Topic: Physical Status Attacks - Applied in Reverse

[Deathlike2]

I started noticing this in my hack...

The determination that a physical status attack is applied onto a character/monster is if the existing status is applied already...
If the "weakest" status in a multi-status physical attack is not active, it is applied along with the other statuses, even when they already active.

For instance, a monster that can inflict Poison+Curse attacks a target that already has Poison status.. Curse status can be reapplied to said target.
If the same monster attacks a target that has Curse status, Poison status can't be reapplied.

To properly put this in perspective, I wrote in a different post that I was able to apply Darkness status (via a weapon) and then apply Charm status (with the Charm Harp) afterwards, despite Charm status having a lower priority than Darkness. So, it's actually very easy to reapply weaker statuses such as Charm, Sleep, or Paralyze with physical attacks to monsters that already have Piggy, Toad, or Mini status already applied to them...

[Lenophis]

Can anybody say "highly abusive?" This could have some interesting uses, even if it was only situational.

[Deathlike2]

Status afflications were underused in this game... moreso monsters than characters.

Under normal circumstances, a character normally inflicts up to 2 statuses onto an enemy target because most weapons have at most 1 status applied to them...

It disappoints me that this idea was never really carried over to FF5 or FF6... they only appear in the form of special attacks to remove the "surprise".

Noting that, you can do a lot more of status afflictions given that status priorities affect spells differently in FF4.

Plus, this information assumes that there are no status resistances... being immune to one implies immunity to rest of the statuses in the same attack (whether physical or magical). This behavior changed in FF5/FF6, where a multi-status attack will continue to apply statuses that are not resisted... which gives you an idea of why it was revamped...

IIRC, FF5's special attacks had a chance to inflict status... in FF6, special attacks always inflicted the status... so I suspect over time, the randomness wasn't good enough.. although a combination of FF4 and FF5's chance to inflict statuses would have been quite more useful...

I would personally try to keep the status affliction behavior in FF4, but also keep the status resistance behavior in FF5/FF6.