Final Fantasy Hacktics

I love this poaching for consumable abilities idea.  It opens up so many possibilities.  Like you could recreate Relm's FF6 Sketch ability with this.  And like Skip Sandwich said, this creates a new angle for a summoner, as well.  "Monster essences," indeed.  Really any sort of class that might use enemies' remains in battle: some kind of soul collector, necromancer, voodoo witch doctor, animist, medium, whatever.

I approve so hard.

Looks like Voldemort already has an 8-piece zodiac battle in 1.3's END.  Oh well, I tried to have an original thought.  

Very interesting tease ya got there, Disco.

Pitfall, Carve Model, and Hell Ivy are non-elemental, if I remember correctly, so they actually aren't boosted by 108 Gems.  Most of the skillset is, though, so I think the odds might be more in favor of the boost, even with the great prevalence of Hell Ivy panels everywhere.

EDIT: Though if we're talking maximation and including MA values of 40, then you might as well have boost in there anyway.

I personally upped the hit rate and greatly reduced MP cost, and now I find it them pretty handy little couple of spells.  They were never really worth it against regular enemies when I played standard FFT.

I'm not actually going to be naming them in battle, just because I'm lazy when it comes to text editing, so they'll all have the name "Elidibs" (like if these were illusions or puppets summoned by the mage Elidibs).  As for Velius and company, yes, I suppose the updated names would be more appropriate.  For the sake of convenience I've just left things as they are.  

I will go ahead and edit the above list just to be more clear, though.

Oh yeah, this whole thing is totally meant to give other people ideas, whether those ideas are remotely close to this or not.  Because that is what this board has given me the entire time I've been here.

Your Tricks of the Trade topic is awesome, by the way.

The Thirteen Signs

So yeah okay I'm sort of adding six Lucavi, in a nice, roundabout way.  I won't be using ??? stats, but I will be using relatively high PA, MA, HP, and MP stats, as I'm planning on using the sealed Wizard job (#37?) to make these guys.  I'm not planning any fights against a single, ??? Exodus or anything, for several reasons: I don't want to change the storyline, Ramza owns almost all the gems by this point anyway, I don't have any special sprites to use, and I don't think the battles should be repeatable, like they would in Deep Dungeon.

I did some research into the boss and summon information of each of the six in the other Final Fantasy games in which they appear.  All are in FFXII, and this was the main source for elemental affiliation and spells, but most make other appearances that I wanted to take into account (Zeromus in FFIV, for example).  In doing so, I also reexamined the seven that already appear in FFT, and overhauled everyone's skillsets.

Cúchulainn - Bio (100% Death Sentence + damage), Bio 2 (100 % poison all), Bio 3 (self heal), regular Bio/2/3 spells (add: poison)
Belias - Ifrit, Fire 3/4, Hellcry Punch (fire elem Wave Around), Small Bomb (instant kills a target inflicted with Oil; useless in DD)*
Zalera - Dark Holy, Lich, Death Cold, Darkness (buffs stats of allies), Life Drain
Adrammelech - Bolt 3/4, Spell, Hold Tight, Lightning Stab (sword hacked on for DEB fight, and it works well enough)
Mateus - Shiva, Ice 3/4, Night Sword, Icewolf Bite (damage + slow)
Famfrit - Crush, Water Ball, Lose Voice, Leviathan, Hurricane
Chaos - Wave Around, Loss, Paralyze, Kamaitachi, Gusty Wind, Tornado
Shemhazai - Secret Fist, Wave Fist, Lifebreak, Mute, Ulmaguest, Blind 2 (2x hit dark damage, add: Blind)
Zeromus - Gravi 2, Haste 2, Slow 2, Demi 2, Return 2, Hold Tight, Dark Whisper
Exodus - Petrify, Reflect, Meteor, Melt (single target), Flare 2
Hashmal - Crush Punch (melee Earth damage), Earth Slash, Quake, Lava Ball, Seal (damage + cancels Float on everyone)
Ultima** - Ultima 2, Cure 3/4, Raise 2, Despair 2, Faith (Draw Out AoE, 100% adds Faith, Darkness, Silence, Critical)***
Zodiark - Snake Carrier, Poison Frog, Midgar Zolom, Zodiac, Dark Whisper

