What kind of Magic stat makes attaching magic runes worth it

[Rachael]

I'm not sure how else to put this. This is actually a question concerning all the games, if there's a formula that applies to all of them.

I was thinking that maybe if their Magic stat is equal to at least half their Attack stat, but now I'm thinking that's too low.

And how does it work? Should I go by "If their Magic stat is over ___," or should I go by "If their Magic stat is __% of their Attack stat"?

[eldrasidar]

The magic stat by itself doesn't really contribute a whole lot to the actual damage you do. The primary value of a higher magic stat is that you can cast more spells, and higher level spells. As long as you have a high enough magic stat to cast a certain level of spell, then you have a high enough magic stat to do a reasonable amount of damage with that spell. What can significantly increase or decrease that damage is that character's particular rune affinity, a list of which for suikoden 4 can be found in the suikoden 4 gameplay guides here: http://suikosource.com/games/gs4/guides ... nities.php

A character with either a 3 or higher in a particular rune affinity is going to be above average effective with that rune. Suikoden 1 and 2 also have hidden rune affinities for characters, while you can see them in suikoden 5 for each character. In Suikoden 3, rune affinities were a part of the skill system. In some of the games, there are pieces of equipment which can improve a character's affinity with a particular rune. As far as the magic stat goes, what identifies a 'mage' character is someone who has a magic stat increase rate similar to a fighter's power/strength stat increase rate. If you look at suikoden 4's list of stat growths, this would characters with a category 8 or higher stat growth rate in magic, for example, Jeane. However, if you equipped Jeane with a Fire Rune, she would be far less effective than Katarina, who although has a worse magic stat, has a much better affinity with Fire Magic.