So I had the idea of having a game where you lose party members as the game progresses, as opposed to gaining them.

I was planning on doing it for the sake of the story, not just for the heck of it. The world faces a seemingly unstoppable force, and where everyone else failed, your party manages to begin the process of pushing the force back. The loss of party members would emphasize that the party is not as powerful they seem, and that hope for the land would be questioned. Very somber and melancholy game ;P It would be a slow process, like a party member being lost every 1/3 of the game or so. And some of the key abilities of dead characters would later be learned by the remaining members, and the enemies would be scaled to accommodate for lost members.

Has this ever been done before, in an RPG Maker game or otherwise? If so, how well was it pulled off?

If it hasn't, does it sound like something that would be interesting to play, and what advice would you have to help pull this off effectively?

Thanks in advance!

You want the work done with the dead members to be significant when they are lost from the party. By redistributing their powers, you may be able to accomplish this, but remember to keep the narrative in sync with that, or immersion may be lost.

I have seen games remove or kill off members, but rarely more than one person. Your game will be unique from my viewpoint.

This isn't difficult to do, and I think it would be interesting.

I'm wondering, if a character is killed-off by the story, would you make their equipped items un-equipped, or would you make their equipment go poof with them? Or would each character have special types of equipment that only they can use and nobody else which would remove the want or need to return the equipment?
Because I'm sure that somebody will definitely rage if character 2 got killed-off with the super-expensive super-armor on and they can't get it back because they were wearing it when they got removed from the party.
Sorry for the run-on sentences, it's kinda late and my concentration is poised mostly on this absurdly large laptop keyboard.

I remember seeing it in FF5
Old man died, daughter took over with cloned stats and equips.

I liked it, cause I didn't like looking at an old man in my party.
There was no real difference in gameplay; only affected the story in that case.

I think there were a couple games I've played where if a character dies in battle...that's it the character's dead for good o.O
It was a TBS though, and of course the ones that die permanently were not key characters and didn't matter to the story.

You must pull this off correctly. You need to plan it out, and make it the least expected thing to happen. In FFIV for the DS they deliberately killed off the characters only for them to be replaced moments later. I.E Cid after you come from under the overworld, He just randomly decides to jump off the ship despite the fact they'd make it out. Make it sympathetic and as detailed as it can be. And don't make these "Deaths" too fluent. You don't even need to kill them, they can just dissapear, betray you or anything else.

It sounds interesting, but it can easily wind up as something that sounds better on paper than in action. Other games have done similar things, but not to the extent you are planning. As one poster noted, FFV. But that was one character, versus the whole party.

Even if the lost player's skills are distributed amongst the rest of the team, there has to be a cut-off. How many people are you planning to start with, and how many do you want to end with?

If you are planning to start with a team of 8+ with the ability to swap in and out, and slowly dwindle them down to the 4 you want remaining, that may work better than, say, starting with 4 and wind up in the end with 1, because most assuredly people will become more bored at the end of the game with 1 player than they would at the start.

Another idea could be to start the game off with a set of heroes, and all but 1 hero is left alive about half way through. That 1 hero, while gaining the strength of the dead, then must team up with a few lesser heroes to aid him on the rest of the journey.

Same as what everyone else has said from me, make sure the deaths make sense.
Many games have an 'underdog', for example, who later learns to overcome their weaknesses and have a 'trust me, I can do this moment'. We're so used to seeing these pay off that seeing the runt of the party die this way would be shocking. Sure it would make the party stronger if anything, but we love rooting for underdogs. The 'leader' of the party will feel it's their duty to have protected that person, and this could lead to a decline in morale and eventually shrugging off the responsibility of leader to someone else in the group. That person makes a hot headed and bad call which leads to another death. The original leader takes charge again, but now shoulders the responsibility of both deaths. Towards the end of the story he sacrifices himself to both save the party and because he can't take the pressure of it anymore.

There you go, three deaths, at 1/3 intervals in the game, that flow from one to the other in an emotionally moving way.
Not great, but it took me a minute. I'm pretty sure you could come up with something better, so yes, I think you should do it I love a bit of originality in a game, it's refreshing to see new ideas.

That said, you could very easily get this wrong. The deaths should be foreshadowed in some way (in my examples the runt would consistently show weakness, the bad leader would consistently make poor decisions, and the main leader would show signs of depression) but always seem unlikely (the runt is showing improvement, the bad leader is keeping his cool lately, the main leader cheers up for the final mission), and yet the death should still make sense in retrospect (the runt got TOO sure of himself, the bad leader cracked under the pressure, the main leader KNEW he would have to sacrifice himself - he was happy because he knew he'd be free from the guilt soon).

So that's it from me. I can't say my advice is any good, but I hope you find it helpful.

I would love to work on this! If you are really interested in doing an RPG like this, please PM me. I could write plot/dialogue or anything else. I also have work examples.

