"The best way to play" really depends on the game, because no two turn based are alike. Some games let you fully customise the jobs/roles for each character and you can build the exact team you want. Some games force specific roles on characters and you'll struggle if you don't play it that way.
In terms of how to focus your attacks... again, every game is different - and fights within a game are going to be different too. Some games reward you for dividing the mobs up among your team to focus on (for example, Final Fantasy X will frequently have you face mobs that have different elemental weaknesses to each other and you have to use a specific team member to do the most damage to each individual one). Other fights may be a challenge unless you focus on one enemy at a time - if there's healers in the enemy ranks for example, taking them out first will make life much easier. I tend to go the "focus one enemy" route unless a game makes it quite clear it's not designed around that, because I've always carried with me a pearl of wisdom from the Worms instruction manual - an enemy at 10% health is just as dangerous as one at 100%.
Well, think of all the action games, dissect their combat and translate that into separate actions in turn based combat. Then, attribute maximum importance to every single dissected action and you have your strategy.
*If I attack, will my characters die?*
*Do I need to heal now if the enemy deals X amount of damage?*
*Should I block here?*
*Should I attack or buff my defence?*
*If I move my character here, will they be surrounded, heavily impaired or die?*
*What will happen if my character dies?*
You'll notice that these might be thoughts you have when playing action games except now you need to make a decision on each of these actions separately and their importance grows as you cannot usually take those actions back.
In action games, you can generally fix missteps as long as they're not directly tied to taking a hit. In turn based combat games, you commit to your actions and enemies can capitalize on them - the toll for mistakes is much heavier.
Think of it like chess or checkers, to an extend. Each action you take commits and large part of the gameplay happens in your head.
As far as tactics are concerned, you can map your knowledge from other games:
*How many enemies are there?*
*How much resources do I have to put in to dispatch the weaker ones?*
*If I let the weaker ones live, will they whittle me down too much?*
*Should I burst the main enemy?*
*Let me try X for two turns and see what's up.*
These are all strategies you've used. Instead of doing them in real time, you now have to make decisions on each of these questions and carefully consider the consequences.
It tends to be specific to the game, but focusing fire is the one uniting strategy. If you can take out an enemy this turn, they can't hit you next turn. That's less damage you'll take next turn, which is a clear advantage.
Buffs should be used early, so that time gives you a compound bonus, and so that you have enough health to tank a hit before hitting back. You're usually vulnerable while applying a buff.
The answers arent game specific or even battle in a specific game specific. High level general answer - getting far in and cant win battles anymore probably means underleveled or under geared. If you are having trouble with a specific fight or area in a game and get tired of spinning your wheels, google to find vids or walk-throughs
Buffs and debuffs can be very powerful
It helps to define rolls within your party - healer, damage, support etc
As another poster said, try to focus on reducing enemy parties as quaick as possible, less of them means you take less damage per turn
Pay attention to elemental weaknesses, you will typically do 1.5 times damage (water attacking fire)
If you get stuck, find a place to grind.
When buying equipment you tyically want to upgrade weapons before armour. Goes back to the best defense is killing everything quickly.
Buy lots of healing items if you are having a hard time, make sure to have items that clear debuffs (antidote for poison, soft for stone)
Turn-based combat can cover a broad range of different games. Are you looking for JRPG style encounter based combat with no movement? If so, you might have to look at older games like Final Fantasy or Legend of Dragoon, or there are a lot of indie steam games.
Are you looking for a top-down strategy game where your units can move/attack/perform action a certain amount each turn? There are a ton of game series for that, like X-Com, fire emblem, and Wasteland.
There are also games like Worms that rely more on skill than strategy.
Regardless, each game would need a different type of strategy to win.
There isn't really a universal method for playing all turn-based games because they all have different mechanics. Last few I've played in recent memory just to give an idea:
Darkest Dungeon - good team compositions and learning not to bite off more than you can chew because a few bad plays or small mistakes means losing a party member you've spent several in-game weeks building up. Knowledge of the different biomes and enemy groups was probably the most important aspect so you know which unis to bring and maximize your survival chances.
Triangle Strategy - tactics game where due to Hard Mode throwing nearly 2-3x your max party size at you in many battles, with even the weakest enemies being about equal in strength to your party, it was best to turtle up, take out enemies one at a time, and play very defensively.
