Skillz

In this tumultuous economy, it has never been more important to have marketable skills. Whether you are the only person in the world who can successfully emulate Mel Blanc's Porky Pig or you're a little skinny asian guy that can eat 140 hot dogs in one sitting, it has never been more important to carve out your own little niche and follow your dreams.

For the residents of Onich, this is no different. Actually, it's way different. The job market in Onich is absolute shit these days (thanks Obama) and there aren't really any hot dogs to speak of. But that does not stop them from trying. And eating.

So, what does an RPG skill system typically consist of? Well, you have your actual skills, first of all. Each individual skill possesses a number of attributes. For instance, Bodom has a skill called Lunge. This skill, like all active skills, has the following attributes (this will be simplified):

(Area of Effect) - Is typically circle, line or cone. This describes the 'shape' of the skill. Lunge has a line-based area of effect. Internally, these are sphere/box/mesh colliders.

(Target(s)) - Indicates who will be affected by this skill. Possible choices are enemies, allies, self, all, et cetera. In the case of Lunge, the target type is enemy.

(Damage Type) - Either physical or magical. In Lunge's case, the type is physical.

(Scaling attribute) - Represents the character attribute(s) that affect the damage done by this skill. In most cases, physical damage uses STR (strength) and magical damage uses INT (intellect), but these are not guaranteed. (Healing spells scale off the user's INT and the target's RES (resilience)). In the case of Lunge, this is STR.

(Modifier) - Represents the base modification value for the attribute(s) used by this skill. In Lunge's case, this value is 1.00x. This means that the typical physical damage formula is applied using Bodom's actual STR value.

(Description) - Straightforward. Represents additional effects or benefits that the skill provides. For instance, Lunge's additional effect is that it moves Bodom along its target area of effect until he collides with the targeted enemy OR another enemy.

(Charge Time) - Little bit of background: there are two time/interval-keeping mechanisms in battle. The first is a turn, which is straightforward and represents everything a character does after his turn has begun and before ending it. The second is a cycle, which begins once the fastest character begins his turn and ends once the slowest character has ended his turn. A turn is 1 unit, but a cycle elapses once a turn has occurred for every combatant. Five combatants, five turns in a cycle.

Anyhow, the point of this is that ability charge times are measured in turns: Basically, the first number in the charge time represents the 'charge count', which is how many units of charge gained each time a turn elapses. The second number represents the 'charge total', which is the number of units that must be accumulated in order for the ability to execute.

For instance, Bodom's ability Lunge has a charge time of 1/2. This means that on Bodom's turn, if he chooses to use Lunge, this ability will effectively enter a 'queue'. Once two turns have elapsed, Bodom's skill will execute. To continue, the user's own turn counts as well. So, when Lunge is used, it enters the queue with a charge time of 1/2 already. Basically, once one more turn has elapsed, Bodom will execute the ability. This is where the concept of combos come in, because executing an ability also counts as a turn.

For example, say that the person acting after Bodom had an ability that also cost 1/2 and he uses it on his turn. Since a turn has elapsed, Bodom's charge time will move from 1/2 to 2/2 and the subsequent character's charge time will move from 0/2 to 1/2 (Remember, all abilities enter the queue with one unit of charge. Once Bodom's ability enters 2/2 and is executed, this will count as another turn, which will then boost the subsequent character's charge time from 1/2 to 2/2, at which point, the subsequent character's ability will execute. Basically, abilities that are executed in this back-to-back manner inflict extra damage (at a minimum) and depending on the skill, other effects as well.

To continue, basic attacks have implicit charge times of 0/0, thus, they will always execute immediately once they are selected ahead of anything else in the queue. This is much easier to show than to explain and hopefully there will be another battle system video showing this (It's implemented, but not particularly pleasing to look at.)

(SP Cost): The 'cost' to use this skill in battle. Every character has a finite number of SP (skill points) that are consumed when a skill is used. For Lunge, uh... I don't know what the hell it costs yet.

(EP Cost): The 'cost' to equip the skill for use in battle. Basically, in addition to SP, each character has another attribute called EP. The purpose of this attribute is so limit the number of skills that a character may equip and use freely in battle at once. For example, Bodom starts out with something like 5 EP. If Lunge costs 2 EP, but another ability costs 4 EP, he cannot equip them both at once. EP, along with SP, increase as the character levels up.

(AP Cost): Yet another cost. This represents the amount of AP needed to actually 'unlock' the ability to even gain access to it. You can think of all these costs as 'gates'. Do you have enough AP to unlock the ability? OK, you unlocked it. Do you want to equip it and do you have enough extra EP? OK. Finally, do you want to use it in battle at a particular moment? Do you have enough SP? Jesus, this sounds like some bureaucratic shit. Also, AP is accumulated on a per-battle basis along with EXP and can be used at any time outside of combat to unlock abilities.

Now that we have all of that out of the way, there are multiple flavors of abilities: you have your actives (can be used directly in battle and in some cases, outside of battle) battle passives (grant an additional effect while in battle, but are not 'used', ie, do not have SP costs. They do, however, still have EP/AP costs.), world passives (Same as before, but these passives apply globally. For instance, a passive that reduces enemy encounter rates OR increases the amount of money obtained from enemies, et cetera.) and special abilities, which are essentially actives/passives with much stronger effects (and larger costs/charge times).

So, how do you actually go about obtaining abilities? Each character has access to a unique set of abilities, and specifically, each character has a specific 'skill tree'. Again, pretty standard. Basically, the skill tree is a group of nodes (skills) that are connected by different branches. I drew a picture of this once, but I don't know what happened to it, so...

Also, I'm sick of writing and I need more coffee. We'll continue this another day...