Stat Boosting/Thieving/Attack Staves

[Zeo]

I don't know when and if I'll ever get really started on a hack (learning to hack in general, rather) of my own or a vision of it. But something that was rolling around in my head when messing with weapon and item values was an interesting idea to give even more utility to healers. As the title suggests, staves with various purposes.

The questions.

A - Would it be possible to hack a stave to have a pure water effect for a character's stats? (IE. Increasing a character's speed by 5 points and 1 point diminishes each turn.

Ax2 - Would it be possible to hack a stave to have a multiple stat boosting effect (IE Pure Water) and have all boosted stats decrease by one point each turn?

Ax3 - Would it be possible to hack a stave to have a Dancer Ring Effect? (IE increase a stat as well as crit/avoid by a large amount for one turn only)

B - Is it possible to hack a stave that can steal items from enemy units, even from a distance regardless of user speed? (Even factoring in speed if that's the only option).

Bx2 - Can staves be hacked to boost the wearers stat's like Divine/S Rank weapons?

C - Can staves be hacked to have attack properties or are you stuck giving healing units light/anima magic for offense? (Essentially not an option as it negates Monks and potentially Mages)

Edited March 6, 2014 by Zeo

[Brendor]

all of them are *possible* but require assembly hacking

[Zeo]

Essentially meaning unlikely for all but experienced coders and hackers and utterly out of the question. Well thanks for the quick reply, I'm glad I got one before I got my hopes up.

[Lord Glenn]

Pretty sure that B2 and C can be done without assembly. In fact, B2 basically requires C to work, theoretically.

Consider the following:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us2N7NcThcw#t=71

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HOrjECWGBg#t=840

As long as the staff is made equippable and given stats and a spell animation, it can be changed to be used offensively (so, you can create offensive staves as new items, but you can't add it on to existing staves and still get their current effects - at least not that anyone's tried). And I'm pretty sure that once it's able to be equipped that you can have it give bonuses like Vaida's Uber Spear.

Edited March 6, 2014 by Lord Glenn

[Agro]

he means like a barrier staff but for speed

[Brendor]

Pretty sure that B2 and C can be done without assembly. In fact, B2 basically requires C to work, theoretically.

Consider the following:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us2N7NcThcw#t=71

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HOrjECWGBg#t=840

As long as the staff is made equippable and given stats and a spell animation, it can be changed to be used offensively. And I'm pretty sure that once it's able to be equipped that you can have it give bonuses like Vaida's Uber Spear.

staves can't be used offensively because they have this weird thing where if you attack with a staff, the defender can't counter because obviously when using the staves to heal, the "healee" doesn't attack the healer so techinically you can use a staff offensively but it's really weird

[Lord Glenn]

For B2 and C? For A (and its subquestions), sure, but those two?

EDIT @ Brendor - Sure, you can't, say, have Physic both heal and attack, but you can most certainly create staves that can attack, as seen from my two links

Edited March 6, 2014 by Lord Glenn

[Brendor]

yeah you can but it doesn't completely function like a weapon

[Zeo]

Agro hit the nail right on the hammer. Regarding the A series of questions, I figured with the Barrier stave in play you would simply need to change a specific value in order to change the stat temporarily boosted or add stats to be boosted simultaneously. Show's how little I know.

As for Bx2 and C, It would appear that you're saying that the staff would need to be an "attack" weapon in order to have boosted stats. That means I can't actually have a healing stave that gives +5 def to the wearer? It has to be technically a weapon?

[Lord Glenn]

Correct, since staves aren't equipped normally.

So, basically, if you want Heal, Mend, Restore, etc. to be able to both attack and use their Staff Effects, you're kinda out of luck. You can, however, create new Staves that can attack and supplement the regular Staves. (And those supplements could bestow stat bonuses, I believe.)

Edited March 6, 2014 by Lord Glenn

[Brendor]

that would require assembly

[Zeo]

In that case, it seems like the best thing to do would be to create an "attack" stave that couldn't actually be used to attack and give it a stat boost for being equipped. That on the other hand would probably create issues if anyone were to get an enemy unit in range with it and use the "attack" option.

I suppose I'd have no choice but to create a legitimate battle stave with a stat booster. Though that would create problems of it's own as it would be giving healers potentially legitimate offense. I want to boost healer utility and tactical use, not turn them into battle units.

We'll see what happens.

[CT075]

that would require assembly

i'm about 85% sure that it's the weapon attribute "staff" or whatever that makes it bug, not the fact that it has a staff weapon level

in that case it probably wouldn't require asm

Edited March 6, 2014 by CT075

[Brendor]

i'm about 85% sure that it's the weapon attribute "staff" or whatever that makes it bug, not the fact that it has a staff weapon level

in that case it probably wouldn't require asm

I'm not talking about the bug I'm talking about forcing the game to read staves as "equippable"

[CT075]

yeah

i would put money on it being bit 3 (0x4 "staff" on the module) that makes it unequippable

[Brendor]

really? I'm not sure. maybe

[Zeo]

Bonus question also.

D - Would it require assembly to create a stave to heal all allies adjacent to the healer? Think a massively watered down fortify staff.

[Jubby]

Yes it would.

[Brendor]

but that sounds much more practical

[Agro]

It's safe to say that most things involving custom staves would require a fair bit of assembly knowledge and know-how, really.

Edited March 6, 2014 by Agro

[dondon151]

the singular of "staves" is "staff"

[Brendor]

The last idea I'm almost certain you can basically c/p the fortify data and just change the range

[Aleph]

staves can't be used offensively because they have this weird thing where if you attack with a staff, the defender can't counter because obviously when using the staves to heal, the "healee" doesn't attack the healer so techinically you can use a staff offensively but it's really weird

This sounds like a case of some missing animation commands or something that might be able to be fixed using a different class/character animation via FEditor cough.

You'd assuredly not want to add in a new animation for every damn class but you wouldn't have a lot of choice unless you hacked the hell out of the current animation processing code to make some terrible ugly exception.

yeah

i would put money on it being bit 3 (0x4 "staff" on the module) that makes it unequippable

I have notes, I'm fairly sure, on the function used to check which weapon is equipped as part of research done on fixing the str/mag class animation selection. One could theoretically poke around near there to get a good start. That said it might be a better idea to just flip the bit and see what happens; even if you end up poking around in that assembly code anyway to change the behaviour it would still be nice to know for sure.

the singular of "staves" is "staff"

Indeed, one should say "staff" to indicate their awareness of this hopefully obvious fact, although stave is perfectly accurate and still a word. Edited March 6, 2014 by Izayoi

[Zeo]

Indeed, one should say "staff" to indicate their awareness of this hopefully obvious fact, although stave is perfectly accurate and still a word.

I definitely know that. But when it's late and you're typing posts on autopilot. These things happen.

Staff indeed.