Magic Defense

Magic Defense (abbreviated MDEF, and shown in the client as Magic Def.) is the stat that reduces magic damage. It is the counterpart to physical defense and covers the attacks that physical defense does not: a monster's spells against you, and your spells against a monster.

It carries more weight than its physical twin for one reason. A physical attack can be dodged before defense ever matters, but a magic attack cannot. Avoidability does not apply to magic, so against a monster's spells your magic defense is the only thing standing between the attack and your HP.

Your magic defense

When a monster's magic attack connects, and it always connects, your magic defense reduces the damage it deals. Magic defense comes from armor, from scrolled bonuses, and from buffs such as Magic Armor.

The exact formula is not documented for Classic World. What is confirmed is that a monster's magic attack is reduced by your magic defense rather than by the physical formula, and that it is never dodged. The physical relationship of roughly 5 points to 1 damage does not automatically carry over, and this article does not assume it does.

Magicians have a second layer here that no other class gets. Magic Guard moves a share of incoming damage onto MP instead of HP, which works regardless of the damage type and is a different mechanism from defense.

A monster's magic defense

A monster's magic defense reduces the damage your spells deal to it, in the same divisor-shaped way its physical defense reduces your swings. As on the physical side, the exact coefficients are unconfirmed.

This is separate from the elemental multiplier and applies on top of it. A monster can be weak to fire and still be a poor target for a fire spell if its magic defense is high, and the two effects are worth reading independently. See Elements for that half.

How much monsters actually have

Median magic defense by level band, across every released monster.

Like physical defense, it stays flat rather than scaling with level, and the median actually peaks in the twenties before settling at 15. Twenty-five of the 107 released monsters have none at all. Magic defense is therefore rarely the reason a spell hits for less than expected; the level gap and the monster's element usually are.

Forty monsters carry more magic defense than physical defense, thirty carry more physical than magic, and the remaining thirty-seven carry the same in both.

The exception

The four Fairy variants are to magic what Iron Hog is to physical. Each carries 500 magic defense at level 29, twenty times the median for its band, and no physical defense whatsoever. Their own attack is purely physical, 127 Weapon ATK and no Magic ATK, so a fairy resists exactly the damage type it cannot deal.

	Monster	Level	Magic defense	Physical defense
	Fairy 1	29	500	0
	Fairy 2	29	500	0
	Fairy 3	29	500	0
	Fairy 4	29	500	0
	Iron Hog	28	100	500
	Jr. Boogie 1	35	50	50
	Malady	55	50	15
	Snail	1	0	0

A fairy and an iron hog sit one level apart and invert each other exactly. A warrior walks through the fairies and grinds against the hog; a magician has the opposite experience. Nothing else in the released set is built this deliberately around a single damage type.

Confidence

That magic attacks bypass avoidability, and that magic defense rather than physical defense reduces them, is confirmed and is stated on Avoidability. Neither the incoming nor the outgoing magic-defense formula is confirmed for Classic World, and neither is stated here. The monster values are the figures published on each monster article and shown in its infobox.

See also

• Physical Defense: the same stat for physical hits
• Magic Attack: what magic defense is subtracted from
• Elements: the multiplier that applies alongside it
• Damage: where defense sits in the pipeline
• Magic Armor and Magic Guard: the magician's defensive skills