Char

Char (チリ Chili) is a Mars Djinni found in Golden Sun: The Lost Age.

Char is the fourth Mars Djinni in Golden Sun: The Lost Age. The separate Djinn list viewable with the Select button from the status screen lists Char and all other Mars Djinn introduced in The Lost Age before the seven Mars Djinn from the original Golden Sun, most likely because all the Djinn from the original game can be gotten all at once late in The Lost Age. However, the original Djinn are ordered before all of the Djinn introduced in The Lost Age in the Djinn inventory screen while they are allocated to characters. By this order, Char is the eleventh Mars Djinni in the GBA series, rather than the fourth.

Basic description

 * "Paralyze foes with a strong blow."

When Set, Char increases its Adept's base HP by 9, base Attack by 2, base Agility by 2, and base Luck by 1.

When Char is unleashed in battle, the user strikes the target with an elemental physical attack equal to a normal physical attack performed by the user, with 50 additional damage points. Being a Mars-based attack, Char's battle effect is also affected by the user's Mars Power and the target's Mars Resistance. There is then a chance that the target will be afflicted with the Stun status condition.

Visually, Char's unleash animation resembles the user summoning the glowing white image of a Mars Djinni that floats above the party, which projects a reddish grainy substance at the target in a stream, and when the target is hit it is surrounded by red electricity bolts.

Damage calculation
Elemental physical attacks such as Char use the damage dealt by the attacker's standard physical attack as the base damage to be later modified. The total amount of damage dealt by a normal physical attack is half the difference between the attacker's Attack statistic and the target's Defense statistic, as this equation shows:


 * ''base damage = (Attacker's Attack - Target's Defense) / 2

Char's attack then takes this base damage value and uses it in the following equation:


 * ''final damage = (base damage + 50) * (1 + (Attacker's Mars Power - Target's Mars Resistance) / 400)

To word this in prose, Char takes the base damage of the user's normal physical attack, adds 50 to it, and then this result is modified by how much higher or lower the user's Mars Power is than the target's Mars Resistance. The difference between the user's Mars Power and the target's Mars Resistance is divided by 400, then 1 is added to this, resulting in what can be called the "elemental damage multiplier". This number is what Char's damage is multiplied by.

For example, if an Adept with an Attack rating of 150 and a Mars Power of 130 unleashes Char on a monster with a defense of 40 and a Mars Resistance of 80:


 * damage = ((Attack - Defense) / 2 + 50) * (1 + (Power - Resistance) / 400)
 * damage = ((150 - 40) / 2 + 50) * (1 + (130 - 80) / 400)
 * damage = ( / 2 + 50) * (1 +  / 400)
 * damage = ( + 50) * (1 + )
 * damage = *
 * damage = 118

Therefore, if Char were to be unleashed under these circumstances it would deal 118 points of damage.

Location
Golden Sun: The Lost Age: Char is in the possession of a pair of residents living in the two-story residential house in Madra, visible in a fenced-in area on the second floor. To get it into your collection, though, you first have to have collected the Healing Fungus from the Gondowan Cliffs (this item is accessible by casting Frost on a puddle over there and using the resulting pillar as a hopping step). Then present the Healing Fungus to the old man, and a short cutscene will have them give it to you as a "pet" in exchange.

Analysis
General: The GBA games do not have any Mars Djinn that increase damage based on a multiplier, so Char is one of the only and "best" offensive Mars Djinn that the player has, having a relatively strong 50 set damage bonus and the chance to inflict the useful Stun status condition. In Dark Dawn, Chili and Pepper are also offensive Mars Djinn that can Stun, but Chili has a set damage bonus of 80 while Pepper has a damage multiplier of 1.5.

By game
Golden Sun: The Lost Age: Char, found right before entering the Great Eastern Sea for the first time, instantly obsoletes Cannon and makes for a respectably strong and practical attacking Mars Djinni to use in The Lost Age. Stun is always a strong secondary effect, which makes this the attacking Djinni of choice for much of the game. When Isaac's party joins Felix's party late in the game along with their returning Djinn from the first game, the Mars Djinni Scorch that returns become an identical copy of this Djinni in ability. Char and Scorch can be equally practical for the Stun chance backed up by satisfactory power ratings, and are perhaps as generally good as attacking Mars Djinn get. Though, the Mars Djinni with the highest added damage rating is Fury with 70 points (though its secondary effect is Haunt, oft-viewed to be far less beneficial).

Name Origin
To char something is to burn it until it is or is like charcoal. It could also mean to burn something slightly in order to change the color.

Chili refers to a notoriously spicy family of peppers.

Trivia

 * Before Chili was introduced as its own Mars Djinni in Dark Dawn (originally named Nitro, to differentiate), the manual to the North American version of The Lost Age used the original Japanese names for Char and some other Djinn instead; Chili for Char, Guts for Spark, Axel (actually Accel) for Kindle, and Turbo for Coal. It is unknown whether the Chili of Dark Dawn being a "superior version" of Char is more than coincidence.