Re: Earwax
Okay, so for the sake of argument, here's a boss I built three years ago. Exact numbers don't matter right now, but extrapolate a little bit and you'll see what I mean here. It should be noted that including the main character, you have three three party members. You can swap them in and out (like Final Fantasy X this way) but doing so removes their buffs and takes a turn.
Name: Kamala-Notai, the Dream Shaman
Description: A wizened old man with a long, smooth staff, a headdress made from bones and feathers, and a tiny misty woman perched on his left shoulder
Stats:
Shaman: fairly high HP, bad attack, good defenses vs. all types of damage, fairly low initiative, fairly high magic attack
Spirit Element: fairly low HP, bad attack, fairly low physical defense, very high magic attack and magic defense, extremely high initiative
Note: It is possible to target either the shaman or the elemental in this battle, but there are consequences for the latter on the first three rounds (see below)
Shaman's Attacks
Mystic Chant: raises magic attack by 20 points and grants +10 evasion
Hypnotic Orb: causes one target to fall asleep; has a 10% chance to fail
Troubled Dreams: inflicts a debuff on any sleeping party members which removes 1/4 of their max HP every round until they wake up, or until they die
Lightwarp: has a 10% chance to fail on each target; attempts to hit all targets with a debuff which will cause the Blind status
Nightmare: does large damage to all sleeping targets, but wakes them up in the process
Raise Staff: does not attack, but simply lifts his staff (as noted in the text); armour and magic armour lower by 10; preparation for Void of Eternity
Void of Eternity: does extreme damage to all waking targets, but fails against those targets who are asleep; cancels Mystic Chant buff, thus lowering magic attack by 20 points and removing the 10 evasion buff; armour and magic armour raises by 10-10 after this attack fires
Ether Transfer: drains a modest amount of MP from a target and restores that amount of HP to Kamalla-Notai
Element of Spirit Attacks
Coalesce: lasts for 3 rounds; during those rounds, the Spirit Elemental cannot be damaged in any way, and any skills or spells which target her will simply fail outright; she does nothing else while coalescing
Spirit Link: used only once, and sets up a psychic link with Kamalla-Notai which allows both of them to heal a small amount of HP per round
Dream Haze: cast on both herself and on the shaman, this is a field of spiritual energy which will cause the next person to attack either of them to fall asleep after their attack is finished; this field is disrupted once attacked, which is why she recasts it so often (see below)
Delirium: a debuff cast on all party members which attempts to inflict poison, silence, sleep and confusion; has a 10% chance to fail on each attempted malediction, per character (thus making it unlikely for the entire party of 3 to be afflicted with all three maladies at once)
Mind to Mind: Reaches out to touch the mind of one of the party members at random; this party member will always miss when targeting the spirit or the shaman until the link is broken; the link breaks on its own after Mental Anguish (see below) or after another character damages the spirit
Mental Anguish: does fairly large damage, and targets the victim of Mind to Mind (which means it is possible to fail if that link has been cancelled); after being inflicted with Mental Anguish, the target takes small damage every round and becomes immune to sleep until battle ends or until they die
Psychic Illusions: When the spirit reaches the 15%HP threshold, she will cast this spell. She summons three copies each of herself and the shaman. These copies have a chance to intercept an incoming attack, and if they do, the attacker takes that damage instead, and the illusion perishes. The illusions cannot attack, never fade on their own, and essentially mean that for a short time, the likelihood of actually doing damage to the shaman or the spirit is drastically lowered.
Attack Pattern (shaman)
Mystic Chant, Lightwarp, Hypnotic Orb, Troubled Dreams, Nightmare, Raise Staff, Void of Eternity, skip turn, Ether Transfer, repeat
Element of Spirit Attacks
Coalesce, Coalesce, Coalesce, Dream Haze, Spirit Link, Mind to Mind, Dream Haze, Delirium, Mental Anguish, Dream Haze, Mind to Mind, Dream Haze, Delirium, Mental Anguish, repeat (ignoring Coalesce)
Hard Mode: Psychic Illusions happens at 30% HP instead of 15% HP; if the shaman is killed first on Hard Mode, it will cast Hypnotic Orb three times in a row (once on each target), then cast Nightmare before dying.
Now obviously, this thing will change if and when I ever get a chance to make my RPG and really run with it, but hopefully you can see that there's plenty of complexity here. Make all your chars stay awake, and you're going to take enormous damage. Let them get put to sleep, and obviously they can't react to other stuff, and it lets the spirit element set up and inflict a ton of debuffs. Now obviously, it's killable, and you make a point that time is a good way to exert pressure, but I'd rather exert pressure by employing actual difficulty. Beyond just big damage alone, I mean.
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