Final Fantasy Hacktics

This thread is similar in concept to the Patch Proposals/Idea Thread; the reduction of new posts about job concepts and execution. However, it will also have some secondary purposes. This thread will also help to reduce "How do I make X job" questions in the Help forum.

Let's begin discussion with the ever popular Blue Mage.
As many of us know we can set any skill in FFT to be learned on hit. This includes monster skills which are woefully incompatible with humans without some modification. The problem here is that if left alone the monster skills are very weak in comparison to other magics in the game. The reason is monsters' high MA growth.

I can see two solutions to this; one simple and the other tedious, but far less lame.
1) Leave each skill as is and choose only insta-cast skills for the Blue Mage to learn. The skills will be weak, but they won't cost any MP anyway. This is totally unlike a normal FF Blue Mage, though.
2) For a more tedious but very win and FF like set of skills, we could mod all monsters stats a skill powers to be more in line with the humans. For example cut all MA growth by 1/2 and increase all MA based skill damage/Hit rate by 2x.
Next would be to give all MA based skills an MP cost which will have the added affect of preventing lower level monsters from using more powerful skills as well as granting the Blue Mage spells a cost.

As for base stats for a Blue Mage we can take some ques from the Geomancer since they are both forms of warrior mages.

Traditionally, Blue mages tend to use knives, swords, rods, staves, and only light armor, clothes, or robes. I tend to think of them as more speed based fighters as opposed to Geomancers who are more strength based, and Red Mages which are totally average in almost every way.

i think there's another problem with blue mage... if blue mage exists, it would kill the purpose of using monster to fight.. because they have  a compilation of a lot of monster's skill.. it's just like you're using a chimera which is capable of wearing equips, and lower stats.

i guess the first solution is better. So the blue mage skill will be weaker compared to the real monster's skill, but he has a number of skills to choose to. i myself like self destruct, bad breath, odd soundwave, and choco meteor as blue mage's skill =p and i've tried gave choco meteor on one of my unit, it's weak but not that bad because it's instant cast and has a really long range.

Yes, I agree with Orlandu on this. If reduce monsters MA growth, making the spells weaker (same average as human), there's no point fighting monsters anymore and not challenging because they are same as us, human level spells/skills, except that they are monster. Just that difference. Making monsters weak just for Blue Mage, I don't think that's worth it all. I rather choose having monsters strong than having Blue Mage by making monsters weak for its skills, which is on our side. It becomes imbalance. Having insta-cast of weak skills isn't really bad at all because they have varieties of skills and long range. So, I would say go for the first option, weak insta-cast skills while monsters stay strong.

The usage of any given job in this thread will be totally up to the hacker we're just going to discus the best way to execute them with our current resources.

As far as the skills go You also have to consider the character animations that the skills use.
If the animation isn't compatible with a human it will look horrible.
It is possible to change the character animation with the newest version of the patcher, but you'd have to choose something suitable for both the monster and the Blue Mage.

While I've never really started working on the specifics, there is one way of handling Blue Mage that I have considerable interest in.  One could sacrifice Poach and Samurai to, in a way, emulate the Learn ability.  Make all the poaching rewards into the katanas (the katanas can be altered in whatever fashion the person wants) and give Poach/Secret Hunt to the Samurai.  Take Samurai's abilities and edit them to emulate certain monster skills.  This method is sort like how one got souls for the Morpher in FFTA.  Give those same abilities to Monsters while doing the things Vanya mentioned, then make them Learn on Hit, and you'll have something vaguely resembling what I've read is the FFXI way to learn abilities.  (First see it and then defeat the monster.)

So far, we have punch, slash, pierce, and casting. So we change those animation?

@SilvasRuin - So meaning we use Samurais' abilities to change it to monsters' abilities? Why katanas acquired from poaching? Is the Blue Mage going to need katana to use skills?

That is the idea.  It would require the Blue Mage (or someone who learned Secret Hunt/Poach from Blue Mage) to kill the monster to get the item to fuel the ability.  It also makes the abilities just a bit trickier to get (depending on the situation), and could potentially justify giving them a little bit better effect by making uses depend on gathering the kills necessary for the abilities.  (Those abilities can function properly with MP costs, can't they?)

That actually is good idea, making the abilities not easy to learn. However, Blue Mage use katana...that's abit funny though. But I definitely like the idea. ^^

Edited first post with names for the 3 flavors of Blue Mage we have thus far.

That is a very interesting idea. Learn the skills the normal Blue Mage way, and then require the monsters soul to be able to use the skills. It would also solve the problem with the Samurais' skillset bug. Then you could make a custom Samurai that is glitch free. My only concern then would be the rather short list of skills the Samurai has. Would it be plausible to add more skills? What effect would that have on item consumption?

I believe I'll be making 3 tutorials for the three different flavors of Blue Mage.

There still needs to be some sort of balancing for the Classic variety, though. Assuming one nerfed the monsters' magic abilities, but still left them a step above the abilities of human, what else could be done to prevent the Blue Mage from powning the monsters? ...

Actually, there is one mechanism that I mentioned that makes monsters still better than a Blue Mage; MP. If the all the Monster Skills are given MP cost it would be more detrimental to the Blue Mages than the monsters. Monsters have to have enough MP to use an ability, but they still don't use it up like a human. For monsters, MP just determines at about what level they have to be to use a given skill with an MP cost. So for the Blue Mage they would still be limited by their MP as to what skills they can cast PLUS they actually consume MP as they use their skills.

Here's another thing I thought of. Give all the skills that a Blue Mage can learn a CT like any normal spell and then give all the monsters the "Non-charge" skill. That will further differentiate a Blue Mage from monsters.

So in the end the 'Classic' Blue Mage will have slightly lower MA/MP growth than a monster, will need to consume MP, and will have CT for his skills. Is there anything else we can/need do to this version of the Blue Mage?

Quote from: "Vanya"but they still don't use it up like a human

is this possible? how?

Quote from: "Vanya"Here's another thing I thought of. Give all the skills that a Blue Mage can learn a CT like any normal spell and then give all the monsters the "Non-charge" skill. That will further differentiate a Blue Mage from monsters.

this is better solution than the previous ones. Still, it's not easy to determine how many CT for what skills...

@Orlandu
monsters just don't consume mp when using skills that have mp costs, its hardcoded into the game. If thier max mp is lower then the mp cost, then they can't use the skill, but otherwise they can fire at will with no restrait

That's right, Skip. Also, figuring out appropriate CT isn't that hard at all.
You can compare the power of the skill and the effects it has to some of the Mage spells to get a good idea of what to use.

Except vanilla has terrible CT times for the longer abilities...  They should at least be pointed to the 1.3 stat sheets to get an idea of what better CTs there could be.

I think that is something I'd leave to them to figure out.
I'll just be sure to make a note of it somewhere.

Yes, I like the latest idea. I think that's much better. That way, monsters are still strong while Blue Mage can have their abilities from monsters. Nice ^^
Though one part, what do you mean by getting souls from monsters? Meaning you can learn the abilities but unable to use unless get hit?

Um... the only mention of souls in this thread that I'm aware of is my reference to the FFTA Morphers.  Morphers learned how to mimic monsters from their soul weapons, most of which were obtained by using a Hunter to capture a monster with a special skill.  If that isn't what you're asking about, then I don't have a clue what statement you are referring to.

Hmm....so meaning each abilities required some souls to use the skills? Like what you suggest about Samurai's skills using katana? So, for Blue Mage to use the skills, example, choco meteor, required muramasa, to use?

Yes, I implemented this in one my personal patches about a month ago.  Though I haven't tested it yet, it seems like it should work fine.

The back-story for the Blue Mages states that they actually learned to use Blue Magic by capturing monster souls or something like that.

Now that we have some solid ideas for how to set up their skills, what about stats? As I stated before Blue Mages are traditionally are considered warrior mages. I think this would make sense since they don't wield the raw power of Black Mages or have the healing prowess of White Mages. Hell, their spells aren't even easy to get as a Red Mage.

So I think they should have stats that fall somewhere in line with the Geomancer only a bit more magic oriented. What do you guys think?

imho, the stat growth should be more or less like geomancer, but the modifier should be magic focused.. at least that what i'd do if i make a blue mage.

something like
12  90  9  110  95  100  45  100  45  125  4  3  10

well, that's me.

Quote from: "jimmyjw88"Hmm....so meaning each abilities required some souls to use the skills? Like what you suggest about Samurai's skills using katana? So, for Blue Mage to use the skills, example, choco meteor, required muramasa, to use?

Yes, that's the basic idea, but you could be more creative than that.  An idea I like is changing each katana to something more relevant to the monster you obtain it from, like making one gotten from a tonberry into a knife, for example.


I agree to the magic focused geomancer stats.  Hm...  maybe if a lot of their abilities are short-range spells, it would make players more inclined to go with something with more HP than one of the other mages.  If Blue Mage is given high HP for a spellcaster, it would make it more ideal for its own skillset than one of the other mages.  I definitely recommend it has fairly good hp modifiers at least.  I'm not sure how to justify giving it enough MA to be damaging and still pack enough punch in PA to make melee attacking a reasonable choice.  I suppose you run into the same problem trying to make any jack-of-all-trades useful.  Perhaps if such jobs are given more lenience in overall stats, they can manage to have multiple stats at a respectable level without being able to overshadow any of the "pure stat" jobs?

Quote from: "SilvasRuin"I agree to the magic focused geomancer stats.  Hm...  maybe if a lot of their abilities are short-range spells, it would make players more inclined to go with something with more HP than one of the other mages.  If Blue Mage is given high HP for a spellcaster, it would make it more ideal for its own skillset than one of the other mages.  I definitely recommend it has fairly good hp modifiers at least.  I'm not sure how to justify giving it enough MA to be damaging and still pack enough punch in PA to make melee attacking a reasonable choice.  I suppose you run into the same problem trying to make any jack-of-all-trades useful.  Perhaps if such jobs are given more lenience in overall stats, they can manage to have multiple stats at a respectable level without being able to overshadow any of the "pure stat" jobs?

You could always give the class decent growths, higher multipliers, make it have innate Secret Hunt so it can poach said animal spirits, then give all the spirits a 100% break rate in addition to the MP cost, to symbolize said Blue Mage "consuming" the Spirit to use the attack?

Since there would be no difference between common/rare poach and you could make the "spirit" required to use the ability a poach from every species in that monster class, keeping a viable stock shouldn't be hard... it'd just make actually spamming the abilities require the player to farm like a bitch.  It'd make the magic require care to use, but the Blue Mage's superior stats compared to other mages (meaning proficiency with many Secondaries and better melee capacity) can more than compensate for those times it can't drop magic all over the place like primordial jizz.

Y/N?

Just my 2 cents
The whole "Spirit" thing needed to use the blue magic skill sucks
The "monsters can spam them without CT and Mp with higher stats than humans, while the Humans unit cannot" part seems good to me
So, IMHO the best thing to do is:

- Give to every monster innate non-charge
- To balance the monster skills, give them a fair ct and mp cost

In this way, humans will do less damage with monster skill (Monster stats>human stats) and they will need to use mp, but they can also have more versatility than a monster
P.s: I agree that a blue mage should have better stats than a normal mage

That is what I was thinking, RavenOfRazgriz.

Dome, that is why multiple variations are going to be listed.  Not everyone is going to like one specific setup.

Quote from: "SilvasRuin"I definitely recommend it has fairly good hp modifiers at least.  I'm not sure how to justify giving it enough MA to be damaging and still pack enough punch in PA to make melee attacking a reasonable choice.  

i think you should choose between higher HPM and MA, or PA and MA... because if blue mage excel in HPM, PA, MA...  

Quote from: "SilvasRuin"That is what I was thinking, RavenOfRazgriz.

iirc, 1.3 Samurais already kind of classify as what you need a Blue Mage to be anyway - powerful PA, MA, decent HP.  While you may need to buff the HP multiplier a bit since I doubt a Blue Mage will be sporting Heavy Armor (hell, my almost straight 1.3 Female Samurai has less HP with a Circlet than my almost straight 1.3 Female Oracle with a Flash Hat, with the same Robe equipped...), it seems like the Samurai is actually your perfect template in more ways than one.

Quote from: "Orlandu"

Quote from: "SilvasRuin"I definitely recommend it has fairly good hp modifiers at least.  I'm not sure how to justify giving it enough MA to be damaging and still pack enough punch in PA to make melee attacking a reasonable choice.  

i think you should choose between higher HPM and MA, or PA and MA... because if blue mage excel in HPM, PA, MA...  

They shouldn't excel at anything.  No stat of theirs should surpass a more specialized job.  That said, the stats should still be high enough to actually see some use.
A Blue Mage without decent HP would suck.  Many traditional Blue Magic spells don't strike me as long range, and any PA they would have would be useless if they can't survive long enough to to actually get in some hits.  They're the type of unit that is likely to be in the fray at all times, and yeah... they're not going to have heavy armor.  (Or at least it doesn't match the concept.)
You could change the formula of whatever weapons they use to use either the (PA+MA)/2*WP formula or the MA*WP formula, but somehow I think that it would be unreasonable to assume that you would be any less against that than Blue Mage "excelling" in PA since it has the same outcome.


I suppose my stance on jack-of-all-trades is this:  Any job that has its stats spread too thinly is useless, but certain traditional concepts wouldn't fit any other mold.  I don't think giving a jack-of-all-trades job a certain percentage of the stats of more specialized jobs would ever be enough to oust the usefulness of those jobs, and with the percentage tweaked right, it should be useful enough to be able to substitute itself into those roles as needed without being horrible at it.

On a slightly different subject, in my opinion, I see Red Mage as being the faster job and Blue Mage being the bulkier, meatier job.  I suppose that comes with the association I have of Red Mages to magic fencers and Blue Mages to monsters like Malboros, Dragons, and Behemoths.  Then again, FFIII has Red Mages equipping certain knight equipment towards the end of the game (Excalibur and shields at least), and Blue Mages have an arguably more ninja-like look to them...

Yeah, I think they should have roughly around Geomancer's stats. As for attack formula, PA and MA, I'm not sure about this. They just have to balance, not weak nor strong. And yes, definitely need good HP or else they can't really learn any skills as can't stay alive for long.

Blue mages have in different iterations tended towards basic mage weapon proficiency (rods/wands) and light blades (knives/standard swords). So giving them a like mix of weapon options should make them versatile without being overly powerful in either direction.

Vanya, I agree with your assessments on Blue Mages and making them speed based. They also have a decent amount of MP, a step or two lower than the Summoner, but enough so that they can deal and surmount the high costs for each of the monster skills they learn. The idea of giving Monster Skills an MP and CT value, while giving all monsters innate Non-charge/CT 0, is the right path to go as well.

In my patch, I've given them growths comparable to most of the mage classes, such as the Black Mages PA, Time Mages MA, Thieves SP (not so much tbh), Summoner's MP etc., but their multipliers are just shy from their amounts aside from Black Mages PA, in which I feel should be higher. Considering that they can equip knives and light swords, they have a melee component to them as well, and this should be considered within a Blue Mage build. However, in terms of HP growth and multiplier, it should be kept decently low/moderate. Not to the point of a regular mage build, but akin to a job that usually equips light armor/robes and can keep up with damage on the field (Squire, Archer, Geomancer, etc.).

Blue Mages can be made into a jack of all trades, but that doesn't they cannot be a master of none as well. It's just a matter of looking at the stats under Patcher and re-balancing them for the Blue Mage within a slight margin. The same can be said for the Red Mage, but as for them I have no solid clue how their skillset is made, and how effective they can be with them on the map.

Thanks for the input from your project, Wasabi.
I think we've got a good consensus about the Blue Mage now. I will begin building a tutorial for them in the next few days.
If anyone else has any more ideas about them, please feel free to continue the discussion.

Since you mentioned the Red Mage, Wasabi, I think that should be the second subject of this discussion.
I've been thinking about how to best execute thins job ever since I first started learning how to use the patcher a couple of years back.
I've seen a couple of ideas emerge in that time as well. The two most prominent ideas I've seen are to either have them use custom spells that have very short CT making them a sort of speed mage or spells that have the ability to hit multiple times. Neither of these are consistent with the traditional dual casting variety found in most games. My own idea for them would require an ASM hack to overhaul the Calculator skillset to cast two spells independently as chosen by the spell lists it already uses. This promises to be an exceedingly difficult hack however.

Before we delve into discussing the possibilities for the Red Mage I'd like to point out that the original Red Mage/Wizard in FF1 didn't have dual cast at all. They were basically just fair warriors with fair magical ability and speed, but with a massive arsenal of spells at their disposal. But even that aspect of them seems like it would take some ASM hacking to get to work.

But enough talk! Have at you!

Well, with the way that the job system works in FFT, there are really only three places that a red mage could fit in the job tree, since its most basic version is simply a priest with black magic secondary and equip sword/short charge.

A) nowhere, by which I mean restriciting the red mage to a special character, this and option C are the most compatible with custom spells

B) at the bottom, as  the point of divergance between the more focused mage jobs (in other words, replacing chemist as the basic mage job) this is probablly the best option to preserve the original FF flavor, but would require retooling the skill lists of those mages the red mage borrows spells from in order to remove redundancy. One such approach would be to give the red mage tier 1 and 2 spells from black, white, yin-yang and time magic, and give some bonus spells to the priest, wizard, time mage and oracle to compensate.

C) at the top, as a universal master job, much like the 1.3 sage, as mentioned earlier, this and optioin A are probablly the most compatible with giving the red mage unique abilities.

Hmm....I feel that Red Mage should have some unique abilities rather than just compilation of all the existing mages' abilities. What's Red Mage like in other FFs?

They mostly use spells from other skillsets, especially white and black magic, but they may have access to some unique spells. Double cast, or fast cast, is also a typical ability:
http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Red_Mage (http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Red_Mage)

Ah, I see. Thanks. Hmm...would be nice with some unique abilities.

The best place I can think to look for unique Red Mage abilities is FFXI, where they are a combination of classic Red Mage (black and white spells with a sword), FFT Oracle (enfeebling magic), and FFV Mystic Knight (giving elemental properties to physical attacks):

http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Red_ ... tasy_XI%29 (http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Red_Mage_%28Final_Fantasy_XI%29)

The only thing that's really unique about that are the En-spells (http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Enspell).  So...you could make Red Mage a fighter that can attack from melee with all 8 elements, plus a sampling of White/Black/Yin-Yang/Time Magic.

If'n you wanted.

While I do prefer the more traditional style Red Mage (i.e. a sampling of White and Black Mages, perhaps with Dual Cast), I feel that the idea Dormin just mentioned could easily work as a standalone class.

or we could make blue mages without any equips or ablities to be equiped expect their own skillset. Can we do this on mime class?

For the Red Mages, in retrospect to the FF1 version, I've always assembled them as melee fighters with enfeeble magic spells. When applying that logic into the job tree in Tactics, the ideal of replacing it over Calculator is a good endeavor. For elemental attack spells, that may be difficult to discuss, but imo I would like them to be weaker versions of the Truth/Untruth skillset, with a quicker CT and have an MP cost. I would like these "random hit" formulas to work on enfeebling magic as well, but I'm not exactly sure how much percentage is calculated on hit for status inflictions (formula 5E "Dark Whisper" inflicts Dead & Sleep at 6.25% for each status, correct?). For the tiers on their elemental attacks spells, I feel that at maximum tier 1 to 3 is a good start, but I don't mind if only tiers 1 to 2 is a good restriction, considering that if we do use formulas 1E or 5E for these spells a 3rd tier spell may be too overpowering (and the extra 3 slots could be used for more enfeebling spells. It's just a matter of juggling around additional Y values, or X hit values.

The only roadblock I see are cure spells. I would like to make them unique, but considering how restricted some of the formulas are in Patcher the only idea that comes to mind is making one element a healing element across the board. Outside of ASM hacking, formula 1E/5E could be used in this application.

Enforcing a restricted "dualcast" or double cast component to the ability themselves sounds a bit ridiculous, considering that I don't see any benefit in having one ability hitting twice in a row. Mind you, I'm making this judgment from what I've seen from a Mercernaries mechanics trailer involving Rad's double-casting spells, so that's my only experience of how a double-casting spell would emulate on the field. However, an ASM hack on the Calculator skillset, as Vanya described where the abilities within the skillset are listed twice in a row to emulate a "dualcast"-ing action is phenomenal imo. An arduous task to work on, but worthwhile one at that. I hope this is possible.

And if this hasn't been mentioned yet, spells emulating Zalbag's "Ruin" swordskills would be a worthwhile input. I've always felt that those abilities would work great for the Red Mage as great enfeebling spells. These should go into their skillset I believe.

Mime is troublesome. I'm preparing to create an ASM hack that allows the Mime to have skills. Right now if you give a Mime skills they only get to keep them until you leave the menu because the game is programmed to skip the code that writes skills to the appropriate RAM addresses. The problem is that I have to remove some code from certain routines and modify others. Fixing the equipment glitch that basically destroys all equipment after returning from a battle is a whole other can of worms.

I'm seeing some really good ideas for the Red Mage.
Skip's idea of replacing Chemist with a Red Mage that has low level spells is pretty swank. It would go great with the hack to give every unit access to Item and the one to limit item usage during battles.
I also like the FFXI suggestion from, Dormin Jake. It is an updated version of the old style Red Mage with the extra added oomph of specialized skills. The thing that would really complement this flavor of Red Mage is a good Dual Cast support skill. For which I have an idea. Utilizing one of the blank support skill slots; a not too complex ASM hack could be made that makes the use of specific skillsets (white, black, time, yin-yang, & red magicks) work twice. Basically, it would prevent the game from greying out magic commands unless it has triggered a specific RAM address. This would eliminate the need for the Red Mage to have access to multiple spell lists, although, that still may be possible. Barring the availability of such ASM hacks, what could be done is to give the Red Mage's spell list a boost by adding some additional black, white, time, and yin-yang spells. Possibly the additional spells could be adaptations of old spells not originally found in FFT.

my only problem with Dormins idea is that it bleeds too much into the Mystic Knight class  (which is something I'd also like to bring up, but Red Mage first).  Imo Red Mage should stick to low-level magics and maybe have one or two unique spells, MAYBE.

The current cap for spells is 16, or the current cap for all abilities + R/S/M is 16?

Cure 1/2
Protect
Shell
Raise
Fire/Ice/Lit 1/2
Poison
Blind
Sleep
Haste
Slow

is a pretty good bank imo.  I'd like to squeeze Don't Move in, but we're already at 16 and either haste or slow removing?  Nah.  Removing cure/fire/ice/bolt 1 would make the bank better imo, but its certainly not fitting for only rank 2's if this job occurs in a chemist's place.

Quotewhat could be done is to give the Red Mage's spell list a boost by adding some additional black, white, time, and yin-yang spells. Possibly the additional spells could be adaptations of old spells not originally found in FFT.

As is their potential spellbook is already packed, but imo those spells are better off in their primary skillsets regardless.  Also, a good portion of said spells would require some hacks.  Using FF1 as an example, spells to increase/decrease accuracy/evasion would be welcome, but red mage exclusive?  Nah.

edit:  actually, blind/transparent work as status, but for production's sake we'd need to change the graphic on transparent and make sure to enable the enemy attack ASM =\

edit2:

Mystic Knight!  In ff5 they were hybrid fighters, boasting the ability to imbue their weapons with black magic and inflict elemental yet physical damage to their enemies.  In FFT this is easily re-created, albeit on an attack by attack basis rather than burn one turn to buff up and then just letting her rip.  Mind, we're basically giving swordskills to generics (:)) but:

Formula 2D = (PA + Y) * WP coupled with the sword strike ASM hack now gives the Mystic Knight access to the main elements (Fire, Ice, Lit, Dark, Holy) -- Earth, Water, and Wind are usually in the realm of the blue mage.

Fire Strike
Ice Strike
Lightning Strike
Holy Strike
Drain Strike (suck it beo)
Spell Strike (long and slow)
Death Strike
Stone Strike
Poison Strike
Sleep Strike
Frog Strike
Flare Strike

would be a good start.  The status inflicters can probably get by with normal damage with a 25% proc rate.  Flare Strike can have its Y value boosted.  All abilities would be instant yet have an MP cost, especially among the statusers because while poison may be inferior to Sleep, if it's 4 times as cheap it might see some use.  Range would be weapon-based.  

Role-wise, these basically replace geomancers, who essential would be booted off to the magical side of things (and we can make elemental adopt the (MA + Y) * MA formula)

well.. mystic knight skills are somehow identical with parivir's.. without the status inflicting effetct of course.. i kinda like to have parivir in my fft..

how do you do it philsov? i mean, let's say making an fire strike using a normal sword swing, but having burn effect. just edit the abilities on the fftpatcher is enough?

don't see why not.

only kicker is free ability space just doesn't appear,  so gutting another classes' abilities would probably be the easiest path.  Geo (and elemental) would probably get the boot.  But between the formula (2D, so we can give it an element -- straight weapon strike might not).  But between the animation and effect and the rest of fftpatcher, all that is easily doable.

I think you should give MA UP skill to red mages so they could learn it.

MA BASED MYSTIC KNIGHTS WTF!?
Just no.
Make them PA based. or PA and MA.

If I read correctly, Mystic Knights won't be MA based, but PA based with the formula 2D swordskill formula. Geomancers will be with (MA+Y)/2*MA (at least that's what I think you were intending, philsov, since without the division component Elemental would be WAY OVERPOWERED).

And mind my ignorance, but I don't exactly understand the sword strike ASM. Does that prevent formula 2D from becoming weapon elemental, and make the ability abide by the elemental it's applied with? Also: As much as I do enjoy seeing the Mystic Knight's swordskills being weapon-ranged, I feel that considering that this game is an SRPG giving their skills a range of 2 (single target) wouldn't be a bad idea. It won't compete with other big name spellcasters/melee-fighters in the job-wheel, and it will give the Mystic Knight some flexibility on the field.

Also, if the Red Mage is going to have the MA Up support skill, I believe the Black Mage should have reassembled multipliers and maybe CTs to compensate for it.

well the shift to elemental (which, yes, has that 2 divisor) is more a post production thought, since Mystic Knight is a magic/melee hybrid while the FF5 Geomancer was mostly caster.  But then again the geomancer may be the primary candidate for the Mystic Knight class, at least as far as easy class creation is concerned;  so it could be a moot point.

Regarding the sword strike ASM, what it does is enable elemental properities.  In classic FFT swordskills were flagged as elemental but in reality their only element was weapon-based.  This is why Weigraf (and Dycegarg) used to be cheesed by simply giving everyone a chameleon robe and frolicing through the place -- the AI thought because the abilities were flagged as holy elemental the player would absorb it -- but if they actually used them (AoE targetting a nonabsorber, for example), they'd all fall down dead.  With this hack in place, this enables the creation of the Mystic Knight class.  

Regarding Spell Blades' range, 2 is probably best, but probably not requiring a sword to use, as spell blade was usuable on all manner of weapons -- swords, axes, daggers, spears, etc.  Anything melee range from the physical tree is fair game, by relation.

Kind of tired at the moment, so I'll read through the other Red Mage posts later.  Has anyone mentioned giving them a focus-firing/assassination type of setup for abilities?  I mean giving them spells that only hit a single panel.  It would keep them from just using the exact same abilities as several other classes.  I also kind of like the idea of giving them the random hit formula and making the maximum number of hits 3.  That should average it out to two attacks per cast, so it would be double-casting with a chance of one failing or getting an extra cast.

