Elements, that song and dance that never seems to grow old in an RPG.

Except it is growing old. It's been done to death, evolved a little tiny bit, and then done to death some more.

It's actually rare not to see elements used in an RPG of any calibur.

And yet it's always the same. Never taken much farther. Sometimes we run into it used a little differently, but not much.

In this discussion I want to hear ideas for new elements used thoughtfully for strategy.

I want to hear interesting ways to use the typical elements.

I want to see us as designers break the notions of what is possible with designing elemental systems. Or at the very least make the A beats C beats D system a little more interesting.

We could benefit greatly if we could find that Z factor. We have the X and Y, where X is the element and Y is how one is stronger than the other. But where is that Z?

Lets make this interesting. :3 I'd love to be able to highlight this as an interesting topic.

A thought on my mind was if, let's say, you used fire on an enemy it cause a burn status. When an enemy is under this burn status it takes slow damage. Now if you used water it would do 2x the damage however the burn status would go away also. It would work similar for other elemental attacks like if you used water the target would be wet and be a bit slower(?) and also take 2x damage from the next lightning-based attack.

Nothing too amazing, but I though being able to apply weaknesses to enemies through skills would add a bit more strategy to battle.

I like classic elements, whether one thinks they're overused or not.

However, I'm quite attached to the concept of "mana" - elemental powers tied to the environment. Making the elemental damage vary in function of the battlefield's elemental properties is one way to use the concept. Now add for special skills and even elemental magic the ability to alter the terrain's properties and you open strategic possibilities.

To push it further, you can also make the terrain's elemental properties alter directly the battler's parameters, and therefore it can become necessary for the player to shift the properties to something else, using, for instance, elemental magic specifically designed for such an use.

Well its not so much element based, but how about a game where magic itself is limited (therefore you wont need a hundred spells based off a dozen elements).
Eg. The plot occurs during a technological era where the very idea of magic is long considered a children's tale (sound familiar?) until your protagonist discovers they possess some very weak form of it. There would be no mp recovery item in this society, and because of the story the character would have very limited mp. Now battles would consist not only of the choice to use magic at all but whether it would be better to use a stronger or weaker elemental variant to try and conserve mp.

Edit: On re-reading this seems more a way to validate the pre-existing system than advance it. Indeed the whole concept of limitation seems to counterproductive to this thread. My apologies.

How about a magic system that was very environmental based (sort of like the one posted above)

But you can just conjure elements out of nothing...you have to manipulate the environment around you instead. You can only use what is available.

Forest Setting
Earth Magic
Wind Magic
Light magic (Day time only)
Dark Magic (Night time only)

Cave Setting
Earth Magic
Dark magic

Town Setting
Earth Magic
Wind Magic
Fire Magic (Torches? Fire Places?)
Light Magic ( Day )
Dark Magic (Night )

Bridge Setting
Wind Magic
Dark Magic (Night)
Light Magic (Day)

Snow Setting

Burning Village Setting

Etc etc

You can alter the settings with items maybe...

Explosives ( Deals X damage to all units and causes a fire environment for Y turns. Consumed on use. )
Water Jug (Equipped accessory. Causes the user to always have water environment access.)

This of course would limit the enemy's actions as well unless they are like monster units and can like breathe fire or what not.

If you gave the player many different actions to choose from based on the setting it could be interesting. Instead of have the exact same actions available each time.

Like take the bridge setting for example and lets make it night time. Your limited to wind and dark.

Wind Spells
Lose Footing - Rocks the bridge violently and has a % chance to inflect Delay debuff (Skip your turn next turn. ) Effects everyone.
Wind Blade - Slices target with ripping wind. Deals X damage.

Dark Spells
Lunatic - Causes beserk status on target.
Lurking Shadows - Cuases Fear buff (Increases evasion, but lowers accuracy and attack.)

Just a thought

I'm actually in the process of creating a similar system to the one that IIomenII has mentioned. Where the Elemental Abilities of my characters, which are based off of the elements themselves, are given to them by their surroundings. An enhancement I've also added is the possiblilty that without a form of their elemental representative they are not as strong. The main character can actually gain a negative status effect due to being away from a source of fire (which is his element) and the standard A is weak against B is still used, however if they are not in an area that doesn't have their specific elemental being, then they're elemental advances are less effective....

Dunno whether that's enough of a spin, but it certainly makes it a challange to play, even for me as the developer

I came up with a status system that had different elements.

Instead of elements simply being trump cards over one another, they altered certain aspects of the character and magic in general. This system could stand on its own but also could function as an addition to the basic elements. Personally I think it'd be best mixed with some other more complex elements.

