Suggestions for my own revamp (be gentle)

[Lydyn]

That's going to be insanely hard to get, heh ... especially if all the monsters are as tough as you say they are. Timats only appear in the Deep Dungeon and the final battle with Balk.

The forumla for Dark Whisper is also MA * ([MA + 1] / 2]. So on a wizard like MA, the damage would be around 231 ... that's with 21 MA. Personally, I wouldn't even attempt learning that. Not worth the trouble. (Timats do roughly 325 damage with 25 MA and I do suppose it casts randomly 5 times like the Heaven/Hell Knight's skills.)

I might also mention that Sudden Cry isn't a calk walk to learn either. It's not often used and there's only 1-2 places to encounter Behemoths on random battles.

Sudden Cry: PA * ([PA + 2] / 2); Has a chance to add; Dead

[adouchebag]

I'm about to test him out--going to try to learn choco cure in chapter 1.

[Lydyn]

I'm actually excited to see how it works. ^^ Though you'd need to trap the dang thing for Cure. xD

[adouchebag]

I just realized I forgot to turn off 'Learned with JP' so I had all the skills already listed at 0 cost heh.  NOW I'm trying it--give me some time to get the job levels.

[adouchebag]

It works EXACTLY like it's supposed to.

BUT that 'affected by' is really finicky.  I finally got the damn chocobo to heal my blue mage, who was at full HP.  Didn't learn the spell.  After I hurt him and the chocobo cast it again, bingo.

MIIIGHT have to replace chocobo esuna--unless using my own monsters works.

I can't believe it actually worked.  If only the list weren't blank, but oh well.

There's a pretty glaring flaw however.  I had to boost the blue mage's MA multiplier into the stratosphere to make the magic halfway decent--up to 200.  My level 4 guy had level 8 magic and choco cure only did 30 hp on himself.  And I was playing around with the high level one, and the spells all kinda sucked--low hit rates and low damage.  I might innate magic attack up and concentrate to improve on that, but they're kinda bleh.  I'll have to play through from the beginning with one to see how he pans out.  

But that MA multiplier is insane--and imagine putting my uber mage skill set in there?  Super high level flares, holys.  Blue Mage might have to be an honor system kinda thing  

[Vanya]

Or modify the monsters to have lower ma multipliers and make their spells stronger. It would be a lot of work, but that's what I'm thinking of doing.

[Lydyn]

I agree with Vanya on this one.

[Traverse]

All this talk of Blue Mages, I can see why everyone wants one. Maybe there should be a 'Blue Mage Cooperative'.

First task: Discuss ease of implementation. Conclusion: ...Moot, since we're all fumbling around in the dark.  

Another option to lessen the game editing you might need to do is to set up a Blue party. In a test bed patch make 5 different generic classes into blue mage classes that each have a different set off monster skills (already learned for this test) and see which ones already naturally work well without editing. Then you can pick between the ones of those you can see the player being able to learn easily (leaving a few super powers for those rare instances, of course). That way you have a cream of the crop Blue Mage.

[Kourama]

Just keep Blue Mage MA a little less or equal to Black Mage and give them innate Magic Attack Boost. You can then also give them very low mp if you kept the Monster abilites useable without magic. That way they won't be godly magic casters simply because they have no mp to use.

[adouchebag]

That's a really good idea.  I doubt Black Mage's MA is high enough, even with innate magic up, to make the class viable however.  His magic stat has to be HIIIIGH.

But, if I give them like 0 MP, and make them only able to wear armor and helmets, it would make it VERY difficult to cast any other magic.  I'll have to leave MA multiplier ungodly high, but I can make MP and MA growth super low to compensate.  Well, I guess MA growth will still have to be kinda high, so he can keep up with everyone else's stat gains.

Now I just need to figure out which abilities are worth having.

[adouchebag]

Well, thanks for everyone's help and suggestions, here's what I've done so far.

And remember, this is all on top of the 1.2 patch.

Squire-Added Speed Break

Chemist-No changes

Knight-Removed Weapon/Armor Breaks--replaced with Cure, Cure 2, Esuna, Raise.  Increased MA and MP.  Lowered AP and HP.  Lowered MP and MA growth.  Innate Arrow Guard

Archer-Charge replaced with Snipe.  Added Charge 1-5, Ignore Height, Equip Gun.  Innate Ignore Height.

Priest-Added time magic and removed some useless white magic.  Innate Regenerator

Wizard-Added Yin Yang magic, replaced useless black magic.  Innate Counter Magic

Time Mage-Now 'Red Mage.'  Added mid level attack and cure spells, can equip swords.  Innate Absorb MP Used.  Also gave Dark Holy spell at 500 JP.

Calculator-Now Blue Mage.  Innate Concentrate, Magic Att Up, and Monster Skill.  Abilities listed above.

Oracles and Mediators-Removed (they now require level 8 mimes to unlock)

Thief-Innate Two Swords.  Innate Secret Hunt.

Monk-Added hats.  Added Vertical +1 to Chakra and Revive.  Innate Defense up

Lancer-Can equip swords and knight swords.  Jump replaced with weapon/armor break, Protect, Shell, and Regen.  Innate Maintenance and Weapon Guard.  Added A Save, Defense Up, Move HP up.

Geomancer-No changes (1.2 added innate move on lava).

Summoner-Now Uber Mage.  Removed summons (I'm going to put one or two back in) replaced with Holy, Flare, Meteor, Death, and Frog.  Innate Short Charge, Half MP.

