Atypical Attack Scaling - TV Tropes

"The user attacks by slamming its body into the target. The higher the user's Defense stat, the greater the damage this move deals."

— Description for Body Press, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet^note 

• Ōkami: The Thief's Glove increases in power every time you successfully steal an item from an enemy. If you do this enough times, you could defeat the strongest enemy with only 2 hits.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • Hyrule Warriors: The weapon skill "Heart Power" raises the attack power of the user based on the total number of hearts they have. The weapon skill "Compatriot" raises attack power based on number of keeps conquered.
  • Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity: The weapon skill "Damage per 100 KOs" raises attack power for every 100 enemies defeated.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: The Demon King's Bow increases in power based on how many maximum hearts Link has. Hearts currently lost to Gloom and yellow hearts don't count towards the total.
• Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice: The Sen Throw upgrade to the Loaded Shuriken Prosthetic Tool causes the amount of damage it does to scale off the number of Sen coins Wolf has on him.

• Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft has this as an Epic spell for the Warrior class. It deals 1 damage to a minion for every point of armor your hero has (10 damage for 10 armor, for example).

• Borderlands 3: The Face-Puncher is a legendary Hyperion shotgun that despite being a gun shoots melee damage. This allows it to not only benefit from melee damage boosts, but also trigger melee abilities, like Amara's Body and Mind skill (which makes melee attacks release Area of Effect elemental explosions) or the Unleash the Dragon artifact (guaranteed fire Damage Over Time on all melee attacks). The Blade Fury, a gun released later on in the game's life cycle, only has half of its damage treated as melee, which gives it even more opportunities for strange synergies.

• League of Legends: There's a rune in the Resolve tree called Shield Bash that, when the user gains a shield, empowers the user's next attack against an enemy champion to deal additional damage based on the shield amount.

• The Turtle Tamer class in Kingdom of Loathing has Shieldbutt as one of its skills, a never-miss attack based on the power of the player's shield.
• Star Trek Online: Ship weapon damage normally scales from the ship's weapon power setting (among other things). However, a selection of quad cannons are available (one each in phaser, disruptor, and plasma flavors) that instead draw on engine power.
• Temtem:
  • Hyperkinetic Strike's damage is based on the user's speed as well as their special attack.
  • Extra Energy Slam's damage is based on the user's remaining stamina as well as their (physical) attack.
• Warframe: Most Warframe abilities scale based on four primary stats: Strength, Duration, Efficiency, and Range. However, there are some exceptions.
  • Gauss's Mach Rush, being an ability that grants a burst of Super-Speed, scales based on Gauss's dash speed rather than power strength; the faster his dash, the faster the Mach Rush. A bug on launch even allowed stacking certain buffs to the point where the Field of View would be inverted by Gauss going so fast due to stacking so many sprint buffs.
  • Hildryn doesn't have an energy bar, instead casting all of her abilities using her shields, meaning efficiency reduces the amount of shields drained.
  • Lavos doesn't have an energy bar, and increasing efficiency on his build instead lowers the cooldowns of his abilities.
  • Koumei's abilities all scale with the usual stats, but also with her dice rolls; in particular, her third ability, Omamori, will generate an amount of tags that absorb damage equal to the result rolled on up to five six-sided dice, and rolling three sixes on these rolls gives additional affects to her abilities.

• Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night:
  • The Traverser's Ring raises Attack based on map completion.
  • The Silver Power Ring raises Attack based on number of enemies defeated.
  • The Gold Power Ring raises Attack based on amount of Gold earned.
  • The Money is Power shard raises the player's stats based on amount of Gold earned.
• Castlevania:
  • Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow: The Soul Flare soul raises stats based on total number of souls acquired.
  • Castlevania: Symphony of the Night:
    • The Badelaire increases in attack power based on play time.
    • The Walk Armor raises Defense based on map completion.

• Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes: Pixies, one of the core units for Sylvan, have their damage scale based on both their level and the hero's current Mana Meter percentage.

