The Inside Story on M+L 3’s enemy stats + damage calculation.

Since it was requested a while back in response to one of my older posts, I’m going to share some pretty much complete information on what goes into Bowser’s Inside Story’s damage calculations.

As it turns out, the basic formula’s pretty simple, and identical to that of Partners in Time:

Damage Dealt = (Attacker POW)*(Attacker Level)/(Defender DEF) * (Attack Constant).
(Incidentally, Lucky and Critical hits are both worth 1.5x a normal attack.)

Thus, unlike in Superstar Saga, an level-2 Mario with a ton of Power Beans still can’t attack worth anything on late-game bosses, due to the inherently low multiplier from his level. Furthermore, power effectively follows a quadratic formula, which when offset by a linear defense increase, results in a roughly linear increase in power against enemies at your level (whereas you’ll much more rapidly gain an edge on weaker enemies).

At any rate, this formula doesn’t mean squat without knowing what Attack Constants are (at least roughly), and without knowing what the enemy stats are (It’s surprising how many correct stat sheets are out in the aether, but I haven’t seen one that lists enemy levels).

Here’s a quick comparison and overview of the players’ Attack Constants.

Mario & Luigi’s Attacks

Again unlike in Superstar Saga, neither bro has any advantage over the other in base effectiveness of moves, i.e. they’re exactly the same strength given identical POW and level. Here are the values of the common attacks:

	Jump	Hammer
No Good	0.50	0.60
OK	1.00	1.12-1.47
Good	1.00 + 0.60	1.50-1.68
Great	1.00 + 0.80	1.70-1.88
Excellent	1.00 + 1.10	2.12-2.20
Counterattack	1.10	1.00
First Strike	0.50	0.50

Thus, Hammer attacks have a slight edge on attack power overall, but are a bit more variable, and considerably harder to max.  The special attacks have more varied and convoluted means of calculation for their Attack Constants, so I’ll describe them below.  It’s important to note that some of these are based on Mario’s attack power, and some on Luigi’s, so I’ll note which is used for each attack (M = Mario, L = Luigi, M/L = Separate or Average, you figure it out).

• Green Shell – 0.375 per hit, M/L, max of 10 hits. Pretty straightforward, a fair increase in power from a standard attack.
• Fire Flower – 0.066 per hit, M/L. Kind of hard to estimate without knowing how fast a button masher you are. Has that all-important elemental aspect, of course.
• Jump Helmet – Hoo boy. First of all, if you hit just the last command, it’s worth 2.875, and if you mess that up, it’s 0.30 (Missing the spring entirely gives you a big fat 0, of course).  Beyond that, every perfectly centered bounce adds an additional 0.586; hitting off-center will add only 60% of that, and hitting the edge will add a mere 40%.  Regardless of AC, Mario’s power is what’s used.
• Yoo Who Cannon – 0.76 for hit, 0.25 for flub, M/L.  Around three jumps’ worth of damage if executed properly.
• Super Bouncer – 0.92 with B, 0.30 without.  Max of eight hits, topping the possible total at slightly above YWC’s.  This one uses the user’s power, although strangely enough only Luigi can get Lucky hits with it (thanks, avengah!)
• Spin Pipe – 1.10 with button, 0.35 elsewise, M/L, eight hits max.  Another slight step up in damage, but otherwise, it’s again pretty much the same.
• Snack Basket – Hoooo boy.  This one’s effectively calculated in three parts:
  • First of all, the initial multiplier is determined by how many of the twenty snacks are grabbed; 8-13 nets you 0.50, 14-17 gives you 0.75, and 18+, 1.00.
  • Next, that value’s multiplied by another multiplier determined by how many times you hit “A” in the button-mashing segment; this value is (1 + 3/64*presses).
  • Finally, how high Luigi is when you press “B” dictates the third multiplier; 0.8 for a failure, up to 2.0 at the top (slightly higher if you can press it just before he starts floating).

  Thus, if you press the “A” button 48 times in the window, catch all the snacks, and press the button at the top, you’ll get a multiplier of 1*(1 + 48/64)*2 = 3.5.  I don’t know if that’s reasonable, again, since button-mashing’s hard to estimate.  In any case, this is the only move that uses only Luigi’s multiplier.

• Mighty Meteor – 1.20 for a hit, 1.40 for the first flash, 1.60 for the second; M/L, maximum of 5.  Thus, this doesn’t have as much power as the Spin Pipe, but you do get a good item for your efforts, and it can inflict the POW-Down status, cutting away a fourth of the target’s POW for a while.
• Magic Window – 0.54 per successful hit, 0.18 for a flub, M/L.  If they hit together, it counts as a 0.54 (0.18)-M and 0.54 (0.18)-L hit added together.
• Falling Star – 4.00 for the initial star hit, 3.20 for each cluster of eight, and 0.344 for any strays left over, all averaged between Mario and Luigi.  That first hit can be pretty devastating with a “Super Strike” active, and the attack can cause DEF-Down, reducing enemy DEF by a sixth.

Bowser’s Attacks

Bowser’s attack constants are roughly on the same scale as the Bros.’, but the game adds 8 to his actual level for damage calculation purposes.  Here are the ones for his standard attacks:

	Punch	Fire
No Good	1.00	0.30
OK	1.45-1.66	0.60
Good	1.67-1.80	OK + 0.30
Great	1.81-1.91	Good + 0.20
Excellent	2.20	Great + 0.20+0.10
Counterattack	1.00	–
First Strike	0.55	0.55

It’s evident that punches are quite a bit more powerful, so it really comes down to how many enemies there are to hit, and whether the Burn / Critical effects might be useful.  And here are his specials’ Attack Constants:

• Goomba Storm – 0.27 per burning Goomba, 0.06 per normal, 20 hits total.  This maxes out at a little over twice a normal punch’s power.
• Shy Guy Squad – Kind of hard to pin down, as there’s no good way to tell the theoretical maximum.  A “Good” will get roughly 3.2+, a “Great”, 4.0+, and an “Excellent”, 5.1+, though.
• Koopa Corps – 0.23 per hit.  Again, estimating the maximum’s kind of hard, but it’s probably at least 20 hits.
• Bob-omb Blitz – 1.00 per hit, 6 maximum.  Slightly more damage than Goomba Storm, considerably easier, can inflict Dizzy, and the damage can be distributed as you see fit.
• Magikoopa Mob – 0.32 for perfect aim, 0.10 for a non-perfect, 24 hits maximum. Maxes out at ~7.6.
• Broggy Bonker – An “Excellent” scores 1.20+2.00+1.20+(0.33*15), for a grand total of a whopping 9.20.  A “Great” gets a mere 1.20+1.20, and “OK”/”Good” a pathetic 1.20.

Also, this isn’t really useful information, but in the final battle (no spoilers), Bowser’s punch at the end has an AC of 2.50/3.50 for the first three hits, and 6.00 for the last.

As for enemy Attack Constants, most attacks have 1.5-2.5, with 2.0 being the value for a great majority; some powerful single-hit attacks can get up to 3 or 4, and multi-hits can get down to 1.0 or so.

With all that out there, here’s a link to an spreadsheet containing all of Bowser’s Inside Story’s enemy stats:
Bowser’s Inside Story Stats

(Unlike the previous games, I don’t think the Japanese version’s stats are any different.)

This wraps up damage calculation in Bowser’s Inside Story, but be sure to stay tuned for an overview of the equipment of the game in the near future, putting to rest some perpetuated rumors, clearing up some stuff the game didn’t bother to tell you or just plain got WRONG in the descriptions.