Editing Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride (section)

===Battle refinements and balancing===
*For the first time, any character who is targeting an already-defeated monster will have their target automatically transferred to one of the other monsters (selected at random). In earlier games, the action was simply cancelled and the turn wasted.
*More advanced party [[artificial intelligence]] than the previous game. An A.I. controlled character is now guaraunteed to "learn" a foe's resistances and vulnerabilities by the third turn of a battle with no exceptions, avoiding infamous snafus such as a character wasting turns casting [[Whack]] on a boss monster. It is also possible, unlike in the previous game's original version, to set characters to manual command and allow them to be controlled individually as in the first three games. 
*There is now a separation of spell resistances for monsters. In previous games, all spell resistance was based around ''accuracy'', whereas in V an offensive spell's resistance is now calculated as ''damage reduction'', thus preventing a caster from completely wasting their {{MP}} unless the foe is immune. This would set the precedent for resistances in all future titles and side games.
*There is now a distinct defensive stat in {{Resilience}}, determining a character's base defence; in earlier games the base defence was calculated from {{Agility}}. This was implemented on human characters because monsters have always had separate {{Agility}} and {{Defence}} stats in the previous games, and introducing tamable monsters without addressing this discrepancy would only confuse players.
*Armour and shield resistance is now based on static number subtraction instead of a percentage. For example, the [[Magic shield]] will always reduce damage dealt from [[Sizz]] by 7 points.
*{{Boomerang}}s and {{Whip}}s can now attack groups of enemies. This feature leads to some weapons being replaced in remakes of older titles to avoid inconsistency.
*Some traditional spells had their effects slightly altered, such as [[Kabuff]] improving {{Defence}} by 25% instead of 50%.
*The [[Zoom]] spell can only be acquired at a certain stage of the plot (in the first half of the second generation); it cannot be acquired by leveling, and if a monster recruit learns this spell, the spell will not appear until after the plot event occurs. This marks the first time in the series that spell acquisition has been tied to story events.
*Background images return to the combat screen, reminiscent of the first game. The images depend on the local terrain and time of day, and feature animations such as clouds rolling through the sky. Also, attacking a monster or casting an offensive spell will produce a matching animation.
*The mechanism for replacing characters with reinforcements from the [[wagon]] was changed. It no longer takes a turn for a character to be swapped with one in the [[wagon]], and it is possible to replace all characters at once. This significantly changes battle strategy, especially against major bosses. To balance this, several bosses possess much higher stats than were featured in previous games--{{HP}} in particular.
*The original {{SFC}} Version only allows 3 active {{Party 5}} members instead of 4; a 5-person [[wagon]] is still available, however. The {{PS2}} and {{DS}} remakes restored {{Party 5}} size to 4.