Gravity\Darkness\Void - This element dampens and absorbs magical energy. It can suppress magic, and devour the power to control it. It can also suppress and devour life energy, and create the essence of absence in certain elements.

Light\Crystal\Amplification - This element enhances magical energies that're filtered through it. It provides the essence of light, warmth, creation and growth.

Blood - This is the power of the animal, the essence of the beast. It Is raw emotion, the ability to instill fear, awe, courage and rage. It's also the raw sense of survival and instinct.

Astral/Sky - This is the raw energy harnessed above. It is the natural forces of the sky. The energy harnessed in the stars and planets, and the strength of storms and clouds and the heat of the sun is within this element. It's essentially raw energy in it's purest form. (Think electric energy, star energy, and solar energy)

Nether\Death\Spirit - This is the power of the dead. The ability to mold spiritual energy into usable substances. This is a recycled energy, which works in conjunction with Light energy naturally.

You know, this is something I've been thinking about a bit lately. The elements are dull, but even with only the 4 basic elements (Fire, Water, Air, Earth) I think we can make things very interesting.

Here's my "Interesting Elements" design :

The first step is to remove elemental weaknesses from the vast majority of enemies. General weaknesses and resistances work great for, say, Pokemon, but a typical RPG gets very boring by mindlessly casting "water" spells on "fire' enemies.

We can also add some significant variety to the elements, and battles overall, by giving each one a focus in addition to dealing damage.

One possible example:
Fire: Buff allies (increase damage, defense, haste, etc)
Water: Heal
Air: Control (silence, stun, slow, confuse, etc.)
Earth: Debilitate enemies (lower resistance, dispel buffs, etc)

Without elemental resistances, something is needed to distinguish the elements. Give them a 'flavor'. However, this can lead a player to rely heavily on one or two types of spell, and completely ignore the others. So we have to come up with a system to counter that.

So, we give enemies a way to counter elements, and the intelligence to react to the party's strategy.(exploitable, of course) For example, a basic enemy, let's call it a "Flying Lizard," can cast two nullify spells, one for water, one for air. Very basic, and somewhat boring spells, but we might not want every battle to be a chess match. When these are cast, they nullify a set amount of spells (two or three) cast by anyone until they're expended. If the party only casts fire and earth, the Flying Lizard will not use nullify spells if he is accompanied by a friend who uses water or air. He may still use them at the beginning of the battle. These CAN be countered.

Much more interesting spells, such as absorb or block spells, can be added to force the player to make strategic tactical decisions. Block spells work similarly to nullify, but they are cast on one enemy (or friend) to block incoming attacks from that element for a set time. Absorb spells would absorb its primary element (a "Water Shield" spell could absorb water damage), reduce damage from its strength (it would cut Fire by 50%), but increase damage from its weakness. (in this case, Air) If the enemy notices lots of Air spells being cast, Air Shield would go up, if it is available to that enemy. That's where exploitation comes in: trick the enemy into putting up an Air Shield, just to slam it with Earth spells. More difficult encounters could pair absorption with nullify spells, throwing a wrench in this strategy. (but one that can be overcome)


So I guess to wrap my thoughts, I feel that even the basic elements can work, if you use them in a dynamic, reactive system that goes well beyond "cast spell X on enemy Y to win." There should not be a "damage" type element that hits harder than the others, nor should there be an abundance of natural weaknesses to elements, there are other ways to add variety. AI is important, as you need enemies that can react and properly utilize strategies to force the player to think, rather than just grind.

I'm a big fan of keeping it simple, but not to the point of repetitive boredom. By introducing status effects into the mix, as some posters have suggested, you can really go a long way with making the game a bit more interesting. It would be nice if you could choose to apply a skill to the enemy or to your party, with different effects, but that doesn't appear possible. So if you were to cast fire against an ice character, that character would receive damage and the possibility of a burn status that depletes health over time. Likewise, if Fire was cast on a Fire enemy, not only would the enemy be healed, but perhaps the enemy would receive the Regen effect or something. The same would apply to using Fire against somebody in the party (either you greatly hurt them or you benefit them).

Another thought is "hit all" element spells. We all want them and use them to no end, because we want to speed through battles as quick as we can. But shouldn't "hit all" spells also effect the party? Ah, so you want to cast Fire All to quickly wipe out your targets, but now you must contend with the amount of damage (or benefits if your character is Fire-Based) your party will receive. It forces the player to consider there moves.

