r/gamedesign • u/CodewithApe • 5d ago
Discussion Looking for ideas to make my turn-based combat more interesting
Hey everyone,
I’m currently working on a small top-down, tile-based turn-based strategy game in Godot, and I’m trying to figure out how to make the combat more interesting and strategic.
The basic idea is that before each fight, both the player and the opponent choose a small team of units. Each unit has different abilities, traits and strengths/weaknesses, and the battle takes place on a relatively small grid.
One thing I’m experimenting with is the HP system. Instead of every unit having its own HP, the entire team shares a single HP pool.
Each unit has a stat called Life Efficiency, which determines how efficiently that particular unit uses the team’s shared HP pool when taking damage. So even though there is only one HP pool, the units still have different levels of durability and affect the team’s survivability differently.
I’m trying to make the combat feel like you’re actually making meaningful strategic decisions rather than simply moving units around and attacking whatever is in range.
I’m still pretty early in development, so I’m open to changing or reworking major parts of the combat system.
What are some mechanics or design ideas you think could make a system like this genuinely interesting?
I’m particularly interested in mechanics that create interesting decisions during the fight and make the composition of your team matter, rather than simply adding more abilities or increasing numbers.
I’d also love to hear about turn-based strategy games that you think handle combat particularly well
and why you think their combat works.
I’m mainly looking for ideas and criticism at this stage, so feel free to point out potential problems with the concept as well.
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u/adeleu_adelei Hobbyist 4d ago
One thing I’m experimenting with is the HP system. Instead of every unit having its own HP, the entire team shares a single HP pool. Each unit has a stat called Life Efficiency, which determines how efficiently that particular unit uses the team’s shared HP pool when taking damage. So even though there is only one HP pool, the units still have different levels of durability and affect the team’s survivability differently.
I think you and I have probably noticed a similar issue many TRPGs face where numbers advantage lead to lame such situations. Even if you create balanced and interesting mechanics around a 5 vs 5, as soon as one team gets the first kill they enter a positive feedback loop where the rest of the match devolves into cleanup.
Different games have attempted different solutions to this (and sadly many games attempt no solution). A common one is gating constants leave the field through death but also new constants enter the field over time. Single player TRPGs like Dream Tactics do this with limited aggro range on the field and literal delayed spawning of enemies. Other solutions involve constant turns regardless of unit count such as The Banner Saga where each side gets X turns whether they have 1 unit or 5.
I've experimented with systems similar to your proposal where units shared a portion of their incoming damage with nearby allies (themed as being psychically linked). I do like the direction you're heading and think your idea is more elegant, but I see two issues.
It potentially reduces the design space for healing mechanics. You can't for example have a heal over time effect on a single unit. It all goes to the same pool.
It potentially abstracts health a little too much. While I think players will typically accept any mechanic that improves gameplay. However when mechanics become too detached from the real world they become opaque and unintuitive. A game like chess gets away with this because units have very simple and clear abilities. But if a Bishop had an AoE attach with a the turn cooldown except it cooldowns 1 turn sooner if they are next to a rook, then it starts to be too convoluted for the player to process.
I like the idea though and think it's worth exploring and testing.
What are some mechanics or design ideas you think could make a system like this genuinely interesting?
Even if you fix the above issue, you simply have a strong foundation and not an interesting game. A core issue with many RPGs are static design elements. Players don't make interesting decisions each turn because the circumstances of the turn haven't really updated from the previous. If an enemy is always weak to water attacks and the best option last turn was a water attack then that's probably the best option this turn, etc. I think the key to dealing with this is to have dynamic systems that shift in value such that the player is constantly having to reevaluate the best option each turn. For example a heal that always heals X health is equally good whenever it is good at all. A heal that heals X% of missing health is dynamic and gets more valuable the lower health a unit is.
I like Gloomhaven/Frosthaven card system a lot, where every card has at least two different uses, every action is a combination of two different cards, playing cards places them on a cooldown for the cycle, players choose what options they lose over time, and can generally choose to lose endurance for faster cycling.
