Ailment

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Status Ailments, or simply Ailments, are a recurring mechanic in the Megami Tensei franchise.

Gameplay

Ailment skills inflict an ailment on a target. Ailments negatively affect the ailed unit in some way for a certain period of time, such as inflicting damage every turn or restricting certain actions. However, ailment skills tend to not deal damage directly and can be cured with an appropriate Healing effect. Ailments may also interact with other skills, such as by giving an additional effect upon hitting an ailed target or giving an ailed unit a benefit when afflicted by a specific ailment.

Some titles have attributes that are heavily associated with inflicting specific types of ailments, such as Mind for mental ailments or Nerve for physical ailments. These attributes often do include skills that inflict direct damage. In titles where this categorization does not happen, a general Ailment attribute may be present instead.

Unlike other attributes (including the specific Ailment attributes like Mind and Nerve) there is generally no resistance to the general Ailment attribute. Instead, a unit may have a resistance towards a specific ailment. For instance, a demon may be weak to Charm, meaning Ailment skills that inflict Charm will have a higher infliction rate against them and grant the appropriate bonus for hitting a weakness, though they may nullify Poison, so Ailment skills that only inflict Poison will be nullified. When a skill inflicts multiple ailments, the target must only be weak to at least one of them in order to hit their weakness and they must nullify every ailment inflicted by the skill in order to hit their nullification.

Ailments may also be present as a secondary effect in skills from other attributes; most notably in Physical skills. These secondary effects do not hit an ailment weakness, but the skill may still benefit from a target's higher propensity to that specific ailment.

Recurring Ailments

Ailment Name	Effect	Notes
Burn
Charm
Confusion
Dizzy	A target inflicted with dizzy will lose their turn
Fear
Freeze
Happy
Paralyze		Not to be confused with Shock.
Poison
Seal		Also known as Mute, Silence and Close.
Shock	Shocked target will be stunned or suffer decreased movement	Not to be confused with Paralyze.
Rage	Enraged target will have increased attack and sometimes lower defense

Mechanics by Game

Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance

Ailment Infliction

The chances of an Ailment being inflicted are determined as follows:

First, all further steps are skipped if one of the following conditions, checked in the following order, are met:

1. If the defender nullifies the Ailment, regardless of Pierce: the Ailment is not inflicted.
2. If the defender already has that Ailment, Mud or Shroud: the Ailment is not inflicted.
3. If the effect's Ailment rate is 255%: the Ailment is inflicted.

The Ratio between the attacker's Luck and defender's Luck is calculated:

$\text{Ratio}=\frac{{\text{Luck}}_{\text{Attacker}}}{{\text{Luck}}_{\text{Defender}}}$

Then, a Root value is calculated using one of three formulas. The specific formula that is used depends on the value of Ratio:

$\begin{array}{rlrl}\text{Ratio}<0.5:& & \text{Root}& =0.25-\frac{\sqrt{0.5-\text{Ratio}}}{20}+\frac{\text{Ratio}}{2}\\ 0.5\le \text{Ratio}\le 1.5:& & \text{Root}& =\text{Ratio}\\ \text{Ratio}>1.5:& & \text{Root}& =\sqrt{\text{Ratio}}+0.275\end{array}$

The base rate is then equal to Root multiplied by the effect's Ailment rate. All further effects that alter the affliction rate are applied as multipliers to the base rate.

The multipliers for Skill Potentials can be found here. Skill Potentials do not apply if the source of the effect is an item, a Healing skill, a Support skill or a Magatsuhi Skill.

Individually, Hellish Mask applies a 0.7 multiplier and Abyssal Mask applies a 0.4 multiplier. When both are present, the total multiplier is 0.1.

If the ailment is not Instakill, defender's resistance multiplier is calculated with the following formula:

$\text{Resistance}={\text{Resistance}}_{\text{Defender}}-\text{Count}\cdot \frac{{\text{Resistance}}_{\text{Defender}}\cdot 2+1}{10}$

Where Count is the amount of times the defender has been afflicted by that specific Ailment during the current battle, and Resistance_Defender is the defender's natural resistance towards that Ailment. Count is reset to 0 on death and by Dekajaon. Resistance is set to 0 if it would be lower than 0. If Qadištu Cohort applies, Resistance is instead set to 1 if it would be lower than 1. In the case of Instakill, Resistance is always 1.

The current difficulty modifies Ailment rates depending on if the target is an enemy or a player:

Difficulty	Targeting enemy	Targeting player
Safety	2	Instant kill: 0.01 Others: 0.05
Casual	Instant kill: 1.2 Others: 1.3	0.7
Normal	1	1
Hard	0.7	1.3

Guarding provides a 0.5 multiplier, except if the defender's resistance to it is ×1¼×1.25, in which case it is instead 0.4.

At this point, the value is limited to a maximum of 100%. Then, both of the following conditions are checked:

• If the attacker is an enemy targeting the player and the skill targets all enemies: a 0.9 multiplier is applied.
• If the attacker is the player, affected by Omagatoki: Hit, and the defender is an enemy: a 2.5 multiplier is applied.

The result is rounded down, and used as the final Ailment rate.

For automatically recovering from an Ailment, the following formula is used:

If the combatant has not spent at least one of their party's turns with the Ailment, then they cannot yet automatically recover from it. For Shroud, they must instead spend two turns. If they can automatically recover, then they will attempt to do so at the start and at the end of their party's turn.

Ailment Recovery

The chances of a combatant automatically recovering from an Ailment are determined as follows:

First, a Root value is calculated using their level:

$\begin{array}{rlrl}\text{Level}<100:& & \text{Root}& =4+\frac{\text{Level}-1}{2}\\ \text{Level}\ge 100:& & \text{Root}& =53+499\cdot (\text{Level}-99)\end{array}$

Then a Coefficient value is determined depending on the specific Ailment:

Ailment	Coefficient
Poison or Sleep	1
All others	15

A Base value is calculated as follows:

$\text{Base}=\text{Coefficient}\cdot \frac{\text{Luck}}{\text{Root}}$

Base is restricted to between half of Coefficient and 85 if it would exceed that range.

The recovery rate is given with the following formula:

$\text{Rate}=(\text{Base}+15\cdot \text{Turns})$

Where Turns is the amount of the combatant's party's turns that have passed since the combatant received the Ailment. Note that the value of Turns resets to 0 if their Ailment is cured or replaced with another. Innate skills that affect recovery rate multiply Rate directly. The final value is rounded down.

Nomenclature

Names in Other Languages

Language	Name	Meaning
English	Status Ailment
	Ailment
Japanese	状態異常 Jōtai ijō	Status abnormality
French	Altération de statut	Status alteration
	Altération	Alteration
German	Statuseffekt	Status effect
Italian	Alterazione di stato	Status alteration
	Alterazione	Alteration
Polish	Dolegliwość	Ailment
Brazilian Portuguese	Enfermidade	Infirmity
Russian	Недуг Nedug	Illness
Peninsular Spanish	Estado alteradoShin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance	Altered status
	Alteración de estadoSoul Hackers 2	Status alteration
Turkish	Kötü Durum Etkisi	Bad Status Effect