Damage overtime (poison, burn, etc). Opinion? How do you use it in your game? Do you even use it?

One of the most common elements in your daily RPGs, yet it's sometimes either beyond useful or useless. Some damage overtime might help you to save your ass from annoying encounter, because additional damage helped a lot, right? Yet, the biggest pet peeve in this case is the game bosses are immune to this status effect. Like, what's the point of having a skill that can deal poison yet you can't poison a boss in front of you?

I've been thinking of trying the damage cap, where the damage overtime is 10% of max HP, but capped at a certain amount, for example, only deal 50 max per turn, and might increase the cap if the character level up. So you can still safely apply poison to the boss without breaking the game.

DoT is one of good ways of dealing damage especially when a character lacks burst damage or ability to directly deliver sustained damage. Some enemies might resist the effects but still you can make workarounds like:

• Instead of nullify the DoT, you can make DoT reduction effect instead; cut either the duration or the damage dealt per turn.
• Make another DoT source that irresistible by bosses. Might be one of high-tier skill effects.
• Create another interaction when said DoT is applied onto enemies that resist one. It might deal no damage, but it's still causing ailments to them.

Capping DoT damage might be a good idea. Pay attention to the enemies' MAXHP, though; you don't want potent poisons to be as weak as usual burn damage, right?

Maybe you can create regular enemies with super high defense. (it can be armored beast or such)
Every physical attacks only deal 1-10 damage.
But if you burn him, a dps will be activated and the armor melts. (which means his defense will drop too)

Or if you want to apply it on boss battle, you can make the boss immune to dps once his HP reach 70%. (for example)

Melting the armor sounds like an idea. But man, you don't want to run into every single high def enemy that forces u to apply DoT to them while waiting them to melt before you can do dps. I'd rather escape to save my time :p still a solid idea for a boss though.

One way to fix this (though it takes a script) is to make it so that all DOT skills do not remove a flat percentage of HP, but instead remove an amount of HP based on a stat. For example, in my game, Poison does damage equal to 250% of the MAT of the one who inflicts it. So early game, that might be 50 HP as the MAT was 20, but late game that might be 500 HP as now you have 200 MAT.

But, by doing this, if you Poison a boss, it will lose the same HP as all the enemies in that area did (unless you just leveled up or changed equipment), not more because it has more HP.

Yeah, what you just spoke of is the reason status ailments are worthless in most games. They typically give the ailment only a 50% chance of succeeding, and then give many strong enemies immuntites to these statuses and also provide the player with other attacks that simply deal burst damage.

So there's usually never a reason to confuse, poison or charm an enemy since you could just use an attack that kills it and doesn't have a 50% chance of missing and thus wasting your turn. The goal of the battle is to kill the enemy and players are always going to pick the options that get them there the fastest.

3 possibilities. Where poison has a percentage chance of being inflicted, I attach it to a skill that does at least some damage anyway, to avoid the wasted turn problem.
For bosses, instead of making them immune, what you could do in the troop event is to have a page set to every 2 turns (or 3, or whatever you fancy) which removes poison from them, if present. That way the player has got some DoT in, but it doesn't get out of hand.
Again for bosses, inflict a 'marker' state on them on turn 0 (or give them a passive state if you are using such a script/plugin). In the damage formula, if the enemy has that state, a weaker form of poison is applied, if not, then the usual one, plus of course the usual damage.

Any of those 3 can be used with any DoT you might have. It's also useful for things like paralysis, silence etc.

I personally hate fighting bosses that are completely immune to just about everything except maybe some ultra obscure combination

I use a couple Yanfly plugins to make DoT a flat amount as opposed to a percentage based one. That way it's useful all around and doesn't require adjusting or nullifying with bosses.

Artificial caps feel bad, but may be necessary if you use the %hp approach.

I think any kind of %hp damage goes wrong with most rpg maker style games as they will either be too good on bosses or useless on random enemies.

Do your DoT damage based on characters' parameters like attack, defense, magic etc instead of using a health percentage.

I did what Kes did. I attached my "DoT" states to Skills the player uses. However, with the exception that, a player can level up those skills to make their DoTs more powerful and more frequently inflicted.

