Here's a list of simple ideas to make strategic battles. Please add more.

• Elemental weakness.
• Need poison attack/skill: enemy has high DEF + high HP.
• Need mute: self-heal spamming enemy.
• Need blind: High P.dmg enemy.
• High atk / low def enemy + low atk / high def enemy: defeat the low def enemy first.
• Defeat/mute AoE enemy healer first.
• Enemy's power/stats decrease when first defeating 'energy source' enemies.
• Need AoE: large amount of weak enemies.
• Defend at x turn for a powerful enemy attack.
• Defeat enemy ASAP before it spawns more enemies.
• High def enemy + poison casting enemy: good enemy battle formation.
• Enemy transforms after x turns: must defeat ASAP.
• Need def piercing attack: high def enemy.
• Must defeat 'shield' enemy so other enemy is no longer immortal (can be done with multiple shields at different % HP levels).
• P.atk resistant enemy (need magic).
• Magic resistant enemy (need physical attacks).
• Player HP lower > enemy stronger: keep HP healed high.
• If enemy X HP is below a certain %, enemy Y starts to attack (or attack stronger). Can be done visa versa.
• Enemy casts powerful DEF+ spell at low HP.
• Enemy party has DD + buffer.
• Enemy party has high DEF/HP healer in party: mute ASAP.
• Immortal/100% evasive sand enemy until a water spell is cast. (Or visa versa with a water enemy that needs an ice attack.)

Hopefully it's a bit useful to someone!

I like this, its a useful list. Thanks for sharing.

Well I have a list that I'm using for my game.

• Enemy uses elemental fields to power up an element (affects actors too).
• Enemy attacks become more powerful over time (must end battle quickly).
• Disable healing ability.
• Disable special skills, or items.
• Reflecting Forcefield: damage inflicted to the target is inflicted back to the attacker.
• Variable defenses.

Generally, most of my bosses obey to a "phases" rule. When their HP goes under a certain value, their stategy changes.

Personal favorites from my own project:

-While you can still attack the summoner boy, poison him before he could hide in his mutant flower again. This will damage him from the inside since you can't attack him outside.

-Elemental barrier shifter with misleading colors casts barrier's elemental spell before switching barriers. Absorbs any other elements. Cast slow while you still know his weakness. (Needs ATB system though)

-Monk that needs one turn to use focus power for energy blast. Stun him or use sleep before he does. Preferably stun.

-The........ uh...........Grim Reaper??? who spends most of the battle in his vapor form dealing fair damage and using Necrosphere to blind us. We can only attack him when he takes physical form before he uses his most powerful death scythe. Um...... not entirely sure about the strategy. Any suggestions?

I use most of the OP's strategies for normal enemies. Bosses have more advanced strategies.

Oh, that's a really good one!


Could you elaborate?


Yep. The list isn't for boss strategies (although you could apply them), but contains simple ideas to make regular battles more interesting.

By "variable defenses", I mean that once you hit the enemy with something, they develop a resistance against this method of attack and you have to find another opening afterwards. They can eventually forget a previous method too.

I particularly like this with enemies with low HP who can regenerate - so the player has to quickly change strategy before the enemy recovers. On tougher enemies, this can become boring quickly though.

Heres a couple taken from WoW, especially raids:

1. Kill enemies at same time, they enrage (get stronger) if they are by themself.
2. Mobs surrounding boss give him different buffs.
3. Boss has phases where he is weak to magic, then weak to melee.
4. Enemy has charge attack, so buff defense or magical defence right then to prevent dying.
5. At 25% the enemy will fully heal after a period of time (save skills for 25%)
6. Boss drops party to 1 HP, and then follows up with a weak AoE attack, so heal up party quick

I could post a lot more, but it would take me all day to list them

Pretty useful list! Let me contribute:

- enemy periodically takes control of an actor for some time
- enemy dies only if his mana reaches 0
- after death, a bigger enemy splits in multiple smaller ones

This one is a really good idea! I remember Kunino-Sagiri in Persona 4 does this with multiple characters. It was really stressing but overall particularly interesting.

