Part 93: General Mechanics: How the hell do you manage to buff guarding?

General Mechanics: How the hell do you manage to buff guarding?

Now, there are a lot of little details in how VFD runs under the hood, and I'd rather have it all in one place rather than sprinkle it in all across the LP.

Priority

Priority in VFD is... strange. Instead of a standard 1-2-3-etc tier system, we instead get:

7
2 (EX boosted action)
3
4
5
1 (Standard action)
6

Its thematically fitting to have 7 be the best possible speed tier, I guess?

Stat Changes

• NEW: Buffs/Debuffs now directly affect stats, rather than final damage.

Now, I've mentioned this change a number of times so far, but what does it mean, exactly? What makes this small change so impactful?

Well, in the 2020s, buffs/debuffs got applied at the very end of damage calculation. As an example: if we threw a 250 ATK hit against a 150 DEF enemy, we'd get 250 - 150 for 100 damage. Add in a 30% damage boost, and that bumps up the result to 100 * 1.3 = 130 damage. Pretty decent, right?

In VFD, those changes are now calculated before damage. So suddenly instead of the ending 100 damage getting boosted, we're having our 250 ATK getting that 30% boost for a grand total of (250*1.3) - 150 = 175 damage. That's more than double the bonus from 2020 from a single buff! Now imagine how devastatingly powerful something like Samurai's Motionless or Psychic's Concentrate (2.5x damage increase!) would be under this system.

And this works in reverse too, as it lets defense buffs cut damage by a much larger chunk. Combine it with attack debuffs, and suddenly it becomes possible to make enemies plink against you for 1 HP.

I'd say out of all the changes VFD made behind the scenes, this is the one that causes most of the game's power creep.

Items

• NEW: Items now have a priority level of 3.
  
• Edit: Items do not give priority, instead they give a x2 Speed multiplier.

This was the only change they needed to completely upend the game's action economy. No more worries about someone needing a heal getting sniped before an item can get tossed. No more reviving a guy only for the boss to use an AOE and instantly kill them again. Priority just gives items so much safety that the only way for someone to die is if you either intentionally go for a risky play, or enough damage gets piled on to one person to kill them from full.

e: Future Bisby here. Araxxor dug into the code again after I noticed some inconsistencies at the end of the game, and it turns out that items just make you go really fast, but a big enough gap can still let an enemy go first. It literally only matters in the post-game, however.

Critical Hits

• NEW: All attacks can now crit, not just normal attacks and specific skills. The base crit rate is 5% for all players and enemies.
  
• All player crits deal 1.5x bonus damage. Rush Shot is the sole exception, dealing 1.1x damage on a crit.
  
• Enemy crits deal 1.25x damage.

This one is a bit of a double edged sword, as while it lets you nail an enemy with a crit on your biggest moves, it also means they can do the same thing to you. The devs also made one of their very few nerfs to go along with this, as most crit chance boosters are toned down to avoid making it trivial to hit a 100% crit rate.

Guarding

• Guarding has a priority level of 3.
  
• Guarding reduces damage taken by 50%.
  
• NEW: Guarding reduces ailment and debuff infliction chances by 50%.
  
• Using Exhaust when Guarding boosts everything to 75%.

Hey, fun fact: in the 2020s the only way to prevent an ailment from landing was to use equipment to block it. There were no way to prevent debuffs, period. VFD just lets you do both with an entirely free action.

Turns out that that's how you buff guarding.

Healing

• Items heal for a fixed amount of LIFE.
  
• All healing skills get a bonus equal to (MAT * 0.1).
  
• Using Exhaust boosts healing by 2x, but does not affect revival items or skills.

Using EX-boosted heals has far less importance now, considering items have priority.

Status Ailments

• Burn: Deals damage on every action. Reduces ATK, MAT, DEF, and MDF by 10%.*
  
• Freeze: Deals damage on every action. Reduces SPD by 90%.
  
• Bleed: Deals damage every turn. Base damage increases by 20% after the first turn, then significantly less for every turn after.
  
• Poison: Deals damage every turn.
  
• Curse: Deals backlash damage when the unit attacks an enemy.
  
• Sleep: Unit cannot act. Unit suffers +20% bonus damage and wakes up upon being hit.
  
• Paralysis: Unit has a chance of having their actions negated.
  
• Blind: Unit suffers a negative modifier to accuracy.
  
• Stun: Unit moves last for this turn only.
  
• Null Action: Unit cannot act.
  
• Downer: MN costs are doubled.
  
• Hack: Required to use an Agent's hacking skills. Has a chance to cancel the target's actions.
  
• Hack Weakness: Odds of an Agent's Hack succeeding are boosted. Infliction rates are increased by 2.2x if Hack Weakness is inflicted by a TROY, or 1.8x if inflicted by an Agent's Buddy Skill.
  