• Brotato: There are some weapons and items which scale their damage based on odd stats. For example, the Alien Eyes deal damage equal to 50% of your maximum HP.
• For the King: Most weapons test the user's Strength (large physical weapons), Intelligence (magic weapons), Awareness (bows and guns), Talent (instruments), or even Speed (finesse weapons), with few exceptions:
  • The Toy Hammer is the only weapon in the game to test the Luck Stat. It's an Artifact, albeit a very weak one.
  • The unarmed attack and a very few small daggers test Vitality, which is normally used for Hit Points.
  • Intelligence-based weapons are normally Magic Staffs, wands, and Tomes. The exceptions are three ethereal, purple blades that bypass armor and deal bonus damage to spirits.
• Hades II: Zeus and Hera have a mirrored set of Duo Boons, King's Ransom and Queen's Ransom. Rather than scale based on something like attack, elemental infusions, or the amount of enemies in the room, King's Ransom strips away all of your Hera boons but levels up each Zeus Boon by the amount stripped away, and vice-versa for Queen's Ransom.
• One Step From Eden:
  • Shield Throw fires a shot with damage equal to the user's Shield, but spends it all to attack. Catching the attack allows you to regain your Shield.

    Flavor Text: When you have no sword and no options

  • Sera Cannon fires a shot with damage equal to the user's current money.
• Slay the Spire: A physical attack's damage is normally scaled via a character's Strength, with each stack of strength equaling 1 more point of damage done. However both the Ironclad and the Watcher have an attack that scales with a different stat:
  • Body Slam for the Ironclad converts the amount of armor you currently have into damage on a 1-to-1 ratio. When paired with the power Barricade (all leftover block is retained for the rest of the fight), the relic Calipers (block decreases by only 15 at the end of each turn), and/or the skill Entrench (doubles the amount of armor you currently have), Body Slam can easily hit the 999 damage limit for only 1 energy, and if you upgrade it, for 0 energy.
  • Brilliance for the Watcher does 12 base damage (16 when upgraded) that increases by 1 for each unit of mantra channeled that combat. Since gaining 10 mantra puts the Watcher into the Divinity state, where all attack damage is tripled, this attack can also hit the damage limit.
• Touhou Lost Branch Of Legend:
  • "Barrier Slam" deals 10 damage, plus additional damage equal to the player's Barrier.

    The strongest barrier can be used to block danmaku, and also smack faces.

  • "Hakurei's Evilest Orbs" is an attack that has Retain (i.e. it stays in your hand until you play it or discard it manually) and increases its damage by 1 whenever you Draw Extra Cards outside of the draw step.
  • "Permanent Border" is a skill with Retain that deals damage passively. This damage increases whenever you lose a buff. Fittingly, the card is in Reimu's pool alongside quite a few cards that provide temporary buffs.
  • "Stardust Reverie" is an attack with Retain whose damage increases for every turn it sits in your hand. "Orb of Water and Fire" has the same gimmick. Inverted with "Milky Way", a block card that scales with the number of turns it sits in your hand.
  • "Crazed Thorns" increases its damage every time it gets played. The same is true for "Boundary of Life and Death", a card that can return itself to your hand to get played even more times.
  • "Suwa Clear Water" deals more damage the more Abilities you've played this combat.
  • Inverted with "Panoramic Shot", a block card that scales with your amount of unspent mana.
• 20 Minutes Till Dawn: The Tome of Might increases damage by 2 for each max HP that you have.
• Dead Cells has "Colourless" (actually Golden) gear (gear usually scales with one of the Three stats) that will scale with "whatever is highest." This allows, for example, a Fireblast weapon (usually red for Brutality scaling) that scales with Survivability (usually used to calculate the damage from long-ranged melee weapons and booby traps) because it happens to be higher than Brutality.

