Three Design Priniciples for Combat in Ecliptic
25 March 2025
The Tradition of HP in Gaming
In most games, HP is not actually representative of the “health” of any given character. True to its ship combat ancestry, the only hit that matters is the last one. This is both fun and avoids any sort of failure spiral. This tradition’s existence leaves us with the decision to either adhere to it or to subvert it, but no matter our decision, it must be a reasoned decision.
Our GDD states that “the ludo-narrative told in combat is that of a well orchestrated band, clocks and abilities set to go off and inflict maximum damage, a group of three warriors all working together to achieve things greater than themselves.” So, in service to our player fantasy, we will use traditional ship-combat HP logic. I believe as of writing that any sort of punishment for low health will directly interfere with the “Hail Mary” play potential of our Clocks system, as well as slow combat the FUCK down.
“Our game will have equally arbitrary abstractions, they’ll just be our’s”
-Matt Colville in his “Designing the Game” Series
Actually Hitting Shit
Not hitting when you attack is literally so FUCKING LAME. It never feels good and in my not-so-humble opinion it’s the single biggest pain point of most TTRPG combat systems. Failing outside of combat encounters in TTRPGs is exciting and feels fair and is fun to work around. Pure chance being the arbiter of whether some character builds do ANYTHING AT ALL on their turn, or fully waste a class resource and then get to sit quietly for 15 minutes until they can try again and hopefully get luckier is AWFUL. I want to avoid anything even close to that in this game. Ultimately, I think that:
“There should be no pointless events.”
When something happens, it matters. Every attack hits, and if it doesn’t do exactly what it normally should, there’s damn good reason for it, and as designers we’ll try to communicate that reason to the player.
Unique Character Feel
Since we’re an RPG where you don't get to make a character, we should make sure the three you HAVE to play all feel different and good to play. Not samey. Their combat skills and style should feel like they are specific not only to their vague “role”, but also to their personality and stuff. They should help fill each other's gaps a bit, but also each be able to be the main DPS in certain rounds, or the main savior of the party’s threshold levels, etc. This will be reflected in their unique skill tree designs, as we've roughly laid out, their combat abilities, their weak and strong points, their social interactions, and of course, the role they most play into in combat.