Mechanic · combat · role-playing game

Limit Break

A gauge that fills as a character takes damage and, when full, unlocks a stronger action.

stubAlso: Limit, Limit gauge, Limit bar, desperation attackUpdated 2026-10-22
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A Limit gauge turns damage taken into a stronger action. In Final Fantasy VII each enemy hit on a party member adds a share of the damage over max HP, scaled by a per-character divisor, doubled under Fury and halved under Sadness1.

  • From damage takenFinal Fantasy VII (1997). 300 × damage over max HP, times 256 over a per-character divisor, from enemy hits only.1

See also

Games

GameYearHowNote
Final Fantasy VII1997From damage taken300 × damage over max HP, times 256 over a per-character divisor, from enemy hits only
Every claim about this mechanic, by game (1)
Final Fantasy VII 1997In the North American release, when an enemy's action takes HP from a party member, BattleApplyDamageAndChargeLimitGauge adds ⌊300 × damage / max HP⌋ × 256 over the character's HP divisor to the Limit gauge, with 512 in place of 256 under Fury and 128 under Sadness, and caps the gauge at 255; the damage counts in full, even past the HP the character had left. It adds nothing for healing, MP damage, a character whose limit level is 4 or more, or a turn flag the code leaves unnamed (turnFlags bit 3). The divisor is read from KERNEL.BIN per character and limit level (hpDivisor), so the code alone doesn't give its values.Code

References

  1. ^ abcIn the North American release, when an enemy's action takes HP from a party member, BattleApplyDamageAndChargeLimitGauge adds ⌊300 × damage / max HP⌋ × 256 over the character's HP divisor to the Limit gauge, with 512 in place of 256 under Fury and 128 under Sadness, and caps the gauge at 255; the damage counts in full, even past the HP the character had left. It adds nothing for healing, MP damage, a character whose limit level is 4 or more, or a turn flag the code leaves unnamed (turnFlags bit 3). The divisor is read from KERNEL.BIN per character and limit level (hpDivisor), so the code alone doesn't give its values.CodeXeeynamo/ff7-decomp
    How we know
    4252void BattleApplyDamageAndChargeLimitGauge(void) {
4253    BattleUnit* target = &g_BattleState.combatant[g_CurrentAction->targetId];
4254    s32 isHeal = g_CurrentAction->damageFlags & 1;
⋮
4261        return;
⋮
4265    if (g_CurrentAction->damageFlags & 4) {
4266        oldValue = target->curMP;
4267        target->curMP = SysAddSubWithMaxMinBound(oldValue, g_CurrentAction->tmpDamage, target->maxMP, isHeal);
4268        return;
⋮
4281    // only party members charge their limit gauge, and only from enemy attacks
4282    if (g_CurrentAction->targetId >= NUM_PARTY || g_CurrentAction->actorId < START_ENEMY || isHeal) {
4283        return;
⋮
4286    if (g_CurrentAction->partyWork->limitLevel >= 4 || g_BattleWork.turn[g_CurrentAction->targetId].turnFlags & 8) {
⋮
    src/battle/battle.c lines 4252–4311 at fc71ccc · upstream ↗
    388                    party->limitBreakHPDivisor = D_80082268[charId].hpDivisor[limitLevel];
    src/battle/batini.c line 388 at fc71ccc · upstream ↗
    786// Per-character record of KERNEL.BIN section 3 (battle and growth data), 0x38 bytes
787// each, nine of them from 0x80082268. The limit commands and HP divisors the
788// limit-break code reads are the third and last fields.
⋮
797    /* 0x28 */ s32 hpDivisor[4]; // by limit level
    include/game.h lines 786–797 at fc71ccc · upstream ↗

    Checked against the evidence by its author, an AI model, 2026-10-22.

    Checked by a second AI model, 2026-10-22.

    In the claim ledger

Sources

Code