Do you need assistance jumpstarting the ideation process for your duelist?
Do you think your character has engaging abilities but needs some balance adjustments before becoming a proper duelist?
This post discusses starting abilities, and how you might approach creating an ability or powerset in a framework that fits the desired style for your character, as well as leave the door open for creative applications and reasonably balanced interactions in the Duelist system.
These steps can be used but aren’t hard set rules. You can approach ability design from any angle, whether it’s inspired from an image, a weapon, story or concept.
Figure out your goal
This can be decided from any direction:
A special weapon or element, a fighting style fantasy, character archetype, theme you want for their flow of combat, or how their personality affects how they approach combat. Keep in mind how you want your character to feel, for themselves or their opponent in combat.
Reference ideas as needed that you think are cool in other media. Imagine how you consider the character approaching different challenges and how they would solve them combat oriented or not.
You should consider that idea as the seed or skeleton of your goal. Don’t stop at only the first idea for the goal. A thought-out powersystem or moveset considers multiple attributes that make up how they approach combat, from their preferred fighting style or tools they have at their disposal, and the general rules of their ability they will be playing by.
Having a good solid goal gives you something you can use as an anchor point and a guiding light as your progress in your design. Reference back to your original goal constantly so you can make sure you are on track to reaching your goal, so that all the additions you will make are in support of the final goal.
If your goal has evolved over time, make note of your new goal and make sure everything in the current iteration is realigned with that.
Expanding on your core idea
If you have figured out one core part of your goal, what are the supporting parts that help your Duelist realize the essence of that goal?
If you picked an element as your core, then what sort of fighting style fits your idea of how they would use that element, are they bare handed or use a weapon, how does that inform their fighting style? If they have a special weapon, what unique applications of their power does it have?
Consider the themes of your goal
What sorts of conceptual ideas lend themselves to supporting your goal, what are some ideas or concepts that are naturally connected to, or support it. Keep digging and see how many cool ideas could be connected and which ones you like.
Consider the simple idea of your goal or ability from multiple different angles and directions. What are different connections to other ideas or themes that can intuitively interact with the core idea? In what ways can the simple idea can be expanded upon.
To keep things focused, it can also be a good practice to take note of ideas and concepts that specifically do NOT align with the final goal.
Defining your balance:
Once you have solidified the basis of your ability, it’s time to start setting trade-offs, limitations, rules, vulnerabilities and guidelines.
Knowing what things you can and CAN’T do is a good step towards further defining your ability but also help to make sure it’s not overpowered. This can also help make sure the concept isn’t unfocused.
A focused ability that is confident in doing a few things very well is something that can be easily appreciated by the opponent and viewers. This is important because it gives both creators less different things they have to worry about accounting for. It saves time so you can focus on the actual combat and exchange of actions.
This is the same for the viewers of the duel as well. It’s also simply a bit easier for a single focused ability to be considered “balanced” in the Duelist system compared to having a bunch of disparate abilities that can cover a bunch of different weaknesses.
Ultimately you can decide how versatile your ability or abilities can be, but always consider what would be balanced, and that the more things you add, the more things you will also have to balance. More abilities means more things that need to be accounted for in combat for your opponent, or some things simply may not have the bandwidth to receive the highlight they deserve.
Balance can Accentuate Your Character!
Also consider how the tradeoffs in strength of an ability can even elevate your theme. An easy example is a strong character with a hammer. The power in their swings are accentuated by exaggerated buildup and anticipation with their swings and having hefty follow-through when the swing lands.
It may not be considered a weakness outright, but the trade off for strength by sacrificing speed helps EMPHASIZE what the character is good at, and that’s a good point for the focus of the theme you wanted to achieve.
Another easy thing to consider the balance on is natural counters or limitations, like how fire is countered by water. Or Thematic counters with dark type powers being weakened when there is too much light. Or Blood type powers being diluted by water. You can consider these elemental/physical or thematic interactions that negate or weaken abilities as a part of the limitations of your abilities as well.
This can also extend to things like natural limitations imposed by the biology of your character, like stamina/ life-energy and elemental vulnerabilities and how that affects ability usage as well.
Knowing what your ability or character is GOOD at and not good at can really help further define the focus of your ability and further locks in your fantasy. This also helps both creators in the duel figure out what traits of the combat they can emphasize to further sell the fantasy.
In this case this creates interesting decision opportunities for the characters where they look to create the right situations to diminish the natural detriments to their ability so they can increase the advantages of their ability. It’s all about creating the conditions in the ability you give them that sparks your character to think about how they can create an environment where their ability can work at its peak. Limitations can inspire creative ability uses. Sometimes knowing what you CAN’T do, but finding another way of achieving your goal can be more interesting than being able to do everything.
Imperfect abilities can grant some form of give and take and exchange in combat. They create puzzles that both combatants need to work around to find the upper hand, looking to find their advantage while looking to reduce the advantages their opponent has over them; that’s part of the fun.
So you know you can’t have Everything, Everywhere, All at once.
There are many ways to create different kinds of tradeoffs, weaknesses, limitations.
You can always create balance within the Duelist system even for very powerful abilities. Common balance tools that can be used include giving cooldown timers, or requiring the consumption of a resource that is not easily replenished.
Maybe a big special move has a charge up time, or has specific conditions that needs to be met like having them give or receive a set amount of damage. Perhaps the big ability can only be used for a short duration, or at an increasing cost with each use or the longer it is used. Other ideas include their ability making them overheat or cool down too much, or there is a large stamina cost to their ability or it drains the spirit energy.
Practice A lot
Make a few dummy runs, make a bunch of OCs duelists, or abilities.
Your first one or even your 20th one always presents something new to learn from. It doesn’t have to be perfect.
You will discover what you like and get better at designing balanced ideas for the Duelists system over time just like with animating, writing, and drawing.
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