Samurai-1.2 Innate 2 Hands

Ninja-Added Innate Throw Item.

Bard, Dancer, Mime-No changes.

All of the abilites that I restricted access to (Oracle and Mediator) I tried to replace in the remaining jobs appropriatley.  Archers have Equip Gun, Lancers have Defense Up, etc.  

I increased every classes base move by 1.

[Lydyn]

You should really test Archers out, but I don't think having Charge and Snipe skills in the same set will work, just like Jump and Break skills won't work together.

Also the classes you added innate reaction abilities too, there's a bit of a glitch there. Let's say I take my wizard (who has innate Counter Magic) and equip Counter Tackle on him. Well, all is fine and dandy until you get into battle ... all of sudden my wizard has Counter Magic equiped and Counter Tackle is no where to be seen.. so, the problem being I can't use any reactions but Counter Magic now.

[adouchebag]

The snipe skillset works--at least I'm almost positive it does.  I took an Archer into a fight last night with my chapter 4 game, but don't think I ever had him do anything.  Leg, Arm aim and all the charges did show up though, so I'm fairly positive it will work.  My low level game I just started has high enough levels to use one, so I'll be trying him out.

I didn't know about the innate reaction glitch, I'll try it out too.

I have also found another problem.  Like I said, I replaced the Jump skillset of Lancers with the Talk Skill skillset.  Well, there's a problem--in order to have access to any abilities I've learned in Talk Skill, the Job has to have already UNLOCKED mediators.  However, the Snipe skillset is available, I guess because it counts as a Squire class.  So I'll probably end up putting everything I have in Talk skill and putting it in a skillset I don't plan on using--namely Truth or Un-Truth.

[Lydyn]

Yeah, just because things show up doesn't mean they'll work. You need to be picky about testing and test about everything you can think of - meaning in this case, actually using both Leg & Arm Aim and at least one charge.

Also, I'd like you to take a look at these three screenshots;







You may have not noticed on your archer, but changing skillsets to a different one, will normally glitch and mess things up as you can see. In this example I changed Dancer to have Chaos as her skillset, but from what I learned outside of battle differed from what I could use inside of battle. I strongly suggest testing this out with a new archer only buying one of the skills and seeing what appears in battle. If it works for you, great, I'm just trying to help since this glitch with changing skillsets has happened to several (or all) people so far.

[adouchebag]

Yes indeed, I saw that problem in your choas post.  Have you considered the Choas set, being a monster skillset I believe, acts as a monster skill set when entering battle--aka, it chooses what abilities are available to it based on availability percentage?  I don't know how far along you've come since that OP, but consider using Snipe or a Holy Sword set, something a human NPC would use.

My Archer didn't seem to have that problem, but like I said I don't think I ever actually fired a shot with him.  I didn't have time to test much last night, it took me all day to change everything around and by the time I tested the blue mage out, it was bed time  

I have an Archer ready to go, first thing I'll do when I get home is fix my Lancer problem by changing the skillset he uses from talk skill to Truth (or I might make my Knight's skillset Truth, and give Lancers Battle Skill, haven't decided yet).  Then I'll bust him out and try some attacks.  I also need to test what you said about reaction innate abilities, I'll try giving my priest counter tackle and see if what you described happens to me.

I have an ENTD question--I looked through that tab, and I couldn't make heads or tails of it.  My question is, which line determines the sprites for the generic classes?  Like I said, I wanted to change the Knight Sprite to Wiegraf.

[Lydyn]

Yeah, just test things out, that's all I'm asking ... just so you know what works and doesn't, so you're not playing along and find out half way through a tough battle something doesn't work right. (I'm using the original Sing & Dance skillsets by the way, since Bard & Dancer don't exist in my patch, so it's safe to use.)

As for the ENTD question ... changing generic job sprites has absolutly nothing to do with the ENTD tab. ENTD files are used to change sprite sets, like making Gafgarion look like Larg or something silly like that ... but it wouldn't change Gafgarion's sprite to Larg's, just switching sprite sets.

For changing In battle and Formation generic (or special) sprites, look at my guides.

[adouchebag]

You were right about everything thanks.

And I know what the reason behind that skills glitch.  In my case, I replaced both jump and charge with hero--aka squire--classes.  The character in question had 5 of 5 squire abilities learned, and when I changed to Archer I taught her one thing, but she had the first five snipe abilities learned in battle.

When I switched Ramza into archer, he had the first, second, fourth, and sixth guts abilities learned, and he also had the same four archer levels learned.  But I have an idea how to get around it.

[Lydyn]

Well, before I say something, did Charge work as well as the Aim skills? Did you test that out?

And my question is, why replace them? Why don't you just edit Jump and Charge with what you want? I'm not sure I follow the reason for going through all this trouble.

[adouchebag]

Because you said that Jump and Charge glitched if you changed them.  

Not sure if Arm/Leg Aim will work in the Charge skillset. Someone had trouble making break skills and stuff work in the Jump skillset before as well ... it's likely there's code in places for Jump, Draw Out/Sword Spirit, and Charge ...

[Lydyn]

Lydyn, he can change the jump skillset's menu to a normal one.

However, no way you can get charges and normal type of skills in the same skillset douche. Those skills aren't just plain normal, as Math Skills are.

Zodiac clarified that about a page and half ago, hehe. ^^ So, I was wrong, you can change them. You just can't mix Charge & Normal skills (i.e. Charge and Aim skills) or Jump & Normal skills according to him.