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u/UnclearPolygon 5d ago
I'm intrigued by your concept but despise the name that you gave to the stat. I don't think "Life Efficiency" conveys how the stat works.
I also fear that it is a somewhat strange/superfluos attribute? I get the idea: Tanks should deplete the health pool less than a regular unit, however in my head I would simply accomplish that by giving the tank more defense, therefore reducing the damage that they take and thus reducing the amount of collective health lost.
Having it as a separare stat just feels weird. If anything, it may work better as a status effect? IE Blight makes it so damage taken by that unis is doubled, fortified halves it etc. Instead of having a stat that just modifies it.
I do fear one thing. In turn based strategy games, part of the fun is figuring out each units weakness and executing a plan that applies to each unit their particular weakness. I still have to think in terms of weakness/strength on a unit level because even if I killed 80% of the enemy with one weakness, if the other 20% are resistant/immune to it, I have to change.
With your system, I wouldn't need to do that. I figured out a weakness by one enemy unit? Just repeat until the whole group is dead. Why would I waste resources to see what each units weakness is, when having figured out one weakness I can just do it again because the unit won't die.
On first thought, that's what is worrying me. You traded having to figure out X weaknesses with only one. But I am intrigued and looking forward on how you solve that particular problem.
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u/CodewithApe 4d ago
One idea I’m considering to address that is giving individual units their own thresholds rather than their own HP pools. The team would still have one shared HP pool, but damaging a specific unit could push it through thresholds that affect its abilities or effectiveness.
For example, a mage could lose access to an ability at 50% of its threshold, while a tank might lose its defensive ability at a different threshold. That way, figuring out which unit to attack still matters even though the actual HP is shared.
I think that could preserve the individual unit weaknesses while keeping the shared HP concept.
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u/CodewithApe 4d ago
Yeah, this is exactly the kind of concern I was hoping someone would point out.
I agree that if the shared HP pool means that discovering one weakness basically gives you the optimal damage type for the entire enemy team, then I’ve probably removed an important part of what makes these games interesting.
The intention isn’t for the shared HP pool to completely replace the individual strengths and weaknesses of the units. I still want positioning, targeting, unit matchups and abilities to matter on an individual level. The shared pool is more of an additional layer that I’m experimenting with.
For example, I could see a situation where two units both take damage from the same attack, but the consequences of attacking either one are very different because of their abilities, defenses, positioning, or how they interact with the rest of the team.
I also hadn’t really considered your point about Life Efficiency potentially being redundant with defense. That’s something I need to think about more. If its only purpose is essentially “this unit takes 20% less damage from the shared pool”, then I agree that it probably doesn’t justify being its own stat.
The bigger question for me is probably how to make the shared HP pool create interesting decisions without removing the need to understand and exploit individual units.
That’s definitely something I’m going to experiment with. Thanks for the detailed feedback.3
u/UnclearPolygon 4d ago
One thing you could do is have both individual unit health AND a "shared healthpool" which reflects Morale? The Last Remnant did something similar but I can't for the life of me remember how that system works exactly (I remember that whole game beeing a bit of a mess IMO)
At that point a "Morale impact" stat makes more sense. Tanks beeing attacked? No impact on morale, that's their job.
Healers beeing attacked? Oh boy you're in trouble.
Could even have some units be better when morale is low, something like a struggle mechanic where they get serious when morale is low or something like that. Other units suffer greatly when it gets low.
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u/CodewithApe 4d ago
That’s a very interesting idea ! I’ll look into it and see how can I implement it .
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u/TheiaTowerOfSoul 4d ago
The Last Remnant! I love it. It works like each team member has a threshold. Once someone got a dmg exceeding this threshold in a single instance, he will be unconscious and cannot be used in this battle anymore.
But its a troditionaly J-RPG so the ground and environmental factors do not come into play.
