In the absence of position-based tactics, singleplayer turn-based RPGs have converged upon some similar mechanics. I want to look at how this works through a few case studies and talk about what it would look like for ttrpgs to adopt this design pattern. Rather than try to talk around this in the abstract, it’s easier if I just show you some specifics:
octopath traveller
Enemies in Octopath Traveller have a number of shield points and weaknesses. Weaknesses are unknown whenever the player first encounters them: after an enemy is hit by an attack they are weak to, their shield decreases and that weakness is revealed. Whenever an enemy has no more shields, they are “Broken”.
- Attacking an unbroken enemy with an attack they’re not weak to deals 1x damage.
- Attacking an unbroken enemy with an attack they are weak to deals 1.3x damage.
- Attacking a broken enemy with any attack deals 2x damage.
After breaking an enemy, they enter the broken state for any turns remaining in this round as well as the next round. After that, they become unbroken again with full shield points.
okay, so what does any of that mean?
Type-based weakness adds a layer of complexity to the combat puzzle. At the risk of being reductive, I believe it replaces the spatial puzzle of position-based combat by creating a temporal puzzle. In other words: because the players don’t have to worry about where their characters are, they can worry about when the best time to attack is.
First: players have to figure out what the enemy’s weaknesses even are. This is a minigame in and of itself.
(image stolen shamelessly from polygon)
The weaknesses in Octopath are always displayed in the same order from left to right. That means that if you do a test attack with a dagger and it’s the first listed weakness on the monster, you can eliminate sword and spear attacks from the pool of guesses. Some character skills attack multiple times with different types, like the Scholar’s Elemental Barrage, which randomly attacks 3-5 times with fire, ice, and lightning. Better yet: the Scholar’s “Analyze” skill reveals random weaknesses of the target, and can be boosted to reveal up to four at once.
Second: players have to reduce the shield points and strike when the time is right.
Sometimes, they might want to do this as fast as possible; other times, they might want to wait to break the enemy to interrupt a powerful attack. Either way, nailing the timing is crucial. You might be able to break an enemy, but it would be after your most powerful damage-dealer has already gone, so it would be better to wait for the next round to give them a chance to attack the broken enemy. It’s also possible that the enemy goes first next round, so you have to weigh the incoming damage vs. the amount you’ll be able to do.
sea of stars
Enemies in Sea of Stars occasionally cast spells — powerful attacks, though not always magical in nature. When the player first encounters a spell, it’s displayed in the form of a number of mystery locks. These function similarly to the type weaknesses from Octopath: players attack them to find out what they are; each corresponding attack reveals and removes one of the locks.
In the above screenshot, you can see that the spell has a timer in the bottom right: this displays how many turns before the attack happens. Furthermore, successfully removing locks decreases the power of the attack from 100% down to a complete interrupt if you manage to break all the locks.
twice is a coincidence
The main twist to note here is that type-breaking is no longer specific to enemies but rather their attacks. A given enemy can have many different spells, though it’s rare for a non-elite non-boss enemy to have more than a couple. Enemies can also attack without casting spells (as seen by the lower enemy above), sidestepping the combat minigame entirely.
Sea of Stars also makes the type-breaking system entirely defensive: rather than opening an enemy up to more damage (with the side benefit of interrupting them), breaking locks is about preventing yourself from taking damage.
honkai: star rail
Like Octopath, enemies have inherent elemental weaknesses. However, the way this manifests is in the form of a second health bar called toughness: any damage dealt to an enemy with toughness is multiplied by 0.9. The only way to reduce their toughness is by attacking with a corresponding type weakness. Fully depleting the toughness results in a weakness break, which:
- Deals bonus damage
- Delays the enemy’s turn by 25%
- Applies a debuff based on the type of attack used
On the enemy’s next turn, they recover from the weakness broken state and fully restore their toughness. Because they spend the turn doing this, it acts as an interrupt for powerful attacks; however it’s more common in Honkai: Star Rail for enemies to get back-to-back turns, so it’s much less of a reprieve than Octopath.
three times is a pattern
“Stagger” mechanics are not a new design pattern for videogames, but many such mechanics are found in action games where the purpose is to force players to attack aggressively rather than play cautiously and chip down health from afar. When applied to turn-based RPGs, they become a combat puzzle that can easily be translated into ttrpgs. This can be a problem.
Type-break mechanics often exist to force players to diversify the attacks they use in combat. It adds variety so that there is never one mathematical “best” attack to apply to every situation, because each combat will have different weaknesses. If we lifted this uncritically, it would serve to restrict player freedom by requiring them to cover every weakness type or risk being ineffective.
I don’t have a silver bullet.
I think there are ways to mitigate the downsides, but it depends on the system you’re building. Maybe your goal is to make players diversify or attack aggressively or act a certain way in combat. I think the answer is here, somewhere in-between the variations in the pattern: the goal is to give players another axis to think about combat. Rather than just “biggest number”, make them think about when to attack or alternative avenues of subduing their foe. The thing I like about Honkai: Star Rail is the variety of playstyles that the break bar adds. Teams that rely on damage-over-time want to break enemies to inflict their debuffs. There’s also a newer archetype called “superbreak” which deals bonus damage to broken enemies, and some characters excel at dealing toughness damage rather than normal damage.
Adding type-break mechanics to a game expands the possibility space for design and gives the players interesting choices to make during combat. If this inspires you, let me know in the comments!