@amerk: I always thought that mass element spells (earthquakes, tornadoes and so on...) should actually affect the environment outside of battle.
Imagine that: you cast a Quake spell in a town to kill some mooks and every house collapse. You're then hated by the populace. Well it might be hell to implement and would probably cause problems with a linear plot, but wouldn't that be interesting? Then some specific locations could have anti-magic shields to prevent use of such spells.
Of course the real issue here would be to make the system fun to use, not needlessly complex.

I'm running on 0 hours of sleep so bear with this.

It's a basic idea but I haven't seen it mentioned here. Let's say that beyond weakness elements had affinities. You know, water + earth = healing. So while some elements were polar opposites and did extreme damage to one another, other elements healed each other.

Another idea I have is properties. Say you could inverse elements, water into steam, fire into gas. These inverts could lead to new possibilities although on their own they're pretty much additional elements. I'm just throwing this idea out there.

That's all I have to offer, for now.

I agree that the A-beats-B-beats-C model is overused and stale. I'm glad you brought this up. I'm wondering if we should break away from the traditional RPG environmental elements (fire, earth, ice, thunder, water, wind, dark, holy). That concept of "elements" is taken from ancient civilizations. We live in an age where "elements" are beyond microscopic view (hydrogen, oxygen + 100 or something others). Why not have some fun with actual elements?

Yeah this is a good topic to think about when designing magic. Too many have little tactics beyond "Use strongest fire magic against Ice monster, congratulations u win!!" that yeah, people want something that requires a little strategy than that!

I like affecting the terrain, though other than physics based games, really short ones, or tactical RPGs, they tend to be hard to implement and way too complex. I'm sure other tactical RPGs do this as well, but I know Bahamut Lagoon has Black magic with some effects on the terrain.You can freeze water to make ice to walk over, burn forests to cause damage, cast Heal on swamps to make it non-poisonous, cast lightning on buildings so they don't cannon you/heal enemies/produce enemies anymore. This gave you more of a choice as instead of just casting on the enemy, you might cast it on the terrain to get an advantage, or accidentally get yourself caught because you were careless.


I think there's an implied area of effect in the "all" spells that would make it so you do hit all the enemies but not yourselves. Plus no one would really use them if they hit yourself unless the damage to your party was really minimal enough to be worth it. At a basic simple level, just having the single target be stronger than the multi target version is enough to have a reason to use the single target over the multi target. Or where enemies have varied resistances or may even counter attack a spell/element if hit.

In fact, just a competent but not experimental use of elements can be a bit refreshing from games that just flat out do it poorly or abuseably. Or worse, can screw you over if say you only focus on a certain element because your spells would be too weak if you balance it out and the last enemies/dungeons are all resistant to the element you picked. Or having you pick out of 8 elementals but you only choose the same one because it's the only one with the healing spell and you're going solo. Everyone should give a little bit of thought to their game design!

It's a nice idea in general to not make each element or spell type a carbon copy of the other type, but with a different name/attribute. Fire2, Ice2, Lightning 2, Earth 2, Air 2, Light 2, Dark 2, what's the difference? Only that you use Dark 2 on the Light enemies, Whatever you want on the Neutral enemies, and don't use Ice 2 on Ice enemies. They can have entirely different spell types or focuses even. Like Air magic be more utilitarian while Fire be more destructive and light magic be helpful, for a common example.

Some games had it were you can use the elemental as is or combine it with another one to get a new effect. There's plenty of what you can do with elementals, even on a small scale, so I won't go repeating what other people have said.


Well a modern concept of elements isn't going to fit a game that doesn't take place in a modern world. Futuristic games tend to have their own damage/skill properties or categories, and earlier settings have their own too.

It is an environment friendly to people like me.

My Element system design borrows from a few titles but more notably the SaGa Frontier 2 setup, where equipment and the environment affect usable skills. Equipment would be able to provide the necessary trait to use the skill but the environment would be able to provide both this and grant specific bonuses to those elements.

The Concept of the Elemental Wheel itself is generally only useful in games that follow a design that utilizes a small amount of elements and weaknesses (Such as Megaman X: Command Mission). For more complex games that hold a larger number of elements, weaknesses and resistances should be dynamic and set on a per enemy basis so as to give all of the monsters a bit of diversity in their design. Additionally the entire design of Elemental Tiers is an awful design in my opinion as it makes more than half the skills useless by end game.

If by that you mean Fire1, Fire2 and Fire3 I completely agree. I always have been more in favor of a smaller number of skills and trying to remove the deprecation factor.