Skill Restrictions

Last Updated: 2011.07.21
Download Link
Github Link

Sometimes good game balance depends on restriction mechanics. Of these mechanics include skill cooldowns, warmups, and the amount of times a skill can be used (limited uses). Included in this script are features also to lock cooldowns, reduce cooldown rates, change cooldown values for skills, skill types, and more. If this isn’t enough restriction power, switches may be used to restrict skills from being used as well as even code.

—

Skills with cooldowns require turns to pass before they’re usable once again. Cooldowns are seen more frequently in MMORPG’s, but there’s no reason to not use them in normal ones. In fact, they help balance overpowered skills from being spammed endlessly.

<cooldown: x>

Causes the skill to have a cooldown of x once it’s used in battle. Skills with cooldowns cannot be used again until cooldown reaches 0 or until the battle is over.

—

<cooldown lock>

A battler afflicted with cooldown lock will not have cooldowns count down every turn until the cooldown lock is removed. This tag can go under in the Actors, Classes, Weapons, Armours, States, and Enemy noteboxes.

<cooldown rate: x%>

When cooldowns are applied from using skills in battle, the cooldown rate can reduce or increase the finalized amount of turns a battler would need to wait before being able to use that skill again. This tag can go under in the Actors, Classes, Weapons, Armours, States, and Enemy noteboxes.

—

Skills can also affect the cooldowns of targets by increasing/decreasing skill types or specific skills. Changing an enemy’s cooldowns may become a vital part of strategy in some games.

<change cooldown: +x>
<change cooldown: -x>

This will cause the target’s cooldowns for every skill to increase by x or decrease by x. This selects skills indiscriminately.

<skill cooldown x: +y>
<skill cooldown x: -y>

This will cause the target’s specific skill x to receive a change in cooldown by either an increase or decrease of y amount.

<stype cooldown x: +y>
<stype cooldown x: -y>

This will cause all of the skills with skill type x to have its cooldowns changed by y amount. +y increases cooldown turns while -y decreases turns.

—

Warmup skills require a certain amount of turns to pass in battle before they can be used. This helps limit certain extremely overpowering skills from being used right from the start of battle.

<warmup: x>

Causes the skill to be sealed until the x turns pass in battle. There’s no way to speed up a warmup manually with the exception of warmup rates.

<warmup rate: x%>

Lowers/Raises the amount of turns needed to pass in battle before the warmup skills become available for usage.

—

Skills can have a limited amount of times they can be used per battle, too. This can help prevent some skills from being used too often or allow the existence of tide turners without breaking the entire balance of a battle (like Hamedo).

<limited uses: x>

This will allow the skill to only be usable x times throughout the course of battle. Once the skill is used x times, it is disabled until the battle is over. This effect only takes place during battle.

—

Restricting skills from being able to be used can also be done through switches for all the eventers. With switch control, skills can be enabled on and off with ease.

<restrict if switch: x>

This will restrict the skill if switch x is ON. If switch x is OFF, this skill will no longer be restricted.

<restrict any switch: x>
<restrict any switch: x, x>

This will restrict the skill if any of the x switches are ON. If all of them are off, then the skill will not be restricted.

<restrict all switch: x>
<restrict all switch: x, x>

This will restrict the skill if all of the x switches are ON. If any of them are off, then the skill will not be restricted.

—

Users with coding experience can take advantage of the <restrict eval> notetag to create their own custom restrictions!

<restrict eval>
  string
  string
</restrict eval>

For the more advanced users, replace string with code to determine whether or not the skill is restricted. If multiple lines are used, they are all considered part of the same line.

— And that’s all, folks! —