape Skill Flag: instantly escapes from a battle. When used on an enemy or enemies, removes them from battle.
  
• Raise Preemptive: improves the chance of a preemptive strike.
  
• Speed: Improves the turn order of attacks.

Luck

Luck is an offensive and defensive attribute that affects the application and resistance of states. By default It has a very minor effect on the game, but this can be tweeked to be much more impactful or disabled if desired:

Ignore the circled part, it's a little higher but still visable.

It adds +-0.1% chance to avoid or apply a state based on the difference between your luck and the opponent's luck. If you have 999 luck to an enemy's 1 you have aproximatly a 99.8% higher chance to resist or apply states versus that enemy, but the gap will generally be less dramatic than this. Bear in mind that this works for the enemy as well, so an enemy with massive luck will be resistant to your states and will have a greatly improved chance of applying states.

Dump Stat?

This depends on a lot of factors. The frequency with which states are being applied, whether the player's class relies on states, the base chance to apply a state, ect. Generally it will have a fairly minor impact but with the right class/skill setup it can make a world of difference even at default values, especially with more impactful state-based abilities such as instant death or long-lasting disables.

Relevent perameters and other modifiers:

• Luck: Modifies current luck by a percent
  Luck Buff: Modifies luck by +25%, stacking additively one time. These values can be tweeked.
• Luck Debuff: Modifies luck by -25% stacking additively once. These values can be tweeked.
  
• State Chance: When giving a monster, item or skill the ability to apply a state, modifies the base chance of that state being applied.
  
• State Rate: Modifies the chance that a spesific state will be applied. This value can be negative. I am unclear on whether this stacks additively or multiplicively with luck and base chance.
  
• State Resist: Provides immunity to a spesific state, removing that state when applied.
  
• Cure State: Provides a % chance to removee a spesific state. I am unclear as to whether or not this is modified by luck.

Parameters (Briefly)

100%: Most perameters default to 100%, and apply multiplicively with each other. Most perameters that default to 100% are multiplied by that value (i.e; all perameters for basic attributes (MHP, MMP, ATK, ect) work this way.) meaning that 1% will cause the affected attribute to be multiplied by 0.01 (or, divided by 100) and 1000% will cause that number to be multiplied by 10.

SP and basic perameters all work this way, but EX have their own mechanics, mostly based on a chance of success (exception: Regen effects)

EX Perameters

HIT: Accuracy of physical attacks; chance to hit. Applies multiplicively.
EVA: Chance to evade physical attacks. Applies multiplicively. Skills and items can be set to physical or magical in the database.
CRI: Chance to score a critical hit. The critical damage bonus can be modified in the scripts. Only skills that have "yes" checked next to "critical" in a skill's damage formula can have critical strikes.
CEV: Chance to prevent a critical strike. This only negates the damage multiplier, not the base damage.
MEV: Chance to evade magical attacks. Unsure if this is additive or multiplive with itself.
MRF: Chance to reflecting magical attacks. Reflecting prevents the attack and launches a magical attack in counter. Appears to be beased on the damage formula of the ability, but I could be mistaken. Not sure if it is additive or multiplicive with self.
CNT: Chance to counter physical attacks. Countering prevents the attack and launches an attack in counter. I am unclear how the damage for counter attacks is determined; if it is based on the countered ability's damage formula or not.
HRG, MRG: Applies a percentile regenerative (or degenerative if negative) effect to their respective attributes.
TRG: Applies a regenerative effect to TP. As TP caps at 100 by default, each % is actually one point. TRG differs from HRG and MRG in that it cannot be set to a negative value (and thus, no degeneration can be applied.)

SP Perameters

TGR: Target Rate, Threat Rate. This is called "Threat" or "Aggro" in some games. This changes how likely enemies are to choose to target you. It has a base of 100% with lower numbers reducing the chance and higher numbers incrasing the chance.
GRD: Guard Damage Reduction: Modifies the strength of the defend skill (or special flag "Guard") which reduces all forms of incoming damage and drain.
REC or Recovery rate modifies non-HRG||MRG||TRG healing received by the affected actor.
PHA or Pharmacy modifies item-based "recover" effects (effects window, first tab) of items used by the actor (outgoing). Item damage formula is not affected.
MCR: Mana Cost Rate: Modifies the MP cost of skills with a base of 100%.
TCR: Tech Point Charge Rate: Modifies the TP gained from skills and items with a base of 100%.
PDR: Physical defence Rate: Modifies the damage revived from by all physical skills (regardless of element.) Base of 100%.
MDR: Magical Defense Rate/Magic Damage Rate: Modifies damage received from all magical skills (regardless of element.) base of 100%.
FDR: Floor Defense Rate // Floor Damage Rate: Modifies terrain damage dealt to actors as they cross the over-map.

Axis of balance and ballance questions.

Axis of balance: Abilities, Attributes, Opposition

Monsters provide a (largely) static challenge for the player to overcome. How strong monsters tend to be relative to the player will influence the story and the feel of the game.

Monsters typicaly provide both experience and gold, providing the player a way to gain skills and attributes over time by leveling up or buying items. This gives monsters a great deal of influence over the rate at which you gain both skills and attributes.