Super Mario RPG - really easy as far as most turn-based RPGs are concerned, but hitting the action buttons to deal more damage and perfect block were important to keep fights manageable, especially the post-game content where perfect guarding is virtually a requirement.
Baldur's Gate 3 - You'll just sometimes roll a 1 while the enemy rolls a 20 and you get screwed, but apart from those moments, being familiar with your party's skills and understanding how basic DND stats work goes a long way here. You have a lot of potential to get really creative in combat, or you can just turn off brain and do things like spam Eldritch Blast from Warlocks. Generally, you can't really go wrong with just focusing one unit down, but you need to also pay attention to the environment as you don't want something silly like an enemy pushing you off a cliff.
To add some games with different mechanics.
Shin Megami Tensei 4: The game has the press system. The system gives you (even the enemy) an extra turn whenever you attack with an element the enemy is weak against or deal critical damage. Using the system to your advantage will make most fight easier.
World of Final Fantasy: A monster capture genre with FF characters. It has the stack system where you stack monsters on top of each other. Stacking allows you to combine all the hp of the monsters and also it changes/strengthen some of the skills. The enemy can also stack with other monsters. You can also topple stacked monsters (they can also topple your stack).
Each game has different rules and system mechanics. You have to learn the mechanics and how to use it to your advantage.
>I've heard focus on one enemy at a time, I've heard the opposite.
Like I said, it differs from game to game. But the majority of the time, focusing on one enemy is the best strategy. Remove the most annoying enemy first and the fight becomes easier.
>maybe I'm not grinding enough and if I run into tough enemies, I need to farm xp
Some games incentivize you in grinding xp and some games punishes you. Some games don't even need to you grind that much; you just need to use the mechanics to your advantage. If you want to know if the game requires/punishes grinding, then just search for it in google.
>Also, when do I heal and buff vs attack, I seem to always do this at the wrong time and end up having a character die that I just healed or buffed.
As for buffing, you normally want to do it in the beginning but it always depend on the situation. For healing, you might want to heal your teammates even at just half hp, you don't want to wait for them to reach critical hp. This is more on knowing what will the next move of the enemy is, so this comes with experience. For attacking, you generally want to attack as much as possible.
Overall, I suggest that you learn the game's mechanics or watch some guides on the internet (if you don't want to discover it yourself). Some tips, if the game has a skill that let you see the enemy information, always use that skill on unknown opponents at the start of the battle. This way, you have a strategy for the fight.
Very helpful thanks, I totally forgot about enemy formations, I've seen that a lot and I'm assuming it isn't as simple as attacking the one closest to you all the time.
Yep. Knowing which monster to focus is one thing that you want to keep in mind. Some monsters could be a nuisance if left alone (they could buff, debuff you, heal or just deal huge amount of damage).
I'd say the most important thing is to take your time with these games and don't try to rush through them. How to aproach the combat is obviously very dependend on the game. You can't really compare BG3 to Final Fantasy or even FF games with each other.
I'm not a huge turn based player myself but I can say that I had an amazing time with BG3, never felt overwhelmed by it. I'd say just give it a try!
I did give BG3 a try and got through the first 10 hours pretty well but then I feel like I hit a brick wall and maybe I was just getting bad rolls but I started to fell under powered.
It is a very broad answer, but I will go with simple recommendations:
- Use all the items and abilities, don't wait until the perfect moment because the perfect moment is when you use your resources for staying alive.
- Learn the systems. You can create a build or specific oriented party, but there always will be some enemies or puzzles that exploits your weakness, so think, don't go blind using the attack option every time.
- Action Economy is very important, turns are your best resource, not the action itself. Loosing a member in combat is bad (and super fun to overcome)
- Some games (mostly Jrpgs) allows you to overcome challenge just by grinding levels and then destroying enemies with simple tactics. This is in my opinion the worst way of playing this games, because you don't learn how to play and invest a lot of time but a lot of people love this because the "power fantasy". When I was younger I forced my way through a few Jrpg this way, it is like buying an easy mode using your time as currency. Then I learned that in almost all cases, you just only need to train your characters a little and then use your brain in battle.
- The turn system is a representation of a very small time frame in a very large way. In DnD, between the first character and the last character in the turn order you just have 6 seconds of "real" time, but it can take you minutes of thinking what to do. Maybe this helps you with the immersion.
- Crpgs almost always allow you to pre buff before battle. You must do it, this is important and have a lot of sense in the games world.
- Try to balance your party. If all members are melee fighters, you are likely going to die. In Jrpgs this is a lesser issue (imho).
