Hello,
This isn't so much a HELP ME! question as it is a query to the more experienced FFT players/hackers on this board. I recently experienced a weird situation where I was attacking a mob that was Fire-weak with a caster generic who had the Flame Rod equipped (Strengthen Fire element). Now, I was fully expecting for the damage bonuses to stack, but they did not. Is this normal FFT behavior or is this the result of an ASM hack I'm using? I confirmed that the Flame Rod is in fact raising Fire element, the target was fire weak, and the ability is flagged as fire elemental. I'm using the "Elemental Fix (v3) FIXES HOLY SWORD AND OIL" patch in my testing where weak targets are only taking 50% more damage instead of 100%. Strengthen element is still a 25% bonus (unchanged from vanilla).
Basically the math was like this:
target takes normal damage to fire, no caster flame rod: 88 damage
Weak to fire: 132 damage (+44 damage bonus, or the correct 50% per the change from elemental fix)
Weak to fire and caster wearing Flame Rod: 132 damage (+44 damage bonus, no stacking with Flame Rod bonus)
Sounds like fdc fucked up hardcore. I have no idea what needed to be "fixed" when it comes to elemental, but even though the hack is in my xml, he basically did what he did to a bunch of my other hacks: completely rewrite them into something that doesn't do what they originally did, and put it in my xml. He somehow felt he was in charge of updating my hacks xml file without ever telling me or even ever asking me. He took terrible liberties using my name. He's an imposter and a terrible hacker.
Yes, they're supposed to stack. Strengthen is supposed to raise your effective MA from 11 to 13, for example.