defense is additive as well. -5 defense from FBO makes forums hit me for about 3-4 more damage per hit (it’s hard to tell exactly due to the random nature of their attacks). However, as I’ve gone over in a different thread, as that difference applies to the entire forum things get wacky.

Say in a given forum each thread takes you 5 hits to kill. With more offense, it takes you 4 hits to kill. That means with lower offense you take 4 hits per thread, with higher offense you take 3 hits per thread. So, your offense alone is effectively reducing the damage you take to 75% of normal.

In a forum that does low damage, defense might take things to 50% of normal. If they’re doing 8/hit and your defense subtracts 4, they’re now doing 50% normal damage. Defense is better than offense there. However, if a forum is doing 24 damage a hit, and your defense knocks off the same 4, you’re taking 83% of normal damage.

EDIT: another odd occurrence is that since offense is additive, it has a greater effect on re-re attacks than any others.