Job & Skill Proposals/Idea Thread

[Skip Sandwich]

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

spoiler: Dragoon of Kirin:35e510n8

Dragoon of Kirin
Equip: Stick, Helm, Armor, Robe
Element: Half Holy, Absorb Holy, Weak Dark

Abilities

Holy Breath: heal targets, range 2, area 2, linear attack

Rainbow Breath: deals holy element damage, may inflict blind, silence, confusion, berserk or charm, range 2, area 2, linear attack

Rainbow Shield: randomly inflict protect, shell, reflect, haste or regen on nearby allies, range 0, area 2

Spin Strike: weapon-based attack hits adjacent enemies, range 0, area 1

spoiler: Dragoon of Leviathan:35e510n8

Dragoon of Leviathan
Equip: Stick, Helm, Armor, Robe
Element: Half Water, Absorb Water, Half Fire, Weak Thunder

Abilities

Aqua Soul: deals water element damage to a single target, range 4, area 0

Refresh: remove negative status from self or single ally, range 3, cancel: blind, silence, poison, berserk, sleep, confusion, and charm.

Drown: deals damage equal to 13% of the target's maximum hp, persistant skill, water element.

Spin Strike: weapon-based attack hits adjacent enemies, range 0, area 1

spoiler: Dragoon of Mist:35e510n8

Dragoon of Mist
Equip: Sword, Shield, Helm, Armor, Robe
Element: Half Ice, Absorb Ice, Half Wind, Weak Fire

Abilities

Ice Breath: deals ice element damage, range 2, area 2, linear attack

Mist Form: self + Transparent

Freeze: inflit slow and stop on a single target, range 4

Rush: weapon-based attack, range 2, linear attack

spoiler: Dragoon of Salamander:35e510n8

Dragoon of Salamander
Equip: Sword, Shield, Helm, Armor, Robe
Element: Half Fire, Absorb Fire, Half Ice, Weak Water

Abilities

Fire Breath: deals fire element damage, range 2, area 2, linear attack

Grease: inflicts Oil status, range 4, area 1v3

Phoenix Soul: as self-destruct, but does not hit allies

Rush: weapon-based attack, range 2, linear attack

spoiler: Dragoon of Midgarsormr:35e510n8

Dragoon of Midgarsormr
Equip: Axe, Helm, Armor, Robe
Element: Half Dark, Absorb Dark, Weak Holy

Abilities

Poison Breath: deals damage equal to 25% of target's maximum hp and inflicts poison, dark element, range 2, area 2, linear attack

Poison Eater: self cure poison and recover 33% of maximum hp

Agony: if target is poisoned, cancel poison and deal damage equal to 50% of maximum hp, dark element, range 4, area 0

Wild Swing:  weapon based attack hits multiple targets, range 1, area 1

spoiler: Dragoon of Lindwyrm:35e510n8

Dragoon of Lindwyrm
Equip: Axe, Helm, Armor, Robe
Element: Half Earth, Absorb Earth, Half Thunder, Weak Wind

Abilities

Stone Breath: attempt to petrify targets, range 2, area 2, linear attack

Mud Ball: inflict don't move + slow on a single target

Stone Armor: self 33% maxhp heal, + protect, shell and slow

Wild Swing: weapon-based attack hits multiple targets, range 1, area 1

spoiler: Dragoon of Hiryuu:35e510n8

Dragoon of Hiryuu
Equip: Longbow, Helm, Armor, Robe
Element: Half Wind, Absorb Wind, Half Earth, Weak Ice

Abilities

Wind Soul: deals magical wind element damage at range, range 4, area 0

Vaccum: deals 13% of target's max hp damage, persistant skill, wind element, range 4, area 0

Vertigo: inflict float and confusion to a single target, range 4

Warp Strike: weapon-based attack, range 8, zero vertical tolerance

spoiler: Dragoon of Quezacotl:35e510n8

Dragoon of Quezacotl
Weapon: Longbow, Helm, Armor, Robe
Element: Half Thunder, Absorb Thunder, Half Water, Weak Earth

Abilities

Thunder Breath: deals magical thunder damage, range 2, area 2, linear attack

Numb Breath: deals 50% mp damage, range 2, area 2, linear attack

Jumpstart: revive target and restore 25% of max hp, thunder element, range 4

Warp Strike: weapon-based attack, range 8, zero vertical tolerance

spoiler: Dragoon of Bahamut:35e510n8

Dragoon of Bahamut (Male Only)
Equip: Spear, Helm, Armor, Robe
Element: none

Abilities

Flare Breath: deals non-elemental magic damage at range, range 4, area 0

Giga Flare: spell deals non-elemental damage, range 4, area 2, ignores faith

Rat's Tail: instantly level up an ally by +1, range 1v0

Jump: deals PA * WP  damage to a single target, range 3v5, unevadable

spoiler: Dragoon of Tiamat:35e510n8

Dragoon of Tiamat (Female Only)
Equip: Spear, Helm, Armor, Robe
Element: none

Abilities

Hellfire Breath: deals fire and dark element damage, range 2, area 2, linear attack, may inflict oil status

Hellfrost Breath: deals ice and dark element damage, range 2, area 2, linear attack, may inflict slow status

Hellshock Breath: deals thunder and dark element damage, range 2, area 2, linear attack, may inflict don't act status

Jump: deals PA * WP damage to a single target, range 3v5, unevadable

[Vanya]

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

[Skip Sandwich]

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

[Vanya]

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

[The Damned]

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?

[DarkxFatal]

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..

[Vanya]

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.

[The Damned]

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

[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.

[DarkxFatal]

@ 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.

[The Damned]

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.

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.

*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.

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.

[DarkxFatal]

@ 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 =/

[Vanya]

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.

[The Damned]

(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.

[DarkxFatal]

@ 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.)

[oneartplease]

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

The 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.

[Skip Sandwich]

@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)

[The Damned]

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.)

@ 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.)

[oneartplease]

@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...

[DarkxFatal]

@ 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.