I forgot another cool one. In council raid bosses, there are 4 bosses with a shared healthpool. One randomly becomes active, and has certain abilities, and periodically loses energy. At 50%, he throws up a shield and its generally not a good idea to attack the shielded council member. At that point, another one becomes active and starts attacking as well. Again, at 50% he throws up a shield, but the other council member then becomes inactive. I'm not sure how this could be pulled off in rm, but it makes for one hell of a fun fight in WoW.

How about this one?

Enemies with high damaging counter attacks. Focus early turns on buffing up your characters offense and defense(Can sacrifice speed if need be). Since these guys won't be as dangerous until you attack them.

So is that one ok? I'm not sure.

How about the Unkindly Treated Beast:

You have two enemies, a beast and it's trainer. The beast is a pawn in this man's scheme. He will deal damage to the beast via a whip. When the beast is below 90%, he attacks you. The more HP the beast loses, the more damage he deals. You can finish the battle without killing the beast. The trick is to keep the beast healed above 90% while killing the trainer.

Also you can do magical pot battles, where you have to give an item (specific or not) to an enemy in order for it to do something, like reward you. Perhaps you can have a battle where there's magical pots that if you give them a good item, they'll debuff/damage another enemy in the battle.

Thief Battle. Kill an enemy before it's turn or it'll steal an item from you and run away.

Character (Un)Friendly battle. If you have a specific character in your party the enemy will respond positively or negatively.

To the Death. An enemy will engage one hero. Optionally, all other heroes will become unable to act. Until one of them dies the two will have buffs/debuffs on them.

Disable X. In this battle X type spell is disabled, such as resurrection, healing, fire spells, earth spells, buffs, dispels, etc.

Zombify. If an actor dies, it will be unable to be resurrected for the battle. Instead, the enemy will resurrect the actor to fight for him. Killing the zombie actor will enable resurrection once more.

Reverse Shield. YOU are protected by a shield from a very dangerous foe. If this shield should be destroyed you will be in an extremely difficult battle.

Every Status Under the Sun. Two words, Malboro Breath.

I wouldn't do that if I was you. Certain actions on an enemy will make them react with greater hostility.

Random Random. The monster is a mimic (Not FF mimic). It takes on the abilities/attributes of certain enemies. Which enemy it is at the start of the fight is random. Doing a certain action on it will cause it to transform into another enemy. You can cycle through the enemies until you get to one you like, or it can be so random you're never sure what to do in fear of it transforming again.

No Kill Zone. A force field causes everything to be ressurected, including your actors. After X turns or alternatively if you kill the force field, ressurection is no longer enabled. Thus, you have to set yourself up to be at a strategic advantage when this happens. To make this even more dire, you could make it so the enemy can 1 to 2 shot your heroes, so when the field drops, you have to have him as close to death as possible or you're in for a beating.

What do you guys think? I could come up with more but I think this is enough.

Great job! I really like this one .

It is very useful, I've been thinking in the same direction but your list is LONGER!

In our own fantasy tactics RPG (shameless plug), we have two rock-paper-scissors wheels, each running opposite the other. In the first wheel, we have the core classes (your standard warrior - thief - mage). In the second, we have special version of the three archetypes (chargers - assassins - grenadiers).

So in order for the core classes to have a shot against the specials, we introduced elemental damage and resistances (close your suggestion about elemental weakness and poison attack/skill: enemy has high DEF + high HP). So now, when a grenadier attacks warrior with fire AOE, their armor has been buffed with fire resistance.

@Titanhex That's some crazy good thinking! I especially like UT beast and the Zombify.

I have an idea that's based on U-boat attacks during WWII. A bit of background, our first continent is like Antarctica; combat is turn-based.

You have a certain number of boxes with a snowmole in each box. Snowmoles are animals (or devices) that function like slow-moving torpedoes. Convoys made up of woolly mammoths pass through a certain area. Your goal is to set the boxes, so that each snowmole will immobilize a mammoth from the convoy, possibly even two.


~Merged double post, please wait 72 hours before posting twice in a row -Harryb412

@Titanhex Wow, nice! You have some really sick ideas on battle tactics! Are some based on other games or are all of them yours?