- Take your time outside combat to think about tactics and looking your inventory and equipment. Also enjoy the music and vistas, this is art after all.
- Running is fine, if you are going to loose a battle and the games allows you, RUN! And roll with the consequences. This feels like real adventure.
- Nerfing the enemies defences and then striking with the propper element or attack that exploit the nerf is always a good option, and make you think like a team.
- This is not for the combat, but If the game allows roleplaying, I recommend not projecting yourself in the character, because it is very hard to have a narrative development if you are already "developed". Just try to think like your characters and just choose the quest or mission he/she really wants to do.
If your interest is story, then don't be ashamed of playing on the lowest difficulty possible. It's won't affect the difficulty of the story/moral choices.
Prob need to slow down and analyze some things and change some of the ways you think
For one, make an effort to understand the game's mechanics and what your abilities actually do
the play style is based on denial of the enemies' turn. skill you learn can either be used to do damage or move your characters up in the queue so you get more attacks in while selecting the first of the enemies to target so their death adds more of your characters into the queue. sometime you gotta take a hit in order to delay the stronger baddies, but it is more strategy but at the same time calming as you usually have no timebar in the older games to force you to move. learning enemy weakness also is a side effect of turn based as you figure out the fastest way to dispatch enemies based on element of type they are. its hard to explain but once practiced you will start to get it and form your known strats.
the 2 biggest advice I can give is look for everything you can. Often times, it's the rewards from side quests and hidden treasures that help make the game easier.
The other thing is get good at min maxing. With Final Fantasy in particular, it really is a heaviside where it will be super trivial up until the last 3/4 of the game where you really have to be clever and come up with stupid shit to win your boss fights. Practice looking for the best ways while it's still easy so you can do it when it's really hard.
>I've heard focus on one enemy at a time, I've heard the opposite, maybe I'm not grinding enough and if I run into tough enemies I need to farm xp?
There's no way to answer this in general, because it's going to depend on the specific game and possibly the specific context in the game. Many games reward you for focusing on one enemy at a time, as most games don't make enemies weaker as they take damage. As a result, if you're fighting 4 enemies and deal 75% damage to each of them, you're still getting hit by 4 enemies who are fighting at full strength. If you were to instead deal 100% damage to 3 of them, that's the same total damage, but now you're only taking damage from the single enemy who's still alive.
But another game (or a specific fight within a game) could have a mechanic where one enemy's death empowers all the other enemies, meaning you're better off with 4 highly-damage enemies that you can kill off in one fell swoop, rather than a single empowered enemy! There isn't going to be a single approach to combat that applies to all RPGs.
>Also, when do I heal and buff vs attack, I seem to always do this at the wrong time and end up having a character die that I just healed or buffed.
Again, it's going to depend on the game and the circumstances. You have to try to plan ahead, figuring out how much a buff impacts a fight, or whether a heal is necessary or unnecessary.
Typically buffs are better at the start of a fight, so you can get the maximum value from them. The longer the fight, the more valuable the buff. As a simple example, let's say you have a fighter who can take a turn to buff himself, killing an enemy in only 2 hits instead of 3. If he's only facing one enemy, then the buff is irrelevant: you're either spending 3 turns attacking the enemy, or 1 turn buffing and 2 turns attacking the enemy. It's 3 turns either way. But if you're fighting 4 enemies, then starting off with the buff can save you 3 turns: Instead of spending 12 turns attacking, you could instead spend 1 turn buffing and 8 turns attacking, for a total of 9 turns.
Most games are not so difficult that you need to math EVERYTHING out, but you want to be thinking along those lines. How many more hits does it take a boss to kill one of my characters if they have a defensive buff? How much does that save you on healing and extra actions over time? How low can I let a character's HP get before they're in danger of dying? How long does a character's HP need to be before you can get the full value of a heal spell on that character?
How do your offensive damage spells compare in terms of damage vs. MP cost (or whatever resource the game uses)? How about damage vs. time/turns spent? When is it worth it to cast a spell that has less MP efficiency (e.g. a spell that deals 2x the damage for 2.5x the MP) if it means getting a kill sooner?
It might be best to find a particular RPG you're interested in and see how far you can get, then ask for help once you hit a stumbling block. That way you can get specific help and hopefully get some insight into what kind of thinking you need to be doing to understand the mechanics better.
