Combat Design Task for a Fantasy RPG Title Application
During my application for a World Designer role at a triple A studio, I was asked to work on three different tasks to demonstrate the skills required for the role.
For the Combat task, I was asked to create enjoyable combat encounters designed around a narrative setup. I believe that the creative freedom of combat systems in tabletop RPGs are some of their best aspects, so I wanted to incorporate this into my own encounters.
In the first encounter I used elementals as the primary antagonists and designed it so the player would be able to utilise the strengths and weaknesses of these creatures against each other. I also gave each elemental a clear role to play - for example, the air elemental is a supporting creature that can power up their allies. This created an encounter that would reward players who utilised strategies to prioritise their targets.
For the second encounter, I wanted to create a combat scenario where the goal wasn't the destruction of all enemy combatants. To this end, I designed a puzzle where the player would be required to use mirrors to direct an energy beam to the center of the room, while waves of monsters tried to slow them down. This encounter would steadily apply more pressure the longer the player took to solve it, but also meant that the player did not need to kill the combatants, only slow them down.