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Allow use of Combat Abilities out of Combat

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#1

In several old school JRPGs you could use Magic to heal party members outside of combat, as long as you had enough MP to do so. You should implement that option here. Let me use my Healing abilities outside of combat. Out of combat I’d have no Overcharge, so I’d have to use MP. This would make dungeons a little more manageable, but also provide a Mana sink causing players to go through Mana quicker, which would require the more frequent use of potions, giving those more value than they have now.

In the current game I use my Overcharge almost exclusively and rarely have to use any Mana potions, but on harder settings managing HP is a constant struggle. This would add some balance.

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#2

You can to an extent, though I don’t know what replenishes the supply. On the bottom right side of the HUD there is an icon with a number. Pressing space will use a different ability for each character. Gully’s is an attack that lets you deal preemptive damage to an enemy. Garrison’s is a sort of dash move that is handy for getting past traps quickly. And Bretto’s is his healing magic.

#3

Resting in Inn replenishes Dungeon Abilities.

#4

Those are Dungeon Skills, I’m talking about Combat Abilities. I’m talking about being able to use 'Bretto’s Healing Touch/Healing Wave, or Knolan’s healing spells, the Abilities that use Mana in Combat.

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#5

Yeah, I was surprised that this wasn’t present. It is a classic JRPG ability to use your party’s healing/buff combat abilities out of combat.

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#6

You can use potions…You don’t even have to buy them. Just craft them. I don’t see the need to use spells also outside combat. It would only make exploring the dungeons way too easy. And if you really need to heal so bad, just wait till the last enemy is low health, use defensive abilities with non healers till the party is all healed up and finish the fight… you’re full health yay!

#7

I didn’t really find that it was odd not to be able to use combat abilities outside of combat. I’ve played several games with this mechanic. The point that OP made about having to use mana on the combat abilities is interesting though and having that mana sink. I also try to exclusively use Overcharge (except for say Garrison/Gully). But I don’t find that being able to use combat abilities outside of combat is necessary, despite it possibly making things more manageable. There’s always the use of healing flasks/potions for outside of combat healing.

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#8

That doesn’t sound fun at all to anyone. Far less fun than the genre standard approach of letting people burn their mana pool for out of combat healing. That’s the balance, bud… no overcharge so you pay in actual mana. But don’t worry, you can use potions that you can craft to replenish it.

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#9

That’s the balance? How is that balanced? You would only have to stock up on mana potions and you have infinite heal…because the abilities heal much more than the potions. And oh wait Knolan ability also restores mana… yeah that sounds really fun to go in to dungeons with infinite healing…

#10

Is it really that easy to stock up on Mana potions? I wouldn’t want to waste all my gold buying them. How abundant are the ingredients used to craft them? I would think at higher levels they would be too expensive to stock up on, since small potions would do almost nothing.

I did forget though that Knolan can restore Mana with one of his heals, so that would create a fairly infinite loop there. I don’t see why that couldn’t be adjusted so the Mana replenish is turn based, making it not work out of combat.

As it stands now I’ve never even come close to running out of Mana, but have died a fair amount. Potions or not, it’s not balanced and a Mana sink of some kind is needed.

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#11

Well I have died twice due to bosses I shouldn’t be dealing with at this moment (sidequests) and always started the dungeons on higher difficulties so it seems possible to manage your hp.
If you would have the ability to use heal outside of combat you would never struggle again. Just be smart and think at the last enemy in combat about healing your party as much as possible.
With your suggestion the game would become way, way too easy and lose all of it’s charm.

#12

Use Calibretto as your permanent healer/support and you’ll never have issues managing hp in and out of battle. I understand the mechanic you’re describing but that also made it a lot easier to traverse dungeons and large areas in those old rpgs. They boiled it down to Cali having a powerful aoe heal as a dungeon skill and very fast single target heals in fights. In any fight I’m usually only using 2 characters to attack and Cali to Heal, Cleanse and Sunder enemies. Don’t think just because there isn’t this option that it’s too hard. It forces you to think, be wary about how many dungeon skill uses you have left and how many potions you brought in case you run out of mana or want to use hp pots as well. The dungeons also do a good job of rewarding you with potions as you explore them so honestly you should only be having trouble with enemies way above your level, but you should have all the tools to deal with everything else.

#13

I’ve gotten an impression that the issue may actually belong to resource management section: As some have already pointed out, the ability count limitation appears to encourage the party to go back to the town at regular basis for both PC-NPC interactions and the inn events.

In my opinion, it would be much less complicated, rather than the ability counters, if only the crafting were limited in town (at least, for supplies such as potions) while allowing Calibretto’s ability open to any party composition (with the counter limit), for example. Or even better, just automatically fill HP/MP at the end of every single battle from a limited resource, which can be only refilled by resting at the inn. There are still “linked” battles and boss fights, which is a standard in Arena, and I don’t think it lessens the difficulty once the balance is established - Better avoid “pointless” frustrations from players’ view points. However, of course, realization of such idea requires much more time than just a few weeks. Needless to say, if the devs (or anyone else) have better ideas, please go for it - it doesn’t matter whose idea at all as long as it improves the gameplay experience.

#14

I feel the way they did healing, at first annoyed me (as others say, you couldn’t use your in combat healing, out of combat). But now, even on the hardest settings, I actually like how the healing is done. It really forces you to think, it adds to the difficulty, and adds its own flavor to this game. I think if you could use other abilities, than what there is right now to heal, it would make things waaaay to easy and the whole balance would be off. On the harder difficulties, it needs to feel like a real struggle, or they would need to add Another difficulty setting, that made the healing go back to the way it is now.

#15

I’m not sure if PhadeOut meant my post or just replying to the OP but allow me clarify my point just in case.

I didn’t mean that the healing skill count should be multiplied by all the party members but that the “skill” should be able to be accessible without Calibretto (so, probably he needs another special ability unique to him) and thus the healing count would stay same since, in the current system, it feels as if the devs were forcing the players to put Calibretto in their parties. The other auto-fill idea (hopefully with turn-off option for more control) may have given a wrong impression but it is just for sparing the players from routine healing sessions. Even in such a hypothetical system, the devs could give a tight resource pool. After all, Calibretto’s healing ability itself is a kind of resource pool in the first place, but limited to a single character for some reason. To put it another way, it’s probably too powerful skill compared with others since other abilities tend to be circumstantial, it has a universal value.

As for the balancing, the devs could even decrease the healing counts (or resource pool or whatever) once the base system is established, which could be further integrated into the difficulty setting, too. Personally, I’d like to see an independent resource management difficulty like hardcore mode in Fallout: New Vegas but I may be asking too much here.

That said, indeed, the system makes me think till HP-related resources are used up but, once it is used up, I simply go back to the town (with that movement speed). So, it just increases the frequency of routine back-tracking since there is no enemy-respawn unlike some rogue-like games. I think, by design, it’s relatively mild resource-management restriction. I find quite many opinions on this board are about how to decrease annoyances while optimizing fun time (including challenges) and mine is not an exception. Again, as long as the issues (at least from where I’m standing) are addressed, I don’t mind the way it is solved.