Have you ever played Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories? Its combat is often regarded as this weird, awkward to play mess, but I honestly found it really fun. For this explanation, I’ll focus on attack cards. Attack cards had 2 different stats to worry about; Keyblade type Attack number Keyblade type affected things like damage, range, reach, etc. If you attacked at the same time as an enemy, the higher number would cancel out the lower one. Here’s the fun bit; you could pile 3 cards on top of eachother to perform special moves. Like, a special move could have the requirement of “3 same Keyblades with attack value between 3-8” or some such. This was called a “sleight”. Since your deck never shuffled, you could build it around sleights, and throw out these moves left & right. The catch? When you reload your deck, you lose the first card used in a sleight. As fun as it was to use in real time, battles only had one of two outcomes. You blast through enemies with no problem, or you die. There wasn’t really any in between. In a turn based enviornment, though, I think this system has a lot of potential. In a turn based game, you could take more time assembling sleights without needing to worry about enemies, and such. Admittedly, and obviously, I’m no game designer, but the biggest hurdle I see is the same one KH: CoM had. How do you keep spamming sleights from being the best strategy? After all, nothing but a 0 card or another sleight can counter anything over 10. I guess there’s the issue of how much info to reveal, too.. in CoM, you saw enemy attacks before they happened, giving you a chance to counter, but would that system still work when time pauses? Maybe rather than pure turn based, it could utilize an ATB gauge, like Child of Light or Dragon Ball Fusions? Hm..

I like dragon quest XI turn based combat right now. It has the feeling of the an original turn based rpg but with the ability to control your characters so that you feel more involved

I'd just make it so you issue orders for the characters (possibly including field position) in real time then characters carry those orders out when their action bar fills. If no order was given they'd just auto attack. Then the AI could figure out pathing amd handle animations to make the fight play out more cinematically. Kind of an advanced version of [i]Grandia[/i]'s battle system but you issue commands at any time and the combat is continuous. And, of course, I'd add the option to tweak the speed (in case you feel it's too fast or too slow) and/or have the game pause when your attack bar filled if you really preferred old school. Probably add a "fast forward" option, a la [i]World of Final Fantasy[/i], as well.

Idk, frankly I really liked the ATB gauge, and kind of wish that would make a return

I got Aifos vibes from this post. And what do you know he's the first comment i see. Hmm if i could make a unique rpg combat style... Diablo and Disgaea are my types of RPGs, but they're basically the polar opposite. I got nothing

Firstly, I want to name some of my favorite innovations. Since that’s not the point of the thread, though, I’ll stick it in a spoiler. [spoiler]Paper Mario’s action commands. Yes, I know, they first appeared in Super Mario RPG, but TTYD nailed them the best. See, each attack triggered a small button prompt, ranging from press A before hitting an enemy, to hitting a random button string, to flicking the left stick. Steven Universe: Attack of the Light brought the idea to touch screen, where it has possibly the widest possible applications. Steven Universe: Save the Light handled super moves interestingly. Using support moved raised a “friendship gauge” between two characters. Once full, they could unleash a devestating team attack![/spoiler] And something neat that’s upcoming; [spoiler]Indivisible seems to fuse turn based combat with a fighting game. Seems interesting![/spoiler] Okay, now, my idea. I’ve always loved the idea of fusion, and while it’s been done a few times in various games, I’d love to see a game embrace it. A lot of games will bar fusion off to a spell, like DBF, or an Ultimate, like SU:AotL, but I want to see it as something of a regular attack, that you can initiate & break at any time, but have a fused form have not just pure benefit, but also some drawbacks. For example, let’s say a fusion is stronger, but can suffer from hallucinations, possibly disabling them for a turn or two, or possibly their attacks require more action points, making them not vuable to use all the time. I think the best way to handle it would to be to let any pair of party members fuse, but have their stats determine what drawbacks the fusion has. For example, you could merge two folk one with a high INT, one with a low, that would balance out to a medium INT stat, while two high INT characters complement eachother for a similarly intelligent fusion. However, that skyrocketing INT could result in the aforementioned hallucinations, while a low overall INT would result in them being a little clumsy & bumbling attacks. This would add the depth of whether you fuse two characters that compliment eachother’s strengths and weaknesses, or one that balances them out. Of course, one pretty important bit here, is it would require highly customizable characters. If Anna always has low INT, and Piccolo always has high INT, than Annalo (or whatever) would always have medium INT, which is frankly, kinda boring if the game focused around fusion, while if their INT levels were highly customizable, Annalo’s could be too, allowing for its unique attacks to vary in effectiveness. There’s also the problem of incentivizing switching between fused/unfused states throughout the battle if it can be used freely. Possibly something like FP (Fusion Points) draining while fused, and recovering when separate? I dunno. Could be fun, could be awful, who knows?

🤔 I basically wound up at Diablo. That was a strange thought experiment.

I’d take gen 7 pokemon and delete z-moves. Everything else is fine

Take away the turn based combat