The reason for this suggestion is that the way I see them is they aren't as powerful as any other job in any area, but they always have some option that would be effective against the enemy.  In my opinion, the best way to express being prepared for any situation would be to go with "assassination" spells of each of the most common spell types.  The spells striking 1-3 times is just a little something extra to emulate double-casting without complicated hacks.

Added:
"Original" Red Mage
"Classic" Red Mage
"Vana`diel" Red Mage
"Steiner" Mystic Knight

Parivir is basically just a Mystic Knight with samurai equipment. However, go back to the NES version of FF3 and you will discover that the "Mystic Knight" in that game was just a dark looking knight which could use katana-shaped 'dark' swords & some white magic. So you can see a bit of a connection.

The "classic" notion of the Mystic Knight comes from FF5, and is basically represented in FFT as Beowulf, they just gave him all stat inducing spells instead of the usual elemental fair for some reason I can't seem to understand. That said, I figure the best place to model a Mystic Knight's stats from is Beowulf. The skills Philsov suggested are quite good, but I would keep them at weapon range. After all, Mystic Knights can wear heavy armor for a reason. They should definitely use a PA + MA formula for damage since the combination of physical and magical damage is the defining feature of the job. I'd also give the skills some CT to offset the power of such combined attacks. When making those skills you should also be sure NOT to turn on the "follow target" boolean. It would look silly to have short range attacks strike after the target has left. BTW, I'd like to mention that Steiner's version of Spellblade/Sword Magic functions in the manner which FFT is capable of on it's own without any ASM hacks.

Ah, Mystic Knight, physical and magical, sword strike and sword elemental strike. Steiner, Yay ^^
I think a job something like Steiner would be nice.
For the Red Mage, I kinda like Dormin's idea.

I have a question for you guys. Do you think I should do separate tutorials for each flavor of a job or merge the flavors into a single document that explains them all?

I'd say do the latter, all variants under one heading.  Less confusing that way, especially considering some of these variants only differ in one or two areas.

Might I say, by the way, I love this topic?  I love this topic.

I think merge everything is better. A single document that explains everything.

Quote from: "Dormin Jake"I'd say do the latter, all variants under one heading.  Less confusing that way, especially considering some of these variants only differ in one or two areas.

Might I say, by the way, I love this topic?  I love this topic.

This. You can easily separate each category under a given custom job with the "list" post-command and present each explanation with a [li]. Everything will still be merged within one document (with proper procedure).

And, not to offend, but I think keeping the Mystic Knight weapon range is a silly restriction. Just make them evadeable and you can keep the range at a limit of 2. Who's to say that they should be penalized because they can equip heavy armor? What can be said for Agrias, Orlandu, Gaffgarion, Meliadoul? The only benefit that I see in keeping the skillset weapon-ranged is so that [maybe] archers and gun-users can have access to the skillset.

Aside from that comment, making their skillset entirely a fusion of PA and MA is a good suggestion, however the formula may need some tinkering. Instead of formula 2D which only implements WP and PA, the Elemental formula (PA+Y)/2*MA is probably the way to go. I've read an old topic concerning swordskills being implemented the Elemental formula, and all it needs is a proper rebalance with the Y multiplier. However, those that are finnicky with keeping the Mystic Knight's "Spellblade" weapon-based might have a disagreement with this notion, since the formula is based on the unit's stats and have no say on the WP value. That is unless I'm unaware there is an ASM hack that can change formula 2D to use the MA value instead of PA.

And also, if the Mystic Knight's skillset is free from the "Require Sword" boolean, will there be any extensive protocol to keep Monks or barehanded units from using the skillset? From my knowledge with FFTPatcher, I don't see anything that would prevent them from using the skillset since there are no booleans that call for an ability to be restricted only to weapons (only the ones that require either the sword or Materia Blade). Granted if the skillset is given a formula with a WP component in it, it will turn out to be a blank skillset for the unit, but I do want to see if there is a way to balance this loophole.

I think that the skills should only available with sword. It's kinda funny to use swordskill with barehands.

Quote from: "Vanya"I have a question for you guys. Do you think I should do separate tutorials for each flavor of a job or merge the flavors into a single document that explains them all?

Like Jake said earlier, keep all the variants under one heading.

As for Mystic Knights, if it's possible to allow them to only use skills when a sword is equipped, then do that. And as far as weapon range goes, I'm in the middle: I like what Wasabi mentioned, about making them evadable with a range of 2, but I kinda feel like it should be weapon range. So I guess I dunno...

Quote from: "mav"And as far as weapon range goes, I'm in the middle: I like what Wasabi mentioned, about making them evadable with a range of 2, but I kinda feel like it should be weapon range. So I guess I dunno...

The way I see it is, if swinging a sword is one panel range, then swinging a sword that happens to be on FIRE should also just be one panel range.  Giving them two panel range, even with evasion, borders dangerously on becoming generic lolswordskillz, and honestly I feel like the likes of Agrias, Orlandu, Meliadoul, and Beowulf are overpowered enough.

Weapon range looks like it'd be the most "realistic" (as realistic as you can get as far as electrifying spears and coating arrows in, uh, earth, goes), but being able to do swordskill damage with possible elemental weakness from 8 panes with a gun seems like it'd need some serious balancing.

To play devil's advocate, 2 panel range would be more fun and useful, and as long as it's kept a single panel targeting and the Y-value of the formula kept under control, I don't think it'd be too bad.  It just doesn't make much sense, as far as real world logic goes.  Then again, neither does Stasis Sword.

Personally in favor of the PA*WP swordskill formula and not requiring swords.  It keeps the class clearly physical, and at the same time prevents attacking things with ice elemental bare hands.  The WP in the formula requires something to be equipped, at least.  And honestly, why shouldn't you be able to empower your Battle Dictionary with the might of the sea?

That's my self-contradictory 8 cents.

Quote from: "Dormin Jake"Might I say, by the way, I love this topic?  I love this topic.

I'm glad you like it! ^_^

Interesting ideas for the Mystic Knight. I'm thinking there will be 2 additional variants; "Classic" & "Updated".
The classic conforms as much as possible to the original FF5 version, while the updated form has, primarily, the extended range and restriction to swords. Any more ideas for the updated flavor? Possibly something that makes it fit in better with FFT?

Incidentally, I only found one other variant, which is the FFX-2 Warrior. It is basically a cross between a Mystic Knight & a FFT Knight. The main attraction here is the Elemental weapon strikes which are purely physical attacks with an elemental added on. They also do consume MP. I think this would fit in with the "Updated" flavor.

List updated:
Mystic Knight - "Classic", "Steiner", & "Updated"
Alchemist
Necromancer

For the red mage variants you listed, which name refers to which flavor?



Nevermind, I think I've got it figured out now.

I like the 2 range idea for the mystic knight abilities.  Either that or require swords to prevent them from being fired from bows or guns.  A range of 2 would allow them at least a bit more of an edge than just abusing the enemies' weaknesses.  Also, for the record, the only significant difference between Mystic Knights and Parivir is appearance, especially considering it was the ninja/dark blades that the original ones wield in the first release of FFIII.

They were actually katana, not ninjato, which makes them even more similar to Parivir.

This is a topic for posting a custom job and skillset ideas right?

Here's mine, you can call it "Elemental Axe Wielder"
(I originally named the job BioEngineer)

Here's the custom skillset:

Omg
Like more than half of the skill names are from dota? <3

I kinda like the 2 range idea too. 2 panels isn't that bad.

QuoteLike more than half of the skill names are from dota? <3

Yup.
In fact, only 2 skills weren't named from dota.

How is it different from a Mystic Knight?

good character / job idea

Quote from: "Vanya"How is it different from a Mystic Knight?

Mystic Knight is single-target melee with elemental attributes + minor offensive status infliction (but not both at the same time).

Ele axe wielder has all sorts of AoE, range, and positive status going his way.

Physical or magical based attacks?

MK is PA.

Ele axe is all over the place.

QuoteEle axe is all over the place.

Yep. It's just my idea to make the certain skills useful in certain times. hahaha..
Some were PA based, some were MA-based. Thanks for the comments.

but.. aren't the skills too overpowered? start a battle with protect & shell, haste & transparent & float, then reraise :)

Seems a bit too all over the place. Where would it's niche be?
If anything it sounds like a 'you've-mastered-all-the-other-jobs-now-this-is-your-reward' kind of deal.

I like the idea, though I have to agree with Vanya, it seems like an uber Geomancer/Monk/Priest/Wizard/Minotaur.
Seems like an Orlandu class, if you ask me, though I love the concept of Axe Skills instead of Sword Skills.

-----
New Idea:
You know, I've been thinking. The Lancer job is kinda odd. What I mean is, it's heavily armored, not exactly fast, and is basically a tank. However, it's ability relies on speed and not being on the field half of the time.

I have a solution! I'll just go with the typical name Dragoon. Light armor, no shield, but fast. Instead of being a slower tank unit with a unique attack, a faster glass cannon with a unique attack! It'd make more sense, as in order to jump that high.. you wouldn't want to be bulky, and if your ability is speed based, you'd want to be fast; you're not a tank anymore, so your lack of a presence isn't missed.

Also, if you want a tank version, make it a Lancer. Heavy armor, original speed, but no Jump. Instead, give it the Breath attacks, and maybe even the holy one from Reis' skillset, slightly modified. It could have self-buffing abilities, i.e. modified Squire skills, so it takes a more defensive role. Good HP, abilities to keep it alive and abilities to strengthen it without Orlandu-ing it. So Fire/Ice/Thunder Breath (Maybe Holy), Accumulate (3CT), Protect Spirit(No CT, 15 MP, 1 AoE self target), and Cheer Up (Regen, 2 Range, 5 MP). Basically reduced the Squire(specifically Ramza) a little bit. Doesn't make sense to be able to boost your power from the start of the game so easily.

Any thoughts?

youuuu can just make it a mid ranged damage class with a little versatility (like monk), and kill the rez

I like what you are saying about the lancer, but I have few ideas.

The heavy armor lancer is a lancer. The guy who sits in back rank, stabs stuff and wears plate. Not breathing fire or holy fire. The lancer should have moves like maybe a bleed(poison) stab, a type of extra damage charge attack, possibly a lance throw attack. Self defense abilities are a good idea too, like a self protect + regen possibly, or a half damage attack that also gives the user the defending status (if it can be done).

The dragoon would be the one having the breath along with the jumping, considering that he is a dragoon and is like dragons, who breath all that stuff.

QuoteNew Idea:
You know, I've been thinking. The Lancer job is kinda odd. What I mean is, it's heavily armored, not exactly fast, and is basically a tank. However, it's ability relies on speed and not being on the field half of the time.

I have a solution! I'll just go with the typical name Dragoon. Light armor, no shield, but fast. Instead of being a slower tank unit with a unique attack, a faster glass cannon with a unique attack! It'd make more sense, as in order to jump that high.. you wouldn't want to be bulky, and if your ability is speed based, you'd want to be fast; you're not a tank anymore, so your lack of a presence isn't missed.

Also, if you want a tank version, make it a Lancer. Heavy armor, original speed, but no Jump. Instead, give it the Breath attacks, and maybe even the holy one from Reis' skillset, slightly modified. It could have self-buffing abilities, i.e. modified Squire skills, so it takes a more defensive role. Good HP, abilities to keep it alive and abilities to strengthen it without Orlandu-ing it. So Fire/Ice/Thunder Breath (Maybe Holy), Accumulate (3CT), Protect Spirit(No CT, 15 MP, 1 AoE self target), and Cheer Up (Regen, 2 Range, 5 MP). Basically reduced the Squire(specifically Ramza) a little bit. Doesn't make sense to be able to boost your power from the start of the game so easily.

Any thoughts?

My main criticism would be about the naming. Lancer and Dragoon are literally one and the same. They aren't variants of one basic concept, but instead just different localizations of the same exact job class.

I'd argue its better to avoid both "Lancer" and "Dragoon" to keep from confusing people.

I think we need to finish discussing the Mystic Knights before moving on to Dragoons...

But since the discussion has already started, I can't help myself either.
Dragoons tend to pick (almost at random) from the following aspects and then mix and match:  Spear-wielding knight, Jump, Lancet, Breath attacks, Dragon slaying attacks, and dragon support abilities.
Jump tends to be an attack that takes up around two turns, deals around twice as much damage as a normal attack, and removes the Dragoon from the field during that time, which can be a mixed bag as far as pros and cons go.  Some games boost the damage multiplier a bit to make it worth using for reasons other than getting the Dragoon out of danger of being attacked.
Lancet is a somewhat rare ability, but is still one of the Dragoon signature moves.

As far as I'm aware, the only way to keep the Dragoon up in the air while charging up the Jump is to go with the vanilla skill setup for Lancer/Dragoon.  Unless someone can find a way around this,

Is it possible to just make Jump a skill instead of its own skillset?

I thought something like that was done in Mercenaries, but my knowledge of the progress there is vague at best, so I could definitely be wrong.  But that's what I thought I saw when I watched one of the preview videos, at least.

I thought that last sentence of mine was clear on that, but I suppose I should put it plain and simply.
The Jump animation can be used for an attack, so by all means a skill can be set up to mimic it.  The problem is the one I've already stated:  I am unaware of any method of emulating the Jump ability that keeps the user up in the air during the time it is charging.

Also, it would need another ASM hack to make the charge time based on the user's speed instead of just being set like a normal ability would be.

i disagree with lancer/dragoon having breath attack... it's just not right.

it would be nice if they have an instant skill that could pierce 2 enemies at the same time (or maybe 3), yea just like holy explosion/earth slash but only 2-3 range and deal a slightly more damage than normal attack, without mp cost.

Breath attacks are at least as recurring as Lancet.

The two panel attack would be something to make spears do, not give as a free ability.  I can't imagine how that attack would be able to be restricted to spears only and have the right appearance.  Unless it was restricted to spears, it just wouldn't make sense.  FF spear users tend to not be able to strike two enemies at once with spears anyways.  This is FFT, not Tactics Ogre.

Yeah, Jump animation can easily be mimic. I did that with Earth Slash (jump up and struck down making the ground shakes). Problem is charging up in the air. I think it would require ASM hacking to make the Jump, a skill, with charge in the air.

EDIT: I don't think striking two enemies at once like Holy Explosion or Earth Slash is a good idea. It doesn't really make sense to be able to poke/pierce the person behind the target.

You can already strike someone that is behind another person with a spear in FFT, I think.  What he seems to want is striking both of them though.  In real life, what it is now is like reaching around them to hit the person behind, and striking both in real life would consist of stabbing all the way through the first person, striking the second, then pulling the spear back through the first person without losing grip on it from the first person recoiling, moving, or otherwise countering.  It is rather unfeasible...

That's why I used breath instead of piercing of some sort. Sure, it's not recurring, but it's a possibility. I was basically trying to make 2 possible classes WITHOUT ASM. ASM is a pain to do, with so few able to do it, and practically none that will do any ASM that someone requests.

Breaths are just simple to do, and are pretty much in game already to the extent that would be needed. And I really wish it were possible to make Jump function like it does, and still only take up a skill slot instead of a whole skillset.

past topic:

QuoteSeems a bit too all over the place. Where would it's niche be?
If anything it sounds like a 'you've-mastered-all-the-other-jobs-now-this-is-your-reward' kind of deal.

Quotebut.. aren't the skills too overpowered? start a battle with protect & shell, haste & transparent & float, then reraise Laughing can heal, a lot of attacking skills...

Oh sorry. First, in what I'm planning, you will only get one skill at start, which is Culling Blade.
To get the other elemental skills, you must get a "cosmos" from the elemental bosses.

My patch would be like a Megaman RPG type of gameplay using FFT, with the starting job having a piece
of skill with each element, and the other jobs pure elemental (eg. Fire Job, Holy Job).. with stronger skills..

No need to apologize, it's all good. I just want to make the jobs here more generic so they don't rely on a specific set-up like what you seem to have in your patch.

The whole "Lancer" thing sounds more like a "Defender" or "Guardian". I would prefer the Dragoon to stay more true to the series.
I like the idea of a tank job with mostly defensive abilities. The only problem with those types of jobs is making skills that are defensive, but don't rely on decidedly magical status effects like protect and shell. Many of the more interesting ideas are unfortunately going to have to rely on some form of ASM hacking I fear.

Now as for the Dragoon (I prefer Dragon Knight personally) there are three flavors that come to mind. The first the the classic FF3/5 style with Jump and Lancet as their main offensive abilities. Then you have the FF9 style Dragon Hunter type. And last the FFT/XI style Dragoon that has support for dragon type units.

Do we have any more ideas for the Defender type job? The FFTA/A2 Temple Knight strike me as that sort of unit.

I think the FFTA and FFTA2 dragoons have a healthy mix of all three of those types, and it happens to be the one I favor.

Defender
Cover is pretty dang hard to do, but it can at least be emulated to some small extent by simply making an ability that places an ally in the Defend status.
Hibernate should be easily doable.
Things like Rasp and Soul Sphere sounds more like a mage slayer than a defender...
Wish is perfect as-is for a Defender type, IMO.

Seems like I missed quite a discussion. :?

In FFIII, Dragoons could equip Shields along with their Spears.  I believe Kain could in IV too.
Speaking of which, Kain could equip spears, axes, and I think some swords.  I'm wanting to think Spears were the most effective weapon type for Jumping, but I could be wrong.

A "Defender" type job really should be mixed into Paladin.  There just isn't room for having multiple support melee fighters of the protection nature.

Oh, and if one removes the break abilities from FFT's Knight, Paladin/Defender would be a prime candidate for Disarm (break weapon).

Quote from: "SilvasRuin"In FFIII, Dragoons could equip Shields along with their Spears.  I believe Kain could in IV too.
Speaking of which, Kain could equip spears, axes, and I think some swords.  I'm wanting to think Spears were the most effective weapon type for Jumping, but I could be wrong.

In most localizations of Lancers/Dragoons in Final Fantasy, spear-wielders can also equip shields with their spears. I'm just saying if spears get a boost in their WP or have an added effect in their place, a forced 2 Hands could be an application to balance them out. Of course, I'm also in league of wanting axes to be 1H/2H (not 2 swordable) and without the random damage formula, so you might see my logic as being somewhat out of bounds.

Kain could equip light swords, but not Knightswords in IV. And I believe Jump got a boost with spears in IV as well.

Quote from: "SilvasRuin"Oh, and if one removes the break abilities from FFT's Knight, Paladin/Defender would be a prime candidate for Disarm (break weapon).

This. Especially in FFT 1.3 and their other adaptations when broken equipment are returned to the Fur Shop for a cost. A simple textual change with Tactext.

And I also believe having Defender separate from Paladin sounds a bit silly, considering they both do the same thing with the exception of one being more defensive while the other is more curative/offensive.

Quote from: "Vanya"Now as for the Dragoon (I prefer Dragon Knight personally)

Yay!!! Dragon Knight ^^
I prefer Dragon Knight too, which is the name for my personal patch.  Hehe.
Alright, so, for Dragoon/Lancer/Dragon Knight, I'm not sure how the other FFs work but I personally prefer FFIX. I feel that Freya's skills actually fit nicely as Generic Dragon Knight; of course not her entire skills but the concept of it.

As for Defender, I agreed that they are the same as Paladin or maybe Crusader. They should be tanker, slow (due to heavy armor), healing skills, support skills, and minor offensive skills. And yes, they should be the next inheritance for Breaking Techniques.

Dragoon is the traditional name, so might as well leave it at that and then let the people using the resources choose a different name if they so want.  Has the name Dragon Knight even been used in the series?  (There's also the whole bit where the word Knight is entirely overused in job names...)

Since there are some Dragoons that have ALL the mentioned abilities, they might as well just have one entry describing how to set all those abilities up and then let the individual patchers decide which ones they want to ultimately go with.  It's not like Dragoons tend to have drastic differences throughout the series.

Hm... don't have any more input for Defenders/Paladins yet at the moment, but I'm inclined to discuss Berserkers/Breakers next.  They're an interesting job, but there is at least one obvious issue in making them.  (What to do about Berserk.)

the initial berserk bug is troubling, but what if instead they had innate Silence, and a single skill that inflicted berserk status? You'd have to retool silence to block every skill EXCEPT this self berserking skill, but that'd be one way of going about it. Another way would be both innate berserk and initial sleep or don't act or confusion or something. If a class has an initial status, does equipping something that prevents that status still prevent it?

Except for clones of White Magic spells, this seems to be the best list of (tank and support based) abilities for a Paladin/Defender:
Astra - Prevent negative status effects, easily done through clever manipulation of the Wall status in the patcher.
Nurse - Small hp heal and cancel some of the more common statuses.
Defend - Might as well just give that to them as an innate ability rather than putting a clone of it in their skill list.
Guard - Put the Defend status on an ally.  Simple enough.  ASM hacks might actually be able to emulate Cover though...
Disarm - Break weapon.
Wish - It just seems to fit with the concept/purpose.
Aura - FFTA Defenders had it give self-regen and reraise.  How about just self-regen?
Hibernate - Full heal but puts them to sleep.  It would probably see more use in FFT than FFTA, though you can't actually cancel all the bad status and inflict sleep at the same time, so it would be less potent.
Shock - Somewhat recurring ability for Paladins, when they don't have Holy attacks that is.  Basically just a powerful physical attack.

If one really wants to give them White Magic, one could make a lesser Esuna (typically called Basuna, right?), and some single target healing spells.  Call them the Heal series for simplicity and just go the opposite route for naming than what is traditional.




As for Berserkers/Breakers, I'm not too keen on giving them auto-Berserk.  I'd prefer to give them an ability that gives it and make it optional.  The problem is that auto-berserk would allow you to design the job stats to facilitate it, but you can't do that if it is optional.  At the same time... the player is going to do better than the AI, so a permanently berserked character won't likely be desirable.  Perhaps give Berserk a duration might help a little by allowing the player to get control of the character again after a time if things don't work out.  Getting to the enemy and making use of the heightened damage is one problem...
Can Berserk be ASM hacked to maybe increase movement or speed a bit just while a character is under the status?  That could help, and it fits in with what other games have done for it.  Stacking Haste onto the ability and giving them the same duration would at least make sure that they aren't berserked without some advantage assisting them in getting to the enemy.  Main thing I would think would work (after making it work by duration) is ASM hacking a formula to set their CT to 100 and give them Haste and Berserk at the same time.  That would allow a player to trigger it at the very moment the Berserker gets within range of the enemy.

@skipsandwich

i believe no.

well, the only thing i've tried is using cursed ring together with ribbon, and the zombie status is still there.
i believe same thing will happen with stone gun. i guess prevent only works for future status change.

about berserker.. rather than thinking so hard to give berserk status, why not just give him(or her?) innate attack up and blind?

I like what Silvas have there for Defender. I think those fit just right. As for Berserker, permanent berserk is definitely a no. Giving them duration is good and haste with berserk is good combination of trigger as they went wild, which increase they're speed and attacks.

Paladin/Defender - everything works great except for Hibernate. Never really used that skill imho and I feel something better could be used for it in its stead. Maybe a weak Holy attack spell with an AOE? (<---Sort of inspired from Cecil in his Paladin form in Dissidia, with his "Searchlight" attack.)

Berserker: Valid point about innate Blind and Attack Up. An ability should be crafted to make the Berserk status a self-targeting ability. In my personal patch, I edited Ramza's Scream/Shout ability to be an auto self-targeting Berserk/Protect/Atheist status ability. Maybe for the Berserker an ability crafted as self-targeting Berserk/Protect/Haste could be implemented, something like 'Mad Rush' from FFVIII which was one of the abilities the Guardian Force Ifrit had in his disposal. Whether or not the Atheist status should be implemented is up for judgment.

In terms of its stats, I feel that they should have low/moderate HP to accentuate their low defense (which FFT has no real statistic for; traditionally Berserkers have high HP), extremely high attack power, moderate to high speed and evade, and pitifully low MP, MA and Magic Defense.

As for their abilities, a couple can be extracted from the Berserker class from FFX-2 (http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Berserker_(Final_Fantasy_X-2)#Abilities) (wikia page elaborating on their abilities). They have a skill that depletes the enemy's HP down by half, one that deals high attack damage but has low accuracy and a couple of status attacks. I bet something can be made from this list, and much more.

Also, if someone can elaborate on what the berserk bug is by any chance, please elaborate on it as I'm unaware that there was a bug in the first place.

the berserk bug is that a unit with either innate or initial berserk status can still take a single user controlled action at the beginning of battle, instead of having an action forced by the AI.

:EDIT:
it also seems that most people are against innate berserk status, with that in mind, how about these for some skill ideas?

Rage- Self + berserk/haste/protect (haste and protect wear off over time, berserk does not, so timing is key in using this ability effectively)

Wild Blow - Deals PA * 15 damage, take 1/3 damage as backlash, range 1, area 1v1, does not hit caster.

Cleave - deals 50% max hp damage to target, weapon range

Heave Ho - deals PA * 30 damage, take 1/5 damage as backlash, range 3, area 1v255, random fire, unevadable, choco meteor effect (deals huge damage, but only has a 20% chance of hitting any given square with it's single shot, does not discriminate between friend and foe, and deals backlash damage regardless of if you actually hit anything)

I don't think it's that bad, really.  Hurts the flavor a bit, but the execution is probably the best possible.  Seems better than having an activated berserk ability, though.  

The biggest problem is that a unit with Berserk has no reaction ability and is immune to move hp up.  In FF5 this was a non issue, but in FFT that's a wild liability.  A follow-through suggestion is to give them an exclusive weapon type (axes?) that have the drain life effect.  That, or made wildly monsterous in terms of HP/PA so they're rarely targetted and hit like trucks to compensate.

Added:
Dragoon
Paladin
Defender
Berserker
Warrior

I see a lot of good ideas. I believe FFX-2 has some good source material for Berserker. I'm all for a berserk skill instead of innate berserk or anything like that. The girls in FFX-2 have such a skill.

I definitely see defenders getting the equipment breaking skills and Knights having the stat breaks as in most every other iteration of them in the series after FFT. BTW, I'm keeping Defender separate from Paladin because I can think of a bunch of skills that are more suited to them, plus I never saw them having any kind of healing at all.

Paladins are pretty straight forward IMO. They are pretty much the same throughout the series with the exception of Agrias and her overpowered sword skills. I liked the FFTA/A2 version as well. And, of course, everyone is correct about the Cover skill. It WILL require some sort of ASM, but forcing defend is a decent temp for it.

I'm throwing Warrior into the mix because there are tons of combat skills throughout the series that can be adapted to a Warrior job very nicely. Some of them can be found in FFTA/A2 in the form of the Hume Soldier & Bangaa Warrior. Beside, the "Apprentice Warrior" (a.k.a. Squire) leaves much to be desire and most of the skills they have are better suited to other jobs.

