Battle

## The Battle Manual

The game manual found in Skeleton Manor

Combat is a core element of HorrorVale. To progress through the game players will encounter all manners of foes ready to tussle in standard RPG turn-based combat.

## Stats

### Death Points

Death Points, or DP, represents a character's vitality. When they drop to 0 that character cannot fight anymore without use of an item or an ability to revive them. Why are they called Death Points instead of 'Health Points'? Because this is the underworld, they're already dead silly.

### Attack

Attack, or physical attack, determines the amount of damage dealt from a base attack. Damage is calculated between the attacker's physical attacks stat and the target's physical defense stat.

### Defense

How much damage a physical attack will be reduced by. A character with higher defense will take less damage from an attack than a character with a low defense stat and a high death points stat.

### Fear Points

Fear Points, or FP, is the typical magic/mana power stat. You need FP to use fear abilities, so characters with low FP stats will have less opportunity to use their abilities.

### Fear Attack

Fear attack is HorrorVale's version of the standard magic attack stat found in other RPG's. Fear attack determines the amount of damage dealt by fear abilities. Damage is calculated between the attacker's fear attack and the target's fear defense stat.

### Fear Defense

Fear defense is HorrorVale's version of the standard magic defense stat found in other RPG's. Fear defense determines how much the damage from a fear ability will be reduced by. Like with physical defense, a character with higher fear defense will take less damage from an attack than a character with a low fear defense stat and a high death points stat.

### Speed

Speed determines the order of who attacks during a given turn. The character with the highest speed stat will attack first, followed by the second highest speed stat and so on. The character with the lowest speed stat will attack last. Some fear abilities have increased priority and decrease priority, which guarantees they will hit first or last respectively.

### Luck

Luck determines the likelihood of critical hits and determines a character's likeliness to be inflicted by status effects. Having a high luck increases the odds a character will be able to avoid being inflicted by status effects.

## Elements

Elements are another core component to battles. There are seven elements and like most games, elements possess a rock-paper-scissors dynamic. The seven elements are: Bone, Flesh, Blood, Nature, Ectoplasm, Electricity, and Sugar.

## Battle Commands

The following actions can be taken for each party member every turn in battle.

### Attack

The Attack Command, also referred to as the "Basic Attack", is the default attack most characters have (looking at you Jekyll) and costs no FP to use. The basic attack is the same element as the character using it, and its strength is determined by the user's physical attack stat.

### Abilities

An assortment of moves unique to each character that traditionally cost FP to use. Some deal damage, others inflict status effects or can buff/debuff a stat, while others can recover DP and even revive downed party members. The strength of fear abilities that deal damage is determined from the fear attack stat. Be warned that your enemies also have their own fear abilities and are more than willing to use them against you.

### Guard

The selected character spends a turn on protecting themselves, this will reduce any damage taken from an opponent's attack this turn.

### Escape

Those who fight and run away live to....um, this saying breaks down when everyone's already dead. Survive perhaps works better in this case? Who knows.

Anyways, use this to flee from battle. Extremely useful for certain enemies such as Red Name Enemies. While it is not guaranteed the player will escape from an opponent upon using the Escape command, the player is able to escape from almost any battle.