Here's the deal:
My computer that runs XP is currently being worked on, and I can't use my other machine running VISTA to tool around with this myself, so if there's anyone who will help me out that'd be great. I have a theory as to how you can modify the damage formula for RM2k/3.

As I understand it, the damage formula for these makers is something like: Attack/2 - Defense/4 or (1/2 * Attack) - (1/4 * Defense); same thing. Well I think this formula sucks. I like my hitters to be able to hit. With a formula like this, than with maximum attack (500 I think), a player character can only deal up to 250(+/- 20%) damage if the enemy has 0 defense. That's kind of lame and it's aesthetically unappealing to me. I also don't like this formula because it means that every other attack point counts and every forth defense point counts. Having a defense of say, 15 will be the same as having a defense of 12 and having a defense of 100 will be ridiculously similar to a defense of 80.

I would like to see a damage formula that looks more like this: Attack * 2 - Defense. I think that's how it works in Breath of Fire III. I also think that just makes it simpler to design games.

And here's how I think we can do this:

First
-Open up the database and go to the tab with the controls for elemental properties. Create 2 new elements and set them for 200% at the highest category. Label them Attack Modifier 1 and 2 or something.
-Go into the Items tab and find your weapons and check both boxes for in the elemental section for all your weapons.
-Now, go into the monsters tab. Look at the elements section and find your attack modifier elements and set them however they need to be set to make the monsters weak against them. Do this for all your monsters.
*Effectively, you have just altered a part of the built in damage formula. Now, when a player attacks an enemy the damage they should be doing is twice their attack stat.

Second
-In the monsters tab, quadruple the defense stats for all your monsters.
*Defense will be cut down to 1/4, which for the monster is now where you want it.
*NOTE, the idea is make the player's stats presentable, not the monsters'.

If anyone out there could verify that my thoughts so far are accurate, that would be nice. Thanks.

Now, here's the part where I really need some help:
We've fixed player attack and monster defense, now we need to fix player defense and monster attack. I would like to do essentially the same thing above but in reverse, but I don't know how. If the monsters' attack action has an elemental property, then I think we're in business. Do they? Can we somehow assign one without making some skill their basic attack?


Please get back to me on this so I can finish my thoughts. If someone could post or link a screen cap of the monster tab in the database, that'd be nice. Thanks.

The elemental correction is applied after the base damage calculation so even with a high multiplier, the gap between final damage for let's say 100 Attack/20 Defense and 90 Attack/10 Defense will be minimal, especially with the variance (somewhere between 15 and 30% for normal attacks).
Considering that the maximum damage output is 999, there are unfortunately limits to what you can achieve that way.

To answer your real question, no, monsters don't have any elemental properties to their normal attacks. And neither have players if they drop their weapons and fight unarmed. So your only option is to use skills for monsters' default attacks.

The problem being that skills aren't effected by the "Blind" status effect, so your enemies "normal" attacks will hit as well as they usually would even when the enemy has been "Blinded" (assuming you're using Blind as a status-effect).

Don't skills always deal what's in the base damage field + variances anyway? That means they wouldn't be effected by by their targets defense stat.

Depends. Skills deal the base damage field value, with the attack/mind values percentages defined (which you can set to 0). And it takes defense into consideration, unless you check the Ignore Defense option.

Okay, so with my computer back, here's what I've discovered in RM2K:
1. Go to the attributes tab in the database
2. Create an attribute called "Quadruple"
3. Specify the C value to 400.
4. No go into your Items tab and find all your weapons. Check Quadruple in the attributes section for all weapons.
5. Now, go into the Skills tab.
6. Create a skill that looks like this:

7. Now go into your monsters tab. Instead of giving your monsters "Normal Attack" for their behavior, give them the fancy "Attack (Quadruple)" skill instead.

Now, instead of damage = Atk/2, damage = 2xAtk. It's not perfect but it's pretty close. Also, the defense part of the formula effectively become def*1 instead of def/4. Mission accomplished!

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UPDATE: Spells like in RMVX.
In RMVX you can customize spells a little differently. You can do it the old fashioned way, or you can make spells that are purely influenced by your character's Magic stat. This is similar to how spells work in Lunar the Silver Star Story Complete I believe.
1. Open the Database and select the Attributes Tab.
2. Create 3 new attributes. Call them Mag*1, Mag*1.5, and Mag*2. Make sure to set them as Magic instead of Weapon.
3. Specify the C classes for each as:
Mag*1 is 400%.
Mag*1.5 is 600%.
Mag*2 is 800%.

How to make skills influenced by the Magic stat:
4. Set Base Damage to 0.
5. Hit Influence is 0.
6. Mind Influence is 10.
7. Variance is 4.
8. Now, in the attributes area, check whichever attribute for which ever strength you desire.

What this does basically, is it makes a spell damage equal to that characters' Magic stat x1, x1.5, or x2 +/-20%.

There you go. That's a working solution for skills with magic influence and no attack influence, and it's probly helpful to you if you want to use atk skills.
http://wetjunk.blogspot.com/2012/12/rm2k3-algorithm-fix.html