Although you can edit any of these three to improve game ballance, you should probably avoid focusing too much on just one or the other. If I had to give an order of importance, I would say:

1) abilities (rules)
2) Monsters (challenge)
3) Attributes (growth)

Here are some other things to think on:
-how long should each battle be? (balance monster life and defence accordingly.)
-How long should a miniboss battle be?
-How long should a boss battle be?
-How much of your needed attributes should come from levels?
-How much from gear?
-How much from stat-up items or quest rewards?
-how many battles should it take to raise a level?
-how many battles should it take to gather enough gold to get a full gear set of higher tier?
-How should gear pieces differ from each other in value and effectiveness?
-how much effort should it take to gain a new skill?
-how much of your gear and items should be granted in chests or as rewards?
-How do you prevent "heal lock" while still presenting a challenge?
-How soon (if ever) should a stronger player achieve immunity to a monster's attacks?
-At what point (if ever) should a stronger monster be immune to a player's attacks?
-Does/should a monster have a mechanic to harm a player after they achive immunity to normal attacks?
Does/should a player have a mechanic to harm a monster that is still immune to their normal attacks?
-By which stat or combination of stats is combat proggression enforced? Health? Mana? Attack? Defence? Agility? Luck? All of them equally?
What makes monsters lethal to the player or the player lethal to monsters?
How much stronger or weaker than monsters should an actor be when at an appropriate level with appropriate gear?
Can the player encounter monsters significantly of a higher tier than what they are currently fighting?
How steep should the difference between gold and experiecne be between areas? In other words, if a player over farms an area, how much of an advantage should they expect to be able to gain compared to fighting the tougher monsters?
Should a monster or actor have a critical weakness to an element or state?
How should a monster respond to being affected by a state?
How should a monster respond to having low HP or MP?
What makes a monster seem like a threat to the player?
How many consecuitive battles should it take to complete a dungeon?
How should monsters differ from each other in how they challenge the player?
new:
How should skills differ from each other?
How much should a resourse cost (such as MP) be weighed against the potency of the skill?
How do skills interact with each other?
What makes a class or character unique?
What makes a given monster or boss unique?
Will a player be able to gather enough TP tu use a TP - based ability in a given fight?
Should the player have a way to recover MP in the field without external events or items?
" " hp " "
and, of course there are many more such questiosn to be asked.

Questions? Comments?

Please don't bring up any spelling or grammer issues unless they significantly affect the accuracy or clarity of the guide. I apologize for my modest ability in spelling and grammer; I know it really bothers some people.

Feel free to ask if there is anything else you would like added, or comment on the accuracy or clarity of the information I have added.

PLEASE BE CAREFUL WHEN MODIFYING SCRIPTS! It might be best to test modifications in a copy of your game first. I MAKE NO GARUNTEES THAT MY SCRIPTING ADVICE WILL NOT RUIN YOUR GAME; I am a novice even at tweeking scripts. In all seriousness, though, I doubt that anything that bad will happen. Please tell me if you run into issues following my advice so I can make needed adjustments to my guide.

[Everscrub]

It looks pretty good imo, though I worry about the price tag. They say they under-priced ACE deliberatly to make it more accessable (the default price, not the on-sale prices.) I wonder if they'll be more daring with the price of MV. I suppose it depends on how successful ACE was.

[Night-Ram]

MV? I'll have to look that up!

[Everscrub]

Thanks ^.^ maybe someday I'll learn to apply my advice myself

And yeah, if you know ruby it will really help with every aspect of your game BUT you should note that a new version of the engine is due to come out soon (RPG maker MV.) You may want to take a moment and make sure you're invested in ACE rather than the upcoming MV before investing much in the Ruby languege since MV uses java instead of ruby.

If you ever learn Ruby properly give me a few tips I'm still dealing with basic tweeks because I haven't invested the time to learn properly beyond just poking around in the script section. I'm at the point where I can look at a segment and have a vague idea about what it probably does without really understanding the mechanics of it.

[Night-Ram]

And btw you explore some very interresting points in the Axis section of your guide!!
I'll deff. come back often to go over them throughout my creation process!!!

[Night-Ram]

Yeah that "cobbtocs" really goes and spread it wide open and plays with it like it's a pack of cards!!! I gess investing some time to look into the Ruby language is gonna pay up in the long run!

I see that it was worth poking around a bit for info! I was getting discouraged by browsing in the RPGMaker's help section ....

Thanks a lot for the help!

[Everscrub]

The basic info on it can be found on the wiki here: http://rmvxace.wikia.com/wiki/Damage_Formula_Reference_Guide

I decided to run a simple online seach to see if I could find anything for you.

[Everscrub]

Sounds about right on the if/else.

As far as other mathmatical possabilities, all I really know is what's on the in-app tooltip and that one trick with if-then. It is worth noting that varriables can be input into a formula and that they can carry all kinds of interesting data with a little extra set-up. I only found out about the if/else on the forums so I don't really know what else might be possible.

I don't know this for sure but I would say it's probably that not all

You might like this link, but it's only one person's notes on what can be done: http://cobbtocs.co.uk/wp/?p=271 I found it impressive but you could easily find it yourself with the right keywords in a google search. Awesome looking stuff, am still reading it atm.

[Night-Ram]

Thanks and god speed on yours too!

There is only one other thing I will be looking into, if you know where the info is, that would be nice! I'll need the different mathematical tools to set up the damage calculations.

and confirming the "if / else" setup

if a.atk * 1 <= b.def * 1; 1; else; a.atk * 1 - b.def * 1; end;

where everything in ( ) can be changed

if (condition); (action taken when cond. met); else; (action to take when cond. not met); end;

is this right?

[Everscrub]

Well, I didn't exactly say it hmm. On some of my guides I have.

[Everscrub]

I do generally make my own skills and items, classes, ect. I haven't gotten into art, though. As I said at the start a lot of my guide was made to help me organize my thoughts since I can't seem to order my thoughts at all unless I have it all written down somewhere.

I've never completed a game but have 2 in the works atm. Hopefully I'll be able to get the smaller one done soon but the other one will probably end up taking me too long because of the scale of it and the limitations of my distractable development style.

Good luck with your game series. Is there anything else you might like explained that isn't on here?