For fighting games especially, some games may have both standard blocking and an advanced form of blocking that is more useful but either harder to do or requiring some resource. Fighting Games may either have one, or (in 2D fighters) have the player simply holding the "back" button (i.e the opposite direction of where the character is facing). Outside of RPGs, other genre games (notably action games) have their own dedicated "blocking" button. Whether this is preferable or more strategic then the usual quick all-out attack strategy of most RPGs is dependent on who you ask. This can, in turn, draw out battles, even otherwise easy Random Encounters, with excessive defending.
While this approach will keep defend from being useless, it can go to the alternate extreme of having a party spending as much or more time defending as attacking, either to generate enough mana to heal or build up stamina to perform more powerful attacks. Alternatively, it may regenerate stamina or technique points used for performing more powerful attacks. For instance, defend may regenerate a percentage of health or mana each time it is used (don't expect to be able to use it outside of battles). This version is exclusive to Turn Based Role Playing Games, as more action-oriented games have a dedicated Dodge command instead to replicate this effect.Ī third common approach to expanding the use of the defend command is to cause defending characters to also regenerate resources when used. That said, beware the Always Accurate Attack, which can bypass even this. One variation may cause a defending character to become the sole target of enemy hostility, either by shielding the rest of the party (kinda hard to reach them when they're behind a big-ass shield) or to draw enemy attention as the character enters a defensive stance, which comes in handy if used by a character who can Counter-Attack.Īnother variation causes the character to evade damage instead of guarding against it attacks which whiff this way are just as effective as if they were dodged normally, and also useful to counter-capable characters.