Alchemist, I see two options for this one. 1) A replacement for Chemist that also gets some offensive items. 2) My personal concept is something along the lines of a mage that can forge raw magic into more or less the same items as the chemist. The main problem is getting them a custom formula so they can adjust the z value used in the item formulas. Probably something as simple as a formula that sets X or Y to Z and then carries on with the normal item formula would be ideal. Otherwise they will only be able to emulate basic Potions and nothing else. The second issue would be in emulating an ether. It would be forced to use the same value as Potion because of the lack of Z manipulation within non-item skills. However, as a neat little thing one could set the MP cost for conjuring Ether to exactly 4x the amount that it restores making it an excellent support skill when you're in a pinch. I recommend applying the ASM hack for limited item usage during battles to make the Alchemist more useful.

Necromancer, I can think of a bunch of cool skills that could be conjured for these guys. The only game in the entire series that has one of these as a playable job is FFV. In that game they are like a weird summoner derivative that specializes in summoning the undead and demons. Some summons can easily be made by manipulating the Oracle's spell graphics, but more intriguing id the idea of having the make and mess with undead units. I haven't tried it, but in theory one could make a dead unit become undead and then raise that unit as an undead. It would probably be advantageous for the necromancer to also apply charm along with undead. There are lots of possibilities.

I thought the FFV Necromancer was more like a Blue Mage.  (More specifically, the type that has to kill the monster to learn the ability.)

Alchemist and Necromancer, very interesting.

Quote from: "SilvasRuin"I thought the FFV Necromancer was more like a Blue Mage.  (More specifically, the type that has to kill the monster to learn the ability.)

You are correct.  They also have an ability called Oath which is similar to the Call command from that game's Summoner. It calls a random summon out of Skeleton, Flamancer, Rajiformes, & Dragon Zombie.

Random summon, nice ^^
So, I guess in FFT, the Necromancer won't be able to summon units as the maximum limit is reached, right? Nine units, I believe.

Warriors are very nice indeed. Personally, I think they should have weapon ranged elemental and stat debuff abilities (whereas for Knights, the ranged -Ruin abilities seem more fitting), along with maybe one or two abilities that are slightly useful but not overpowering for them to be considered bottom tier (like Heal/Salve/First-Aid and maybe a 2-paneled ranged rez with a slightly nerfed accuracy, similar in 1.3 with Wish).

Hmm, Vanya, your latest comment about Defenders sounds pretty interesting. Equipment break abilities... Would you like to see them as a fusion of the vanilla FFT Knights and Meliadoul? Swordskills that deal damage and/or break equipment? I'd like to see that happen, actually. Maybe a step-up from the Knight's -Break abilities, in that they are weapon range, but can break equipment AS WELL AS deal damage just like with Meliadoul's Mighty Sword / Unyielding Blade in the WotL version (where, regardless if the the unit is armed with any equipment, her swordskills can still deal damage).

Necromancer is probably one of my favorite jobs in FFV Advance. It was a shame that once you've obtained and mastered the class, your party was already fully developed and/or mastered with the other jobs. In terms of FFT, they can be made to utilize plenty of wondrous abilities. However, on the topic of reviving a dead unit and making them undead would be a hard task imo. With FFTPatcher, the way the reviving formulas work is that only one status is enacted within the formula, and that status is the trigger for it. For revive abilities, that's "cancel: Dead," so it'll be difficult to remove the "Dead" status on a fallen unit and legitimately apply the Undead status at the same time without a means of, say, an ASM hack I believe. (Note: By difficult, I mean editing a temp ability that would mirror such a task like this without ASM hacking.)

But the standard fare of abilities for the Necromancer would be powerful single-target elemental spells that also deal abnormal statuses to the enemy. I hope this goes through. They also have innate: Undead, which if there is a means to manipulate equipment in such a way that helps to aid with the Undead status I'd like to see that happen. Necromancer + Chaos Orb in FFV Advance was pretty awesome.

And, well, the Midgar Sworm summon could be used for an "Oath"... *hint hint* A lot of great possibilities with the Necromancer job.

Hm... maybe borrowing some of the "Hell" spells or whatever from Crisis Core would work well with Necromancer.  The three standard elements with some nasty statuses mixed in.

Well, here's a small breakdown on what FFV Advance's Necromancer had for abilities:

Drain Touch - (self-explanatory)
Dark Haze - Causes old and confusion status for all enemies.
Deep Freeze - Freezes one target with otherworldly cold. Causes stop status.
Evil Mist - Sprays all enemies with a deadly poison. Also causes poison (status).
Meltdown - Burns target with searing heat. Causes sap status.
Hellwind - Rends all enemies with cursed winds. Causes petrification.
Chaos Drive - Strikes enemies with the lightning of hell. Causes paralysis.
Curse - Causes various status ailments.
Dark Flare - Damages all enemies with a burst of dark energy.
Doomsday - Forbidden Dark Art powerful enough to destroy everything in its path (basically, a touch stronger than Dark Flare with a slightly higher MP cost).

I believe Dark Haze and Curse were the only spells that didn't deal damage. And Drain Touch, Deep Freeze, Meltdown and Curse were single target spells.

I'm not feeling the elemental skills for the warrior, Wasabi.
I'm thinking they should be more utilitarian with only physical attacks for their skills.
For example, stuff like, spin slash for when being gang raped, a very fast attack with low damage that never misses, an attack that misses often but hits real hard, perhaps a two-hit attack with a CT, things like that.

BTW, FFT seriously needs a custom formula with adjustable hit rate & weapon based damage.

My notion of defenders wouldn't be so much a Meliadoul fusion as a slow tank unit with the weapon ranged break skills and some good support abilities like phalanx which would give all surrounding units the defend status, or an earthquake ability that can disrupt charge, defend, & performing of surrounding units.

I really like the necromancy spells from FFV. There's room for another 6 skills, so the 4 summons and a couple undead related skills would fit. Now as for the raising undead thing, it would have to be a two stage process. One spell would add undead & charm to a dead unit and another would revive them. This would of course require that certain status effects be modified to allow stacking on dead & undead status. The revival spell could be a moderate raise spell with power somewhere between Raise and Araise. This would give them the advantage of being able to function as a partial support unit. There are also a variety of spells that can be made to only affect undead units using the Seal formula. Like a spell that has a high rate of charming undead.

Edit: Had an idea for the Alchemist. I call it 'Full Metal' Alchemist. It would use the Geomancy menu type and have custom attack spells with AOE and a couple of healing spells for support. This largely depends on weather the Geomancy set will allow AOE to be cast around a the target, of course.

I understand, Vanya. I was speaking in part for FFTA's equipment, such as light swords, blades and broadswords. Thinking that the Warrior would be a small fusion between the Hume Squire, Bangaa Warrior, Mog Knight and Hume Fighter, I just came up with this idea. And also, the Warrior in past traditions of the FF genre relied on elemental weapons to lead the battle, which in most cases were either Knightswords or not, so I thought a better method was just making them elemental attacks with a weapon range, that deal weapon damage.

However, wasn't there a glitch involving "Wild Shot" and "Aimed Blow" that was abusable in 1.3? I believe it may have been Wild Shot. To keep this from happening instead of a low accuracy / high attack power ability, why not one that deals a hard blow but injures the user as well? Spin slash may be a good addition as well, but it might overlap with the Monk's Spin Fist unless that is edited out for future reference on a player's patch. But, this ability can be fixed in having a better vertical and given the Minotaur's spinning attack effect to compensate (and maybe require a sword, who knows?; the Monk's Spin Fist can be made stronger to contrast).

I like your earthquake idea for the Defender. This could also be implemented as a monster skill for the Sacred/Sekret that can either only be learned upon hit, or is a shared skill amongst the Defender and monster. Also, if that is your flavor of the Defender, I feel that they should have an auto self targeting AOE 1 ability that damages surroundings with a chance of knockback, just like the very same ability that Defenders had in FFTA.

And one question about the Undead status: would there be a way remove the formua of randomly processing a crystal/treasure when a fallen undead unit has its CT go beyond the 0 point mark? That would destroy any need of having a second component to make them revive, and with the Undead/Charm ability, you can implement the Haste status to speed up their CT for a faster revival (just like in vanilla when a unit has an equipment with Always: Haste, they still retain the Haste status even when dead). Is that possible?

I like Warrior having physical attacks rather than elemental. Spin slash is a good skill using Spin Fist effect. Though, if possible, addition of a sword for the spinning effect would be awesome ^^
I definitely like the idea of earthquake for Defender.

QuoteThis largely depends on weather the Geomancy set will allow AOE to be cast around a the target, of course.

I'm pretty sure it can be done.  I can't imagine why it couldn't be.

Spinfist directly uses the attacker's brawn.  Spin Slash would rely at least half on the weapon.

Physical and elemental aren't mutually exclusive, Jimmy.  Maybe I'm just being overly picking about the wording though.  It is clear that you just mean you are against them having elemental attacks.

Well, I'm not really liking the attacks like Fire Blade, Wind Slash, Ice Sheer, Thunder Strike, etc etc.; just a normal attack with elements. I mean, its not that I don't like elemental attacks but have some physicals too, non-element, just purely skills, Spin Slash for example. Some elemental attacks are good but not all, in my opinion though ^^

Uh..Whew. Lots of reading I did :/

Read the Blue Mage..The Lancer/Dragon Knight.. The Mystic Knight..And the somewhat intro of the Berserker?

Now for my ideas for the classes, and my own I suppose..

Dragon Knight- Like Jimmyjw88 said a page or so back, Freya's skills from FFIX would be pretty good here. Like Reis' Wind. On FFT it could affect the user and the four panels around the user (in a + shape :/), giving them the Regen status. Even Lancet would work somewhat, basically putting Drain and Aspel into one smaller ranged skill. Not too sure about the others..But the Breath/Bracelet skills could work fine. And maybe some of Reis' personal Dragon skills might fit in.. This is just my opinion :/

Berserker- I haven't read too much of this, but what you could do is have some Monk skills for the class. They could possibly use Axes..They could also have a skill that gives them Berserk and Haste/Berserk and Protect (kind of like Red XIII's Lunatic High limit in FFVII) except it just affects the user..

(My own) Mystic Knight- In my ISO/Hack/Patch, the Mystic Knight is pretty much a 'Red Mage' type. He has a few Black Magic spells, White Magic spells, Holy Sword skills, and Dark Sword skills. But I'm considering changing him..Since he's a bit overpowered :/

(My own) Sword Saint- What I like about this is that it's a 'Unique' class and the sprite is none other than Beatrix from FFIX (Thanks to whomever made the awesome sprite). I gave her Shock, Climhazzard, Blade Beam, The four Divine Knight skills, some White Mage spells and a few other skills.

(My own) Guardian- This class has the four Destroy Sword skills (Ruin), Protect/Shell 2, Wall, either Cure 3 or Cure 4, and Weapon Break, Helmet Break, and Armor Break..The class works out quite well, since I also added damage to the Ruin skills so they're not just 'Debuffs'

And those are my ideas.. Any opinions will help ^^;

I like your idea for the Dragoon. It seems to have some skills that correlate with some of the dragon-type blue magicks in other FF games. It is mostly what I originally thought a Dragoon should be in FFT.

Your Mystic Knight seems enough like a Red Mage to just be called a Red Mage, and yes, a bit over powered.

You basically have Beatrix + Paladin for the Sword Saint, and Guardian is like an over powered Paladin.
They're both good ideas as special or guest units, but way too strong for generics.

Yeah thanks. ^^

I've been working on replacing the Geomancer with more of a 'Melee' type class, but I keep having problems with the 'Terrain Panels'..

For Example: Replacing Pitfall with a skill that forces the target into Defend status (I changed it so 'Defending' characters can't attack back, giving the skill a use) but at first it wouldn't work, but I'm going to try to change a few things then I'll ask for help :/

As for the Mystic Knight/Red Mage, I may make him into a sort of 'Beowulf' type class, except with ranged spells (Like Fire 3, hitting one panel) rather than Status skills. I'm probably going to keep the 'Dark Sword' skill though, so he can recover MP rather than using the somewhat hard to get Ethers (in the beginning).

Oh and as for the Necromancer idea above, I like all the different views, but they all seem to be the same. The class could have summon(Oath) spells like Midgar Zolom, and possibly even Lich and Cyclops (since they are kind of un-used and seem perfect for Necromancer) Hell, even a nerfed Zodiac would be possibly good for it. As for the other skills, Wasabi's ideas are pretty good.

(A side-note)
I made a generic 'Blue Mage' type class, where he(or she) has Monster Skills, but can learn them on hit rather than only by JP. I know the Blue Mage thing was pretty much talked over already, but doing it on hit (or having above average JP costs for the skills) sounds perfect and true to the Final Fantasy franchise  

Hm... yank one of the magic gun formulas and do some fiddling to create an Oath ability to cast Midgar Zolom, Lich, or Cyclops?  I'm not sure what all can be done with those formulas.

If you do that, you'll probably have to make it into a weapon. It may work as a spell/skill, but I'm not too sure. At the very least, you could do it for a weapon (like a Rod/Staff). Or maybe even a Book or Knife o_O

well, to my understanding, since the spells called are dependent on the element the formula is assigned, even if the magic gun formula did work when not attached to a weapon, you'd still be limited to fire, ice, or thunder element. (most likely anyway, though I think I remember some talk about it defaulting to the ice spells if not one of those three). This may or may not interfere with the AI's use of the skill (since it may think that the spell is ice element, when the spells it calls are really dark element/non-elemental)

Ugh..I have a question :/

For my improved Mystic Knight, How do I make him do the little slash thing, like when Agrias does Stasis Sword, or when Beowolf does something from his skill set?

I have the skills, and they're not too overpowered (thank god), but all I want is for him to do the slash ._.

If you have the latest patcher it should be as simple as going to the animation tab and clicking the checkboxes of said skills so they're the same as one of the sword skills, it should say 07 00 00 on the right I think.

Oh ok. I thought t was something like that, but I didn't really understand the Animations tab :/

Thanks though ^^

*Edit*

Thanks so much! It's working just fine now  

Quote from: "SilvasRuin"Hm... yank one of the magic gun formulas and do some fiddling to create an Oath ability to cast Midgar Zolom, Lich, or Cyclops?  I'm not sure what all can be done with those formulas.

Quote from: "Skip Sandwich"well, to my understanding, since the spells called are dependent on the element the formula is assigned, even if the magic gun formula did work when not attached to a weapon, you'd still be limited to fire, ice, or thunder element. (most likely anyway, though I think I remember some talk about it defaulting to the ice spells if not one of those three). This may or may not interfere with the AI's use of the skill (since it may think that the spell is ice element, when the spells it calls are really dark element/non-elemental)

I believe the AI would be too stupid to consider if the formula is elemental based on the formula of the ability, since all it does is transfer the command to allow differentiating percentages between the tier 1, 2 and 3 spells the ability is assigned to. Like, say you're using the ice magic gun formula, it won't consider the ability an ice element based on what it reads from the formula itself but whatever the element the corresponding abilities that ability designates. As always, however, this does need to be experimented just to be sure (and you can always fiddle around the AI behavior slightly to see how this ability is utilized in battle).

This has been mentioned a couple of times in this forum, but a revamp of the Bard/Dancer classes should be in order. I've seen one topic concerning the Dancer that has been revamped and edited, and it looked pretty swell, but nothing about the Bard class. Suggestions?

Well..I made the Bard into..more of a Soldier like class :/

But the growths are the same..So I'll need to work on that..

(Because I couldn't find it else where..)

How would I go about downloading/uploading a patch onto an ISO? Like FFT Mercenaries.. >_<

Well you could at least give them draw out type area of effects instead of EVERYTHING so that they can't just hide in a corner.  Maybe boost the AoE more than the draw outs so they can cover at least a little more distance though.  As for abilities...  I haven't thought too hard about that.

You mean..Kind of like 1.3??

But I kind of understand. Make it like an 'Odin' summon range for Draw Outs :/..

I made another class...And this one is actually over-powered..

It's called the Admin class. With Zodiac's sprite too...The skills replace the 'Songs' for the Bards.. High Growths...Almost impossible to miss skills... But they have somewhat high MP costs..so it works....

*Edit*

Link to a video showing off Zodiac :/   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHMHZ2mWXdo

It's...pretty ridiculous

Quote from: "DarkxFatal"How would I go about downloading/uploading a patch onto an ISO? Like FFT Mercenaries.. >_<

Please restrict these sorts of questions to the help forum, please.

Sorry about that :/
I've been getting a few ideas for my patch but...

I think my classes are a bit over-powered (The Unique ones at least)
But I have a few plans to help with that, and I'm going to end up puttig back the Job Requirements for classes and most likely will be making classes such as a Black Knight/White Knight (BK using Black Magic sword skills while WK uses White Magic Sword Skills) Among a few other ideas  

Well, Delete was rather impressive, if I may say so myself.

For the bard, it wouldn't make sense to be able to sing across a HUGE map to support allies. I mean, Mediators can only talk 3 panels. So, it being of the highest (or 2nd) tier, make it 4 panels AoE. So where it moves, it affects allies? And of course, a slightly smaller CT for the bigger songs could be in order. You could even go with themes for the songs, giving them different effects. I thought about that a bit myself, it'd be rather fun to mess with after seeing what you can do with Dancer (like that one topic, with the elemental based dances and such. It works very well).

Thanks, though I wish it didn't completely destroy the field.. And it was only a single target attack XD

That is a good idea, because realistically..No one could probably hear a song from across a battlefield . So it does make sense to make it a much smaller range( and smaller AoE of course). It could work like Cloud's Limits, they only affect the panels, they don't travel with the characters...Though, then people might fully denounce Bards..

I'll try to work on this and upload a video or two, of course with added music since ePSXe doesn't seem to record sound >_<

*Edit*

The Bard video is now up..Though currently the 'AudioSwap' is taking place so there will be some music..

Bard *Beta* - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYVwbB3cDJk (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYVwbB3cDJk)

I'm totally in agreement with the Bard having AoE. It worked well in the main series for their skills to affect all allies, but those are much tighter quarters than in FFT. The Dancer's skills should also be limited to AoE, but with a larger range than songs since they rely on sight rather than sound. Or maybe making them work with line of sight instead?

Slightly extended range over what Bard gets in exchange for line of sight, perhaps?

Well, I was thinking more along the lines of keeping the maxed out range and making it line of sight, instead of limited range greater than that of the Bard. My thinking is that since dances seem to based on visual magic that they should work as long as the Dancer is visible. The battle fields in FFT don't look so large that one unit in a corner couldn't still clearly see another unit in the opposite corner.

While using line of sight isn't perfect, it emulated the effect enough. The full idea would require some ASM to make it so the target itself needs to have line of sight with the Dancer, rather than just the Dancer having it. Another ASM addition to this sort of system would be to prevent dances from working if the unit is made invisible. That is assuming the dance has too be seen for it's magic to work. If we assume it relies on the motions themselves, then this is all irrelevant anyway.

I'm definitely in favor of Zaen's suggestion for the Bard's songs: AOE of 4 on the Bard itself. I believe the range should be set at Auto so that the range is limited to the panels surrounding the Bard, therefore making the channeling abilities only affect in those respective panels. CT for each individual ability should be tinkered with to compensate for the range/AOE limitation as well. I'm not in favor with the the ability "following the target" as that would mess with the range/AOE implications set on auto.

As for the Dancer, I really do like the elemental dance proposal made from that one topic. However, being the skeptic that I am, making the Dances follow whatever that has been suggested in other Final Fantasies would be a higher priority than making it a fully original skillset. Concerning the line of sight/255 range-&-AOE suggestion proposed by Vanya, I really think that's a good idea for making the Dancer a more supportive unit. In my imagination, I feel that they should be more mobile and attack-oriented as a unit (partially because of FFV's Dancer with Sword Dance and such). I haven't really thought too much on utilizing the Dancer's skillset in this fashion yet, but maybe taking away the Samurai's Draw Out AOE and implementing them on the Dancer's dances would be a good idea. And from there a re-fashioning of the Samurai's skillset from their original self AOE 3 with something else would be in order. I mean, the Bard would have the advantage in terms of AOE and curative/protective abilities, but since they're not meant for melee the Dancer would be a healthy contrast with their equipment (daggers, cloths and maybe ninja blades) a tighter AOE and attack/status inflicting abilities.

But now that I've explained my previous statement in that way, I guess I introduced another topic in this topic: a skillset rehaul for the Samurai. If so, then I must say this: Mineuchi ftw! Zantetsu... maybe. Anyway, FFX-2 has a good dose of abilities to work with, but to have these abilities function with the katana-item system may be in need of some consideration (or a complete drop from the system in all).

Also, I feel katanas as an equipment are a bit drab. There's a use for swords, lances and maybe axes if you removed their random damage formula. But katanas have no real solid use at all if used as an "Equip Katana" support, other than raw WP attack power and looks. Maybe nerfing their WP in favor of elemental/stat attributes would be a good consideration.

PS: I believe you can make the Bard/Dancer move around the map as they're undergoing the channeling status. Maybe. It's been awhile since I've actually used these classes, so I'm a bit rusty on how channeling functions.

As for Zaen's suggestion (and your agreement on it, Wasabi)

I did do that for my Bard/Minstrel. You can see the video I made in the signature.. But I'm still working on it. I might have to increase the area effect..Right now, it's only...3?..Er...Something like that, but it works pretty well =/

But I have an idea for a class..

I'm sure a lot of people remembers the Hunter class from FFTA/FFTA2?

Well..I tried to recreate it in my patch..

I replaced the Archer class, got rid of his Charge skills.
I added Shockwave (using Ultima as the animation)
Invitation, Fire, Ice, and Bolt Arrow. Blind Arrow..Poison Arrow..

Arm Aim, Leg Aim, and Seal Evil..

I gave him innate Monster Skill, innate Monster Talk, and innate...something =/

Does the class sound good?

I did something similar with my Dancer/Bard.  Auto AoE of 4v6 centered on the caster, and I changed the abilities to standard charge times rather than continuous performances (just so I could balance things better).  I tried to keep the class roles roughly the same (offensive dances, supportive songs), but I also tried to diversify the skillsets a bit.  Mostly I wanted to replace the stat buffs and debuffs, to keep Squire's Accumulate and the Knight's break skills unique.

I like your idea Vanya, of having Dances keep infinite range but with line of sight restriction.  I just did mine this way to keep the two classes as closely parallel as possibly.

Gratuitous promotion of my own skillsets:

Dancer - rather than acting like the dances themselves have an inherent power to their steps, I'm attributing the effects of dances to the discreet use of various poisons, smokes, and mild enchantments, representing the Dancer as a manipulator instead of someone who can turn people into frogs just because of the way she moves her body.

I won't explain how massively I overhauled my job tree, but the two main requirements for Dancer in my patch are Thief and Wizard, and that's the sort of flavor I'm going for.

Venom Dervish - 10% max hp damage with a chance to poison
Sapping Aura - 25% max mp damage
Dusk Minuet - ~90% chance to add darkness
Hushing Pall - ~65% chance to add silence
Lethargy Mist - ~50% chance to add slow
Nameless Dance - ~70% chance to add random status
Water Rondo - ((PA+4)/2)*MA water damage (inspiration from Mog's FFVI dances)

Bard - Bards are powerful because their songs/stories inspire.  And, there's maybe a little bit of magic behind them.  Their two main job requirements are Priest and Warrior (overhauled Monk), so I'm treating Bard more like the badass Norse Viking Bards rather than dudes playing lyres in tights.  Not like there is anything AT ALL wrong with that.  Also I sort of built these guys to be alternatives to using Priests and Chemists as your main healers.

War Epic - heal 10% max hp with 100% chance to add defend
Mystic Melody - heal MA*2 MP
Soothing Song - heal 10% max hp and dispels negative status ailments
Uplifting Hymn - ~65% chance to add faith
Vital Anthem - heal 20% max hp with 25% chance to add regen
Myth of Gods - (MA/2)*MA holy damage, with chance to add regen (felt they could use an offensive ability, but only with a drawback)
Unending Tale - ~80% chance to revive teammates with 10% max hp

Oh, and I got A LOT of inspiration from Final Fantasy V:
http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Dancer_%28Final_Fantasy_V%29
http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Bard_%28Final_Fantasy_V%29

I included the abilities I used above merely to illustrate the point that Dancer and Bard can still fill the same sort of roles they did in Vanilla, but with maybe less of the silly brokenness of bland, map-wide stat point changes.  Regardless, I like where this thread is headed.

So where is, you know, the tutorial, one might ask. And thanks for the ideas :>

It's still under construction.  This thread/discussion/effort is still relatively new.

After this weekend I'll start making the tutorials. It's the last 2 art shows of the year for my wife and I. I'll have more time to work on them come Monday.

I suppose this is the place to put this sort of discussion as it involves Hunters, Dragoons, and other jobs.

So every so often I muse about the elements.  Here's my latest thoughts.

Fire ------->  Fire
Lightning ->  Wind (with both Wind and Lightning animations included)
Ice ------->  Water (with both Water and Ice animations included)
Wind ----->  Beast (given to abilities like Sidewinder, all Behemoths, Panthers, etc. set to weak against it)
Earth ----->  Melee (It would make Float rather desirable, though it should take much more to get it applied to someone in response)
Water ---->  Health (both healing spells and poison.  Humans would be made weak to it, undead resistant/immune/absorb)
Holy ------>  Dragon (given to dragon slaying abilities and all dragons and hydras would be set to weak against it)
Dark ----->  Gravity (with the Float weakness hack set to Dark instead for this more sensible coloration.  good counter to the newly empowered Float.)

Boom, you now become able to create weapons and abilities designed to kill beasts and dragons, or really, you could use the elements in any sort of way in that nature.  You could in a similar fashion make certain armors resist attacks from dragons.  You could also skip Hunters and make one element the weakness of dragons and one element the attacks of dragons to really give a dragon killing job the advantage.

Giving a psionic job their own attack type is also something that's crossed my mind.

That reminds me of how the elements/statuses were handled in FF1.

I must say that I expected it since the thread is new, but I was a little confused as to why there were several posts from Vanya that he added new stuff to the tutorial. Anyways, interesting read, this topic. I like the latest elemental idea, I'll play around with it for a while. it sounds really interesting.

Myself I played a little bit with a job that would have status attacks only, wide area with lower succes chances. I never used status attacks in my playthroughs, so I thought of having the succes chance be just a bit lower than oracle's skills, so they'll be used woth great succes. I just wonder if it would be severly overpowered. Range of 3/4, effect of 2, succes% of F(MA+~100) lower for good statuses of course.
What do you guys think?

Well it's no better or worse than an oracle, I guess, unless you're talking about having multi-panel petrify and such. In vanillla definitely op, but in 1.3 there's already the sage, which gets confuse2 and toad2, which murder everything.

I tried adjusting Beowulf's Sword Skills to make it target 5 panels instead of one. However when I tested it out, it only gave me one animation.

Example:
I targeted two adjacent bombs in deep dungeon with Beowulf's Petrify Sword Skill. The petrify animation showed up once but it petrified both bombs in the process.

Is there a way for me to allow the skill to show up more than once if there are more than one enemies targeted? (similar to Agrias's or Orlandu's sword skills...)

Some spell animation are hard-coded to only display on one target, the only way around this is to use a different animation.
If you get really creative you should be able to even edit the replacement graphic to look somewhat like the original.
The biggest issue though is that you will not be able to change the sound effects used by the animation. That is unless you figure out how to do that yourself. ^_^

Okay, so I'm new to this, and trying (keyword here) to create at least an extra chapter in the original PS1 game (since my PSP sucks when it comes to custom firmware) that involves the introduction of new characters and classes from a project I'm a part of.

