Elemental physical attacks such as Backstab 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 = (User's Attack - Enemy's Defense) / 2

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

final damage = (base damage + bonus damage) * (1 + (User's Jupiter Power - Enemy's Jupiter Resistance) / 400)

To word this in prose, Backstab takes the base damage of the user's normal physical attack, adds a set amount of bonus damage to that, and then this result is modified by how much higher or lower the user's Jupiter Power is than the target's Jupiter Resistance. The difference between the user's Jupiter Power and the target's Jupiter 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 the Psynergies' damage is multiplied by.

For example, if an Adept with an Attack rating of 300 and a Jupiter Power of 150 casts Backstab on a monster with a defense of 100 and a Jupiter Resistance of 50:

• damage = ((Attack - Defense) / 2 + bonus damage) * (1 + (Power - Resistance) / 400)
• damage = ((300 - 100) / 2 + 35) * (1 + (150 - 50) / 400)
• damage = (200 / 2 + 35) * (1 + 100 / 400)
• damage = (100 + 35) * (1 + 0.25)
• damage = 135 * 1.25
• damage = 168

Therefore, a Backstab cast under these circumstances would deal approximately 168 points of damage. However, damage calculations are ignored should Backstab automatically down the target.