4) Odds, Ends, and Updates

Some additions were made to Arpeggio sometime after Game 1 actually began. These include the support system and the addition of armor.

Support is a concept from Fire Emblem which is basically putting a numerical value on friendship—or not actually friendship in its most general form, but specifically, the inevitable bonds built between characters forced to fight for their lives together, whether they want to or not. Under this definition, support can be built between characters who are, story-wise, mortal enemies. Support can also, however, have a romantic angle.

The basic idea is that the more two characters fight together, the more support they build. Of course, in Fire Emblem, the entire game is fighting; in Arpeggio, I also award support points when a pair solves a not-necessarily-lethal field puzzle. Fire Emblem games feature support endings, wherein two characters whose support level has been maxed out have their epilogues at the end of the game changed to involve the two of them having related conclusions—they may get married, but they may never see each other again; it is not necessarily always romantic. Since a game of Arpeggio has no clear ending, I have designed no default feature for support endings, although I suppose they could be incorporated. More significantly number-wise is that the building of support offers stat bonuses, similarly to the way that it does in Fire Emblem but altered to fit the Paper Mario-based Arpeggio system.

(Update: Support levels can now be broken. See the same page.)

Something else that I would like to note, partly because it was a post-beginning change, is that the player characters used to have a maximum allowed Magic Power of 3, just like their Attack Power, but I increased this to 4 when I realized that physical attacks could be greatly powered-up by weapons and psychic attacks could become much more powerful because Brain Power is allowed to go up to 6. Magic attacks still get kind of gypped at 4, but it is actually quite a lot of work for me to make that kind of change—more so than it would appear, at any rate, and considering the size of Ostinato, it probably appears to be a lot to start with.

After thinking about these damage numbers that are potentially massive compared to Paper Mario averages, I realized that I needed some new defensive feature to help balance things out. Thus, armor was added to the system. I even went so far as to make armor protect the character even when the incoming attack is supposed to cut through Defense Power. To balance that back out a little, I made an alternate form of ignoring Defense dubbed "armor-piercing," which damages both the armor and the wearer. I also differentiated between physical and psychic armor.

Recently added were the Weight stat of armor and the option for a character to be insane and able to perform insanity attacks. A suit of armor's Weight is subtracted from the wearer's Platform stat while worn, and it can only be worn if the character's Strength stat is equal to or greater than its Weight. An insane character will be marked as having a negative Brain Power stat, and will be immune to psychic attacks and incapable of using them. The exceptions are special insanity attacks (which count as psychic damage, but also work on other insane characters), which use the negative Brain Power stat as a damage number, but do not apply the absolute value for damage given until after the target's Brain Power is subtracted, effectively adding what is supposed to be the target's defense to the damage dealt instead of subtracting it. However, the higher (or rather lower) the negative Brain Power number, the more insane the character is, and this may affect his or her ability to make rational choices in battle as well as in the field.

As another counterpoint to the high damage numbers possible, I pulled in the Defend command from Paper Mario 2, and allowed it to work on psychic attacks as well (though defense-ignoring attacks pierce it). This I should have thought of much earlier, as I think of myself as a defensive player...

(Update: I changed it so that Defend still works against defense-ignoring attacks, even armor-piercing ones. This makes it more like pressing A against an enemy attack in Paper Mario.)

I've now added a page listing several mental disorders in addition to insanity, which affect characters in various ways. These are chronic disorders and as such do not have the come-and-go nature of Status Problems, but should be incorporated into the character's personality. As the page notes, however, it may be a good idea to have enemies inflict temporary versions of them at some point, so that they actually see some sort of use.

And now I've given Weather Conditions their own page, since they felt kind of hidden in the Battle System page. I also added an Example Character Sheet as a counterpart to the Key Character Sheet.

Most recently added was the Weight stat of characters, a stat previously only possessed by armor. A character's Weight determines whether or not they can be carried around by another character (the carrying character must have equal or greater Strength), but since it was added after Game 1 ended, it was not relevant to anything in it, and all of the Weight stats that appear on the Game 1 character sheets were not originally there.

