Making Guard Skill Viable

I am curious as to how people try to make the guard skill viable or how they process it to make it more interesting
I heard people saying that they remove it, others saying that they make it useless / overpowered

For me, I was able to balance it by having multiple levels of guarding. Using TP, I made it so the more Tp the player had, the more powerful the guard skill would get, encouraging the player to build it up more. To make it more interesting to use aside from less damage taken, I made it the more levels you have on guard, the more MP you recover as well. What was your take to balance guard and make it viable? Did you simply delete it or made something else for it?

I replace it with a free skill that functions differently for each unique character, but the one thing they all have in common is that they restore a bit of MP to the user. Generally, the effect of it plays in on the theme of the character using it. So, a healer guy might use it to restore 10% HP to an ally. A tank guy might use it to increase their Defence by 50% for 1 turn. A killer guy might use it to inflict Bleeding to an enemy, and so forth.

Honestly, the guard skill by itself is perfectly viable if you balance around it. Does your healer lack any meaningful attacks and have no one to heal? Guard! Did the boss just charge up his deadly shoop-da-woop laser for use on the next turn? Guard! Is [insert character here] low on HP and you'd like to increase their chances of not dying before the heal lands? Guard!

I make Guard to be broken when users take a number of specific hits (Critical, Certain Hit, or Elemental Weakness). Once Guard is broken, users cannot use Guard for 3 turns and takes more damage from all sources.

I changed it so that guard rate is based on your DEF, with the old 100% Guard rate what you get with 1 DEF. Then I also had it give you a little HP restoration as well.

I make it work towards the core concept of the character or class.

• Raise a Barrier till next turn
• Reflect damage taken
• Raise Attack, Magic or Healing power of your next ability
• Reduce Hit rate of the attacker

I went with a similar approach to bgillisp by having the damage reduction provided by guard scale with your DEF stat, but I also added an additional effect of having it provide a damage absorption shield equal to 10% of the user's MaxHP. In my game, there are certain party-wipe type abilities that bosses use that require you to guard to live through them, so the bonus 10% shield is an added safety measure to help the party survive those sort of attacks.

It's a tempo adjustment and a possible parry if timed correctly in my atb battle setup. A parry can be quite punishing against a powerful skill because it drains the attacker's energy. I go with similar designs as the above-mentioned in turn-based. Alternatively just remove it.

On my game, I didn't change it much. I use vanilla guard with 50% percentage reduction, however it also recovers TP. Since my game revolves around TP management, having guard while cutting the damage taken and replenish AP more than doing attack make it worthy. Especially when there's an occasion when it's better to skip a turn rather than attacking for some reasons.

I'm a fan of what 7th Saga did with guard. Basically you would guard as normal and your next attack would deal double-ish damage. The idea is to not make the player feel like they wasted a turn using this ability. They used it for a reason and got something out of it.

I didn't really put much thought into the Guard skill, I just made it that you'd take less damage like everyone else, about half. To mix it up I made it that you'd gain fairly more TP than you would have by just attacking. I did also add some skills that can break guards too, leaving them open to more damage!

In the idea I'm planning, 'guard' is a self heal (based on a stat). But that's only the start as its one of the few ways to remove what I'm calling Exhaustion.

Exhaustion is self applied when using certain powerful skills. It does nothing on its own but should an an actor use a second exhausting skill they become tired, basically a self stun.

The core idea is akin to Bravely Default, you can use powerful skills in quick succession but will suffer the consequence of skipping actions. However, by mixing in a timely 'guard' you can lessen the downtime alongside a bonus effect (in this case the heal)

The Guard command in my current idea not only does the usual guard thing, it also restores 10% of the user's MP and nulls incoming negative states. That's by default; depending on the shield/offhand equipped, guarding can also serve as a Taunt, double the power of the user's next attack, and other things. Certain enemy attacks will also have different effects depending on whether or not the actor is guarding or not (for example, an attack that would normally reduce HP to 1 and MP to 0 will instead do normal damage with no MP damage to a guarding actor).

