/vrpg/ — Metal Slimes

>>3997445 (OP)
In the later Wild ARMs games there are metal slime equivalents that act how you list except
>-every attacks will either do 0 / 1 damage (early game)
they have 1 hp and 0 defense
you get as much XP as you deal damage, later variants give 10x as much xp as you dealt damage
boss fights you lose for plot reasons also reward you in XP for how much damage you deal in their turn limit
the games also have a late game shop that lets you exchange levels for items

>>3997445 (OP)

Breath of fire has gold slimes and Lufia had gelatinous cubes which are essentially the same thing. The metal slime is pretty common JRPG trope.

Even final fantasy's cactuars are a sort of metal slime as they have high evasion and defense tend to flee and give higher than normal experience for when you first encounter them.

These sorts of encounters add welcome dopamine hits to the grind.

>>3997445 (OP)

>BOF 3
The Goo King, had a great steal too


>Chrono Trigger
Rubble, Turrets; they were in areas you could never return to

>Final Fantasy
Magic Pot, they were literally only at the end of the game in seven and you could only fight a limited number of times in five.

>Paper Mario
Amazy Dayzee

>M&L RPG
Gold Beanie

>Kingdom Hearts
white mushroom

This archetype really isn't as common as you are making it out to be. Many games don't have them; however they should be implemented more so.

>>3997526
Well OP here, I didn't mention it was common, this guy did >>3997467
I am more interested in how this design can be furtherly improved / expanded on.
But your examples are nice, I knew some of them beforehand too (FF and KH in particular).

>>3997537

>Expand upon it

What if you have to buy expensive bait for them and they can eat it in and run (but you can get it back by killing them)

Or what if they eat your accessories, and flee?

What if they will only appear and attack if you are wearing no ar.or or weapons, (but you can take a turn in battle to equip gear)?

What if they call friends in battle that give similar xp but are much tougher and deadlier?

What if they were heavy hitters but casting heal spells or using items made the run?

What if they also had a sandworm mechanic from ff5 and 6 where they eat a party member, and run. What if you get your whole party eaten and you go to another place (like ff6/gogos lair). What if they only eat party members who are tasty?

What if they don't run but the hp reward halves every turn?

Etc.

>>3997526
>Rubnles and Turrets from CT.
One strategy that grows out of this is ditching both Marle and Lucca. When everyone is getting low percentage hits, the hits need to be strong. There is only a limited amount of time before those things run away.

>>3997587
I had been ditched Marle, she's dogshit. Robo is my day one dude!

>>3997445 (OP)
>Metal Slimes and it's equivalents in other JRPG
Atelier Iris series for the PS2 has red slimes as the basic ones and IIRC, the other colored ones are the tougher slimes.

>>3997445 (OP)
I will put metal slimes into METAL BAWKSES!

>>3997445 (OP)
MOTHER 1 has the Red Snake enemy, who kinda serves a similar niche to the Metal Slime (enemy who drops a lot of EXP but is likely to run away). MOTHER 2 has those criminal worms that drop a shit ton of EXP. MOTHER 3 has the Soot Dumpling, the Black Beanling, and a parody of the Metal Slime archetype, the Mystery Metal Monkey, which offers no character EXP but instead gives you a text box saying "It was a good experience."

Playing Etrian Odyssey Untold rn on emu
Rare breeds are great EXP accelerators, although they are pretty easy to beat

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Breath of Fire III and IV offered a high risk/reward permutation on the concept. Fire-element enemies struck by fire would double their stats and therefore their experience. Repeat this too often and you risked getting a game over. They were dumb enemies, just a physical attack with whatever fire-element attacks. In BoFIII you could stack fire resistances more easily, and earlier, so if you neutralized the fire hazard when the enemy reached the byte limit for XP, you just had to avoid the physical attacks.