Let's talk combat

[renke_]

Also look at the current second and third tier of druid spells. They are horrendously similar. My first effort would be to combine the four into one, maybe having it cause the kind of damage the target is the least resistant to if that's programmable.

As this seems to be not possible (as Jack wrote) one more simple approach would be to combine antagonistic elements into one spell (as you all know I'm fond of a good and coherent story - and dualism is a well-proven idea ^^).

Say an Fire and Ice spell, AoE like 50 % water damage, 50 % fire damage and a chance of 10 % for each of burning and frozen, the single target nuke would be 150 % damage for fire and water respectively, plus 25 % chance for each harming condition, same for Earth and Air (another dualism/antagonist pair).

"Only" 4 freed slots, those can be filled with new or even existing skills (I'm not conviced that every skill must be unique to a class).

[Anima_]

Attacks can have only one element. That's not possible.

[jack1974]

Just wait end of Act 2 to see the other 2 casters. There's a lightning bolt that hits like strikethrough (row of enemies) and another one that causes enemies to hit each other. They're quite creative
Even the bard is interesting, basically a full party buffs but only once at time can be active.
In summary, compared to Loren, even if there are much less characters this game has already a lot more variety of skills, so I prefer to concentrate on finishing it, maybe adding a lot more sidequests to make it longer

[renke_]

Attacks can have only one element. That's not possible.

How is this solved with dual-wielding two different elemental one-hand weapons? Two separate attacks in a row?

Just wait end of Act 2 to see the other 2 casters.

A *good* answer, this will stop yayswords to meddle with the Druid for a few weeks :P

[yayswords]

Afraid my concern is that the druid has a boring skill tree, not that I think the game is automatically doomed for proper spells

[Anima_]

Attacks can have only one element. That's not possible.

How is this solved with dual-wielding two different elemental one-hand weapons? Two separate attacks in a row?

Pretty much. We call the hit sequence twice in the attack and change the weapon we're getting the element from in the meantime. So "Multispells" would be possible, but would behave like offhand attacks.

[renke_]

Vaelis' Recover says it should give 10 SP per turn but gives 5. Also if possible I would like it to restore mana from attacking instead of just from passing a round... because I can manadance with that :P

Ah is a mistake of the text, though I'm not sure if 5SP a turn would be enough or perhaps too low?

What about 0 SP cost and 5 SP recovery per round? It seems strange to invest SP to get SP :) (and I see the stances as emergency measures, for Recover Vaelis' invests valuable time to get stamina, so he's able to do more funny and deadly moves later)

[yayswords]

Er what, I would use the stances all the time if not limited by SP, unless I was looking at a short fight. 15% speed for a big offensive or defensive buff.

[jack1974]

What about 0 SP cost and 5 SP recovery per round? It seems strange to invest SP to get SP (and I see the stances as emergency measures, for Recover Vaelis' invests valuable time to get stamina, so he's able to do more funny and deadly moves later)

Well is about a sort of "slow start", since then he gets 70 SP (10 x 7 turns). Of course you can ask, why not make it cost 0 and get 60 instead? I think that if I make this skill cost 0 would be a bit unfair vs the other stances. So I've lowered them to a cost of 10 too

--
Speaking of combat in general, Anima suggested an alternative method to calculate damage. I'll test it and see but seems to work better than current system, since damage is reduced in percentage based on the delta between attack and defense, and I could still have the extra protection on the backrow as it is now. I hate to be doing another change now, but I think is better before I code all the 3 remaining seasons (which are much bigger than this one too!).

[renke_]

Er what, I would use the stances all the time if not limited by SP, unless I was looking at a short fight. 15% speed for a big offensive or defensive buff.

I meant especially the SP Regen as emergency tool, to enable Vaelis to perform e.g. other stances.

Well is about a sort of "slow start", since then he gets 70 SP (10 x 7 turns).

I thought of 5*7, not the 10 per round the description promised :)