The Battle System

When two characters, or two groups of characters (or one character and one group... or whatever), decide to resolve their conflicts with combat, battle mode begins. The combatants will trade attacks in attempt to reduce the HP (Vim Points) of the other team to 0; a character whose HP reaches 0 is rendered unconscious and can no longer take any actions in battle, but some items and abilities can revive these "dead" characters before the battle ends. Therefore, the battle does not end until all the members of one team are reduced to 0 HP, at which point it is impossible for any of them to revive each other because none of them can take any action, and they receive a Game Over, leaving the opposing team victorious. The opposing team will be awarded with a number of experience points (or XP) determined by the difficulty of the battle (though team members who are "dead" when the battle ends will not receive XP), and will also have the opportunity to loot the unconscious bodies of their foes in order to steal any items that they were carrying.

The battle is divided into turns, during which each character may normally take one action. Each turn is divided into four phases, which occur in the following order: Player Phase, Partner Phase, Enemy Phase, and Other Phase. During the Player Phase, each of the Player Characters may take one action, but they may act in any order; the same goes for each of the other three phases, but for the appropriate groups of characters. Partner Characters are non-player characters who are assisting the player characters; Enemies are the opponents of the players and partners; and Other Characters are not assigned to either team and may attack any of the other characters (even other Other characters), but are generally people who the players and partners are trying to protect, in which case they may typically do nothing or heal the players with items. The end of the Other Phase is also when certain extra effects occur, such as those tied to Weather Conditions or things like Bobbery's time bombs. Often, there are no Partners or Other Characters, so their Phases will be skipped over. In some boss battles, the first turn skips the Player and Partner Phases and begins with the Enemy Phase.

Although Partner characters are helping out the player characters, they are not targeted by multitarget actions directed toward the player team—so for example, if a player character used an attack that granted a Stat Increase to his or her entire team, this would only apply to all of the players, not the Partners; and if an enemy used a multitarget attack on the players, the Partners would not be hit. The Partner Team may be targeted by multitarget actions, in which case all of the Partners will be affected, but none of the players will. The Other Team is similarly separate from the other three teams, but this is more obvious since they may not be directly helping the players.

During their Phase of each turn, any character has the following five options, of which they must choose one. Prior to this, a character may change their equipped weapon, or simply unequip the currently equipped one, for defensive purposes against the Weapon Triangle, but using a weapon to attack will equip that weapon (and using an unarmed attack will unequip any weapons), which will then remain (un)equipped until the character's next turn. The five turn options are:

Turn/Phase Effects on Status Conditions

Status Problems and Status Benefits are typically measured in turns; the number of turns that an effect lasts (which varies depending on the inflicting item or ability) is reduced by 1 every time a complete turn passes, which means that the Phase returns to whatever Phase it was when the effect was initiated. So:

In the above scenario, the count is changing on the Player Phase. But:

In this case, the count is changing on the Enemy Phase, even though it still applies to the player character. If the count still changed on the Player Phase, then, if the enemy Paralyzed the player for 1 turn, the count would fall from 1 to 0 on the next Player Phase, meaning the player was never Paralyzed during the time they could actually act, and the Paralysis did the enemy no good whatsoever. So while this all may sound confusing at first, it's used to make sure that the turn count applied will actually be relevant for that many turns, e.g., if a character is Poisoned for 3 turns, you can expect them to be hurt by the Poisoning 3 times, whether they're a player character, an enemy, or whoever. (Paper Mario and Bug Fables both had issues with this, where a listed number of turns meant something different when applied to a player character than an enemy.) On the other hand,

The player prevented the enemy from doing any damage by using the Metal Cap—but Invincibility also raises a character's attack by 10, yet the player did not get to utilize this before the effect wore off. How could we solve this one? It's actually quite simple: have one player use the Metal Cap on a different player, before that other player executes their attack. In this case, what appears to be a kink in the system is actually an intended piece of strategy. The same could probably be said for how the turn counts rolled over in PM and BF, but whatever—this is how I'm doing it.

Character Positioning

Arpeggio removes most of Paper Mario's positioning-based strategy due to being designed for use in a non-visual medium, where positioning is not as obvious to the players as it is on a video screen. However, apart from the normal character position of just kind of standing around somewhere, there are two possible alternate positions: characters who are flying (this is much like Paper Mario) and characters who are currently burrowing underground (this one is taken from Bug Fables). Along with some characters being able to achieve these (de)elevated positions naturally, they can be temporarily granted to anyone in the form of Status Benefits.

When a non-flying character targets a flying character, the attacker can use projectile attacks to reach the airborne target, but if melee attacks are attempted, these will always miss if the attacker's Platform field stat is lower than the target's, the idea being that the attacker needs to be able to jump up to reach the target. This check actually applies even if one flying character attacks another, with a lower Platform stat indicating a poorer flying ability and therefore an inability to catch up to the target. Additionally, attacks of any sort that are inherently low to the ground, such as earthquakes, will always miss any flying target regardless of Platform stats. That being said, attacks that can reach underground, like those same earthquakes, are the only things that can hit an underground target, no matter who has what stats of any kind. The bottom line, then, is that while earthquakes won't work on flying foes, you'll want to keep them handy in case of burrowing ones, as they're even harder to get at. Then again, one underground character can hit another with most any attack, so if you can dig yourself, you don't have to worry much about that.

