Final Fantasy Hacktics

My goal: Having more than 6 functional characters BEFORE Herb Picking mission. (Hopefully have a full roster from the start)

Tried so far
1) Could not find a way to increase number of units of Default Party using AIO.
2) Setting Recruit Moogle during Snowball(start) or Lizard Fight(2nd battle) missions using Nightmare2.
Did not work. Since the game does not trigger the Mission Completion screen, no unit gets recruited.
3) Using CBA to create a 7th character
So far I have managed to create a character out of thin air by using these codes:
820006B4 2401 (creates an Animist)
820006B6 2405 (changes the character to Moogle Animist)
The issue with this: The Reaction ability section is broken. Even though equipping Green Beret shows the Moogle is learning Block Arrows, his Reaction ability list remains Empty and no Reaction ability can be selected. Even after he learns Block Arrows, he still cannot equip it. Is there some code for Reaction Ability Set that I might be missing? Or does it have to do with 820006B4 picking a specific appearance which does not allow of Reaction Abilities from another race?

How would you go about this?

The function starting at 0x080c9644 initializes an "entity" slot from a "template".

Early at system boot, the default player party is initialized by calling that function in a loop located at 0x080097ce. The loop is coded to execute 6 times and takes its "templates" from offset sequentially from 0x0852cde0.

I would patch to call that function sometimes near startup with additional characters that you want to set. For instance, calling the function manually -- in GDB -- with the second default template adds an extra Montblanc at position 6:

p ((void (*) (void*, void*, unsigned char))0x80c9644) ( (void*) (0x02000080 + 0x108 * 6 ), (void*)0x0852ce10, 0)

This does also seem to also balance the equipment inventory correctly as long as you are filling an empty spot.