Post-most recently, I decreased the maximum Brain Power from 6 to 5. This is a big deal, but I felt that it was necessary, because whenever I tried to design powerful psychic enemies, I always felt like I had to weaken them slightly because they were just too powerful with a Brain of 6. Although the maximum technically only applies to players, enemies tend to follow it since they use the default psychic attacks. At any rate, the offensive maximums are now 3, 4, and 5, so that makes some kind of sense (even if Brain is also a defensive stat).

And now I've created one default Insanity Attack and removed the option to create any other ones. This was because I couldn't actually think of any good ideas for other ones.

Somewhere around here is when Game 2 started. I'm not sure exactly when because I'm writing this later, in the long pause after Session 14.

Thanks to people who actually understand math (namely kirbyviper93 and hegel5000), I have now simplified the Damage Formula by removing the Flower Bonus damage and moving the subtraction of armor defense to before the halving of damage from a Shield. The reason I had not done the latter already was because I was confused about how much to subtract from the armor's HP value, but what we'll do now is treat the armor like its own separate character that is also Shielded, and simply halve the damage that it would normally take.

Previously, most bosses had a note on their sheets making them immune to Instant Death; I've now added to this an immunity to Time Freezing, since it is completely paralyzing and has no detriments such as allowing psychic attacks like Paralysis or being canceled out by a Burn like regular ice Freezing. Bosses could still be rather troubled by Paralysis or ice Freezing if they have just the wrong set of moves and Elemental Modifiers, but it is the Arbiter's responsibility to make that work, and if your players trounce a boss that was supposed to be difficult by keeping him or her immobilized, then they should expect you to give the next boss blunt (and possibly nonsensical) immunity to this strategy.

Semi-relatedly, I made some alterations to the default psychic attacks and default magic attacks to remove any 100% chances of inflicting Time Freeze, regular Freeze, or Paralysis. This is still allowed for player-created attacks, but the VP or MP cost should be high to account for the abuse potential. There are now two attacks—the dark magic spell Abdullah and PK Freeze γ—that roughly cut the target's current HP in half; this is most devastating for player-like characters, since their level ups fuel HP, VP, and MP rather than Attack and such, but most Paper Mario enemies have tiny amounts of HP, so just keep an eye on these attacks and try not to allow them to be too overpowering.

Now I've modified the alcohol system so that a character's alcohol tolerance is based on Weight. The "Alcohol" values for alcoholic items are the same, but now they get multiplied by 10 - Weight before being added to the blood alcohol level. This means that characters with a Weight of 9 will essentially be following the old system, whereas characters with a Weight of 1 or 2 will get drunk off of just one beer. I felt that this was necessary, because in the old system, you really never would have gotten drunk without trying, and I haven't yet figured out any way to handle addictions, so there was nothing really to fear from alcoholic items.

After reexamining the values given by 10 - Weight, I've decided to change it to 9 - Weight with a minimum of 1. This means that characters who weight 8 and 9 will have the same alcohol tolerance as each other, and only characters who weigh 1 will get drunk off of one beer—2s just barely avoid it. The improvement here seems worth the slight increase in complication—my main concern was that characters weighing as much as 6 would still get drunk off of only two beers, and that seemed excessive.

And now, after finding out how Weapon Level Ups actually work in Fire Emblem, I've decided I like KV's version of my version better than mine, so I've switched to it. The values needed for a level up are the same, but now instead of each higher level of weapon giving 1 more point, using the highest level possible at the time gives you 2 points, and using any lower level gives you 1. This should be easier to keep track of.

Right about here, I think, is when I added two additional Example Character Sheets for a total of three. They range from very simple to quite complex, so they should be a lot more helpful to those trying to understand the character creation process. The main problem before was that the single example character, Grate Oracle Lewot, had an unusual way of utilizing the Brain Power stat, and this is not really a good thing to do on the only example character sheet.

