So, after looking over my ideas, I've gone from people in mechs, to people hunting demons with swords, to people with the basic equvilent of lightsabers. My mind is a dangerous thing indeed.

Anyway, so I decided to ask for critique on this battle system idea.

I should give a brief summary of the plot so it makes sense. A group of people learn/are born with the ability to use their soul as a weapon blah blah. Only others with the ability to use such a thing can see them, although everyone technicially has the ability to use it, they don't know how. In order to use it the character has to focus their mind only on fighting. That should be enough, and that sounds really cliche and boring, I know.

You have HP(which is your health, duh ) and Mind Strength, which is how much the character is focused. It's also used for special skills. At the start of each battle, it starts at a threshold of 10, and goes up to a Max of 999. The higher your Mind Strength, the more damage your attacks do, I havn't decided yet how this will work, maybe increase base damage by a percentage or something. Attacking with anything but a standard attack will reduce your Mind Strength, but you will lose HP for using regular attacks. During the start of each character's turn, they gain MP/Mind strength based on a stat. Obviously, then there are skills, which drain your mind strength, but deal more damage than Standard attacks whilst not deducting your HP. You can also choose to 'Pour' your soul into your weapon which for a limited number of turns your Mind Strength will be set to 1000, however you cannot use skills during this time, and when it runs out your character will be unable to act for several turns.

Should your Mind Strength reach 0, be it through spending more than you have avaliable on a skill, being comboed(which I will explain later) by an enemy or just running out somehow, you will lose your concentration and lose your next turn. If your HP reaches 0, you will faint/die/combust/be knocked out whatever you want to call it. If you are revived by a skill, your mind strength will start again at the base of 10.

And combos, there are 3 types: Duo, Trio and full party. Should be obvious. Whilst combos don't take any HP/MP to perform, you will have to wait till specific moments to do them, such as knocking your opponent's weapon out of their hand. Even though a combo may involve 2/3/4 characters, it only uses 1 turn, the turn of the character performing the combo. As such, Combos are helpful for ending battles with various lesser enemies you may encounter. You cannot use a full party combo against some bosses, which is explained by a plot point early on but is mostly due to perserve difficulty.

And sort of similar to the Persona series, if you hit an enemy with a certian attack, or their weakness, different things will happen. Performing a Jumping Attack against a blocking enemy will give you the ability to knock their weapon out of their hand, for instance. Other times, against bosses, this can be negative, as well as hitting an enemy resistance. When you defeat an enemy for the first time, it will automaticially become updated into your Notebook/Diary, wherein you can read about it.

And finally, you have the option to simply block, which will double your defence until your next action. comments, anyone? Also the way equipment would work would be pretty normal except for the weapons. You cannot change your weapon, unless a specific story event gives you a new one, spending time in the labatory and taking mental tests can give you the foresight to change your weapon, but it's name will be the same, pretty much through the entire game. I.e: it's called Fenrir and it's a Gun, you can go take a few tests in Sword Play and practice sword play and it will turn into a sword, but it'll still be called Fenrir. Then at a later date you decide you want it to be a bow, go and practice archery and it'll evolve into a bow.

This reminds me of Shin Megami Tensei: Persona's battle system except for a few things. Well it's a great battle system but I have a few questions. Does the regular attack cost's hp too? I mean you have the options of attack, skills, defend, etc. but as you said "but deal more damage than standard attacks" Does that mean the attack option or will there be skills that use hp and skills that will use ms?

Also what's the point of pouring your soul, which gives you 1000 mind strength into your weapon if you can't use your skills? "The higher your mind strength is the more damage your attacks do" Does this also apply to the attack option?(which would make my first question pointless lol)

As I said it's a great battle system

I think this an original battle system I've never heard of before.
That's one point I have to discuss, however.
If a character's mind strength is, let's say, 10 and that character has few HP, how he/she is supposed to act?
Losing HP while attacking is an interesting idea, but maybe it will be too harsh for newbies.

Attacking becomes a Maths problem: you should use that command only if the damage done is equal or higher than HP loss.
What percentage are your characters gonna loose while doing this?
Is it proportional to damage done or is it a set number of HP, maybe based on level?

Mind force system is a good idea too, but I bet no player would use the "channel your soul" option if not in true danger.
The skill-ban due to this condition could be a major drawback, together with the lost-turn-after-god-mode-is-finished.

Anyway, what does it mean Mind Force = 1000? You set your limit to 999, so I suppose 1000 points grant a major damage bonus or something else.

The weapon idea is surely a good point. You could also make a weapon-evolution-system (something like weapon EXP) to deepen the system itself (which is well developed yet).

However, good job.
It's truly difficult to have a good, original idea about a new kind of battle system.
You should literaly do somersaults to find a RPG with a different battle concept, like this.

I wish you best luck and I hope you'll realize this system,

Jens

You don't lose health after pouring your soul into the weapon for the time that it's active. Only special physical attacks cost HP, so it's like Persona in that there's skills that can cost HP or SP, or both.

This sounds great. Persona is an excellent model to follow, and I wrote an analysis of Persona 4's systems which you may find helpful.

Just for clarification - normal attacks do not cost HP, and using non-physical skills drains the mind gauge, right? Do you also have MP/SP for non-physical skills? I ask that because if your mind gauge has to be a certain limit to use a skill, then it will always have the same strength, so you need separate parameters to manage skill cost/skill attack power.

It'd be great if you could post a demo of your system in action. Let us know if you need any help implementing it. Good luck!

Yes there's SP and Mind Strength.