Almost every RPG hides its actual damage formula from the player, showing you a stat sheet and a DPS number without explaining how one produces the other. That opacity is why so much build advice online is superstition — "this stat feels good" — rather than reasoning from how the numbers actually combine. You don't need the exact formula from any specific game to build better intuition; you need to understand the handful of shapes damage math tends to take.
Additive vs. multiplicative scaling is the core distinction
Some stats add flat amounts to your damage (a +10 damage bonus, applied once), while others multiply your existing damage by a percentage (a +20% damage bonus, applied to whatever your damage already is). Additive bonuses are strongest early, when your base damage is low and a flat bonus represents a large relative increase. Multiplicative bonuses get stronger as your base damage grows, because a percentage of a bigger number is a bigger number. This is why "which stat is better" often has a different answer at level 10 than at level 60 in the same game.
Diminishing returns exist almost everywhere, even when hidden
Most RPGs quietly cap or soft-cap stats like critical chance, damage reduction, or accuracy, even without telling you explicitly. A common pattern: the first chunks of investment into a stat are highly efficient, and each additional point buys less than the last, sometimes dramatically less past a threshold. Recognizing this pattern — rather than assuming a stat scales linearly forever — is why min-maxers obsess over specific "breakpoints" rather than just stacking one stat indefinitely.
Multiplier stacking order can change everything
When a build has several multiplicative bonuses, whether they multiply against your base damage independently versus multiply against each other sequentially produces very different final numbers — and most games don't document which method they use. This is the actual reason two builds with seemingly similar total bonus percentages can perform very differently in practice; the order and independence of multiplier application matters as much as the raw numbers.
Resource efficiency is a hidden multiplier on DPS
A skill's raw damage number ignores how often you can actually use it. A high-damage ability gated behind a long cooldown or expensive resource cost has an effective damage-per-second far lower than its tooltip suggests, once you account for the downtime between casts. This is why "rotation" or "resource management" builds often outperform single-big-hit builds in sustained content, even when the big-hit ability's tooltip number looks more impressive.
How to actually use this without a game's exact formula
You don't need a datamined formula to build better intuition — you need to test in-game. Compare your damage output (against a training dummy or consistent enemy, if the game has one) before and after a single stat or gear change, changing only one variable at a time. This crude, empirical approach reveals a stat's real marginal value far more reliably than assuming a wiki's generic advice applies to your specific build and gear state.
The takeaway
Damage math in RPGs almost always follows a small set of recognizable patterns — additive versus multiplicative scaling, diminishing returns, multiplier stacking order, and resource-adjusted DPS. You don't need a game's exact hidden formula to build good intuition; you need to recognize which pattern you're looking at and test empirically rather than trusting a stat's tooltip in isolation.