I'm planning on making guarding a central part of the combat in general, since I feel that in a lot of games it can be safely ignored and thus is rather underutilized.

My guard blocks all status ailments, reduces 60% damage, and recovers 10% HP, its something you'll want to use since your blood magic healer has to use her own HP to heal anyone and she's got bad defenses aside from a large HP pool.

my guard is a way for characters to get the chance to half-resist or counterattack an incoming attack.
usually, if you attack or act at all you're open to damage.
if you guard, you don't act, so you get increased resistance, and chance of counterattack, in exchange for your action (which, when most enemies have only one attack move, and some have attacks that can really screw you up, it becomes a life saver).
when combined with skills that look for exposed weak points, and characters who rely on aggression and distraction, it really helps you direct the fight, and fight on your terms.

I tried to mimic the D&D mechanic of 'reaction'.
if you move, you *act*, so you can't *react* to the enemy.
if you don't, you can use your reaction to do something else (depending on the character you pick), and some reactions allow for really crazy finishing moves (the-kind-that'd-put-an-entire-party-to-laugh crazy)

Guard in my game is meant to be used as yet another tool in the player's "toolbox" of skills. When you guard in my game it will grant the normal 50% damage reduction but will also makes that character take damage in place of any allies who are attacked at low HP (about 25% MHP). This can come in super handy when an ally is low on HP you can attempt to defend them until they get healed. This also stacks well with reviving allies mid-battle being difficult, it is better to keep them alive if possible promoting strategic play over reviving away mistakes. Additionally, if a character equips a shield they can increase the effectiveness of their guard beyond the normal 50% (not to 100% for obvious reasons) making them even better suited to for using the Guard skill.

The problem with Guard is that it consumes a character's action, and rarely provides enough utility to justify that loss of an action. If you have three characters, for instance, you are consuming one-third of your turn by instructing one character to Guard. And in doing so, you are reducing 50% (RPG Maker's default Damage Reduction for the Guard state) of one-third (the average ratio of attacks to hit this character since enemies will randomly target one of your three characters) of damage coming your way - and you're not even reducing incoming status effects or gaining other utility.

So, the solution - if you want a Guard move at all in your design (there are valid arguments against it, first and foremost that Guarding is rarely fun and it slows things down) - is to make sure that there are a decent number of situations where using the Guard can justify the turn that it is consuming.

Here are a few different designs in which a standard Guard Move will sometimes be useful:

• An Aggro system allows the player to predict in advance which of their characters is more likely to be targeted this turn.
• The enemies telegraph their moves, either by showing you their targets or by "charging up" a turn before a very powerful attack.
• A Skill Cooldown system exists, meaning that on this turn a character may only be able to basic-attack, guard, or use an item - and between those options the Guard may be the most beneficial.
• A dynamic TP/MP regen system exists, again meaning that on this turn, if a character is out of resources, they're down to the same options and Guard may be the best, whereas next turn they'll have the resources to use a Skill.
• Any system which limits the availability of Healing Skills is in place (most often Cooldowns but sometimes other resources or timing windows), meaning that a character may need to Guard in order to hold out until they can be healed.
• Heavy penalties (such as permadeath or long-term stat loss) are in place for a character dying within battle, so that even if it means being useless for the rest of the battle, it's better to Guard than to die if you're at low HP.
• A combat design where against any given troop, one or more characters are going to be really useful and one or more characters are going to be a liability, where the best characters are different for each troop (the liabilities should Guard while the useful characters do their thing).
• An ATB system where the Guard can be used for short windows of time (perhaps not filling up the ATB while guarding, but also not consuming the character's ATB gauge when used).

Alternatively, if no systemic mechanics can encourage the player to Guard, the Guard move itself can be enhanced in certain ways:

• Guarding can have bonus effects based on the types of Equips a character has - for example, one of my games has an equip slot called "Shields" where every Shield item, in addition to stat boosts, changes your Guard move in some way.
• Guarding can give you a damage buffer (sometimes called a 'Shield' but not related to equips) that lasts multiple turns, meaning that over time it can be worthwhile.
• Guarding can restore TP or MP so that characters can use skills more frequently (I tend to recommend against this since it slows down battles - consider offering passive TP/MP regen instead).
• The Guard action can be extremely useful (e.g. negates 100% of damage and all incoming status ailments for a turn) but have a limit on how often it can be used (e.g. a 3-turn cooldown, or a heavy MP cost).