Now I've stolen from KV again and changed Bow-type weapons a bit. Before there was a different type of weapon for each equivalent bow in Fire Emblem, and each one just had one specific quiver ammunition item that it could use. Now there's basically just one type of bow that can use all the quivers, and the arrows themselves have weapon levels to prevent players from using stronger arrows too soon. Being me, though, I've added a few more complications; I kept the Slingshot as an E-level Bow-type weapon, and the Crossbow as an alternative to the regular Bow; the Crossbow's bolts don't have weapon levels, but the Crossbow itself has a C (the regular Bow is D and the Slingshot, again, is E). Then I added some other C-level bows that can fire all the normal arrows: a Longbow and one called Lady Bow. Anyway, it's a bit complicated, but more logical. So to speak.

Logic strikes again: I've decided to differentiate between "successive" multitarget attacks and "fieldwide" multitarget attacks. The former will miss Invisible/Nirvana/S.E.P. characters, but the latter will hit them. It is the conceptual difference between bathing the entire enemy battlefield in your attack and just going up to each enemy and hitting them individually in the same turn. What I'll do is keep fieldwide attacks the same, but label successive attacks as "Target: All (Successive)."

At the moment, I'm playing through Mother 3; I've changed PK Flash so that it's more like it is in that game, having more possible effects but dealing no direct damage. I'm going to keep PK Thunder the way it is, though, because I don't really like how it works in Mother 3. I've already addressed the fact that attacks like Hypnosis and Paralysis do not have the "PK" in front of them in Mother 3; I'm keeping it there because otherwise they would overlap with things like the Pokémon attack Hypnosis or, heck, just the name of the Status Problem Paralysis.

Now I've caved in and changed PK Thunder to better resemble Mother 3 as well. Its target is randomized and it's not even very accurate, but it's the only armor-piercing default psychic attack.

I've just woken up and decided to make the Defend command reduce the accuracy of incoming Status Problems by 50%, partly to make it more useful and partly to reference the fact that pressing A to duck in Paper Mario usually prevents Status Problems. I also came up with the idea to make some characters take +2 damage from all magical attacks in order to help even out magic's status as the least convenient type of damage, but I haven't actually put this on any characters yet. It could also occur with psychic attacks, especially with Fighting- or Poison-type Pokémon, but since the point is to help magic out and psychic is probably already better than physical, I haven't added this to Zubat and Golbat yet.

Tried to change all instances of "(ignore Defense)" to "[/]" and "(armor-piercing)" to "[X]." I now refer to these as "Spare Attacks" and "Strike Attacks" respectively, obviously based on bowling. They still have the same effect, but the labels always felt awkward. I've probably missed changing them in a bunch of places, but oh well. (I'm leaving Game 1 stuff alone intentionally.)

Added High Gravity as a Weather Condition. This is stolen from Pokémon (the original source of the Weather Conditions), but will probably mainly be used in the field to reduce the Platform stats of flying characters and thereby create more challenging field puzzles for them. I was starting to get uneasy about field puzzles with flying characters, so this should help.

And now I realized I hadn't said what to do with Elemental Modifiers in regard to the 5-damage lightning bolt from the Thunderstorm condition, so I fixed that.

Finally, finally got around to making laguz enemy sheets. They probably suck though.

Apparently I never noted on this page that I added a system for addiction and withdrawal. It's not a very good system, because it's based on "days" which don't pass with any kind of regularity in Arpeggio, but it is at least a system.

Now I added some vague rules for non-laguz form changing, based on Levity's sister's proposed character for Game 2.

And now I've altered those rules that I just wrote a bit. Form-changing characters can double the offensive stat maximums compared to normal player characters... well, just go read it.

BIG THING: I've added a system for vehicles, such as tanks, space fighters, and giant mecha. They have their own HP and even Defense Power, and protect the driver from attacks, except for psychic attacks which get through them. (However, some vehicles can have an AI system that takes the psychic damage instead of the driver.) They can use various weapons and store extra items, so they're all kinds of fun.

