Item Tiers, Rising Action, Limit Break and Luck

This is made in association with my main page for the Orchold project
http://gamedesignproj.blogspot.com/2013/06/orchold.html

Item Tiers

In Orchold, there are essentially 3 planned "Tiers" for non-unique items.

Basic Items

Basic items are the base for the item type.

Masterwork Items

These are better made versions of the basic items.  I used to have them give a to-hit bonus, sometimes a defense bonus and a good scaling bonus to damage, but I feel like this is too much of an improvement over regular weapons. 
Therefore I'm looking at what is better for masterwork weapons?  Should I give them +1 to hit +1 defense or +Skill to damage?

Magic Items

This is the top tier item without delving into ruins to find legendary stuff (which would all be uniquely crafted) for your heroes.  So far I'm leaning towards giving magic items +1 to hit, +1 defense and a bonus to damage.  If the Masterwork item has a +Skill to damage, then magic items probably wouldn't do more damage then masterwork, just add the +1/+1.  If masterwork items already give the +1/+1 I'd probably give magic items a flat bonus to damage, so as to not make them completely broken in the hands of skilled heroes who would be wielding them. 

Rising Action

Here's a number of ideas I've thought about while browsing the inter-webs to deal with how combat winds down, or to just make things more interesting.
Basically in a regular combat, both sides are going to lose troops, which leads to a loss in damage output per turn, which leads to the battle drawing on in the later stages of the fight.

Note that rising action of any kind adds another level of complexity to the game, which is not necessarily a good thing.  

Escalating Action:

This method is pretty simple, basically all units on the map get a buff every turn that passes granting them a small bonus to hit and damage.  This bonus stacks with previous turns and probably will cap out at a bonus of + 30% to hit and damage.

Desperation:

This method is that whenever a unit dies, all units on it's side get a buff to hit and damage, possibly proportional to the number of troops that side had in total (aka a bonus when 10% of their troops die or w/e).

Limit Break:

This is an alternate idea which isn't exactly in the same category, but is worth mentioning none the less.  Firstly limit break would not be available in all battles, only in specifically hard boss battles.  Secondly limit break would only happen a tiny handful of times, perhaps only once per hero if I decide to do it on a hero by hero basis, or twice per campaign if I decide to do it on whole party basis.

How limit break would work is when all the heroes in the party have been taken to half health or below, the hero that can limit break (or all of them if I do that) would gain an immediate level up mid combat and gain an ability that is far beyond the available list of abilities allowed to them at that point -> either it could be high on their list of available skills or it could be a hand crafted ability for the hero.  They would also gain an immediate heal of 25% of their maximum health.  They would however not get a level up at the end of the fight.

If a character goes through their limit break fight without activating the limit break, they gain the super level up (special high level power) at the end of the fight instead of a regular level up. 

Luck:

Luck is concerning to me because almost all of my formulas used for combat scale well up to infinity for factors such as to hit, defense, damage and armour.  However my current formula for luck sets it as the maximum % chance that the character will be hit, or the minimum chance that the character has of hitting an opponent, which, obviously will start causing problems with numbers over 100.

My idea to make luck scale to infinite heights like other numbers is to allocate a certain portion of an attack that's based on luck -> say 10% for regular attacks and 20% for critical hit calculation and divide that between the attacker and defender depending on how much luck they have. 

Here's some stats for attacks that this would effect

Attacker Luck	Defender Luck	Old Formula To-Hit	New Formula To-Hit	Old Formula Critical hit	New Formula Critical hit
2	6	2% to 94%	2.5% to 92.5%	4% to 76%	5% to 85%
20	60	20% to 40%	2.5% to 92.5%	40% to -140%	5% to 85%
5	7	5% to 93%	4.2% to 94.2%	10% to 72%	8.3% to 88.3%
15	10	15% to 90%	6% to 96%	30% to 60%	12% to 92%
5	0	5% to 100%	10% to 100%	10% to 100%	20% to 100%
15	0	15% to 100%	10% to 100%	30% to 100%	20% to 100%

 
Note that if I do this, I might make an archer skill that doubles this luck threshold for them -> meaning archers (who can be somewhat luck based) could have 20% of the attack determined by luck and 40% of their critical hits determined by luck. 

Initiative order options

This is in association with my main post about Orchold
http://gamedesignproj.blogspot.ca/2013/06/orchold.html



There are a good number of ways initiative has been done in turn based games, here are a few ideas We've been considering for this game:

Method 1: Team 1 moves, then team 2 moves:

This method is pretty straightforward and easy for new players to pick up, it is also allows the player to move as many troops as they desire each turn with ease.  It however cannot reward a high initiative nor give units buffs/debuffs to initiative without giving more or less actions in a turn. 
This method also either gives the player a large advantage (if they move first) or a large disadvantage (if they don't).  Thirdly, it's not exactly natural/realistic.

Example game using this method: Fire Emblem

Method 2: Each unit rolls initiative individually, and acts on its own personal turn

This method is very simple, rewards units appropriately for having a good initiative and is extremely flexible in terms of giving units buffs or debuffs to init, but is unwieldy if a player doesn't want to move a large number of their troops -> having to end each unit's turn individually. This method can allow units to delay until before or after any other unit, to allow the player to set up powerful combinations to unleash on an enemy, or to take turns as quickly as possible to cut down foes before they can get a chance to act. 

Example game using this method: Radiant Historia (with a slight twist)

Method 3: Each turn, the player (or opponent) chooses X number of units to move

This method is simple and allows the player choice, and is a method that essentially begs the player to weigh each move and make sure they make the best choice.  It however is unwieldy, not granting bonuses for initiative, not scaling well to larger scale battles and often results in a number of units sitting around for numerous turns doing nothing, very unrealistically (have you ever seen someone just standing around in the middle of a battle for an extended period of time?). 

Example game using this method: Chess

Method 4: Each unit group rolls initiative individually, then initiative proceeds similar to method 2.  

 The difference between this and method 2 is that in method 2, if there were 4 footmen on the human's team, they would all roll initiative and act separately.  In this method only one roll is made for all 4 footmen, then the human player can choose to move all 4 of the footmen when it comes to their initiative.  This is a slightly more complex initiative idea, but still remains fair and rewards high initiative units with acting first and/or more often then low initiative units, but it's hard to grant specific units bonuses to initiative -> if only 1 of those footmen gets a +5 bonus to init, he would have to break off and create his own group, if 1 of the others got hit with a slow for -3 init/turn, they would also have to break off.

Example game using this method: Dungeons and Dragons (Although it officially uses method 2, it usually boils down to using this for all the groups of NPCs)

Method 5: Each unit rolls initiative individually, then groups of like initiative rolls are put together, allowing them to be moved in any order

There would be a finite number of initiatives that could be rolled, such as all integers between 1 and 8, when it comes to the next number, the player could move any/all units at that initiative in any order or individually/group delay their actions to a later initiative number.   This keeps granting bonuses units with good initiative, while remaining flexible to buffs/debuffs, and gives the player the option to quickly end to turn of a number of units at the same time.  With keeping the number of initiatives that could possibly be rolled finite, it should scale up to larger battles well. 

Sorry guys, no example game with this, I made it up myself and haven't yet found a game using it. 

Please discuss, I'd love to hear your opinions on what would be best.