Final Fantasy Hacktics

It'd probably be better to either try to fix the hack or wait for it to be fixed.

So I have a few job change ideas for my personal patch I kinda want to run by you guys. Don't worry too much about the names, I'm probably going to be too lazy to edit the text for that. Some of this I know is possible, but I don't quite understand how to get it done so I'm gonna need some help with that too lol. I'm not super concerned with balance but if you find something that will wreck the game do share your concerns. These are all in the loose planning stage anyway (AKA I don't have a lot of the details worked out >_>). Some of those left out details will be the characters' growths/multipliers. XD

My new knight (who is now more like a paladin):
-Nurse: Restores a small bit of HP to the caster and surrounding characters and cancels blind, silence, and poison.
-Guard: Casts wall (reduces HP damage to 1) on self. 100% success, 0 CT.
-Cover: Casts protect on the characters surrounding the user. 100% success, 0 CT, 0 vertical tolerance, doesn't hit caster.
-Seal Evil: Moved from Mustadio's skill-set
-Weapon Break: Retained from battle skill, but I'll probably up the success rate by maybe 5%.

My new archer:
-Leg Aim: Stolen from Mustadio
-Arm Aim: Stolen from Mustadio
-Oil Arrow: 5 range, 2v3, 100% oil status. Doesn't deal damage. This one is totally iffy, but I wanted an AoE with range similar to a bow. Success rate will probably need to be lowered, but I figured "Hey it's oil, and this skill does no damage".
-Fire Arrow: Either a strong single target fire elemental attack using the held weapon's range or a 5 range 2v3 light damage fire attack. Earlier I was leaning towards the AoE, but now I'm thinking the single target would be more appropriate.
-Poison Arrow: Weapon range, 100% chance to poison. Or an damaging skill with a chance to poison. See what I mean about my ideas being mostly in the planning stage? XD
-Sure Shot: Weak attack with a 100% chance to hit that ignores reactions. Might be moved depending on what I decide to change about the squire class.

I've seen patches with the lancer class modified and that's something I really want to do as well. I'd just give them Reis's (slightly modified) abilities and make her a blue mage.

My new Agrias (upgraded knight/paladin/defender):
-Mighty Guard: Casts a 100% instant hit wall effect. Hits the caster and surrounding characters (0 vertical tolerance).
-Fortify: 2v3 instant cast skill that grants protect and defending status to allies. Won't hit Agrias. I'm pretty sure I copied this from someone in this thread, but I liked the idea and it is like an improved version of my knight's "Cover"
-Life Spring: 2v3, heals a moderate amount of HP and cancels petrify, blood suck, undead, death sentence, and poison.
-Last stand: Instant 100% self haste and regen
-Shock: Stolen from Beawulf
-Rasp: If you guys think that her skills need MP requirements, then this will replace Shock. It'll just be a 4 range mp draining move.

My new Mustadio is going to utilize the Antidote, Eye Drop, Echo Grass, Maiden's Kiss, and Soft slots. I've seen it done, but I'm not completely sure how I'm going to do what I want to. He'll have innate throw item, so he will have the range of a chemist. 100% hit rate and 0 CT applies for all of these. His skills:
-Hero Drink: Casts wall on target.
-Sleep Powder: Casts sleep on target
-Chocobo Feather: Casts haste on target
-Lamia's Kiss: Casts frog on target
-Chef's Knife: Casts death sentence on target.

The price of these items can be adjusted to make it more balanced, and I can change when and how they can be acquired too. That's why I'm okay with something like a 100% frog.

I also want to change the ninja's skill-set into something more fitting. I was thinking either make them more like assassins or more like their FFTA counterparts. Unfortunately the FFTA one would step on the geomancer's toes. Any suggestions? Oh I have seen the ninja class altered somewhere (I think), but again I don't know how to do it.

I'm also having problems thinking of a new skillset for Beowulf. I feel like his current one makes oracles useless, so I was wanting to make him more of a mage knight. Maybe I could give him the spells like tornado and melt in sword skill form? I don't know how much I would have to tone down the power of them though. XD

Thanks in advance for any feedback! Also if you are kind enough to try to explain how to do anything please dumb your explanation way down, because I am (unfortunately) technologically challenged. XD

PS: Yay first post! Sorry that it's kinda long. XD

Nurse can be done with formula 48, setting the effect area to 2, setting the range to 0, and giving a status set to Cancel Blind, Silence, and Poison.  Statuses 1D through 1F are blank slates, so you can use one of them.  Just make sure nothing else uses one of them for some reason or you'll be screwing up some other ability or item.

