Disgaea: Hour of Darkness/Specialist

Item Specialists are helpful spirits found within items. Every Specialist adds to the item's power. Specialists are usually found in their unsubdued form and displayed as silver dots and in black text on the item screen. When found in the Item World, they can be subdued by defeating them, and are displayed as blue or gold dots and in blue text. Once subdued, the Specialist doubles in power and may be transferred to another item.

Specialists can be combined, which will merge two Specialists of the same type into one Specialist with the combined power of the original two. If either of the original Specialists were not subdued, the combined Specialists will not be subdued, and the combined power of the Specialists will be calculated as if neither had been subdued.

When a Specialist appears on a level in the Item World, 'CHECK' will appear above their head when the stage loads, and the name of the Specialist will appear in blue text on the 'Characters' list after the enemy characters.

Enemies will seek out and attack Specialists in the Item World, so it is ideal to seek them out and defeat them quickly. If enemy units kill the Specialist or the stage is exited without the Specialist being killed, it will not be subdued, though it may return on a later stage within the same item. Since Specialists may return, it is not necessary to subdue them on first appearance.

If all enemies are defeated, the level is defeated even if the Specialist remains alive, so leaving the Specialist until last to defeat is not a viable strategy: at least one normal enemy should be left alive until the Specialist can be subdued. Killing a specialist with a Scout class's Dark Cannon does not subdue them.

Types
All Specialists can be increased to power 19998. The game will only allow 9999 as the power for a newly-combined Specialist; to get 19998, you have to combine a subdued and unsubdued Specialist to produce a 9999 unsubdued Specialist, then subdue it through the item world. Many Specialists have a maximum effective power; neither a single extra-powerful Specialist nor multiple Specialists of lesser power can give a single character any benefit beyond that level.

Stat Bonuses
Each of the following Specialists increases one of the eight statistics of an item by the Specialist's power level:

There is no effective limit to the benefit of these Specialists.

Resistance
Each of these Specialists increases the item user's resistance to certain elements in status effect attacks:

The maximum resistance any character can have to Wind, Ice, or Fire is 90%, which means that the maximum effective power is 140% for Aeronaut, Cryophile, and Firefighter (due to characters with negative base resistance).

Increases
Each of these Specialists increases the user's gains from kills. Each unit of power is equivalent to a single percent increase in gain (e.g., a character with a power 1 Statistician will gain 101% of normal experience; a character with a power 300 Statistician will gain 400% of normal experience):

Effects
Each of these Specialists adds a chance of a status effect to attacks made by the item's user: