Battling Mechanics

While battling is an optional part of Imperion's experience, meaning you can choose to abstain from battling at all and never think about it again, most will probably take part in at least one battle during their time on Imperion. Quests in particular tend to have at least one battle at some point, so chances are fairly high you'll end up in one eventually, or at the very least, witness one.

We do not currently have a free-form battling option on Imperion. Unfortunately, it tends to cause more problems than it solves, to leave it open-ended and up to the players to work out between one another. The system still allows you to write around it and be creative; all it does is tell you what happened, and that's it. The rest is up to you to fill in. Furthermore, you can open yourself up to even more freedom by designing your character's skills openly. I.E. a generalised combat skill, rather than a specific technique, would allow you to decide the details of your attacks, what exactly you did. You can still decide where you aim and similar, and I've seen several Imperion players turn misses into dodges for themselves, and similar.

There's a lot more wiggle-room here than one usually thinks; all it does is make sure the battle stays fair, no one power-plays, or tries to pretend they are stronger than they actually are, and both sides have opportunity to have fun and enjoy the thread. If you play your cards right, either side has more than ample opportunity to win any battle they take part in, it just requires a little thought. Nothing really changes from free-form style battles, it just has an automated third-party referee that gives you a direction to go in.


Using Skills

The Skill Suite makes handling and using skills a breeze. While it does not track HP, multi-turn skills, status conditions, automatically, it will do everything else for you. Skill use is easy; simply input a small code in your post, probably at the bottom is the best place for it:

[skill]{User} {Skill Name}[/skill]

You can learn more about how to work this skill code, how it operates, and what valid modifiers it accepts, in the Skill Suite Guide. Always check your spelling before you submit. If anything is wrong, it will output an empty result code, or output a message body is empty error. The code can be posted without any of its modifiers, if none are applicable. The system will also automatically recognise Metronome, and generate a random skill from the spawner to use. It cannot handle Metronome's type calculations at the moment, so you'll have to calculate that on the fly.

To learn a new skill in play, you can attempt to trigger. Simply roll a d50:

[roll]1d50[/roll]

If you have a similar skill, such as a same-type skill, or something that does something similar, like a healing skill for another healing skill, or a generalised skill (I.E. survivalism) for a specialised one (I.E. first aid), you can use the skill you have at the same time as you roll the trigger d50. If either of the two succeeds, you have your new skill. If you can find someone that has the skill you want, that is willing to teach it to you, and you trigger roll after they've gone through the IC motions of teaching you, you'll trigger your new skill at half the class rank of the teacher's skill.

The Suite is equipped to handle NPC rolls. The only requirement is this skill needs to be in the spawner. So long as it is, you can input the total number of skill points, to denote the skill's level, and the skill name, type, accuracy, damage, and critical rate modifiers as applicable. Unfortunately, category denotations do not work for the NPC roller, so it rolls for both damage and healing on success. You'll have to read the result and figure out which one's valid.

[npcskill]{200} {Fire Blast}[/npcskill]

The modifiers are the same here as they are for the main skill code. If you want a skill roller to play with, as this one does not alter points, this is the one to play with.

Note:

  • You can try and trigger and attack in the same post.
  • You can also use two different skills in the same post, as long as they are not both the same type of skill. I.E. One dodge, one attack. One heal, one dodge. One attack, one heal. Etc.

Experience Gain

The system will figure your skill points and bump your skill XP on its own, so you don't need to memorise this. But, if you're curious how it works, here it is.

You earn 2 points on success, and 3 on failure. The skills are set up to begin at a fairly high success rate, and steadily cap out at 90% accuracy. There is still thus a 10% chance of failing even at skill cap. Some NPCs can be spawned with Class 10-0 skills, at which point they have no fail rate. You'll level fairly quick at low levels, and as they go up, will slow down, particularly beyond Class 7-0. There are 90 levels, essentially, for skills. It goes faster than it sounds.

Each level has 10 points in it, so at Class 1-8, you have 180-189 points. This is for ease of calculations. When your skill levels up, the roller will tell you. Max level is Class 9-0, or 900 points. Healing and damaging skills do a secondary roll, for damage and healing numbers. At Class 0-0, you have a success rate of 45%, and do 1 damage / heal a max of 5 HP. Every 10 levels, your accuracy rate goes up by 5%. Your damage/healing amount goes up every time your skill does, but only the max — every 10 levels, your min goes up, too, so you won't be doing 2 damage at Class 7-0.

There are three categories for skills; non-damaging, damaging, and healing. These are pretty self explanatory. If a skill does damage and heals both, you'll want damage. It's generally not probable for a skill to be non-damaging and damaging or healing, too, as either way you need the secondary roll.


Hit Points

HP determines how long you can stay in battle before you're knocked out, or need to heal. This is simple to calculate, here. In fact, you don't have to calculate it at all. Your highest level skill's total points divided by 2 will give you your HP. The system will calculate this on your profile for you.