• The Breath of Fire series:
  • Breath of Fire IV:
    • Oracle, Spray and Clip are physical attacks that scale based on the user's wisdom, defense and speed stats respectively.
    • Faerie Attack and Faerie Charge deal damage based on how many faerie workers the player has assigned to the barracks in the Faerie Village.
  • Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter: The Dragon Blade increases its rank the higher Ryu's Dragon Ratio is.
• Dark Souls series:
  • Dark Souls 1: Unlike every other weapon upgrade path and class, which scale off a stat you can upgrade, the Chaos path and Chaos weapons instead scale off the number of Humanities you have used and stored, signified by the number in the top left of the screen.
  • Dark Souls II:
    • The Lost Sinner's Sword is unique in that it scales inversely with your sin level. The more you've sinned, the less damage you do.
    • The Ruler's Sword, as well as hexes Resonant Soul and Great Resonant Soul, scale off the number of souls in your possession.
    • The Dark Pyromancy Flame, Scythe of the Forlorn and Greatsword of the Forlorn all deal increased damage based on your Hollowing level, which is increased each time you die. The Staff of Amana, meanwhile, scales inversely, losing damage each time you die.
    • Downplayed with Hexes, who scale of faith and intelligence like other spells in the game. What makes them unusual is that rather than scale from one or the other, like miracles or sorceries, or both at the same time, like pyromancies, Hexes scale of the lowest of the two stats.
  • Dark Souls III: Anri's Straight Sword and spells cast by the Man-Grub's Staff scale primarily (exclusively, for the latter) based on Luck, which no other weapons use unless you give them a Hollow infusion.
• Divinity: Original Sin II:
  • The Warfare skill Bouncing Shield throws the user's shield at one or two enemies, dealing damage based on the shield's physical armor stat.
  • Unlike any standard attack or weapon, the damage from a telekinetically thrown item scales from the item's weight rather than any character stat — and telekinesis has no weight limit.
  • The Geomancer skill Reactive Armour converts a fraction of the user's current physical Armor Points into a burst attack that, for obvious reasons, includes the user.
  • Unlike other magic, Necromancer attack spells deal Non-Elemental damage that scales based on Warfare, the ability that normally boosts physical weapon damage.
• Elden Ring:
  • The Clawmark Seal causes incantations cast with it to scale based on strength instead of faith.
  • Katanas typically scale with strength and dexterity, but the Moonveil's highest scaling is with intelligence, making it a favorite Emergency Weapon for magic builds. The in-universe justification is that this blade was forged out of glintstone (the Green Rocks powering the setting's intelligence-based magic) by a Sellian blacksmith (Sellia being an ancient city of sorcerers).
• Etrian Odyssey Nexus: The bash skills for shield weapons use the shield's defense stat to calculate damage.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy II: Ultima's power is based on the combined total of the user's weapon skill levels and the levels of all the spells they have equipped.
  • Final Fantasy V: The Brave Blade and Chicken Knife both have their attack power scale based on the number of battles the party has fled from — the Brave Blade begins the game at maximum power but loses attack power with each successful escape, while the Chicken Knife begins weak but becomes stronger with every escape.
  • Final Fantasy VI: The recurring weapon Ultima Weapon, which debuts in this game, scales its damage based on the wielder's level and amount of HP remaining, dealing most damage when used by a level 99 character with full HP and decreasing as it lowers. Conversely, Locke's Valiant Knife deals higher damage the lower his current HP is.
  • Final Fantasy VII: Vincent's and Barrett’s ultimate weapons scale damage in an unconventional manner compared to their other weapons. Vincent’s ultimate weapon, Death Penalty, increases damage based on number of enemies killed, while Barrett’s weapon increases damage based on the total amount of AP accumulated on his equipped Materia.
  • Final Fantasy IX: Zidane's Thievery, Freya's Dragon Crest, and Quina's Frog Drop are all Fixed Damage Attacks that scale based on the number of successful steal attempts, dragons defeated by the party, and the number of frogs captured in the associated minigame respectively.
  • Final Fantasy X: The special ability Spare Change is an attack that scales to the amount of money used in the attack instead of the user's attack stat. Up to 100,000 Gil can be used in the attack, resulting in a maximum damage output of 9,999.
  • Final Fantasy XI: Dark Knights' job ability Soul Eater causes each hit to drain 10% of the user's HP, adding the lost HP to the damage of their attack.
  • Final Fantasy XII: Several weapons have damage formulae that either scale based on multiple stats or have different damage formulae entirely.
    • Katanas and staves scale based on both their wielder's Strength and Magick Power.
    • Daggers, ninja swords and bows scale based on their wielder's Strength and Speed.
    • Axes, hammers and hand-bombs scale based on their wielder's Strength and Vitality.
    • Measures and guns scale based on their stated attack bonus squared, and ignore the defense stat of most targets.
  • Final Fantasy XII and Final Fantasy Tactics A2 have Knots of Rust, which are just chunks of rocks you throw at enemies. They seem to do very little damage at first, but they get more powerful the more you use them, making them almost a Lethal Joke Item. Then there's also Dark Matter, which does little damage like the Knots of Rust at first. The Dark Matter gains power the more you use the rusts. With these items, it's possible to be Cherry Tapping bosses with chunks of rock. Knots of Rust also have a slightly more obscure use. Shemhazai's Limit Break attack, Soul Purge, does damage equal to the combined damage from the Knots of Rust and her Devour Soul attack. The damage cap on this is 60000, making it the second-strongest attack in the game at full charge.