Now I've changed Long Fall damage so that the faller's Weight stat is added to the damage from the old formula, making the whole thing (Weight + 10) - (Platform + Defense Power). I did this to explain why large objects such as airships would actually be destroyed when they crash, instead of just taking Long Fall damage (the hypothetical Weight of an explorable ship would be so large as to take away all of its hypothetical HP). I also like this because previously, high-Weight characters had high alcohol tolerance as a nice bonus, and there was no equivalent bonus for low-Weight characters; now heavies get the alcohol tolerance but take more damage from Long Falls.

Finally attempted a page that allows for easy character creation. Not sure how well I did.

Moved the "Current Stats" section of all character sheets farther up, just under the initial "Basics," due to how Arora didn't seem to understand what it meant when he created Concerto. It also makes it easier to see without scrolling down, which was supposed to be the entire point. I may have missed some character sheets here, but hopefully I'll eventually find them (as usual, I'm leaving Game 1 stuff alone for a kind of historical accuracy).

Added some (horribly broken) Pikmin stuff.

Once again altered the Fire and Ice States. Now you can choose not to add the Elementality to the relevant attacks, meaning you're not in so much trouble against an immunity to it. Also, you can get a +2 damage bonus to an attack that is already Fire or Ice, though it's also optional. This is more complicated but less restrictive and more how I envision the power-up, and still less complicated than the original Flower Bonus.

Nerfed [X] attacks so that the full damage of the attack is no longer done to the armor's HP, rather the armor just takes its full Defense value of damage. It takes this even if the power of the attack is less than the full Defense number. All other aspects of [X] attacks remain the same, though I'm not sure I found every mention of the effects on the site.

And similarly, I'm sure I missed some references to this somewhere, but I've decided to throwback to Paper Mario a little and implement a now-universal system where flying characters will automatically dodge any melee attack targeting them if the attacker's Platform stat is lower than theirs. This even applies if the attacker is also flying, but does not apply to characters who have a 9 in Platform but use it by climbing, teleporting, or otherwise not flying.

Also inspired by a Paper Mario throwback, I've decided that "external" effects like Electrification, Spikiness, and damage from Weather Conditions will not ignore armor, which now gives us a reason that Koopas can attack Electrified targets: their shells take the damage for them. I'm quite positive I've missed some references to this throughout the site and still need to correct them.

Nearly finished adding sheets for every boss from both Paper Mario games and also this handy table listing every enemy and boss sheet in the Default Data section. In doing all this I've made a number of corrections to enemy stats and done various other things that my shoddy memory can't quite keep track of, such as making it standard that bosses are immune to Instant Death even if it isn't stated on their character sheets, so things will probably get very confusing when you look back at stuff from Game 1 and Game 2 because I'm leaving all those sheets uncorrected for historical accuracy.

Converted a set of Hegel's old Fuzion sheets for the Stickmen into these Arpeggio sheets, which means that the Default Data section now actually includes enemies who use projectile weapons (besides Bows), and psychic attacks beyond tacking them onto a few Mario enemies. The Buzzy comics will live on whether BK likes it or not.

Forgot about this page for a while, so I might've done more stuff that I don't remember, but I added a bunch of sheets for NPCs from Super Mario Odyssey, and also a new type of melee weapon, plus a few new individual weapons in old types. And I split the Mario NPCs off from the enemy table into their own.

I had a few Pokémon sheets before, but now I've made a sheet for just about every Pokémon that only learns one or a few moves or has a particularly unique ability—basically gimmicky Pokémon like Ditto that can be decently represented with only one sheet. I also made sheets for all the starters at the level of a starting player character in Arpeggio.

Then, for some reason, I made sheets for all of the bosses from Super Paper Mario.

Changed all instances of "Arbiter" to "Maestro," stealing Arora's name for the GM to match the musical naming scheme. Quite likely I've missed some instances, but as usual, things from Game 1 and Game 2 have been intentionally left unedited for historical accuracy.

Created a new Status Benefit that reflects projectile attacks back at the originator. Finally there's a situation where projectile attacks aren't always better with no downsides. Also, clarified that being hurt by Spikiness, Electrification, or being Made of an Element actually prevents all effects of the attempted attack; previously I had vaguely assumed that it would still get through, but only the first hit of multiple-hit attacks, which arguably still makes more sense, but this way it's more like Paper Mario.

