Hello, thanks for your reply. I'm posting this from my phone at work while on break, I can get a screenshot of the event later if you need. Basically this it is.
The skill is set to target the user, with only an animation and dummy status (so it looks like an activation animation). The skill calls the common event.
The event is as follows:
Text box saying "input commands"
Button input processing
Conditional branch to check if you pressed Up
Button input processing
Conditional branch to check if you pressed Left
Force action, set to player 1, target random enemy with skill Fire, set to execute now
End event processing
Then both 'fail' parts of the conditional branches have a text box saying "incorrect input" and an End event processing
If I change the force action to something like another text box, it works fine saying the input was correct. With the force action in there, just nothing happens and the battle proceeds as normal.
What I had read about force action before was that it may error since you're setting a player location (1 to 4) but the character using the skill and calling the event may be in a different party spot than what the force action is set to.