using different magic types for the same effect?

I'd like some thoughts on situations where you have two distinct "classes" and mechanisms for spells, but situations where they might produce the same effect. Obviously, the problem is that it can lead to some redundancy - should this be avoided, or do you think it's fine if these overlapping character types fit in well with the rest of your game?

Here's an example.

One character is a priest/cleric/holy mage type. He or she uses magic by calling upon the divine/holy deities to produce effects - whether it be healing, reviving, etc, and including say, a spell that removes poison.

Another character is a kind of wizard that uses magic by manipulating matter and energy in the world. He has a spell that removes poison by actually altering the molecules in a creature's blood.

So two characters, both with a spell that removes poison, but through very different means. Hopefully you see where i'm going with this - this kind of overlap could occur for many status effects, or even damage effects. Even if there are some differences in their spell kits, there could be significant overlap.

Would you avoid this? How do you design multiple types of magic casters while circumventing this problem? Obviously, in a game with only 3 or 4 characters, it's easy to design them all in a way without overlap. But in a game where the player has a choice of which characters to use among say 10 or 12 different types, what do you think?

Easiest to avoid is to give both skills different secondary effects. So, while they might both cure the same condition, they could do different things alongside it.
Or change one slightly, so it kind of does the same thing, but still gets the same thing done: 1 skill just removes poison, while the other skill could remove it and grant poison immune for several turns (maybe at higher MP cost).

The logical backstory behind each method doesnt make a difference mechanically speaking. Part of the strategy behind turn based rpgs can be picking your team so you can have two characters that share skills but add something different overall to the group dynamic.

For example a and b both can heal poison but a is exclusively a healer otherwise and b is All about Applying poison and curing it.

Both can heal poison at the same cost but other skills and stats make them unique.

As states above the differences are endless.

• You could make it remove poison and add poison state to your attacks
• Remove poison and add hp regen
• Remove poison and gain a crafting item
• Etc

What you could do is offer some kind of special effect over one skill to avoid simply copy-pasting the skill.
As said before, maybe one of the skills could take more MP to be used, but it would also give an immunity to whoever was affected by it.

I personally don't think it's much of a problem to one skill be used twice; that's because generally when there is many characters in a game, I always think that they are probably separated, so it would not be that soon to the holy mage to be together with the... "bio" mage?

So in that case, if the characters are not so easily together, I see no problem. But I guess this is isn't the case you mentioned

opens the possibility to implement an extension to one type, but not the other.
or, both, differently.

I have a similar system.... ailments that can be cured by one type of magic, and other ailments that can't be cured at all, but won't kill you, or would just incapacitate you for a while.
you have to look at it including the whole picture: one is a type of magic that has a cure, another is a type that doesn't have a cure.
all-in, they're different types.

I think you need to ask yourself why you need to have two distinct skills that produce the same effect in the first place. If you can answer that then maybe you can find a way to work around that.

From another perspective, giving two characters their own skills that give the same exact effects can mean that the player can choose. It's not like those 2 characters are gonna have all their skills producing all the same effect, right? So, players can choose which one to pick from the 2 to deal with different situations. Maybe the cleric can't deal a lot of damage so another mage might be better suits for a battle where you might need to quickly deal massive damage at once while also deal with the poison problem. A cleric might be a better choice in a situation where the enemies hit hard so the player needs someone who can consistently heal. It can depends on how you design the enemies.

Or, you can tweak the effects like others have said. One might do AoE cure poison, while another might just do single-target poison remover.

Or another easier way is to just don't give one of them the skill. That would be the case if you find that a skill of this particular effect doesn't need to be on more than one char.

I ran into this problem too at one point. I, then, decided to find their quirks, their specialized field. One might really specialized in that certain field of healing, while another is more good at buffing-debuffing but can heal a bit when the need arise. Think of how you want them to be in the battle, or what role are they're more likely to play when player use them in battle.

Overlap doesn't really matter and some can actually be good. Still, I try to make my "similar" abilities each feel unique somehow. Let's take a look at a few of them as they are in my game right now. One is from the main character, the other is from a pixie, the third is from a pirate, and the last is from an otherworldly entity:

- Inner Fire: Heals HP/MP by 30% and removes blind and silence from the user.
- Nature's Cure: Heals a small amount of HP and removes poison and bleed effects from one ally.
- Moonshine Flask: Removes mental status ailments from one ally and gets them pretty drunk.
- Illstorm: (a Limit Break type skill) Cures most common status ailments from the entire party and deals poison damage to the enemies. Damage is increased by the number of ailments removed, and has a chance of inflicting those status effects on the enemies. (Yes, this obviously requires a fair amount of scripting, but it's nothing I can't handle)

Inner Fire has very limited ailment removal since it only targets blind and silence specifically, but its other function is to restore a solid chunk of the user's HP and MP.

Nature's Cure might seem limited as well, but bleed and poison are categories rather than specific ailments even though most effects in these categories do the same basic thing--damage over time. The HP restored is small and meant more for flavor than for it to be a proper healing skill.

Moonshine Flask removes any ailment tagged as a mental status effect, but comes with a small side effect that I have yet to decide what to do with.

Finally, Illstorm (being a limit break) won't always be available every turn, but can be a very effective (and fun) way to remove ailments from allies without giving up an attack on that same turn.

So as you can see, that's several different abilities for removing status ailments, but also, they function quite differently from one another overall by removing different ailments, having different secondary effects, having different targeting scopes, etc. RM allows for a lot of creativity when it comes to diversifying your abilities, so try to aim for more than just "cures poison on one ally" on everyone you want to have a cure poison ability.

When you're going to use different skill from different actors, but has same effect?
It's when you are creating massive party members. You have a choose between them that works best with the situation.

Will you slot two actors that has same skill? probably yes, probably not. Yes, maybe the buff are stackable, no maybe because it doesn't stack. If character A has better skill set, and B is not, but they have same skill you probably want to use actor A.

In other design choice where you could have two or more parties with different members for whatever design game you have. You want to separate two actors that has overlapping skill because you're controlling two parties. Or maybe, you make a skill is only limited use in every battle so you need two actors that has same skill so you can use more of it.

It's not about avoiding, but about why would you design such overlapping skill.

These are just different "handwaves" (not meant in a derogatory sense, but just meaning an explanation of something that would have been impossible in real-world medieval times) for what, based on your descriptions, I understand as the same spell. This would be absolutely fine in a novel or an anime (although it might mute characters' identities a bit), but I think it's problematic in a video game. When both skills read as "cure poison", I don't think it really matters that the explanations behind them are very different, and this kind of Rationing is something that kit designers need to be very careful about.

The way to address it would be to make the skills mechanically different in how they are activated and/or what they do. This is somewhat easier in an ABS where real time and movement are important factors - for example, two skills that simply "deal damage" (e.g. a bow snipe vs. a hammer slam) can have completely different feels and require completely different types of talent to land.

In a turn-based system, it's a little harder, but definitely still doable. Returning to your "cure poison" mechanic - perhaps a Holy class can cure poison directly (and heal the target), but the spell to do so is expensive; a Time class can reduce the duration of an existing poison state for a much cheaper cost, and a Voodoo class can transfer the poison from an ally to himself, inflicting himself with the state (but perhaps having tools to then transfer it from himself to an enemy next turn, or to gain power for every ailment on him). All three of these will feel somewhat different in practice, and will shine in different situations - with the added bonus that each effect furthers the fantasy of being a Cleric or Chronomancer or Witch Doctor.