The characters are all Kamen Riders.
So all of them have a powerful long range attack that can be only used once.
On top of that many riders have specific forms that only they can access.
Each has specialized weapons, etc.
If anyone's interested I can post the full list on the ideas I had for making these characters.

Sure, go ahead. After all, that is what this thread is for.

I've been working on a new job tree, based on a three-way partition rather then the default two way

(http://i159.photobucket.com/albums/t140/SkipSandwich/3-WayJobTree.jpg)

Some of the positions may not be immediately intuitive, such as summoner following geomancer, or why it now takes such extra effort to reach Wizard, but those jobs in unusual positions are there only under the assumption that their abilities and stats will be adjusted to compensate (summoner, for instance, will lose some of the more powerful summons and gain a selection of mediator-like abilities, this is in part because of the replacement of mediator with a gambler job to top off the thief tree)

Ah, very nice.

something I forget to put in that graph is the position of mime, basically, I had it set up so that once any single character unlocked every other job, they automatically unlocked mime as well (in other words, the requirements for unlocking mime were to unlock sage, samurai and ninja)

I'd be more inclined to completely overhaul the job tree rather than rearrange the existing one with just two or three major tweaks to the jobs.

Edit:  That said, the three branch setup is one I repeatedly turn back to in my musings, so I suppose I actually favor the basic structure of that tree.

Very interesting set up. I like it.

It's very interesting, indeed. Thief, Monk and Squire branching off is a very good approach...

Hold on, you've essentially made Monk the start of the spellcaster branch...  How does that work?  And how did you make Priest worth being a higher tier than Monk?

monk becomes the start of the spellcaster branch very easily, of course, in practice this 'monk' is more like a red mage that punches people in the face and hadokens everybody he can't reach to punch, but yeah. (in game mechanics, punch art is reorganized has a hybrid fighter-spellcaster skillset, with the more mystical skills such as wave fist, earth slash, chackra, and secret fist replaced with basic spells that fulfill the same functions)

Priest is worth it by having better healing, better revival, and better support ability, along with the ability to equip hats and robes.

I thought that was rather obvious. If there is a balance issue to this setup, then the monk can lose some power to compensate.

I have an idea for you guys to brainstorm over when you're bored and unoccupied.
What sorts of skills would you give to a branch of Dragoon jobs each with a summon dragon specialization?
The group would include the following types:
Bahamut, non-elem.
Leviathan, water elem.
Mist, ice elem.
Hiryu/Wyvern, wind elem.
Syldra/Quezacotl, thunder elem.
Kirin, healing.
Midgardsormr, poison elem.
Tiamat, all elem.
Salamander, fire elem.

give them a "breath/bracelet" attack, some sort of psuedo-magic to cast(based on their element) thats about on par with ultima (ramza-ultima), maybe some smaller version of what their summon does (Flare-Bahamut).

Hmm, I'd give them something a la sword skills, only based on their element and to be used with their spears...For example, a Bahamut Dragoon would have some various levels of a Flare attack, as well as an Aura attack, and a Rend attack (I believe Bahamut had all three of those techniques). A Leviathan Dragoon would have some kinds of Cyclone and Tidal Wave attacks. I guess all of 'em could have breath/bracelets related to their element, as well as Jump. Then again, if we did this each Dragoon would share one tech (Jump) and have only a handful of techs...

is it possible to make an ability "jump" instead of a skillset "jump"?

I'm liking this idea, Vanya. Special skills for each group.

That depends on what you would accept as Jump.  Attacks can be made with that animation, but I've not yet seen anyone manage to pull off a perfect copy of the vanilla Jump.  The best (and only) emulation I've seen has the unit not Jump until after the charging is over rather than obtain the Jump status while charging, the charge time isn't based on speed, the damage doesn't improve with spears, and the damage shows up before the attack connects.

Job idea:

Athleticist?
Striker?

A guy, or gal, who attacks with soccer balls and various sporting equipment and techniques.

I got this idea from my friend, a soccer fan, who told me this story of this one player who headbutted another guy in the chest and sent him flying.  I was thinking, what if you turned soccer into a fighting style?
One part parkour
One part Krav Maga
One part Keysi Fighting Method
Three parts football hooligan
Six parts crazy soccer player.

For weapons, this dude could use soccer balls, which he could kick or headbutt (is that what it's called?).
Image:  Guy kicks a ball at a dragon, ball bounces off dragon, guy headbutts the ball on the rebound and it nails a squire, ball flies back towards guy, guy bounces it off his chest and KO's a Dancer by knocking her right in the face, ball bounces high in the air, guy catches it.

Maybe a cricket bat?  Baseball bat?  No, that's too close to a staff.

Or maybe the whole cricket bat/baseball bat could be another job class, built in opposition to the Striker.

Holy shit!  New idea.  Final Fantasy Tactics: Sports.  Every job class could be a particular athlete from a particular sport.

FFT: Athletics?

sure, why not?

Oh my god it's Tidus!  Maybe I could call it Blitzballer?

Alright! Time to get off my but and start doing some of these tutorials.
I'm gonna shoot for 1 each week until they're all done.
Are there ant requests for which one to start on first? (choose from those listed in the first post)

how about that 'full metal' style alchemist you mentioned? I'm especially interested in that because it promises to do something really interesting with the geomancy skillset. I never really cared for geomancy, mostly because as is, the 'terrain-dependant' skillset really doesn't depend on terrain at all, as all the skills are more or less the same, so you really don't have to bother paying much attention to what terrain you're standing on.

I usually change geomancy so that the formula fits the elements being used. It makes you think more when using the class, and it gives each ability a build that makes it better, instead of everything being Even PA, max out MA for good damage.

OK, then I'll begin with the Alchemists.
I'm going to go over all major variations in each job's tutorial.
So, it'll include "Uber Chemist", "Item Conjuror", & "Full Metal" variants.

QuoteTechnically you can make an attack-only berserker out of mime with little trouble. Just set berserk to innate and give him equip change as innate. Since berserk triggers only after the unit is targeted by the enemy, you can briefly retain control of your mime/berserker and equip things (including clothing and weapons, if you flag those). However, anything equipped will be permanently lost after the battle (and weapons are lost immediately after use).

(In fact, it works even better since a berserk mime can't imitate actions, so unless someone removes the status effect, you have a less-glitched new class.)

From what I posted on another thread.  Considering that this class results in lost equipment (and money) every time you use it and has no skills, it wouldn't be (too) broken even with martial arts (supplemented by attack up or blade grasp + berserk allowing counters) since the AI is controlling the unit.

-cough- I forgot about this thread.
Anyway, I'd posted something about fencers replacing geomancers. The only time I've ever used a geomancer is for a physical tank, just because they've got a pretty good PA but Geomancy sucks aside from the status effects from things like Lava Ball. Vanya's suggestion was short ranged, accurate and fast attacks. I liked Nighthawk and Piercethrough from FFTA, so I'd thought about keeping that. I've also worked on the weapons for them by replacing the four flails with rapiers; scarlette, djinn flyssa, diabolique and femme fatale.

I'd also mentioned something about replacing the Dragoner with an Elementalist and giving her the geomancy skills, just at an MP cost with a faith based damage formula.

What are your ideas on that?

What I did for geomancer was to give them different formulas depending on the terrain and status effect inflicted, so that rarer terrain types and less incapacitating status effects gained better damage while more common terrain/more dangerous status effects dealt less damage.

Also, you can't give the geomancy skills MP costs (I tried this and failed).  What you can do, however, is give them charge times, or make new skills, one for all the natural elements and give those MP costs with the geomancer damage formulas (unfortunately, this won't be tied to terrain).

As for fencer, you need to flag all their attacks that use any weapon formula (00, 01, 02, 06, etc.) as sword only because otherwise, gunners could exploit any attack to deal 999 damage via the same exploit as wild blow from 1.3029.
What I'd like to see, though, is the use of the SP*WP formula on fencer for skill damage.  You also need MP dependence, reduced damage, or elemental damage on the ranged attack (Nighthawk?), Swarmstrike, and Piecethrough (or people will choose that over the regular attack button).

I have the elementalist tested already and everything works fine... huh. Everything is worth 10 MP and it all works fine. But I re-routed it and just put everything under Elemental into an All Magic that's never used.
And I realized the gunner thing just a few minutes ago. I'm working on it now. As for MP dependence, that's already done. The moves I've given them so far are Nighthawk (dark, 8 MP), Scream, Ma/Mi/Pow/Sp ruins (10 MP), and an ultima masher-like attack. I realize that's from the Assassin job command from FFTA, but I always thought a fencer should have it. I'm thinking the same thing for the SP*WP formula.

Hmm, maybe it's something wrong with Magic Sword (the skill set I used) or with the original geomancer formulas.

Must be. I'm testing it right now. The only problem is, I had to change all of the rapiers to the "sword" category, and that means that any sword-equipping class can get them. Which kind of defeats the purpose. :/ But I suppose it works. I could always change the knight swords to regular swords, which wouldn't be a super big deal anyway.

I'm planning to replace Dark Knight and hopefully Onion Knight with two of my own classes, but there aren't as many blank spots for new skills in the PSP version sadly. So I was wondering if I could take an already existing skill and alter it into a brand new skill. If so, what would I need to do?

Oh yeah, the classes I'm going to implement are; Asura - High power, close range attacks, low movement, low HP
Panzer Knight - Bow wielding knight

Well, there's nothing much to besides making your changes in the Ability tab of the patcher and then going into the skill set for the job you want the new ability to appear in and adding it.

What sort of specific skills are you planning?

Asura is going to have single target power moves and one or two close range AoE's that target only panels around the caster. Panzer Knight will have elemental long range moves and maybe a few moves that'll resemble the Hunter/Ranger abilities in FFTAdvance. And now that I'm sure of how to make the skills I'll get right on that and try to get a demo vid up.

If you're going to make ranger abilities, here are a couple things to avoid:

1. Sonicboom can't use the normal weapon formula or you'll have a massively bad exploit for guns (unless you change the formula for guns).
2. You'll need ASM for sidewinder.
3. You'll need ASM for advice.

Thanks for the advice, heh. I'll keep those in mind as I plan out the skills.


-Edit-
Ah, lame PSP version. It seems the Dark Knight skills are hardcoded and I can't alter them. Guess I'll have to change Arithmetician instead.

Quote from: "formerdeathcorps"Hmm, maybe it's something wrong with Magic Sword (the skill set I used) or with the original geomancer formulas.

I think I can answer this now.
The original geomancer (7E-89) and samurai spells (4C-55) are hard-coded by their location in FFTPatcher to their terrain/weapon dependencies.  Even if you change the damage formula, you cannot modify the dependence.  Thus, these attacks cannot cost MP (without ASM), even if you specify them to cost MP (in the Patcher).  (You can, however, make them subject to charging.)  Worse, like chemist, lancer, samurai, and calculator, only the specified generic move-set can both contain the required skills and be usable by generics.  (Duplicate skill-sets can certainly exist, except only enemies will be able to use them.  Similarly, you can delete, but not add moves to these move-sets.)  Even if you tried to set a special unit class to have his base job as the generic moveset (and not a unusable duplicate like A1 item), his ability to use the generic moveset will be dependent on his mastery of the generic job (as opposed to his "special class squire" job mastery).

thought i'd take a stab at the request for elemental themed dragoon jobs

Elemental Dragoons

Bahamut, non-elem, spear
Leviathan, water elem, stick
Mist, ice elem, sword
Hiryu/Wyvern, wind elem, longbow
Syldra/Quezacotl, thunder elem, longbow
Kirin, holy elem, healing, random effects, stick
Midgardsormr, darkness elem, poison, axe
Tiamat, all elem, magic based, spear
Salamander, fire elem, sword
Lindwyrm, earth elem, axe

Interesting. I like how they have different physical attacks instead of them all getting jump.

I think my favorite ability that I came up with is Drown, it's basically a single target wiznaibus that kills the target in 8 ticks, I would have made both drown and vacuum inflict silence status as well, but that would have required using the death formula, which would cause some strange interactions with the undead. Also, I only just now realized that the earth dragoon is the only one not capable of dealing elemental damage, which is probably fine,  since petrify>damage most of the time anyway

I was also very amused by Rat's Tail. ^_^
Agony, Jumpstart & Vertigo were also clever.

Nice to see both you and Skip Sandwich are doing well, Vanya.

I read through the entirety of the thread last night (though I admittedly skipped over Mystic Knight because, well, I have no interest in such a thing).

I was pleasantly surprised to see that such a lengthy amount of time was spent on Blue Mage, mostly because of the classes that I was trying out before I put "On the Skull of Dragons" on indefinite hiatus and disappeared, Blue Mage seemed to work out the smoothest, though looking over my skillset now there is a bit of redundacny. (There is also a bit of confusion since I put it on hiatus before I used TacText to label things....)

Anyway, among other things, I was most intrigued with the idea that someone gave of making Blue Mages like the Morphers of FFTA. As much as I dislike that game, I think that's a neat idea, if only because shores up the problem of replacing Draw Out. (Although, that also means that you're stuck with only 10 slots for 16 monster types among the cost and accessibility problems that people talked about earlier, though there are a few ways to circumvent the latter two issues at least.)

Though this may be answered when you get around to doing a tutorial, I was curious how you were going to address the potential problems with On Hit Learning that may occur for Classical Blue Mages.

Chief among those would be the potential abuse of one Blue Mage learning a technique and just hitting his allies with it to have them learn said technique. Even if you gave the Blue Mage none of the few allies buffies they tend to have such as White Wind (which we can't really duplicate anyway) or Big Guard, you'd have to make sure that the rest of the abilities they learned couldn't target allies anyway, which might have mixed results depending on upon what you give them. And, well, if you give them ally buffs, then it seems rather impossible to stop them from being able to teach it to others that have Blue Magic even though this goes against the Classical Blue Mage design.

Speaking of tutorials, how are you planning on doing tutorials anyway?

Hmm..I suppose now I shall try, eh?

Class: Holy Knight (Not like Agrias, mind)

Can equip: Swords, Shields, Armor, Robes, Helmets, (maybe) K. Swords

HPG:15
HPM: 145
MPG:10
MPM: 140
SpG: 95
SpM: 105
PAG: 40
PAM: 110
MAG: 30
MAM: 125
Move: 3
Jump: 4

Skillset: Holy Edge (Or possibly White Sword =/)

Cura Blade Mp: 16 Range: 3 CT: Instant  Effect: 1 panel Formula: Heal_F(MA*Y)
Life Sword Mp: 18 Range: 2 CT: Instant  Effect: 1 panel Formula: Heal_(Y)% Hit_F(MA+X)%
Judgment Edge Mp: 16 Range: 3 CT: Instant  Effect: 1 panel Formula: Dmg_(PA*(WP+Y)) 100% Status (No status yet)
Barrier Sword Mp: 14 Range: 3 CT: Instant  Effect: 1 panel Formula: Hit_F(MA+X)% Add: Protect
Shell Sword Mp: 14 Range: 3 CT: Instant  Effect: 1 panel Formula: Hit_F(MA+X)% Add: Shell
Esuna Edge Mp: 16 Range: 3 CT: Instant  Effect: 1 panel Formula: Hit_F(MA+X)% Remove: All statuses except Dead, Death Sentence, Crystal, and Treasure
Finality's Verdict Mp: 64 Range: 2 CT: Instant  Effect: 1 panel Formula: Dmg_(CasMaxHp-CasCurHp) 100% Add Status CasterinAoE: DmgSelf_(CasCurHp) NS (Status=Dead)

Now I do realize some things may seem either over-powered or even under-powered but this is just a..beta if you are willing to call it that. I have yet to test it, for some obvious reasons..

Hey there, Damned! Nice to see you. ^_^

I understand the concern with the Blue Mages. One way to manage the learn on hit thing is to make them have a reduced chance to learn the attack.
That might be a viable solution for a more balanced blue mage. However, for the strictly classic flavor, it would be fine to let the player xfer his abilities to ally blue mages since all the classic ones function in exactly this manner.

@DarkxFatal: That's an interesting concept for a Holy Knight, but it lacks variety. As is it is basically a heavily armed White Mage. You could even go as far as calling it a variety of cleric. I think the concept could work well if refined a bit more.

Quote from: "Vanya"Hey there, Damned! Nice to see you. ^_^

Why thank you. I hope you've been keeping well.

QuoteI understand the concern with the Blue Mages. One way to manage the learn on hit thing is to make them have a reduced chance to learn the attack.

Hmm...I can't recall whether I already knew that you could do that or not. Reducing the learn on hit aspect obviously creates potential problems with learning the attack in the first place, though. So there's that too, though I'm sure you obviously know if you're pointing it out to me.

QuoteThat might be a viable solution for a more balanced blue mage. However, for the strictly classic flavor, it would be fine to let the player xfer his abilities to ally blue mages since all the classic ones function in exactly this manner.

Really? I could have sworn that you could only learn Blue Magic from enemies even if your friends hit you with Blue Magic. Maybe I'll fire up FFV and test that out .

(FFV EDIT: Consulting FFCompendium's Blue Mage (http://www.ffcompendium.com/h/jobs/bluemage.shtml) page, it would appear that you are somewhat correct. All characters would learn the attack if just one person learned it. The only Blue Mage that actually seems to be what I'm thinking of is the FFTA Blue Mages. I'm not sure how I feel about that on multiple levels, though that's more a personal problem than anything.)

Speaking of testing things out, I'll help out if I can. Right now, though, getting ePSXe to work on my desktop isn't working (well), which is why I was using my laptop; the problem is that my laptop, of course, had its screen partially break last summer and it hasnt been priority to fix that. Additionally, my desktop computer has been screwed for the past week and even now it's rather slower than normal.

But, yeah, I'll try to help out if I can if you need anything. At the very least this thread is making me want to test things out again even with LD gone.

****

On the concept of clerical Knights, wouldn't that just be a Paladin? I mean, we're all kind of hurting for ability-space as it is. Is there any point invalidating Priest by making one with heavier armor and a sword if you aren't replacing it?

Just a thought.

I forgot that about the FFV Blue Mage. Good of you to chack.
Have you tried pSX? It's a much less troublesome if graphically inaccurate option.

@ Vanya

Yeah, I just noticed that before I went offline. I mean, the 'Judgment Edge' and 'Finality's Verdict' moves give it some originality but I'm still (roughly) working on it. I don't want the Holy Knight to be basically a Generic version of Agrias' class. Any suggestions for skills will help (as will names, I don't want every thing to be 'Edge', 'Sword', or 'Blade' x_x )

But at least the growths aren't so terribly broken, no? Like you said ' A heavily armed White Mage', one could go as far as to call it a Paladin =/
And this Holy Knight is more like an..outline, if you will, rather than an 'actual' proposal.

*Edit*

@The Damned

Why yes, I suppose it would be a Paladin, but Paladins are 'Holy' Knights, no? =P

If I have to, I suppose I could give it nerfed versions of Agrias' skills, or at least those without the Status effects and add Mp Costs.

Grr...damned computer. This was supposed to be up more than an hour ago before IE stalled on me. I guess I'll just use Firefox from now on.

Quote from: "Vanya"I forgot that about the FFV Blue Mage. Good of you to chack.
Have you tried pSX? It's a much less troublesome if graphically inaccurate option.

No problem. It's not like I'm doing it out of altruism, so no need to thank me or anything. Just remember that FFCompendium is an excellent resource for these types of things.

As for emulators, I haven't tried pSX, but I'll keep it in mind.

Anyway, unfortunately I'm pretty sure that I'm having problems more because I can't find the disk to repair my computer more than anything else right now. My computer is just really slow even with all the stuff I've removed and the virus protection and the defragmenting.

Quote from: "DarkxFatal"*Edit*

@The Damned

Why yes, I suppose it would be a Paladin, but Paladins are 'Holy' Knights, no? =P

If I have to, I suppose I could give it nerfed versions of Agrias' skills, or at least those without the Status effects and add Mp Costs.

Paladins usually are "Holy Knights", but not necessarily. (http://www.ffcompendium.com/h/jobs/paladin.shtml)

Since I'm not sure what exactly you plan on doing with your patch, I'm just going to state what I feel is obvious.

IMO, there are two vital parts of making new classes:

• Heavily considering whether that class steps on the toes of other classes that you aren't planning to get rid of, i.e. certain models of Paladin potentially heavily toes of either White Mage or Knight or maybe even both. This is why I personally frown on things like Red Mage (with a notable exception that I won't get into).
• Remembering that you have very limited space since we can't yet get rid of things like Charge or the entirety of Math Skill even if we aren't going to use them. Sure, there are a lot of redundancies, but even using those up gives only like 20 extra spaces. I ran out of space rather easily early on because I was trying to make it a point to give every class the maximum of 16 abilities. Even with a hell of a lot of giving things the same abilities, including monsters, I still ran out of space well before I got around to doing Dancer and Bard.

So, yeah, I'm not sure what you intend for you with your particular Holy Knight, but even if the abilities are single-targeting, it already seems somewhat superior to Priest because of higher HP, better equipment options, better damage options and instant casting, which in turns means it doesn't have to deal with the problem that still plagues even 1.3. in that higher CT spell-users need Short Charge so as not to get destroyed mid-charge.

Just some things to think about.

As for skill set names, "Holy Edge" is fine IMO. "White Sword" sounds way too generic.

@ The Damned

Well then...I don't really know what to say. From what it sounds like, having a Holy Knight/Paladin-like class seems near pointless. I mean, space isn't a problem, but you are right, it takes away from the usefulness of Knights and White Mages, even if I reduce the Hp and Mp growths/multipliers for it there's still not enough originality..I suppose I won't find a good class to replace Geomancer =/

The key to making that job work in the presence of the Knight & White Mage is going to be coming up with unique abilities that use the available resources in a clever way. I suggest continuing to experiment and head over to the jobs section of the Final Fantasy Wiki for ideas.

(Note: I was typing this before Vanya posted, but since neither of our posts contradict, I'm not changing anything.)

Sorry, I didn't mean to discourage you. Just I was trying to say that realistically we have (very) limited space, so it's something we all have to consider.

As for Paladins having to necessarily step on toes of White Mage and Knight, they can do so without making one or both classes necessarily ineffectual.

For instance, I would say that you could cut down on a lot of potential "stepping on" if you made sure that all the Holy Edge skills need a sword to function. Since Knight skills (at least in 1.3. & its variants and vanilla) and White Magic can be used with any weapons or even without them, this could be a key difference. The dependence on a Sword (or a Knight Sword) might be too close to a generic version of Agrias for you. It may also end up being too atypical of all other generic skills, which generally can be used with any other weapons; only notable exceptions I can think of would be Charge not working with Guns and maybe Jumps being strengthened by spears & not by anything else, even Martial Arts.

Additionally, and I say this knowing what a controlling bastard I can be without meaning to, I think that another potential solution would be doing something as simple as giving them more sword attacks (not even necessarily on the level of a knockoff of Agrias) and/or less spells (specifically that Esuna one--you could have anti-status one, but it should be a lot more selective IMO--and that self-sacrifice one) would help you get a better starting point too.

Simply taking stock of their skills then comparing them to another class's skills seems like a decent measure too. There will always be overlap (even if you dramatically cut down on the available amount of generic classes). However, IMO, no (generic) class should have more than half of its skill set overlap or outright be superior to another generic class at worst. Right now, your Holy Knight steps on White Mage way too much more than anything else; not sure what your Knight is looking like, but you could try to make it more similar to that too.

If nothing else, it's rather obvious that Paladins should probably have a lot less MP than White Mage, so you can also decrease the MP cost of the "Holy Edge" skills overall IMO.

Now that I learn more about this, you're replacing Geomancer with this? I thought we couldn't replace that class, though maybe that was more mix and matching. Hmm...this gives me a completely unrelated idea that I should go write down.

Anyway, may I ask what else you intend to replace or what, if any, changes you've made to Knight or White Mage? I'm of the mind to at least think about making a Paladin myself now since we're talking about it, so I could at least try to help if you want.

@ The Damned

Oh, Probably should I mentioned that little fact, all of the 'Holy Edge' skills will have Require Sword =/

And I probably will make Esuna Edge recover less statuses,(And of course the statuses that Esuna can't heal won't be used, should have mentioned that too)

The only problem I have is the fact that I want the Holy Knight/Paladin's skills to cost a fair amount of MP or else he/she could just spam Cura Sword, Life Sword, and Finality's Verdict (Though technically you could spam it anyways with enough Ethers/Hi-Ethers and Phoenix Downs/ another Paladin)

Yes, Geomancer's class is..Well I haven't tried to replace/change it yet in terms of skills, but it should work fine imo. Just swap at the Skillset and take the time to find said Skillset in TacText and name it.

Well, as a few people have done, I kinda used 1.3 as a reference for my patch.

Right now, (I'm most likely going to change it)
Knights have the 'Ruin' skills and I took out the Stat Break skills (giving them to Squires and naming them Soldiers), as well as giving their Growths/Multipliers a few points (Giving them a bit higher Hp and iirc Mp)

White Mages are the same skill wise and (iirc) I gave them a little bit of a higher HP growth compared to Black Mages (Like in FFI) as well as some increases to MA and maybe a little to Speed, I'll have to check later.

(As for the Knights I'm probably going to replace the Ruins with some more unique abilities, not too sure yet.)

Sorry to bring up an old topic, but as I was reading through this thread, I came upon this:

QuoteThe Jump animation can be used for an attack, so by all means a skill can be set up to mimic it.

I'm new at this, so forgive me, but how is this done exactly? By editing the "effect" tab on an ability? If that's the case, I swear I've searched up and down the list of effects on that tab and not one of them seems to represent the jump animation. I read on a few other threads, too that some of Worker 8's ability effects can be used, but I'm guessing that might have only worked on previous versions of the patcher, because after trying it with Destroy, Compress, and Crush, I just got those skills' respective animations.

@oneartplease
you're confusing 'animation' and 'effect'

Animations are what the sprite does when executing the skill
example- the sprite raising their hands when casting a black magic spell

effects are special graphics that run when the skill is executed
example- the flames that appear for Fire 1

animations and effects are edited differently, animations are a lot trickier to change, since the menu to do so isn't exactly intuitive and animations are more complex then effects (animations consist of three parts, effects only have one part)

Since we're talking about this, having finally checked over the new FFTPatcher, would it be possible to use the new Animation tab to give a skill Jump's animation without glitching? I know that we still can't mimic the mid-air CT charge that the Jump status provided yet, but it's just something I thought of when oneartplease asked.

@Vanya: The "Vana'diel" model of Blue Mage is in reference to the "Morpher"/uses "Draw Out" items type Blue Mage, correct?

Regardless, I was thinking about the model of Blue Mages earlier today that used items and I while pondering something I hit a wall. For something to be able to be Learned on Hit, it has to the exact same skill in the system, correct? If that's indeed the case, then do we know if there will be any glitchy efforts of having monsters use skills that humans would need items for. I never tested Draw Out abilities as an actual monster skill (and currently can't because of the aforementioned computer situation). However, I know that they work perfectly fine for things like Ahriman's using Counter Magic on you.

So now I'm unsure and confused with no way to test it on my own.

(Although if this does work, that means we have even more space to work with.)

Quote from: "DarkxFatal"@ The Damned

Oh, Probably should I mentioned that little fact, all of the 'Holy Edge' skills will have Require Sword =/

*snip*

I see.

