Feedback:User/Erasculio/Multipartite bosses

The Shatterer demo showed us how some bosses have multiple targetting areas. From the looks of it, it appears to be purely for a matter of convenience - so players can target the point closer to them, and so not all auto targeted attacks hit the boss in the same place, which would look visually odd.

I would like to expand that notion a bit. The same system could be used for bosses with multiple parts, each with its own health points and effects. Many single player RPGs have a similar mechanic, such as in one of the most iconic fights in Chrono Trigger, many boss fights in Lunar 2: Eternal Blue, and so on.

For example, say our characters are fighting a big Ice Dragon. Instead of being a single target (or multiple places in which to target the same being), the dragon would have three areas: its left hand, its right hand and its body (which would encompass everything other than the hands). The body would have the highest health, and killing it would destroy the dragon. The left hand would attack the party with a very strong melee attack, and would have a lower health than the body; the players would be able to target it with their skills in order to inflict damage only to the hand (and not to the body), and killing it would prevent the melee attack. Likewise, the right hand would cast an ice spell with a very large area of effect; killing such hand would not do damage to the dragon's body, but would prevent it from casting the ice spell.

Players would then have more variable strategies - would it be better to focus on the body, and thus end the fight faster? Would it be better to destroy the right hand, and avoid being close to the dragon in order to be out of range from the melee attack? Would be better to destroy the left hand, and just move from the area of effect of the ice spell? And so on. Hopefully it would add more strategy to fights against big bosses, as well as add more diversity to the game, as long as this kind of feature were used only sparingly.