States And Status Injuries in RM2K

A status injury is a special kind of injury that you can inflict on enemies, and also get inflicted by. 'Dead' is treated as a status too, albeit a special-er one. These injuries can be inflicted via weapons or spells, or even events.

Let's open up the 'States' (called 'Conditions' in the rip) tab in the database and take a quick look.

Right away we can see a list of statuses already filled out and configured for us, with 'Dead' at the top. This first slot in the list is reserved for 'Dead' (or whatever name you want to give death in your game). You'll notice that you cannot change most of the settings here. You can, however, change all settings for all other statuses, and even create your own (by increasing the 'Maximum Number' of statuses in the list).

Let's take a look at something else in the list, and see what options we have.

I've forgone the coloured boxes here because there would just be too many

Of particular note (for I say so) is the 'State Rate'/'Effect Chance' panel. Much like with the Elements from the previous post, we see here a list of symbols from A to E, with percentages next to them. And much like the symbols for Elements, this list too defines the different levels of weakness or resistance your characters and enemies can have towards the selected status.

Since we've already gone through the symbols and their use in the previous post, this part is actually the easiest to understand. We use the symbols for statuses exactly as we do for Elements to determine vulnerability to different statuses. We can change up the percentage values in the same ranges (0 to1000% for A to D, -999% to +1000% for E) as for Elements, and test the changes in much the same way too.

Most of the rest of the options are self-explanatory, but I will go over them anyway in case they actually aren't self-explanatory and I just think they are because I'm used to the software hehe.

1. Name => Y'know. The...name of the status.

2. Removal Conditions => 2 options to choose from, about how long the status stays in effect – 'Ends after battle' (i.e., 'Combat Effect') implies the characters recover from the status automatically after the battle ends, and 'Persists after battle' (i.e., 'Movement Effect') implies the opposite. Status duration would be a better title for this section.

NOTE: you can even make sure characters automatically recover from death after a battle (partly like in The Last Remnant), provided your whole team hasn't been KO'ed already, by setting 'Dead' to 'End after Battle'; this can be useful if your game's highlight/focus will be the in-game battles, and you expect them to be long and/or strategic. Though a more common implementation of such a mechanic would include restoring full HP/MP too, so a common event might be what you actually end up using.

3. Color => Just a colour code. Your status text will be in this colour once inflicted.

4. Rating/Priority => Don's translation makes much more sense here. Rating is the priority level of the statuses. When multiple statuses are inflicted, the ones with higher priority will be displayed (some or all inflicted statuses will still have their effects, this just decides what gets shown in battle and menu).

5. Restrictions => These define additional restrictions that can be placed on the character inflicted with the status. The options in the official translation mean what they say. In Don's translations, it can be a little confusing, but: 'Restrictions' option = no restrictions; 'Inside Battle' = cannot move (as in, what you see for the default Paralyze settings); the last 2 options are exactly what the translations say they are.

From the official translation

6. Healing Method => set the percentage chances of a character or enemy recovering from the status, both naturally and when hit by a physical attack (an example of the latter would be the default Sleep status, which has a pretty high chance of recovery (at 50%) on being hit). So here, you can basically set up that the character/enemy has a Y% chance of recovering naturally after X number of turns in battle and/or has a Z% chance of recovering on being smacked in the face (irrespective of how many turns have passed).

7. Reduce Stats By Half/Ability Half Cost => statuses can reduce your ATK, DEF etc. stats for the duration of the status infliction.

8. Accuracy Modifier/Hit Rate Change => Determines whether the character's or enemy's hit accuracy is affected. For example, the 'Blind' status in the defaults has a value for this at 20%. This means that anyone with this status gets in a hit against the opponent only 20% of the time (I mean, they can't see very well when Blind-ed, can they).

9. Unable to use skill => Indicate if any physical or magical skills will not be usable while this status is active. The values entered here correspond to the physical and magical rates/points present in the 'Skills' tab. The settings in the 'Skills' tab will make more sense once we reach battles and skills in this tutorial series, but for now, all we need to know is that all skills with a physical or magical rate equal to or above the values we set here will be automatically disabled while the status is active. So if I select 'Magical Rate' and give it a value of 1, all skills from the 'Skills' tab that have a Magical Rate greater than or equal to 1 will become unusable by the injured character/enemy. This setting is used for the default Silence state.

10. HP/MP => These panels are where you set the decrease in HP or MP that the status causes. If your status is a battle-only status, then you set the decrease per turn. If it's a field-level status, then you can set both per turn and per number of steps taken on the field.

11. Messages => Pretty straightforward panel, where you type the messages you want to display in battle when a character or enemy gets inflicted with, or recovers from, a status.

That pretty much covers statuses. For this demo game, I'm going to stick with the default element and state/status settings.

It's covered in BEES!

Next post on, we'll get back to building the game using what we've learnt so far! Specifically, we'll be setting up our shops and inns using the items we set up earlier, so make sure you have the maps ready for them.

- Meese

P.S.: If you thought, once you read the words 'Dead is a status', that you can equip characters with special armour that makes the wearer immortal (i.e., immune to this status of death), turns out that doesn't work. Your character still snuffs it if you take enough damage in battle. Sadface.