* - for the storyline encounter with Belias, I've replaced his Archaic Demons with customized super bombs that are capable of adding Oil.  Ability idea from Skip Sandwich (http://www.ffhacktics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=413).
** - Ultima's first form.  She's closer in power level to the others now.  Second form, as the final boss, is much harder, and will not be seen in DD.
*** - Heh, get it?  Victims blinded by, silenced by, and made to kneel before the sheer perfection of her holy might, in utter worship.

Any comments?  Is this totally stupid or what?

EDIT: Used updated Lucavi/Esper/etc. names.

Alternate title:

Elidibs and His Fightin' Lucavi/Espers/Scions/Totema/Zodiac Beasts

This is personal patch stuff here, but I thought I'd share some of what I'm doing, maybe return some of the massive amounts of creative inspiration I've gotten from this board.

Basically, I've always liked Elidibs but found the encounter with him somewhat underwhelming.  You learn from Magic City Gariland that he is a legendary Wizard, you stumble upon him in a cave, steal his Zodiac spell, he blows up, end of that guy.  I decided I wanted to make his presence as a kind of ominous secret boss a bit more tangible throughout the game.

So:

Rarely, on certain battlefields, some random encounters will generate a high-level, immortal-flagged guest Wizard named Elidibs that bears the Serpentarius zodiac sign.  The guest will have mastered Black Magic and be awesome all around.  It'll make those occasional fights easier, but the wtf moment would be worth it.

Throughout the first nine levels of Deep Dungeon, more of these Elidibs Wizards would show up (this time fighting the party), betraying the fact that they are puppet/astral projection/whatever things rather than THE Elidibs himself.

The scripted Elidibs fight at END will have Serpentarius Elidibs supported by six more Wizards, rather than the usual crap-ton of Apandas.  Each of these six will represent puppet versions of the six Zodiac beasts that did not make it into Vanilla FFT (using FFXII to fill in blanks: Mateus, Famfrit, Chaos, Shemhazai, Zeromus, and Exodus), each with a custom skillset.

Once Elidibs is defeated, his spirit remains, and END becomes sort of an arcane sanctum for him to continue his spellwork.  One of the battles that becomes unlocked would pit the player against a random number of Elidibs Wizards (maybe 6-8?), each equipped with one of the Zodiac skillets and carrying the appropriate Zodiac sign.  Lots of big flashy spells getting fired off at once, basically.  It would also mean Zodiac would be learnable in more than just one battle, as one of the wizards would be sure to pack Dark Cloud.  But it'd also be interesting to see the sorts of interaction that the various Lucavi have with one another.

no u

Quote from: "gojoe"

I do like this.

I'm not a fan of this poll.  I know rules of appropriateness kind of go out the window in a spam forum, but come on.

You're making me and my hope scared here.

I am Cancer.  All up in the face.

I America am in.  I learned rocks.

The kid has mad acrobatic skillz.

If you've got your laptop, that means you can still talk to us the entire time!  Right?

Telling me the truth was not an option!

My extremely strong bias aside, it's a good sprite, definitely a change.  I applaud your work, but I do so while weeping bitter tears.

I'm a hardcore vanilla Agrias fan.  I love that she's fairly sexless in her occupation as a knight-captain (standard breastplate rather than omg breasts! breastplate), and I especially love her massive English braid, so this new sprite makes me sad.  Lie to me, assure me it isn't my sweet Aggy, and I'll be content.

And if it isn't Agrias, then Agrias would surely beat her up.  Am I right?

Yes we can so hard.

Your name's Gin Sutoraifu?  Related to Cloud, yeah?

One chicken.
Two chicken.
Three chicken.

Three chicken.

On topic: marvelous chickens, everyone!