This is an easy one:
A boss has an extremely advanced case of multiple personality disorder, with each personality focusing on a different attack strategy (Physical attacks, Magic, Healing, or simply different magical elements). Using a certain type of attack, or magical element, will cause certain personas to appear, though the boss will periodically choose a random persona to fight with. While this does mean that the player has to spend significant time learning the different stressors that cause each persona, it also attempts to create a strategic battle with a lot of depth to it (for example, what happens if you hit the boss with a healing spell?).

Obviously the Malboro, Magic Pot, Disable X, and Thief ideas aren't mine. The other ones are. None of them are based off of any games.

My ideas are a combination of game mechanic understanding and situational setups.

Imagine a Full Reversal Mind F**k battle. It'd be difficult to do, but basically:

All actions in the game are taken in reverse and all effects are reversed for the battle. If you attack an enemy, you'll attack your ally instead. Instead of taking damage though, the ally will be healed. If you cast white magic on an ally, you'll damage the enemy instead. If you cast black magic on an enemy, it'll be turned into white magic and heal your ally. Casting sleep on an enemy causes your ally to be woken up. Etc. You could even make the highest healing/damaging spells become the weakest.
You could change the effects up randomly through the battle, you could allow only one of these field changes or all of them, and/or you could allow or disable the initial effect while including the reverse effect.
Now that'd be an intense battle to keep track of if done properly. Would be even more intense if the system was ATB. Just think of ways to make your player think before every action they take instead of spamming their best stuff.

There's few limits if you go outside the box.

Nice strategies Titanhex
Some ideas:
Self-destruct enemies that blow up and damage the party after taking a certain amount of hits or waiting a certain number of turns.
Ultimate skills for bosses that will active after (x) turns, being potentially a OHKO.
Bosses that will cast doom on you at the start of battle or if the battle takes too long (similar to FF13)
One time only monsters that will change the whole game depending if you win or lose. (You lose in a battle with a gypsy and she curses you for the rest of the game o.O)

I like your idea of Monsters that change the game, but if you lower it to a lesser extent it may be far more usable.

Example:
You run into a Curse Cat. If you don't defeat it in 2-4 turns it casts a curse and runs. These curses add up. If you try to leave the map you encountered the Curse Cat on, your party will have it's Hitpoints reduced by half of their current Hitpoints per curse. The only way to break the curse is to kill a Curse Cat successfully.

Or. If you run into a Orchid of Malice in a room. You must kill all pieces of the Orchid or you cannot leave that room.

Or perhaps a curse that lowers your strength by 1 and the only way to break it is to go back and kill that enemy type.

GOLD EATERS. These enemies will attempt to latch on to you. If they succeed, then they will lower your armor. Until you've earned X gold (which they take from you as you earn it) then the penalty will stay.

Alternatively a specific antidote can fix these penalties.

Figured out a few more strategic ideas:

-Discourage Low Damage-
Every time the enemy is damaged, it will heal itself for a set amount.
Ex. A Jelly-King appears. You try to lay into it with poison, which normally does the best damage to the lesser-Jelly's high defense. Suddenly you realize this is a bad idea, as every time the poison deals damage he heals for more damage then it did. The King also casts regen on itself, which amplifies his healing. Luckily you have a few stat-down spells which he isn't immune to and a dispel, so you dispel the King after the poison wears off and let loose with stat-downs. From there, you pull out your high-damage spells and let loose.

Optionally: Absorb
Every time you attack an enemy with a Physical/Magical attack they are healed a set amount or by a %. Thus you switch your strategy up for this enemy.

Battle Difficulty: Medium-Easy.

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-Soul Swap-
Every played one of those cup games? Someone puts a ball under a cup and you have to guess where it is? Well this is a battle based on that.
Ex. Six inanimate statues or "golems" are the enemy. The true enemy is a soul that plays puppet-master to these objects. When the battle starts, it's pretty easy. He pops into and out of each object randomly in a rather slow method (Show Battle Animation on the enemy sprite.) You deal no damage to the enemy the soul isn't inside, and whats worse is the enemy does a counter attack. This can make AoE spells a VERY bad idea.
It starts out easy, until the soul begins popping in and out rather rapidly, making it harder to track it. Failure to pay attention may lead to a quick demise.
Additionally: The possessed enemy will perform a move at the end of the turn while the others will do nothing.
Additionally: Each statue has an elemental affinity.
Additionally: Some statues cast buffs/AoE buffs. Trying to debuff a statue that isn't possessed will trigger the counter-attack.

