Stats: HP, Sun & the Overshield

The stat line

• HP — how much damage you can absorb before fainting. Grows with your level and the plant's longevity.
• ATK — the multiplier behind every attack; a move's damage is a fraction of your effective ATK.
• DEF — flat damage reduction, graded 0 / 2 / 4 / 6 by how woody or armored the family is. It subtracts after the ATK math, and every hit still deals at least 1.
• SPD — your tempo. It drives initiative — who acts first each turn.
• Sun — your energy bar, which pays for almost everything you do.

Damage lands as: round(move fraction × effective ATK × type matchup) − target DEF, floored at 1, then drained through the overshield before it touches base HP.

maxHp vs baseMaxHp: your baseMaxHp is your buff-free ceiling; maxHp is what you're currently sitting at after buffs. Regen and persistence read the base value, so temporary swings never inflate your real total. Genetics (IVs and EVs) only shift magnitude, never the formula.

The Sun economy

Sun caps at 120. In battle it only ever goes down — there is no in-battle regen. Out of battle it trickles back at +1 Sun per 15 minutes (~4/hr; a full bar takes about 30 hours). Run dry mid-fight and that plant is attack-locked — it can still fire its free ability (and retreat if it can afford the Sun), but no more attacks until you swap in a fresh plant.

Action	Sun cost
Starter attack (strike)	2
Advanced attack	6
Heal	3 per 10 HP
Retreat (tree/conifer)	30
Retreat (shrub)	20
Retreat (everything else)	10
Ability	free (once per battle)

The overshield

The overshield ("Native Strength") is a segmented fourth ring: up to 4 green HP segments (each ~1/6 of the active's maxHP, sized by the contributor's rarity) plus up to 2 gold Sun segments (each ~1/3 of the Sun cap).

Direct attacks chew through overshield segments before base HP. But it is not a full wall — poison, thorns recoil, seedRain, and haustorial-drain all bypass it and hit base HP directly. You can be poisoned to death through a full shield. Depletion carries across swaps, and there's no free refill.

Native vs Invasive

	Native	Invasive
Role	Buffer	Attacker
HP	×1.15 self-cushion	—
ATK	—	×1.75 (×1.4 if toxic)
Overshield HP	Projects segments from the bench	Contributes none
Downside	None	"Faustian" self-damage to its own lowest-HP bench ally each attack

Gold Sun overshield segments come from the network passive and aren't native-gated — any nativity can supply them. See Nativity for the full picture.

Type matchup

Damage is also scaled by the succession wheel: your category's group is strong (×1.5) or weak (×0.667) against others. That's separate from status immunities — warded, staked, Sulfur spore-immunity, and blight's heal-denial. See Statuses, Abilities, and Combat Overview for how it all fits together.