How enemies help keep turn based combat fun

I thought I would describe how enemies in my game work and how it helps keep combat interesting and challenging. Some of it is basic stuff but there are a few spins on it. I'll be using goblins as an example (everyone loves goblins right?). Here's a pic of some of them.

Variety

There are a lot of different varieties of enemies. Using my goblin example, you have your basic kinds, spearmen, archers etc: and some like the 'mounted' goblin with a few extra tricks. Some of the more advanced units get really bonkers. There's a lot of inspiration from the movie Labyrinth with goblins in the game being crafty, inventive and varied.

The goblin 'flinger' can reach into his bag and throw a variety of objects from poisonous mushrooms to spikey balls to starving rats, you never know what might come flying at you. The goblins alone have almost 20 varieties.


Even more variety

Throughout the game there are also rare and very rare enemies for most enemy groups. These are named, much stronger enemies with more experience, loot and sometimes even bounties to collect in town. You might get hints about their locations or bounty board requests and it can be fun hunting all of them down, especially as some have unique and powerful items. It really helps shake things up as you make your way through dungeons and seeing some of these stronger enemies appear.

Like "Grizzik Beetlebinder" here. He is a rare type of goblin that has a variety of buffs for any giant insects around him and can make them truly terrifying. So players will want to prioritise taking him out as soon as possible. However while adjacent to insect he will gain a huge damage reduction as damage is redirected to the protecting creature. Do you just try and focus on him anyway? Or take out all adjacent creatures first? It also becomes a lot harder if the random buff that he gives out was some sort of extra armour or magic resistance buff on the unit protecting him.

Keeping enemies relevant

Ok, 20 different goblins, plus all these rarer types, but who cares if you're overpowering these encounters after the first few hours and never come back to them again? That's where the horde system comes in. As you get to more difficult areas, enemies will start appearing in groups rather than as a single enemy. Rather than waiting for 20 enemy individual turns, each 'group' is represented as a single sprite. These new 'horde' enemies do more damage, have more health and also more abilities. Suddenly goblins are way more of a threat when they're in stacks of 3, or even more.

This adds an extra layer of strategy and planning which abilities you want to use for your characters. Some characters can specialise in taking down these hordes with area attacks or cleaving attacks that do extra damage. Or certain abilities like block might not be as effective as there is a block penalty on horde attacks but tanky characters with higher health might do better. at absorbing the high amounts of raw damage.



If you have any ideas on what else you think would make enemies more interesting or what you don't like about enemies in turn based games I'd love to hear it.

Making turn based combat fun

I love turn based combat. Some of my first games were Ultima, Phantasie, Final Fantasy 6, even dungeon crawlers like wizardry. I can't get enough of the tacical nature, thinking of what to use in each turn. However, it can get a bit stale, especially once encounters become too easy.

So I thought I would post about how I handle combat in my game. It will cover some general thought behind combat and skills and I'll get more in depth on those in future topics.

This is a bit of a text bomb so if you can't be bothered reading the details, here is the tldr first:

Routine, easy combat bad, challenging and varied combat good.
Lack of enemy variety boring, variety of enemies and enemy abilities good.
Forcing players to play a certain way bad, giving players tools to play the way they want good.

I am trying to do as much good and as little bad as possible.


Combat difficulty

A lot of the time in turn based games we tend to just go for whatever ability does the most damage
and spam the hell out of that or even worse, spend time waiting for cooldowns on top abilities while doing nothing in between.

What I loved about the games mentioned above was that they were hard as hell, sometimes incredibly so. It could be frustrating but overcoming some of those battles was satisfying. I think one of the weaknesses of modern RPGs is everything is too easy, or even worse there are adjustable difficulty levels and trying to reward players for overcoming challenges isn't a core concept.

In Lair of the Leviathan combat is difficult and punishing. Not to the point some enemies are impossible (unless you are very underlevelled) but recovery between battles is limited, it's a battle of attrition in many ways. You need to carefully manage your parties health so every wound you take is important. Even that band of small goblins with enough hits can wear down your party slowly.

Some enemies may seem impossible and you will find a weakness and suddenly you have a chance. I don't mean a binary final fantasy style of weakness, it is more along the line of mechanics. That enemy that seems impossible to hit? Hit him with evasion debuffs, raise your own evasion. That other enemy with what seems like a impossibly massive amount of health but no armour or evasion? Go to town with your high damage low accuracy abilities and damage over time.

I don't want to make players quit, you can always come back to encounters later with better gear and levels and try again but having difficult encounters that players can really think about and challenge themselves with I think is a core part of older RPGs and I want to bring it back.

Providing tools rather than just damage

Every enemy has strengths and weaknesses. You might not need to take advantage of them but I think have a wide variety of builds and abilities that do more than just damage makes combat far more interesting. That enemy with high armour, you can either use armour piercing characters for the battle like the Rogue, or characters that reduce armour through debuffs like the Dwarf.

Or another example is the witches' Melt the Flesh ability which does moderate damage but can continuously wear down enemies with low fortitude.

There are more complicated examples, but the core concept is having players look at the battle and choosing each turn what is the best option, not just trying to do big damage.



Enemy design

Another core part of the game is a high level of enemy variety. There will be a lot of different enemy types as well as elite and boss type enemies. The more advanced enemies have a variety of attacks so just spamming high damage skills isn't always the best option.

I remember playing older games and never knowing what was coming up next, thinking 'what the heck is that thing??' being surprised at new enemy abilities and having to quickly adapt. That's what I am trying to achieve.

Customisation

The final aspect of combat that I think is important is letting players customise abilities and find new ways to make it fun. I don't want to just pigeon hole everyone into playing the same way. With the weapon system you can choose to focus on particular playstyles for each character. I will post at a future date on how the weapons and skill systems work but there is a lot of flexibility. I want to provide the tools for players to decide how they want to do things and work out solutions in their own way.

Want to make your Dwarf into a frontline beast and at the cost of survivability? You can do that. Or want to make your Champion lose a lot of his offensive power in favour of being a buffing machine? You can do that too.

I want to hear from you

I'd love to hear comments from you on what you like and dislike about turn based combat. Is there anything that you feel is missing from modern games? Or something that you wish more developers would focus on? Or even things that stop you playing turn based games at all?

I'm really interested in hearing what people think.