Optionally: The soul can take damage that is tracked in a variable. Once the variable reaches a certain amount the battle ends. Alternatively you could give each statue life points, and victory is achieved when all statues are defeated.
Additionally: The final statue left could be boosted and fully healed.

Optionally: There can be 8 statues and 2 souls.

Battle Difficulty: Medium-Hard to Very Hard.

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-Stat-Switcher-
The enemy bounces between a 10/10/90 ratio on it's stats. Every x turn he will change that ratio around. Best for a Real-Time TBS.
Ex. You are battling a mutating slime. This little bugger will change colors depending on it's stats. It starts out 50/50/50 on the first turn. Then it turns blue, with a 10atk/90def/10agi. You take the opportunity to recuperate since it's defenses are so high. Then it shifts to red with a 90atk/10def/10agi set up. You lay into it while it's slow, trying to time it properly to defend against it's hard hitting attacks. Then it shifts to green, with a 10atk/10def/90agi. It's getting turns constantly, letting loose a number of spells and debuffers. This becomes a time to lay into it while not getting taken down by it's abilities. It then switches to defense and you recuperate. Rinse, wash, repeat.
Difficulty: Hard

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-Simon Says-
This one is a tricky beast of a battle. If you're not on your toes, it's game over.
Ex. Simon appears. He starts off with Heal. Someone now HAS to cast Heal or Simon will instantly kill someone. He then casts a Fire spell. Someone now HAS to cast that Fire spell or Simon will kill.

Optionally: The spell can be memorized for 4 rounds, or can be forgotten after it's cast. Ex. He casts heal, your priest has to cast heal. He cast Fire, your mage has to cast Fire AND your priest HAS to cast heal. He casts High Jump, your Dragoon now has to cast High Jump, your Mage Fire, your Priest Heal. He casts Dispel. Your priest now has to cast Dispel instead of Heal, and your Mage has to cast Fire, and your Dragoon High Jump. This could make the battle increasingly difficult as you try to keep track of your spell casts.

Battle Difficulty: Easy to Hard

Need Sleep spell- An enemy keeps using debuffs that lower your stats(att/def/spi/spd) but is only temporary. Put them to sleep and guard until the debuffs wear off. One of my more strategic bosses.

That reminds me of a set up I've seen before where the only way to perform certain moves is to have a debuff on.

For example, a skill that only does damage if you're blinded.

Thus, you could have a medusa battle where the only way to defend against her gaze which hits 100% of the time is to be blinded. Or say you have a weak poison spell. An enemy has an incredibly strong poison spell. You inflict yourself with the weak poison which prevents that strong poison from landing.
These scenarios are good because they force a player to think outside the battle.

==Additional Edit

Also imagine a dungeon where there's some Magical Entities flying around and the main boss is a giant manifestation of that. Red Entities vs Blue Entities.

Every time you kill a blue entity you absorb it. (Adds +1 to a variable.) Every time you kill a red entity, it destroys one blue entity inside you. When you get to the Giant Entity, it does a special move. For every blue entity you've absorbed it does bonus damage. The strategy is, before the boss fight, try to avoid killing blue entities. Or perhaps every time you attack him you do bonus damage based on blue entities. The idea now is to collect the entities.

Also why does a boss in a dungeon have to be single battled and confined to one room. Lets use the previous example. ANY time you kill an entity it increases a counter by +1. When that counter hits a certain amount, the dungeon boss appears to fight you, probably out of vengeance for those you've slain. This occurs every time you reach that amount on the counter. To compensate the boss may not be a very efficient fight, so your strategy would be to avoid this encounter.

Variants here are numerous too, use your imagination and experiment within the gamescape.