Category:Type
Techniques and monsters have one or two types, reflecting their nature, behaviour and structure. Tuxemon has five types - Fire, Earth, Metal, Water and Wood.
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Background
Tuxemon's creature types are based on the five-element/five-agent theory of Wu Xing. The doctrine of five phases describes this:
Overcoming Cycle
- Wood parts Earth (such as roots; or, Trees can prevent soil erosion)
- Earth dams (or muddles or absorbs) Water
- Water extinguishes Fire
- Fire melts Metal
- Metal chops Wood
Generating Cycle
- Wood fuels Fire
- Fire leaves behind Earth (ash)
- Earth produces Metal
- Metal fortifies Water (minerals in water)
- Water nourishes Wood
How It Works
There are five options for strengths and weaknesses using the Wu Xing cycles:
- In A, an attack is weak against the element that it Generates and strong against the element that it Overcomes.
- In B, an attack is weak against the element that Overcomes it and strong against the element that Generates it.
- In C, an attack is weak against the element that it Generates, strong against the element that it Overcomes and strong against the element that Generates it.
- In D, an attack is weak against the element that Overcomes it, strong against the element that Generates it and strong against the element that it Overcomes.
- In E, an attack is weak against the element that it Generates, strong against the element that it Overcomes, weak against the element that Overcomes it and strong against the element that Generates it.
We have gone with model A at this point.
Dual types/Pseudo-types
While the game only has five types, the existence of two-type monsters and techniques allows for different vulnerability and resistance profiles. We can therefore represent other "types". For example, Earth-Fire techniques do half damage to Earth monsters and double damage to Water monsters. Electricity-themed techniques like Electrical Storm can be given the types Earth and Fire, to reflect the idea that water conducts electricity well, but it is earthed when it hits the ground.
- Earth-Fire techniques do half damage to Earth monsters and double damage to Water monsters. ("Lightning" pseudo-type)
- Earth-Water techniques do half damage to Wood and Metal monsters and double damage to Fire and Water monsters. ("Frost" pseudo-type)
- Earth-Wood techniques do half damage to Fire and Metal monsters and double damage to Earth and Water monsters. ("Fungus" pseudo-type)
- Earth-Metal techniques do half damage to Metal monsters and double damage to Wood monsters. ("Vermin" pseudo-type).
- Fire-Water technqiues do half damage to Earth and Wood monsters and double damage to Fire and Water monsters. ("Cosmic" pseudo-type).
- Fire-Wood techniques do half damage to Fire monsters and double damage to Metal monsters. ("Battle" pseudo-type).
- Fire-Metal techniques do half damage to Earth and Water monsters and double damage to Wood and Metal monsters. ("Psionic" pseudo-type).
- Water-Wood techniques do half damage to Wood monsters and double damage to Earth monsters
- Water-Metal techniques do half damage to Water monsters and double damage to Fire monsters. ("Darkness" pseudo-type)
- Wood-Metal techniques do half damage to Fire and Water monsters and double damage to Earth and Wood monsters. ("Heaven" pseudo-type).
Current implementation
Currently, some techniques are identified as Normal or Poison type. However, it is not clear if this will continue in future versions of the game.
Associations
- Fire: Includes creatures associated with energy, like electricity, light and heat, dragons and other legendary beings, and poison.
- Water: Includes creatures associated with the sea, lakes and swamps, ice and snow, the weather, liquids like blood, and fish and amphibians.
- Wood: Includes creatures associated with plants, lichen and fungi, poison and venom, forests, the natural environment, the wind and flying, and the wilderness.
- Earth: Includes creatures associated with the ground and underground, dirt and soil, mountains and rocks, caves, and ancient and buried things.
- Metal: Includes creatures associated with steel, light and darkness, mechanical and robotic things, psychic powers and other unnatural things, humankind, and the undead.
Other options
Some of this design space has instead been filled by dual types (see above).
Aether type
The Aether type could serve either or both of two purposes:
- Be the type for special techniques for which an element is irrelevant (since they don't involve damage)
- Be a type for attacks that indicates that the attack takes the element(s) of its user
Normal type
The Normal type would be strong and weak against nothing.
Heaven and Darkness types
Two new types would fit well into our matrix:
- Heaven: For flying, divine, weather-based, legendary, heroic, light, fairy and magical creatures and techniques.
- Darkness: For poisonous, evil, undead, fateful, sorcerous, shadowy, frightening and sinister creatures and techniques.
