Final Fantasy Tactics Advance: Grim Grimoire (OLD!)

[Eternal]

I like the concept of Laws, and how they're handled in A2. The problem with laws in TA is that they can royally screw your party over unless you walk around to get laws that won't screw you. Using Law Cards, you can still tactically make laws that will benefit you in battle. The removal of laws simply ensures that each battle starts balanced on both sides.

Understandably, this goes against canon (one of the things I hate most), which is why we were also considering a version with laws. This way, both groups could be happy and enjoy it.

[Pata Hikari]

Care to elaborate why? Darth and I were considering a version with and without laws anyways.

Mainly because the laws are part of what made FFT:A Unique. Plus, in theory they helped encourage a balanced team. (Since you might have one character's skillset or entire RACE banned)

I agree that the main problem was that walking around removed a big part of it. Are there stages in FFT:A that have exact set laws (I can't remember if there are) if so, I think a good idea might be to make it so that each mission stage has it's own law made for that stage, while the random battles follow the law calendar.

Law cards were really fun to mess with too.

*sigh* The pain of being someone who liked the laws...

[Eternal]

Haha, relax, you're not alone. Like I said, I liked laws, just not how they were executed. Not sure if laws could be set per battle though. I'd need to ask Darth.

Thanks for your input, btw. It's good to get many opinions on things like this.

[Kaijyuu]

Plus, in theory they helped encourage a balanced team. (Since you might have one character's skillset or entire RACE banned)

Right, but it's a rather intrusive way to force using more than 1 team of characters and/or encourage diversity among your character's learned skills. Laws pretty much just cover up the balance issues with newspaper; what it's covering is still there and stinks, but it's theoretically better than leaving it out in the open.

Law cards I admit were sort of interesting, and in actuality I wouldn't mind a system where laws only came from cards.

[Pata Hikari]

I will admit that FFTA2 did the laws a million times better in every way.

[Darthatron]

Pata Hikari: I'm one of the people who likes laws as well.

Can someone explain to me how they were different in A2?

[Dome]

You have only one law in each fight, and it's fixed...it will never change for that fight
At the beginning of the match you select a "Bonus" (Slightly hit % bonus, regen on all units, etc etc..)
If you break the law, you lose the bonus
Also, if you break the law, you cannot resurrect units.
That's all, no prison, no gil/stats penalities

[Darthatron]

That doesn't seem harsh enough to me...
Maybe I could make it so breaking the law causes that unit a random status ailment or something.

[Eternal]

Skill editing has begun. I've finally taken the plunge and am learning how to hex edit while editing skills. So far, five skills have been changed with many more changes on the way.

Air Render- Half damage.
Holy Blade- Normal damage, Add: Blind.
Far Fist- Half Accuracy.
Magic Hammer- Add: Silence
Smile- Add: Regen

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

Did the spreadsheet help with editing, at all?

[Eternal]

I didn't use it to directly edit, but it helped me get my bearings. In truth, I had no idea how to directly edit with it. =\

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

The instructions didn't help?

What you have to do is copy the contents of the cells that have the hex data to the corresponding addresses, via hex editor.  You can tell if a cell of hex data corresponds to an address, because they're on the same row.

Does that help?

[Darthatron]

Why would Holy Blade add blind? Seems odd to me.

[Kaijyuu]

Bright light, maybe?

Or maybe a jab at religion "blinding" people, heh.

[Eternal]

For tanking purposes. This way the Paladin can deal damage while increasing their defensive capabilities as the battle goes on with the possible Blind affliction.

[Pata Hikari]

You have only one law in each fight, and it's fixed...it will never change for that fight
At the beginning of the match you select a "Bonus" (Slightly hit % bonus, regen on all units, etc etc..)
If you break the law, you lose the bonus
Also, if you break the law, you cannot resurrect units.
That's all, no prison, no gil/stats penalities

Also, if you go the entire fight without breaking the law, you get extra rewards.

The best part, naturally, was that every fight had a law tailored for it. Usually making it that you obeying it gave a slight disadvantage.

[Author]

Rundown:

I'm enjoying the whole "I don't know/care about stats" thing. It's entertaining, and I like this edit. However, we've got some srs problems.

Blind is like the best effect EVER in this game. It's pretty much a free, one-turn per enemy concentrate, that lasts FOREVER. I tanked through a good bit of the game (eg: 300-some AP) with just Blackout on two archers - Marche (known as Ramza) and some viera girl who was an assassin.

Game falls into the similar pattern after you do the negotiation grind. Get Cinqueda, do Wanted! (Giza Plains) to pick up Steal Weapon and Steal Armor, and then start making loots. However, the loot tables here are royally fucked. I'm still running into Leather Garb on quest enemies at level 15+. Once I grinded Montblanc from 1 to 11 (took about 10 minutes of a mission), he became useful again, although waaay outshadowed in damage by my Nu Mou and Ramza. A large problem is how shops open -they don't. I'm just past Cheetahs and the fucking store is selling one greatbow (without sniper skills) and that's it. At level 15+, that's not good at all. Fix that up.

Thief is ridiculously overpowered. With Ramza having 3 levels in Soldier, 5 levels in Archer, and 8 levels in thief, his base stats are crazy. 212 WATT/206 DEF/167 MPOW/182 RES/126 SPEED. Literally the only thing meh in that set is his speed, but Viera already outclass speed in every way.

Which brings me to my next point. Nerf the Viera speed. The White mage in Viera can double turn a Bangaa of the same level. This should not be happening in general, but when the mage class is moving before Ramza and his 126 speed, that's a problem. Hell, the only reason I outspeed them is because my Viera started as an assassin.

Eternal knows my grievances with the MP system. 10% is not nearly enough for these purposes.

Holy Blade needs to cost waaay less MP. The reason it costs 32 was because it did 2x damage, and you could bring that up to like 4x with the Justice Badge. However, here it would only be 2x with the Justice Badge, as Holy Blade's only effect is adding blind, but with damage.

That's all for now I suppose. Lates.

[Ethereal Embrace]

How is that you were able to allow Black and White Mage to equip another weapon?  I thought about the idea but I  didn't how to make it happen. 

Also, were you able to reduce Concentrates effect to like 5 or 10 %?  I know you said that the skill/item editor wasn't finished, but still.

[Eternal]

Darth's editor is updated to change what gear each job can use. Try it out!

As for Concentrate, Darth hasn't nerfed that yet, but he supposedly knows how so I'll take him on his word.

[forks]

i think an acceptable fix for concentrate would be to drop its modifier for enemy evade from 50 to 25, and status def from 20 to 0. that way it's still a useful support (hit rates vs a 50 evade target go from 50/75/87 to 75/87/94, and status abilities are 50/60/70 against non-monster targets as they are without concentrate) without being rendered useless. i don't know much about how romhacking works, but since all you'd have to do here is find and change some variables, it sounds like it should be easy enough!

i approve of nerfing air render, but i don't think halving it is the best way to do it. with 45 power it's a good deal stronger than your regular attacks when you first get it, but nothing i'd call gamebreaking. 30 or 35 seems more reasonable, especially considering it's already outclassed by sonic boom in every way except damage (and that's only before you get weapons with 45+ attack). and on that note, sonic boom needs nerfing too, way more than far fist. i don't recall far fist ever being overpowered, though i can see how it might be pretty good when you first get it. i'd worry more about gladiator's swords - ice sword is boostable to a whopping 81 power with sprinkler from a very early point, although i guess this is less problematic with your new mp system... phoenix is another skill to consider. full-life over a large area for only 24 mp is insane, especially consider single-target full-life is only 4 mp less.

(ps you guys are my heroes you have no idea)