Well, beyond saying that I still think that Finality's Verdict is unnecessary/abusable and that you probably would want a couple of physical attacks or at least a few abilities that aren't dependent on MP, I'll just echo Vanya's "you should experiment" advice.

(Speaking of abuses, though, I really don't think that reducing costs by for most of the abilities by 25%-40% would make them all the abusable, but, yeah, experimenting and all that jazz.)

@Skip Sandwich

Thanks for clearing that up! I realized that my problem was I didn't have the latest version of fftpatcher, so I wasn't even aware of the existence of the animations tab. Now to fool around with this...

@ The Damned

An interesting thing I found out, the 'Self-Destruct' formula doesn't seem to work for the fact of hitting the caster, I think I know how to fix this though so it's not too big of a problem. And yes, I will come up with some more attacking abilities.

As for Finality's Verdict in general, I might just make it so it does a LOT of damage instead of an instant-KO, however that might only be good for ??? status enemies because if it does 999 damage, the instant death wouldn't really matter =/

But like Vanya, and you, have said, I will experiment with the skills/formulas and hopefully make a balanced, mostly unique class.

Quote@Vanya: The "Vana'diel" model of Blue Mage is in reference to the "Morpher"/uses "Draw Out" items type Blue Mage, correct?

Not exactly, it refers to the FF11 version of the blue mage. Using a "draw out" style game play for them is just the best fit for them we could come up with.

Quote from: "Vanya"

Quote@Vanya: The "Vana'diel" model of Blue Mage is in reference to the "Morpher"/uses "Draw Out" items type Blue Mage, correct?

Not exactly, it refers to the FF11 version of the blue mage. Using a "draw out" style game play for them is just the best fit for them we could come up with.

Forgive me if this is blunt, but that doesn't really tell me much since I'm utterly unfamilar with FFXI.

Even having looked at the Blue Mage FAQ for FFXI that's on Gamefaqs, I'm not even sure how we would begin to replicate that.

What did you have in mind?

If I remember correctly the thought was to replace katanas with monster souls and drop the break rate to 0.
Then turn all the souls into accessories.
This would simulate the blue mages having to infuse themselves with the monster spirits and the learned spells giving stat boosts.

If you want more detail about the FF11 Blue Mages look them up at the Final Fantasy Wiki in the "List of Final Fantasy XI Jobs".

Oh accessories. I see.

That's actually an interesting solution. I was thinking of something else. Something that PXTimeforDeath had made me think of. I'll see if I can test it out over the weekend and report back here, double posting if need be (although I would hope that I don't have to).

Do you know of the Draw Out on monsters thing I asked earlier? I'm guessing it wouldn't be a problem if you put the break rate down to 0, but I'm currently unaware how to do that; unless you just mean not using Draw Out's formulas because IIRC using Draw Out formula for anything else does break it 100% or something weird like that.

*goes off to download pSX*

Not sure. I need to get more info on the bugs with "Draw Out".

I just realized that I've no idea how to make a .pff file (or even a digest) with the new FFTPatcher, so it's currently impossible for me to test things.

I've an order figured out for testing things, though, and like I said in the Battle Log thread, I've already reached the point where I would usually test things. That said, before testing, I've noticed that the Accessory thing might not work...unless the power of the Draw Out is linked to the Second Table, which I still don't think anyone's really tested out.

So I'm ready for phase 1...if I can figure out how to apply my test patch to the image.

I thought the general procedure for generating a .ppf file from a FFTPatcher file was to patch the FFTPatcher file to an iso, then use a ppf generating program to compare the patched iso with a vanilla iso in order to generate the ppf? I also think that FFTPatcher digest files are only generated when you actually apply the patch, at least, the only ones I have floating about are from patches i've actually applied.

First and foremost, since I forgot to say this like in the last post, thank you Vanya. pSX works like a dream (even) on this computer.

More related to the this thread, it would appear that my testing of the Van'diel Blue Mage model has hit a stopping point.

Regrettably, it would seem that even reducing the levels of the items to Level 1 availability still doesn't allow monsters to use the Draw Out skills. The Learn on Hit thing works fine as does changing the animation (surprisingly, though more on that later), but they simply cannot attack with it.

I guess this means that unless I'm missing something rather vital, the Van'diel model isn't possible without ASM hacking that's probably severe.

Speaking of things that aren't possible, I'm not sure your accessory idea will work. I noticed when working with Patcher that the accessories and weapons are on separate Second Tables and I think it's the Second Table that controls the Draw Out item use anyway, though I may be wrong. (As I said earlier, does anyone actually know what the Second Table controls now?)

Having not really messed with item graphics (but planning to if things would go well for once), I tried changing Katanas to another weapon type...and they become Picasso-esque abominations both when using Draw Out and regularly attacking. It's rather annoying since I've no idea how to fix this. It just screwed up with Draw Out, then I probably wouldn't really give a damn since I'm pretty sure the weapon appearing at all is part of the newly added animation table and that's just trial in error. However, if you want it to be a normal weapon, then well....

As it stands now, I'll probably do the classic style of Blue Mage, which is regrettable, but I had a back-up idea for using Samurai's obstinate slots anyway. (Bend to my will, damn you!)

On the "bright" side (read: ugh, I hate being optimistic), this means that Blue Mage can actually have more than 10 abilities. (Probably 16 abilities since there's exactly 16 slots for all 16 families of monsters thankfully.)

Since I need to familiarize myself with all types of stat growth (why couldn't it be simpler?), I guess this is welcome practice...that I've already started to put off since now I'm going to mess around with Paladin.

Quote from: "Skip Sandwich"I thought the general procedure for generating a .ppf file from a FFTPatcher file was to patch the FFTPatcher file to an iso, then use a ppf generating program to compare the patched iso with a vanilla iso in order to generate the ppf? I also think that FFTPatcher digest files are only generated when you actually apply the patch, at least, the only ones I have floating about are from patches i've actually applied.

You are correct. I realized my mistake about 30 minutes after I posted that, at which I could no longer delete that post and I was resolved not to post in here again until I finished Blue Mage testing.

My apologies for the confusion.

No problem. Thanks for doing all this research. ^_^

One thing with the Blue Mage I was thinking. What if you use a more traditional item system for most of their monster spells. For example killing a yellow chocobo gives you the item choco cure, which can be adjusted to have roughly the same effects as the monsters. The advantage would be making the skills equal to the monsters (CT and all). The disadvantage would be that for the monster spells you would have to kill the creatures and stock up their "souls". Then you can set the blue mage however you want considering MA and Mp won't be as large a factor.

I like the samurai idea, I just also thought that this would be a good compromise and remove a lot of would be issues when it comes to tweaking monster skills. You could take it a step further and have all monsters innately equipped with there "soul" so when they get booted from your party they leave it behind. Kinda messed up then cause it's like you're farming souls.

Your proposal won't work I'm afraid, at least if want you something that looks even remotely close to other Blue Mages from FF past.

Items are pretty much locked to being single-target only, have either a range of 1 or 4 with Throw Item which greatly restricts range even if you give everyone Throw Item innately), heavily restricted in both what formulas they can take & what variables they take and thus are pretty much limited only to status induction and bizarre amounts of damage.

On top of that, Item is even more of a pain because we currently can't do anything else with. Even trying to replace it just makes that slot bug out.

All we can do is make offensive potions using damage formulas.  Item slots are also constrained so we can't change the ratio of existing headgear, clothes/armor, accessories (unless you want to be wearing a fire robe on your head because you replaced cachusha).

Sigh. After a little experiment, it would appear that the Second Table doesn't have anything to do with Draw Out like I thought it would.

Damned Samurai. Why can't you just die gracefully?

Besides that, with regards to Blue Mage about six hours ago, I realized something that the Battle Mechanics Guide doesn't seem to provide answer for: For things that can be Learned on Hit, does anyone know for certain what, if any, statuses might prevent the learning from triggering?

I'm guessing Petrify, Blood Suck and Dead would (which is rather annoying for the former two considering the amount of Petrify I have, though that will change), but I also began to realize that things like Berserk possibly could too.

(With regards to monsters, I'm curious, formerdeathcrops. What attack did you end up giving 12 of your monsters to kill redundancies? Personally, I want the most neutral looking attack possible.)

Finally, Vanya, have you any ideas about how to get potentially get monsters to use the items necessary for Draw Out?

The monsters will perform the correct animation and the effect files (of making contact with the target) are similar enough (so I just used chocobo attack, which still looks reasonable).  It's just that such a compression will never have the correct sound file (so all the attacks will sound like choco attack), which is hardly ideal.  I didn't experiment too much with this, but I suspect wing attack might be better as a generic attack in terms of sound and effect.

So noted. I shall test it out while finalizing Blue Mage tonight. At the moment, I had used Tentacle (Morbol) as a the placeholder attack since I was going to at least consolidate it with Squid's version of Tentacle. However, the animation effect lines are annoying me and look out of place even if it the animation itself is not glitchy.

@Vanya: I've another question upon looking back in the thread. Earlier you had said that you had wanted to give the equipment breaking skills to Paladin. What did you intend to give to Knight if you took that away from them? (Or did you just intend to replace Knight with Paladin?)

Blue EDIT: Also, I've thought about it, and I'm not sure. Do we know how enemy Blue Mages act if all their skills are Learn on Hit only? Will they have any skills? All of them? Or are we going to have set their skills in the ENTD? Because the few things I've tried to do with ENTD haven't worked out.

Quote from: "The Damned"Blue EDIT: Also, I've thought about it, and I'm not sure. Do we know how enemy Blue Mages act if all their skills are Learn on Hit only? Will they have any skills? All of them? Or are we going to have set their skills in the ENTD? Because the few things I've tried to do with ENTD haven't worked out.

I've done some testing of this. Even if all Blue Magic abilities are flagged Learn on Hit only, the AI still learns abilities for enemy Blue Mages based on JP and Job Level.  Though if you're setting the Learn chances of blue spells to 100%, the AI will thus attempt to learn every spell in the book.  

To counteract this, you have to be very specific about assigning JP costs to abilities (since your Blue Mages are learning on hit, it only matters to the enemy).  What I mean by that is, if you've got an enemy Blue Mage with job level 3 (with a default 350 JP), you probably don't want to assign any super-powerful spells JP costs that would be remotely purchasable by such an intermediate mage.  You'd want things like (incredibly roughish estimates here, tailor to own needs) Goblin Punch at 50 JP, Aero at 100 JP, maybe Self-Destruct at 200 JP, and that would be all the mage could learn before running out of JP.  Spells like Dark Matter (say...900 JP?) could be made available to job level 6 or higher Blue Mage (1150+ JP), so they could learn one big spell and have a little left over for smaller spells like Aero, or they could choose from a large selection of more moderately-priced spells like Flamethrower (200 JP), Blaster (~400 JP), and Mimic Titan (~300 JP).

Since all spells are set to 100% learn rate, from the testing I've done it seems like skill selection is totally random, as the AI essentiallly attempts to learn all the spells at the same time.  So the only limiting factor is JP cost.  It's best to keep in mind then what spells you want enemy Blue Mages to have access to at each job level up, and match JP costs of those abilities accordingly, in tiers.

If you set no JP cost at all, enemy Blue Mages will (if I remember right) have every single spell, and thus be way too powerful and make it way too easy for you to learn every Blue Magic spell for your characters early on.

EDIT: General question: Has anyone figured out any way to successfully edit Ninja? Tried to make a Hunter class, with new skillset (one of Mustadio's Snipes), and it was fairly glitchy. Throw is such a bland, boring skillset that has suffered horribly since I normalized speed and weapon power in my personal patch (max speed is 15 instead of 20, highest WP is 20 instead of 40 -- makes for much lower Throw damage), and I'm just wondering if there is Anything That Can Be Done.  Thank you, thank you.

It would seem that formerdeathcrops has taken the time to greatly update the Wiki with regards to FFTPatcher and abilities. Everyone be sure to thank him/her.

Quote from: "Dormin Jake"I've done some testing of this. Even if all Blue Magic abilities are flagged Learn on Hit only, the AI still learns abilities for enemy Blue Mages based on JP and Job Level.  Though if you're setting the Learn chances of blue spells to 100%, the AI will thus attempt to learn every spell in the book.

So noted. Thank you very much for the information.

Well, despite having been mostly unconscious the last two days, it would appear that I've a working prototype of my own Blue Mage.

As such, I've been testing Learn on Hit to support various theories of mine, mostly with regards to status. I just finished another test that didn't reveal as much as I wanted because I made two skills unable to target allies. However, I did at least a couple of very useful things:

• Learn on Hit will not activate if the user is inflicted with Sleep, Don't Act or Blood Suck. In addition to Dead (and Crystal and Treasure of course), this thus confirms that Learn on Hit will not be able to activate in the face of at least four statuses. I would suspect that this "problem" also comes for at least four more statuses: Berserk, Confusion, Stop and Petrify. I will have to wait a couple of hours to test these out, though, as my computer and I need a rest.
• It would appear that Learn on Hit will not activate if you guard all statuses of an attack that inflicts only status. That said, if the attack does damage in addition to having a chance to add status that you happen to guard, such as with Blood Suck, even if that 100% chance if blocked Learn on Hit will still act as normal.

Somewhat related is that fact that apparently mixing and matching with Learn on Hit-only moves and Learn with JP moves in a list cause the list to not show the any of Learn on Hit-only moves until someone learns one. And then everything shows up for everyone (as long as their class is open, of course).

I'm currently unsure what happens if the entire list is full of Learn on Hit-only moves, though.

Quote from: "The Damned"I'm currently unsure what happens if the entire list is full of Learn on Hit-only moves, though.

Lots of beautiful, beautiful "-------------------" marks. An empty slate. Tabula rasa. It is glorious.

Quote from: "Dormin Jake"It is glorious.

Quote from: "Dormin Jake"It is glorious.

Quote from: "Dormin Jake"It is glorious.

No...not that phrase!

Nooooooooooooooo! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDKxpkcvL84)

*presses button frantically* (http://www.nooooooooooooooo.com/)

So...I finished confirming that Learn on Hit gets disabled by Confusion, Berserk, Stop and Petrify. Just something to keep in mind with regards to Blue Mage--it means no Mind Blast and no Blaster for one thing (at least without some changes).

Since I've shored that up on my end (sans on skill), my prototype lives! Ahahahaha!

Good work guys! Lots of progress makes me happy! ^_^
As for your inquiries, Damned...

QuoteFinally, Vanya, have you any ideas about how to get potentially get monsters to use the items necessary for Draw Out?

Nope.

Quote@Vanya: I've another question upon looking back in the thread. Earlier you had said that you had wanted to give the equipment breaking skills to Paladin. What did you intend to give to Knight if you took that away from them? (Or did you just intend to replace Knight with Paladin?)

I'm pretty sure that was in conjunction with other changes, but I'll have to have a closer look at the thread.

Quote from: "Vanya"I'm pretty sure that was in conjunction with other changes, but I'll have to have a closer look at the thread.

I see.

Well, I already made changes to Knight since I did give Paladin all the equipment Breaking abilities, so my version of Knight currently has 5 new skills--9 (which is all of them) if we're counting the changes from vanilla and not 1.3. Still, I'd like to know what you had planned when you have the time.

Ugh, my sleep schedule is even more properly screwed up now since I finally fell asleep at noon. So I guess it's just another all-nighter of testing and playing. If anyone wants to test me to try to test anything specific--I'm all the way up to Zaland's Chapter 2 in other file I've been using strictly for 1.3, I can try to try it, otherwise I'm going to try to start finalizing my job sets, consolidating even more space and maybe finally start looking into the Animations and ENTD tabs, which I've largely been avoiding and thus am completely incompetent with regards to using.

Oh, before I forget, I want to echo one of formerdeathcrops's posts since it only got posted in philsov's thread and not this more general thread:

Quote from: "formerdeathcrops"You can consolidate a lot more than that; just from a vanilla patch:

-1 Seal
-1 Blood Suck
-2 Small Bomb
-12 Monster Base Generics (16 monster classes, all of them use the same damage formula, one attack suffices for them all; the animation is always correct, the only thing glitchy will be the sound...only exceptions will be triple attack, throw spirit, leaf dance, and whatever move you keep to mimic across monsters)
-3 Elemental Breath
-1 Shock
-2 Bio
-3 Bio2
-2 Bio3
-15 Free Spaces (since replacing Teleport Send/Arrive will not actually glitch the game)
That's 42 right there.

Some more controversial ones:
TK/Oracle (+14+7 if you include Blind 2, Confuse 2, Lose Voice, Darkness, Despair 2, Hold Tight, and Threaten)
AK/Knight Stat Breaks (+4+2 if you include Circle and Beaking)
No Speed Boosts (+3)
No Invite/Steal Gil/Steal EXP (+5)
DS (+1)
Level Up/Down (+2)
Turn Punch/Spin Fist (+1)
No Stat Boosts (+4)
Cheer Up/Praise (+1)
Frog/Toad 2 (+1)
Death Cold/Slow (+1)
Don't Move/Chicken Race (+1)
Redundant Work Skillset (+3)
Loss/Stop (+1)
Allure/Charm (+1--though this is if you really want to restrict charm)
Wish/Energy (+1)
That's 53 more for a total of 95. Of course, 1.3 had its own uses for some of the above, so this number's too high, but you should get the picture.

Also, I'm going echo that for some reason monsters can't seem to use any attack with animation FFFF (such as regular Attack, any of equipment Breaking skills and so on), even though they will totally attack you with their "normal" attack if Berserk even if you give them no physical attacks.

(I'm admittedly unsure how this works on Woodfolk/Woodmen, Ghosts and Hydras, though.)

I've had an idea for a possible class for awhile now, inspired by the Warlord in D&D 4th Edition (And the Marshal in D&D 3.5), and I'd like to make it, but I just need to see if it's actually possible to.

Class: Field Marshal (Or just Marshal)
Description: Warriors that are often military commanders or battle strategists, they fight with their minds as well as their bodies, ordering their allies to boost their effectiveness, and attacking their enemies in strategic ways to gain an advantage.

Unlock: Mediator 4, Knight 4

Equipment: Daggers, Swords, Shields, Crossbows, Hats, Clothes, Robes

Innate: Monster Skill,

Skillset: Strategy

Reaction Abilities:

Support Abilities:

Movement Abilities:
N/A

Oh dear, your General unit class is going to require quite a bit of ASM.

There's no formula that attacks the enemy and gives yourself a status effect.  I'd rather have 100% cancel defend or something akin to that on enemies.
Vital Strike is impossible.  You can't have two separate percentages for stats.
You need a MP cost all of those attack + status moves unless you mean just to inflict the status at X%.  If it's the former, you should know that can either have 100% status infliction with attack or 25% status infliction, but you can't have 50% status infliction with attack.
Terrify would just be a simple ASM hack on brave up.  Same with guerrilla war.
I'm not sure how difficult Alertness would be, but since Zodiac made the global C-EV hack, he's probably a better judge of that.

Since formerdeathcorps didn't say anything about it, I would have to say that Terrifying Cry seems kind of broken, especially if you're going by the old discriminating Draw Out standard.

Any CT 00 skills are kind of "iffy" when it comes to trying to balance them/make them not abusable.

**

Anyway, since I finally got some sleep for once, I'm probably going to be testing all day. I'll try to test Necromancer a lot this weekend since Paladin seems to be doing well and I'm pretty much done with Blue Mage for now.

Edit: Wrong section.

Formerdeathcorps, I could always make the MP cost 0, like the Holy Sword Skills.  It's the 25% or 100% only that annoys me, I'd rather not have it 100% of the time, but 25% is too low, I suppose I could compensate by giving them all additional statuses they can potentially inflict, making the chance higher they'll get one. (Or both, if they're really lucky)  Anyway, I've already made edits to my former post about it.

The Damned, well, I may have some of the abilities reserved for a special character with this class, that'll be one of those skills, I suppose.

Anyone have any suggestions/opinions?  Especially about what class this class should replace, I'm leaning towards Bard, but I don't like that that one is only males.

Edit: Now that I think about it, it might make the most sense to have it actually replace Mediator itself, I'll go take a look at some things in the morning.

Ultimately it's up to you what class replaces what, especially since most people have no idea what everyone else is doing with there classes.

I did some rather minor tests with Necromancer, though I did enough that I can support that there will be no way to Raise the dead without some ASM hacking since Dead (and Petrify, much to my chagrin, but I disgress) will always ignore things that don't cancel them.

I also have to echo that the blank slate Blue Mage is something to behold.

EDIT: Whoops, I knew I was forgetting stuff already:

• Surprisingly, Shuriken don't seem be affected by the graphic you give them. I tried putting Bombs in that slot and Shurikens were still thrown...Shuriken that had weird animation effects. I wonder how you add in animation for those things....?
• Draw Out seems surprisingly flexible outside of having to use those particular item slots. It doesn't seem to care what formula (or range or weapon type) you use, though I'm not sure if it will ever break if you change the formula from those three, which could be a problem....

Since my thread was locked, here's my advanced idea about Marshals.  I've already changed and edited some things.

Name: Marshal (Replaces Mediator)
Description: Veteran warrior that acts as a tactician, uses 'Strategy' to turn the tide of battle.

Requirements: Monk 3 (Geomancer moved to Oracle 3)

Innate: Maintenance

Equip: Dagger, Sword, Crossbow, Shield, Hat, Clothes, Robes

Skillset: Strategy
Description:

-----


Reaction:

Status Guard: Defend against most status spells.
(I'll try editing the reaction, but I may have to change the formula on the spells.)

Support:

Train

Maintenance (Switched with Equip Gun with Chemist)

---------

I've changed it considerably from the original plan, I've taken out the CT 00 skill (The AI wasn't using it, and it's likely the success chance was so small it wasn't worth using for the player either)

The statuses on the strikes inflict 100% of the time, but they cost MP to compensate.  I've also made the AoE skills have a CT of 3 (About that of Cure1, IIRC) to help compensate for the increased AoE

I have a necromancer in my personal patch, and i just went with a normal mage build for him. (I'm using WoTL so excuse the changed skill names)

Bard- Necro (halves dark)(http://imgur.com/RIoiH.png)
Requirements-  Black Mage lvl 8, Mystic lvl 8
Equips- Rod, Staff, Book
Innate-Magick att up, Manafont
Skillset- Death Magicks
   Bio*   
   Biora*   
   Bioga*
   Death*   
        Darkness*
        Drain Touch
        Lich*
        Unholy Cross*


The bio skills have a normal formula like fire, blizzard, etc. and add status effects. Death has a lower CT, Darkness costs MP and is 100% darkness, Lich adds poison and Unholy Cross adds undead,poison, and slow at a certain chance. The skillset could use a few more moves but i ran out of creativity

I've got some ideas for your Marshal job.  A new power called March, Move Up, Move Forward, or something like that essentially its an effect 1 version of throw stone or dash, that does no damage and has a high hit rate.  Use the ASM hack to make that formula always push.  Then you can have your Marshal command his troops to move forward.  How about a skill like Accumulate but for your other allies?  

Finally, can the Marshal use his skills on himself?

here is a D&D style fighter class, part of a D&D inspired personal patch I've been working on

Job: Fighter
Sprite: Squire
Replaces: Squire
Equip: Sword, Flail, Spear, Axe, Knife, Knight Sword, Katana, Staff, Crossbow, Shield, Helmet, Hat, Plate, Chain, Leather
Innate: Defend

Move: 2
Jump: 3
Evasion: 20%

Abilities

Bull Rush: Deals rnd(1..6) * PA physical damage and knocks back the target, range 2v1, linear attack, direct.

Command: direct an ally's actions, set CT to 100, range 3, cannot target self

Warn: direct allies to take cover against incoming attacks, range 3, area 1v3, adds defending status, cannot target self

Weapon Break: attempt to sunder target's weapon

Shield Break: attempt to sunder target's shield

Head Break: attempt to sunder target's headgear

Threaten: attempt to inflict don't act on a target, range 3, talk skill

Reaction/Support/Movement
Counter
Equip Change
Maintenance

and here is the coresponding D&D style wizard class (in the patch, the difference between divine and arcane magic is that arcane magic ignores faith, divine magic does not). Also, maximum mp will be about 50 end-game (80 post-game), with in-battle mp recovery options very limited (in point of fact, Absorb Used MP and MP Restore might end up being the ONLY means of recovering mp mid-battle, which also makes the Half MP support more useful).

Job: Wizard
Sprite: Wizard
Replaces: Wizard
Equip: Knife, Staff, Crossbow, Gun, Leather, Hat

Move: 2
Jump: 3
Evasion: 10%

Abilities

Magic Missile: deals MA * 6 damage, range 4, unevadable, mp cost 1

Burning Hands: deals MA * 4 fire damage, range 2, area 2, linear attack, mp cost 1

Acid Arrow: deals MA * 4 piercing damage, may inflict poison, range 4, mp cost 2

Gust of Wind: deals PA * 1 typeless physical damage and causes knockback, range 5, area 5, linear attack, mp cost 2, unevadable

Fireball: deals MA * 6 fire damage, range 4, area 1v3, mp cost 4

Lightning Bolt: deals MA * 6 electrical damage, range 5, area 5, linear attack, mp cost 4

Blizzard: deals MA * 8 cold damage, range 0, area 2v3, mp cost 6

Wall of Fire: deals MA * 8 fire damage, range 5, area 5, linear attack, mp cost 6

Cloudkill: inflicts poison, range 4, area 2v3, mp cost 8

Polymorph: changes target into a frog, or undoes existing polymorph, range 4, mp cost 8

Flesh to Stone: petrifies target, range 4, mp cost 10

Magic Sword: deals PA * (WP + 5) damage, weapon strike, weapon range, mp cost 10

Spell Turning: grant reflect status, range 4, area 1v3, mp cost 12

Finger of Death: instantly kill a single target, range 4, mp cost 12

Fireburst: deals MA * 10 fire damage, range 0, area 2v3, may inflict blind status, mp cost 15

Meteor Swarm: Summon ten meteors, dealing (MA + 9)/2 * MA fire/blunt damage each, range 4, area 2v255, 10 hits, random fire, mp cost 20

Reaction/Support/Movement
Counter Magic

Great Minds think alike.  I was thinking about a D&D tactics game.

Don't think I'll do something quite like that, I don't have many ability ability slots to spare, honestly, and I've got some other abilities that utilize knockback.  Although, the Marshal class, as I said, was also inspired by DnD.

And, Skip, I'm going to have to thank you, Kage suggested I include one of your elemental Dragoons in my class patch, I took a couple of skills, added my own spin to them and made a couple new ones, and made up a Dragoon class of my own.

So, I've got some ideas to make my archer better and now that its time to actually create them, I'm a little torn and I need some expert advice.  I'm not creating anything new or groundbreaking here by the way.

So, I've decided to take my Archer to an assassin kind of place.  He uses poisons.

Arsenic Poison: Inflicts Poison
Methanol Poison: Inflicts Blindness
Chloroform Poison: Inflicts Sleep
Cyanide Poison: Inflicts Death

I've got two problems:

1. How much should I charge in terms of MP and/or CT?
2. Should I use formula 2D or should I choose formula 3F?

2D Does Auto-Hit Weapon damage + 25% chance to inflict status.  
3F Doesn't cause damage, instead its speed + x% chance to inflict status.

