Hi there,

I'm working on a combat system for a JRPG-like game. The combat system uses action points to activate abilities. On each turn, the active character automatically gains some new actions points. Unspent action points may be spent during the next turn instead.

I'm facing the following balancing problem: Some characters have healing abilities. With an unlimited number of turns, a character may gain an unlimitied number of action points over time. Therefore, the player can heal all characters completely by using their healing abilities. This renders items like healing potions useless and players often don't need to use any healing items after combat. This mechanic can be abused especially when the enemy is pretty weak and only deals a tiny amount of damage every turn.

I don't want to limit the number for turns per battle. How can I prevent players from abusing the infinite amount of actions points? Or how can I incentivize players to use the healing items in their inventory?

Another option would be to simply remove the healing abilities and only rely on healing items. But then a player may run into a situation where he doesn't carry enough healing items and also can't buy or collect any further items.

If you really want to emphasise healing with items, not having heals is an option. I had a similar problem where my healing spell would make the healing items redundand, so I removed it. I later added an option to add a small leach via a spell, that only heals so much and only conditionally when you deal damage.

Another trick I learned from Darkest Dungeons is that you could add direct conditions to the heal-spells, ie. only usable under a certain percent of health of the target. If that is too restrictive, add a secondary effect to the spell, like removing a sort of debuff (what DD does).

easy, copy cdbcs, aps you earn expire in one turn, therefore, the most ap you can have at any one turn is 2x, 1x from this turn and 1x from the previous turn

may even add depreciation, you carry over half the ap you didnt use