Demon HP is also automatically calculated on their info page. This will make you last around 6-7 rounds, against opponents around your level, before you're done.


Levels

Skills go from Class 0-0 to 9-0. Each individual level has 10 points in it, with a full Class Rank (X-0 to Y-0) holding 100.

These aren't things you need to memorise, so honestly, try not to worry about it. The system will tell you what your accuracy and damage ratings are in the skill manager. The "median" level, is Class 4-5. Remember, some NPCs CAN spawn with Class 10-0 skills.


Status Conditions

Status conditions are used here. Skills of varying types can trigger them, both Demon and Human skills.

Burn Half the damage the triggering skill inflicted for default 2 rounds. If the triggering skill is at or above Class 6-0, raises to 3 rounds. If at Class 9-0, 4 rounds.
Charm Disables the target's ability to use any actions. Default 2 rounds. If the triggering skill is at or above Class 6-0, raises to 3 rounds. If at Class 9-0, 4 rounds. Automatically disables if the affected target is damaged.
Confusion The target has a 25% chance of inflicting half a damaging skill's damage roll on themselves. Roll a d100; 25 or down does self-damage. Default 2 rounds. If the triggering skill is at or above Class 6-0, raises to 3 rounds. If at Class 9-0, 4 rounds.
Disarm Disables the target's ability to attack. Default 2 rounds. If the triggering skill is at or above Class 6-0, raises to 3 rounds. If at Class 9-0, 4 rounds.
Freeze Disables the target's ability to use any actions. Default 2 rounds. If the triggering skill is at or above Class 6-0, raises to 3 rounds. If at Class 9-0, 4 rounds. Freeze can be undone by hitting the frozen target with a Fire skill.
Paralysis Disables the target's ability to use any actions. Default 2 rounds. If the triggering skill is at or above Class 6-0, raises to 3 rounds. If at Class 9-0, 4 rounds.
Poison Half the damage the triggering skill inflicted for default 2 rounds. If the triggering skill is at or above Class 6-0, raises to 3 rounds. If at Class 9-0, 4 rounds.
Badly Poisoned Half the damage the triggering skill inflicted for default 2 rounds. If the triggering skill is at or above Class 6-0, raises to 3 rounds. If at Class 9-0, 4 rounds. Lowers the damage the target deals by 15.
Sleep Disables the target's ability to use any actions. Default 2 rounds. If the triggering skill is at or above Class 6-0, raises to 3 rounds. If at Class 9-0, 4 rounds.

Virtual Training

If your character is Republic, or has access to Suyis Corps' training decks, you have the option of doing a Virtual Training thread. This room spawns a special virtual opponent for you to fight. No damage actually occurs, everything is simulated, so HP does not need to be accounted for. Status conditions are also nulled. If you are unsure about the system and want to mess with it a bit, a VTR would be a great option to play with the system without having to track extra things like HP and statuses.

You can only run a VTR for at most four pages ( technically three, as you stop at the first post that begins page 4 ), at first. Sign-offs should be requested in the tag people box once it starts the fourth page. VTRs may only be started once a calendar week, starting at the end of the last VTR. Post a new thread in Eridanus' Virtual Training forum, mark it with the VTR message icon, and post a link to the new thread in the tag people box and request a VTR spawn. Most likely going to get a Magikarp.

For every two IC threads your character has been in, the character gains one extra VTR page. These bonuses are permanent. You'll need to bookmark your threads into your character's thread trackers, so that the IC thread count can easily be verified.


Typing

You'll notice that skills and Demons, Psionics, Demonicas, and Fusillades all have at least one type. Those familiar with Pokemon will recognise these, but in case these aren't familiar to you, we'll go over types really quick. There are eighteen types: normal, fire, fighting, water, flying, grass, poison, electric, ground, psychic, rock, ice, bug, dragon, ghost, dark, steel, and fairy. Skills all have one type. A Demon may have either one or two types. All Demon species have a type combination that is typical for their species, but Delta Demons qualify as Deltas by having a different type or type combination than is typical.

Typing is essentially a property that determines how effective, or ineffective, a skill is on certain types. For example, fire is weak to water, which is weak to grass, which is weak to fire. Sometimes these type weaknesses and resistances do not make much sense ( psychic is weak to bug? ), but, usually they make relative sense. Types are intended to make you think about your team and their move-sets, but characters and Demons are not restricted to only four skills here, nor are they really all that restricted on what moves they can learn and what types they have at their disposal, so typing takes more of a marginal background role.

Characters and Demons do get something called STAB when using a skill that is of the same type they are — this is an acronym for Same Type Attack Bonus, meaning they deal slightly more damage than usual with a skill of their own type. For instance, a Charizard, which is Fire and Flying type, will deal x1.5 damage with fire and flying type moves. This bonus is automatically calculated when using a skill by the Suite, so don't worry about it — though, it does not work for NPC skills at the moment.

If you are unfamiliar with typing, you can use our type calculator page on the forum to calculate type effectiveness.

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