The Mario RPG timed attacks become second nature after a while, when your muscle memory takes over.

Paper Mario (N64) took care of that problem by letting you upgrade your shoes and hammer, and each of the shoes and hammers had different timings that you'd have to re-learn from scratch.

It actually was a good idea, making the game temporarily harder until you got used to the timing again after ten or so battles.

Still Buckley22 - just changed my screen name.........

Thanks everyone for your input - given me plenty to think about....

Thaumaturge: In regards to "regions", then yes this was also going to be my intention. It would take the place of what would traditionally be the damage dice. So for attacking a "perfect" would be a crit (say, x2 max damage) then the damage would fade off either side of the centrepoint. For defence, a "perfect" would immediately allow a counter attack, then damage mitigation would again drop off either side. Something like that anyway. I've done something similar before in a text based C++ cricket game, so the maths behind it is pretty simple for me.

Kseh: I agree, at a macro level you expect randomisation to balance out - so the tactics err on the side of increasing the averages in your favour. I meant more in the "I'm using my most powerful attack, I really want it to hit!" kinda way. Your point about the players reaction skill is very true though - a further question then: a dice roll (say a d20) is always random in the same range. However, player skill can plateau at different levels, so in this instance altering the range at which the natural variation of reaction time falls. It's the equivalent of getting a static numerical bonus to your dice roll based on skill (so a skilled player would be hitting at d20+10, whereas a lesser player, just +1). How would you best compensate for that? Fold mechanics in to allow "better" players to progress at lower levels, and allow "lesser" players to grind their stats and gear up to a position where they are hitting similar numbers to the "better" players??

Servant: I'll check out that Mario gameplay - sounds like there's lots of ideas to consider in there

Thanks again

However, I can foresee a few issues with this in terms of player skill progression, possibly slowing things down, balancing problems, maximum reaction speed....etc etc. Obviously, I don't know how impactful (or not) this might be, so was hunting for some discussions that might have already been had online.

To me a dungeon crawler is more of a tactical game than an action game, and it's one of the reasons I play them (along with other types of strategy/tactical games). If I was playing such a game and I discovered it had skill testing mechanisms, I would just stop playing immediately. This is because I have terrible reaction times and timing, and am extremely uncoordinated. I do not get better with practice and only get frustrated when games require me to do certain things at certain times.