Enemy Abilities (GBA)

Monster Skills are various abilities available only to enemies in the Golden Sun GBA games, which have a variety of effects. Differentiating these from Psynergy abilities is that none of these subtract from their users' PP meters and the enemy can still use them even if their Psynergy has been sealed. Contrast with List of Psynergy used by enemy Adepts. It is possible to tell the difference between Psynergy and Monster Skills in-game because the battle text says that enemies "use" or "unleash" Monster Skills and "cast" Psynergy. All of the monster-only abilities in the two GBA games are listed below, categorized by effect.

All offensive effects in the game that damage multiple targets at a time use any one of three ratios that determine how much of the force the targeted enemy takes will enemies standing to the side of the targeted enemy take if the range of the area-of-effect attack include them in in its range. The various area of effect abilities in the tables below will be marked with these three symbols:


 * [N]: The "Normal" ratio, in which an enemy standing one space away from the target takes 80% of the area-of-effect attack's force, an enemy standing two spaces away takes 60%, three spaces away 40%, four spaces away 20%, and finally five spaces away 10%.


 * [D]: The "Diminishing" ratio, in which an enemy standing one space away from the target takes 50% of the area-of-effect attack's force, an enemy standing two spaces away takes 30%, and any enemies standing three, four, and finally five spaces away take 10% of the damage as the target.


 * [S]: The "Summon" ratio, in which an enemy standing one space away from the target takes 70% of the area-of-effect attack's force, an enemy standing two spaces away takes 40%, three spaces away 30%, four spaces away 20%, and finally five spaces away 10%.

Elemental Physical attack
These monster skills always target single Adepts at a time, unless otherwise noted in the Damage Modifier section.

Elemental Physical attack that may inflict a status condition
These monster skills always target single Adepts at a time.

Elemental Physical attack that may lower a statistic
These monster skills always target single Adepts at a time.

Elemental Physical attack that may instead reduce the target's HP down to 1
These monster skills always target single Adepts at a time, and will deal damage calculated through the listed statistics if they fail to instantly reduce the target's HP meter down to 1.

Elemental Physical attack that may deal instant death
These monster skills always target single Adepts at a time, and will deal damage calculated through the listed statistics if they fail to instantly kill the target.

Elemental Physical attack that may ignore half of the target's defense
These monster skills always target single Adepts at a time.

Elemental Physical attack that may deal double damage
These monster skills always target single Adepts at a time, and may deal double damage after the listed base calculations are complete.

Elemental Physical attack that may deal triple damage
This monster skill always targets a single Adept at a time, and may deal triple damage after the listed base calculations are complete.

Elemental Physical attack that removes the user
These monster skills always target single Adepts at a time.

Elemental offense that may restore HP to the user
These monster skills may heal the user for the amount of damage they deal.

PP Reduction
These skills deal damage to PP meters as though they were HP meters.

Self-duplication
These have a chance to introduce a new monster of the same type as the user into the battle. The battle text each skill generates gives thematic flavoring (e.g. Ooze and Slime Beast undergoing fission to duplicate themselves, Undead looking for and finding allies, etc.)

Monster summoning
These have a chance to introduce a new monster into the battle. What type of monster it is depends on the individual ability.

Summon sequences
These are similar to the summon sequences the party may use in that they use their own ratio for determining how much damage enemies next to the targeted enemy take (see top of article for details). Some of them deal additional damage based on the target's total HP (see the Summons page). All of these attacks use the ratio; see the top of the page for more information.

Counterattack mode
This skill is like the Mars Djinni Reflux in that the user sets itself in a counterattack mode for the turn, where it will automatically deal an attack to any opponent that uses any battle command against it.

Djinn manipulation
These abilities are quite different from each other but are linked by virtue of the fact that they are the only abilities enemies in the games may have that deal effects based on your Djinn.

Defense aura
This command is exactly like the Djinn Flash, Granite, and Shade in that it cuts all damage the affected would take from damage by the opposing party this turn, and this effect does so with increased priority. However, it only affects one target at a time; either the user itself or another unit on the user's side. Whether the user targets itself or another on its side with this effect is pre-programmed into the individual enemy's AI.

Defend
The Defend command available to the party is also available to various enemies, sometimes in variations distinctively named in the game code but whose names are not visible in norml gameplay. Regardless of the name of the ability in the code, the battle text will always just report "[enemy] is defending!"

Flee
The Flee command available to the party is present on a variety of enemies.

Trivia

 * There are two elemental physical monster skills named "Poison Sting", one of the Venus element and one of the Mercury element.
 * Rolling Flame and Mine Ball are the only monster skills that are dependent on the user's Attack rating and can hit multiple targets at a time. The Shuriken psynergy is similar in this regard.
 * The attack "Darksol Gasp" is a likely reference to both the evil wizard Darksol and his signature attack "Demon Breath" from the Shining in the Darkness and Shining Force game which Camelot helped develop.