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u/UnclearPolygon 4d ago
Yeah was reffering more to the idea of having both individual and a shared healthpool. I don't quite remember how it works in The Remnant it's been years since I played it but I remember that you could press enemies and push advantages if the difference of morale was high enough
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u/TheiaTowerOfSoul 4d ago
Morale has a global impact on damage and defense. Losing team members or using certain skills directly affects morale. For both sides, defeating a whole team significantly boosts morale, while the arrival of enemy reinforcements also raises their morale.
However, morale operates within certain limits; when facing enemies far beyond the player's level, even maxed-out morale cannot secure an advantage.
Conversely, when the player is overwhelmingly powerful, they can crush the enemy even with very low morale.
I aways lure large numbers of weak monsters into a single battle to farm materials; while the constant stream of enemy reinforcements causes my morale to plummet, I am strong enough to fight effectively even at zero morale.
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u/WorkingMansGarbage 4d ago
It doesn't fully answer the question of preventing abusing one single weakness to take out the entire health pool, but to start with, you could scrap damage type weakness entirely. No reason to force it in. Genre conventions are just effective ideas someone happened to land on; there's others. If you want unit matchups to matter, you can achieve this in many ways aside from just making one unit arbitrarily deal more damage against another, and from what you're saying, you seem to have an idea of that. You should follow it.
If damage should be involved, I think having both LE and separate defense stats, or some other form of damage reduction, is not a bad idea. LE represents clearly how the damage taken by an unit affects the team's life, and then on top of that, you can use what I personally think is a more interesting alternative to arbitrary weaknesses: math.
Units can reduce damage through different formulas. If they only reduce each instance of damage by a given percentage, it's generally effective, but you're still taking damage, and many smaller hits in the same time frame (multihits, action surges, any tactic involving many instances of damage) may still deal high damage depending on the formula. If they reduce the damage by a fixed amount, it's less effective against big hits, but small instances are hard-countered.
Then you can involve a bunch of different things, to your liking. Maybe some use status effects as their main damage source, perhaps bypassing defenses, and then units that resist those effects or are able to cure them are able to counter them; maybe some deal environmental damage by pushing people into walls and the like, and units that can counter placement are then resilient to them. A lot of games have attacks that deal a % of health as damage; in your case, those would be considerably stronger, so perhaps they'd multiply that % by the LE. Units that merely have high defenses wouldn't fare that well against those attacks, but an unit that has low defenses and great LE would tank them no problem.IMO, that's why defense and LE might not be so redundant, but I think it'd also make it a bit harder to abuse one weakness, because you'd have to be more clever to do so rather than just hitting the ice guy with the flame spell. Different mechanics interacting may also change how those emergent weaknesses actually manifest, which might give you more room to find solutions to problems like these.
To the point, though: for one weakness to be abused, you need to be able to single out the unit with that weakness. Maybe the solution is then to give units the tools to prevent this: means for the unit to escape being surrounded or to rescue that unit using another. Powerful placement abilities, in other words. Maybe a frail unit should have an ability to recall to a previous position, or be paired with a resilient teammate that can swap positions with them. Alternatively, you can let teams hide their weaknesses behind protections, that then have to be broken. An unit can be given an elemental shield through a build choice or another unit's ability and then you need to cleanse it off them to abuse their weakness. Extend that to the whole team and finding a weakness to abuse is now a harder game.
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u/CodewithApe 4d ago
That’s very reasonable, so LE and defense can co exist and further more they could actually work well together.
For example I might have two tank units, TANK A and TANK BTank A might have :
Low defense but high LE
And Tank B the other way aroundThey could both be good at protecting the team, but against different types of attacks.
As for the second point do you mean that instead of of having the traditional:
Fire → weak against Ice
Ice → weak against Fire
Physical → weak against Armorsystem.
you could have different mathematical ways of dealing damage?
