tweak idea: partially elemental attacks

[Assassin]

Secret of Evermore has no elemental system for spells, which is silly. i was thinking about adding one (but the skills to do so currently elude me), and considered caveats along the way. things like "Explosion" and "Nitro" have a blast force; they aren't mere burning. would a being with Fire affinity absorb all of such an attack, even when they've been slammed into a wall, or had a chunk taken out of them?

that in turn got me thinking about FF6, a game whose internals i follow more. maybe there are also spells here (vanilla or otherwise) where damage/healing should be only partially elemental, and 3 or 4 bits could be set aside for the ratio. (EDIT: or set aside 1 bit flag, and re-purpose the fractional damage/healing nibble.) it'd probably kick in shortly before Forcefield and Imzogelmo's Separation of Powers (which likely helped inspire this) do their thing. you'd apply the fraction to $F0, save the elemental part in $F0, save the non-elemental part in VariableN, save the pre-elemental healing flag in another variable, go do SoP/etc, then combine (i.e. add/subtract) $F0 and VariableN (plus redetermine the $F2 flag) in a way dictated by comparing the $F2 and backup healing flags.

any point to it? candidate spells? conceptual reasons against? side effects?

google tells me FF8 supports the idea in Elem-Atk-J.

[Lenophis]

I am actually surprised that Evermore DIDN'T have anything elemental in the game, considering the source it came from. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if Square left code in for elemental-like attributes, since the source was Secret of Mana, which did have elemental attributes in it...I think.

The game is pretty balanced around not having elements, but it's also very broken in a lot of areas. I think with some general bugfixing, along with the element addition, it could make the game a lot better overall.

[Assassin]

it's a bit of a myth that SoE used SoM's source. Evermore was built from the ground up by Square USA, though they did replicate aspects like the menu ring system, so players would have a familiar interface.