Vitality/Defense?

[ReloadPsi]

In the nine years or so that I've been playing this game I've never known the Vitality and Defense stats to have any effect at all.

Is that some kind of glitch or bug in the PAL version or something? I've never once seen any difference in damage between a Vitality of 10 and a Vitality of 100. I've also always taken exactly the same physical attack damage under Fury and Sadness too.

[Bolivar]

i don't know exactly but in the beginning of the game Barret seems to take much less damage than Cloud, who I also have in the back row (he's a black mage, people!). I don't know, maybe it's just your version.

[Captain Maxx Power]

Each point in Defense (and vicariously Vitality) reduces the damage you take against physical, non-piercing attacks by 0.19% give or take. At 255 Defense you will take approximately half damage (closer to 48.45%) from all attacks. As you can see, placing a character on the back row/Barrier/Sadness status will usually make a much more noticeable difference to the damage you take. Also of note is that if you have 255 Defense/Magic Defense and then use either Hero Drinks or Dragon Force to raise these values, all non-piercing damage will be reduced by 96.9% (or approximately 3% of the total damage).

Note that there are quite a few Defense-ignoring attacks, and also a whole boatload of Physical and Magical attacks that also ignore the Barrier and MBarrier status.

[Jarvio]

Here's a stupid question for everyone, and I'm quite ashamed I don't know this, but what is vitality? Is it speed? That's what I always thought it was

[ReloadPsi]

Here's a stupid question for everyone, and I'm quite ashamed I don't know this, but what is vitality? Is it speed? That's what I always thought it was

Nope, "Vitality" refers to how well you can take physical blows from the enemy. I understand where you're coming from, there's a lot of languages where words beginning with "vit" tend to refer to speed. An educated, but sadly incorrect guess.