Probably forgot some other stuff that I did, but—badges! Oh so many badges. Uh, since there's no BP, they reduce the wearer's maximum HP, VP, or MP (you choose which per badge). Along with all the ones from the first two Paper Marios, I've written up a bunch based on other games and my own... ideas. It will probably be some time before I settle down about adding more.

And now I went through and got rid of the old PK Freeze γ and Abdullah effects of cutting HP in half; in Paper Mario terms, such a thing is too weak against enemies and too strong against players, so it just didn't really make sense. Instead, Freeze γ has a low chance of Freezing the target solid for a longer number of turns (kind of vice-versa compared to Ω), and Abdullah just gives a random Stat Decrease. Actually, I completely revamped the whole set of dark spells, as before they all had the same strength and just increasingly pierced defenses, which was kind of stupid. Eclipse is still the same as before, though.

Now, like [/] and [X] attacks, I went through and changed all instances of "Never misses" to a new mark: [O]. This is something I've thought about for a long time, so I finally did it. As always, I probably missed (...heh?) some somewhere, but I'm intentionally leaving stuff from Game 1 and Game 2 uncorrected for historical accuracy. Where [/] is pronounced "Spare" and [X] "Strike," I just called [O] "Homing" attacks, which I guess could be taken as a Sonic reference. But it also came in handy for the homing ammo of the Donkey Kong 64 weapons... By the way, I added the Donkey Kong 64 weapons. And corresponding ammo fruits where they didn't already exist. Also the seed-spitty Watermelon from Yoshi's Island. (And later the Fire and Ice Melons.)

I looked up the likelihood of Paper Mario 2 enemies holding and dropping badges, and that whole system is rather interesting, particularly how almost every enemy can potentially have a badge, and many badges that I thought there were only one of being obtainable this way. Anyway, I went and added potential badge drops to pretty much all of my own enemy sheets, giving almost all of them a unique one; as with everything, these are just suggestions and not meant to be restrictive, but it gave me something to do for a while. In doing so, I changed the regular item drops of a few enemies, but it's not like anyone ever saw those.

Revamped insanity to basically the way that I had originally envisioned it: instead of them being immune to psychic attacks and unable to use them, they can use them, but their negative Brain Power stats mean that they basically have negative defense against psychic attacks, taking more damage from them, but the same is also true for an insane character attacking an insane one. Also they're immune to Confusion and can inflict it with any psychic attack. I was originally going to make a whole list of default "insanity attacks" like the regular default psychic attacks, but I got too lazy; some of the ideas that I had for those ended up here.

Added Bopts: these are simple enemies who utilize the "made of" mechanic, with a type for every Element. The name is an old reference that only I will get.

Probably did some other stuff, but now I've made Lakitu's cloud count as a vehicle, mostly just so that players can steal it. I had to make corresponding versions for other Lakitoids as well, and for the Lakitufo it made more sense to make Spiny (Shroopa) production a property of the vehicle, so that one's a bit wonky.

Added some more vehicles, including motorcycles (which I'd previously been unsure whether to count as vehicles due to not protecting the driver or having room to store items and generally being small for a vehicle) and Magic Pingu, a miniboss from Allo's Town, as well as a spidermech not directly based on Allo's Town but (like the Mr. Deathmech sheets) on my vague memories of it. And probably did some other stuff. (Birdo?)

Got rid of the "Until Tails" coin flip thing for moves like Power Bounce, replacing it with using the Platform stat to determine the number of hits you get (all variations of this attack were jumping-based; could use Hand-Eye or something for one that's not). This is more in line with, for example, using Strength to pry off Blooper Babies, where a field stat replaces an action command. I liked the theoretical possibility of infinite jumps with continual coin flipping, but at 50% each time it wasn't likely to get very far. Speaking of, don't think I ever noted on this page that some time ago I changed Confusion slightly to be closer to Pokémon; it still, unlike Pokémon, has a chance of lasting forever like Power Bounce no longer does, but now you'll never snap out of it on the first turn it's inflicted—that is to say, the first time you're able to try to do anything after it's been inflicted. This "first turn" is renewed if the Confusion-inducing move is reused on an already-Confused target. Oh, and uh, I also added Embargo as a Status Problem.

