Allowing for variable raid group sizes

[Fendred]

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Think turn 6. People get chained together and have to break free. Without making the fight a meaningless encounter in which most people would never have to move anymore, the chains would need to affect more players. However, if multi-linked still, the number of players chained together could be of a number which makes it impossible to spread far enough on the small plot of land.

As such the encounter would need to be revised, for greater party sizes different tactics may be required to be introduced, and ultimately there may be a need to create 5 or more varieties of the same raid boss; as the extra number of players people expect to bring along will never be the same anyway.

The turn 6 example is easily remedied by changing the algorithm for choosing chain targets from purely random to a randomly ordered queue where each DD is guaranteed to get chained at least once during the fight. Because the game breaks combatants down into three distinct roles, its easy to understand what is needed when adding more of them to a fight. Adding a new damage dealer requires they buff the boss's HP total to compensate, but little else. Additional tank would require a smaller buff to hit points and maybe a little more flexibility on tank swap mechanics. The more healers there are, the more damage gets spread to other members of the party that needs to be healed.

Obviously there are limits to what they could do before stuff starts to break down, but the flexible party size would never need to go above at most a cap of fifteen players. A flex cap maxing out at twelve would be more likely.

Again, I'm not saying they allow you to bring twenty four people to do turn six, but to allow a little variability which requires minor tweaks at best.