RPG - Damage Formular

Game Mechanics
#1

Hi.
Can someone tell me how a Damage Formular could be like in other RPGs?
In my game you can choose after you level up which Stat you want to improve by 1 Point.

Each Character/Monster have this stats

Strength
Vitality
Magic
Agility
Luck

And then there are the Weapon/Armor

Attack
PDEF
MDEF

Strenght:
The higher the strength the higher is the damage you do with physical attacks.

Vitality:
The higher the Vit the higher the HP.
(If the player choose this he gains +1% of his MAXHP ,at least 1HP)

Magic:
The higher the Magic the higher the damage you do with magical attacks and you get more MP.
(+1% of his MAXMP, at least 1MP)

Agility:
This decide which one in battle strikes first.
Its also decide the influences hit rate and the evasion from enemy attacks.

Luck:
This is for the chance to getting inflict with a status attack like “poison,mute or dizzy”.
And it increase the critical hit rate.

Attack
The Weapons attack value
PDEF
The physical defensive value
MDEF
The magical defensive value

So does someone know how the formular have to look like?
I need the

  • Physical Damage
  • Magical Damage
  • Evasion calculation
  • Critical Hit calculation
#2

It’s trial and error, and other than “use System X” where X is D20 or some other published RPG rule system, all I can say is you’re going to have to experiment. The root of “stats” is “statistics”. In other words, figure out what percentage of attacks should hit at what stat level, and how many hits should be survivable given a certain level of HP and defense, then start some formulae from there. Run automated simulations to gather the stats. Tweak one variable at a time in your simulations and ensure they don’t have runaway chaotic effects.

After that, you need to playtest. After ensuring that you don’t end up with players that all die at level 1 or become unstoppable gods at level 3, you then need to optimize for the trickiest metric of all: fun. Is your game fun to play with the way you balanced the stats? Then call it a success.

#3

Here’s a link to a one-page set of D&D rules.

Of course you can use whatever set you want and traditional D&D rules may not necessarily transfer well to computer RPGs.

#4

There is no right or wrong. You seem to have already decided which stats are going to be in the game, but you haven’t figured out how they should work yet. Seems kind of backwards if you ask me. Look at this article: http://psychochild.org/?p=377. It analyzes WoW’s attribute system, and you seem to have similar “problems” (magic only being affected by one stat for example). Also remember that WoW factors in the level differences between players and mobs. Higher level mobs and players are almost impossible to hit for much lower level players.

EDIT: And the WoW attack table: http://www.wowwiki.com/Attack_Table. I’m not saying that it’s good, just that it works.

#5

When I was struggling with this I ended up putting the numbers into a google docs spreadsheet and ‘simulating’ combat by graphing the outcomes. Then also having a bunch of test creatures (across the range of possible stats) and having some simple formula show toHit, toWound, etc. for the possible match ups. Then you can tweak your core stat ranges and algorithms without having to actually implement them and see what your power curves actually look like.

When deciding on stat ranges, I found it very helpful to start with four baselines:child, regular adult, athlete, and peak human. With those baselines (in my case, 2, 4, 8 and 20 in all stats) it was easier to see how things like strength and vitality should interact in combat.

#6

Or you can learn basic statistic to do this. I personally just use simple ratio and make it to little plus/minus.

#7

Personally I like to keep such things simple and clean. It also depends on what you want… do you want that every statpoint counts? Then just take (attack * bonus + weapon attack) - (defense of enemy + bonus on defense) + random -/+. So every point counts. I also saw Attack / 2 - Defense / 4 and stuff like that :smiley:

You can also add critical damage and stuff. Depends really und what you want, testing is helpful here. I guess start with simple attack - defense and add stuff like you want :slight_smile: