Monsters are invincible/Algorithm question???

Hmm. I wouldn't actually need 24-bit Monster HP if I could cut all characters' damage dealt in half. I can just adjust the monsters' HP accordingly.

I found where the algorithms were for character's attack and magic damage are. I've been meddling with the magic attack algorithm, trying to get it to halve the final output.


So from something like: (Spell Power x 4) + (Mag.Pwr x Spell Power x Level) / 32
To something like: (Spell Power x 2) + (Mag.Pwr x Spell Power x Level) / 64

Which seemed to give the desired results when I ran them through a spreadsheet using different stats, etc. I took the following:
00022D70 7B AD A6 11 C2 20 90 02 0A 0A 8D B0 11 E2 20 AD
00022D80 AE 11 EB AD A6 11 20 81 47 20 B7 47 A9 04 C2 20

And tried changing to either of these:
00022D70 7B AD A6 11 C2 20 90 02 0A 00 8D B0 11 E2 20 AD
00022D80 AE 11 EB AD A6 11 20 81 47 20 B7 47 A9 05 C2 20
Set the second ASL command to 00 and changed the LDA from 05 to 04 under the theory that it would change the divide function from 32 to 64. As of typing this I realize that by setting that byte to 00, all I did was change it from an ASL command to a software break? Or is that just considered empty space?

Or...
00022D70 7B AD A6 11 C2 20 90 02 0A 8D B0 11 E2 20 AD AE
00022D80 11 EB AD A6 11 20 81 47 20 B7 47 A9 05 00 C2 20
Tried removing the above mentioned ASL command and shifting the bytes over 1. Then foolishly tried, what I assume was an LDA command in 8-bit mode trying to use 3 bytes.

Both of these things just caused my game to crash as soon as I attempted to use fire beam on a fresh game. I'm not sure what I'm missing here as I've only been learning this stuff for a couple days now. I'm not sure what needs to be done here to get extra bytes needed to alter the algorithm in the way I want. I would appreciate ANY insight on this!

PS: I apoligise in advanced as well for not knowing how to add code blocks to my posts...