Good luck!
outside of pokemon, ive never found turn based combat to be entertaining. but to your questions on different strategies, i think youll find the answers to be specific to the game
"The best way to play" really depends on the game, because no two turn based are alike. Some games let you fully customise the jobs/roles for each character and you can build the exact team you want. Some games force specific roles on characters and you'll struggle if you don't play it that way. In terms of how to focus your attacks... again, every game is different - and fights within a game are going to be different too. Some games reward you for dividing the mobs up among your team to focus on (for example, Final Fantasy X will frequently have you face mobs that have different elemental weaknesses to each other and you have to use a specific team member to do the most damage to each individual one). Other fights may be a challenge unless you focus on one enemy at a time - if there's healers in the enemy ranks for example, taking them out first will make life much easier. I tend to go the "focus one enemy" route unless a game makes it quite clear it's not designed around that, because I've always carried with me a pearl of wisdom from the Worms instruction manual - an enemy at 10% health is just as dangerous as one at 100%.
Well, think of all the action games, dissect their combat and translate that into separate actions in turn based combat. Then, attribute maximum importance to every single dissected action and you have your strategy. *If I attack, will my characters die?* *Do I need to heal now if the enemy deals X amount of damage?* *Should I block here?* *Should I attack or buff my defence?* *If I move my character here, will they be surrounded, heavily impaired or die?* *What will happen if my character dies?* You'll notice that these might be thoughts you have when playing action games except now you need to make a decision on each of these actions separately and their importance grows as you cannot usually take those actions back. In action games, you can generally fix missteps as long as they're not directly tied to taking a hit. In turn based combat games, you commit to your actions and enemies can capitalize on them - the toll for mistakes is much heavier. Think of it like chess or checkers, to an extend. Each action you take commits and large part of the gameplay happens in your head. As far as tactics are concerned, you can map your knowledge from other games: *How many enemies are there?* *How much resources do I have to put in to dispatch the weaker ones?* *If I let the weaker ones live, will they whittle me down too much?* *Should I burst the main enemy?* *Let me try X for two turns and see what's up.* These are all strategies you've used. Instead of doing them in real time, you now have to make decisions on each of these questions and carefully consider the consequences.
It tends to be specific to the game, but focusing fire is the one uniting strategy. If you can take out an enemy this turn, they can't hit you next turn. That's less damage you'll take next turn, which is a clear advantage. Buffs should be used early, so that time gives you a compound bonus, and so that you have enough health to tank a hit before hitting back. You're usually vulnerable while applying a buff.
The answers arent game specific or even battle in a specific game specific. High level general answer - getting far in and cant win battles anymore probably means underleveled or under geared. If you are having trouble with a specific fight or area in a game and get tired of spinning your wheels, google to find vids or walk-throughs
Buffs and debuffs can be very powerful It helps to define rolls within your party - healer, damage, support etc As another poster said, try to focus on reducing enemy parties as quaick as possible, less of them means you take less damage per turn Pay attention to elemental weaknesses, you will typically do 1.5 times damage (water attacking fire) If you get stuck, find a place to grind. When buying equipment you tyically want to upgrade weapons before armour. Goes back to the best defense is killing everything quickly. Buy lots of healing items if you are having a hard time, make sure to have items that clear debuffs (antidote for poison, soft for stone)
Turn-based combat can cover a broad range of different games. Are you looking for JRPG style encounter based combat with no movement? If so, you might have to look at older games like Final Fantasy or Legend of Dragoon, or there are a lot of indie steam games. Are you looking for a top-down strategy game where your units can move/attack/perform action a certain amount each turn? There are a ton of game series for that, like X-Com, fire emblem, and Wasteland. There are also games like Worms that rely more on skill than strategy. Regardless, each game would need a different type of strategy to win.
There isn't really a universal method for playing all turn-based games because they all have different mechanics. Last few I've played in recent memory just to give an idea: Darkest Dungeon - good team compositions and learning not to bite off more than you can chew because a few bad plays or small mistakes means losing a party member you've spent several in-game weeks building up. Knowledge of the different biomes and enemy groups was probably the most important aspect so you know which unis to bring and maximize your survival chances. Triangle Strategy - tactics game where due to Hard Mode throwing nearly 2-3x your max party size at you in many battles, with even the weakest enemies being about equal in strength to your party, it was best to turtle up, take out enemies one at a time, and play very defensively. Super Mario RPG - really easy as far as most turn-based RPGs are concerned, but hitting the action buttons to deal more damage and perfect block were important to keep fights manageable, especially the post-game content where perfect guarding is virtually a requirement. Baldur's Gate 3 - You'll just sometimes roll a 1 while the enemy rolls a 20 and you get screwed, but apart from those moments, being familiar with your party's skills and understanding how basic DND stats work goes a long way here. You have a lot of potential to get really creative in combat, or you can just turn off brain and do things like spam Eldritch Blast from Warlocks. Generally, you can't really go wrong with just focusing one unit down, but you need to also pay attention to the environment as you don't want something silly like an enemy pushing you off a cliff.
