Combat
Hitting and Missing
Most attacks hit or miss based on the hit rate of the attack and the MBlock% of the defender. (Due to a bug, both physical and magic attacks can be avoided with MBlock%. Evade % was intended to resist physical attacks, but is not used at all—see the Evade Bug below.) Some can additionally be resisted by the Stamina of the target. Unblockable attacks always hit unless the target is immune to Wound and the attack is subject to that resistance.
MBlock%
MBlock% acts like a percentage modifier on attacks, except that it is calculated out of 128 instead of 100. The hit rate is multiplied by this percentage to get the final hit rate of the attack, which is itself out of 100. For example, if you have 70 MBlock% and an attacker has a hit rate of 150, the attacker's hit rate is reduced by 55% to 67. This represents a 67% chance to hit. Most monsters have 0 MBlock%.
Stamina Resistance
Certain abilities are resisted with Stamina as well as MBlock%. These tend to be instant death or percentage-based damage attacks. The chance to resist is equal to Stamina/127. No monster has a Stamina greater than 40, so these attacks tend to be fairly accurate if the target is not immune.
Damage
Physical vs. Magic
Every attack in the game is either physical or magical in nature. The distinction is important, as each has its own method of calculating damage. The attack used determines the damage to a large extent, but physical attack damage is increased with a higher Vigor and resisted with Defense, while magic attacks are empowered by a higher Mag.Pwr and resisted with Mag.Def.
Defense
Damage mitigation follows a simple formula in Final Fantasy VI. Values can range from 0 to 255, and block a fraction equal to that number over 255 of damage. In other words, 255 defense is a 100% reduction (resulting in a minimum of 1 damage from each hit), while 0 defense results in full damage. All "expected damage" calculations in this guide are based on a Defense or Mag.Def of 128, resulting in half of raw damage. Actual values can range from 0 to double this amount based on the relevant defensive stat alone. Any attack that "ignores defense" acts as if the target's defense was 0 (resulting in double damage as a general approximation).
Elemental Resistance
The Elemental attributes of an attack are compared with the Elemental resistances of the target. If multiple different resistances apply, they take precedence in the following order:
- ForceField: Damage is set to 0
- Absorb HP: Damage is taken as healing
- No Effect: Damage is set to 0
- 50% Dmg: Damage is halved
- Weak pt: Damage is doubled
Bonuses
Critical hits, which occur on 1/32 of standard attacks, deal double damage. Similar flat damage bonuses, such as those from Berserk, do not multiply. Two doublings results in triple damage, a 50% bonus and a doubling results in +150% damage, and so on.
Row
Characters in the back row deal half damage with the Fight command. This doesn't apply to other physical attacks, and some weapons will deal full damage from the back row. They also take half damage from all physical attacks, even special attacks other than Fight. Character rows are reversed during back attacks, and there is no back row during pincer attacks.
Back Attack
A creature facing the other way takes 50% extra damage from physical attacks and those attacks always hit. This can happen at the start of a back attack and with some regularity during a pincer or side attack, where creatures turn to face the last opponent that hit them.
Multiple Targets
Most spells, especially those where you have the option of targeting one or all targets, will deal half damage when they have multiple targets. However some powerful spells bypass this limitation and deal the same damage regardless of how many targets they hit.
Friendly Fire
To mitigate the power of Muddled, characters only take half damage from attacks made by one another. (This doesn't affect healing.)
Battle Types
Formations
There are four battle formations: normal, back, side, and pincer. Normal battles are by far the most common, while back and pincer attacks are the rarest. Back attacks will result in the party being located on the left side of the battlefield, facing away from the enemies to start with. Character rows will also be reversed, requiring characters to use the Row command to return to their normal positions. Side attacks give your party the advantage, setting two slots each on the right and left of the enemy formation. Pincer attacks place your party in the center between two sets of monsters. Not every encounter can use all four formations.
Because back attacks start with your party on the left side of the battlefield, facing away from the enemies, they will be especially vulnerable to the initial attacks by the enemy party. Side and pincer attacks bring this mechanic into play even more frequently, as the party in the center of the battlefield will turn to face each opponent that attacks them, leaving them vulnerable on the other side.
Preemptive Attacks
There is a 12.5% chance of a preemptive attack for any given encounter using the normal formation. The chance is nearly doubled to approximately 22% for side attacks. You'll never get a preemptive attack if the formation is a back attack or a pincer attack, nor if the encounter specificially disables them (as is the case for many bosses).