  • Final Fantasy XIII-2: The Odinbolt and the Odinblade increase in power based on the percentage of Fragments obtained.
  • Final Fantasy Legend III: Talents (used by all species except humans and mutants) scale in damage based on a mixture of factors that notably include the user's maximum Hit Points. This is particularly important for robot characters, who must buy expensive capsules in order to get stronger; buying a HP capsule effectively means double-dipping, benefiting both attack and defence.
• Gothic 2: Rapiers use the dexterity attribute while crossbows use strength, making them viable side weapons for bow and sword users respectively.
• Heroes Of Oakenhaven: Guardians' Wind Slashes, a physical damage move, adds Magical Attack to damage.
• Knights of the Old Republic: The "Finesse" feat changes melee attack rolls to be modified by the character's Dexterity modifier instead of their Strength modifier if higher.
• Live A Live: Masaru's Arm Lock move deals damage based on his IQ (Special Attack in the remake), despite being a physical move.
• Lufia: The Legend Returns: The IP skill Dash Attack deals extra damage based on the user's speed.
• LunarLux:
  • Astro Kick: PWR is based on your level.
  • Nebula Grenade: Power increases based on Anti Meter.
  • Shuriken: PWR increases based on Shield count.
• Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga: The Mush Badge raises your attack power based on how many Mushrooms you have in your inventory.
• Mega Man Battle Network: Attack power Custom Gauge-based chips, like CustSword, which increase in damage as the gauge fills and tend to zero out when it maxes.
• In OMORI, Kel's Run n' Gun skill scales off his Speed instead of Attack. Given Kel is naturally a Fragile Speedster and the variety of ways to boost Speed, a popular tactic is to boost Kel's Speed as high as possible and use this skill for massive damage (nicknamed the "Kel Nuke").
• Persona 2:
  • Hieroglyphein deals damage equal to the user's level times the Rank of the Persona they have equipped.
  • Eternal Punishment introduces Chaos Element, which deals damage equal to the user's level times a random number between 1 and 8.
• In Persona 5 Royal, Izanagi-No-Okami's Persona Trait "Country Maker" raises Attack and Defense based on Compendium percent completion.
• Pokémon:
  • The move Return scales its damage based on both the user's Attack stat and their happiness. Conversely, Frustration scales inversely with happiness, dealing more damage the less the Pokémon likes its trainer.
  • Flail and Reversal deal more damage the less HP the user has left, potentially going all the way to 200 base power at 1 HP.
  • Water Spout and Eruption are very powerful moves which deal damage based on both the user's Special Attack and their percentage of HP remaining.
  • Electro Ball is a special Electric-type attack which makes more damage the faster the user is compared to the target. Conversely, Gyro Ball is a physical Steel-type attack that does more damage the slower the attacking Pokémon is relative to the target.
  • Stored Power and Power Trip have a base power of 20, but get increased power from a buff to any of the user's stats — Attack, Defense, Special Attack, Special Defense, Speed, evasion, and accuracy. Punishment functions similarly but on the number of the target's buffs instead.
  • Body Press scales its damage based on the user's Defense, not its Attack like other physical moves do.
  • Foul Play scales its damage based on the target's Attack instead of the user's.
  • Some moves' damage is affected by the weight of the user or target, a stat specified in the Pokédex entries for the relevant species rather than being part of an individual Pokémon's statblock.
    • From Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire onwards, Low Kick inflicts more damage to heavier targets. Pokémon Diamond and Pearl added Grass Knot, which works similarly.
    • Heavy Slam and Heat Crash, introduced in Pokémon Black and White, scale their damage based on the difference between the weights of the user and the target: a user who is much heavier than the target gets a damage bonus, while a user who is much lighter gets a damage penalty.
  • In Downplayed examples, the moves Psyshock, Psystrike, and Secret Sword (the latter two being the Secret Arts of Mewtwo and Keldeo, respectively) all deal damage based on the user's Special Attack, but the target's Physical Defense.
• Prayer of the Faithless: The "Shoulder Tackle" attack Drive "Adds 50% of Armor to damage."
• Ruphand: An Apothecary's Adventure: Landslide potions are Earth element attacks that add "4x Defense to attack", giving it 4 more damage for every point of defense.
• Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne: Certain physical skills (typically ones that involve weapons, such as Deathbound or Heat Wave) deal damage based on the user's max HP instead of Strength.
• Super Battle Kiddo Experience:
  • Wish's physical attack has its damage rise with Wish's current MP.
  • Leon's Shield Bash has its damage partially raised by his armor.
• Tales of Symphonia: An endgame sidequest introduces the Devil's arms, a set of rather weak weaponry at first; however, after defeating a Super Boss known as Abyssion, the weapons have attack power that scale based on the amount of enemies defeated using them.
• In the remake of Trials of Mana, the Luck stat normally determines Critical Hit chance, but it also determines the power of projectiles and traps.
• Zeboyd Games: The games with combo systems increase some attacks' damage the higher the combo number is.
  • Breath of Death VII
  • Cthulhu Saves the World