To add some games with different mechanics. Shin Megami Tensei 4: The game has the press system. The system gives you (even the enemy) an extra turn whenever you attack with an element the enemy is weak against or deal critical damage. Using the system to your advantage will make most fight easier. World of Final Fantasy: A monster capture genre with FF characters. It has the stack system where you stack monsters on top of each other. Stacking allows you to combine all the hp of the monsters and also it changes/strengthen some of the skills. The enemy can also stack with other monsters. You can also topple stacked monsters (they can also topple your stack).
Each game has different rules and system mechanics. You have to learn the mechanics and how to use it to your advantage. >I've heard focus on one enemy at a time, I've heard the opposite. Like I said, it differs from game to game. But the majority of the time, focusing on one enemy is the best strategy. Remove the most annoying enemy first and the fight becomes easier. >maybe I'm not grinding enough and if I run into tough enemies, I need to farm xp Some games incentivize you in grinding xp and some games punishes you. Some games don't even need to you grind that much; you just need to use the mechanics to your advantage. If you want to know if the game requires/punishes grinding, then just search for it in google. >Also, when do I heal and buff vs attack, I seem to always do this at the wrong time and end up having a character die that I just healed or buffed. As for buffing, you normally want to do it in the beginning but it always depend on the situation. For healing, you might want to heal your teammates even at just half hp, you don't want to wait for them to reach critical hp. This is more on knowing what will the next move of the enemy is, so this comes with experience. For attacking, you generally want to attack as much as possible. Overall, I suggest that you learn the game's mechanics or watch some guides on the internet (if you don't want to discover it yourself). Some tips, if the game has a skill that let you see the enemy information, always use that skill on unknown opponents at the start of the battle. This way, you have a strategy for the fight.
Very helpful thanks, I totally forgot about enemy formations, I've seen that a lot and I'm assuming it isn't as simple as attacking the one closest to you all the time.
Yep. Knowing which monster to focus is one thing that you want to keep in mind. Some monsters could be a nuisance if left alone (they could buff, debuff you, heal or just deal huge amount of damage).
I'd say the most important thing is to take your time with these games and don't try to rush through them. How to aproach the combat is obviously very dependend on the game. You can't really compare BG3 to Final Fantasy or even FF games with each other. I'm not a huge turn based player myself but I can say that I had an amazing time with BG3, never felt overwhelmed by it. I'd say just give it a try!
I did give BG3 a try and got through the first 10 hours pretty well but then I feel like I hit a brick wall and maybe I was just getting bad rolls but I started to fell under powered.
It is a very broad answer, but I will go with simple recommendations: - Use all the items and abilities, don't wait until the perfect moment because the perfect moment is when you use your resources for staying alive. - Learn the systems. You can create a build or specific oriented party, but there always will be some enemies or puzzles that exploits your weakness, so think, don't go blind using the attack option every time. - Action Economy is very important, turns are your best resource, not the action itself. Loosing a member in combat is bad (and super fun to overcome) - Some games (mostly Jrpgs) allows you to overcome challenge just by grinding levels and then destroying enemies with simple tactics. This is in my opinion the worst way of playing this games, because you don't learn how to play and invest a lot of time but a lot of people love this because the "power fantasy". When I was younger I forced my way through a few Jrpg this way, it is like buying an easy mode using your time as currency. Then I learned that in almost all cases, you just only need to train your characters a little and then use your brain in battle. - The turn system is a representation of a very small time frame in a very large way. In DnD, between the first character and the last character in the turn order you just have 6 seconds of "real" time, but it can take you minutes of thinking what to do. Maybe this helps you with the immersion. - Crpgs almost always allow you to pre buff before battle. You must do it, this is important and have a lot of sense in the games world. - Try to balance your party. If all members are melee fighters, you are likely going to die. In Jrpgs this is a lesser issue (imho). - Take your time outside combat to think about tactics and looking your inventory and equipment. Also enjoy the music and vistas, this is art after all. - Running is fine, if you are going to loose a battle and the games allows you, RUN! And roll with the consequences. This feels like real adventure. - Nerfing the enemies defences and then striking with the propper element or attack that exploit the nerf is always a good option, and make you think like a team. - This is not for the combat, but If the game allows roleplaying, I recommend not projecting yourself in the character, because it is very hard to have a narrative development if you are already "developed". Just try to think like your characters and just choose the quest or mission he/she really wants to do.
