Dragon Quest is, mechanically, a pretty simple series

you have your Attack, you have Spells, you have Items

none of that is revolutionary

what it's really good at, in my opinion, is enemy design

like OK, let's hone in on what I mean

Dragon Quest 5, Castle Reinhardt catacombs

there are a number of enemies in the dungeon

Yetis, who usually just attack but occasionally do a roar that has a separately-rolled chance to stun every party member for a turn

Gonks, who sometimes attack, sometimes do nothing, sometimes lick your face for a guaranteed one-turn stun, and sometimes summon skeletons

Tortragons, who have very high physical defense, and occasionally waste turns using the guard command

what this diversity means is that each enemy - and each enemy group, because of how encounters work- okay let's get into that a bit

but each enemy and enemy group is, depending on their abilities and your circumstances, a different amount of dangerous

and figuring out that hierarchy is non-trivial

so sidebar, dragon quest encounters are formed of like 1-4 Groups of monsters

each group containing 1-8 monsters

and each group containing only one species of monster

so say you have the above sets of monsters

an encounter is one yeti, three gonks, and two tortragons

Quio has a very powerful single-target attack, and also is your healer and can do light magic damage to one group of enemies

Henry has a whip, which does less damage but hits an entire group of enemies, with descending damage as it moves left to right, and can cast Bang, which does moderate magic damage to all enemies but costs a lot of MP

Who do you attack first? What do you attack with?

It's not obvious!

The meat of the dungeon game is in figuring out which enemies are the most pain to kill and the most pain to leave alive

and forming an order for how you dismantle the group based on that to minimize MP expenditure

for the record: Henry casts Bang because it doubles the enemies he can hit and can OHKO a non-guarding Tortragon, Quio focuses on the Gonks because as slots in the enemy formation empty out they can summon skeletons in to replace them

it's a long sequence of prioritization decisions as you try and judge how to deal with each formation of enemies with minimal pain and resources burnt

I'd probably go for the gonks first because they have the potential to make the encounter go out of hand with their summons and just pray the yeti doesn't do aoe stun. But it's a decision that takes some consideration, yeah.

and it means that your first dive into a dungeon is unlikely to be the last, because you don't know the enemy movesets or traits yet

so while you explore the dungeon spatially, you're also exploring it mechanically, and getting a feel for the priorities

if that sounds fun, play dragon quest

especially the older, meaner ones

these minks can hit the party with blinding sand to lower accuracy but these fish can cast AOE defense debuffs and my whip can only take out one group at a time

instructions unclear
zap zap zap zap zap zap zap zap

DQXI is a forgiving game

I feel like it's also worth noting Dragon Quest typically does NOT have full healing available before bosses, but DOES grant a full recovery on level up

Which is another part of the resource management

the full recover on level up is a fairly modern addition

at least as of 5, it's not there

ah right I'd forgotten earlier games didn't

Yeah I feel like that wasn't a thing until 8

but yeah, being able to deconstruct the various Types of enemies and the best way to defeat them is the fun in Dragon Quest encounters

and also is the evil of it

And sometimes that goes awry but in often comical situations

see: Muddy Hands

here's three enemies who can blind you, two who do huge damage, and four who can drain your MP

The key to understanding Dragon Quest encounters is, in my mind, two things

1: Every enemy has usually no more moves than your average Pokemon

(the answer is to obliterate the MP drainers at any cost. If one guy drains 10 MP, that's equivalent to taking two Healmores of damage)

2: Enemies are just, if not more MP-gated than you are, so sometimes "drain a monster's MP so they can't use their big spell that turbofucks you" is in fact not only a valuable but Vital strat

enemies do have resources and you CAN deprive them of it

similarly, sometimes if an enemy does a big move, that deprioritizes them, because now they're out of mp

OK side not but here's the weirdest fucking enemy ability in 5

so DQ5 has Strategies you can set for the party

Offensive, Normal, Defensive, Save MP, Use No MP, and Manual

of course you should always have it set on Manual

but there's an enemy in this tower with a spell

that changes your set strategy

Oh that's very mean and also weird

it's not as mean as it sounds, but also weirder than it sounds

because like

...you can just set it back

I love how Dragon Quest telegraphs that enemies have MP pools you can exploit with the early Imp enemies

Who attempt to cast Kaboom but don't have the MP for it and waste their turn

This makes me feel like, for DQV, you probably want to track individual enemy stamina/MP in order to get the proper DQ experience where enemies can just run out of MP for their skills LOL

maybe... but it's haaard

also Valor's Stamina availability is too balanced

maybe I can have some kind of special rules thing

where certain enemies have Costly moves, and you can use some kind of skill to drain their uses? or something

maybe big spells on rando encounter monsters just have ammo limits, though you'd still need to track the ammo

I should fuck around with making enemy design wackier in general

playing within the rules of the system is for rookie GMs

it's fun, the most memorable fights in my games tend to be the ones where I fuck around outside of the usual rules

Dragon Quest Valor should absolutely have Weird Enemy Design

instakills/disables, costly moves... I'll have to think of more

I'm considering an equipment system, but it'll depend on the party I end up with

the funniest thing about Dragon Quest Valor and messing with enemy design is there is one enemy you do not have to mess with

ironically, Dragons

like when I set up a whole system for buying weapons in FFAV, then the party I got had a legendary sword, a body-grafted blade, and a custom magitech gauntlet

Have you seen my Fire Emblem rules? You might be able to adapt them a bit for Dragon Quest

For what I did with the weapons

I have not

Valor Fire Emblem by Valorous Games

Since I had weapons that tagged with various properties

I'll look it over, at least

I mean, TrV's quartz system is kind of like equipment, and I think it's working p well

again, it will depend on the party's needs

I'm not gonna do an equipment system if 3/4ths of the party have bespoke plot weapons