Character Stats Discussion

[xLostWingx]

I've been toying with the idea of making another mod.  One of the areas that I need to think about and plan carefully are the stats of each playable character.  Also I think that HP, MP, and Limit Breaks factor into the equation (150 Str and 200 Str make little difference when your Limit Break is a single powerful attack causing 9999 at 150 or 200).  Initially I thought I might be able to just say "Ok Cloud has 100 Str, Aeris has 100 Mag, and Red has 100 Spr so they are on equal terms."  But this is not the case.  100 Magic is significantly more valuable in a battle than 100 Spr - the same goes for comparing other stats.  So my intent here is to either establish an attribute heirarchy or determine a suitable ratio for stats.  The goal is to be able to create highly differentiated characters that are still comparable in overall fighting ability.

I think the relevant areas of assessment are:

Strength, Vitality, Magic, Spirit, Dexterity, Luck, Hit Points, Magic Points, and Limit Breaks.

So pretend we have Barret and Yuffie and we are using a scale of 1-100 for assigning stats.

Barret might look like this:

Str – 80
Vit – 70
Mag – 10
Spr – 15
Dex – 25
Luk – 15
HP – 8500
MP – 410
Limit – Mostly Offensive, Multi-Strike attacks.

Yuffie might look like this:

Str – 40
Vit – 15
Mag – 30
Spr – 25
Dex – 60
Luk – 40
HP – 5800
MP – 630
Limit – Mix of Offensive, Curative, and Support attacks.

This is just an example, but each of these characters is unique and unlike the other but, it would be hard to say one is ‘better’ than the other.  Depending on how you play you may choose a character more suited to your style, but each one provides advantages and disadvantages to your party during a battle.  So do you think Strength, Magic, Dexterity, and HP are more important/valuable than Vitality, Spirit, Luck, and MP?  I will probably figure out how I want to do this on my own, but I was interested in hearing what others had to say about it.

[nfitc1]

Magic will get less devastating toward the end of the game when you encounter enemies that have higher MDefs and elemental resistances or absorb them. Negative statuses will rarely help because most higher-leveled enemies are immune to them. In the end, your magic user will go from a damaging uber-wizard to a combination util character that is mainly used to buff and heal more than nerf and damage.

Here's my break down of importance:

HP - Obviously the more the better. If your wizard has lower-than-avg HP they'll be focused on healing themselves more often. Keep in the back row and this won't be an issue with physical attacks.
MP - I don't prioritize this at all on fighters. It's sometimes nice for a fighter to be able to heal themselves, but that's what items are for anyway. Wizards need an above-average amount of it as they become mostly useless without it.

Strength - Weak towards the beginning of the game and tends to get more important at the end when magics are failing me. I look at this stat first when evaluating a character's effectiveness.
Vitality - It seems that physical attacks are used more often than magic ones so I take this as the primary def stat. Obviously I can increase my PDef with armor so Vitality is rarely even looked at.
Magic - Weak at the beginning until you get more devastating spells (like Ice 3, Bolt 3, Flare, etc). Then it tends to be not as powerful toward the end when enemies have over 10000 HP. I can do damage just as quickly with Physical attacks as I can with Magic ones.
Spirit - If playing with the MDef bug intact then this is a super important one throughout the game. This is how I can reduce damage to basic magic attacks. Towards the end of the game there are more enemies that can perform the MDef-ignoring attacks like Pandora's Box and Ultima so I'll treat it as I would Magic. Few enemies at the beginning use magic so it's important in the middle of the game and against lots of bosses.
Dexterity - Not so important to me. Haste tends to counter-act a low Dex and is a permanent status throughout a battle. Mostly I'll only use this to plan the initial strike against a boss (the one with the highest Dex will be the one I'll have Big Guard on, etc)
Luck - Barely important. Increases critical chances, yes. I don't want to rely on criticals so I won't expect them and get disappointed.

That said, I think the mandatory character (Cloud) be a balance between fighter and wizard but not "strong" in either, early characters should be fighters (Barret, Tifa) middle characters be wizards (Aeris, Red XIII), later characters be high def/avg attack (Cait Sith, Cid) and secret ones be slightly overpowered versions of fighters/wizards, but weak in the other (eg. Vincent have good HP,Str,Vit, Dex with low MP, Mag, Vit and Yuffie have good MP, Mag, Vit with low HP, Str, Vit, Dex).

[xLostWingx]

Thanks for your input.  I guess I will have to decide exactly what I will do with the equipment before I decide how to make the characters.  Mdef bug is intact so I will remember this when working with Spirit values.  I have full control of the scene.bin so I can determine what is more/less useful earlier/later in the game.  I think that I will have to be less conservative when assigning characters their stats.  If I do everything right then it will be virtually impossible to make it through the game WITHOUT utilizing each character's strengths and minimizing their weaknesses.  So I will probably end up having some variation of character specific armor so that you won't be able to produce a High HP/Str/Vit/Spr character who has no real weaknesses for a long stretch of the game.  I also plan to smooth out the way magic becomes more powerful. 

[Tenko Kuugen]

I was pretty sure either Dex or Luck increased dodge chance
I remember that even Emerald Weapon had a goddamn hard time hitting Cloud with anything except air team storm and emerald beam when he had 255 dex / luck