On scaling back... if you have more than 4 in your party list, realistically, you'll only need to scale back after 3 members are left. Also, unless you get down to just one, there's gonna be a limit on what you can remove (and by the time you're down to one, regardless of how you scale, the one dead = gameover may be too much to adapt to realistically).

So at this point, your character should either be nigh-invulnerable as a result and avenge their death, or concentrate their efforts on trying to get the party back together, or a Downer Ending.

Besides dead, this can work as a premise to a horror game where your friends "fade away" until it's just you left. The last 1/4 can be trying to figure out how to get them back, or turn it into a horror/romance style where just the gf/bf returns. Or you can end it there, with the last person beside the hero leaving.

I have to agree with the horror motif, that would work well. Something really psychological would work well.

Such as, if all the party members are part of a dream, or in the character's head? Yea, you can do alot with this.



This was pretty much how party changing worked in FF4. They had no party change screen, so they killed off extra characters. Many, many times.

Or they decided to go back home and do their homework.
Lol that's a great way to exit a character.

Put them in a haunted house where each of them leave out of fear, and those remaining assume the ones that have left have died, and yes that would actually be a gripping way to remove characters, barring you bring them all back at the end except for the protagonist who never left the house and has been driven insane.
But there would be better ways to do it than that

I'll jump in on this one and throw in my thoughts with a "most certainly unequip them". Nobody wants to lose the good stuff when a party member leaves.

As far as having members leave goes, I am in favour of it to drive the story. If the story is a journey, characters will get tired of walking the earth and leave, if it is a war, there might be losses close to the cast. A well-executed departure can add some punch to the story. Especially if it is the right kind of unexpected.

Definitely with that there. There's no way I'm losing my $4,000 diamond sword because they decided to go off on a train to nowhere halfway through the game.

It would be quite a balancing act to have the party lose members continuously throughout the game - you want the remaining character(s) to be strong enough to fight for themselves without artificially decreasing/increasing enemy/actor strength or requiring grinding/frustration over too-hard enemies. You want it to be so that a member goes away just when the party has become strong enough to take down all but the toughest of enemies with ease, so you'll need to do a lot of beta testing to make sure your timing is perfect.

It actually seems like quite a good idea - instead of having one leader gain followers as the story progresses, it's about the sacrifices followers make for the leader. Or, better yet, it's about having the leader make a sacrifice for the followers, and one of the followers has to step up to the plate and become The Hero... you know. There are a lot of ways you can take this - just remember that balancing is key.

I've always liked the ol' "One by one" concept. Out of most of the Horror Movies and Games I've seen, they are pulled off rather well with this idea. It adds both curiosity and further draws the player / watcher into the story.

Better yet, you could have a main party plus extras, that caterpillar your party. Simon goes off to the bathroom, and never comes back. Jerry is heard screaming faintly. Et cetera.

Then you could make it more a mystery, trying to find out what's happening.

absolutely interesting concept! and people mentioning it as a tool for a great horror game but im wandering whether this might make the game a bit challenging as well seeing you have only yourself in your party against an ultimate boss when your supposed to have 4! you probably need to scale done the difficulty as your party becomes smaller just like theben said?

To be honest, you don't even really need "An Ultimate Boss" to achieve victory in a horror, most horrors are solved through the main characters' eyes, and not via a direct event. I.E, Solving a puzzle which means life and death. If you do have a last boss, yes, you will need to balance the difficulty a bit. I've played a few horror games whereas the last boss is defeated via A puzze solving, or Desiphering a code within a short amount of time or something, which makes a nice variation from the "Hack n' Slash" method. I've even played a few games whereas a boss is defeated with one action, both of which, if are pulled off rather well, can be amazing and add a rather unique touch to your game. You just need precise planning really, and know exactly how the situation will fall to that manner.

I'm surprised no-one else noted that alongside losing equipment is losing the character's experience. Nothing bugged me more in the Grandia games than that they permanently removed several characters from your game and you were left with the 2 main protagonists and a bunch of half strength allies. They included some bonus xp items (I think it was something like Sue's notepad when she left) but they only gave a fraction of the xp lost.
I guess this matters less in your game where you wont be trying to cover for lost allies, but I can't help thinking that one guy you never used may end up in your party right at the end and just be constantly one-hitted.

The whole concept's cool though and does seem to lend itself excellently to the whole psychological thriller thing others were recommending.

I suppose that's one reason why traditional experience systems are flawed, or why having a big party is useless.
Some games have systems that share experience even to characters not in the battle, but realistically they were ALL in the fight. It's not like half of them were just standing on the sidelines

I've played some games actually that have only reward experience to the main character, and all the other players progress naturally. Sometimes they keep in pace with the main, sometimes they level up automatically as the game progresses.

