Mechanic – Daze

Daze

This is a relatively simple mechanic. Attacks that land increase the opponent’s Daze, a statistic that determines how much stun a player suffers when attacked. Whilst all attacks raise Daze a little, only powerful attacks (such as smash attacks and other KOing moves) raise it significantly. Daze also decreases over time, so the only time Daze will noticeably come into play, is when a player is clobbered by a significantly powerful attack that fails to KO them. Daze allows for combos, and at high amounts can even lead to hit-confirms into KO moves. Blocking an attack does not block all of its Daze, only half the incoming Daze is negated.
Visually, Daze is represented by spinning cartoon stars above a character’s head. The stars will only appear when the player has enough Daze for it to significantly affect hitstun, and the stars increase in size as the player’s Daze increases. Once the player has enough Daze for it to be visually shown, their blocking can be broken with attacks with sufficient power (the more Daze the player has, the lower the blocking threshold becomes, making the block easier to break).
Daze is also increased in a significant way when the player is struck by certain items, such as a baseball bat for example. Daze decreases faster whilst idling, and decreases much faster when laying in the prone position. Activating a Magic Blitz or Magic Blast will also clear the player’s Daze.

The presence of Daze gives KO attacks a logical purpose outside of simply KOing, gives players a simpler means of exploring combos, and allows blocks to be overcome with enough dumb muscle.