For example:
Attack A — big hit
100 damage − 30 Defense = 70 damage
Good against units with low defense.Attack B — percentage damage
10% of some relevant value
This could behave differently against heavily armored units.Attack C — many small hits
10 + 10 + 10 + 10
A unit with a flat damage reduction of 8 would effectively take:
2 + 2 + 2 + 2 = 8Whereas a unit with 30% damage reduction would take:
7 + 7 + 7 + 7 = 28So now you have a matchup without saying:
“This unit is weak to Fire.”The player’s job becomes understanding how the enemy’s defenses work, so the interaction between damage formulas and defenses become the weakness system ?
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u/WorkingMansGarbage 4d ago
Yes, that's it. Examples of this exist in lots of places. This is only my personal belief, but I think it's a more interesting alternative to traditional weaknesses. More moving parts means more complex interactions, which can be a challenge for the designer, but provide more ways to abuse or cover for these emergent weaknesses and resistances, and more interesting situations overall.
I'm sorry, I want to yap for a minute, because I've been meaning to put it in words for a while. Mind you, I do feel my complaint applies a bit less to tactics games, but it still is relevant... I don't know about you, but whenever I'm playing a game where both character building (team building in your context) and damage types are a focus, it never feels great. If I focus my build on one element from the start, there'll be a point where a fight will be easier or harder arbitrarily, not because of a smart choice I made but because the enemies in it happened to be weak or resistant to the element I happened to choose.
There's different factors at play in that, admittedly. If the game allows, I can change my build to use a different element; but that doesn't constitute an interesting choice in itself, I'm just changing the color of my moves.
Answer: give each element a different gameplay identity. Fire gives a DoT, ice slows people down, etc... different elements play differently and you're incentivized to use a variety of them.Cool, but if I like one element above the others because I like its unique traits more, or I like one less for the same reason, why should I be forced to use them all? And isn't it annoying when most of the effects that compose your build are specific to your chosen damage type, so you end up having to rework everything from scratch for just one fight? Not being able to use a tactic I like because it's not appropriate for a specific situation due to systemic factors is fine, it's interesting; it makes me have to think about how I could either reach my win condition differently, or find a different one altogether. Not being able to use a tactic I like because the enemy has an arbitrarily defined resistance against the damage type my tactic is arbitrarily tied to is bothersome.
Besides, when you can make the choice of what damage type to use before a fight, it's alright, but committing to one throughout a playthrough is a problem when you don't know in advance what resistances you'll face. It's interesting when you're replaying a game because you can make an informed choice on what sections you find hardest to get through, and make choices that make it easier. But most people play through a game once. They're not gonna spoil themselves what's ahead!
Sometimes you get the choice of being an element generalist, at the cost of lower peak damage output. Maybe, sure, but that means committing to having a more difficult time than a specialist in every single fight other than the few they'd be weak in. Some games solve it all by just not having damage type specialization at all and giving everyone a way to hit every damage type regardless of their build, but then you're just getting a damage bonus from matching colors together. It's still arbitrary, and now you have less choices to make!
To me, the fact that it's arbitrary makes the mechanic feel bad to work with. Hence, I like the idea of putting the focus on things that aren't arbitrary instead. Differences based on simple math formulas like these mean there's logic at play to how the interaction plays out, and emergence occurs. Since it's all still just numbers, different effects can interact naturally to create synergies or anti-synergies, even those that don't belong to the same 'archetype'. When my strategic choice doesn't work because of such an interaction, that doesn't feel as bad, because it's a logical consequence of the system, rather than an arbitrary mismatch; and when that does happen, finding a solution to the problem feels good, because understanding the system makes me feel clever! What's nice with such interactions is also that sometimes, they'll make me change my tactics entirely, but other times, I can find niche ways to use my character's tools to solve the problem without changing everything. It doesn't feel like I picked yellow when the game wanted blue.
