Other Combat Partners | The Cutting Room Floor

If you play chapter 4, you may find it strange that no matter who's plan you go with, who your romance partner is, or who you have the closest relationship with, you always team up with Priscilla for combat. This was not always the plan, as I initially hoped to have Rais and Charlotte available as combat partners as well. Of these two, only Rais got any work done. Unlike Priscilla, instead of an MP bar, Rais had a defense meter that nullified most damage while it lasted and could be "repaired" with heat potions and other lust-increasing potions.

Since it didn't make sense for any player potions to really restore HP, Rais would instead regenerate HP every round based on his defense meter. His lust also actually contributed to his attack power, but reduced his healing and caused him to take more damage, both to his defense meter and to his HP, so you'd want to adjust his lust based on what he needed at the time.

I got pretty far along with Rais, such that I could probably add him to the game with an evening or two of work, but I wasn't super happy with him mechanically, and he ended up feeling kinda weak and one-dimensional (even more so than Priscilla).

For Charlotte, I hadn't done much with her at all. I had rough plans, but there were some gaps, too. The idea for her was to have a "focus" meter. It worked sort of the opposite way to Rais, where calming and lust decreasing potions boosted her focus. With focus, her attack power and crit rate would increase. But I wasn't exactly sure how to balance this with lust, and what effects high or low lust would have. For HP regen, I planned to make her heal based on the damage she dealt, but again, I never actually got far enough in thinking about that or how to implement it and balance it with her focus meter and her lust.

I wound up going all in on Priscilla because she felt like the most "normal" and well-rounded of the three, and because in some ways she is a bit of a deuteragonist. It's also not impossible that these other combat partners could make a comeback, as one of the post-game modes I have planned for v1.0.0 is a combat challenge mode where you can scavenge in the otherworld with Priscilla for tons of rare ingredients (to prep for NG+ or just finish up your alchemy recipe list). If I have time, now or in the future, maybe I could add additional combat partners to that mode.

Combat in SS is kind of an afterthought, though, so I'm not sure how much time and energy I want to invest in it. Especially when I compare it to Hex, the idea of spending a ton of time adding and balancing out additional partners makes me feel like I'm already beating a dead horse just considering it. I don't think the combat in SS really has legs; it's fine for adding a little drama I think and there's a certain sort of "heal slut" fantasy to it that I think works okay, but it's never gonna be deep and compelling.