Pacification: Ineffective on NPCs?

[Clavaat]

I believe it works like this:
Pacification = unable to use Technique abilities (physical attacks)
Silence = unable to use spells (magic attacks)

This would be close, but the issue is some physical attacks seem to ignore Pacification for some reason. Like I said, it seems to be related to GCD somehow, but the description is pretty vague haha.