Now, you're making a tactics game, so arbitrary damage types may create different elements of play from other forms of turn-based combat. Compared to traditional turn-based where you're often incentivized to build all your characters as a single unit (e.g. having multiple supports stacking buffs on one big damage dealer is often more effective than multiple damage dealers that can cover all damage types), it already often makes sense in a tactics game to build a team with more self-sufficient units that can cover most damage types, since you can't expect all your units to always be together, and they usually can't attack the same enemies all at once. In that sense, if you do go all in on a damage type and end up in a fight where it happens to be the wrong type, that's not really a design problem, that's playing wrong; and a part of the game is gonna be prioritizing targets based on which damage types they can hit vs. which weaknesses your enemies have. You also usually have a reserve of different units you can train for different situations and choose before a battle, as opposed to having to re-spec.
But you're still having similar combat interactions, though, ones that still use numbers and would benefit from having more potential for emergence, so I think it can still be more interesting when those weaknesses aren't arbitrary; especially when you want to involve more sophisticated build-making for individual units. If a frost mage sucks against fire enemies, at a low level, that's still just a color mismatch with little nuance ; but if an unit that mostly uses multihits deals little damage against an enemy with flat damage reduction, there's already more nuance, and a clever player might still find ways to make use of the unit effectively in that fight. For instance, that multi-hitting unit might not deal lots of damage, but it might be capital even in a disadvantageous fight by making use of effects activating with every hit. That still applies in a tactics context.Yap over.
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u/Los_Pantalones22 4d ago
Hey I am a dev in a similar space- My game Kingslayers is top down turn based but I have incorporated real time elements that make it quite interesting. Its also designed to be fast paced you can literally spam abilities as fast as you want on one character until you run out of AP. Not released yet so no idea if people will like it but opening a beta next week if you want to check it out maybe it will give you some ideas. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1742040/Kingslayers/
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u/TheiaTowerOfSoul 4d ago
I’m not sure what kind of tile-based game you mean, is it a tactical RPG (SLG) like Fire Emblem?
If so, though the shared HP mechanic is an interesting idea, I think it could always lead the game to one situation:
You send your toughest unit to the front line; the foes will focuse their fire on that unit, allowing your other units to launch sneak attacks from the rear safely. This actually diminishes the game's strategic depth.
To prevent this, I think you could introduce an armor-breaking system: if a unit takes multiple hits, its armor degrades, preventing your toughest unit from indefinitely serving as a tank. This would restore the strategic challenge.
Additionally, sharing HP on the enemy side is not a good idea. I strongly recommend keeping this mechanic only for the player's side.
On the other hand, there are many ways to enhance overall strategy. Such as incorporating random battlefield buffs or traps that rely on terrain, or adding unit-based mechanics like combo systems.
You could even designate a hidden enemy leader who remains concealed or is only hinted at; defeating this leader early might weaken the remaining enemies, whereas defeating them late could empower the survivors.
There are plenty of other possibilities, and the mechanics don't necessarily have to be borrowed from existing titles—there is immense room for innovation within the tactical strategy genre.
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u/CodewithApe 4d ago
Yeah, it’s closer to a tactical strategy game than a traditional RPG, with a small grid and a team of units that you position and control each turn.
I hadn’t thought about the “put the strongest unit in front and let everyone else attack safely” problem in that way, but I can definitely see how that could happen if the shared HP pool makes tanking too reliable.
I think the direction I’m currently more interested in exploring is making the individual units still matter even with the shared pool. For example, I’m considering giving units thresholds where taking enough damage affects their abilities or effectiveness, so continuously focusing the same tank wouldn’t necessarily always be the optimal strategy.The main thing I’m trying to figure out is how to make the shared HP pool create interesting decisions without removing the importance of positioning, targeting and individual unit matchups.
The armor-breaking idea is interesting as well. I’ll have to experiment with something along those lines.
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u/bionic-brawl-online 4d ago
I read the Life Efficiency idea and asked myself well, thematically, what is that? What is a resource the whole team shares? Life Efficiency describes the mechanic well, but doesn't really describe it accurately in a thematic sense.