You don't even really need heavy penalties for this to be utilized. My current plan is to make buffs (defense increases, elemental resist, general physical/magical mitigation, etc) important, even mandatory for the harder fights. The idea is that you can't just let someone die, raise them, and continue plugging along as if nothing happened. Instead, since you lose buffs on death, a character raised without fire resist could find him/herself getting roasted again by a dragon's breath attack moments later due to lacking the necessary defensive buffs. In such a situation, it's also in the player's best interest to "waste" that turn guarding since it increases their odds of surviving and thus, not falling into a raise/die/raise/die loop which may eventually result in a wipe due to turns spent trying to get that character back up.

This is also what I'm doing, however not every shield will get to do something special. Anything from negating a particular element, restoring a bit of hp, restoring a bit of mp, absorbing mp from spells (if I can pull it off), reflecting certain spells, or even enabling counterattacks of some kind--it's all fair game. :)

In order to figure out what will make a Guard command viable in any given battle system, I think it's most important to ask yourself what the purpose of Guarding actually is in that system. And a huge part of that is going to come down to the difference between "prevention" and "recovery" and how your system handles both.

The granddaddy of JRPGs, Dragon Quest, actually had a reason to use Guard (and I feel many JRPGs only have a Guard option because Dragon Quest has it). The DQ series heavily favors prevention over recovery. Items are limited since each party member has their own, very small, inventory so each character needs to have an herb or potion taking up one of their limited slots to use one in battle. Reviving fallen party members is borderline impossible for most of the game - you won't typically get a revive spell until halfway through the game, the first revive spell is expensive and only has a 50% chance to work, the second revive spell that does always work is even more expensive and not obtained till late game levels, and the items that revive people are extremely rare (as in you may only find 2 of them by the time you reach the final boss). Healing spells are pretty strong and not too expensive, but MP is limited and hard to restore so constantly burning MP to heal will make it impossible to face the boss at the end of the dungeon. What makes this all work is that DQ monster and enemy comp design factor this in so the combat is built around preventing damage in the first place. Monsters have moves/behavior that telegraphs when a powerful hit is coming next turn, comps have gimmicks which you need to counter, etc. so a well-timed block can save your party from a strong hit or prevent them from taking unnecessary damage while they wait for another party member to do something.


DQ's main competitor, Final Fantasy, probably doesn't even need a Guard function. Healing is powerful and the costs are mostly negligible and the player will often have stacks upon stacks of healing items they can't be bothered to use. That plus the ease of revival means that it's often best to just constantly attack and break out the heal spells and Phoenix Downs when needed. The focus is completely on how the player is dealing damage instead of how the player is managing their resources (HP, MP, items) in the long run. Also the fact that there are save circles in dungeons, and that you can restore full HP/MP before a boss fight with a Tent item gives even less incentive to use caution in ordinary fights.


For a more modern example, I really loved how Tales of Berseria handles Guarding. In previous Tales games it wasn't that important since everything was about the combo gauge so doing anything besides attacking was a waste of time unless it was absolutely needed. Berseria actually integrates Guard into the combat system so it doesn't feel like you are "pausing" combat or wasting your time (some of which were done by the previous game, Tales of Zestiria, but improved on):

• Basic attacks were removed. Instead of normal attacks and Artes, there are now only Artes but some of them are low-cost physical skills that are like basic attacks but with a cost added to them and special traits to differentiate them. Removing the no-cost attack option makes resource consumption much more important.
• The resource which gates skill usage, SG, is separated into "Souls" instead of being a single resource bar. SG functions a lot more like stamina than MP as it is depleted very quickly but also comes back fairly fast as long as the character isn't attacking.
• Enemies also have "Souls" to gate their actions and it is possible for the party and the enemies to steal Souls from each other by landing status effects (burn, stun, slow, poison, etc.) with most Artes having some kind of status they can inflict. Status effects also prevent healing until they status wears off or is removed, and healing in general is far weaker than in previous Tales games so you aren't going from near-dead to full unless you use an item and items have a cooldown before you can use another.

