So, I am having trouble, as you would have guessed. I am making a turn based battle system, I know you think that's boring, I disagree. Well, except when it comes to the boss fights. I can't see to make them interesting and challenging at the same time. My question is this: What would/do you do for a turn base boss fight to make it interesting?

I read up on the boss type tutorial and such, it was helpful in knowing the different types, but with the limitations of the RM system, how do you do that? What can be done to make these interesting?

Im always a sucker for when the Boss changes forms once you beat up on him a bit, like Keffka in FF6, his last anglic form was so beautiful! One of the best boss fights ever!

I like those form types too, the only problem with that, is that it feels like just an extended fight, still feels like there is not trick or strategy to it.

There's some really great ideas in an old thread: http://www.rpgrevolution.com/forums/index....showtopic=47898

That was pretty helpful, thanks Amaro!

When the boss transforms, you can add new types of skills to him so it changes the strategy of the fight.

I like turn-based battles because, if done well, they test how good I am at developing strategies rather than testing my reflexes. Any turn based battle system should have a good system for party setup behind it. The player should have to think hard about which characters to use, what to equip them with, etc. Of course coming up with an element system can adds an element of strategy - Persona 4 is turned based but fun because hitting enemies with the correct elements gives you an extra turn, but getting hit by an element you are weak to makes you lose a turn, so figuring out weaknesses is mandatory.

Status effects and buffs can also make battles more interesting, as players will have to heal more. Final Fantasy has a plethora of spells to borrow from. Some of the more original ones: ideas: Oil, a state that makes you especially vunerable to fire attacks; Zombie: a spell that makes cure spells hurt your player; bubble, a spell that doubles your max HP ...I'll think of more.

Mario RPG for Super Nintendo has some creative turn-based battles...I remember one boss who alterantes between disabling your attacks, skills and items, which could probablly be programmed with some simple scripting.

I plan to have strategy in mine, I'm actually using just 4 party members at maximum, but there are 10 classes they can all share, as well as each one has a unique base class. I'm also using a sub class script so you can mix and match skills and such. I think that should allow for quite a bit of strategy, and I'm working in something unique for each boss.

For example, an optional boss I have is accompanied by four minions, now these minions are just standard enemies from the same area, but the bosses abilities buff up the entire enemy team, and every 10 turns, (I may lower this or raise it depending), he respawns all enemies, so it makes you think to focus on them, because they get strong with the buffs, but the secret would be to actually defeat the boss first.

So yeah, does that sound like an interesting fight?

Sounds good to me. Your class system sounds interesting too - can characters switch class in battle?

Another idea I got from Final Fantasy: the spell reflect causes magic to "bounce" off the player and hit the enemy attacker. Some enemies cast reflect on themselves, so the only way to do magic damage is to cast reflect on one of your characters and then attack them with spells, so they'll reflect at the enemy to deal damage (magic only bounces once, I guess). You can also cast reflect on enemies that cure themselves, and your party will be cured instead.

I'm using Yanfly Subclass script, so they can't change in battle, though I may look at finding a way to do that, would make things more dynamic. Since skills are learned via jp and not by level, they can't just switch to a class they haven't been 'leveling', would still make things interesting.

I like the idea of reflect, probably wouldn't be too hard to pull off, though I'm finding out that getting events to work in battle is a lot more difficult then outside of battle, and I'm not sure why. ><

In the game I'm (slowly) making, I have one such boss form that changes color the more HP it loses. Essentially I had to create a few various forms of the boss, with different shades, very crude, but it works. Each new colored form signifies to the player that a new element is needed, as well as the boss acquiring different resistance and skills. So while it does extend the fight, it also forces the player to change up their attack pattern.

Remember the Elizabeth from Persona 3 FES? If it's turn based, then all you need is a massive HP. And at certain turn, let's say :
-> Her Pattern

1st Turn - With Surt, she uses Maragidyne or any physical attacks.
2nd Turn - With Jack Frost, she uses Mabufudyne or physical.
3rd Turn - With Thor, she uses Magiodyne or physical.
4th Turn - With Cu Chulainn, she uses Magarudyne or physical.
5th Turn - With Metatron, she uses Mahamaon or physical.
6th Turn - With Alice, she uses Mamudoon or physical.
7th Turn - With Nebiros, she uses any bad status ailment magics or physical.
8th Turn - With Masakado, she uses Megidolaon.

then all we need to do is a counter. Well, at first try, we all know that we will all die
Or Yiazmat battle of FFXII, massive unending 1 hour battle, with a normal attack have a 25% of an instant death probability. Isn't that a cheating bossability?!
(well, even Ichigo use a time-stopper cheat engine to defeat Aizen)

Another idea: incorporate Limit Breaks/Overdrives, preferably ones that are unique to each character. Final Fantasy VII pretty much set the standard for that system.

