Rance 4.1 & 4.2:Game mechanics

Adventure
Rance 4.1 and Rance 4.2 are two parts of the same storyline, and use the same mechanics and artstyle. Part of the game involves navigating the surface, speaking with people, and investigating the surroundings through an adventure game menu.

The other part is a dungeon-crawler taking place in the monster-infested underground cave. Within the cave, there are specific rooms where the player can interact with the environment, use healing items, and load/save. The rooms are connected to each other by thin lines, where the only available actions are "Advance" and "Retreat", to take a step forwards or backward (most routes are about 3-5 steps long). Random encounters can occur while you navigate the paths. When the game starts, the cave is unmapped, and paths are marked on menus as "???". Each time the player crosses a path and enters a new room, Athena 2.0 will draw the room on the map (with a short dialogue with Rance about how to name and illustrate it; sometimes giving comical or unhelpful names). The "???" option will change to reflect the room name. Some paths are hidden or trapped, and can only be crossed later in the game.

Like with old adventure games, some actions (ex: walking into a trap or attacking the President) can lead to an instant game over. These "Bad Ends" are just a few lines long and are mostly played as jokes, but they will force you to reload the game.

Combat
In battles, Rance is the only controllable party member, with all other teammates auto-battling. A maximum of four party members and enemies can appear, represented by stat blocks across the bottom and top of the screen, respectively. Three statistics are visible in these stat blocks; Hit Points (represented by circles) show one kind of health, while Stamina shows another: reduce either to 0 and the character will go out of play. Power is spent each time they perform an attack, refilled a little each turn.

Attacks can reduce both an enemy's hit points and stamina. The more damage you do to stamina, the more likely you are to cause damage to hit points. Combatants who lose all their stamina are knocked out, and can't fight - but they can still be attacked to reduce HP. Combatants who lose all their HP are dead. If any player character dies, it's an automatic game over.

The player wins a battle when all enemies are either knocked out or dead. Characters are awarded with EXP at the end of the battle; unlike previous games, characters levels-up automatically when they have enough EXP, with no need to summon a level goddess. EXP earned is entirely random, and is not related to the enemies defeated. Like in other games, Athena 2.0 cannot level up, nor can Feliss in Rance 4.1. Other characters will gain 1 point of Attack and 1 point of either Evasion or Defence, with a 50-50 chance of either. In Alice's Mansion, the developers state that the random encounters are mostly there as obstacles, and that low-level runs aren't difficult.

Rance
Rance is the only character you can directly control. His attacks are as follows:
 * Iceberg Sword: Standard attack, strength 32 at start of game. Costs 10 Power.
 * Rance Attack: Standard attack damage x3. Costs 30 Power.
 * Summon Feliss: Rance 4.1 only. Summons Feliss into the party for the current combat. Only works 10 times across the course of the game. Costs 10 power.
 * Items: Use Seirogan 2 or 3. Costs 14 Power.

Athena 2.0
Fights with a crossbow, and can heal her own Life.
 * Giga Bow: Standard attack, strength 20. Cannot cause Life damage unless the target is unconscious. Costs 10 Power.
 * Vital Attack: Causes 1-6 Life damage. Costs 20 Power.
 * Rapid Fire: Causes a standard attack to all enemies. Costs 30 Power. More likely to be used in boss battles.
 * Recovery: Will restore her life by 1. Costs 10 Power. Will only be used if her Life is below 6.
 * Items: Use a Seirogan 2 if Stamina is extremely low. Cannot use Seirogan 3. Costs 14 Power.
 * May pass her turn if her Life is at 2 or below.

Genri
Uses status debuffs. Has a bad habit of attacking downed targets, killing them.
 * Iron Kakkhara: Standard attack, strength 8 at start of game. Costs 10 Power.
 * KATSU! Slow: Enemy Power reduced to 0, delaying their turn. Costs 20 Power.
 * KATSU! Nervous: Enemy evasion down by 10. Costs 20 Power.
 * KATSU! Soft: Enemy defence down by 10 (affects Stamina damage, only impacts Life damage indirectly). Costs 20 Power.
 * Prayer: Rance 4.2 only. Can restore Life by 2. Costs 10 Power. Will only be used if his life is below 5.
 * Items: Use a Seirogan 2 if Stamina is extremely low. Cannot use Seirogan 3. Costs 14 Power.
 * More likely to pass his turn to accumulate Power.

Feliss
Rance 4.1 only, must be summoned into battle by Rance.
 * Shinigami Scythe: Standard attack. Strength 38. Costs 10 Power.
 * Devil Beam: Cannot miss. Causes 16-95 points of Stamina damage, ignoring enemy Defence. Cannot cause Life damage unless the target is unconscious (in which case it will cause 1). Costs 25 Power.
 * Cannot use items, but doesn't particularly need them, either.

Kisara
Rance 4.2 only. Uses a variety of magical attacks, but has low Life.
 * Kick: Standard attack. Strength 3 at start of game. Costs 10 Power.
 * Flame Card and Lightning Card: These attacks are identical except in appearance. Cannot miss. Causes 21-40 points of Stamina damage, ignoring enemy defence. Cannot cause Life damage unless the target is unconscious (in which case it will cause 1). Costs 20 Power.
 * Items: Use a Seirogan 2 if Stamina is extremely low. Cannot use Seirogan 3. Costs 14 Power.

