Revision of Battle System Context
Reevaluate the validity of including Psychic Powers. Not to say, “Yeah, get rid of them!” Rather, reword and reset the context of each power and stat through a psychological perspective.
For instance, PSI Shield Alpha would be Seek Cover, which would work on everyone because it’s akin to “Get down!” Taking Cover reduces most forms of fallout because you are not as exposed (could be as much as 75% instead of 50%). That’s right—in lieu of flat-out Damage, you suffer Fallout. You don’t have to suffer direct physical harm.
In vanilla Earthbound, the kinds of harm fall into various camps: Direct, which consists of anything a Shield or Defend Stance can whittle away; Projectile, which bypasses Shield and Defend and is relegated to “Beams”, Yo-Yos, Slingshots, and Firearms; and Unavoidable, which covers Bombs, Bazookas, and Starstorm. Smashes are another variety that might not bypass Defend and Shield, but will break a regular Shield.
There are a few Goods-Oriented forms of Damage like Bottle Rockets, which work best against slowpokes while used by someone wearing a Rabbit’s Foot; Ness’ Psychokinetic Wave works under a similar success rate as does Handbag Straps and Mummy Wraps. Everything else hinges on RNG and Luck, which might as well be considered the game’s “Will Save”, which is something you avoid simply by having mental concentration.
Then you have Freeze which, if you think about it, could be rewired to being entanglement or suffocation-based Damage because Freeze has a lousy chance at Solidifying a Target. Thing is, Freeze can be resisted by a specific stat and, if that is zero, then the option of Freeze pops up when being Spied upon. Fire is another one, which covers not just the PSI but also Dragonite, that checks for someone’s resistance. Then there is Flash, which in the context of Psychic Powers revolves around a D&D “Color Spray” Spell—something that causes an epileptic seizure and thus disorientation, blindness, mania, paralysis, even unconsciousness or possibly death. It isn’t terribly nice to use something that horrific, right? Finally, Paralysis itself, operating outside of the Flash version, posits a chance that your character stops doing anything physical—direct combat or Goods—and instead uses psychic powers and maybe a specialty, if so motivated.
The defense against Sleep and Feeling Strange—the video game equivalents to hypnosis and manic rage—is the starkest piece of Itoi commentary on human experience and existence ever. Want proof? If you equip one of the Pixie/Faerie/Goddess Bracelets, you diminish the defense against Manic Rage and increase the defense against Hypnosis. No joke—check the guide. Seems people’s heads are predisposed towards one or the other, but for whatever reason, all four Chosen Ones seem predisposed towards Hypnosis rather than Manic Rage (at least from PSI Brain-Shock).
This implies a value judgment on people who suffer manic depression, intentional or not, which puts them at the bottom of the human food chain as a result of having the Chosen Ones come from backgrounds of such psychological solidity that they fall prey to falling asleep every single time with Hypnosis. Seriously, that’s a serious issue to consider and one of the main reasons why everything must have a psychological interpretation rather than one where people take physical blows to the face until they get sent to the hospital immediately.
So, replace Freeze with Suffocation (have Body Equipment that explains how it prevents it from happening, like being SCUBA Swimwear). Fire is fine. Explosive power is horrifying even if it isn’t aimed directly at you, so Bombs and Bazookas are fine as is Starstorm. Thunder might as well stay like it is.
For complex tasks such as rewording Flash or Paralysis, remake the status effects, such as remaking Paralysis into Depression and Crying into Debilitated (since it reduces one’s Competency Check). Depression is a crisis of desire, feeling non-compelled to do most things except what you’re good at—but that might not be enough. Getting out of a depressed spell is difficult and would require consultation with a faith healer as much as a traditional clinician. Feeling strange can be reworked as manic, especially if we’re talking about an Earthbound patch that is inherently adult to some degree.
Direct Hits represent virtually everything that is physical, including Firearms (instead of saying Bash, it’s “Assault” or “Fight”). Indirect Hits reflect psychological deterrence, such as a Riding Crop if you’re holding the Dominatrix Ball (feel free to change the actual content of this concept as you like). All the instances of lasers can be defended against, but certain attacks are like hypersonic and wear against a person’s nerves.
Second that, we can remake the Stats.
Why? Because, why not?
Actually, Offense and Defense are too abstract and both are two syllables each. The fewer syllables, the better our comprehension. Fortitude, Constitution, and Health Points are three things that revolve around one stat and one concept, yet we only consider Health Points and nothing else. Easy how that works, right? So, call Offense and Defense Force (how forceful you are) and Nerve (how steeled your nerves are against the sort of mayhem and fallout you are about to suffer through) respectively.
Next, Guts is more like a Strength Stat that Weapons improve, so call it Drive, a psychological upper that comes from holding the right kind of device in your hands; it affects both the likelihood of Smash Hits and the chance of surviving a mortal blow.
Replace Speed with Grace. Grace not only handles initiative in turn-based battle, but one’s ability to dodge an attack or just about anything. Grace is the Reflex Save Stat, for which which several actions fall under.
Replace Vitality with Health. This one’s obvious. HP is just a Heart, as in “Life”, just like The Legend of Zelda.
Replace IQ with Savvy. We all know Intellectual Quotient only covers literacy and logic, and there are other forms of intelligence in the human condition to estimate. Here, it works as prescribed—increasing PSI points (called Vibe) and opening doors to better and better usable Technician’s Gear.
Replace Luck with Will. Seriously, where I come from, there is no such thing as luck.
Conditions should be toyed with. The Homesickness Condition should be a universal experience and easier to treat since it has a one-in-eight shot at negating your battle command. There should be more locations to get Sunstroke by re-branding it as Exhausted, though again, there should be easier ways to treat it when it comes up—say having Healing Alpha come with a 0PP price tag. Getting colds should be “Afraid” and it will do one in four things to you per battle, though your turn might come up anyway. Getting Afraid is horrible, but it can be shrugged off with some help from, again, Healing Alpha (renamed Medicine Alpha).
Getting Poisoned is like getting Bleeding, which siphons Health quickly. Getting Nauseous is infinitely worse because it comes with a loss of Competency. Another thing that bothered me was the ease of recovering from Hypnosis or Sleeping as opposed to Feeling Strange (at least in terms of PSI Healing). But anyway, we’re doing good—there is an Alpha for some basic psychological buffering and Beta for treating actual wounds. Gamma is where we have weirdness happen. The Depression is extremely difficult to shake off, but then we have supernatural effects such as turning to diamond and then spiriting someone back nearby.
If you suffer too much, you break away without orders to do so and end up in the Hospital with a wicked case of the shakes. “Dead Chosen Characters” will be there “in Spirit”, so ghosts don’t need to be taken away; in fact, having them lingering overhead makes for unwieldy movement which hampers attempts to ambush or escape, just like in regular Earthbound. Just knowing your friends might be somewhere very dangerous without your supervision or the comfort of the whole group is meant to be unnerving.
So there you have it: a bunch of weird-ass concepts that most likely will never make the final cut. Figured I’d throw them out there in case anyone could bite.