• G-Depth: Required to use God Hand offensive moves.

_{*There is one exception to this.}

So, I've already gone over Burn and Freeze a bunch, but I'd like to point out that Stun is now even more worthless, as Freeze effectively acts as a multi-turn version of it. Poison has also become the worst DoT, as Venom Boost has been entirely pulled from all classes. I guess that's just a bit too much power for the players to have.

Exhaust

• Damage dealt is multplied by 1.5x.
  
• Guarding reduces damage and infliction rates by 75%.
  
• Healing is multiplied by 2x.
  
• Attacks can never miss, unless the target is jumping.
  
• Ailments have their infliction rates multiplied by 2x.
  
• NEW: All actions have a priority level of 2.
  
• Escaping a fight is guaranteed.
  
• EX Skills are usable.

Hey, noticed that one change? Before, EX would only give you max speed for that priority tier. Now, EX makes you Go First, without exception.

EX Gauge Gain

• All effects can stack, aside from LF lost breakpoints.
  
• Multihit attacks give EX for each hit that lands.
  
• Being targeted for an attack gives 1% EX.
  
• Being targeted by ailment infliction gives 1% EX, even if the ailment is blocked.
  
• Taking a hit will gives a varying amount of EX based on how much LF was lost:
  
• -Less than 25% gives 1% EX.
  
• -Between 25% and 50% gives 2.5% EX.
  
• -Between 50% and 75% gives 5% EX.
  
• -Losing over 75% LF in one hit gives 10% EX.
  
• Normal attacks (except from Agent) gives 2% EX. Agent gets 1.5% on each hit, up from 1.1% per hit with Gun Trickster.
  
• Skills increase EX by their own amount.
  
• Mind Boosters add 2.5% EX with every attack. Every hit on a multihit attack will give this bonus.
  
• NEW: You can now get a 2nd Mind Booster, these stack for a total of 5% EX per hit.

Two Mind Boosters. Two. Mind. Boosters. Being able to get 5% EX a hit, every hit is exactly as nuts as it sounds. The devs clearly agree, as Cyclone Dance actually has a hidden property that halves EX gain, otherwise two Mind Boosters would make it give 70+% EX in a single turn!

Pre-emptive attacks and Ambushes

• There is a base 5% chance to get a pre-emptive attack.
  
• If this chance doesn't succeed, and you have an Agent with Surprise Hunt, Surprise Hunt is rolled.
  
• If Surprise Hunt fails, there is a 2% chance of getting ambushed.
  
• If Surprise Hunt is at level 3 or above, ambushes are negated.
  
• If the enemy fails to get an ambush, the battle begins normally.
  
• You can only get a pre-emptive against a dragon by walking into their back, Surprise Hunt cannot override this.
  
• A dragon can only get an ambush by walking into your back, Surprise Hunt at level 3 and above negates these.
  
• Boss battles always start on even ground.

This is much the same as 2020, but having numbers on hand is always nice.

AUTO Skills

• Start of battle AUTO skills have a 25% activation rate, compared to 35% in the 2020s.
  
• Only one start of battle AUTO skill can activate. If multiple roll to activate, one is picked at random and the others are cancelled.
  
• NEW: Mid-battle AUTO skills with a 100% activation rate, however, no longer interfere with any other mid-battle AUTO skills.

A small change, but it means stuff like Samurai's Blade of Rage can go off at the same time as any other AUTO.

EXP Scaling
If a party member is underleveled, the game will boost their EXP gains to let them catch up to the rest of the party. The scaling works by comparing the average level of all enemies in a battle against each party member, and increasing the gains of anyone that qualifies. The EXP boost tiers are:

• 4 levels or less: 1x EXP
  
• 5-9 levels below: 1.5x EXP
  
• 10-19 levels below: 3x EXP
  
• 20 levels below: 5x EXP

This is almost identical to 2020's tiers, (2020-II is bugged and only gives 1.2x EXP between 3 and 9 levels below, everything else gives normal EXP) with the slight change of the first boosted tier starting at 5 levels below instead of 6, making it kick in a bit sooner.

It is indirectly buffed, however, from the mere existance of the second party. In all prior 7th Dragon games, you're not really encouraged to create new party members unless you really don't like how a class ended up, so the odds of you ever noticing that EXP scaling exists, let alone taking advantage of it, are pretty much nil. Here? Team 1 is already around level 16, so Team 2 is going to start with that x3 bonus, making them shoot right up to Team 1 in a blink and giving the player far more choices in strategy with zero effort involved.

Casual Mode
The difficulty mode can be set at the start of the game, and can now be changed at any time, even in dungeons. Casual Mode slightly reduces** the stats of all enemies.

_{**There is one exception to this.}