Note - This information is outdated. For my actual Healer Sparring Plans, please see my signature.
Okay, so here are my plans, based on the conversations in General's topic
NFC, with my example in italics:
(It's long-winded, but please take a good look; I tried to take everything into consideration with these plans.)
Options:1. A person with a healer (assuming there would be self-judging) would use two RN's to determine which of two pre-set characters would be used to fight each other.
Ex., the mods make a list of NPC's of equal levels but obviously varying strengths, weaknesses, and weapon types; RN's 3 and 5 come up, so we use the Myrmydon and the Wyvern Rider. Then, the healer would be set to heal the first character (keep in mind that this does make the choice random).
In this case, that's the Myrmydon. Next, after both NPC's "attack" each other and take damage, etc. the healer's round begins. After the other two guys have gone through their round,
which in our example would likely mean the myrmydon attacks once, then the Wyvern, then the myrmydon again, the healer gets to heal his character
(ie the myrmydon) once. The healer would receive experience based on the healing experience formulas as shown in FE8, which usually is around 10, give or take 3.
So our healer just healed the myrmydon 15 HP and got 11 exp for it. After the fight, regardless of who wins, the healer takes the experience, loses the staff uses, and walks away. This process could be limited to only three such fights a day, since otherwise a healer could spar infinitely in one day because the actual fighters are NPC's. This makes about 30 exp per day, which is about how much one could get from a normal spar anyways. And yes, this makes the fight one-sided in favor of the healed guy, but since both are NPC's, no one cares.
2. Or, two normal characters which two people own would decide to spar including healers. Then, it would be just like the fight above with real people.
For instance, my Reán and General's Robin would challenge one another and start a spar. But we both agree to bring in healers; my Lisiada would heal Reán at the end of each round and his Gabriel (pretend she can use staves) would heal Robin; no one could attack the healers who also could not attack anyone else. At the end of the fight, Reán and Robin would take exp and weapon uses like normal; Lisiada and Gabriel, having healed so many times, would take experience based on the usual formulas and take weapon uses like normal. So what if there's a miss? Well, say Reán misses in Round 2, and Robin has full health. Now what? Well, Gabriel now has no HP to restore, so she must forfeit that round and receive no exp or weapon uses until Robin loses HP again and she can heal again.3. Two RN's are used for two random NPC characters again. This time, the stats of the healer are transfered onto the first NPC and the second NPC takes a similar level of stats, as pre-written by the staff. Then it's a fight like usual. The victor gets exp, if it's the healer, and said healer has to pay, through a use-by-use cost, for the weapon use (ie, Iron lance is 460, and has 45 uses; thus, each use costs 10g [460/45]). This could be done with two opposing healers as well.
Pro's and cons:1. Well, the plus side is that this works for leveling up the healer without making cheap, one-sided battles for real characters. it still takes up weapon uses and still makes use of the healer's healing ability.
The down-side is that the only stat used by a healer is strength; none of the healer's other stats even influence performance, so a Healer would usually have 12 strength and near 0's for all of the other stats, even at level 1. The judging is marginally complex, but not too different. The only other problem is that this requires a mod to create a wide variety of Level 1 NPC's with single-weapon-skills, balanced stats, and so on. Not too bad, but a bit of a hassle.
2. Pluses here are that the healing would always involve real characters and real sparring. Also, this would make for nice team-work stuff. It's the closest I can come to making it like the game itself... except by that I mean a line of four guys, Healer-Fighter-Fighter-Healer, and only the fighters can fight... which never really happens in the actual game... but you get the idea! The best plus that I can see is the ability to raise two characters at once in one match.
The down-side is, again, that the stats of the Healer don't do much. It's only the strength that counts. Also, the judging would be even more difficult. But I have an idea to fix this...
3. This one's pro's are that it takes
ALL of the Healer's stats into account when making this all work. Also, since the character that has the Healer's stats super-imposed upon it is chosen at random, there would be no issues of uni-weapon casting (wha? In other words, if we just allowed a Healer to use any type of weapon in exchange for the staves and then paid for it use by use, then they could technically use any weapon type and be cheap with it).
The con's here are many. First, this kind of fight becomes massively complex: for example, say your healer has good speed but his stats are super-imposed on an armored rider? An armored unit isn't allowed to have such a high speed => issues. Also, if two healers wish to spar in this manner, someone has to fiddle with so many RN's just to start the fight... ugh... In other words, this system has too many weird flukes. Also, the healers then wouldn't really be healers; they'd be amorphous blobs that assimilate into random shapes upon meeting similar amorphous blobs. Secondly, this requires the mods to make an NPC list like I mentioned in 1's cons, only worse: since the actual stats of the Healer would be superimposed on someone else, the opposing fighter would either be a similar level human player (then it's okay) or an equal level NPC. This means that for each level 1 NPC that we have, we'd need a level 2 through 20/20 stat readout. WAY TOO COMPLEX!!!
But it's sadly the only idea that uses all of the Healer's stats.
Or is it?
Idea 4 is based on idea two, for the most part, although it breaks a few rules of FE in the process. The difference is that the staves aren't unbiased by the guy who gets healed... the healee?
We have Reán and Robin fighting away, each with their healer, when suddenly Lisiada and Gabriel see each other. Angry snarls ensue, and they approach each other. Now, say Lisiada has a strength of 9 and is wielding a Heal staff; thus, she can heal Reán 19 HP each round. But what if Gabriel doesn't like it? Suddenly that 19 is reduced by Gabriel's defence of, say, 4. Or reduced by her resistance of 9? Or reduced by the combination of the two, making 19 go to 6?
Suddenly, it's a fight between Robin and Reán with a side-battle waged between the healers. If Lisiada's speed is 4 or more points higher than Gabriel's, then she gets to heal Reán twice in one round. If Gabriel's avoid is 35, then Lisiada's accuracy drops by 35; of course, here's where we break rules: Staves don't have accuracy, weight, or critical. We'd have to make them up, fairly of course. So say Lisiada's initial accuracy was 89; now, because of Gabriel, it's 54. An RN would determine if Reán gets healed this time. Only it would only be 6 HP (or 15 or 10, depending on how the defence/resistance comes into play) healed, not 19. Unless Lisiada gets a critical heal, in which case Reán would get 18/45/30 HP healed (respective to the last list). Is anyone seeing a pattern here? The healers have a battle just like anyone else, only instead of attacking each other, they heal their friends. Staves would have power, accuracy, weight, and critical just like any other weapon. And their final stats of attack power, hit rate, avoid, critical avoid, defence, and resistance are weighed against the stats of their opponent to give the usual HP/Damage/Hit Rate/Critical chart from the final vitals we are used to seeing. Basically, each healer has a negative aura effect on the other healer, reducing their ability to heal.
Pros: It's got all of the pros of any idea I've given so far.
Cons: It's just two simple battles fought side-by-side; it would count as judging two battles, and the only difference between these fights and two normal fights is that Reán and Robin would be gaining HP as well. It's a bit more difficult, yes, but not much.
The ONLY con I can see so far, short of the minor increase in complexity, is the fact that the healer's HP stat isn't incorporated in the fight... I can't think of a way to make that count for something. Maybe it would be tacked onto the fighter's HP and drained as though the pair shared HP.
So Robin would attack Reán and Lisiada would feel a portion of the pain, so to speak, and their joint HP of 60 would go to 46.Comments? Questions? I'm ready!
And General, I think I smoothed those edges you mentioned a bit too much...!