Twelve Ways to Improve Turn-based RPG Combat Systems
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(2) Give the player at least six characters. This one is absolutely key, and yet most western RPGs of the past 20 years have missed it. Imagine playing chess with only four pieces you'd be looking at a game with greatly reduced tactical complexity and far less interesting matches.
Putting more characters under the player's control pays great dividends in terms of tactics. More characters means that the player can be expected to handle much more involved combat scenarios, and becomes responsible for keeping more characters alive. This naturally gives rise to dilemmas about how to balance multiple objectives with minimal losses, which in turn make combat more interesting.
Also, with more characters under the player's control, each individual character can be much more specialized.
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(9) Resource management. This appears in nearly all western RPGs to a limited extent, mostly in the form of budgeting gold, conserving magic points and hoarding scrolls and potions. However, this standard RPG implementation of resource management isn't usually too important at the combat level it's typically a broader challenge spanning a whole foray into a given area.
To liven up particular combat encounters, use a system that requires players to balance more powerful attacks against other priorities on a turn-by-turn basis. Action Point systems (e.g. the kind used in X-Com: UFO Defense and the first two Fallouts) are great for this, forcing the player to weigh a variety of factors all at once when deciding on character actions. Also good are systems where most powerful abilities use large amounts of magic points, but magic points regenerate over time (e.g. Tactics Ogre: Let us Cling Together).