In Paper Mario, instead of the underground thing, the third possible position was clinging to the ceiling, and such characters were, again, even harder to reach than flying characters, with Mario's jump not even working. This is not considered a standard mechanic in Arpeggio due to the possibility of battling in a location that doesn't have a ceiling, but it can technically be recreated without much effort: the basic idea is for the Maestro to determine the height of the ceiling as measured by the Platform stat, and only characters with enough Platform can reach ceiling-hangers with melee attacks, much as with flying targets. The main difference, carried over from Paper Mario, is that earthquake-like attacks will hit characters on the ceiling, since that gets shaken as well. Damage may dislodge characters from the ceiling and cause them to fall down to either a flying or grounded position, but in Arpeggio this would be determined by the specific enemy, so you'll have to check their sheets (particularly the "Notes" section at the end). Tangential to this conversation is that if the ceiling has a height of less than 9, then flying characters can't fly higher than that and other characters will be able to reach them so long as their Platform stats can at least match the height of the ceiling.

Under more unusual circumstances caused by field obstacles, character positioning may have additional effects on battle, mainly, again, limiting which characters can attack whom. As an example, say the players are in the middle of solving a field puzzle involving a cliff that two of them have high enough Platform stats to scale, but that the third does not. If enemies attack the upper players, then the third, lower player will only be able to reach the enemies with projectile attacks (or for that matter, will only be able to aid their companions with projectile healing/buffing abilities); their melee attacks will be useless in this battle, since they cannot scale the cliff to execute them on the appropriate target(s). On the other hand, any enemy that uses a melee attack on the lower character will, obviously, need to jump down to do so, and if the enemy does not have enough Platform to climb back up, then they will be stuck down there too. Flying characters (be they players or enemies), obviously, can go wherever they please, and burrowing characters might be able to go through the cliff to reach the top; this would depend on whether the Maestro would require a digging-based Unique field ability in order to accomplish this, and possibly other factors such as material within the cliff that is too strong to dig through.

If the lower player is attacked instead of the upper players, then the upper players could choose to remain in their elevated position to avoid enemy melee attacks; since they have high enough Platform stats to get back up, they can use melee attacks on enemies and then return to the cliff afterward. This can all be done in a single turn, but if the cliff is particularly high then Long Fall damage may become involved as it would in the field.

In a callback to Fire Emblem 9, a character at a lower elevation who attacks a target at a higher elevation using a Bow will deal bonus damage, being the same +2 for normal bows or +5 for crossbows that would be dealt to flying characters (this is not doubled when attacking an actual flying character, though), but because characters at a higher elevation are still standing on the ground, they will be affected by earthquakes and other such attacks. An exception can be made if the elevated characters are standing on a free-floating platform, in which case an earthquake would not logically affect them (and this would also apply to characters who are clinging to a ceiling that is not attached to the ground).

Variations on these scenarios can be achieved using other field stats besides Platform—you could even create a psychic barrier that only allows through characters with certain Knowledge, Clever, or Charisma stats. Despite involving psychic powers and people who can leap tall buildings in single bounds, it's all supposed to reflect what would logically happen if the battle actually took place under the field conditions in which the characters find themselves, so do whatever makes sense to you based on your setting. But, unless you intend all of your battles to simultaneously serve as field puzzles, this kind of thing is probably best done sparingly.

First Strikes

As in Paper Mario, a character in Arpeggio may initiate a battle with a first strike. This means that the battle will begin with the character performing the selected attack on the chosen target, following which turns will progress normally—the first strike does not use up the character's turn. Unlike Paper Mario, however, VP or MP costs still apply to first strike attacks.

Fieldwide multitarget attacks will always work if used as first strikes, as will psychic attacks—the former are too difficult to dodge and the latter too difficult to anticipate. However, any other kind of attack will, if attempted as a first strike, miss if the target is not sufficiently surprised in the field. Thus, enemies will often dodge such first strikes if they are executed by a player out of annoyance at the enemy, since the enemy would probably be expecting this; and on the other end, enemy first strikes should be ambushes that are truly unexpected by the players, otherwise the players will be able to choose to dodge.

Bosses do not usually make first strikes since most of them get to go first on the first turn anyway.

Important to note is that first strikes hit before support bonuses are activated. This means that they can bypass enemy defensive bonuses, but will not gain user offensive bonuses.

Player vs. Player Combat

When two teams of player characters battle against each other, then which team's Phase occurs first can be determined in one of several ways. For a friendly competitive battle, the teams can decide civilly between each other. For a less friendly scenario, the team that initiates the battle will get the upper hand—this could mean a first strike, and even a first strike that fails to hit will allow that team's Phase to occur first, but even if no first strike is made, one team will probably be seen as initiating the battle. If all else fails, the Maestro can flip a coin.

In a several-players-versus-one-player scenario, the single player can be seen as a boss who is controlled by a player instead of the Maestro. This means that any of the various rules that apply to bosses (always rewarding 19 XP, being immune to Instant Death, and/or any of the complications mentioned on the "Optional Add-Ons" page below) can be temporarily applied to that player character, but this is not required.

Obviously, instead of "Player Phase" and "Enemy Phase," it will be more like "Team 1 Phase" and "Team 2 Phase," but other than the names and the order, everything is pretty much the same as in any other battle. If any of the player teams have Partner teams, then these Partner teams' Phases will occur after the Phases of the player team to which they are partnered, and if any actual Enemy characters or Other characters exist, then their Phases will occur after both of the Player and Partner sets of Phases.

In a somewhat similar fashion to two opposing player teams, the enemy characters may be divided into more than one faction in the event that all of them are hostile enough that counting any as Other characters wouldn't make sense but that they have enough beef with each other that they might attack each other instead of the players. The reason that this is usually not done is to allow the players to hit all enemies with multitarget attacks; having multiple enemy teams means that only one team will be hit by a given multitarget action. Theoretically, even the Partner and Other teams could be subdivided as well, although the only time this would be particularly necessary would be if some of the Other characters are being hostile toward the players but other Others are vital for the players to protect. Aside from situations like this, or something like the three-team brawl on Yoshi's Island in Super Mario Bros. Z, for simplicity's sake it's best to stick to the established four-character-type system.