The entire combat system is designed around attacking with Artes and landing the status effects to steal enemies Souls, giving you more SG to keep attacking and reducing the enemies' ability to fight back. The fact that things are never so easy is where Guard comes into play.

• Guarding restores SG very quickly. You have to wait to get SG back anyway, so reducing incoming damage while making it come back even faster is a good deal.
• Guarding has a special ability which the player unlocks where guarding for a few seconds starts to grant buffs. The first 2 buffs helps get SG to full even faster, but the 3rd greatly increases the next Artes' chance to land its status effect. This makes it good to reclaim Souls if the enemy steals them from you.
• While Guarding, the player can flick left or right to circle strafe to maneuver around the targeted enemy to avoid attacks or hit from the side. If the player times this just as the enemy attack is about to land it triggers a "Quick Step" which negates the attack and pops out an extra Soul and depending on equipment and skills can proc additional effects, one of which restores HP on a Quick Step. Due to the healing nerfs this is actually one of the better sources of HP recovery.

For most enemies it really isn't that important to Guard, but when a fight suddenly goes bad Guarding - and the abilities that trigger only from Guard - can turn any fight around if used right. The extra abilities keep it relevant, and tying them to Guard also means they have no cost which is critical since Guard is most useful when the player has no SG/Souls. Guard isn't something that needs to be used all the time, but it does exactly what it needs to do, exactly when the player needs it.

Guard is... by and large... useless.

As a game player and as an aspiring amateur hobbyist dev... I've never used it, nor ever seen anyone else use it. Not even with Healers. Even if the Healer does 5% the damage rates of everyone else in the party... Better to have them use "Attack" than "Guard".

I actually did experiments with "Guard". Namely, I had characters given a skill, it did the exact same thing as Guard, but it was called "Ultimate Defense". Literally copied and pasted it. I gave it an MP Cost. I gave it a description. "Reduces incoming damage by 50% for one turn". You know what I found? Players used it a lot more than they used the "Guard" command. It was seen as strategic. "I know the boss will drop his AOE here, I'll use Ultimate Defense to avoid damage!".

But, you have to remember that my Battle System isn't really "you can use Attack to murder everything" and "there is no dedicated healer at all", so it's catered more towards using Guard than most combat systems are.

Games don't tell players what Guard does. Speaking of which, would you know what it did without being a dev using RPG Maker? Just off-hand? I wouldn't. The engine doesn't tell you. Nor can you give the command a description. Nope, you have to break the 4th wall somewhere in your game to tell players what it does. Even then, will they ever use it?

My current game leaves Guard as is... with a single caveat. It builds more TP than if you were using attacks. TP in my game is a simple strategic resource used to unleash the most powerful attacks... or power the most useful skills. I have a character who has nothing but TP skills... except his personal heal skill, which uses MP. Most every attack and skill gives you 1-4 TP (depending on tier of skill) on use. Guard though? Guaranteed 5 TP per use. Suddenly, spending a turn to "Guard" isn't a waste of a turn. You're using it to charge your most powerful skills. Those skills include AOE attacks (which are amazingly rare in my game and hard to come by) against the entire enemy troop... full party revives (nobody can heal, so being able to revive the whole party in a single turn is useful, especially without item use)… Or using skills that could potentially kill Bosses in a single hit?

Where is it signposted in my game that Guard does that? Nowhere right now. I'm not sure I'll ever signpost it. I'm not sure I'll ever tell players about it. Or, maybe I'll have it off-handed mentioned by their first party member when they stay at an Inn for the first time.

Now remember that I also have equipment that can be obtained decently early that doubles or triples TP gain. Or, skills that increase TP gain by 500% at Max Tier for 3 turns.

Guard is insanely useful in my game. Because you not only spend a turn mitigating damage... but you spend that turn charging for stronger attacks.