Making Complex Attacks

Tired of your boring attacks? Well, we have the cure for you! Add varity to your RPGs with these fantastic attack ideas! Well, what are you waiting for? Dig into our great list of attacks!

Feel free to add your attack ideas here, or suggest an attack you want made in discussion, it would be greatly appreciated!

Common Ideas

These are ideas that everyone will most likly need to know and are in most RPGs. These are simple and many people new to OHR will like to know them. Here are ways that you can achive them if you don't yet know how. These ideas are easily customizable so you can try lots of different things to them.

Be sure to read How can I make an attack do an exact amount of damage each time? if you would like certain attacks to do so, such as healing attacks.

Healing Attack

Healing attacks are very simple. These attacks are often also used outside of battle, as Items. We will call this attack "Heal."

• Make an attack.
  • Set the Target: Ally makes the attack usable on your heroes instead of the enemies.
  • Set the Damage: Pure prevents defense and magic defense from being included in the calculations.
  • Set the Base Atk Stat: 100 makes the attack do 100 damage, independent of the abilities of the hero who is using the item. You can raise and lower the damage by changing the Extra Damage, which is a percent of the normal damage
  • Edit the attack's bitsets, and turn on:
    • "Usable Outside of Battle" So it can be used as an item.
  • Edit the attack's damage bitsets, and turn on:
    • "Cure instead of Harm" So that the attack will heal.
    • "Do Not Randomize" So that it will always be the same.

It's basically all because of the "Cure instead of Harm" setting which raises the target stat instead of lowering it.

You may also want to see:

• How do I make an item or spell that revives dead heroes?
• How do I increase Maximum HP or MP through an Item?

Stat Increasing/Lowering Attack (Buff/Debuff)

These attacks can increase stats such as Atk, Mag, and Def in battle. However they can only be used in battle, and the stats go back to normal after the battle.

• Make an attack.
• Set the damage, it shouldn't too much unless it is a powerful attack.
• Set the Target stat: to whatever stat you want to damage.

Doing this you can "debuff" (decrease) stats like, attack, so when you use an attack it won't be as powerful.

You can also raise the target stat, simply set the "Cure Instead of Harm" bitset on, and set the target settings to "Ally." In most cases this attack will also need to have the "Allow cure to exceed maximum" bitset on, so that it can raise the stat beyond its standard value.

Random Multiple Attacks

The key to making complex attacks is chaining. Chaining is where you set one attack to "link" to another. There's a couple options to how it can link, primarily to set the probability of the second (or third, or fourth...) attack happening. Pummel is an attack that will repeat, for a random amount of times, until it stops. It is done by chaining attacks. We'll call this "Pummel."

This "Pummel" attack is easy:

• First, create an attack. Pummel is usually set to do low damage, since it will repeat.
• Then, go to "Chaining" on the attack menu, and set it to chain to itself.
• Make sure to give it a Chain Rate of less than 100%! Or it will keep going until the monster is dead. For those who don't know about percentage, 100% is all the time. 75% is most of the time. 50% is half the time. 25% is one quarter of the time.

And that's all you need to do!

Then in the game, when you use pummel it will attack, and if your lucky it will attack again, and again. Congrats! You did Pummel!

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WARNING: If the attack has some type of requirement (e.g. HP, MP or Gold cost), it will be deducted each time it attacks. So, if your pummel attack hits 5 times, and requires 5 MP to use, you'll lose 25 MP.

However, this can be a convincing attack if it's like Steal MP and has a negative MP requirement. Each time it attacks, you would gain that much MP. Beware, for unknown reasons, HP and MP don't do "negative requirements"...

However, there is a way to aviod having the requirements repeated. (i.e. 5 attacks at 5 MP cost only equals 5 MP lost) It is just as easy, but takes slightly more effort:

• Create an attack. This will be the first "blow" in the attack.
• Create a second attack, which will be successive blows.
• Make sure it has no requirements!
• Chain the first attack to the second, with 100% probability.
• Chain the second attack to itself, and give itself less than 100%.

And, voilá!

Charging Attack

This is a way you can make an attack, that you must wait for a long time to unleash (like charging energy so the attack will be more powerful), but the damage should be a lot.

• To make a "Charging Attack," simply increase the "Delay Ticks Before Attack" in the Appearance & Sounds submenu a lot.
• Attacks like this are meant to be powerful. So set the damage high, for example by setting a large "Extra Damage %".

Extended Animations

Ok, let's say you have an attack (say, Über-l337 Gigadoken), but it just can't work with only three frames! Enter the "Extended Animation!"

• Identify the main "segments" of the attack. Example: Ball of energy flies from sky to hero, ball of energy shoots to monster
• Make seprate attacks for each segment, depicting said actions
  • Give it the "Don't show damage" bitset, and make it give no damage, except for the last segment, which should do however much damage the attack does.
  • That said, if you want more than one part to do damage or whatever, feel free to do that.
• Chain each segment to the next, with a probability of 100%
• The hero should have the first segment as an attack. That way it will show all the parts.