Added all of the weapons from Cave Story complete with their weapon level up system, all cordoned off in their own particular section to avoid confusion over that. Some of them are quite overpowered, but the whole leveling down thing is supposed to mitigate that. We'll see if they ever get any use.

Then, for some unfathomable reason, made sheets for every enemy from Cave Story as well (sans bosses and thusly boss battle minions, of which there are a lot due to the whole weapon level up system; they're there to drop weapon energy in mid-battle). Also a few NPC species. All of the enemy stats are both playtested and cross-verified through a program that reads their stats directly out of the game files for the PC version of Cave Story, except that due to a quirk in this program I'm not 100% certain on the Butes and Mesas, since that whole section is beyond my skill level and thus my ability to playtest. But they should be pretty close.

Created an additional set of default magic spells designed for reviving dead characters, since the regular healing spells didn't do that and I had previously tacked PK VimUp onto Fire Emblem healers for the purpose, which seemed a bit out of place. Dead people can't be revived in Fire Emblem, so that's why this didn't exist before, but in Arpeggio revival is more of a standard thing. The lowest-level spell, based on the Restore Staff, just heals Status Problems, but since death is technically a kind of Status Problem, it makes sense for the progression of the spell set to go into revival. The equivalent of the multitarget attacking spells, which are based on the super-long-range spells from FE9 and 10, heals Status Problems for the entire party, but doesn't revive dead people. Also, I didn't forget to make badges for this new spell set.

Then I changed the way that reviving abilities are written up, with "(Revive)" after the amount of HP healed instead of the entire sentence "Can be used to revive a dead character" at the end. For Life Shrooms and the like, I put "(Auto-Revive)". I've quite likely missed changing some instances of this, but as always I'm leaving stuff from Games 1 and 2 alone for historical accuracy.

Oh, I guess I never noted here that I added every enemy from Super Paper Mario. Previously I'd only done bosses because a lot of SPM enemies were only seen in that game and, in my opinion, weren't really interesting or iconic enough to add, but since I can't seem to stop myself from adding more stuff and it's at least better than Sticker Star and Color Splash, there you go. It was also that, after adding the Cave Story enemies, I wanted more enemies with higher HP values, since the regular Paper Mario enemies are always lacking in that regard, and Super had some like the Muth with high HP. In the same vein, the "Dark" enemies from the Flopside Pit of 100 Trials provided a way for me to keep using Mario enemies later into a game of Arpeggio, even if them all being shadows makes them more monotonous. I even made some additional shadow versions of enemies that didn't get one in SPM itself. Some of these necessitated new weapons, armor pieces, and the like to avoid spoiling the pure black color scheme (not that, y'know, you can actually tell in the non-visual medium that is Arpeggio).

Added Shields as weapons. These augment the Defend command when equipped, making that more useful as well as filling a fairly obvious hole in the weapon roster.

Then altered PK Shield so that it has eight levels instead of four, incorporating Reflectivity as well as Reciprocity. I think I corrected all the enemies who can use PK Shield, but I may have missed some.

Made single-use items for summoning Weather Conditions. I've actually had the page up for a while, but I couldn't think of funny names for some of them until now. But like with the shields, in retrospect it seemed like an obvious omission.

Went ahead and gave Knowledge, Clever, and Charisma stats to every vehicle that has an AI. This means the only stat that these vehicles still have an "n/a" in is Hand-Eye, which is pretty awkward, but since vehicles that lack AIs still have it in those three mental stats, it's probably fine. I gave my personal mech a Hand-Eye stat as well, though, just to round off all of its field stats being 9.