So, in order to make those things useful to inflict at all, I'm running under a specific set of rules. Bosses are weak to two states. Standard enemies are weak to 3. Maybe this boss here isn't weak to Poison, but maybe it's weak to Burn. Not all bosses are weak to all DoTs, but I do have a DoT that every enemy in the game is weak to. "Bleed". Unfortunately, you don't get access to it until late game sometime.

However, my DoT's scale with more investment into wanting to do them. Poison goes from 2% HP damage to 5%, to 10% to 20%. Burn goes from 3% to 5% to 10% to 20% (Burn also debuffs Defense). That wild jump in damage is intentional. Especially as the enemies get harder.

But, I've designed bosses and enemies to react... not kindly to you hitting them with a DoT that kills in 5 turns. Namely... hitting your whole team with the same DoT... or a worse version of it... Or hitting you with Paralyze skills (leave you unable to act all in combat, only curable with consumables, never wears off).

All of this is intentional. States should be deadly to the enemy and the player in order to add one more thing to worry about for the player as well as one more tool for their belt to work with. After all, what's the point of having something in the game if it can't be used? If it isn't useful? It should be a choice about whether you want to inflict a DoT state like Poison or spend turns attacking. Likewise, you could even plant the DoT on an enemy and spend some turns popping potions so that you're dealing damage as well as healing at the same time.

Could my states be used to "cheese" a boss? Absolutely. But, could I also design my bosses to not be cheese so easily and to do something horrifying to you as well? Oh yes, yes I could. Would I let you kill a midgame/endgame boss with that fatal Poison that kills in 5 turns? Yep! Why not? It's a viable strategy. One that involves surviving those 5 turns. Or, hopefully the boss can't cure that state and force you to inflict it on them again.

That's kind of the fun for me. Give the players some overpowered toys, put limits on them, restrictions, and then look for ways to play with them so that while they're a useful tool, they might be a double-edged sword in some way. Provided a player isn't prepared for that sword.

It's really about what you want to do with your combat. If you can't imagine anyone using your DoTs... just don't include them. They're just going to waste space.

@bgillisp that kind of concept, means if you equip an accessories that gives you more MAT, means more DoT. Would be suits well with a game where you can have a customization over the character stats I would say.

@MMMm figured that I also hate wasting a turn trying to apply an ailment state that the boss would resist. I always try to put a damage dealing (usually slightly higher than the normal attack) with status apply as a bonus. So player would never feel like a wasting turn

@Kes applying a weaker version of DoTs sounds like an idea. The problem is if you decided to do this, you might be prepared to make more weaker version of DoT for each boss since every boss may have different Max HP (and that's if you still using flat percentage DoT in default RM). A burn state can have various version, and might be hard to track. Removing the status per certain turn can also work tho.

@Frozen_Phoenix this was to make a DoT stays usable even when you're at low level, but not make them overpowered. The purpose is to make DoT helps you to shave foes HP by (for exmaple) 10% each turn. Which mean, 10 turns with DoT alone to kill the foes. But when 10% HP of the foe is higher than your DoT damage cap, DoT can't be higher. Some people use stat based like bgillisp, but, that means when your stat is low, it's not helping at all, yet when you're overleveled, DoT can shave higher damage per turn in lesser foes.

@Tai_MT I'm interested with your boss design. But I'm gonna ask you one thing. Yes, you may allow 5 turn kill the boss my DoT alone. Depends on how much Max HP that the boss have though. But if your regular damaging skill alone can't be higher (or barely same as) your DoT, does that mean, applying DoT sounds like a mandatory to kill the boss faster? I mean, you're already giving a hard time to the player within that 5 turns, and it can be last longer if you don't apply the DoT.

@TheoAllen
My DoT's are percentage based. So, provided the boss doesn't heal or remove the state, they're dead in 5 turns minimum (max damage on any of my DoT's is 20% of total HP). It never becomes "Mandatory" to inflict states on my Bosses. You can if you want, but it isn't necessary. Besides, you really have very little control over that except via Equipment or "Skill Level Ups" you take. It's a tactical choice.