In any case, the in-built system is flawed. Ten people are traveling the world, when they encounter enemies only four of them fight, these four become super badass while the other six watch. That's not how an adventure should work

This is a good idea indeed. If I were to do it, I would actually "recycle" dead party members, giving them a different purpose. For example; they could be reincarnated into items, or simply guide you from heaven. This would emphasize the dramatic aspect as you suggested, while keeping things balanced and interesting, as it can be very frustrating for a player to lose everything they've given a character. Along this line, characters' abilities in their "afterlife state" could depend on how you've built them before they die. So the question would not be "how long will this character remain useful", but "will this character stay alive long enough to enable this feature later".

I'd argue that you shouldn't give the player the abilities of dead party members. What's the point of killing them off from a gameplay perspective then? I'd also argue against adapting difficulty down as you lose party members. Instead give the player a way to strategically pad out how to use the remaining abilities to fend off enemies.

Just mt two cents.

Well, it's not about keeping characters exactly the same after they die. All I'm saying is they might enable some features, obviously much less powerful than having the actual character in your party, but still useful at times. Maybe dead party members could come to the rescue in critical/desperate situations, for example only when all your party is down except for one character who just have 1HP left, does a deas party member appears and gives an attack, then vanishes and you don't see them again in a while; This kind of ability is constrained enough in my opinion to maintain the feeling of loss toward the dead members, but still, if you've done the right things during their lifetime, you know you can count on a greater joker in time of troubles.

I think this was aimed more at the OP who suggested it as a compromise for losing character specific abilities midway through a game (maybe one character's history led to him being a dabhand at lockpicking, it would be illogical for locked chests to simply disappear conveniently at the point of death, and so another character eventually picks up the slack)
I like your whole 'Mysterious Stranger' Fallout thing though it would probably detract from the seriousness intended by death by making it seem less of a permanent state (what with their ability to just jump into the physical realm on a whim; kinda makes death seem like a boon for a character who now has two worlds to play around in)

Well, yes, if the OP had party members teaching each other (perhaps have the player choose how to train) then it makes sense to still have the abilities when one party member dies.

You'd have to let the player pick from al ist of abilities from al ist of party members os that way it doesn't become a cycle to the player. I.e don't only let the player choose to train in lockpicking because then it's obvious who is going to die next.

For added benefit you should design the game to allow randomly chosen party members to die.

It also depends on the tone of the game. Final Fantasy 6 has the first party disappear in the first 10 min, except Terra (Tina). Sorta horror element, until you figure out what's going on, and the characters missing were extras. Final Fantasy 5, you have Galuf doing a heroic sacrifice. His daughter gets the brunt of his experience and job points.

Shared experience should happen as a result of battles, not hero loss.

Wow this is an awesome topic, and a few things I'm surprised didn't get covered. Sure the game play aspect is important but what about the emotional one?

One of the greatest series to do this was the Suikoden series. In the first game your life-long friend and care-taker Gremio sacrifices himself so that you don't get eaten by man-eating pollen. This was foreshadowed the night before by all the other characters telling Gremio he shouldn't go this time, and that it was time for you to step out on your own. Yes this doesn't effect a game greatly when you have another 67 possible party members.

Just imagine a character who has been with you since day one, that has developed into a father figure for you. Now imagine the dialogue as he says his last goodbyes in the other room as his flesh is stripped away. He tells you how he's proud of you and how his vision is going dark. The scene shifts to 'a few hours later' and a rescue party lets you out of the room. You see only his cloak and axe lying on the ground. Amazing

An alternate aspect of this is betrayal. Suikoden II actually covers this. The game starts with you and your best friend in a youth division of the army, you go to sleep only to wake up and find your entire unit being wiped out by a surprise attack. You and your friend escape but are separated. Eventually you meet back up and he rejoins you in a heart felt reunion. Eventually you escape from city after city as the war terrorizes you. You attempt to assist the army in a recon mission only to be caught and have him stay behind to save you. Later he miraculously shows up and you are reunited. He then assassinates the leader of your army, causing everything to go to hell and your near death. How do you deal with a best friend whom you shared so much with suddenly becoming an enemy?

Now from the game play side of things, because that is just as important. A good game to use as an example for this is Final Fantasy II, the remake for the GBA to be specific. In that game you get a total of four members who end up dying to save you. The game does not comp you for these characters, but they help you in ways such as information, a boat, and helping out your spirit in hard times. The game play side of things that was interesting is that after you beat the game you unlock an alternate mode that lets you play as those four in the underworld, solving the other half of the story.

A good way to balance starting with characters and losing those characters is to make sure you always have a mostly full team, if you are doing an rpg of course. This will get unbalanced fast. But losing all but the lowest of recruits causes you to have to train them and make them into the warriors the ones who sacrificed themselves were. Story and game play all in one.