I've had a hunch for a long time, but I just confirmed it. The M DEF stat (which we already know affects resistance to bad status attacks) acts as a percentage. In other words, if it's set to 1294, that's really only 12.94% resistance. But each type of bad status attack has their own resistance on top of that. I let myself get afflicted by these a few hundred times, and though there might've been some anomolies, I assume these are pretty close.

Decrease Attack/Guard/Speed - 100% success rate.
Poison - 100% success rate.
Silence - 95% success rate.
Confuse - 80% success rate.
Sleep - 80% success rate.
Paralyze - 50% success rate.
Petrify - 50% success rate.
Death - 40% success rate.

Those are the success rates if you have M DEF turned off or set to 0. When M DEF is higher than 0, it takes off a percentage of the existing success rate. So if a character's M DEF is 5000 (50%), Poison drops to 50% success rate, Sleep drops to 40% success rate, Petrify drops to 25% success rate, and you get the idea.

In other words, if you want your party's M DEF stats to have any effect at all, you'll want it increasing at a rate of at least 50 per level. 99 per level wouldn't hurt, either.

Definately a bit of a bummer, though. It means that if you want a boss weak to poison but not to paralyze, the best you can do is set the M DEF stat just high enough that the player won't feel it's worth trying to paralyze yet just low enough that trying to poison it is.

Wow, Dray. Good going finding all this out!

how does this work with the 5 point per stat rule? youd have to set a base stat of something half decent. it makes more sense to have accessories that mega boost your m defense then it would to get a natural per level increase. i can see how getting .05% of an increase is laughable.

once again this is a great find for someone to sit down an iron it out. im going to have to reevaluate my stats yet again to configure this since i use status effects.

Apparently the 5-point rule was created before figuring out just how much M DEF affects.

im stingy when it came to that anyway. no char has more then 2 points invested in that skill so my gain is bordering nothing. im going to subtract 5 points from each char, starting with the m def and then reinvest a ton more into it. even with maximum investment being .99%, at 99 levels your looking at 98.01 as your skill max (without adding bonus foods or anything). no one is going to battle in rpg maker for 99 levels and its very hard to see anyone play into the 40's or 50's. 50% is a good max, changing the stats to:

Decrease Attack/Guard/Speed - 50% success rate.
Poison - 50% success rate.
Silence - 47.5% success rate.
Confuse - 40% success rate.
Sleep - 40% success rate.
Paralyze - 25% success rate.
Petrify - 25% success rate.
Death - 20% success rate.

thats not too bad a spread. the values still seam rather high. im tempted to start off with a few hundred points towards the value or something. speaking of which, what do you think of adding extra hit points and other starts at the beginning of the game? or would you rather see it spread out through levels?

I actually give everyone a boost in speed and evasion right at the start of the game. Makes balancing easier, because this way you're not suddenly several times faster than you were just a few levels ago.

Karr reminded me of something, Dray. Remember when we were talking about base stats for RM1 characters, and the lower they are, the more likely they are to have the same base stat number... and therefore have will have the exact same stats through the entire game? That was kind of bugging me. I mean, I split the party up enough where hopefully they'll differ in levels most the game, but I also plan to utilize the 'food' items, which will also make differences in character stats permanently. Also, with this new found info, looks like the M DEF food item is going to have to get a few more points added to it, if it is to make any difference what so ever.

Thanks for this, it'll help out greatly.

i really cant afford to go and balance my entire game yet a 5th time lol. i do want to edit some stats though. ive always wanted my chars to have more hp, and to be able to have some difference between them that isnt just levels or stat set.