The two extra types would fit in as such:
- Heaven is weak against Water, as rain swells the waters and wind whips it up and the Moon gives the ocean motion
- Water is weak against Darkness, as darkness fell upon the face of the deep, and the depths of the oceans are dark
- Heaven is strong against Fire, as wind and rain extinguish fire, and the Sun eclipses mere flames, and fire was a gift of the gods to humankind
- Fire is strong against Darkness, as fire lights the dark, warms the spirit and lends courage
- Darkness is weak against Earth, as it falls harmlessly on the planet every nighttime
- Earth is weak against Heaven, as the Earth supports the heavens
- Darkness is strong against Metal, as humans are afraid of the dark and metals can dull and rust
- Metal is strong against Heaven, as cold iron kills fairies, science and skepticism undermines faith and superstition and iron from meteors can be turned against the sky
- Heaven and Darkness would be strong against each other
With the current five types, there are a lot that fit quite awkwardly. Wood is a catch-all for nature spirits and flying things that could better go to Heaven, and Metal has abstract beings, human-like beings, corrupted or weird things, etc. It would balance out the categories too: many in Wood and Fire could go to Heaven and many in Metal could go to Darkness.
Under my proposed system Fire (0.5 vs Earth, 2 vs Metal, 2 vs Darkness) would be very close to Darkness (0.5 vs Earth, 2 vs Metal, 2 vs Heaven). In that case, you could instead make Darkness super-effective against Wood, as living things need light, and Wood super-effective against Heaven (not sure why, though ... )
tamashihoshi added:
We have the 5 elements "wood", "fire", "water", "metal", "earth"; these are natural. The natural tuxemon belong to these types.
When the humans came, they brought something new ... a soul, which can behave good or evil. They have morality.
Soon, a new wheel of elements was added, the balance of nature was changed. "heaven" and "darkness", "good" and "bad", "moral" and "corruption" ... "cathedral" and "bazaar".
Soon, artificial tuxemon were created. The natural tuxemon had to live with the changes the humans brought. Since then, tuxemon adopted the types "heaven" and "darkness".
Secondary types
All tuxemon would have a primary type, and they may also have a secondary type.
Leo suggested:
- Repair
- Elemental
- Error
Sanglorian suggested:
- Psychic feeds Ghost
- Ghost inspires Fighting (e.g. spirit ancestors)
- Fighting can't reach Flying/Wind
- Wind blows futilely against Rock
- Rock is repelled by the forcefield of Psychic
- Psychic controls Fighting
- Fighting breaks Rock (like a strike that breaks a block)
- Rock entombs Ghost
- Ghost follows Wind
- Wind ducks around Psychic
I'll be the first to admit that it lacks the simplicity and obviousness of the original Wu Xing! And we probably don't need Earth, Rock AND Metal.
Technique-only and monster-only types
You could have a Poison move type despite no tuxemon having the Poison type. It could be super-effective against Wood and Earth and not very effective against Metal and Water. That would reflect that many attacks are poisonous, but having a poisonous attack doesn't make you immune to other poisons.
- Sound - x2 vs Water, 1/2 vs Metal (sound waves are amplified by water; metal is a type of music)
- Electric - x2 vs Water, 1/2 vs Earth (conductivity, grounding)
- Wind - x2 vs Wood, 1/2 vs Fire (wind often topples trees, but only fans flames)
- Psychic - x2 vs Metal, 1/2 vs Water (psychics bend metal spoons, but water draws them when they dowse for it)
Or you could have Flying type tuxemon, but no Flying moves. They might have 1/2 from Earth moves but x2 from Fire moves.
Telefang 2 is an example of a game with technique types (Fire, Machine, Wind, etc) that are different to the mosnter types (Grassland, Mountain, Sky, etc).
Subtypes
Alchemist observes:
Metal, for example, also encompasses Undeath and psychic powers. How would one understand that for mechanics and lore purposes, the zombie, wizard and tank are all the same element? What is there to bridge that gap? That's not to say it can't be done, but it is tricky. Careful attention to secondary types could do it- for example, ALL undead are also part poison? But then, this means that all undead-themed teams would have to be monotype, which limits design space.
What if the five primary elements were like central element schools, with subtypes for creatures beneath that?
So, a trainer of the Wood school could use animals and plants, and plant-animals and wind-plants. The "Animal" type would be it's own thing, as would the "Plant" type and "wind" type, and they could mix. But at their core, they are part of the Wood type and have some things in common. Maybe they all share the same resistances, but the weaknesses of the subtypes differ?
List
This category uses the form Type.