Split fusion off from the Other Conditions page onto its own page, and in doing so cleaned up the explanations for its rules and added new ones for aspects I hadn't considered. While it's not necessarily meant to be a thing in every game of Arpeggio, it should now be well-explained enough to be usable in a given game should that be desired. And it's basically set up so that a fusion's stats are entirely derivable from those of the fusers, meaning that even generic enemies could fuse without requiring an entirely new sheet for the fusion.

Threw some enemies from Game 2 into the Arpeggio Originals section, with minor updates.

Added Mechawfuls, including a Super Paper Mario-inspired "Dark Dark" version. I think these were the last of the Fawful enemies I had planned to add, the main purpose of all of which was to have default enemies who are insane; the Mechawful suits count as vehicles, but the robotic heads as enemies. I also added a weapon called a Bill Sniper, which, when equipped by a Bullet Bill, can be used to recreate an enemy from Superstar Saga called a Sniper Bill.

Revamped Bows for a second time: taking cues from Breath of the Wild and Pathfinder, I went halfway back, with fewer types of arrows and more types of bows, based on the idea that the same arrow fired from a bow with a higher poundage would deal more damage. However, there are still different types of arrows for things like Elements and other special effects. The end result is messy, but appears cleaner, and is ultimately somewhat simplified with primarily the one main type of arrow. I've probably missed changing this on a ton of enemy sheets and things, but I tried to find them all.

Started adding Bug Fables stuff, including items and badges, though I've been distracted from finishing the actual enemy sheets by the card minigame. Since I'd written up Capture Cards from Super Paper Mario, I decided to combine them with Bug Fables' Spy Cards, so they can also be used for the minigame. It'll still be a long time before I actually make card data for every enemy and boss that I have on here, though. But since, in real battles, some Bug Fables enemies can be flipped over like shelled Paper Mario enemies, I wrote a page on flipping.

Revamped Bows AGAIN. The arrows are the same, but now the Quiver counts as a separate item from the Bow, meaning that Bows no longer show Fire Emblem-style decretion in use points, because a larger Quiver can be retained through swapping out to a stronger Bow. That being the case, acquisition of a larger Quiver becomes a separate goal, but Quivers don't require Weapon Levels to use bigger ones, so once you have it you're golden. I tried to change all references to this, with the typical exception of Game 1 and Game 2 stuff, but it's likely I missed something somewhere. Don't ask me why I made the change; I'd prefer it the old way, as this is overly complicated, sometimes requiring an entirely new field on the character sheet (and only "sometimes" because I came up with convoluted ways of sometimes leaving it off by stuffing the would-be information elsewhere on the sheet), but at least this way it's a bit more verisimilitudinous. The currently equipped Quiver doesn't take up a slot in either the item or weapon inventories, but unequipped ones take up item slots, and of course have a certain number of arrow slots within them (which, like before, can be filled with any combination of arrows). In order to still somewhat mimic Fire Emblem, I've indicated that by default, the generic Fire Emblem enemies have size decretion in their Quivers as they get stronger, which doesn't really make any sense, but I don't care.

Based on the burrowing enemies in Bug Fables and the notion that that is a much more usable "third position" than ceilings, I made Underground as a Status Condition and changed some stuff around the site to reference it, along with rewriting the "melee vs. projectile" section on this page to make it sound like underground is just as standard of a thing to encounter as flying. I still haven't actually finished all the Bug Fables enemy sheets, and those mostly won't refer to Underground as a Status Condition, because the condition version lets them stay underground even when damaged, but nevertheless. Read more over here.

The Arpeggio system is, by this point, ever-adapting, and thrives on new ideas, despite how much work it is for me to add them. I suppose I persist because it satisfies me to see that my fusion of Paper Mario, Allo's Town, and Fire Emblem, with dashes of other works, is functioning as it is supposed to—both in the sense that the numbers are working, but more importantly, in the sense that the players are enjoying their experience.

I have always played video games for fun instead of challenge, and that is how (and why) I design them. Arpeggio is bound to this rule by its 42nd and Only Amendment: "Above all, Arpeggio is meant to be an enjoyable experience for both the Maestro and the players."