Sengoku Rance What Does Intelligence Do? What Level, ATK and NP Do

Attack power is class base attack plus ATK times 10. Magic damage is base INT plus INT times 10. Magic defense is INT times 7. All three come off the same panel, none are explained in the 2026 Steam release, and your class choice decides what they are worth. Level never touches your map battles. National Power is not a commander stat at all - it is your country's budget ceiling, and it is what blocks you from recruiting anyone new.

The formulas that decide every troop battle

Official source: AliceSoft Wiki - Parameters & Formulae, the community-maintained page built on the 2006 Japanese original v1.04 and the 2019 MangaGamer English release

Attack minus Defense has a floor of 10, and magic attack minus magic defense has the same floor. A Musketeer sits on 130 base attack and an Onmyouji on 35, so a stat-6 Musketeer and a stat-6 Onmyouji are not comparable units. Read this alongside the troop type breakdown, not instead of it.

What each stat on the panel actually changes

Speed sets the delay before a unit acts - class delay, the speed stat (0 = +8 delay, each point above removes 2), speed buffs (a flat -4) and the last skill's recovery time. The wiki admits no exact formula is known, so precise speed maths quoted elsewhere is guesswork. Cost is the fifth stat and the only one where lower is better. Search, Negotiation and Construction gate map commands and have no combat effect.

The class constants feeding those formulas - Knight shares Samurai's row, and every unlisted class sits at 38 attack, 15 defense, 5 INT:

INT has four separate jobs, which is why it is the stat people misread

The tactician line is the strongest case for maxing INT: an INT-maxed tactician both hands out more buffs and makes each one hit harder, which also makes enemy tacticians priority targets when you choose who to capture rather than kill. In commander battles a tactician gives exactly 4 buffs whose strength equals its own level as a percentage - INT does nothing there.

Skill names follow the community wiki's English naming, which tracks the MangaGamer-era translation. The Steam build renamed a batch of them - check the version differences page before hunting for "Neo Ally Guard".

Level runs on a completely separate track

Level does nothing in troop battles: your map army fights on troop count and stats alone. The exception is skills where the commander personally swings, such as Commander Charge.

An ATK buff on the attacker multiplies physical damage by 1.3 and a DEF buff on the defender by 0.7; magic uses INT buffs the same way.

Four sources feed levels: the affection level-up reward (+2), a Happiness Pokkuru item (+1), the first clear of a dungeon's final floor (+1 for every commander you own at that moment), and story events - one recurring character has a repeatable +5. Across the nineteen dungeons and the two Oni hunts in Shikokalamity that is 18 level-ups on routes where he joins and 16 where he does not; unlock conditions are on the dungeon reference.

Cost is the one stat where a lower number is the better number

Cost is a base value plus a troop-size penalty, ranging 0 to 9:

National Power is the ceiling you spend against: the summed development of every province you hold, and more NP means more gold income each turn. The province Development command adds 1 NP, capped at 30 per province. Read the wiki's display formula literally - current province NP equals the Construction points needed for the next point, divided by 3 - and a province at NP 5 needs 18 Construction points for its next point while one at NP 20 needs 63. Development is cheap early and brutal late.

Overrun NP and the punishment is economic, not fatal: if total Cost is above NP when your turn starts, income is halved until you get Cost back under NP before ending the turn. The recruitment gate is hard, though - the game refuses to hire a commander whose Cost would push your total over NP, which is why a gold-rich save with a full prison still shows a greyed-out Recruit button. Your roster holds at most 30 commanders, and Second Game Bonuses characters beyond that quietly kill the first removable person to make room. The recruitment guide covers that screen.

How to raise a stat without burning a turn

That 6 is the number that matters. Ordinary textbooks stop at 6; everything past it comes from power-up events, dungeon-exclusive books, or permanent +2 items such as Scare Hare Mask for DEF and Warfare for Dummies for INT.

Books arrive often enough to plan around. After any turn whose number ends in 6, the next battle you win while attacking an enemy-held province hands you one of the four stat books at equal odds, and Enforcing Taxation on a freshly conquered province rotates Attack, then Defense, then Intelligence. In Ise the shop's first purchase costs 5 Oni Bones and each purchase adds 2; after six purchases or skips the Attack, Defense and Intelligence versions of Textbook 2 go on unlimited sale. The rest of the inventory is decoded on the items page.

Why more ATK eventually stops helping

Damage is capped by how many soldiers a unit has, not by how good its commander is: the number inside the damage brackets caps at the unit's actual troop size, so a 1000-troop unit on a normal attack with no Battlefield Adjustment kills at most 1000 whatever its stats. Combined with the adjusted troop size tiers above, that is why heavy hitters cap out around ATK 6 or 7, and why how the battle rating decides fights usually matters more than one more point of ATK.

FAQ

Does levelling my commander make my army stronger? No. Level affects dungeons and one-on-one duels only. Map battles are decided by troop count, class constants, stats, skills, Battlefield Adjustment and the battle rating.

Why can I not recruit anyone even though I have plenty of gold? Recruitment is gated on National Power, not gold. If a commander's Cost would push your total above NP the game will not hire them, and some reinforcement commanders are blocked before that. Raise province development, or drop an idle unit below 500 troops.

Is it worth taking every stat to the maximum? Usually not. Max the stat the class scales - INT for Onmyouji, Mage and Tactician, ATK for Ninja, Samurai and damage-oriented Ashigaru. Points above 6 come from one-shot events and rare items, so spreading them thin wastes them.

Related Guides

• Sengoku Rance Unit Types: All 15 Troop Types Explained - what each class constant here is for.
• Sengoku Rance Combat Guide: Battle Rating and Formations - how these numbers turn into a win or a loss.
• Sengoku Rance Items: What Each Colour Means and What to Buy - where the stat books sit.
• Sengoku Rance Dungeons: All 19 and How to Unlock Them - the biggest source of levels.
• Sengoku Rance Recruitment Guide: How to Recruit Commanders - what to do when the NP ceiling blocks the button.