A thought on running, leading to suggestion for OHR

Hi everyone, I've been replaying Dragon Warrior 2 on emulator recently, and I forgot just how wonderful the balance is for large portions of that game. Sure, there are times when a random bit of bad luck can totally screw the player, but for the most part, I love the battles in this game. It's the only game I've played where the 'Parry' (Defend) command is just as important as any of the others throughout the whole game. (This makes me impatient for the Plan for Buffs)

One thing that can be unfair about the game, though, is that the success rate of running away is random. A failed run results in a free turn for the enemy, which is usually guaranteed to cripple your party. But being able to run at no cost can ruin a dungeon. So I had an idea about balancing running. In turn-based games, there was usually a (small) chance that a battle would begin with a free turn for the player, or a free turn for the enemy. What if running away from a battle increased the chances of free turn for the enemy in the following battle? Then winning a battle would reset these chances. In this way, if a player ran from 3 or 4 battles in a row, the 5th battle could almost surely give the enemy a free turn, as well as all battles after that, until the player finally killed something. Thus running from all battles is never a free pass, but a single run is a guaranteed way out of a tight jam.

In order to implement this in the OHR, all we would need is the idea of turn-based battles (or any battles, really) to allow for the enemy to get a free initial turn (and the heros as well, just to feel fair). Then the chance of this happening needs to be adjustable via plotscript. But adding this seems like a good idea regardless of my running idea. Thoughts? Or is this already possible in some way that I'm not aware of?

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I am Srime

I've tried preemptive strikes for battles before, but unsuccessfully.

Um, you could do something, perhaps, where you have a smaller and smaller chance to flee in subsequent battles until you willingly stand and fight. I don't know if it's paranoia or what, but I swear that DW/Q games and pokemon have such an effect....

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dOn'T MiNd mE! i'M jUsT CoNtAgIoUs!!!
Play Orbs CCG: http://orbsccg.com/r/4r6x

This is a cool idea. I totally agree that the current default running system in the OHR is crap, and so I am very happy to hear ideas for how to make it better.

The running/fleeing from enemies does not work in turn based games if you want to trigger it by ptessing ESC. It works triggereg throug an attack, thoug.
Maybe one could update the apperance options for running, like making the enemies run instead of the heros. Or just making certain elements/types run so some enemies are left.
Maybe reagarding the sugesstion that running influences the upcoming battle, then thoses enemies/enemieformations that were chased away are less liky so show up, or more likly to show up and take revenge.
I've no idea how to implement this. Is there a wiki article on battle-options-progamming?

Well, if you want running away in turn-based games, you'll need to make an attack that has the bitset "force heroes to run from battle" set to true.
Simply put, you can make a lone attack that does that, or you can have set to some aiming thing (WHICH REMINDS ME: I WANT CUSTOM AIM CALCULATIONS TO BE A THING, YES THANK YOU) that makes it where you can miss. You can also make, for what I'm using in Merciful Mungbeans at the moment, a chain of moves that has a set % chance to flee or not.

Hecks, here's other ways: Set a move that makes you run to work 100% of the time (aka, never miss) but it has a delay that makes it work AFTER everyone else has had a turn, thus being a penalty by giving your foes a free shot at you before you get away.

You can have custom % chances to flee based on enemies, just make the move not have a choice of target, and probably choose random, and having a custom element of, say, "flee" that the foe will counter with a move that will run through a certain % chance of working or not.

There are a multitude of ways to do this.

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dOn'T MiNd mE! i'M jUsT CoNtAgIoUs!!!
Play Orbs CCG: http://orbsccg.com/r/4r6x

I agree, we have plenty of ways to deal with affecting the chances of a successful run. My point is that I think it might be better if running was not dependent on chance. In a well-made RPG, the only time running should be important is when a player is in TROUBLE. In which case a failed run (and free turn for the enemy) results in either true crippling (dead characters, etc) or death. So I think it's worthwhile to consider allowing running to be 100% on the first try.

So then how to counter-balance this? My first thought was to have successive running increase the chances of giving the following enemy group a free turn. But maybe it WOULD be better to do as Meowskivich suggests and instead allow 100% running from the first battle, but decrease this percentage with each successive run (and reset it when a battle is won). And we do already have the ability to do this with plotscripting, so I guess that's a possible solution for the present.

I'd still like to see support for free initial turns for heros/enemies though.

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I am Srime