Hello, I've been hard at work brainstorming ideas. While I have a pretty solid idea of what the resource bars and stats will be for characters, I have been struggling greatly with deciding the core battle mechanics. I didn't want to continue posting until I had that essential aspect of the game figured out. Luckily after days of frustration, I believe I am finally getting somewhere.

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Somewhere is better than nowhere. So what have you come up with?

Sorry Charlie, battle mechanics are for the next post; I guarantee they'll be interesting. This post is about resource bars and stats. First let's discuss resource bars. Nearly every game has some sort of resource bar. Health/hit points(hp) is one of them. Mana is another common one used as the resource for fueling magic. This game will have both of those. But where it will differ from most games is that in total there will be 6 different resource bars! Overkill? Perhaps. But since this is an auto-battler, all the resources will be automatically managed. If this was a manual battler, you'd be wracking your brain every second trying to look at 6 resource bars at once. So without further adieu, here they are.

1) hp - Nothing new here. Once you run out, you're dead. Certain abilities will allow you to regain hp in battle.

2) Essence - It's mana with a different name. Spells cost essence, and when you run out you can't cast spells. In this game, I plan for essence to refill at a decent rate on its own during battle.

3) Fervor - This represents your adrenaline/passion. Fervor has different levels. It builds through certain abilities. As you reach higher and higher levels of fervor, it starts depleting more and more quickly and thus is harder to maintain. As you ascend in fervor, your character gets passive boosts to things such as attack speed, run speed, damage, and many more. Fervor may affect magic in some ways too, although I'm not sure of that yet.

4) Mastery - This represents your knowledge of your opponent. It is a single bar that fills up. Once completely full, your character will unleash a mastery ability of your pre-determined choosing. The main theme behind these abilities will be either breaching your opponent's defenses or countering their attacks. Mastery may affect magic abilities as well, but like with fervor I'm unsure of that.

5) Attunement - This is the magical cousin to fervor. It represents the strength of your connection to magic. Casting speed, essence cost, magic damage, and other traits of spells will all improve as your attunement rises. It depletes quicker at higher levels, but it also may deplete if you take damage (a conk on the head sure doesn't help you stay connected with magic).

6) Endurance - This basically represents how physically exhausted your character is. Performing heavy movements or physical based attacks will drain endurance more. Powerful magic spells can drain it too. It replenishes over time through inactivity or less strenuous activity. If your endurance is too low, you won't be able to perform powerful attacks, and your guard can be broken through by powerful attacks.

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Phew! That's quite the list of resource bars. But we're not out of the woods yet. What about stats?

I'm glad you asked. Surprisingly, stats are rather simple for this game. There's only four of them. Here they are:

1) Strength: Ahh strength, I wish I had more of it. Strength d[color=rgb(0,0,0)][font=Arial][background=transparent]irectly affects your physical damage and what weapons and armors you can equip. It may also affect your hp (stronger guys and gals can typically take more of a beating).[/background][/font][/color]

[color=rgb(0,0,0)][font=Arial][background=transparent]2) Conditioning - If you go and pump iron every day you're bound to be strong. But if you don't condition yourself with heavy aerobic exercises such as running, you'll run out of gas rather quickly in a fight. Conditioning represents this. It directly affects your recovery of endurance as well as endurance costs for moves. It could possibly affect the recovery rate of essence as well. It may affect total hp too. The only thing set in stone however is its relationship with endurance.[/background][/font][/color]

[color=rgb(0,0,0)][font=Arial][background=transparent]3) Agility - This represents both reflexes and flexibility. It affects your ability to dodge, your weapon and run speed (although strength may have a greater influence on this for heavier armors and weapons), and perhaps your ability to gain mastery quicker.[/background][/font][/color]

[color=rgb(0,0,0)][font=Arial][background=transparent]4) Concentration - The all-encompassing magic stat. It affects your total essence and attunement ability, the recovery rate of essence, and possibly the essence costs of magic. It could also affect mastery (If you have good concentration then you'll pick up on your opponent's tendencies better).[/background][/font][/color]

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Really? Only 4 stats?? I've never heard of a game with more resource bars than stats.

It's not the amount that counts, it's how you use them. You're free to invest stat points as you see fit. They will drastically affect how your character plays. Do you want a massive weapon wielding caster? Then invest in strength and concentration. Do you want a nimble rogue-like caster, then invest in agility and concentration. How about a berserker who goes on an endless rampage? Invest in strength and conditioning. You're free to pool all your stats points into one stat, spread them out evenly, and everything in between. Stats are the foundation of what your character will be.

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It all makes sense now... sort of. I still think 4 stats is pretty low

What can I say? Four's a good number to me. We have 4 limbs, and everyone knows limbs and stats go hand and hand, right? It's really late and my brain is starting to malfunction. So let's end here. I've got some questions for you:

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1) What are some other resource bars you can think of? I know I've made a lot, but if you've got your own creative one in mind then do share.

2) What are some other stats you can think of? I've been pretty stubborn and stuck to only 4. Surely there's more.