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Well, some testing will let us know if the fight is too easy/hard

Despell (the one that removes a lot of status effects) from the Sage should be able to handle that. It removes Undead at the very least. Poison, while annoying, can at least be counter by placing regen on yourself again. That said, hitting the entire field is ridiculous. A large AoE surrounding him would be cool though. As half of the fight is made irritating by the obsession with trying to make you undead. And I'd rather deal with that, because I ended up juggling a person to cure undead, which worked out fine with some management.

That's good to know, good thing I didn't change those. That would have been annoying. But how about some of the other ones though?

Like say... The blank skills that are underneath "Move Find Item?" Or the ones that are in that big list after Parasite? I know their initial animations are set to "1FE Crashes Game," but does that mean that if I change them there will be any unforeseen circumstances like the ones you already mentioned? I'm asking this, because I know with some other things I've hacked like Golden Sun, there were a ton of spots in the game that literally had no data, but could be messed around with, with a bit of fudging-- which enabled you to have more skills present in the hack than what was used in the actual game.

I like the idea of them hitting everything on the field. Huge AOEs simply scream abuse absorption, and would make it hideously overpowered for healing and enemy damage.

I agree, more than enough Swordskills around :-)

I suppose that's true, there are too many swordskills. Although, would they work without being swordskills? I might actually try making it up for myself then.

I love FFTA and would love to see a rebalancing hack that makes things better. But you know what?

Removing things strikes me as pretty lame.

Assassins:. They're powerful because they're fast, and their instant kill abilities are too accurate. Rather then remove the class, balance it out. Reduce the class's speed, reduce the accuracy of their skills. Im think that, a good baseline might want to make it that any rebalancing done would make it that with Concentrate they would be as accurate (if not slightly less) as they are in the current game with concentrate.

Turbo MP: This can be balanced out simply by increasing the amount of MP used. So if double MP is too little for the boost given, then triple MP, etc.

Reflex, Strikeback: both these skills are effected by magic and special attacks still. Increase the presence of these enemies.

Doublecast/Dualweild/Ultima: You know what? Some abilities should be powerful. Each of these are gotten from rare equipment, with 999 AP cost. What should be done is that there should be battles that need abilities this powerful. In the game normally these are overkill. Basically, the post game should have challenges that throw this sort of crazy stuff at you.

I disagree on the notation that removing things is lame. Some things are just inherently imbalanced. If you are changing something to the point that it's no longer the same, it's essentially removing it.

Assassins are not just powerful because they are fast, and have instant kill abilities that are too accurate. They are powerful, because they are the best class to level up as a Viera, their only real weakness is their low hp, and that doesn't  scale too horribly all things considered, they have instant kill abilities or incredibly lethal status effects, they can be immune to all status effects. They make a great class to carry summon for huge AoEs, and they have a very powerful damaging attack (Ultima) from long range. Actually, they can just out and out use long range. There's no real way to approach them as a computer enemy. As for the concentrate part, maybe I'm reading it wrong, but I'm not sure what you're saying here.

Turbo MP: should just be changed. The idea of it is kinda silly because the damage you get for it is absurd. Tripling the cost still doesn't help too much as you still pretty much OHKO the enemy. It needs to be altered. That's why it's being discussed for removal until then.

Reflex, Strikeback are affected by magic. Too bad the AI is still too dumb to SEE Reflex and Strikeback and mages are known for attacking physically for some odd reason.

Doublecast/Dualwield/Ultima: Doublecast is fine... If it didn't have access to so many spells being used with it. That + Turbo MP is ridiculous. Dualwield isn't just powerful because of its attack... It also effectively doubles your skill learning as well as bumps up your attack.  Ultima is just a bad algorithm used and is a glorified OHKO attack pretty much. Making them cost 999 AP? Um... Doublecast DOES cost that much. It's still overpowered, and it's on rare equipment. Nosada is a pretty rare equipment for dualwield... Might I add that you can still learn other skills while learning Dual-wield? Ultima skills are just too powerful in general. Nerfing would be the best choice for them. But it is a bit lacking in the creativity department admittedly.

Alright, I'll take a shot at it. I haven't played this game in a long time, but I'll try to go off of what I can remember.

*Moogles: Need stat buffs in general. Besides the infamous Gunner/Mog Knight, I can't think of much else that these guys can do that's useful besides support, and they aren't really needed for that, as other classes like Blue Mage and Elementalist can do that as well, while not sacrificing raw attack power.
-Smile needs to cost MP, like 20 MP. So that way you can't powerlevel 2 moogles to level 50 the minute you get the ability and thus, kill any form of difficulty that could be obtained over the course of the game. Actually, Juggler's should have to cost MP for their stuff. Why do they get all of these amazing status effects and decent damage for no MP? Because it's single target? I don't think so.
- Machinist: needs to either get an entire moveset revamp, or needs to change the way it works. It's bad enough that it's 50% chance of buffing or inflicting status effects on the entire team. Does it really need to help the other team out on failure? It just makes the entire moveset stupid. When the computer uses it, if it fails, congrats, you just won. The only way to get any use out of it is to make your teams immune to whatever status effects you plan on using, and with Concentrate + Status effects, there's no need for this moveset. At all.

*Viera: Besides the already mentioned, the Viera classes in general need to be a bit slower. Most of them are pretty darn fast, and the only class that's really slow is the Summoner, and even then, it'll still be faster than a lot of people because it's probably a hybrid summoner.
- Ribbon/barette needs to protect against less status effects or something needs to be made so that other classes can be immune to a ton of status effects like them.
- Can Red Mage at least learn to 2 level spells and then have DoubleCast only work with Red Magic? You could offset this by making the second tier spells only able to be learned much later (like when the Wizard/Black Mage classes have their 3rd tier spells).
- Need to lose Concentrate as a race. It's too powerful for them.

