BBCF/Damage

Health

Health bars are more "dense" the lower the remaining health

Health vary by character, see each character's page for their values or see the System Data for a table to compare across all characters.

The health bar in BBCF is slightly misleading; it's denser near the end to give the effect that a player is barely surviving a "fatal" blow, and thus more dramatic. A good rule of thumb is to look at the section of the health bar gets thicker; that's where the health bar gets denser.

Damage Scaling

As more attacks are added to a combo, each attack progressively does less damage due to damage scaling (also known as damage proration).

To determine how much damage the second hit onwards (the first hit always deals 100% damage with Guard Break as an exception) in a combo will deal, there is a formula:

Damage = (Base Damage of the attack) × (Character Combo Rate) × (P1 of the first hit) × (P2 of all the preceding hits in a combo) × (Bonus proration)

Keep in mind that the first hit of a combo still applies its P2 to the second hit onwards. P2 also stacks multiplicatively. For example, for the third hit of a combo, P2 = (P2 of first hit × P2 of second hit).

Proration Type	Description	Applies To
P1	Applied only by the first attack of a combo. For multi-hit attacks, the second hit onwards will have P1 scaling applied.	Next hit onwards
P2	Applied by every attack of a combo. Some multi-hit attacks will apply P2 only once, regardless of how many hits connect, while some apply P2 for each hit. These will be noted in the frame data with multiple P2 values.	Next hit onwards
Bonus	An extra proration value, separate from P1 and P2, generally greater than 100%. Only some moves apply bonus proration. Only one bonus proration value can be applied at a time in a combo; using multiple moves or the same move multiple times with bonus proration in a combo does not cause it to stack.	Next attack onwards
Combo Rate	Applied 2nd hit onward. Everyone has 60% combo rate.	2nd hit onwards

Examples

For a simple first case, let's take an example of Hakumen's combo: 5C > ODc > j.214C(Tsubaki) > 5C. The table below lists the damage and proration of each move.

Move	Damage	P1	P2
5C	1100	100	92
j.214C	2500	90	92

So we would proceed to calculate the damage as follows:

Move	Raw damage	P1 of the first move	P2 of the current move	Accumulated P2	Combo Rate	Final damage	Total Damage
5C	1100	100	92	Not applied	Not applied	1100	1100
j.214C	2500	100	92	92	60	2500×1×0.92×0.60 = 1380	2480
5C	1100	100	92	92×92	60	1100×1×0.92×0.92×0.60 = 558 (rounded down)	3038

The following example explains how P2 (once) works. Let's take an example of Rachel's combo: 5B > 3C(3). The table below lists the damage and proration of each move.

Move	Damage	P1	P2
5B	600	100	85
3C	400×3	100	79(once)

So we would proceed to calculate the damage as follows:

Move	Raw damage	P1 of the first move	P2 of the current move	Accumulated P2	Combo Rate	Final damage	Total Damage
5B	600	100	85	Not applied	Not applied	600	600
3C(1)	400	100	79(once)	85	60	400×1×0.85×0.6 = 204	804
3C(2)	400	100	79(once)	85×79 (once) = 61	60	400×1×0.85×0.79×0.6 "=" 160 (rounded down)¹	964
3C(3)	400	100	79(once)	85×79 (once) = 61	60	400×1×0.85×0.79×0.6 "=" 160 (rounded down)¹	1124

Finally, we provide an example of bonus proration, for example, Hazama's 6A > 236236B.

Move	Damage	P1	P2	Note
6A	700	80	89	110% bonus proration
236236B	1950	50	94

So we would proceed to calculate the damage as follows:

Move	Raw damage	P1 of the first move	P2 of the current move	Accumulated P2	Combo Rate	Final damage	Total Damage	Note
6A	700	80	89	Not applied	Not applied	700	700	Bonus 110%
236236B	1950	80	94	89	60	1950×0.6×0.8×0.89×1.1 = 916 (rounded down)	1616

¹The game does not multiply all the value together at once (the final number should be 161 if calculated at once); rather, they will rounded down the numbers at some point and continuing multiplying the remaining. How that works is still unknown.

Exceptions

Certain other mechanics can affect how much damage an attack or combo deals.

Minimum Damage

Distortion Drives will do a percentage of their base damage (generally 20%) at minimum regardless of damage scaling. This means that using supers at the end of combos is a good way to tack on some significant extra damage.

Standard throws have a minimum damage of 100%. This is also true for almost any throw that can be escaped. Comboable throws (which do not allow the opponent to break them) will scale as normal.

Minimum damage is calculated after all normal combo scaling effects written above, but before bonus damage.

Guard Break

If the combo "starts" from a Guard Break (meaning you start the combo after the opponent's guard is crushed), the combo starts with 80% proration. It's easiest to think of the Guard Break as the first hit of a combo with 0 damage, P1 80%, and P2 100%. Combo into an attack with high P2 if possible!

Same Move Proration

In addition to normal damage scaling, certain moves, special attacks and supers have a quality called Same Move Proration: using the same attack twice or more in the same combo will reduce the base damage of it by 70%. Other attacks afterwards are not affected by this penalty and will scale as usual.

It is important to note that Minimum Damage is also affected by SMP; this means that using the same Distortion Drive twice in a combo is a bad idea!

SMP only affects damage and not Hitstun Decay. Some combos will intentionally trigger SMP to sacrifice damage in exchange of a better position or gain other resources. Or sometimes a combo route can be damage optimal even with SMP due to there being no alternatives. For example Izayoi often triggers SMP to gain more stocks in her combos.