I'll give you the example of inflicting "Burn" on an enemy. You can do this via some equipment, or two separate skills. If you take the "Fire" skill and level it up along the "Effect" path, you'll go from Burn L1, to Burn L2, to Burn L3, up to Burn L4. If you take it along the "Power" path, you'll go from +10 bonus damage added to your MAT skill, to 30 bonus, to 60 bonus, to 100 bonus. The L4 Burn on the Fire skill only provides a +70 bonus. But, the +100 bonus provides a L1 Burn at roughly 95% chance.

The way my skills are designed, they are asking you how you want to play the game. Same as the way my Equipment is designed.

But, no matter what, you're going to get a Skill that does damage as well as inflicts a secondary effect. Even my buff skills often have that "secondary effect".

However, you're trying to ask if it would be reasonable in my game to hit as hard as 1/5th of the enemy's health, or if it would become mandatory to inflict a state. That kind of depends a little bit upon how you play. I know I touch on my combat system quite a lot here in the forums in various topics, but it's kind of hard not to when it's basically several dozen systems interlocking and interacting with each other.

So, short answer, yes, you could do more damage to a boss than 1/5th of their HP in a single blow. Even late game bosses.

Long answer is: There's a lot of conditionals involved. What weapon are you using, what buffs do you have, what extra abilities are attached to your weapons/armor, what are your base stats, what are the stats of the enemy, what Element are you using (Slash, Blunt, Pierce, Fire, Ice, Lightning, etcetera), what debuffs the boss has, etcetera.

Currently, in the "Demo" portion of my game where you face a boss, it is possible to one-shot it. You start with a paltry 10 Attack and 10 Defense and 20 HP, while the boss has roughly 200 HP, 30 Attack, and 40 Defense. However, it requires you to do a lengthy and annoying quest to get a Tier 11 weapon early which pushes your Attack stat to 120. It also requires you equip Accessories to jump your Attack up another 5 points (125). It requires you cast the Tier 2 "Battle Cry" skill that jumps Attack by 50% (187 Attack), and finally to have an Accessory that jumps Critical Hit rate up to 80%... and land that Critical Hit. The game calculates all that damage as roughly 290-350 damage. It typically falls in that range somewhere. Instant kill. If, however, you decide not to do the lengthy quest for the Tier 11 weapon with 110 Attack on it... There's over 25 Quests out there that will net you at least 1 Attack stat per quest. You could actually 3 shot the boss at that point. Especially with a Tier 3 weapon (highest you can get inside my demo besides the lengthy quest for Tier 11). All of this is just based on a single party member. You're meant to have two with you at the time. If you're unprepared, you're going to spend 10+ turns fighting that boss. Even with a DoT that does 5% damage, that's going to take 20 turns to kill it.

But, basically, it's a lot of conditionals in my game. Lots of moving parts. Lots of options. If you want to have a build for high DoT damage, it has a use in my game. But, if you want to go along without it, you aren't required to take it at all, and you can go full tilt DPS if you want.

My point is that some battles may be easier for you as a player if you have that really powerful DoT. It can do damage for you on turns you want to spend healing (I have no dedicated healer, so someone has to waste a turn to pop a potion). Maybe you just don't have the stats or equipment to take this boss on and kill them in 5 turns. But, you've got the DoT. You can pop that and focus on healing. However, as a dev, I'd like to incur a penalty for "speeding battles along" in the form of more challenge. Most bosses will enter what I call a "rage mode" (it isn't programmed into the game, it just uses specific abilities and skills if it registers you've done something that ensures an easy win). They won't typically kill you in those 5 turns, but they will make life very difficult for you. They will sap you of some of your resources for your arrogance. But, again, if you know they're coming, or lost to this boss before, you can prepare for even these tricks.

My combat focus is "strategy". I don't mind giving the players an "easy win" if they're clever. But, I do mind them spamming that "easy win" method across the whole game. So, sometimes, there are consequences.

As G Man from Half Life 2 says, "prepare for unforeseen consequences".

