Game balance: Bob and Alice

This post is just laying out the framework for a series of posts about game balance and how various features interact with one another. The ripple effect will be a major topic of discussion, probably by the next post, though I make no guarantees.

Picture, if you will, a fantasy roleplaying game set in a world where magic exists and blades regularly clash. The typical setting for one of these games, in other words. Let's also throw in a fairly basic plot with a couple of hooks -- the warmongering and powerful Zeitgeist Empire has taken over the vast majority of the world's countries, and to make matters worse, a necromancer is pulling strings within it, ordering genocidal regimes and reanimating the countless corpses that result from it. The world is plunging into darkness.

But then, in the burnt husk of a backwater village, two unlikely heroes are born. The apprentice huntsman, Bob, and his childhood friend and doctor's daughter Alice. Thirsting for revenge and seeking power, the two of them leave their old, ruined life behind and take up the mantles of warriors.

This is our story.

Gameplay-wise, Bob and Alice will be thrust into various random encounters, boss battles, and sliding block puzzles as they traverse the dying world they live in. When they engage in battle, the two may act against their opponents first, and either one can take the first action. When they have both done so, the enemies will act, and do their best to murder the pair. The two have hit points, and when one reaches 0, they must be revived at the local temple. If both die, the game is over. They also have magic points with which to use their various abilities, and attacks, with which to deal damage. They can obtain items, and use those (either character!) in battle. Typical RPG stuff.

Bob has 30 hit points and 4 magic points. He can attack with his sword for 10 points of damage, perform a better attack for 1 MP and deal 18 points of damage, throw a knife at his opponent for 2 MP and prevent them from acting next round, fire a volley of arrows at his opponents for 3 MP and hit them all for 24 points of damage, or unleash an ultimate technique of forbidden power for 4 MP that deals 100 points of damage to one enemy. He has the passive ability to dodge attacks half (50%) of the time and regain 2 HP every turn.

Alice has 25 hit points and 6 magic points. She can attack with her dagger for 8 points of damage, heal one of the two for 1 MP and restore 15 hit points, cast a spell to heal both for 2 MP and restore 25 hit points each, or heal one of any status effects for 3 MP. She has the passive ability to regenerate 1 MP every second turn.

Here are a few examples using this model to showcase what I'll be doing with this.

Example #1: The heroes face off against Evil McGenocidePants, the evil necromancer who is threatening to finish the world's destruction. Before the battle, the daring Bob gives him an impassioned speech about the worth of life and death and how much it should mean to him, doubling his attack power for the battle. In addition, Evil McGenocidePants doesn't do much damage, throwing darts of pure magical death at the pair for 4 damage per hit. It'd take him forever to chip away at their healing and damage at this rate. Why, they could easily do hundreds of points of damage! What's more is that they have items to keep them going through MP restoration and can deal 60 damage with MP-free grenades!

... But what they don't know is that it doesn't matter. Evil McGenocidePants has infinite hit points, and the player is supposed to lose the battle. Since he takes forever to kill them they might think he's just a hell of a turtler, and use their consumables and MP against him... wasting it and draining them of resources they probably need for the actual game. This is bad game design. It's a step above an actual boss fight followed by loss in a cutscene, but a step below a plain vanilla unwinnable boss fight. And all of these things are bad and I'm going to discuss them.

Example #2: Alice and Bob fight a glass cannon of an enemy, the Boneshattered Deathserpent. It only has 80 hit points, but it can dish out 20 in damage to both characters or savage Alice or Bob for 30 damage in one blow. It is a credible threat, and it has just enough hit points to make it a lasting threat. That is, unless Bob has 4 MP stored up and elects to one-shot the boss. This is an exploit, an oversight in the game's encounter design that creates a balance problem -- unless the game designer specifically intended, in which case it's presenting only one option, which is also bad game design. Or maybe the boss itself is unbalanced and too difficult to be reasonable and the overpowered technique in question is fixing what is, yet again, bad game design.

Well, that's about it for this first post. Next time, we'll be talking more about these two.