Bonus Damage

The damage counter will turn red when you're doing extra damage

Additional bonus damage can be added in a number of ways.

Counter Hit

Counter Hitting the opponent increases the damage of that one attack by 10%. Normal throws and purple command throws do not benefit from this bonus when they hit as a Throw Counter (which instead just makes the throw untechable). Comboable throws, however, do receive this bonus damage, such as Naoto's Phantom Pain.

Multi-hit attacks will apply the bonus damage to all hits of that attack.

Active Flow: Active Flow increases damage of attacks by 10%.

Danger State: Dange State increases damage taken by 20%.

Damage bonuses can stack, but do so additively rather than multiplicatively. For example, hitting an opponent who is in Danger State while you are in Active Flow will cause your attacks to deal 130% of their normal damage, not 132%.

Attacks that have minimum damage have their minimum damage applied before bonus damage is added. For example, an attack that normally deals 500 minimum damage will deal a minimum of 550 damage during Active Flow.

Other Damage

Chip Damage

Special and Super attacks in BlazBlue (and most other fighting games) do small amounts of damage even if they are blocked. Most Special and Super attacks do 5% of their base damage as chip damage. This chip damage can be prevented by using Barrier. Additionally, certain attacks have different chip damage percentages like Amane's drills (see his Frame Data for details). Ragna's drive (Soul Eater) does chip damage which is ALSO absorbed by Ragna and converted into health. Soul Eater can be prevented with Barrier Block.

Poison and Life Drain

Left: Poison from Bang's Nail
Right: Life Drain from Rachel's bats

Poison and other Life Drain effects steadily decrease the character's life while active, but can never kill the character by themselves; the most they can do is decrease their life to 1 health. This effect is not considered attack/combo damage, so it is unaffected by damage scaling and not tracked by the combo counter.

Combo System

Hitstun Decay

As a combo goes on, the amount of hitstun each attack deals is reduced as it reaches certain time thresholds. Hitstun/Untechable decay is determined by the amount of time that has passed in the combo as well as what starter is used.

Hitstun/Untechable Decay vs. Time
Combo Duration	120F~	300F~	480F~	660F~
Decay	-2F	-5F	-10F	Reduced to 1F

Starter Rating

The above table alone does not tell the whole story: each attack has a rating that determines how much "time" is instantly consumed when used as the first hit of a combo. The rating for each attack is listed in each character's Frame Data.

Starter's Effect on Combo Duration
Starter	Long	Normal	Short	Very Short
Time Consumed	0F	60F	120F	240F

Increasing Hitstun

Crouching Opponent

Crouching characters suffer additional 2 frames of hitstun, allowing observant players to go for crouching specific combos. This extra hitstun only applies while the opponent is still crouching. Virtually all normal moves performed from a crouch are also considered crouching, but very little else is.

Example: Jin can combo > on crouching characters but not on standing characters, as 5C deals 17 frames of hitstun for standing opponents while 6C has 19 frames of startup.

Some moves force standing characters to crouch including many grounded overheads such as Naoto's , this can enable combos just like hitting a crouching opponent in neutral.

Fatal Counter

Fatal Counters adds 3 frames of hitstun/untechable time to all subsequent attacks in that combo. This allows for combos that would otherwise not work.

Example: Jin can combo > only during a Fatal combo, as 5B deals 14 frames of hitstun while the startup of 2C is 17.

Every character has at least one move that causes a Fatal Counter instead of a normal Counter Hit. A very small number of moves can force Fatal Counter even on a normal hit (Including during combos!).

Fatal Counter does not stack with itself, so doing two Fatals in one combo still only adds 3 frames instead of 6, but it can stack with crouching hitstun for a total of +5 frames.

Fixed Hitstun

Some attacks inflict fixed hitstun regardless of the combo length. Usually Distortion Drives, Exceed Accels, Astral Heats and throws have this property, but there are other attacks, specific to each character. Usually this property exists to simply stops certain moves behaving strangely (such as characters escaping mid-throw) but it does also mean using these moves at the end of combos is viable where other moves would fail. These moves still benefit from increases due to crouching and fatal counter effects, if applicable.

Invalid Combos and Resets

a valid vs. an invalid combo. The small number at the bottom right shows which hit was invalid.

Because characters can delay their recovery, this leads to the possibility of combos that work only if the opponent chose to not recovery. This means that some combos are not "true" combos; the game's HUD differentiates between the two classes of combos by showing the hit counter as red for a valid combo and blue for an invalid combo. The invalid combo HUD also show which hit was invalid.

Invalid combos still behave the same as normal combos for the purposes of damage scaling, hitstun reduction, etc.

Sometimes player on defense will intentionally delay air recovery (or wait until landing to Emergency Tech) to avoid a mixup or a reset. For example, players often avoid air recovery while Tager's Atomic Collider is active because air recovering will let Tager hit the opponent with an unblockable air throw and start a new combo! Delaying air recovery is a low risk tactic since a few extra hits at the end of an already long, heavily scaled combo are unlikely to actually add much more damage. The same is true for Crumple Recovery.

A number of characters have methods of forcibly restanding the opponent in order to start a new, freshly scaled combo. Jin and Nine's freezing attacks and Tager's Gadget Finger are examples of attacks that can force this type of reset.

A "purple" throw will reflect an invalid combo, even if that throw was a throw counter and unable to be rejected.