* Human: For the most part, humans are fine in terms of growths. Except the Black Mage. It needs a buff, because I remember the White Mage strictly having better growths than the Black Mage. Either that, or the White Mage needs a growth nerf.
- Hunting needs to be nerfed to only 3 or 5 JP when you kill something. It's stupid that you can have two hunters, use a Totema, pick it off with Hunting with both of them and then finish it off with another Totema and still have Hunter 2 still have 10 JP for the next battle.
- Sonic Boom needs to be nerfed hard. It's way too powerful. Just because this really does need to be mentioned multiple times.
- Double Sword needs to be innate on Ninja. It's stupid that it isn't.
- Veils need a buff, or should be both physical and magic based. Their damage is abysmal and they don't inflict the status effects on with enough consistency to make them worth using. Throw, as usual sucks. Get rid of it and make it something else if you can.
- Marche needs to be more well-rounded. I'd say make him start with average hp, slightly above average MP, high attack, low defense, high mag.attack, low mag.defense, and above average speed. So he's a bit of a glass cannon. It sort of makes sense from a storyline perspective too.

*Nu Mou: Growths are fine, I suppose they could use a "speed" class as well.
- Morpher: Needs to be rebalanced in the fact that it's entirely overpowered or underpowered. There's no medium to it. I'd wager you might want to change this class completely, as the computer is unable to make use of it, making it even more strange... And FFTA2 seems to agree with that because it's gone there as well.

*Bangaa: Bishop needs a bit more magic growth I suppose. I don't really have much to complain about with Bangaa growths.
- Expert Guard needs to be rebalanced. Putting a law that makes the comp break it + berserk + standing there and taking no damage from it is ridiculous.

- In general: Steal Gil needs to become something else. It's lame and never useful and makes the computer act stupid by using this. Maybe it should change to "Steal Sanity" for confusion or something. It makes sense for a thief to have a confusion skill anyways to aid in stealing.
- Maybe make something where you can change Marche's race? That might be cool, as having a forced hume at moments is kind of annoying.
-Computer needs to get stronger skills when it levels as well as equipment.
- Special characters should be able to switch classes. Otherwise they are really just glorified waste of spaces.
- Antilaws are fine, but laws that put on extra laws are stupid. Fight Law Card + Berserk wins the vast majority of randoms, and certain clans can be dismantled by one law. And certain fights like the 2nd Totema can be cheated to death by having charm be against the law (although that's more so because you can walk around until it's against the law). Totally unfair for the computer.
- Computer always needs to have the same amount of enemies as you have allies or more. I noticed that a lot of the time enemies have 5 while you have 6. Weird and kind of stupid, as you are clearly stronger than them.

That's cool that Agrias gets to live. I really like her. I have no idea why, but I've always used her (and if not, I've at least kept her). I really like Female Warriors/Knights.

Just some general ideas...

- The easiest way is to bring a mixed gender party in and charm one or two of them, and let all Hell (no pun intended) break lose.

- Counter Magic or Damage Split will go a long way in this battle, as if the HK doesn't kill you want your low faith/high brave character Counter Magics and hits them 1 or 2 times, they are dead. Either that, or you could bring some high faith people with Hamedo in. With high faith, they are less likely to attempt to hit you with their magic and melee you which will only lead them to their own demise.

- If that doesn't work, status effects that execute immediately are useful. This comes from people like Short Charged oracles and Mediators can help with this. Most noticeably sleep, as the enemies cannot wake them up without one-rounding them (unless one of them knows Elemental as a secondary).

- If you can, target item users first as they are annoying (as always). As a matter of fact, putting them in a status effect that stops them from fighting is highly useful.

- Abandon actually works to help dodge Untruth because it's considered "magic" IIRC. I know you can definitely guard them. Better than praying you don't get hit I suppose.

- Also, do you have any thief hats? Those might be useful in that battle. After all, extra hp really doesn't matter if you are dying before you get to do anything... Carbani armor also raises speed by one, so if you have some equip armor floating around with that, THAT could help as well. You may not beat them in speed, but you won't get doubled if you are.

- Finally, bring and extra revival guy. If you normally use 2, take 3 this time. If all 5 of them are using it, then this is a problem too, as you need something that can cripple them more than prevent yourself from dying.

Oh yeah, and letting Rafa die seems to be a good idea, as it at least gets rid of Malak, and considering how unreliable Rafa is in the battle, losing Malak on the field is more of a godsend than having Rafa there.

If you can get Mime to work like the Onion Knight, you are a god amongst us.

It's good to hear I am not the only person playing the game without restricting myself from levelling.

Philsov I have been doing basically what you are doing too as well, for the most part. Maybe I am a 'skillaholic', I tend to want to learn all the useful abilities for a job until that's done, so sometimes things take a little longer. I did unlock Damage Split (and some other useful abilities) for everyone possibly as early as the beginning of chapter 3 (and you can imagine the level I was in at the time). And I always wait out for the enemies to crystalize. Honestly most generics won't have problems mastering most of the essential abilities, the problem really starts to arise when you want to max out special characters. But with proper rotation, and crystal farming, it's not too bad I guess. I haven't considered that most people probably don't keep all the special characters (so in a way I am not your average player). But I find it hard to imagine how the game would play out if it weren't for so many battles where I am almost purely grinding for JP. It's not a big deal I guess but still I think the game should reward a bit more JP generally speaking to reduce JP spill grinding.

I'm not restricting myself either. I'm about to fight Elmdor at like 45, and I want his totally delicious armor so I haven't gotten passed that yet.

Also, for special characters, you could let them eat your generics... (I could never do that. I love my generics too much).