I believe the formula for Guard would best be 38.  Nothing inflicts Wall, however, so you'd have to use another status for that.  You'd also have to implement one of the ASM hacks to get Wall to work.

Cover would be done through a mixture of the Nurse and Guard methods.  I'm sure you can figure out how to set it up from there.

I think abilities with the Weapon Strike tag can be given AoEs, so you shouldn't need to set it to range 5.
Oil is also in need of an ASM hack to function properly.

I'm not sure how you could make Sure Shot ignore reactions.  Formula 03 might be best for this purpose, assuming PA for most or all characters is higher than bow WAs.  I recommend flagging it as Ranged Weapon too so people can't get long range with it with a sword equipped.  NOT using the Weapon Strike flag might allow it to bypass that reaction that blocks arrows.  Making sure it doesn't have Evadeable flagged should make sure it doesn't miss.

As far as I'm aware, there is no way to alter Ninja's abilities without running into bad glitches.

As far as the Items go, you need to alter their results. Instead of curing "X" they need to cause "X" for 100%. Really simple, really easy.

Y'know, after a little bit of consideration, 100% Death Sentence is pretty harsh, especially at a 100% success rate. You'll have to alter other parameters as well.

Internal Conflictor! - Needs Zodiac's ability requirement hack to work though.  (and I suck at names)

Its able to float between a normal and "shifted" mode, much like stances in The Way.  A truly versatile character.

The light side is focused on positive status infliction and moderate ranged aoe damage.  The dark side is focused on strong, closed range single target output and negative status infliction.

Shift Evil - 0 JP - Inflicts the "Curse/Dark Looking" status onto the user
Shift Light - 0 JP - Cancels Curse status.

Light Side (unuseable while cursed):
Enlighten - Faith-based magic with the ability to add: regen and float onto single target.  
Nature's Call - 3v0 zone, 3 range, moderate MP cost, light charge time.  ([PA+4/2] * MA) damage (its like elemental, but isn't as spammable and has no status)
Cleanse - 4 range, single target.  Removes poison, stop, or don't move from a unit, and heals it for 40% HP on success.
Wind Slash - 5 range linear, enemy-only -- deals MA * X damage.  Wind elemental.
Energy Siphon - Weapon-strike that drains MP from the target to replenish self.  Can only hit allies.

Dark Side (only useable while cursed)
Poison Slash - PA * WP with 100% chance to add poison.
Bash - 1 range PA*Y damage, while harming self for 20% of that damage.
Curse - 4 range, single target.  Removes either regen, float, or reraise from the target, and deals 20% HP damage upon doing so.
Halt - 4 range, single target.  Seperately Inflicts stop and/or don't move on the unit with moderate chances.  
Life Siphon - Weapon strike that drains HP from the target to replenish self.  Ally-only.

why stop at just one shifter unit? why not make a whole tree of units that each shift from one skillset to another? In fact, some units may even be able to force a shift change on an opponent from one state to the other in order to deny them access to certain abilities, although for the AI to make good use of this, almost every ability would have to have some sort of charge time, or else they'd probably just ignore those skills completely, like with the way the AI only uses magic ruin as a reaction to incoming spells, and never proactively to prevent the charging of spells in the first place.

Thinking about it further, what of instead of using the dark/evil looking status, we used the undead status coupled with the ASM mod to make undead immune to healing instead of reversing it. Then you have a team of units who, at any time, can "Death Pact" or whatever to gain a different or more powerful skillset, at the cost of being immune to healing  and revival for the duration of the shift (though they still have the default undead trait of having a chance to auto-revive with a random amount of health).

Spellcasters could even use this shift system to fight the speed growth/spell ct problem, for example;

Shifter wizard can normally cast up to tier 2 elemental magic, when shifted, he can cast tier 3 and 4 elemental magic, which has the same increase in power and cost as normal, but in terms of ct, are identical to tier 1 and tier 2 spells, respecively

:EDIT: we can call this patch FFT: Final Faustian Tactics  ;p

Now I know most of what I'm proposing is currently impossible, but I'd like to get some feedback about it.

First off, I'd like to change Berserk so that it gives you 20+ CT when you end your turn. You can now control your character, but still you can only use Attack.

Secondly, I'd like to change the Fist formula by adding a PA cap to humans. Basically, it will be PA! * (((PA{14})Br)/100), with {14} meaning PA will only go up to that number. Monsters have no cap.

Thirdly, I'd like to change Martial Arts to do two things. One, when dealing with the Fist Formula, either it just increases the cap to 17, or it change formula to (0+ 0...(PA/2)+PA! * (((PA{14})Br)/100), following ASM'D axe/flail formula. For everything else, just a 4/3 bonus.

