Special Attacks Thread

So, creating special attacks can be sort of a pain considering all the choices in the OHR. Other than the small amount on the wiki, there's no specific place to look. Let this thread stand as a sort of sharing place for attacks you've made, or attacks you want to make, but aren't sure what to do.


I'm trying to make a parry/riposte attack. I want the hero to have a chance to absorb the damage, and then fling that same damage amount back at the attacker. My initial thought is using an attack that raises defense, then lowers it, and then chains to a "last damage to attacker" with a "revenge" target.
Basically, I don't want the hero to take any damage should their "guard" be up, however i don't want the hero to riposte should the enemy not hit them.
Will the hero copy that "miss", or is there a way to outright cancel the riposte?

I've considered using an attack almost identical to the one you just suggested, but it's too complicated for me to figure out. My solution is to make a simpler attack, which I can't think of a good name for, in which this set of actions occur:
1) User guards, raising defense
2) Time passes, user lowers guard, normalizing defense
3) User attacks with increased power, say, 1.5x or 2x damage
It's not exactly a parry attack, but I imagine it functions very similarly in the thick of battle; most players wouldn't be able to tell the difference. And if they can, they probably won't care. This also eliminates the pesky question of what to do if the user doesn't get attacked at all.

I'm not sure how related this is, but I've recently found a new idea regarding the Level MP system. I have a medic character with absolutely no magic abilities whatsoever - I'm switching his healing moves from normal MP to Level MP. It makes quite a bit of sense since he uses special items instead of magic spells to heal and apply buffs, so the Level MP represents his stock of items and how many he's capable of making in one night. Mana potions and elixirs are useless to him, only way to refill his stock is by sleeping overnight or talking to special vendors.
In addition, I'm going to make this character's healing moves percent-based. Give him heals that restore (for example) 1/3, 1/2, and the entirety of someone's HP, regardless of the medic's level and stats, making him equally useful throughout the entire game.

There's one more interesting special move I've been thinking about adding. I have a fighter who can shield an ally temporarily, boosting his/her defense while making the fighter unable to move until it wears off. I'd like to make an improved version of this - I'll call it "Super Guardian" - that will apply a large defense boost to a chosen ally for the rest of the battle wherein the fighter can continue fighting, but can only be used on one ally at a time. (I may also apply a penalty to the fighter's accuracy and/or speed when he uses this move)
My working idea is to give the fighter one MP, and have Super Guardian consume that MP, requiring him to use a "remove guard" type of attack to cancel Super Guardian and restore the MP. Under normal circumstances, this might work, but it can be subverted and abused if a clever player figures out a way to prematurely restore the fighter's MP.
Maybe I should accept that and allow it anyway. There's loads of games with unintended exploits like this, it's not a big deal.

if i remember correctly, bloodlust had a system sort of like this. i'd like to know how they did that.

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Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy... So here's some lunchmeat... Sandwich, maybe?

Nayte from Nintendo Quest had an attack called "Counter"
Part 1: Targets self, doing nothing
Part 2: Targets last enemy to attack him, doing damage based on the previous attack to hit him

Eiyu/**** from Axe of the Mystics had an attack called "Hero Cut"
It just did light-elemental damage and bonus damage versus the "Boss" enemy-type, with low base power (it would be roughly half the power of a normal attack against most enemies, normal power against undead/shadows/whatever and mortal bosses, and double power to Dark Lords).

Several characters from unreleased games of mine had a command for avoiding enemy attacks.
Part 1: An attack with the Jump animation that does no damage
Part 2: An attack with the Land animation that does no damage, set to "All". If redone in a new version of the engine, I'd add "Do Not Trigger Spawning on Hit."

Other generalities:
- I used to do tiered spell systems like such oldschool games as "Dragon Warrior", "Final Fantasy", and "Dungeons and Dragons", in which there were low-level spells that were essentially worthless compared to basic attacks, and high-level spells which were basically the same exact abilities with the power boosted to the point where they were almost competitive with regular attacks.
- I eventually realized that what I wanted from attack spells were "Do roughly normal damage to all foes at once" and "Do loads of damage to a single target" - my games from a few years ago had only three spells per element ("Weak attack with low cost and optional spread", "Mid-power spread attack", and "Powerful focused attack"), and I have since realized that the first is redundant. From Maces Wild onward, I've done two attacks per element unless I had other gimmicks I wanted to explore.

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Remeber: God made you special and he loves you very much. Bye!