The past couple of days have seen me replay a number of my older titles made in Ace. Okiku, Star Apprentice was still a blast to play, but, I could it's age via the lack of Yanfly's Messaging System. Konae's Investigations fared a little better. Uchioniko, however? Man, I totally forgot how much of a grind that game expected on players.
Like, in the back of my head, I knew I wanted to have the "Power Up" ability by the time I face off against Michi in that game. I might not have necessarily recalled when that ability is earned. I had to look that up later. However, I was kinda done with the encounters, and faced off against Michi around Level 35, maybe 36, whereas the boss before her could probably be defeated handily at 30. For reference purposes, though, "Power Up" is earned at level 38. Darigaaz.
Anyway, I've been giving some thinking towards how I want healing to work in this game. As things stand in the current demo, items restore a set percentile of the target's maximum health. Meanwhile, spells that restore HP do so at a pathetic rate that isn't worth spending an action on. "Chakra" might still be worth the action, depending on how much FP the user has available to spend on it.
So far, I've been increasing the cost of healing spells, and also increasing the base amount that they heal, but, I still feel healing spells are vastly underwhelming. You're better off using Chakra, or an item.
One idea in my head is to have healing spells have their base healing value still tied to their FP cost, but, the amount of healing is also expressed as a percent of maximum health. So, for example, something like First Aid could have a base healing value of 25% of the target's health, then apply a multiplier based on the difference of the user's MAT and a portion of the target's MDF as per normal for a healing spell. Full Cure would just strait-up have a 100% restoration of health, with no multiplication necessary, as probably would Divine Intervention.
So, how much would these skills cost, should I go this route? That, I'm not sure of yet! I know I have a handy-dandy spread-sheet that I used to calculate cost versus effect for abilities in a general sense, so, maybe I can run some numbers there.