Anybody care to weigh in on this for me?  Also, if you have any better suggestions for names of poisons I'd love to hear them?

Finally.

Sorry for the two-three week wait for testing things, but I just wanted to finish getting abilities for all my classes. (Too bad my Dragoon doesn't appear to work at the moment. Damn.)

It would appear that you were quite correct, Skip Sandwich. (Even though your post referencing what I'm about to say is got deleted when the site went down.)

Draw Out will indeed automatically consume an item that doesn't use the Draw Out formula. I'm so very glad to be certain of this now since it makes Templar much easier to plan without it just being to whore one item that never broke.

Additionally, that same chance to break seems to be unaffected if you changed the type of weapon, since it will work if as long as it's in that slot, or changing range or any other stats (though, yeah, it unfortunately won't take MP and I haven't tested out CT).

So that's decided.

In testing, despite coming across a lot more problems than I had wanted to today, I wasn't able to verify the two last things I should have realized with Learn on Hit.

You see, it was only earlier this week that I had realized that I should have tested Learn on Hit with Cancel Dead as well as Learn on Hit with weapon procs--not that you want to get poked by a Dragon Whisker just to learn on Fire Breath.

I guess I'll try to confirm that later on today after I fix the 52 mistakes I made.

P.S. Rad's sprite in FFTPatcher apparently just gives you a really glitchy female Ninja that seems to be screwing up the first battle. Do not want.

Quote from: "The Damned"Finally.

Sorry for the two-three week wait for testing things, but I just wanted to finish getting abilities for all my classes. (Too bad my Dragoon doesn't appear to work at the moment. Damn.)

It would appear that you were quite correct, Skip Sandwich. (Even though your post referencing what I'm about to say is got deleted when the site went down.)

Draw Out will indeed automatically consume an item that doesn't use the Draw Out formula. I'm so very glad to be certain of this now since it makes Templar much easier to plan without it just being to whore one item that never broke.

Additionally, that same chance to break seems to be unaffected if you changed the type of weapon, since it will work if as long as it's in that slot, or changing range or any other stats (though, yeah, it unfortunately won't take MP and I haven't tested out CT).

So that's decided.

In testing, despite coming across a lot more problems than I had wanted to today, I wasn't able to verify the two last things I should have realized with Learn on Hit.

You see, it was only earlier this week that I had realized that I should have tested Learn on Hit with Cancel Dead as well as Learn on Hit with weapon procs--not that you want to get poked by a Dragon Whisker just to learn on Fire Breath.

I guess I'll try to confirm that later on today after I fix the 52 mistakes I made.

P.S. Rad's sprite in FFTPatcher apparently just gives you a really glitchy female Ninja that seems to be screwing up the first battle. Do not want.

Learn on hit only either only works with inflict damage/status or never with cast on allies (this was my test with wish).  Weapon procs do work; I remember someone basing their blue mage patch off of that and getting it to work.
Draw Out takes CT, but both the AI and player will lose charging if they use draw out and then move because the effect radius is 0 with auto (or linear, which creates the same problem).

As for Jack,
1) Arsenic Poison?  If you want something that rapidly depletes one's constitution, arsenic is too slow.  I'd pick something like snake venom.
2) Methanol?  You mean wood alcohol?  This is probably something far more flammable and useful for ranged explosive attacks.  If you want to inflict blindness, try using strong reagents (like acids) to the face or things that release corrosive or blinding fumes.
Technical issues aside, this seems like items that belong on a chemist so it shouldn't cost any MP, but those would either be 100% or close to 0%.  If you really have no other option, you could make them use up "katanas" that have been replaced by items (with no unit able to equip a katana).  Using Skip's discovery that a non-samurai formula means auto-breakage, and you could easily simulate throw item or something like that, but only if you want to replace samurai with something radically different and lower the number of available weapon types.
If you are seriously going to stick to inflicting damage with MP or CT, something like:
1 CT/5 MP for blind
2 CT/8 MP for poison
4 CT/15 MP for sleep
5 or 6 CT with at least 10 MP/25+ MP for dead
would work if you are not using damage.
If you are using damage from the weapon formula 2D, but Y=0, the above should also suffice if you are using inflict 25% status (which is done by flagging the separate on the status effect).  If you want 100% (flag random or all or nothing), the above should also hold as long as you replace dead with DS at double MP costs or at 1.5x CT costs (but keep dead).  If you're going to boost damage, I'd raise CT costs by 1 for each increase of 1.6 in Y or MP by 8 for each increase of 1 in Y.

Well, I went with Arsenic Poison because it wasn't super lethal.  Snake venom does a lot more then damage over time.  It causes paralysis, destroys nerve tissues, and causes organ failure.  In reality a good snake venom like that of the rattlesnake or black mamba would be poison, blindness, don't act, don't move, sleep, and death sentence.  Methanol poisoning is one of the only poisons that cause blindness.  

Here is the thing, I'm not particular about what I call my poisons but I want a resounding theme.  I chose chemical names because that was the only theme that went across the board for all four status effects.  I would be more then happy to go with another if we could find one that works across the board.  

What sucks is that I thought I was completely done with all of this job balancing stuff and now I'm all the way back to the archer that I started on.  I've currently got him with 10 skills; the Knight's 4 stat breaks, the poison skills from above, and aim which is formula 2D without a status effect.  I was thinking that the archer used MP costs to guide his "limited" supply of poisonous arrows.  Charge costs make more sense in the same vein of thought but not by much.  

I really like the Katana idea, but like you said, it radically changes the game.  Of course we could really go crazy and fold swords and Knight Swords into the same type and move Katanas into the Knightsword type.  For my patch, Knightswords all become forced two handed so its not that big of a deal.

As for the Draw Out skills they could be recreated but wouldn't be katana dependent.  It's actually a solid idea.  It also allows for some pretty creative magic arrows/poisons/alchemy items/whatever.  You could potentially create any kind of consumable whatever.  Its a really sweet idea that could again radically change my job tree.

By the way, what happens if you use a one of the draw out skills in another ability set?  Do they by chance become unbreakable regardless of formula?

You can't put Draw Out skills in other skill sets. Just like you can't put Items, Elementals, Throw and Jump (gr...) into other skill sets.

I unfortunately didn't get to test the Cancel Dead Learn on Hit, since the ability I wanted doesn't appear to work, so...yeah.

From Raven's stream, for healing to be learned (is possible), you need to use it on units who are not at full health.  That explains why wish didn't work for me.

Oh, that's what you had meant. I've known that forever. Sorry.

Although since this is a thread about class ideas, I was wondering, formerdeathcrops, how you got your Lancer to function at all. My Dragoon isn't functioning like I want it to at all; the same with my Blue Mage now since I tried to switch Battle Skill with Math Skill because I wanted to avoid slow down since my Blue Mage has quite a few AoE techniques.

@Vanya: What happened to the front page?

What did you do?  Did you give blue mage the skillset of knight (as in give Knight 15 Math Skill and Blue Mage 07 Battle Skill) or did you individually replace each skill of 15 Math Skill with each skill of 07 Battle Skill and vice-versa?  If you only did the first, blue mage's mastery will be dependent on your mastery of knight, and vice-versa.

Similarly, if you modify dragoon, you must set the new skills to a previously blank skillset number (like 50) and make sure for the first X skills on lancer, you have mastered the first X skills on squire.  However, for the sake of correspondence, the previous generic jump skillset must also be an exact copy of skillset 50.

Since we are on the subject.  I'm about to do something very similar.  I was going to put a blue mage in my party, until I realized just exactly how tedious it would be for the completionists to grind out 16 blue mages, and more importantly how unbalancing it is to allow players to use iconic blue magic like bad breath, blood suck, and self destruct on standard classes.  So, like you FDC, I made Reis into a blue mage and I've decided to give her skills to the dragoon.

However, unlike you I don't the idea of having to unlock classes with spillover jp.  So, I decided to move the dragoon into the mediator class, which I'd previously eliminated.  I intend on filling Talk Skill with Reis' skills + a new Jump skill which I'm not actually sure how to create yet.  

Now, my idea is that since blank skillsets on generics will have all of their skills mastered automatically, I need to either use Spill Over JP to unlock the class or I can create a job that makes sense for its skills to be pre-mastered.  I eventually landed on the Red Mage, which works just fine if you set the requirements high enough to assume that most of those jobs will have learned those skills anyway.  

So, while the Mediator his Talk Skill are becoming the Dragoon and Dragon Arts, the Lancer and her Jump are becoming the Red Mage and Red Magic.  Now, I want to make sure I've got this right.  I need to change the original Jump Skill to Default and fill it with the 16 skills I want the Red Mage to have.  Then, I need to Assign Skillset 50, or another blankset, to the Lancer and fill it with the exact same skills I put in Jump.

Do I pretty much have that right FDC?  Also, is there a link or something for how to create a Jump Skill in a Default set?

That's a smart solution, Jack. Too bad I find "generic" Red Mages totally against the point of the class system.

Quote from: "formerdeathcorps"What did you do?  Did you give blue mage the skillset of knight (as in give Knight 15 Math Skill and Blue Mage 07 Battle Skill) or did you individually replace each skill of 15 Math Skill with each skill of 07 Battle Skill and vice-versa?  If you only did the first, blue mage's mastery will be dependent on your mastery of knight, and vice-versa.

I did the second...I think.

I'm admittedly not entirely sure what you're asking me. Math Skill has all of Knight's skills & RSMs and Battle Skill has all of Blue Mage's skills & RSMs currently, if that's what you mean. I did swap them, but that was only because of the slow down issue.

QuoteSimilarly, if you modify dragoon, you must set the new skills to a previously blank skillset number (like 50) and make sure for the first X skills on lancer, you have mastered the first X skills on squire.  However, for the sake of correspondence, the previous generic jump skillset must also be an exact copy of skillset 50.

So you mean that to make sure that 12 Jump and whatever previously blank skill set have the exact skills even though I won't be using 12 Jump?

I was looking in the thread that R999 has in the PSX version sub-forum and you also said something about not having redundancies. What did you mean by that?

Quote from: "The Damned"That's a smart solution, Jack. Too bad I find "generic" Red Mages totally against the point of the class system.

I know exactly what you are talking about.  I can't stand jobs like the Mime, the Archer, the Squire and other jobs that either don't have skills, have pseudo-skills, or have skills you learn to never use.  I thought long and hard about adding the red mage to my job wheel.  I actually maxed out most of my available skill slots  I'd have to start cutting into monster attacks to add more skills and although I have a few ideas.  I don't think its necessarily worth it.  So while the Red Mage doesn't add anything new to the my job wheel, other than mana burn, he does add a rather unique feeling arrangement of abilities and equipment.

...Uh, I actually don't think we're talking about the same thing at all.

I don't have a problem with Mime or Archer (though I did change Archer, mostly because I have a hell of a lot more space than I thought I would because of "pseudo-skills" as you put it). Squire is just kind of weak, which is why I've sort of done a hypocritical thing to it, but all in time.

No, more what I was talking about was that a Red Mage pretty much makes gives you know reason to ever use White Magic or Black Magic secondary considering that it generally takes enough from both those classes that it can easily sub in for them on anything but perhaps an assassination mission where you need to Nuke something/someone with Flare or Holy repeatedly.

I mean, sure, your Red Mage could borrow from other Mages as well, but that seems like it would become somewhat more infringing unless it was a beginner class.

You can also make a Red Mage already in a way using a Priest with Black Magic, Equip Sword and whatever Movement and Reaction. That's more what I was getting at.

*goes back to working on Templar*

Well stated, Damned.  Yeah, I call the Archer's skills pseudo skills because while they take up space they aren't really more interesting then a basic attack.  My Red Mage borrows from the Priest, Wizard, Oracle, and Time Mage.  It's a combination of all four mage classes.  It just takes 3 to 4 spells from each class, but none of the really epic ones.  My red mage won't be an effective replacement for any of the other jobs.  I'm still debating on whether to give the cure, ice, thunder, and fire or cure 2, fire 2, ice 2, and thunder 2.

I would love to hear what you did with the Squire.  You should PM me about it if you don't want to post about it.

I have red mages that are hardly generic but are clear syntheses of all the other mage types.  It hits in elements not used by black magic (which are weaker because they can only be boosted by 108 Gems and have fewer absorptions), inflicts status effects that are different than oracle, and heals better status effects than WM, but without AoE.  That and they have a 1.3 Rafa/Malak style instant random multi-hit spell.
As for squire, I made wish the only instant cure spell that was any good, heal the only decent early game poison remover, and gave them mind/power break.

QuoteSo you mean that to make sure that 12 Jump and whatever previously blank skill set have the exact skills even though I won't be using 12 Jump?

I was looking in the thread that R999 has in the PSX version sub-forum and you also said something about not having redundancies. What did you mean by that?

Exactly.  Not having redundancies was the idea that you couldn't have a special unit class and a generic unit class share the same skillset because then, the special unit class' mastery of his base class would be tied to his mastery of that generic unit class.

@Jack: Nothing special really. There more of a preview class with sort of an Onion Knight feel. You'll see what I meant when I called myself a hypocrite.

@Former: I see. Any ideas on what would be causing the current Blue Mage problem then?

Also, do you know of any problems if a special unit class shared the same skillset with Squire (like Ramza)? I'm guessing nothing since Ramza's that way by default really, but since we're changing so much around....

Quote from: "Jack of All Trades"Since we are on the subject.  I'm about to do something very similar.  I was going to put a blue mage in my party, until I realized just exactly how tedious it would be for the completionists to grind out 16 blue mages, and more importantly how unbalancing it is to allow players to use iconic blue magic like bad breath, blood suck, and self destruct on standard classes.  So, like you FDC, I made Reis into a blue mage and I've decided to give her skills to the dragoon.

However, unlike you I don't the idea of having to unlock classes with spillover jp.  So, I decided to move the dragoon into the mediator class, which I'd previously eliminated.  I intend on filling Talk Skill with Reis' skills + a new Jump skill which I'm not actually sure how to create yet.  

Now, my idea is that since blank skillsets on generics will have all of their skills mastered automatically, I need to either use Spill Over JP to unlock the class or I can create a job that makes sense for its skills to be pre-mastered.  I eventually landed on the Red Mage, which works just fine if you set the requirements high enough to assume that most of those jobs will have learned those skills anyway.  

So, while the Mediator his Talk Skill are becoming the Dragoon and Dragon Arts, the Lancer and her Jump are becoming the Red Mage and Red Magic.  Now, I want to make sure I've got this right.  I need to change the original Jump Skill to Default and fill it with the 16 skills I want the Red Mage to have.  Then, I need to Assign Skillset 50, or another blankset, to the Lancer and fill it with the exact same skills I put in Jump.

Do I pretty much have that right FDC?  Also, is there a link or something for how to create a Jump Skill in a Default set?

No, you messed up the critical step.  Namely, if your red mage in the lancer slot has 16 skills, your generic squire must also have 16 skills learned.  Otherwise, your red mage will not learn whatever skill your squire didn't.  In other words, if your squire didn't learn his 3rd skill, in combat, your red mage couldn't use his 3rd skill either (even if your red mage learned his 3rd RM skill from the formation menu).  This is why I resorted to spillover JP and had a level 8 squire requirement.

The Damned, are you having the same problem?  Your generic squire needs to have a completely mastered skillset of at least as many attacks as the largest skillset you are replacing for you to be able to use any of those generic skillsets.

I could have sworn that I had completely mastered all active abilities. Did you mean RSMs as well?

I had also seen it said in the thread that R999 started that having 0 JP abilities causes problems as well. Is this correct? I had been planning to make Squire's abilities cost 5-10 JP uniformly anyway. I just would have preferred not having to re-learn them.

Although I think I just figured out an obvious way around that now....

Blue EDIT: Although, if you're including Blue Mage in this, then my Blue Mage has 16 abilities while my Squire has 15. So I hope not.

If you do, then FFFFFFFff--.

RSMs shouldn't matter.  The game keeps track only of the Xth move in the Yth job.  Thus, you shouldn't need to relearn anything if you replace all of squire's original X attacks with some other skillset of X attacks (since you have learned the first X attacks of Basic Skill, you will now know any attacks you modify into the slots of the first X attacks of Basic Skill with FFTPatcher).  As for 0 JP abilities, I don't think that's an issue, but you can test it for yourself.

If blue mage/knight is in the Math Skill slot, there shouldn't be any problems other than slowdown.  Check to make sure the action menu has been set to default from math skill.  Also, what exactly is the problem (what error message are you getting when you try to use blue magic)?

Oh, sorry. I meant "relearn" things with regards to what I'm doing with Squire, which is completely unrelated to what we're talking with regards to Lancer and such. I shall give that a try.

As for Blue Mage, the problem with I was having that when I learned few abilities that I still had left as Learn by JP, completely different JP abilities would show up. What's even weirder is that the abilities that showed up would work completely fine, unlike Lancer, which wouldn't work at all. (But I've known of that problem for at least a year and a half.)

It was too= the point where I had to test Pep-Up by moving it Paladin. (And then proceeded to find that it worked, but didn't work like how I wanted it to due to the status not being 100%. Sigh. So close....)

Were they of the same job?  Was this when Blue Mage was under the calculator skill set?

"They" being the techniques? If so, then yes. Choco Cure would be learned instead of Pep-up and Aqua Rake instead of Trine. I forgot what replaced Aeroga/Aero 2. I think it might have become Fire Breath.

And, no, this is with Calculator using the Battle Skill Set.

What's even weirder is that the Fire Breath I didn't learn I could teach, so...yeah.

Did you perchance put the learn by hit moves before the learn by JP moves when you configured the skillset?

No. The Blue Mage skill set is currently ordered directly in order that the sixteen monsters are in vanilla, so Chocobo to Goblin to Bomb all the way down to Dragon and Hydra. (This will doubtless change up a bit considering how much I've tried to change monsters. For example, Bombs...aren't going to be beginning monsters anymore, for the player's sake.)

So, they were more or less interspersed: 3 Learn by JP abilities within 13 Learn on Hit ones.

No, I mean the physical order.  Let X be moves of the learn by hit only variety and Y be moves of the learn by JP variety.

Did you arrange the blue magic skillset as:

X
X
Y
X
Y
X

OR

X
X
X
X
Y
Y

OR

Y
Y
X
X
X
X?

I'm willing to bet if you did not arrange by the third arrangement, you'd have problems learning your moves correctly because the formation menu may assume an interspersed Y-type move which occupies the 5th slot (for example) actually occupies the second slot (so you end up learning the second slot's attack in battle).

Hmm...I guess that makes sense. It was the first arrangement.

I shall keep that in mind when testing things then. Blue Magic should be fine otherwise then?

Regardless, thanks.

Front page got trimmed until I actually have time to put some of those promised tutorials together.
If anyone else feels like writing any I'll be more than happy to add them to the front page for everyone's convenience. ^_^

Classic Red Mage (simple amalgam  of other magic sets for abilities, with a physical leaning for equipment)

Equip: Swords, Knives, Hats, Clothes, Robes, Accessories *may or may not be able to equip rods and staves, the FF1 version could only equip the very weakest staves*

Multipliers: Average in all respects
Growths: slight MA/MP advantage, average speed, slight PA/HP deficiency
*exact numbers for multipliers growths depend on the balance point of your patch*

Move: 3
Jump: 3

Skillset
Ice
Ice 2
Bolt
Bolt 2
Fire
Fire 2
Cure
Cure 2
Raise
Protect
Shell
Poison
Blind
Silence


Ways of Simulating DoubleCast

Rafa's multi-hit magic formula (random # of hits between 1 and X)
Pro: ...no particular pros that I can think of...
Cons: doesn't activate all the time, non-standard damage formula, requires custom skills, no doublecast status or curative magic

Hydra's multi-hit magic formula (set # of hits equal to X+1)
Pro: hits double every time
Cons: non-standard damage formula, requires custom skills, no doublecast status or curative magic

Weapon Strike flag and Two Swords ability (casts twice when two weapons are equipped)
Pro: works with standard skills, provides a use for the Two Swords ability on a mage
Cons: doesn't affect MP cost, makes Magic Attack UP obsolete
Possible Work-around: double mp cost of spells, give Red Mages innate Two Swords and all other mages Innate Half MP

Persistent flag (casts at set ct intervals)
Pro: affects mp use (mp is subtracted at each firing interval)
Cons: CT/Speed progression makes it fire more times per round at lower speeds, and less at higher speeds unless speed growth is kept static. Requires custom skills.

:EDIT: added in weapon strike flag and persistent flag options for double cast, added in pros and cons of each method.
:EDIT2: added in the lack of curative and status magic options for the first two doublecast methods

I like Rafa's multi hit formula the best.  It's the least wonky of all the above options.  Also, I decided against giving the Red Mage Cure, Fire, Blizzard, and Lightning.  Instead I just gave her the Cura, Fira, Blizzara, and Thundara spells.  It allows for a greater versatility.  I also threw in Mana Burn to give the Red Mage something unique.

My list is
Cura
Esuna
Raise
Protect
Shell
Fira
Blizzara
Thundara
Frog
Haste
Slow
Comet
Drain
Osmose
Sleep
Mana Burn

See, the problem I have with Red Magic is that for some reason everyone wants to give it Raise even though that's pretty much the only thing that White Magic would have over Red Magic (since Holy is rather overrated in most instances) AND Classic Red Mages never got Raise/Life (http://www.ffcompendium.com/h/jobs/redmage.shtml)--Red Wizards did, though.

IMO, going straight off of vanilla & 1.3's minimal changes to abilities, if we're just sticking just with White and Black Magic, then Red Magic should have 12 spells:

• Fire
• Fire 2
• Ice
• Ice 2
• Bolt
• Bolt 2
• Cure
• Cure 2
• Esuna
• Protect
• Shell
• Wall

Technically, Esuna or Wall could be subbed out for Cure 3 since FF1 Red Mages DID learn that, but I personally think it's a bit much, even if it's not as bad as Raise would be.

You could also give them four abilities to cover Time Mage and Yin-Yang Magic as well since some spells that Red Mages did get as part of FF1 White Magic or FF1 Black Magic aren't in those skill sets in FFT. Red Mages could still get decent coverage with three spells from each, though:

• Fire
• Ice
• Bolt
• Cure
• Protect
• Shell
• Haste
• Slow
• Don't Move
• Blind
• Sleep
• Paralyze

You could potentially add Poison, Esuna, Demi (EDITED in for Stop after double-checking and seeing that only Black Wizards got Stop) and Confusion Song (or Silence Song) as fourth spells for Black Magic, White Magic, Time Mage and Yin-Yang Magic respectively that further simulate FF1 Red Mages. (Well, Poison is just there because Frog, Death and Flare are too powerful, really; the same with Demi since only Black Wizards got Stop.)

Otherwise Skip Sandwich pretty much nailed the non-Active Ability stuff.

Quote from: "Vanya"Front page got trimmed until I actually have time to put some of those promised tutorials together.
If anyone else feels like writing any I'll be more than happy to add them to the front page for everyone's convenience. ^_^

I wouldn't mind doing it if I had a consistent model that I was supposed to use.

I like the fast cast Rad Mage rather than the double cast.

(forgive the psp names, i like them more)

Red Mage(http://imgur.com/0frBN.png)(http://imgur.com/ofWhu.png)
Requirement-None
Equips- Same as mages except no rods/staves, just swords and shields.
Innate- +Swiftness
Skillset- Red Magicks
Fire
Fira
Blizzard
Blizzara
Thunder
Thundara
Cure
Cura
Protect
Poison
Immobilize
Bubble* (http://imgur.com/9P3oD.png)
Gigaflare* (http://imgur.com/6d3c4.png)

This is meant to be the starting mage, with basic spells. You would want to branch out to the other classes, but the innate Swift makes the class useful throughout. Other mages would have their own special traits.

Magical growths would be slightly lower than a black mage, and physical growths around those of a squire.

My elite Red Mage requires level 8 WM/BM and level 7 TM/Or.

Normal Received Damage: All Elements
Lower MA/MP Growth than most mages
Higher PA/HP Growth than most mages
4 Move/3 Jump
Uses all mage gear + swords
Aero3
Water3
Quake3
Curse (Rafa/Malak style darkness elemental attack that adds a curse status)
Foxbird (Nerfed from vanilla by around 65%)
Golem (Nerfed from vanilla by 50%)
Esuna 2 (known in vanilla as Deathspell 2, except that it now costs JP and MP)
Bio 3 (Learn from enemy demons)

It seems like everybody has their own idea of what a red mage looks like.

Hmm...I had just had an idea about how to possibly make that Vanadiel/Morpher/Item-using Blue Mage that Vanya had brought up. Ergo, I figure might as well, especially since I'll probably forget it as I'm not going to use it myself.

Okay, so the key problem that occurred when I originally tried to make Blue Mage using Samurai as the template was that monsters can't use the items for Draw Out, which I should have probably realized since Katana Inventory needs its own skill set due to being a stubborn bastard. (There was also the additional problem that is mentioned in the posts above this one about Katana to other weapons have so far looked extremely buggy.)

However, just half an hour ago I realized a possible solutions: Make every monster (or 10 of them, at least) like Worker 8 and Byblos and tell them to get a job. It seems like it should work, especially since there's easily enough blank skill sets that apparently flagged for auto-learn to make both 10 monster "primary" jobs and 10 single "Blue Mage" abilities, and then all you'd have to do is poach their asses.

I guess it was sort of a delayed revelation from seeing a Worker in Dokurider's recent video against Balk II using Phoenix Down despite the have somewhat been thinking about using something like that for at least a couple of regular monsters (too).

That said, there are of course problems, the key one being that 10 monsters you used would probably have to be made immune to Invite or else they'd act really wonky on the formation screen.

The other key problem I'm seeing is them being that Monster Skill/Beast Master becomes obviated for the most part, even if all of the other 6 monsters are able to be Invited. As I'm sure we all know, a good many of the RSMs we're stuck with now kind of suck as is, so we need as many viable ones as we can get.

With that said, Vanya had similarly mentioned that the idea that Blue Mages were originally said to use the captured souls of monsters (or something like that) to use their abilities. So, there was a question that occurred to me that I should have asked (myself) much earlier when I was still testing the Learn on Hit thing (though technically I never finished testing that since Pep-Up was/is a bust):

If the Learn (on Hit) rate for Blue Magic is presumably to be 100%, then has anyone tested to see/confirm whether or not Blue Mages can learn their abilities just by testing on the crystals of the monsters that have them?


It seems fairly obvious that Blue Mages can get abilities from other Blue Mages, but it seems like they should also have to the ability to just get them from monster crystals without even needing to get hit by them considering that Learn on Hit is solely dependent on the skills being the same and doesn't care about what job(s) it comes from.

That's more of a problem really (in my eyes), but it could also be an alternate interpretation of Blue Mages if someone confirms that such a thing is indeed possible. (Although learning things through crystal Only would be a huge pain in the ass even if you made all monsters immune to treasure boxing.)

In that sense, though you could combine the two ideas and have the monsters possess the Blue Magic (perhaps as their Monster Skill so as not to take up one of their precious skill slots, though that again obviates Monster Skill/Beast Master) even though they never use it since as long as they have it, you could learn it. In that sense, a Vanadiel/Morpher-esque/Item-using Blue Mage should also be possible since then all you would need do is also poach the monster so that you could use the item yourself. (Although in this case it would probably be best to have it available in stores since changing Draw Out's formulas cause things to break/get used up without saying so.)