Sounds cool, and thanks for the explanation. I have no more to say (I'd rather commenting your concept in your game thread rather than here to keep the topic) :)

DoT can be applied to boss battles, but it must be limited to one turn only, and at a very low % rate.
There's a final boss in a certain game ; he has lots of HP, all magic/abilities deal low damage, but he's weak against burn/poison; poison/burn will deal 5% of his max HP per turn. People will think the best way to beat this boss is by continuously inflicting burn/ poison to him . Although as I remember it's only 2% chance.

That's my real experience.

I think there's a misconception that beating bosses by using DoTs is less entertaining than beating them with raw attack power. I remember fighting Ultimecia for the second round in FFVIII. I put her to sleep, amped up my party's speed, then hit with a non-stop wave of my most powerful spells. The boss never landed a single blow.
It took some creativity customizing my party to be able to execute that strategy, and if she woke up after I'd spent all my MP, i would have been in a pinch! So I wouldn't say the battle was "broken." And I definitely wouldn't say it was boring. I was proud I'd been able to pull something like that! Contrary to popular belief, using a status attack (not DoT exactly but similar) to pounce the boss was downright fun. Of course when you fight Ultimecia for the final round she is immune to sleep...

@Failivrin
Alright, but we're talking about DoTs here right now, not other ailments, or how to design a boss in general. It's not about a less entertaining. But how a boss (and most of bosses) render a skill to useless because a DoT skill would be a waste of space cz they're not usable. Like, why even bother designing it

@TheoAllen
I think everything in game design goes back to entertainment value. You asked what's the point of DoT if bosses are immune to it. You're right, there is no point. It's a waste of time, because it's not entertaining. Probably my example wasnt the best, but all I'm really saying is players are entertained when they have options, such as the option to use DoTs against a boss. Balancing and using DoTs is challenging but not a waste of time. There's a lot of good examples in this thread about how to balance DoTs, but the first step for me at least was getting over the convention that says it's a waste of time, broken, or otherwise not entertaining.

I'm of the belief that DoT mechanics tend to work best when both "teams" normally have the ability to invest resources to finish off a member of the other team quickly.

The cool thing about DoTs in this kind of setup is that the DoTs can be used for general efficiency (spending less turns and resources to do more damage in long run), whereas spike damage can be used more strategically to quickly remove an important link on your opponent's team.

This is common in competitive games like PvP World of Warcraft and Guild Wars, as well as challenging, tactical turn-based games like Final Fantasy Tactics or even Naruto Arena. It's much less common to see in RPGs, where regular enemies can't finish you quickly, and you can't finish bosses quickly. I think that's what makes it so hard to properly implement and balance DoTs in RPGs - and why some developers rely on lazy workarounds like bosses having complete immunity to DoTs.

I didn't have a problem implementing a few DoT effects (poisons and burns) in timeblazer because every fight has at least one boss-level enemy - so I allow skills to reliably apply DoTs, but I keep the % HP degeneration pretty low (2 to 5 % per turn).

In another game that I'm designing now, where there are a lot of battles without boss-level enemies, I expect Shields to be an important mechanic (since damage taken and not shielded can only be partially healed back up without resting), and DoTs are a good way to get around opponent shields since these statuses ignore shields and directly sap opponent health (with the main counterplay to the DoT being to try and finish the battle quickly, or to reduce its duration using other skills).

this is just my rough idea , it deals damage that scale from player stats, but they'll give extra resistance after you got inflicted with let's say poison. using DoTs could give you extra damage , but you can't really abuse the ailment because of "extra resistance" after enemy got inflicted. this also makes having a bit imba DoTs are acceptable

I have 3 DoTs in my game. Poison, Burn and Corruption. Poison activates at the beginning of the enemies turn, and is based off the stats of the person who inflicted it. Deals low, but constant damage and overall has a generally high chance of success. Burn activates at the end of the enemies turn and its damage is based off the character and the enemies stats, and tends to deal higher damage in a shorter window of time. Creatures immune to fire can't be inflicted with it, and as a general rule it tends to work less often, but does more damage then Poison. If someone is classified as Heavily Armored, Burn also reduces that for the duration. Corruption is the percentage based DoT, on bosses it has a duration, but on normal enemies it stays on them until they die.