Hello survivors! Let’s dive today into our fighting system, one of the new features for Dead In Vinland.
Let’s start by the basics.
Dead In Vinland proposes a turn-based combat system, opposing up to 6 characters (3 vs 3). We designed our fights in order for them to be tactical, but quick. It was important that they don’t break the rhythm of the game, since you will have many things to think about in the management part.
The battle takes place on a small grid with back and front rows: each party has its side and each character has its associated line and the skills target characters on specific rows (or on any row). Characters acts one by one considering their INITIATIVE.
This row system is dynamic, meaning that a front row exists only if there is actually at least one character on the front row, “protecting” his comrades, if there’s no front row, your characters could be hit by any skill!
Each character has Action Points each turn, which he can spend to activate skills, or move. You’ll need to find the optimal use of the Action Points pool of your character to success.
Every character can switch row using 1 Action Point.
End your turn without spending all your Action Points grants you one AP for the following turn.
The battle ends when all characters on one side lose all their Health Points.
Note that we separated the injury state bar that you have during the game from the actual HP of a fight. Consider fights’ injuries to be short-term, and injury bar to be long-term. When a character loses all his/her HP, he is Knocked Out.
The HP are divided into 2 rows: above 10 and under 10.
Above 10 are “armor” HP. You can lose them all you want, it won’t have any effect on your injury state. But if your HP go below 10, for each HP lost, the character will gain some injury after the battle ends. Obviously, 100% injury means the character’s death!
Each playable character has a specific Battle Class and a Passive Ability. There are 5 Battle Classes, and each class has a specific purpose in battle
· Warrior: Pretty balanced fighter, works best in the front row
· Protector: Can shield their weaker allies
· Shooter: Damage dealers, in need of protection ; can also reach enemy back rows
· Mystic: Can buff and debuff
· Civilian: Disrupts the flow of the battle with their chaotic skills (row-changing, large damage range…)
The Battle Class determines the set of 5 activable skills the character has in battle.
They will also have a Passive Ability, which is independent from the Battle Class. It acts as a modifier to their behavior. Those different combinations mean each character will have its unique playstyle in battle.
In addition to all these set characteristics, some dynamic aspects of the characters (e.g. stats) are affected by their state in the camp.
So, let’s dissect a battle skill.
Inside a row, a skill can be set to target 1 CHARACTER, ALL CHARACTERS or 1 RANDOM CHARACTER & can be limited to target another character on a specific row (only front, or only back), or target ANY row.
Example: “Sniper Shot” can hit any enemy in any row…While “Hit n Run” can hit a RANDOM enemy in the Melee row.
Beside attacks, we also have buffs and debuffs which can change any parameter of the character with gain bonus ranks for ACCURACY and POWER rolls, but also for CRITICAL chances, AP, Initiative, …etc.
We made the choice to exclude HEALING skills from our game, for several reasons. It breaks immersion, we can’t imagine our characters taking time to magically heal themselves during an ambush in the woods… But more importantly, it would in the end artificially drag the length of the fights, and we most certainly don’t want that. As said our combats are designed to be tactical but quick and not the flow of our core management survival gameplay.
That’s it for now for our fighting system! See you next time for the following post on our secondary characters!