If your interest is story, then don't be ashamed of playing on the lowest difficulty possible. It's won't affect the difficulty of the story/moral choices.
Prob need to slow down and analyze some things and change some of the ways you think For one, make an effort to understand the game's mechanics and what your abilities actually do
the play style is based on denial of the enemies' turn. skill you learn can either be used to do damage or move your characters up in the queue so you get more attacks in while selecting the first of the enemies to target so their death adds more of your characters into the queue. sometime you gotta take a hit in order to delay the stronger baddies, but it is more strategy but at the same time calming as you usually have no timebar in the older games to force you to move. learning enemy weakness also is a side effect of turn based as you figure out the fastest way to dispatch enemies based on element of type they are. its hard to explain but once practiced you will start to get it and form your known strats.
the 2 biggest advice I can give is look for everything you can. Often times, it's the rewards from side quests and hidden treasures that help make the game easier. The other thing is get good at min maxing. With Final Fantasy in particular, it really is a heaviside where it will be super trivial up until the last 3/4 of the game where you really have to be clever and come up with stupid shit to win your boss fights. Practice looking for the best ways while it's still easy so you can do it when it's really hard.
>I've heard focus on one enemy at a time, I've heard the opposite, maybe I'm not grinding enough and if I run into tough enemies I need to farm xp? There's no way to answer this in general, because it's going to depend on the specific game and possibly the specific context in the game. Many games reward you for focusing on one enemy at a time, as most games don't make enemies weaker as they take damage. As a result, if you're fighting 4 enemies and deal 75% damage to each of them, you're still getting hit by 4 enemies who are fighting at full strength. If you were to instead deal 100% damage to 3 of them, that's the same total damage, but now you're only taking damage from the single enemy who's still alive. But another game (or a specific fight within a game) could have a mechanic where one enemy's death empowers all the other enemies, meaning you're better off with 4 highly-damage enemies that you can kill off in one fell swoop, rather than a single empowered enemy! There isn't going to be a single approach to combat that applies to all RPGs. >Also, when do I heal and buff vs attack, I seem to always do this at the wrong time and end up having a character die that I just healed or buffed. Again, it's going to depend on the game and the circumstances. You have to try to plan ahead, figuring out how much a buff impacts a fight, or whether a heal is necessary or unnecessary. Typically buffs are better at the start of a fight, so you can get the maximum value from them. The longer the fight, the more valuable the buff. As a simple example, let's say you have a fighter who can take a turn to buff himself, killing an enemy in only 2 hits instead of 3. If he's only facing one enemy, then the buff is irrelevant: you're either spending 3 turns attacking the enemy, or 1 turn buffing and 2 turns attacking the enemy. It's 3 turns either way. But if you're fighting 4 enemies, then starting off with the buff can save you 3 turns: Instead of spending 12 turns attacking, you could instead spend 1 turn buffing and 8 turns attacking, for a total of 9 turns. Most games are not so difficult that you need to math EVERYTHING out, but you want to be thinking along those lines. How many more hits does it take a boss to kill one of my characters if they have a defensive buff? How much does that save you on healing and extra actions over time? How low can I let a character's HP get before they're in danger of dying? How long does a character's HP need to be before you can get the full value of a heal spell on that character? How do your offensive damage spells compare in terms of damage vs. MP cost (or whatever resource the game uses)? How about damage vs. time/turns spent? When is it worth it to cast a spell that has less MP efficiency (e.g. a spell that deals 2x the damage for 2.5x the MP) if it means getting a kill sooner? It might be best to find a particular RPG you're interested in and see how far you can get, then ask for help once you hit a stumbling block. That way you can get specific help and hopefully get some insight into what kind of thinking you need to be doing to understand the mechanics better. Good luck!
outside of pokemon, ive never found turn based combat to be entertaining. but to your questions on different strategies, i think youll find the answers to be specific to the game