Finally, I'd like to replace the current Monk skillset with a 'combo-based' skillset.

Berserk: Adds Berserk, Instant, 100%, Self only

One-two punch: Fist attack with 25% chance of hitting again, Fist Formula, 8 MP, Instant, P-Ev, 1 Range, 1 Vert

Haymaker: Powerful blow that always knocks back, (PA * (PA+2)/2), Always Knock Back, 8 MP, Instant, P-Ev, 1 Range, 1 Vert

Light Attack: Light attack stuns the enemy, -10 CT, (SP*SP/2), Instant, P-Ev, 8 MP 1 Range, 1 Vert

Medium Attack: Medium attack stuns the enemy, -20 CT ((SP+1)*(SP/2)), 50 Speed, 8 MP P-Ev, 1 Range, 1 Vert

Heavy Attack: Heavy attack stuns the enemy, -30 CT, ((SP+2)*(SP/2)), 25 Speed, P-Ev, 8 MP, 1 Range, 1 Vert

Meat Hook: Quick blow to the enemies' weak point causes enemy to instinctively curl up, (SP*(SP/2)), Add Defend, Instant, P-Ev, 1 Range, 1 Vert

Guardbreaker: Special Fist technique breaks guard, causing massive stun, Cancel: Defend, -30 CT, (SP*(SP/2)) Instant, Unevadable, 1 Range, 1 Vert

Throw: Technique uses enemies' guard against them to deal massive damage, otherwise miss, Cancel: Defend, If Target is Defending, than Cancel:Defend, and deal (PA!*(PA*3/4) Damage, Unevadable, Instant, 1 Range, 1 Vert

Uppercut: Powerful, but inaccurate attack that KO's opponent if their HP reaches critical (PA!*(PA*3/4) Damage, PA!+35% Success, Instant, 8 MP, P-Ev 1 Range, 1 Vert

Knock Out Punch: Technique that attempts to go for the Knock Out, Add Dead, PA!+35% Success, P-Ev, Instant, 1 Range, 1 Vert

Thoughts?

I'd love to see a Support Ability that makes a unit immune to any statuses they are able to inflict themselves. So a Wizard would be immune to Frog, Poison, Dead... and Holy Knights would be immune to Stop, Death Sentence, Dead, Silence, and Confusion. And Math Skill should not apply.

Not a revolutionary ability, but I think it's new and not too overpowered. Sure, an Oracle would then be immune to a lot of statuses, but it's not like the ability would make them invincible or anything.

While sitting at work today staring off into space, I began thinking about a new custom job , and the one that came to my mind was the Berserker. The name is pretty unoriginal but what can you do?
Basically this class would be focused on dealing damage and self-buffing. It would have a low HP modifier and low HP growth. Its MA and MP modifier and growth would also be low.
High AP and SP mod/growth.

Equipment - Axes, Swords, Clothes, Hats, Accessory. (Possibly more, but I can't think off hand)

As far as skills go, I only have five or so right now, and I'm not positive if they can really work. Ha ha.

Smash - Attack the tile in front and the two parallel adjacent tiles (does that make sense?) for damage, and heal the Berserker for 25% of damage done.

Whirlwind - Basically a Spin Fist/Turn Punch attack.

Weapon Toss - Basically just a throw attack. This is one I'm not sure can work unless the weapon selection is limited to one single category.

Piercing Scream - A "draw out" type skill that either inflicts statuses on surrounding enemies, lowers their brave, or lowers their AP stat.

Roar - Sacrifice 20% max HP and increase AP and SP by 1 each (probably not able to be done, but on well).

Well, that's all I have so far. Let me know what you guys think!

Thanks.

Wait, it just seems right for a berserker to have a helmet, but I don't know why.

Quote from: "ffta707"Wait, it just seems right for a berserker to have a helmet, but I don't know why.

Yeah...

Since the Berserker idea is a little stale I decided to shelf it for now.
Ever since I discovered Zodiac's ARH, I started scheming up jobs/skillsets that would rely a lot on the "requires" and "synergy" abilities of the hack.

One I came up with was a replacement for the Dancer. This would be a bit of a variation on the Assassin, named something stupid like "Stalker" etc.
For equipment, they would pretty much be a Thief. They would have pretty average to low modifiers and growths in every stat except for Speed, which would be nuts fast. Faster than a Ninja, easily. Their C-EV% would be something crazy too, or at least on par with a Ninja.

Their entire skillset would require that a knife be equipped. Basically, it would be full of one-panel ranged status inflictions, probably on a 100% application rate. It could include Poison, Sleep, Confusion, Stop (or Don't Act/Don't Move), Silence, and Death Sentence.