Detailed Mechanics
This section details the math behind battle mechanics an AI. Note that it includes spoilers.

Damage Calculation
An attack hits if Accuracy minus Evasion is greater than a roll from 1-10.

Stamina damage calculation begins by calculating your max possible damage, which is equal to Attack minus Defence. If this comes out to 0, you'll get a compensation maximum of 1-2 (ironically, this means it's better to have equal or less attack than enemy defence than it is to have 1 Attack point better than enemy Defence, but this situation is unlikely). Your actual damage is then set to 50-100% of that maximum.

Next, Life damage is calculated. Enemies have a separate Life Damage defence that is added to their standard Defence for this stage. Extremely strong hits cause Life damage automatically. If your Stamina damage is more than double the target's combined resistance, you will cause 1 Life damage automatically. If it is triple, 1-2 damage. Quadruple, 1-3 damage.

If you fail to cause Life damage in the above fashion, there are additional, but random odds of causing Life damage. If your Stamina damage is higher than the enemy's combined defence, but not enough to hit double, there is a 50% chance you will cause 1 point of Life damage. If your Stamina damage is higher than half your enemy's combined defences, there is a 90% chance of causing 1 point of Life damage. There is also a purely random, 1 in 100 chance of causing 1 point of Life damage without question.

If a target is unconscious (0 Stamina), you will cause an additional point of Life damage and no points of Stamina damage.

Special Circumstances

 * Athena's Vital Attack overrides Stamina and Life Damage calculation and instead causes 1-6 points of Life Damage directly. This attack still benefits from the extra point of Life Damage if the target is unconscious.


 * Athena's regular attack and Rapid Fire attacks cannot cause Life damage unless the target is unconscious, in which case they will cause 1.


 * Feliss' Demon Beam and Kisara's cards (i.e. magical attacks) ignore most of the above. They cannot miss, and they cause their damage directly, ignoring defence, and will not cause Life damage unless the enemy is unconscious, in which case they cause 1.

Rance
Rance has two attacks: his regular strike (Attack Strength: 30 + Attack Stat, which starts at 2), and Rance Attack (triple regular Attack Strength). The True Iceberg Sword in Rance 4.1 sets Rance's Attack Stat to 20, accidentally overwriting previous gains from level-ups. The 32-bit port corrects this by increasing Rance's attack by 18 instead.

Ally AI
Allies select their attacks as described below.

If an ally other than Feliss begins the turn below 15 Stamina, they have a 2 in 6 chance of using a Seirogan 2 if the party has one. They cannot use Seirogan 3s via AI.

If they choose not to use an item or can't (either because they don't have Seirogan 2s or because they don't have the 14 Power required to use the Item command), they will select an attack as follows. If they select an attack that they don't have the Power to use, they will pass their turn. Note that this doesn't guarantee they actually use the same attack during the next turn: their attack will be selected randomly the same as before, and they may easily waste their newly-accumulated Stamina in this process.
 * Feliss' AI is the simplest: she has a 1 in 2 chance of using either her regular attack (38 Attack Strength) or Devil Beam. She will never use healing items.
 * If Athena 2.0's life is 1 or 2 at the start of her turn, she has a 1 in 4 chance of passing her turn. This is checked before the check to use items. Athena then has a 2 in 3 chance of using a regular attack, a 1 in 6 chance of using Vital Strike, a 1 in 6 of using Rapid Fire, or a 1 in 6 of using Recover if her Life is below 6.
 * In the fights against Arnie or Partie in 4.1, and the fights against Sailor, Jumper, Blazer or Arnie in 4.2 (not Falcon, Archibald or the Marishten bosses), Athena adjusts her AI, using regular attacks only on a 1 in 2, in exchange for using Rapid Fire on a 1 in 3.
 * Genri in Rance 4.1 has distinct AI from Genri in Rance 4.2. In 4.1, he has a 1 in 5 chance of attacking, and a 1 in 5 chance each of using his three debuff techniques, KATSU! Slow (eliminates accumulated Power), KATSU! Nervous (reduces agility by 10), and KATSU! Soft (reduces defence by 10). Because his attacks are so reliant on Power, Genri also has a 1 in 5 chance of simply passing his turn without trying to act.
 * In the fight against Partie in 4.1, if the AI chooses to attack Partie after she's been reduced below 0 Stamina, Genri will pass his turn to avoid killing her.
 * Genri in Rance 4.2 has more complicated AI. He has a 1 in 5 chance of attacking. If he doesn't take this chance and his Life is below 5, he will always heal. Failing that, if Genri's target is unconscious, he will always attack them, thus his weird habit of killing people instead of doing something productive. Failing all of the above, Genri will return to the original random roll. He use KATSU! Slow, KATSU! Nervous, or KATSU! Soft on a 1 in 5 each, or pass his turn on a 1 in 5. If his target has Power below 15, he will swap using KATSU! Slow in favour of using KATSU! Nervous.
 * Genri has no compunction against killing people Rance wants alive in 4.2, as many a player learned the hard way.
 * Kisara's AI is simple. After deciding not to use an item, she has a 1 in 5 chance of attacking, a 2 in 5 chance of using Flame Card, and a 2 in 5 chance of using Lightning Card. Since the card attacks are identical, her AI could be considered even simpler than that: 1 in 5 of attacking, 4 in 5 of using a Card.