• Disgaea: In the first two installments, the Gun weapon uses the wielder's HIT stat (accuracy) to determine damage, with the third installment adding SPD into the calculation. Similarly, Bow weapons use ATK and HIT whilst Fist weapons use ATK and SPD. There are other Evilities that can change the stats used to determine damage, such as one that uses RES (Magic Resist) and HIT for bows. The Female Armor Knight's skill "Galahad's Shield" uses her DEF stat to determine damage.
• Fire Emblem Engage: Timerra's Sandstorm skill calculates damage through Defense instead of Strength for physical attacks.
• Honkai: Star Rail:
  • Fu Xuan (a "tank" character) and Lynx and Huohuo (both being healers) scale their attacking power from their Max HP instead of Attack. Thus, making them tanky will also make them hit harder.
  • Similarly, Aventurine (another "tank" character) also scale his attacking power from his DEF stat, which would also strengthen his generated "shields".
  • Blade is unique in that many of his attacks scale from both his ATK stat and his Max HP, given that said attacks also tend to be Cast From Hitpoints to empower them, so making him tanky gives him both more survivability and attacking power.
  • In a variant, most healers tend to base their healing on their Max HP, but some use other stats, such as Luocha (ATK), Gallagher (Break Effect), and Lingsha (both ATK and Break Effect, in different ways).
• Makai Kingdom: While most weapons use ATK, those related to technology and skill (such as rifles, bombs, vehicles and fishing poles) use the TEC stat. The shining example goes to the Balloon, which uses the SP stat to determine damage.
• Phantom Brave: As anything can be used as a weapon, any of the game's stats can end up being used to determine damage, with Speed being highly preferred since it determines turn order.
• In Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, there are both conventional and "psi" weapons; while conventional weapons rely on the weapon's power and strength of the enemy's armor, psi combat ignores those and focuses on the morale of both sides (with attackers being given a 3:2 advantage against a defender on land).
• Sword Of Convallaria: All of Cocoa's healing skills scale off her HP rather than her P.ATK or M.ATK, encouraging players to give her as much HP as they can to boost her tankiness and healing capabilities.

