I tried Bropedio's approach and I ran into trouble with it; I don't know if it's an edge case or a conflict with his Informative Miss (which I believe alters some monster script reactional behavior).
Basically, I couldn't get Vargas to trigger his second phase from the "Below X HP" counter. I think it's because there's another invisible monster in my battle formation making status checks and counters every time it takes a turn. It might have been flushing any other viable counter trigger in the monster scripts. Reversing the code in the first post resolved this hangup.
Can't get any more technical than that because I'm having trouble wrapping my head around how all of this queuing up works. It's just something you might want to look out for.
Basically, I couldn't get Vargas to trigger his second phase from the "Below X HP" counter. I think it's because there's another invisible monster in my battle formation making status checks and counters every time it takes a turn. It might have been flushing any other viable counter trigger in the monster scripts. Reversing the code in the first post resolved this hangup.
Can't get any more technical than that because I'm having trouble wrapping my head around how all of this queuing up works. It's just something you might want to look out for.