======Reinforcements====== //example image tbd// =====Description===== Reinforcements are enemies who appear after combat has already been going on for some length of time to reinforce the already present enemies. Reinforcements may appear as an [[Patterns:Ambush|ambush]], they may spawn far enough away that they aren't an [[Patterns:Ambush|ambush]], or they may be preexisting enemies who either had to travel some distance to get to the fight or did not notice the fight until they were alerted by the sounds of combat. Reinforcements increase the duration and the difficulty of an encounter as the player is forced to deal with more enemies. They are often preferable in a level-design to simply having more enemies at the start of an encounter. There are two distinct differences on gameplay between reinforcements and starting with more enemies. First, having reinforcements it provides more challenge to the player as area-of-effect attacks cannot target all of the enemies at once. Secondly, it makes the player less likely to be overwhelmed by all of the enemies, making the encounter less punishing without really lowering the difficulty. Reinforcements that spawn can be triggered to do so by the defeat of certain enemies, a certain amount of time elapsed, or a combination of the two. There may be other kinds of specific [[patterns:trigger|trigger]]s as well, such as [[patterns:portal|portal]]s through which enemies appear until the player disables the portal. [[Patterns:Boss Battle|Boss battles]] very commonly involve reinforcements. In a [[Patterns:Boss Battle|boss battle]], reinforcements serve to continually divert the players attention from the boss, who is usually the main target and the biggest threat. [[Patterns:Boss Battle|Boss battles]] will often have waves of reinforcements which spawn periodically. =====Variables===== * **Number of waves**: how many waves of reinforcements arrive during an encounter * **Strength (per wave)**: are they dispatched easily, or are they strong opponents who will provide a new challenge? * **Number of reinforcements**: how many new enemies arrive with each wave of reinforcements? * **Frequency of waves**: how frequently reinforcements appear, and also how predictable their appearance is. =====Examples===== * [[games:dragonage2|Dragon Age II]]. Many enemy encounters in Dragon Age II involve reinforcements spawning in mid-battle. =====Related Patterns===== * [[Patterns:Ambush|Ambush]] * [[Patterns:Boss Battle|Boss Battle]] =====Quest-Level Relationships===== * None identified yet! {{tag>level:EnemyEncounter games:dragonage2}}

patterns/reinforcements.txt ยท Last modified: 2011/06/16 02:54 by Gillian Smith
www.chimeric.de Valid CSS Driven by DokuWiki do yourself a favour and use a real browser - get firefox!! Recent changes RSS feed Valid XHTML 1.0