• Neopets: For the "Mind Blast" ability, which can be unlocked temporarily as an Obelisk skirmish reward, knowledge is power, literally—using it will make any weapons the pet uses that turn scale damage based on their intelligence stat rather than their strength.

• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim:
  • Taking the "Fist of Steel" perk allows the player to add the armor class of their gauntlets to any damage they do when fist fighting.
  • The Ebony Blade is a unique sword that, unlike most other weapons, cannot be improved at a grindstone. It also has a unique "Life Drain" enchantment that grows stronger every time the blade is used to murder someone who considers the Dovahkiin a friend.
• Genshin Impact: Several characters scale their damage on stats besides Attack, such as Defense, HP, Elemental Mastery, Healing Bonus, Energy Recharge, etc. There is a degree of elemental bias to this, with Hydro characters often scaling from HP, and Geo characters scaling from Defense. For example, Candace's Elemental Burst, Sacred Rite: Wagtail's Tide, deals damage based on her maximum HP. Most of the times this is in addition to scaling from Attack, but a handful of moves exclusively are calculated using alternate stats (such as Yelan whose skill and burst damage scale exclusively from HP).
• Wuthering Waves: Taoqi's Resonance Liberation uses her DEF stat to determine damage. Similarly, Baizhi's Resonance Liberation uses her maximum HP to determine healing for the team she's assigned to.

• Arkham Horror 3rd Edition: The Blood Mage Agnes Baker's starting spell Storm of Spirits lets her substitute her Lore score for Strength in an attack action — a great benefit for a Squishy Wizard, albeit one that doesn't stack with most mundane weapons.
• The Dark Eye: A special quirk of dream and nightmare worlds is that the physical stats are replaced by the mental stats of the dreamer or dreamwalker, turning Courage into Strength, Intelligence into Dexterity, Intuition into Agility and Charisma into Constitution. While attacks are still calculated by the usual formula, it effectively matches this trope.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition:
    • The "Weapon Finesse" feat allows attack rolls with "light" melee weapons (and rapiers) to be made with the attacker's Dexterity modifier instead of their Strength modifier.
    • The Factotum, a generalist class themed on Awesomeness by Analysis, can spend Inspiration points to add their Intelligence modifier to various rolls it wouldn't normally apply to, starting with attack and damage rolls at 1st level. It even stacks with the roll's normal ability modifier.
  • Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition:
    • The Druid spell Shillelagh enchants a club or staff so that its attack and damage rolls are derived from the user's spellcasting stat (Wisdom for a Druid, but if you somehow get it from another class it could be Intelligence or Charisma) instead of Strength, among other benefits.
    • Hexblade Warlocks can attune to a weapon so that its attack and damage rolls are derived from their Charisma (their main spellcasting ability) rather than Strength or Dexterity.
    • The Battlesmith Artificer can use their Intelligence modifier in place of their Strength or Dexterity modifier when wielding a magic weapon. The Armorer Artificer has a similar ability, but it only works with the special weapons they get as part of their subclass power (the Thunder Gauntlet and Lightning Gem.
• Mage: The Awakening 1st Edition: Rote spells use a dice pool of "Attribute + Skill Score + Magic arcanum", so some combat spells rely on markedly non-combat skills. A mage might Intimidate the flesh off someone's bones, improve their lightning bolts with Athletics training, or power a Tele-Frag with Investigation.
• Magic: The Gathering: The Affinity mechanic makes certain spells cost 1 mana less for each of a certain permanent type on the battlefield. It started out as Affinity for Artifacts, which is still the most common type, but after that was deemed far too powerful in constructed formats, other types of Affinity have popped up as one-offs, such as Affinity for Tokens, Equipment, or Planeswalkers.
• Pathfinder's First Edition:

• The Order of the Stick: Elan The Bard eventually enters the Dashing Swordsman Prestige Class. Though it is physically-oriented, one key feature of the class is that if Elan makes a pun, he can use his high charisma stat for damage rolls instead of his meager strength score.

• Dimension 20: In the Neverafter campaign, Mother Timothy Goose is a bard. Bards in Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition normally have their abilities scale based on Charisma, but Timothy is a Wisdom-based bard instead.