TADA! You're done, and know you have a really spiffy attack!

Critical Hits

This is more of an idea than a attack. It lets you give your attacks critical hits! Which are powerful blows that may rarely come after any attack. Something you get if you're lucky.

• Make an attack, this will be your Critical Hit, it is rare, and should do a lot of damage, but not too much.
• Perhaps make the animation just a big CRITICAL HIT! or something spiffy. If not, put critical hit in the captions box.
• Anyway, then go to most of your attacks that don't have a chain on them, and chain them to, CRITICAL HIT! But make the chain rate about 10% or lower.

This means, that when you use most attacks, there is a rare chance of getting an extra blow in there!

• Try making an attack, that is slightly weaker than other attacks, but has a higher chance of getting a critical hit. An attack like this should not cost MP, since it has already sacrificed how much damage it does.

Status Side Effects

Perhaps you want an attack like "Poison Punch." It will do damage but also may inflict poison on the enemy.

• Make the attack, with damage and such.
• Then make it chain to the attack that poisons the enemy.

You can set the chain rate to 100% if you want it to always poison the enemy. Or less, if you want it to occasionally poison the enemy. You can use this idea with all status effects.

If you don't yet know how to use status effects see:

• Stun, Regen, Poison, and Mute

Specific Ideas

Here are some attacks that aren't used in every game, but they are neat ideas if you are looking some interesting attacks. Some of these are rather complex, and a new user may have trouble using some.

Stat Stealing Attack

Perhaps your hero is a vampire type, and can steal enemies energy to use against them. Maybe by taking Attack from a monster, the hero can up his? Whatever the effect, you can steal stats from monsters, and this will show how:

• Make an attack that has the following characteristics:
  • Target stat is whatever stat you want to steal
  • It should have the following damage bitsets on:
    • Absorb Damage
  • It would probably look best if you use a "Reverse Projectile" Attack Animation, to show that you're stealing something from the target.

Random Attacks

This is a whole way to attack. We will call this "Chaos Box." The Chaos Box is a spell list, that is set to random. When used, it may do many things, sometimes good, really good, or sometimes bad, very bad.

• Go to a Hero's Menu, and name a spell list, "Chaos Box," or some other spiffy name.
• Then set the type of list to random effects.
• Then make many attacks, some that will be standard, some that may attack many at once, some that will heal, and some that will heal enemies, some that will hurt heros, and some that cause status effects, be creative.
  • Make sure you set the "Automatically Choose Target" bitset on for each.
• Then go back to the spell list and add all the attacks, make ones that are more common by adding multiple of those.
• Then you are done.

So if the player likes to gamble then this is good for him/her!

Copy Attack

This is a very cool idea, but it requires you to not use the "Steal Item" normally in the game. This attack copies an enemies attack. But it doesn't become usable until after the battle.

• First, make your copying attack, make the animation or damage anything you want, but be sure to set the "Steal Item" bitset on.
• For most enemies, create an item that will teach the hero how to use the enemies main attack.

• Then for each enemy, in the "Rewards" menu
  • Select the appropriate Item in Stealable Item
  • Make the Steal availability to unlimited, steal rate close to 100%, so it might not always work.

Then, in the game, when you steal that item, you can teach it to your hero and he know can use that enemy's main attack! You can make these Items sellable, in case they get multiple ones.

• Remember to change he global text strings! Edit all the ones about stealing.

HP/MP Reading Attack

The Scan move from Final Fantasy games allows the player to see how much HP and MP an enemy has left before it dies. This can be important, strategically, in that you can focus more on high-powered attacks if an enemy is close to death.

To implement an attack that reads HP, just follow these steps:

• Make a new attack, call it "Scan" (or whatever you wish to call it).
• Optionally, set the caption to something along the lines of "Scanning HP..." and change Display Caption to something like 1.5 seconds, so it remains on-screen after the end of the initial Scan attack
• Give it Damage Math: No damage
• Trn on the "Don't cause target to flinch" bit and turn off the "Chain if attack misses or fails" bit.

• Add a second attack called "HP Left" and make Scan chain to it 100% of the time.

• Now edit "HP Left":
• Set the damage formula to "HP = 0% of current"

• Set the following bitsets on it:
  • Mutable (if it's a magical attack, and you're using the mute status effect)
  • Show attack name (so instead of just showing the damage as a number, it'll have "HP Left" next to it, like "4 HP Left")
• And set the following damage bitsets:
  • Do not randomize (so that it shows exactly the HP, not +/- 20 points)
  • Ignore attacker's extra hits (so it only scans once)
  • Show damage without inflicting (so that you only show the damage, not actually do it)
• Set the Attacker Animation to Null

And, voila! When this attack is used on an enemy (or, a hero even), their current HP will "pop up" like regular damage, but they won't actually take damage. Also be sure to give the player the "Scan" attack, not the "HP left."

