Here are some interesting things about magic in PSIV you may or may not have known:
-Kyra's uses a different Hewn and a different Tandle to Rune. Her version of them is 48 points higher. Sort of makes up for her not having Legeon. (Source: http://www.wrftpb.com/psiv/txt/ps4-techs.txt)
-There seems to be an enemy ability called "Destrocray", but I've never seen any enemy use it and I'm not sure what it is or what it looks like. (Source: http://www.wrftpb.com/psiv/txt/ps4-eskill.txt)
-Two Hewns existing isn't the only instance of two types of the same spell existing. There are also two versions of Corrosion (I always thought it was spelled Corrision). One is the version an enemy uses, and the other is the one Seth uses (Source: Me)
-Technically, the Physco-Wand isn't the only thing that can penetrate Zio's magic barrier, as Cancelling could also penetrate through it. (Source: Me)
Yup, Kyra's Hewn and Tandle are a bit more powerful than Rune's (48 points for Hewn and 32 for Tandle). Her Hewn is great for combos, and in Kyra's hands, Tandle is fairly competitive with all of the "ultimate attacks". Technically Kyra's Tandle can outdamage Posibolt and Legeon, since there are enemies with a double weakness against electric attacks.
There are two versions of every skill used by more than one PC, actually. Eliminat, Barrier, Spark, Recover, Flaeli. Oddly, in most cases they are completely identical anyway. Hahn is a little better at Eliminat than Rika (except she has higher Dex) and Wren is a bit better at Spark than Demi. I don't even know if these differences are even observable.
That's right: all enemy abilities are completely separate from player abilities. So this includes: Flare/Shot, Barrier, Spark, DblSlash, Phonon/masr, Shift, Saner, Doran, Seals, Rimit, Airslash, Deban, Giwat, Vol, Gra, Gigra, Gizan, Gires, Wat, Foi, Res, Sar, Zan, Gifoi, Gisar, Corrsion, Dthspell, Hewn, Tandle, Legeon, Gelun, Flaeli, Bindwa, and Megid. You can see in some cases the spelling is different but the idea is the same. I guess that means there are three copies of Barrier, Spark, Flaeli, Hewn and Tandle.
The stats around enemy abilities are very strange. Technically, the enemy version of Sar and Gisar are statistically identical. Gisar just seems stronger because the enemies that use it (just Dark Witch, I think?) have much higher mental. A lot of them just generally work differently than the player version, too. Flare/Flare Shot is a good example of this.
Isn't that interesting. I made those pages and never realized that this enemy ability was never used. We'll have to hack it in sometime and see what it looks like - it'll make another good article for tcrf.net or something. Try googling "destrocray". There's only a few results and they are definitely all Phantasy Star IV-related. One result is an unfinished, unpublished FAQ I was writing. I really don't want that out there, frankly...
Last edited by FreshFeeling on Mon Dec 12, '16, 4:08 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Probably not, seeing as any tie between the ability and an enemy doesn't exist in the game's code. What's funny is that it had never occured to me before. I think when I saw Destrocray in the game's enemy ability tables I just naturally thought, "Yeah, that sounds familiar".
There are maybe two ways to learn the intention behind it (maybe): 1) Check if it might be different in the Japanese version (or a prototype translation version). Just as the Acacia/Shadmirage enemies were removed and thus their unique Star Dust attack is completely unused in international releases, perhaps Destrocray had a home in the original version. Not sure why it would be removed; seems like Acacia/Shadmirage were removed because of fleshy female chest pillows, so maybe Destrocray shoots fleshy female chest pillows at the party or something. (note: I tried to use a respectful, anatomically correct word for fleshy female chest pillows but the site doesn't allow it, so I had to be a bit immature. Apologies.)
2) Hack the game so an enemy can use it. By hacking Destrocray onto, say, Xanafalgue, there's a reasonable chance that the game will crash or animate in an obviously incorrect way (just like when you hack skills onto characters they aren't intended for). It might take tons of trial and error, but if you eventually find a subset of enemies that it works perfectly for then it's pretty clear who it was meant for. Or, perhaps that would give some insight as to why it isn't used.
EDIT: 3) It happens to appear directly after Shdwbreath and Lightshowr so there's a good chance it was meant for DF2. That's really just an educated guess though; enemy Burstroc is after Reinforce but Burstroc isn't used by Lashiec. But mostly, attacks that are unique to specific enemies do happen to be clustered together. Why might it have been removed from DF2? No idea. It's just a little bit weaker than Lightshowr (and not an electric attack).
Last edited by FreshFeeling on Mon Dec 12, '16, 4:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Posted: Tue Mar 1, '16, 8:11 pm 
