Maybe the amiga version is bugged. I always thought slash was the weakest but the multiple attacks made up for it vs weak mobs. I wouldn’t be surprised if each version had some sort of bug in their mechanics and that would take an extended testing in each for someone with patience.
As to the races, the rando monsters also have the worse age restrictions and grow old faster so that would be a deterrent as well. I don’t know if their skills progress faster but that would have been something I’d program in if possible when the games were made (shrugs). Do lizardmen have superior swimming? In #3 maybe limbs are harder to destroy/damage on certain races.
Yeah, a Phantasie 1-5 ultimate remaster would be nice where every game is more or less on the same page and maybe aging is nerfed a tad.
I didn't know of the harsher age penalty about randoms, interesting. So to recap then, the randoms have penalties of:
- Much less total stats than standard races
- Cost much more to train- not sure if this is exclusively due to lower CHA or an artificial penalty, because it seems massive
- Lower lifespans
- Fighter/Thief restriction
- Some of them don't really have a unique graphic in P3
And advantages of:
- Some of them have 20 or over in one stat
- Some of them have a unique graphic
Lizardman swimming bonus and tougher limbs bonus for some races are quite nice ideas. Actually here's the manual's description of lizardmen:
7 foot, scaly hunks of muscle. Lizard men are humanoid... barely... with great tails, claws, and a forked tongue. They eat like pigs but swim like lizards.
Based on that description, in a hypothetical rework I supposed lizardmen could be rebalanced as something like
19 str, 17 int, 21 dex, 19 con, 14 cha
+50 innate to Swimming
This would would give them the same total 90 stats as default races, and it'd mean they're stronger than humans, but just short of a dwarf's strength, but they'd be more agile than any default race (shouldn't a reptilian character be a bit more agile than a halfling?), but would still have low CHA making them costly. Not sure about the fighter/thief limitation. Anyway, similar balancing could be done for other races. I guess they wouldn't be overpowered as long as their low CHA was enough of a deterrent?
Also definitely agree about nerfing aging. Maybe a way to do that would be to address that 1 day passes per 1 tile movement while in dungeons (I think), that probably shouldn't happen.
Basically, the lower-stat "brother" of the other race does not give any tradeoff to offset the lower stat roll... well except for player preference on how said party member will look. In a rebalance/edit of races, you could just add +1 charisma to make it up I guess, or give a bonus on one of the 9 skills (maybe goblins are expert at disarm traps and Pixie have insane spot for example).
As for the slash, it's not exactly it, but the AtariST version works very close to the example below (Using solid number instead of dice rolls):
Attack #1 => Damage 12
Attack #2 => Damage 12 + Result of Attack #1 (12) = 24
Attack #3 => Damage 12 + Cumulative Damage at the end of the Attack#2 line = 36+12 = 48
Attack #4 => Damage 12 + Cumulative Damage at the end of the Attack#3 line = 48+12 = 60
Now this works like Combos, if you miss attack #3, pretty sure it resets as if your first hit.
But assuming 4 hits in a row that means : 12+24+48+60
Unfortunately, with melee your attacks seem to be spread on anything you can hit, so you can't do the entire 144 damage on one target (well unless there's only one target)
Now usually you have dice rolls, so your damage could fluctuate wildly (high strength ensures a higher minimum/maximum damage), and could end-up with silly cumulative dmg rolls like 1-5-12-24 as much as 15-27-56-95 (I've even exceeded 100dmg on a high level fighter with a Sword+10 or God knife, and the text only show the last 2 numbers, so you can have your last attack display 00 to say 20, but it in fact hits for 120)
This makes warrior beasts in Phantasie3, Thankfully there are plenty of monster with high dodge or some damage resistance that mitigate that. Demons and Ghosts are nigh impossible to hit with melee for example.
It's just too bad MindBlast and FireBolt were both nerfed heavily in P3 if compared to P1 and P2.
There's quite a list of non-critical nagging bugs in P3. Most are harmless fun or force you to adapt your playstyle.
Others are more annoying (like the Constitution and Stat bugs = stats are locked from getting above 22 I think, and con above 10 does not affect your HP gains at all as far as I tested.)
But I really loved how the slash combo hit made warrior hit for a lot of damage. Thankfully the monsters benefit from that too, making some REALLY dangerous, especially when they cast Quickness on themselves
Thanks for the clarification on slash. I wonder if the stacking damage works the same on other versions or if it's just Amiga and ST that behave this way, as they appear to be the two versions that look the most similar. It does make fighters have more appeal for sure. Even in games like FF6, when a melee character is eventually able to attack multiple times, it's just cool. Hitting random targets is a concern on paper but hmm, I was admittedly surprised with how well it worked out in P3 even with that randomness. I've also never seen a game do that before, and it just sorta works.
Interesting that Mindblast and Firebolt were nerfed. I did notice in my playthrough that Mindblast wasn't very good, partly because it couldn't damage limbs meaning no chance to remove a torso for an instakill nor cripple units by removing arms, and partly because lots of high-level monsters had some kind of hidden magic resist stat where certain spells (Mindblast was one) simply don't hit them. Firebolt however seems to hit every enemy type, disregarding typical diceroll misses here and there. I don't mind a magic resist stat existing, but I guess the player characters should have that as well.