I can't decide if they would be imbalanced at all. I mean, yeah, be able to inflict status effects at a high clip can be cheap, but if the range is only melee range, and if it requires a knife be equipped, doesn't that kind of balance it out?

Any input would be terrific!

I really think that it would be balanced. Maybe you could give them a low movement range, so it would be harder to get to the melee range without getting killed? It's a good idea at any rate. I would use that class - I don't  like dancer too much.

I was actually thinking more along the lines of giving them a good movement range (4m 4j) as a way to balance them more.

The way I see it, they'll be one of the first to act. Now, you CAN move right into melee range and disable an enemy before they can act. Only problem is that you're now at the mercy of their entire team.

I am pretty sure that even knowing this, there will still be fights where I'm using one and I want to say Silence a Summoner, only to get stomped by their allies before I can retreat. I guess it's more dependent on your R/S/M choices, but you get the gist.

My Idea for a class concept - A very powerful class, with basically amazing abilities, but has innate death sentence. It would need some more thinking, but I thought it would be cool.

Quote from: "ffta707"My Idea for a class concept - A very powerful class, with basically amazing abilities, but has innate death sentence. It would need some more thinking, but I thought it would be cool.

Why not  make a class that is pretty average in terms of stats and skills, but has a self-buff for like 5 PA and 5 MA but causes Death Sentence?

Now that Zodiac has some really kick-ass ASM hacks with which to fix and manipulate jobs and skillsets I came up with some new ideas for a Riskbreaker job.
It has always been my intention to change Ramza's 3rd job into Riskbreaker as a sort of tie-in to Vagrant Story. My problem with it was the lack of weapon requirement based skills and just the huge variety of abilities that Ashley had in VS.

My current idea is to give Ramza's 3rd job a unique skillset that reinterprets the Break Arts. You can consider them an earlier incarnation if you want. Using the Generic Skillset Fix Hack (GSFH) I can turn the Defend command into a normal skillset that will contain all the Break Arts. Then I can use the Ability Requirement Hack (ARH) to make each Break Art require the appropriate weapons be equipped. The abilities would use formula 42 to cause damage to the target and the caster to emulate the HP cost of real Break Arts. In addition to this I would expand Ramza's normal skillset to include several abilities based on some of Ashley's Chain- & Defense-Abilities. There's no need to recreate any of the VS spells as the existing White, Black, Time, & Yin-Yang spells serve the same role.

Break Arts:
(*All break arts are single target abilities.)
Weapon Type                -Name                -Range     -Element
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fists                   -Lotus Palm          -7         -none
Knives                     -Vile Scar           -5         -as weapon
Swords & Ninjato           -Mistral Edge        -6         -as weapon
Knight Swords & Katana     -Swallow Slash       -4         -wind
Axes                    -Thunderwave         -5         -lightning
Flails                  -Ignis Wheel         -4         -fire
Poles                   -Glacial Gale        -5         -ice
Rods & Staves              -Gravis Aether       -4         -earth
Polearms                   -Spiral Scourge      -3         -water
Bows                       -Heaven's Scorn      -5         -holy & wind
Crossbows               -Sanctus Flare       -3         -holy & water
Guns                    -Brimstone Hail      -6         -dark & fire
Books                      -Black Nebula        -3         -dark
Instruments                -Accursed Umbra      -5         -as weapon
Cloths                     -Papillion Reel      -3         -holy
Bags                    -Emetic Bomb         -3         -as weapon

As for the main skillset, I want to keep all the squire abilities and Ramza's unique abilities and add in a few new ones like Dulling impact (weapon attack +mute), Crimson Pain (weapon attack +30% damage to user), Mind Ache (damage based on target MP). Some abilities may require formula hacks but nothing too drastic.

@Vanya
that sounds really awesome, especially the bit about expanding Defend into a normal skillset. One problem though, isn't formula 42 (Work) incapable of accepting elemental flags?

Is it? If so, then I'd probably need a custom formula for the Break Arts.
The other alternative would be to treat them like FF6 limit breaks and only allow them to activate if the Riskbreaker is in critical status.

I had a new idea about how to structure the relationship between a spell's Power, Range, Area, CT, and MP cost. One of magic's biggest weaknesses is that as you progress through the game, you must switch to using higher tier spells to continue dealing competitive damage, however, the CT for spells only becomes longer as you progress through the game, whereas unit speed continues to increase, eventually eclipsing spell CT and making them all but impossible to use without Short/Non Charge support.