Just something to think about....

Quote from: "The Damned"If the Learn (on Hit) rate for Blue Magic is presumably to be 100%, then has anyone tested to see/confirm whether or not Blue Mages can learn their abilities just by testing on the crystals of the monsters that have them?

Tried it in ASM'd because I was sick of dealing with an Ahriman.

Didn't work.

Considering that you seem to look at patches' system changes with FFTPatcher, can you thus assure me that Ahriman's Blue Magic move had a Learn rate of 100%?

Not that I disbelieve you, I just want to be absolutely sure (though I'll end up making a necessary change anyway that will obviate the answer).

Lazy EDIT: Never mind, I decided to look for myself. Look of the Devil indeed has 100% Learn rate.

Giving them skill sets would doubtless allow for learning through crystals, though. Hmmm....

Quote from: "The Damned"Considering that you seem to look at patches' system changes with FFTPatcher, can you thus assure me that Ahriman's Blue Magic move had a Learn rate of 100%?

Not that I disbelieve you, I just want to be absolutely sure (though I'll end up making a necessary change anyway that will obviate the answer).

Lazy EDIT: Never mind, I decided to look for myself. Look of the Devil indeed has 100% Learn rate.

Giving them skill sets would doubtless allow for learning through crystals, though. Hmmm....

I don't speak for everybody but I don't see this as a problem.  I don't mind if you get to learn any "hit by" spells by crystal as well.  It's not any more or less balanced then learning them by being hit.  It's just a little bit more convenient.  I've spent arduous periods of time trying to get hit by Zodiac and Ultima, only to have to reset in frustration.

Was messing with the animations tab and found a really cool effect/animation combo, 11 3C 00 combined with the lifebreak effect results in the caster transforming into a ball of energy, smashing into the target, and the re-materializing back at their original position, alternatively, 04 3C 00 has the same result, but the animation and effect play slower.

I haven't tested it yet, but I think I may have figured out how to create an effective Taunt skill.  Give the knight, guardian, paladin, whatever you call it skillset a skill that heals them for around 10 to 20 percent of their max hp and set the charge time to where it takes just under a full turn for the fastest speed available to characters.  The heal should be enough incentive to get the AI to actually use it, making it percentage based doesn't make it work differently for a magic oriented job (and it would be less appealing on a squishy character anyways), and making it as long of a charge time as possible without going over into the next turn keeps the AI from being too stupid with it while still keeping it long enough that they do draw enemy fire.  I realize this could be abused for a cheap heal, but doesn't that make it all the more effective at its job?  If a player sees an AI controlled tank job using that, they're going to want to take advantage of the charging status to inflict more damage than Taunt will heal while they're making themselves vulnerable.  Heck, depending on the balance of the patch, 20% might even be too weak to counteract the extra damage Charging causes.


Also, Skip... that sounds awesome.

I'm guessing that animation was tested with humans, correct Skip?

Quote from: "Jack of All Trades"I don't speak for everybody but I don't see this as a problem.  I don't mind if you get to learn any "hit by" spells by crystal as well.  It's not any more or less balanced then learning them by being hit.  It's just a little bit more convenient.  I've spent arduous periods of time trying to get hit by Zodiac and Ultima, only to have to reset in frustration.

Well, that opinion noted, it wouldn't help with learning Zodiac because IIRC Elbidis doesn't crystalize. (Then again, it's been forever since I beat him in vanilla and I'm probably never going to try to beat him in 1.3, so....)

Nothing new to report with regards to weapons yet unfortunately. I haven't been testing thing as much anyway, but right now I'm probably going to do weapons last since I'm going to end up using most of the few Item Attributes--why are there only 80 damn it--on Accessories and Armor. (God damn, trying to create useful armor within the limitation is such a pain in the ass.)

I do know what I'm going to shift Ninja Blades into (though I think I said that), so that's not the "problem" at present.

Quote from: "SilvasRuin"I haven't tested it yet, but I think I may have figured out how to create an effective Taunt skill.  Give the knight, guardian, paladin, whatever you call it skillset a skill that heals them for around 10 to 20 percent of their max hp and set the charge time to where it takes just under a full turn for the fastest speed available to characters.  The heal should be enough incentive to get the AI to actually use it, making it percentage based doesn't make it work differently for a magic oriented job (and it would be less appealing on a squishy character anyways), and making it as long of a charge time as possible without going over into the next turn keeps the AI from being too stupid with it while still keeping it long enough that they do draw enemy fire.  I realize this could be abused for a cheap heal, but doesn't that make it all the more effective at its job?  If a player sees an AI controlled tank job using that, they're going to want to take advantage of the charging status to inflict more damage than Taunt will heal while they're making themselves vulnerable.  Heck, depending on the balance of the patch, 20% might even be too weak to counteract the extra damage Charging causes.


Also, Skip... that sounds awesome.

Couldn't do that on mine, he already has a healing ability (Derived from Chakra) giving it a charge time... likely wouldn't be very good.

So I'm doing this thing where I'm going to replace all the special characters with O.C's. So far, I've thought of a few definite changes I want to make.
That is, I'm going to remove Rapha, Marach, and Beowulf so I can have a "Paladin", "Beserker" and "Cavalier." This is what their abilities would look like, including the specs for the skills. Note: I know some of these look beastly, but I'm also thinking of increasing the number of enemies per battle, and number of allies per battle, along with increasing HP and MP limits.

I've already implemented some of them into a current game and some abilities like Knight Prayer, White Wind, Global Quarter, Field Command, Supply and Reaching Hand have made the game almost impossible to lose to.

The Paladin is Rapha.
Heaven's Wrath became Knight Prayer - Increases Br by 5, Str by 1, plus Chakra, self only. Same formula as Chakra.
Ashura is still called Ashura, but is more like the FFIV Summon Ashura. Casts Protect, Shell, Reflect. Self AoE. Faith based for success.
Adamantine Blade became Knights Guard - Casts Cure and Regen on an ally. Can't target self, range 4. Faith based.
Maelstrom became White Wind - Drains HP from an enemy, hits up to 3 times. Range 3. Same formula as Climhazzard.
Celestial Void became Cosmic Justice - Hits one enemy for Lost HP, like Shock.
Divinity became Deity's Faith - Damages one enemies HP and MP for max MP, depletes MP of self to zero. Requires High Faith and MA like BM spells.
Paladin has innate Cup of Life, equips Swords, Knightswords, Armor, Helmets and Robes. He's male.

Beserker is Marach
Hell's Wrath became Knuckle Bust. It deals random damage and reduces opponents Str by 2. Same formula as attacking with an Axe.
Nether Ashura became Rage Rush. Hits an enemy twice. Basic PA*WP Attack.
Nether Blade became Volcano Fury. Requires charging, but increases Str by 3. CT time of 32.
Nether Maelstrom became Global Quarter. Hits like a Summon spell, but is based on PA, can't hit floating. Can cause Stop, Blind, and Immobilize. Same formula as "Split Punch".
Corporeal Void became War Sanity. Causes Beserk, Haste, Protect, increases Str by 2, causes 25% dmg to the Beserker of current HP. 100% on all aspects.
Impiety became Ares' End. Instantly kills one opponent, also kills user. 100%.
Beserker has innate Attack Boost, equips Daggers, Axes, Clothing. Can also equip The Ribbon and Bandannas.

And finally, my Cavalier.
Innate Swiftness.
Now, Beowulf usually has like 16 attacks. I removed most.
Throw Axe - Same as Ninja Throw Axe
Throw Spear - Same.
Leap Crush - Same as Jump Vert 6
Sky Crunch - Same as Jump Horzt 8
Field Command - 100% Quick, same MP cost. Used to move him around the field quickly.
Battle Statue - Causes Immobilize and Disable on selected enemy, same formula as Arm Shot or Leg Shot.
Supply - Uses a "Megalixer" on all surrounding allies, can only be used once per battle.(So far, I did this by removing Echo Screen from Chemist and making it this. They're super expensive at 15000... I don't know how else to make this only be used once per battle.)
I want to give the Cavalier a special Support Command in replace of Defend. It allows him to always "Throw" his equipped Weapon. "Reaching Hand" increases his attack distance by two panels and one horizontally. So if he's got a Spear equipped instead of a Sword or Axe, he can hit 4 panels, or 3 for Sword/Axe -- Is this possible? Cavalier can equip Swords, Polearms, Axes, Helmets, Hats, Armors.

QuoteI'm also thinking of increasing the number of enemies per battle, and number of allies per battle, along with increasing HP and MP limits.

Unless you're talking about soft caps for the HP and MP limits, what you're describing is impossible.  The only way to allow over 999 HP and/or MP is the ??? status, and that status screws up with equipment.  So either no higher HP and MP limit... or no equipment.  Additionally the maps have an annoyingly constrictive limits on how many sprites there can be in a fight.  I think it gets to maybe 8 usually...?  It varies from map to map.  Considering that you have to assume the player will be using five distinct sprites and that leaves you with only 3 sprites for the enemies.  As far as I know, no one has found a way to improve those limitations.

QuoteI've already implemented some of them into a current game and some abilities like Knight Prayer, White Wind, Global Quarter, Field Command, Supply and Reaching Hand have made the game almost impossible to lose to.

In this community, that doesn't tend to be considered a good thing.

Heaven's Wrath - How in the world did you mix healing along with boosting PA and Brave?  Or is this on your to-do list...?

You know what, I'm just going to skip addressing the rest for now because I'm getting a very strong vibe that you don't yet have a firm grasp of what we can and can't do, especially on the can't side of things.  I suggest you take a good long look at the patcher and what options it has at the very least before continuing with your ideas.


EDIT:  Reading how you described White Wind totally confirmed that for me.  Seriously, figure out the capabilities first, THEN work on your ideas.  That or you're a very skilled ASM hacker.

Quote from: "The HiemLICH"So I'm doing this thing where I'm going to replace all the special characters with O.C's. So far, I've thought of a few definite changes I want to make.
That is, I'm going to remove Rapha, Marach, and Beowulf

You know, that sounds a lot like the patch I recently released.  However:

QuoteHeaven's Wrath became Knight Prayer - Increases Br by 5, Str by 1, plus Chakra, self only. Same formula as Chakra.
Ashura is still called Ashura, but is more like the FFIV Summon Ashura. Casts Protect, Shell, Reflect. Self AoE. Faith based for success.
Adamantine Blade became Knights Guard - Casts Cure and Regen on an ally. Can't target self, range 4. Faith based.
Maelstrom became White Wind - Drains HP from an enemy, hits up to 3 times. Range 3. Same formula as Climhazzard.
Celestial Void became Cosmic Justice - Hits one enemy for Lost HP, like Shock.
Divinity became Deity's Faith - Damages one enemies HP and MP for max MP, depletes MP of self to zero. Requires High Faith and MA like BM spells.
Paladin has innate Cup of Life, equips Swords, Knightswords, Armor, Helmets and Robes. He's male.

Heaven's Wrath is impossible.
Adamantine Blade can't guarantee both the ability to always cast cure and regen.
White Wind isn't possible and by the name of it, shouldn't be a drain move anyways.
Deity's Faith deals HP and MP damage?  There's no reliable way to do that and if you are sticking to your original conception of 100% damage, it's not possible and is broken no matter how much MP is used.

QuoteHell's Wrath became Knuckle Bust. It deals random damage and reduces opponents Str by 2. Same formula as attacking with an Axe.
Nether Ashura became Rage Rush. Hits an enemy twice. Basic PA*WP Attack.
Nether Blade became Volcano Fury. Requires charging, but increases Str by 3. CT time of 32.
Nether Maelstrom became Global Quarter. Hits like a Summon spell, but is based on PA, can't hit floating. Can cause Stop, Blind, and Immobilize. Same formula as "Split Punch".
Corporeal Void became War Sanity. Causes Beserk, Haste, Protect, increases Str by 2, causes 25% dmg to the Beserker of current HP. 100% on all aspects.
Impiety became Ares' End. Instantly kills one opponent, also kills user. 100%.
Beserker has innate Attack Boost, equips Daggers, Axes, Clothing. Can also equip The Ribbon and Bandannas.

Knuckle Bust isn't currently possible unless you want an axe attack that reduces PA 25% of the time.  That's the best we can currently do, though Zodiac might soon release something on the matter.
Rage Rush isn't possible unless you want a 25% second attack.
Volcano Fury is OP.
Global Quarter would have to be an earth elemental attack, but is seriously OP.
War Sanity is not possible.
Ares' End is possible, but I'm not sure you can guarantee the 100%.

QuoteInnate Swiftness.
Now, Beowulf usually has like 16 attacks. I removed most.
Throw Axe - Same as Ninja Throw Axe
Throw Spear - Same.
Leap Crush - Same as Jump Vert 6
Sky Crunch - Same as Jump Horzt 8
Field Command - 100% Quick, same MP cost. Used to move him around the field quickly.
Battle Statue - Causes Immobilize and Disable on selected enemy, same formula as Arm Shot or Leg Shot.
Supply - Uses a "Megalixer" on all surrounding allies, can only be used once per battle.(So far, I did this by removing Echo Screen from Chemist and making it this. They're super expensive at 15000... I don't know how else to make this only be used once per battle.)
I want to give the Cavalier a special Support Command in replace of Defend. It allows him to always "Throw" his equipped Weapon. "Reaching Hand" increases his attack distance by two panels and one horizontally. So if he's got a Spear equipped instead of a Sword or Axe, he can hit 4 panels, or 3 for Sword/Axe -- Is this possible? Cavalier can equip Swords, Polearms, Axes, Helmets, Hats, Armors.

You can't have throw in the same skilset as non-throw attacks, especially in the same skillset as Jump, which has the same problem.
Field Command is OP.
Megaelixir isn't possible in the way you want it.  You can't have it heal all units unless you make it an unequipped katana with 100 WP (which would still have animation glitches), but that would require making all katanas non-equippable.
Reaching Hand is possible with ASM only.  Razele made a hack to do something like this, but he vanished before he implemented it.
"Throw" equipped weapon encounters the same problem.

QuoteAres' End is possible, but I'm not sure you can guarantee the 100%.

100% status, linear attack with AoE, 1 range, hit caster flag enabled?

I played a game of Maid RPG the other day, this class is the result

Maid
Replaces: Dancer
Equip: Pole, Bag, Silk, Knife, Clothing, Robe, Ribbon (cannot equip any headgear other then ribbons)

Skillset - Service

Maiden's Tears: cancel charm/confusion/berserk/petrify/frog/blood suck/undead on a single opposite-sex ally, range 3v3, hit 100%

Morning Service: 100% hp heal and cancel sleep on a single sleeping ally, range 1v0, hit 100%

Kiss: grants random positive status to a single opposite-sex ally, randomly inflict regen, protect, shell, reraise or haste, range 1v0, hit 100%

Maid Fist: deals PA * 24 damage to a single target, but the maid suffers 1/3rd backlash damage, range 1v3

Servant of Evil: inflict Blood Suck/Haste/Regen/Float to self

Ares' End is actually just as simple as using the Self Destruct formula (52) with Inflict Status Dead and having it be AoE 0 instead of having AoE 1. SilvasRuin's way would probably work as well since it worked for Gambler.

Similarly, Volcano's Fury is actually rather underpowered since CT 32 is FOREVER, even with Short Charge.

Everything else has been addressed.

Quote from: "Skip Sandwich"Servant of Evil: inflict Blood Suck/Haste/Regen/Float to self

I like this idea, but you'd have to get rid of Blood Suck on everyone making for a Game Over since otherwise....

Despite not playing Melty Blood at all, I feel like she should totally have some type of plant or faux item throw. Good work with using the sex-specific formula. For the life of me, I've yet been able to figure what else to use it on besides Steal Heart.

Nothing new on the weapon front I'm afraid. I've finished armor, but I still need to do hats and helms before I finish up with weapons and then I'll try testing (a lot of things) again. Provided my computer doesn't self-destruct on me first since it's been acting up unfortunately....

Quote from: "formerdeathcorps"Adamantine Blade can't guarantee both the ability to always cast cure and regen.

Can't specifically be Faith based, but it can heal and inflict regen at the same time with the raise formula.

The raise formula is faith based and won't work if the unit already has regen.  Thus, this can only be used once on a unit.
I assumed he meant 32 SP (really should be 34).

The problem with self-destruct is that you don't guarantee you kill the enemy.

also, the self-destruct part of the self destruct formula only applies if the caster is actually in the AoE of the ability, so it's only applicable to linear attacks, and abilities with ranges low enough that the caster is guaranteed to be in the AoE.

Besides what Skip Sandwich said, Self Destruct always adds status unless the Inflict Status Code you're using is Separate. So using All Dead will always kill the enemy if they're vulnerable to Dead, which most things are.

It seems I have much to reply to. Okay..

@SilvasRuin
Don't be so quick to judge someone you've never met. If you can't tell by my post numbers, no, I have not been experimenting long. I just wanted to clear that up and remove the hostilities and misconceptions... anyway. I've seen maps where there have been seven enemies and a guest, and I've seen maps with eleven enemy Monks. It simply has to be possible to change the game to allow for seven allies and up to fifteen enemies. At least, I hope. As far as it goes making the game breaking... I brought it here because it is game breaking and because I wanted suggestions. The community shouldn't have a problem if I'm breaking my own game, it's not like I'm trying to say it's perfect, or saying I'm releasing it for you all to play and asking for praise. Also, again, suggestions always welcomed. Forgive me for not making that clearer. I also realize I didn't make it clear that when I said making the game impossible to lose, I didn't say that all the abilities came out like I wanted them to. In fact, White Wind ended up hitting three times, guaranteed, without the Drain. So.. as I said earlier, forgive me for the misconceptions, these jobs and abilities are still VERY young. As in.. last night.

@Formerdeathcorps
If I remove Scream from Ramza(as I do want to change his Job around a bit as well), do you think I could manipulate it to do what it already basically does, but also use Chakra? Or is this completely impossible?
I'm okay with Knight Guard not being 100% on Regen landing.
White Wind is just a stage .01 name. I thought of the White Wind's past and figured "Yes, healing." But my Paladin has enough healing, and I wanted him to be a bit more offensive. I could change the name, and forget the Drain, keep the Random x3 attack?
Deity's Faith - no, sorry. I messed up. It only damages HP, not MP as well. I want it to cost the amount of MP for the DMG it does. I.E., 48 MP/48 DMG.
Okay. Moving onto Beserker. I guess I can just hope Zodiac releases something that'll help that.
Is there a way to make the first attack of Rage Rush be stronger to compensate for the weaker attack? If not, I could be okay with a reduced second attack.
I don't want Global Quarter to be a 100% for the Status. I suppose the formula could change to use less PA, but the only way I could figure it was to alter Split Punch, what with statuses+dmg.
I figure War Sanity is impossible because of the Str+ and the HP Loss, right? I couldn't figure out how to get around it, though I have gotten him to successfully, 100% Beserk and Haste.
Ares' End is done exactly the way Silvas describes. Moving on...
Why can you not have two abilities from Throw and Jump be implemented into another Skillset? You don't have to take them away from the other jobs to use them in another job.
Field Command is something I want to use for the Cavalier to get extra Move, but in battle. I didn't know how else to do this without giving him an innate high move, and then giving him Quick. I could take away the 100%.. But I don't know how to increase the MP cost.
Megalixer, or, Supply as I want to call it.. I literally have no idea how to add this smoothly. Could I take away Zodiark or any other summon, add it to Cavalier, change the way its used and make it cost All MP? Reaching Hand is something I'm really interested in, as a throwback to Fire Emblem games where mounted knights could throw weapons. If I could make reaching hand possible, I'd take away his Throw Axe/Throw Spear abilities. Perhaps I could take some specific weapons, give them advanced range, remove them from Shops and just have the Cavalier come equipped with them? That'd be pretty unique.

@Deadmanwalking and Formerdeathcorps again
The Raise formula would work fine for this. I could describe the "Cure" part of it as being an instant part of the Regen taking affect, and therefore it would basically only cast Regen, and wouldn't work on the same character within a unique amount of time. I think that works fine for this job, as it's not supposed to be so relative to the White Mage.. well, it is, but some faults on its part are expected (and desired, as I don't -want- to make jobs that are stupid powerful.)

On a final note, instead of raising HP and MP values, I could just simply lower PA and MA values for the game, as I know that can be done. This would make the Beserker's abilities very valuable, yea? What I'm saying is, lower the power of Weapons and maybe let Armors have a bit more HP and MP. Would this not make my jobs seem less like walking killing machines who are incapable of defeat?

I basically have potions working like that in the patch I'm working on.

@HeimLICH
you can't use the throw, jump, draw out, charge, item, elemental or math skill abilities in a skillset other then their own, because they all require special skillsets to work properly, and simply don't work in a default skillset.

That sucks super hard! >< Okay. Do you think my revised idea for Reaching Hand is plausible? Giving him "special" equipment with advanced range?

It wasn't so much hostility as it was "Gah!  That's a lot of stuff this guy needs explained.  I'm too lazy.  Hey, you, go experiment more before convincing yourself you can do stuff!"

I don't think there's any way to make MP costs dynamic.  Except maybe if you make an Osmose or whatever you want to call it get absorbed.

Such weapons with special range are possible, but not making them exclusively available... without some trickery.  Remove harps, cloths, or something else of that nature, replace their animation with clones of the weapon animation you want, change up the coding of the weapon animation so the character(s) perform it properly, change the formula of that weapon type to mimic the type of weapon you want it to be, and then make only Cavalier able to equip them.  You'd probably need to replace one weapon type for each weapon type you want an extended range weapon for.

Here's an easier example.  Copy and paste the Axe graphics over the Mace graphics.  Give Maces greater range in the patcher.  Make it so only Cavaliers can equip Maces.  Voila, Axes only Cavaliers can use, and they can hit from farther away with them.  This is easy as the two weapon types are fairly close to identical as far as i can tell.

This is my idea of a Paladin/Defender/Guardian-type job class I'm using for a major job-class patch I'm working on, FFT: Omega.  I wanted something that was balanced, a master of defense for the party, a moderate enemy disabler, and a unit not at all dependant on damage to be effective.


Job:  Divine Guardian


The Protection skillset will take the place of the Knight's and largely contains CT-less defensive abilities that aid and protect allies on the fly in a variety of ways while disabling the enemy.
Most of the abilities and spells cost little MP for a class that will have a moderate amount to spend on.  Some abilities will have negative effects
on allies and beneficial effects on enemies due to my concept of the usage of divine magic to inspire yet strike fear in the faithful.

The Divine Guardian prefers to prevent damage before it is done by either pacifying and disarming the enemy or directly protecting allies from damage.
It only has access to Swords and Knight Swords for weapons and heavy armor, shields, and accessories.  It is not a heavy hitter by no means and has only its basic attack for damage.
With a moderate amount of MP to spend on abilities, the Divine Guardian prefers to be in the front lines around other units that can reap the benefits of its Range: 1 and Effect: 3 spells.
It has limited offensive spells, the only damage dealing spell instant-kills undead and Berserk/Haste, Don't Act/Wall on enemies when the situation calls for it.

Over-all this is my favorite job-class I've made thus far out of the 4 or 5 I've gone through.  Seeing all my guys getting put into defend while casting each spell on them just looks right.  

...I'd be very, very careful about using Wall.

Quote from: "DeadManWalking"...I'd be very, very careful about using Wall.

I was careful to use Wall for AI purposes only since it's only used in 3 spells.  I like the 'no-targeting' aspect of the non-hacked Wall so that's why I tried to incorporate it in this build.

For Pacifist, basically disallows targeting the enemy since they have been 'pacified' while they cannot also act, effectively removing them from battle while they can still move around.

Blessing of Defense...hmmm.....maybe I should have chosen this to be used on other allies rather than on the caster.
It uses Wall / Don't Move / Don't Act, basically your character is stuck in place without being able to act and without being a valid target for any unit which means no healing either.
I think it would be best on an ally other than the caster as a last ditch effort to save them by removing them from battle altogether for a short while.

Apotheosis has Wall added just for the heck of it.
It alone would have a low chance to affect units due to the spell adding randomly beneficial status so its not really a controllable way of adding Wall on units.  


Here's another job I've been trying to play around with.

Job:  Timekeeper

Okay, so you guys know I was going to adjust some weapons so I could use certain abilities I wanted. Instead of doing this, I made my three special jobs like the SOLDIER. They can only perform their abilities with their special weapons equipped. So far, I've only completed Beserker. I removed the Main Gauche and Magemasher from all shops and renamed them: Slasher and Gasher. Like the Materia Blade, you have to find them.

The game can only check for Materia Blade or Sword requirements.  There's no way to check for other unique weapon requirements without quite a bit of hacking involved beyond what the patcher is capable of.  I suppose you could make all but one sword different kinds of weapons (with a bit of trickery, you could probably make them function exactly like they already were despite the change) and then have two such special requirement weapons, but I don't see adding such checks as being very feasible.

Quote from: "SilvasRuin"The game can only check for Materia Blade or Sword requirements.  There's no way to check for other unique weapon requirements without quite a bit of hacking involved beyond what the patcher is capable of.  I suppose you could make all but one sword different kinds of weapons (with a bit of trickery, you could probably make them function exactly like they already were despite the change) and then have two such special requirement weapons, but I don't see adding such checks as being very feasible.

Zodiac just made a hack to do just that.  Abilities Replacement Hack can be found here: http://zodiac.ffhacktics.com (http://zodiac.ffhacktics.com)

I thought that didn't work?  As in, the AI ignored the requirements.

Quote from: "DeadManWalking"I thought that didn't work?  As in, the AI ignored the requirements.

That's fine.  Just classify the special trigger weapons as its own category of weapon (like cloths or a ASM revamped flail/axe/bag) and make no enemy except the specified job able to use that type of weapon.

Er... that's not what I'm talking about.  If you break/steal the weapon required on the enemy (Or presumably, just set your own character to Auto) They'll be able to use the skills even without the weapon.

The chances of your characters special equipment being stolen or broken are very slim. Not only that, but I think it adds a very unique challenge to the game if it does happen. As for what else you're all talking about, as in, SOLDIER and Materia Blade being the only weapon dependent job and skillset, I'm sure APR and the Patcher can alter these parameters.

Quote from: "DeadManWalking"Er... that's not what I'm talking about.  If you break/steal the weapon required on the enemy (Or presumably, just set your own character to Auto) They'll be able to use the skills even without the weapon.

Yes, that's true.  This is still easy to fix though.
1） Give auto-maintenance to enemy SOLDIERS.
2) Delete the ability to set units to auto by deleting that option from the menu (relatively easy, shouldn't require more than hex).

It'd probably be better to either try to fix the hack or wait for it to be fixed.

So I have a few job change ideas for my personal patch I kinda want to run by you guys. Don't worry too much about the names, I'm probably going to be too lazy to edit the text for that. Some of this I know is possible, but I don't quite understand how to get it done so I'm gonna need some help with that too lol. I'm not super concerned with balance but if you find something that will wreck the game do share your concerns. These are all in the loose planning stage anyway (AKA I don't have a lot of the details worked out >_>). Some of those left out details will be the characters' growths/multipliers. XD

My new knight (who is now more like a paladin):
-Nurse: Restores a small bit of HP to the caster and surrounding characters and cancels blind, silence, and poison.
-Guard: Casts wall (reduces HP damage to 1) on self. 100% success, 0 CT.
-Cover: Casts protect on the characters surrounding the user. 100% success, 0 CT, 0 vertical tolerance, doesn't hit caster.
-Seal Evil: Moved from Mustadio's skill-set
-Weapon Break: Retained from battle skill, but I'll probably up the success rate by maybe 5%.