Chrono Trigger had some wicked bosses; you usually had to think fights through, rather than just "whack it 'til it dies" kind of strategy.
I for one have a vampire that turns into bats after its taken enough damage, wolves that combine into a cerebus, and a puppet master who...nevermind. I'll let you chew on those ideas for now.

Now we're thinking about the same thing!
I did that too, but I thin it all ends in different way based to our way of thinking ^^,

Oh! My most favorite topic! Let me share a few fun ideas for bosses


Idea number one: Countdown to total destruction
One of the basics. Used few times in Final Fantasy, mainly when boss was Bahamut. Each turn you showing message (or animationless skill with specific number for name) on how much turns left. You can make it by events pretty easy. After countdown reaches 0, force boss to use some uber skill and BAM! Battle is much more intense!

Idea number two: Flip-a-coin
You can make boss a skill which effect is random. This can be made by easy work with variables... Or without any! I'll say how without any: make boss few skills with same name, but with slightly different animations and effects. Example i gonna made in my game:
Charon has a nick for coins (sorta like Two-face from batman). One of his skills involves throwing up a coin. I made two different skills with same priority and same names and same cast animation. But when one skill deal heavy damage to party, other damaginfg Charon himself!
When technically it's 2 different skills, it's crating illusion of one skill to a player and adding tention to the battle

Idea number three: Copycatte
This shall require some work with events. Make boss to get all stat changes player shall cast on his party!
Make a boolean with condition "if actor have cond", make action "add cond" with that condition player have. And BAM! Player who always depended on buffs is screwed

I actually like the copycat one, it prompted me with another strategy, a boss who is immune to all stat changes and ailments, unless you use it on a player, he then copies whatever you affect a player with, be it poison or attack up. He will copy that to himself. After a few rounds he will remove everything and copy again. So you can get the boss to weaken himself by weakening one of your team mates.

Glad i could help

Your ideas rock Stalin. What makes the Bahamut fight even better is that his uber attack can be reflected, so you have to quickly set up reflect before he uses megaflare and then watch him kill himself! It's pretty much impossible to survive otherwise, so you have to use your mind to figure it out.

I have some experience in making boss fights for turn-based battle systems. What I usually do is make different boss phases, where each different phase the boss summons certain minions. You can even take it up a notch and make it so that the boss casts many other dfferent spells for each phase. I'm working on a final boss right now that inflicts a curse that will reduce your HP to 1 every 3 turns unless you dispell it. I hope I gave you a couple of ideas. =)

I hate boss battles that force you to use some strategy you would never in 100 years actually use. It sucks. Example: In FF5, there's a boss whose only weakness is Magic Sword. I don't use MagSwd because I don't like it, all of the sudden I am forced to go grind ABP for an hour so I can get ahead. I never used MagSwd again for the whole game. Don't make that boss! Don't force the player to have to use a strategy that they don't like. If anything, make a boss who can be beaten using more than one strategy, whatever suits a player's play-style.

How about a boss who punishes the players for exploiting it's weakness?

I could think of mountains of strategic boss designs for atb, but turn based? That is pretty limited. I supposed a lot of my ideas could still work if the player always moves faster than the boss but that can't always be the case. Well some of the ones from some games I'm going to make when I got time and energy that would definitely still work include:

- A boss with a bulk up mode where both his offense and defense are doubled, though this state only lasts for a few turns(3-5ish) then he goes back to normal. Some strategies that could work here is saving your crowd controls for this occasion when he bulks up.

- Another one is more for a 1v1 boss at a stage of the game when the player doesn't have the resource to prevent sleep. The boss has a spell that can put your player character to sleep and heal spam before attacking you and the damage will wake you. You do however have a poison spell that you can inflict on yourself so the next time sleep is inflicted, the damage from poison will wake your character.

There's more, but I only feel like posting these two.

Anyway, I see you really are putting thought into your boss designs and that's great. Remember not to just inattentively throw roadblocks in front of the player assuming, "Yep! I gave them a challenge!" coughff13cough.

Also, though it's great to have a variety of bosses with unique special abilities that make them a challenge, it's the mechanics of the whole fight you should design well and opposing the boss is the player. Make sure they have a variety of abilities such as skills focusing on DPS, AoE, Stun, Sleep, DoT, buff, debuff, healing etc.

After all, what strategy could the player apply if they don't even have options right? One thing I have against most commercial games for is making pretty much every status effects useless against bosses which doesn't leave too many options for players. Ironically doing so threw out the ones with the most strategic potential.