To scan MP, you do exactly the same thing, but you set the Target stat to MP instead of HP. Also, be sure to change the caption, so as not to mislead players. You can also target other stats, but they are generally not as useful to know.

If you want your Scan attack to scan both HP and MP, then you can make one attack for each, and then chain the HP attack to the MP attack, and it will do one after the other.

Quick Escaping Attack

• Make an attack, that does no damage, but set the "Cause to run away" bitset on.

Then if a player needed to run, but had little HP left and didn't think they had time to hold ESC. They could use this attack to escape quickly.

• Just as convenient would be to use the attack bitset: "Cause heroes to run away".

However, it should be taken into account that this will not let your heroes run away if an enemy with the "unescapeable" bitset is on the battle field.

Multiple Hitting Projectile

Have you ever wanted to make an attack that hits more than one enemy, like, a tornado that ravages your enemies one at a time when you cast it, or throw something, and it bounces off all the enemies? Well, this is for you! What you need to do is:

• Draw up the graphics of your tornado, or other projectile attack.
• Set the attack animation to Sequential Projectile.

And there you have it in a nutshell. If you want to spice it up, you can add more hits, making you throw that object or cast that tornado a couple more times, or make it an extended animation, causing you to whip up that whirlwind, then toss it at your enemy. Your imagination and the engines capability are the limit!

Death From Above

Here's an interesting idea you can try to make. This idea consists of your hero jumping up into the air, projectiles falling down upon your enemy, and then you land. Heres how you can pull this off:

• Draw up your attack animation for the thing that will fall on your enemy.
• Make an attack that has attacker animation set to Jump.
• Make an attack that has your dropping attack, and set its animation to drop.
• Make an attack that has your attacker animation set to Land.
• Chain them all together, and put its percentage to 100%.

And there you have it. Remember, always set it to 100%, or you'll get stuck in the sky! As an added bonus, you could make copies of your falling attack, and put them in the chain between your Jump and Land, and set it to pick a random enemy so that your enemies will be mercilessly pelted.

Summoning Attacks

A popular idea that supposedly began with a Final Fantasy title was to Summon Monsters into battle and have them attack. This is possible, but due to the size limitation of an Attack, you won't be able to Summon anything very large.

To do this, you might want to start by making some sort of spiffy animation that brings a monster forth, like a bolt of lightning or a swirl of fire. Then, you'll need to make the actual monster picture, but it has to be an Attack picture, not an Enemy picture. If you want you can make it animate somehow, like making it fly, walk, laugh, roll, whatever. It's up to you! Finally, you'll want the actual attack animation that the Monster delivers, which can be anything that's appropriate for the monster, or you could recycle one of your already-made attack animations.

Now, let's go into the Attack editor. If you decided to have a "summoning-in-progress" animation, then start with that. This will be an attack indicating that the summoning has started, so it should have almost no delay. It should also do no damage, so in the damage screen, be sure to select "No Damage." You should also go into the Attack Bitsets and turn on "Do not display damage" so that you don't have a 0 showing up on your target(s). Since this is a "summoning-in-progress" attack, you should do two last things:

• Be sure to chain it to the Summoned Monster at a 100% chance, unless you have a reason for a lower percentage.
• You might want to add a caption that says "Summoning [monster]..." if you want.

As for the actual summoned monster, you should give it a fairly large Delay time, since Summons are considered powerful and time-consuming. Then, you should have Monster move toward the enemy in an appropriate fashion. If it's a winged creature, you might try the "Meteor" movement. If it's a walking critter, you should use the "Projectile" movement. And so on!

Once again, since the actual attack hasn't been dealt yet, it should deal "No Damage" and the "Do not show damage" bitset should be on. Now, for two more things:

• Be sure to chain the Monster to its attack with a 100% chance.
• If you want, you can have a caption saying "Summoned [monster]!" or "[Monster battle cry]!"

Finally, you'll want to have the actual attack that the monster deals, which can be anything you want. Chances are you've already made a simple attack that could work for a monster. All in all, use your imagination!

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HOWTO Chapters

Getting Started | Making Maptiles | Making Walkabout Graphics | Importing Graphics | Map Construction (Animating Maptiles) | NPCs | Text Boxes | Tags | Making a Hero | Items | Customizing Menus | Vehicle Use | Sound Effects | Distributing a Game

Battles | Stun, Regen, Poison, and Mute | Bosses | Making Complex Attacks | Combat Dialogues | Enemies that respond to a certain attack | Ways to refer to a hero in a script | Creating Dungeons | Conditional Door Links | Permanent Stat-Boosters | Creating Cutscenes | Using the Mouse in the Game | Making Android games