Capture
The Capture Command, activated by the Thief Glove, allows you to combine a basic attack with Steal. One of the side effects of this is that most of the special abilities of any weapon used with Capture are disabled. This is usually a drawback, though in some cases or situations it can act as a benefit. The affected weapons include:
- The Tempest will not trigger Wind Slash. Weapons that randomly cast spells in addition to the attack rather than instead of the attack will do so as normal.
- Weapons that "Randomly dispatch an enemy" will not. This includes the Assassin, Striker, and Trump.
- Similarly, the Scimitar will not "Randomly dice up an enemy."
- MP Critical weapons will act as normal weapons. This includes the Illumina, Ogre Nix, Punisher, Ragnarok, and the Rune Edge. On the upside, the Ogre Nix also cannot break.
- The Hawk Eye and Sniper will never deal bonus damage or use alternate animations.
- The Drainer will not drain HP.
- The Soul Sabre will neither drain nor damage MP.
- The Man Eater deals normal damage to human targets.
- The Heal Rod will deal damage rather than healing the target.
- The Dice and Fixed Dice act as normal weapons, making them almost entirely useless.
- The Atma Weapon and ValiantKnife do not scale damage based on the user's HP or ignore Defense.
Party Members
Join Level
The first time a character joins the party in the World of Balance, they will be assigned a LV based on the average LV of your current party members modified by that character's LV bonus (or penalty). When a character joins in the World of Ruin, this calculation is made again with the same modifier, but a character's level will never decrease as a result.
Special Attacks
All permanent party members other than Gau and Umaro have a special attack that they can potentially use once per battle. This attack will only be used when the character has Near Fatal status (i.e., they are below 1/8 HP) and uses the Fight command, and even then it has a 1/16 chance of occurring. A character will never use a special attack in the first 25.6 seconds of combat or when under the effects of Image or Clear, or suffering from Muddled or Zombie.
Major Bugs
Like its NES predecessors, Final Fantasy VI (SNES) has its fair share of bugs. Most are fairly minor and require certain actions to reproduce, but there are a number of significant bugs that affect gameplay. The Evade % bug in particular has a large effect on how the game plays.
- Vanish Bug: When a character or monster has the Clear status, physical attacks always miss and magic attacks always hit. However, this 'always hit' logic is applied a bit recklessly, and it overrides immunities to the magic. Most famously this is used to defeat Wound-immune enemies with Doom or X-Zone, but it applies to other immunities as well. For instance, you can use Life 2 to heal Clear characters even when they are still alive.
- Sketch Bug: Early copies of FFVI are vulnerable to this game-breaking bug. If Relm uses Sketch and misses, random memory is accessed and all sorts of odd things can happen, including changing your inventory and even deleting your saved games.
- Rippler Bug: Rippler swaps all of the normal status effects in the game, as it is supposed to, but also swaps a number of inherent status effects it is definitely not supposed to, such as Shadow's protection by Interceptor. It also always hits, even if it reports a miss.
- Missing Rages: Gau has slots for three Rage abilities that he cannot actually obtain in a normal game: Chupon, Siegfried, and Allo Ver. These are not obtainable because these monsters never appear on the Veldt. There is also a Rage for Pugs, but it cannot be used because it is in the final slot on Gau's list, which is blanked out. (It's also worth noting that ProtoArmor appears on the Veldt but does not have a Rage Gau can learn.)
- Save Point Bug: This one only applies when you are controlling multiple parties, such as in the Phoenix Cave or Kefka's Tower. If one party steps on a save point, and you immediately switch to one of your other parties, that party can save or use a Tent as if they were themselves on the save point. This ability persists until one of the parties takes a step in any direction.
- Evade % Bug: The game never actually uses Evade %, instead using MBlock% in its place. This affects the strength of a variety of items as well as a number of Statuses. The most obvious is Dark, which has no effect except to prevent Strago from learning a new Lores (and giving you cool glasses!). Other statuses such as Haste were supposed to affect your ability to evade, but do not. A list of items with a difference between their Evade % and MBlock% values follows:
Items Improved by the Evade % Bug- Aegis Shld
- Bard's Hat
- Enhancer
- Force Armor
- Force Shld
- Magus Rod
- Man Eater
- Minerva
- Mirage Vest
- Mystery Veil
- Tao Robe
- White Cape