My proposal is to REVERSE this relationship. CT is in a very real way a "Cost" to casting the spell, just like mp, so why not arrange spells so that you begin the game paying mostly CT, and end paying mostly MP.
"Mostly" is an important word choice here, because there is another component I'd like to add to the mix. My second proposal is that you pay for a spell's Range/Area with CT and Power with MP. What this would mean is that lower tier spells would have greater range and AoE then higher tier spells.
Here is an example, using three different targeting schemes, Fire is SelfAoE, Ice is Linear, Bolt is 3-Way attack.

Fire: dmg_F(MA * 12), Range 0, Area 5v0, CT 7, MP 6
Fire 2: dmg_F(MA * 24), Range 0, Area 4v1, CT 5, MP 12
Fire 3: dmg_F(MA * 36), Range 0, Area 3v2, CT 4, MP 24
Fire 4: dmg_F(MA * 48), Range 0, Area 2v3, CT 3, MP 48
Melt: dmg_F(MA * 60), Range 0, Area 1v4, CT 2, MP 96

Ice: dmg_F(MA * 12), Range 10, Area 10v0, CT 7, MP 6, Linear Attack
Ice 2: dmg_F(MA * 24), Range 8, Area 8v1, CT 5, MP 12, Linear Attack
Ice 3: dmg_F(MA * 36), Range 6, Area 6v2, CT 4, MP 24, Linear Attack
Ice 4: dmg_F(MA * 48), Range 4, Area 4v3, CT 3, MP 48, Linear Attack
Freeze: dmg_F(MA * 60), Range 2, Area 2v4, CT 2, MP 96, Linear Attack

Bolt: dmg_F(MA * 12), Range 5, Area 5v2, CT 7, MP 6, 3-Way Attack
Bolt 2: dmg_F(MA * 24), Range 4, Area 4v4, CT 5, MP 12, 3-Way Attack
Bolt 3: dmg_F(MA * 36), Range 3, Area3v6, CT 4, MP 24, 3-Way Attack
Bolt 4: dmg_F(MA * 48), Range 2, Area 2v8, CT 3, MP 48, 3-Way Attack
Blast: dmg_F(MA * 60), Range 1, Area 1v10, CT 2, MP 96, 3-Way Attack

You probably noticed that my spell power ratings jump a little faster then you're used to seeing.  This is because I crunched the numbers and 50 faith versus 50 faith is 25% of maximum spell power possible. So I devised a new distribution of spell power levels for faith/non-faith and elemental/non-elemental spells

Faith-Based Elemental spells start at 12, and improve by 12 per spell tier
Non Faith-Based Elemental spells start at 3, and improve by 3 per spell tier
Faith-Based Non-Elemental spells start at 16, and improve by 16 per spell tier
Non Faith-Based Elemental spells start at 4, and improve by 4 per spell tier

So there  it is, I know it's a lot to take in at once so I thank you for your time.

First post here, so hi I guess   ). The job is based on tanking, life management, and double-sided powers. It's probably a bit OP ATM.

I'm happy with what I have so far, still I'm submiting this to you guys, i'm pretty sure it can be improved.

Blood Knight

• Innate : regen
• Same equipment as Knight
• HP : very good (like, best of all jobs)
• MP : very bad (like 1 and poor growth, there has to be a counterpart)
• PA : mediocre (for a physical class)
• MA : very bad
• good speed (because it's Ramza)
• good movements (because it's Ramza)

Abilities (all instant, no mp cost, and can hit both enemies and allies) :

Blood Gift : (100 JP)
hp theft 25% of target max hp, range 0-4, no evade, separate status add (25% each) : Regen, Haste, Reraise
(I'd be happier with just hp damage 25%, and a separate HP theft spell, but there seems to be no HP% damage with status effect.)

Dark Pact : (900 JP)
heal 50% of target max hp, range 0-4 (some enemies seem to be able to evade this idk why), separate status add (25% each) : Undead, Death Sentence, Poison

Drain Pain : (400 JP)
Give 2/5 of max hp, loose 1/5 of max hp. Range 3, effect 3. Don't heal caster

Agravate Wounds : (900 JP)
Deals damages based on target missing life. Range 2, effect 3 (caster is always in effect area, and takes damages too)

Vengeance : (400 JP)
Deals damages based on caster missing life. Range 1, effect 2 (caster is always in effect area, and takes damages too)

Self Destruct : (400 JP)
Deals damages based on caster missing life. Kill caster. Effect 3. Add separate status (25% each) : Undead, Death Sentence, Poison

Other abilities, shamelessly stolen from other class :

• Damage Split
• Move HP-UP
• Defense-UP