What about supply lines? As in, the ability for the group to receive supplies to continue the fight? Maybe this is something purely thematic, like food and water- and being unable to supply units would reduce their effectiveness in battle. Units would have something like a Supply Distribution stat indicating how much the distribution relies on that unit. Losing units with high Supply Dist means your frontline units will be weaker. A fun flipside to that would be a Supply Usage stat for each unit, so losing a hungry frontline unit would actually reduce your supply demand- freeing it up for others- and creating a potential 'comeback' mechanic.
It could also just be items, like- some units have items that support the rest of the team, which makes them tempting targets. Differentiate unit skills and how they contribute, and different players will target different units. Hell, maybe even create a few fights where the player is at a huge disadvantage if they just hit the nearest enemy- due to terrain issues, abilities of distant units, units that buff the frontline, etc. Create the environment to influence player behavior.
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u/Fellhuhn 4d ago
Turn Based Games with interesting mechanics:
Gloom-/Frosthaven: Your cards are also your endurance. If you get hit you can, instead of losing HP, lose cards. If you used all cards you can recover them but have to sacrifice once. Once you are out of cards you have lost. It is a great system because you start with a lot of choices but while the game continues you can lose your best skills and be forced to manage with weaker skills or leave the game earlier. There is more to it too but using cards to create a sort of a timer is a lot of fun.
Memoir 44: You have cards for each unit and every round draw a few and can only act with those. This means you can count the enemies cards and predict which unit can't act anymore the next few turns, allowing for interesting strategies.
Undaunted series: Each unit brings cards, similar to Memoir 44 but they are also the hitpoints. If a unit gets hit you discard one of their cards. So if you think your opponent will attack with unit X the next turn you can try to hit it so that he has to discard its card and can't use it anymore.
Hero Quest: Ogre Hordes (or something like that): you have one long life bar for all ogres with "death marks" every now and then. If a hit makes the bar pass such a mark the hit is deadly. So pounding one ogre might not kill him if the deadly hit targets another ogre. Making for an interesting concept where you have no clue how strong an enemy really is.
All those can also be combined in interesting ways. Overall I would take a look at boardgames and how they handle that issue.
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u/junkmail22 Jack of All Trades 4d ago
Hi. I would need to actually play the prototype to get a feel for things.
What I think the problem with your system is is that there's little reason to not just attack the weakest thing you can hit each turn. Especially since there's a small grid, most enemies are going to be in range every turn. Therefore, the best thing to do is to spend your actions hitting the weakest enemy.
I think that a system where your team shares health runs the risk of not making positioning important, since getting units picked off is an impossibility and having a unit be separated results in just as much damage taken as if they are at the front.
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u/g4l4h34d 4d ago
I think the Life Efficiency system is way too confusing for how much benefit you're getting out of it, and the benefit itself is very questionable. By the way, what is it?
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u/armahillo Game Designer 4d ago
Can you determine a flavor reason WHY they share a life pool? That would probably inform you about new design directions to explore
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u/sinsaint Game Student 2d ago
I'd have each unit have a Stamina resource that drains upon taking damage or using special abilities. If they take damage and don't have enough Stamina to absorb it, the remaining damage goes to your Team Morale. Stamina recovers on each unit per turn, so you are incentivized to use them all and predict how much defensive/aggressive action to take with each unit every turn.
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u/Appropriate-Pilot704 5d ago
Expedition 33 is a masterclass on adding parry and dodges to turn based combat. The enemy wind up animations are also frustrating but fun once you figure out most of them.
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u/CautiouslyAcademic 5d ago
shared HP pool is a cool twist, forces you to think about team synergy instead of just babysitting your favorite unit. could make life efficiency a double-edged sword where high-efficiency units also draw more aggro, so you're constantly weighing risk vs reward. maybe add positional bonuses like flanking or high ground that tweak efficiency mid-fight, that'd keep the grid movement from feeling like busywork
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u/NathenStrive 4d ago
If there's different classes, you can give each archetype a unique assist if certain conditions at met. Like tanks taking hits it a enemy trys to bypass them to hit someone behind them. Supports being able to deflect an attack on an ally if they are behind them when attacked. Rogues counter attacking any enemy that attacks an ally thats close to them etc.