My new archer:
-Leg Aim: Stolen from Mustadio
-Arm Aim: Stolen from Mustadio
-Oil Arrow: 5 range, 2v3, 100% oil status. Doesn't deal damage. This one is totally iffy, but I wanted an AoE with range similar to a bow. Success rate will probably need to be lowered, but I figured "Hey it's oil, and this skill does no damage".
-Fire Arrow: Either a strong single target fire elemental attack using the held weapon's range or a 5 range 2v3 light damage fire attack. Earlier I was leaning towards the AoE, but now I'm thinking the single target would be more appropriate.
-Poison Arrow: Weapon range, 100% chance to poison. Or an damaging skill with a chance to poison. See what I mean about my ideas being mostly in the planning stage? XD
-Sure Shot: Weak attack with a 100% chance to hit that ignores reactions. Might be moved depending on what I decide to change about the squire class.

I've seen patches with the lancer class modified and that's something I really want to do as well. I'd just give them Reis's (slightly modified) abilities and make her a blue mage.

My new Agrias (upgraded knight/paladin/defender):
-Mighty Guard: Casts a 100% instant hit wall effect. Hits the caster and surrounding characters (0 vertical tolerance).
-Fortify: 2v3 instant cast skill that grants protect and defending status to allies. Won't hit Agrias. I'm pretty sure I copied this from someone in this thread, but I liked the idea and it is like an improved version of my knight's "Cover"
-Life Spring: 2v3, heals a moderate amount of HP and cancels petrify, blood suck, undead, death sentence, and poison.
-Last stand: Instant 100% self haste and regen
-Shock: Stolen from Beawulf
-Rasp: If you guys think that her skills need MP requirements, then this will replace Shock. It'll just be a 4 range mp draining move.

My new Mustadio is going to utilize the Antidote, Eye Drop, Echo Grass, Maiden's Kiss, and Soft slots. I've seen it done, but I'm not completely sure how I'm going to do what I want to. He'll have innate throw item, so he will have the range of a chemist. 100% hit rate and 0 CT applies for all of these. His skills:
-Hero Drink: Casts wall on target.
-Sleep Powder: Casts sleep on target
-Chocobo Feather: Casts haste on target
-Lamia's Kiss: Casts frog on target
-Chef's Knife: Casts death sentence on target.

The price of these items can be adjusted to make it more balanced, and I can change when and how they can be acquired too. That's why I'm okay with something like a 100% frog.

I also want to change the ninja's skill-set into something more fitting. I was thinking either make them more like assassins or more like their FFTA counterparts. Unfortunately the FFTA one would step on the geomancer's toes. Any suggestions? Oh I have seen the ninja class altered somewhere (I think), but again I don't know how to do it.

I'm also having problems thinking of a new skillset for Beowulf. I feel like his current one makes oracles useless, so I was wanting to make him more of a mage knight. Maybe I could give him the spells like tornado and melt in sword skill form? I don't know how much I would have to tone down the power of them though. XD

Thanks in advance for any feedback! Also if you are kind enough to try to explain how to do anything please dumb your explanation way down, because I am (unfortunately) technologically challenged. XD

PS: Yay first post! Sorry that it's kinda long. XD

Nurse can be done with formula 48, setting the effect area to 2, setting the range to 0, and giving a status set to Cancel Blind, Silence, and Poison.  Statuses 1D through 1F are blank slates, so you can use one of them.  Just make sure nothing else uses one of them for some reason or you'll be screwing up some other ability or item.

I believe the formula for Guard would best be 38.  Nothing inflicts Wall, however, so you'd have to use another status for that.  You'd also have to implement one of the ASM hacks to get Wall to work.

Cover would be done through a mixture of the Nurse and Guard methods.  I'm sure you can figure out how to set it up from there.

I think abilities with the Weapon Strike tag can be given AoEs, so you shouldn't need to set it to range 5.
Oil is also in need of an ASM hack to function properly.

I'm not sure how you could make Sure Shot ignore reactions.  Formula 03 might be best for this purpose, assuming PA for most or all characters is higher than bow WAs.  I recommend flagging it as Ranged Weapon too so people can't get long range with it with a sword equipped.  NOT using the Weapon Strike flag might allow it to bypass that reaction that blocks arrows.  Making sure it doesn't have Evadeable flagged should make sure it doesn't miss.

As far as I'm aware, there is no way to alter Ninja's abilities without running into bad glitches.

As far as the Items go, you need to alter their results. Instead of curing "X" they need to cause "X" for 100%. Really simple, really easy.

Y'know, after a little bit of consideration, 100% Death Sentence is pretty harsh, especially at a 100% success rate. You'll have to alter other parameters as well.

Internal Conflictor! - Needs Zodiac's ability requirement hack to work though.  (and I suck at names)

Its able to float between a normal and "shifted" mode, much like stances in The Way.  A truly versatile character.

The light side is focused on positive status infliction and moderate ranged aoe damage.  The dark side is focused on strong, closed range single target output and negative status infliction.

Shift Evil - 0 JP - Inflicts the "Curse/Dark Looking" status onto the user
Shift Light - 0 JP - Cancels Curse status.

Light Side (unuseable while cursed):
Enlighten - Faith-based magic with the ability to add: regen and float onto single target.  
Nature's Call - 3v0 zone, 3 range, moderate MP cost, light charge time.  ([PA+4/2] * MA) damage (its like elemental, but isn't as spammable and has no status)
Cleanse - 4 range, single target.  Removes poison, stop, or don't move from a unit, and heals it for 40% HP on success.
Wind Slash - 5 range linear, enemy-only -- deals MA * X damage.  Wind elemental.
Energy Siphon - Weapon-strike that drains MP from the target to replenish self.  Can only hit allies.

Dark Side (only useable while cursed)
Poison Slash - PA * WP with 100% chance to add poison.
Bash - 1 range PA*Y damage, while harming self for 20% of that damage.
Curse - 4 range, single target.  Removes either regen, float, or reraise from the target, and deals 20% HP damage upon doing so.
Halt - 4 range, single target.  Seperately Inflicts stop and/or don't move on the unit with moderate chances.  
Life Siphon - Weapon strike that drains HP from the target to replenish self.  Ally-only.

why stop at just one shifter unit? why not make a whole tree of units that each shift from one skillset to another? In fact, some units may even be able to force a shift change on an opponent from one state to the other in order to deny them access to certain abilities, although for the AI to make good use of this, almost every ability would have to have some sort of charge time, or else they'd probably just ignore those skills completely, like with the way the AI only uses magic ruin as a reaction to incoming spells, and never proactively to prevent the charging of spells in the first place.

Thinking about it further, what of instead of using the dark/evil looking status, we used the undead status coupled with the ASM mod to make undead immune to healing instead of reversing it. Then you have a team of units who, at any time, can "Death Pact" or whatever to gain a different or more powerful skillset, at the cost of being immune to healing  and revival for the duration of the shift (though they still have the default undead trait of having a chance to auto-revive with a random amount of health).

Spellcasters could even use this shift system to fight the speed growth/spell ct problem, for example;

Shifter wizard can normally cast up to tier 2 elemental magic, when shifted, he can cast tier 3 and 4 elemental magic, which has the same increase in power and cost as normal, but in terms of ct, are identical to tier 1 and tier 2 spells, respecively

:EDIT: we can call this patch FFT: Final Faustian Tactics  ;p

Now I know most of what I'm proposing is currently impossible, but I'd like to get some feedback about it.

First off, I'd like to change Berserk so that it gives you 20+ CT when you end your turn. You can now control your character, but still you can only use Attack.

Secondly, I'd like to change the Fist formula by adding a PA cap to humans. Basically, it will be PA! * (((PA{14})Br)/100), with {14} meaning PA will only go up to that number. Monsters have no cap.

Thirdly, I'd like to change Martial Arts to do two things. One, when dealing with the Fist Formula, either it just increases the cap to 17, or it change formula to (0+ 0...(PA/2)+PA! * (((PA{14})Br)/100), following ASM'D axe/flail formula. For everything else, just a 4/3 bonus.

Finally, I'd like to replace the current Monk skillset with a 'combo-based' skillset.

Berserk: Adds Berserk, Instant, 100%, Self only

One-two punch: Fist attack with 25% chance of hitting again, Fist Formula, 8 MP, Instant, P-Ev, 1 Range, 1 Vert

Haymaker: Powerful blow that always knocks back, (PA * (PA+2)/2), Always Knock Back, 8 MP, Instant, P-Ev, 1 Range, 1 Vert

Light Attack: Light attack stuns the enemy, -10 CT, (SP*SP/2), Instant, P-Ev, 8 MP 1 Range, 1 Vert

Medium Attack: Medium attack stuns the enemy, -20 CT ((SP+1)*(SP/2)), 50 Speed, 8 MP P-Ev, 1 Range, 1 Vert

Heavy Attack: Heavy attack stuns the enemy, -30 CT, ((SP+2)*(SP/2)), 25 Speed, P-Ev, 8 MP, 1 Range, 1 Vert

Meat Hook: Quick blow to the enemies' weak point causes enemy to instinctively curl up, (SP*(SP/2)), Add Defend, Instant, P-Ev, 1 Range, 1 Vert

Guardbreaker: Special Fist technique breaks guard, causing massive stun, Cancel: Defend, -30 CT, (SP*(SP/2)) Instant, Unevadable, 1 Range, 1 Vert

Throw: Technique uses enemies' guard against them to deal massive damage, otherwise miss, Cancel: Defend, If Target is Defending, than Cancel:Defend, and deal (PA!*(PA*3/4) Damage, Unevadable, Instant, 1 Range, 1 Vert

Uppercut: Powerful, but inaccurate attack that KO's opponent if their HP reaches critical (PA!*(PA*3/4) Damage, PA!+35% Success, Instant, 8 MP, P-Ev 1 Range, 1 Vert

Knock Out Punch: Technique that attempts to go for the Knock Out, Add Dead, PA!+35% Success, P-Ev, Instant, 1 Range, 1 Vert

Thoughts?

I'd love to see a Support Ability that makes a unit immune to any statuses they are able to inflict themselves. So a Wizard would be immune to Frog, Poison, Dead... and Holy Knights would be immune to Stop, Death Sentence, Dead, Silence, and Confusion. And Math Skill should not apply.

Not a revolutionary ability, but I think it's new and not too overpowered. Sure, an Oracle would then be immune to a lot of statuses, but it's not like the ability would make them invincible or anything.

While sitting at work today staring off into space, I began thinking about a new custom job , and the one that came to my mind was the Berserker. The name is pretty unoriginal but what can you do?
Basically this class would be focused on dealing damage and self-buffing. It would have a low HP modifier and low HP growth. Its MA and MP modifier and growth would also be low.
High AP and SP mod/growth.

Equipment - Axes, Swords, Clothes, Hats, Accessory. (Possibly more, but I can't think off hand)

As far as skills go, I only have five or so right now, and I'm not positive if they can really work. Ha ha.

Smash - Attack the tile in front and the two parallel adjacent tiles (does that make sense?) for damage, and heal the Berserker for 25% of damage done.

Whirlwind - Basically a Spin Fist/Turn Punch attack.

Weapon Toss - Basically just a throw attack. This is one I'm not sure can work unless the weapon selection is limited to one single category.

Piercing Scream - A "draw out" type skill that either inflicts statuses on surrounding enemies, lowers their brave, or lowers their AP stat.

Roar - Sacrifice 20% max HP and increase AP and SP by 1 each (probably not able to be done, but on well).

Well, that's all I have so far. Let me know what you guys think!

Thanks.

Wait, it just seems right for a berserker to have a helmet, but I don't know why.

Quote from: "ffta707"Wait, it just seems right for a berserker to have a helmet, but I don't know why.

Yeah...

Since the Berserker idea is a little stale I decided to shelf it for now.
Ever since I discovered Zodiac's ARH, I started scheming up jobs/skillsets that would rely a lot on the "requires" and "synergy" abilities of the hack.

One I came up with was a replacement for the Dancer. This would be a bit of a variation on the Assassin, named something stupid like "Stalker" etc.
For equipment, they would pretty much be a Thief. They would have pretty average to low modifiers and growths in every stat except for Speed, which would be nuts fast. Faster than a Ninja, easily. Their C-EV% would be something crazy too, or at least on par with a Ninja.

Their entire skillset would require that a knife be equipped. Basically, it would be full of one-panel ranged status inflictions, probably on a 100% application rate. It could include Poison, Sleep, Confusion, Stop (or Don't Act/Don't Move), Silence, and Death Sentence.

I can't decide if they would be imbalanced at all. I mean, yeah, be able to inflict status effects at a high clip can be cheap, but if the range is only melee range, and if it requires a knife be equipped, doesn't that kind of balance it out?

Any input would be terrific!

I really think that it would be balanced. Maybe you could give them a low movement range, so it would be harder to get to the melee range without getting killed? It's a good idea at any rate. I would use that class - I don't  like dancer too much.

I was actually thinking more along the lines of giving them a good movement range (4m 4j) as a way to balance them more.

The way I see it, they'll be one of the first to act. Now, you CAN move right into melee range and disable an enemy before they can act. Only problem is that you're now at the mercy of their entire team.

I am pretty sure that even knowing this, there will still be fights where I'm using one and I want to say Silence a Summoner, only to get stomped by their allies before I can retreat. I guess it's more dependent on your R/S/M choices, but you get the gist.

My Idea for a class concept - A very powerful class, with basically amazing abilities, but has innate death sentence. It would need some more thinking, but I thought it would be cool.

Quote from: "ffta707"My Idea for a class concept - A very powerful class, with basically amazing abilities, but has innate death sentence. It would need some more thinking, but I thought it would be cool.

Why not  make a class that is pretty average in terms of stats and skills, but has a self-buff for like 5 PA and 5 MA but causes Death Sentence?

Now that Zodiac has some really kick-ass ASM hacks with which to fix and manipulate jobs and skillsets I came up with some new ideas for a Riskbreaker job.
It has always been my intention to change Ramza's 3rd job into Riskbreaker as a sort of tie-in to Vagrant Story. My problem with it was the lack of weapon requirement based skills and just the huge variety of abilities that Ashley had in VS.

My current idea is to give Ramza's 3rd job a unique skillset that reinterprets the Break Arts. You can consider them an earlier incarnation if you want. Using the Generic Skillset Fix Hack (GSFH) I can turn the Defend command into a normal skillset that will contain all the Break Arts. Then I can use the Ability Requirement Hack (ARH) to make each Break Art require the appropriate weapons be equipped. The abilities would use formula 42 to cause damage to the target and the caster to emulate the HP cost of real Break Arts. In addition to this I would expand Ramza's normal skillset to include several abilities based on some of Ashley's Chain- & Defense-Abilities. There's no need to recreate any of the VS spells as the existing White, Black, Time, & Yin-Yang spells serve the same role.

Break Arts:
(*All break arts are single target abilities.)
Weapon Type                -Name                -Range     -Element
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fists                   -Lotus Palm          -7         -none
Knives                     -Vile Scar           -5         -as weapon
Swords & Ninjato           -Mistral Edge        -6         -as weapon
Knight Swords & Katana     -Swallow Slash       -4         -wind
Axes                    -Thunderwave         -5         -lightning
Flails                  -Ignis Wheel         -4         -fire
Poles                   -Glacial Gale        -5         -ice
Rods & Staves              -Gravis Aether       -4         -earth
Polearms                   -Spiral Scourge      -3         -water
Bows                       -Heaven's Scorn      -5         -holy & wind
Crossbows               -Sanctus Flare       -3         -holy & water
Guns                    -Brimstone Hail      -6         -dark & fire
Books                      -Black Nebula        -3         -dark
Instruments                -Accursed Umbra      -5         -as weapon
Cloths                     -Papillion Reel      -3         -holy
Bags                    -Emetic Bomb         -3         -as weapon

As for the main skillset, I want to keep all the squire abilities and Ramza's unique abilities and add in a few new ones like Dulling impact (weapon attack +mute), Crimson Pain (weapon attack +30% damage to user), Mind Ache (damage based on target MP). Some abilities may require formula hacks but nothing too drastic.

@Vanya
that sounds really awesome, especially the bit about expanding Defend into a normal skillset. One problem though, isn't formula 42 (Work) incapable of accepting elemental flags?

Is it? If so, then I'd probably need a custom formula for the Break Arts.
The other alternative would be to treat them like FF6 limit breaks and only allow them to activate if the Riskbreaker is in critical status.

I had a new idea about how to structure the relationship between a spell's Power, Range, Area, CT, and MP cost. One of magic's biggest weaknesses is that as you progress through the game, you must switch to using higher tier spells to continue dealing competitive damage, however, the CT for spells only becomes longer as you progress through the game, whereas unit speed continues to increase, eventually eclipsing spell CT and making them all but impossible to use without Short/Non Charge support.

My proposal is to REVERSE this relationship. CT is in a very real way a "Cost" to casting the spell, just like mp, so why not arrange spells so that you begin the game paying mostly CT, and end paying mostly MP.
"Mostly" is an important word choice here, because there is another component I'd like to add to the mix. My second proposal is that you pay for a spell's Range/Area with CT and Power with MP. What this would mean is that lower tier spells would have greater range and AoE then higher tier spells.
Here is an example, using three different targeting schemes, Fire is SelfAoE, Ice is Linear, Bolt is 3-Way attack.

Fire: dmg_F(MA * 12), Range 0, Area 5v0, CT 7, MP 6
Fire 2: dmg_F(MA * 24), Range 0, Area 4v1, CT 5, MP 12
Fire 3: dmg_F(MA * 36), Range 0, Area 3v2, CT 4, MP 24
Fire 4: dmg_F(MA * 48), Range 0, Area 2v3, CT 3, MP 48
Melt: dmg_F(MA * 60), Range 0, Area 1v4, CT 2, MP 96

Ice: dmg_F(MA * 12), Range 10, Area 10v0, CT 7, MP 6, Linear Attack
Ice 2: dmg_F(MA * 24), Range 8, Area 8v1, CT 5, MP 12, Linear Attack
Ice 3: dmg_F(MA * 36), Range 6, Area 6v2, CT 4, MP 24, Linear Attack
Ice 4: dmg_F(MA * 48), Range 4, Area 4v3, CT 3, MP 48, Linear Attack
Freeze: dmg_F(MA * 60), Range 2, Area 2v4, CT 2, MP 96, Linear Attack

Bolt: dmg_F(MA * 12), Range 5, Area 5v2, CT 7, MP 6, 3-Way Attack
Bolt 2: dmg_F(MA * 24), Range 4, Area 4v4, CT 5, MP 12, 3-Way Attack
Bolt 3: dmg_F(MA * 36), Range 3, Area3v6, CT 4, MP 24, 3-Way Attack
Bolt 4: dmg_F(MA * 48), Range 2, Area 2v8, CT 3, MP 48, 3-Way Attack
Blast: dmg_F(MA * 60), Range 1, Area 1v10, CT 2, MP 96, 3-Way Attack

You probably noticed that my spell power ratings jump a little faster then you're used to seeing.  This is because I crunched the numbers and 50 faith versus 50 faith is 25% of maximum spell power possible. So I devised a new distribution of spell power levels for faith/non-faith and elemental/non-elemental spells

Faith-Based Elemental spells start at 12, and improve by 12 per spell tier
Non Faith-Based Elemental spells start at 3, and improve by 3 per spell tier
Faith-Based Non-Elemental spells start at 16, and improve by 16 per spell tier
Non Faith-Based Elemental spells start at 4, and improve by 4 per spell tier

So there  it is, I know it's a lot to take in at once so I thank you for your time.

First post here, so hi I guess  :more: ). The job is based on tanking, life management, and double-sided powers. It's probably a bit OP ATM.

I'm happy with what I have so far, still I'm submiting this to you guys, i'm pretty sure it can be improved.

Blood Knight

• Innate : regen
• Same equipment as Knight
• HP : very good (like, best of all jobs)
• MP : very bad (like 1 and poor growth, there has to be a counterpart)
• PA : mediocre (for a physical class)
• MA : very bad
• good speed (because it's Ramza)
• good movements (because it's Ramza)

Abilities (all instant, no mp cost, and can hit both enemies and allies) :

Blood Gift : (100 JP)
hp theft 25% of target max hp, range 0-4, no evade, separate status add (25% each) : Regen, Haste, Reraise
(I'd be happier with just hp damage 25%, and a separate HP theft spell, but there seems to be no HP% damage with status effect.)

Dark Pact : (900 JP)
heal 50% of target max hp, range 0-4 (some enemies seem to be able to evade this idk why), separate status add (25% each) : Undead, Death Sentence, Poison

Drain Pain : (400 JP)
Give 2/5 of max hp, loose 1/5 of max hp. Range 3, effect 3. Don't heal caster

Agravate Wounds : (900 JP)
Deals damages based on target missing life. Range 2, effect 3 (caster is always in effect area, and takes damages too)

Vengeance : (400 JP)
Deals damages based on caster missing life. Range 1, effect 2 (caster is always in effect area, and takes damages too)

Self Destruct : (400 JP)
Deals damages based on caster missing life. Kill caster. Effect 3. Add separate status (25% each) : Undead, Death Sentence, Poison

Other abilities, shamelessly stolen from other class :

• Damage Split
• Move HP-UP
• Defense-UP

I love Ramza specific patches. It sounds good.

"Welcome to FFhacktics were all your dreams come true!"

Thank you ^^

I tested a handful of versions of this job in-game, and my tank-ramza was indeed very good at survival : no one was attacking him ever, unless he was the last one standing. Not quite what I expected  :)

Damn i just read a lot but anyways i just registered and this is my first post .
i think a realy good job would be a chocobo knight. you can ride a chocobo already in the game but the chocobo knight would take it to the next level. they could be set up FTA2 style and be able to use the chocobo's abillities and a couple of his own abillities.

Quote from: "Vanya"Now that Zodiac has some really kick-ass ASM hacks with which to fix and manipulate jobs and skillsets I came up with some new ideas for a Riskbreaker job.
It has always been my intention to change Ramza's 3rd job into Riskbreaker as a sort of tie-in to Vagrant Story. My problem with it was the lack of weapon requirement based skills and just the huge variety of abilities that Ashley had in VS.

My current idea is to give Ramza's 3rd job a unique skillset that reinterprets the Break Arts. You can consider them an earlier incarnation if you want. Using the Generic Skillset Fix Hack (GSFH) I can turn the Defend command into a normal skillset that will contain all the Break Arts. Then I can use the Ability Requirement Hack (ARH) to make each Break Art require the appropriate weapons be equipped. The abilities would use formula 42 to cause damage to the target and the caster to emulate the HP cost of real Break Arts. In addition to this I would expand Ramza's normal skillset to include several abilities based on some of Ashley's Chain- & Defense-Abilities. There's no need to recreate any of the VS spells as the existing White, Black, Time, & Yin-Yang spells serve the same role.

spoiler

Break Arts:
(*All break arts are single target abilities.)

Code Select Expand

Weapon Type                -Name                -Range     -Element
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fists                   -Lotus Palm          -7         -none
Knives                     -Vile Scar           -5         -as weapon
Swords & Ninjato           -Mistral Edge        -6         -as weapon
Knight Swords & Katana     -Swallow Slash       -4         -wind
Axes                    -Thunderwave         -5         -lightning
Flails                  -Ignis Wheel         -4         -fire
Poles                   -Glacial Gale        -5         -ice
Rods & Staves              -Gravis Aether       -4         -earth
Polearms                   -Spiral Scourge      -3         -water
Bows                       -Heaven's Scorn      -5         -holy & wind
Crossbows               -Sanctus Flare       -3         -holy & water
Guns                    -Brimstone Hail      -6         -dark & fire
Books                      -Black Nebula        -3         -dark
Instruments                -Accursed Umbra      -5         -as weapon
Cloths                     -Papillion Reel      -3         -holy
Bags                    -Emetic Bomb         -3         -as weapon


As for the main skillset, I want to keep all the squire abilities and Ramza's unique abilities and add in a few new ones like Dulling impact (weapon attack +mute), Crimson Pain (weapon attack +30% damage to user), Mind Ache (damage based on target MP). Some abilities may require formula hacks but nothing too drastic.

This is nice :D Specifically since I really really want to use the existing Ashley sprite but really couldn't come up with a good Break Arts equivalent. But it seems you have it all figured out

whoops wrong thread... moving to the patch proposal thread.

Idea for a status effect - Trance.  Reduces MP Cost of all abilities to zero.

So I have resumed work on a slightly revised edition of my End of Days Zombie patch

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2567 (http://www.ffhacktics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2567)

And I was thinking it might be interesting to limit the two main characters to their starting jobs, and round those out as much as possible so they retain versatility, being that the only characters you're going to pick up as additional party members are going to recruited survivors from random battles I have a theory on how to work it, I thought I could perhaps change the squire and chemist base classes so that gaining access to them required a lvl 8 in both classes, I expanded on that idea to consider the possibility of designating survivor characters to a certain role, each casting class requiring low levels in the cast oriented classes leading up to it, the same would of-course apply to the melee classes So that if you find a survivor time mage, he'll likely have no levels in a melee class and ditto with a knight for example.

To get to the idea of the base classes for the starting characters, I was thinking that considering the likely case of hordes and the increased number of enemies present in even common battles (Human zombies btw are much tougher to bring down then their living counterparts) That it might be a good move to give them a ranged attack with a small area of effect, now being partial to sword-skills I was leaning towards the idea of a Stasis Sword style move, but I would really appreciate any interesting ideas, I was also thinking of something along the lines of a self only chakra, but I'm not really sure about an MP restoration technique even existing in the game (any thoughts?), and definitely something that removes a few status effects on a single target, maybe with a 2 range, but definitely not spectacular, and short of those few ideas I don't have much I can think to change from the base ramza squire. My Idea was to use either a ramza and luso style pair with the guts ability set (under a different title, as of yet undecided) or perhaps only one of them with said set and another with an entirely different approach, maybe one melee and one caster with rare skill-sets. At any rater, there will be very few other special characters and no other characters immune to the infection. So any suggestions anyone might have would be very much appreciated, and if you'd like you can PM a list of ideas should you have any.

At any rate the idea of the classes rework is that I'm having some serious trouble coming up with a way to make two characters immune at all times to the infection, but NOT applying it to all the base classes because, well, only the two of them are immune as far as anyone is aware. If anyone has a solution for this issue maybe the classes won't be so heavily overhauled, just enough to suit the zombies a little better. Be warned though, I do not plan on this being an even remotely easy patch to just walk on through.

Quote from: "Amici"quote: "stuff I wrote about Riskbreaker job"

This is nice :D Specifically since I really really want to use the existing Ashley sprite but really couldn't come up with a good Break Arts equivalent. But it seems you have it all figured out

Sure I can give it a try. I'll post it here when I get it done. ^_^

Well, this thread's redundant now that there's a sub-forum for mod and job class ideas, so I'm locking this.