Well huh, RL intervened so I don't have much progress again, not zero though - some revisited/edited dialogues, a few new battle obstacles, bugfixes and a new system - I decided to expand defensive options a bit (I really wanted to avoid any significant gameplay changes, but this one works very well) - there were plenty of ways to attack, but not quite enough ways to defend - just buffs. Not even HoMM-like defend was in... well, it was, but as a pretty rare self-buff.
Now everyone can use these 3 actions:
"Defend": increases defence by 50% * (50% + % of remaining action points)
"Evade": increases evasion by 50% * (50% + % of remaining action points)
"Wait": increases initiative by 10 * remaining action points, so you'll act earlier next turn
There are also 2 alternative actions which can be enabled with certain skills for certain characters:
"Protect": replaces evade. Grants 50% * (50% + % of remaining action points) of character's defence to all nearby allies.
"Graze": replaces defend. Sets evasion to 0 while adding evasion * (50% + % of remaining action points) to defence.
Finally, there is "Spellguard": replaces both defend/evade (and their alternatives) when spellcard is active; costs 10% of spellcard's MP cost, but decreases all received damage/status power by 50% + 5% * (spellcard level + 1) * (50% + % of remaining action points). If spellcard is broken, stops working. Unlike defend/evade, spellguard is still useful for low-defence/low-evasion characters.
All of the above work until next turn and are disabled if the character is incapacitated (by paralysis/sleep/freeze/petrification). Evade/graze are disabled if the character is affected by evasion-disabling status effects (all incapacitating statuses and blindness/entanglement) (Reimu got a new skill, "Intuitive Evasion", which prevents evasion disabling & lets her evade even if she's blind; there are also several new & changed passives that affect defensive actions in some way).
Morale, which would normally give you a second turn (and it will still do that if you wait) will instead increase the effect of defensive actions - they will have a full AP effect plus additional 50%, e.g. defend will give +100% to defence. Spellguard gets +1 to spellcard level instead of +50% bonus.
Also, shields (a type of accessories), which previously gave a high chance to grant a very big bonus to defence against a particular element (some shields give bonuses against multiple elements and some give bonuses to resistance against specific status effects), now always give that bonus when the character is defending or using spellguard, and 1/10 of it otherwise.
That makes them a lot more useful since they're no longer reliant on random chance, and powerful shields can trivialize even level 3-4 spellcards.
I probably won't have much progress in the next month either, but if everything goes well I'll resume the active work in February. (if it doesn't, I'll have to freeze the development for a very long time, but that's not very likely (at least I hope so))