Balancing a Red Mage in Vanilla.

[ArkthePieKing]

Not sure if this is the correct board but I'm trying to create a good Red Mage in vanilla. I replaced the Calculator class, and gave it tier 1 and 2 fire/bolt/ice/cure. I also gave it raise, blind, and sleep. It's got abandon, short charge (to emulate doublecast as closely as I can think of) and move-Mp up. Stat wise it's essentially the love child of a thief and oracle, minus the thief's speed. Equips are knives, swords, rods, and staffs. Also hats, clothes, and robes. It seems like it's okay thusfar, but I can see it quickly falling off towards the latter half of the game. Has anyone else had luck making a solid Red Mage in the past?

[Jumza]

Sounds about right, no?

A red mage class (as I understand it) is a 'jack of all trades, master of nothing' and they shouldn't be as useful as a class that is the master of their purpose. Obviously such a diverse a unit as you have created with all of it's utilities would be an epic early game character, but other jobs can just do the things the red mage does better, but it takes time. An example would be that an Oracle is much better at disabling units, a Black mage is better at dealing damage, and a white mage is better at healing, but that's because they have way more options.

I think that what you've made is probably balanced enough (without having looked at it's actual stats, any modifications you've made to it's abilities etc...).

If you want a more substantial class (though I actually like the set up you have here), you could try buffing it's stats or skillset, but you'll probably end up with something overpowered.

[ArkthePieKing]

Yeah you raise a good point. I agree that they should be weaker than any specialists out there, but I would like them to stay relevant throughout the game. I suppose they really wouldn't be that bad with a nice secondary like draw out. I still can't help but think Red Magic itself is just a poor man's summon. Then again they have comparatively high overall base stats, so I guess it's a fine tradeoff at the end of the day. I guess they're alright. Nothing to complain about, do you think a capstone ability would be good? Something for them to call their own?

[Jumza]

A unique ability would be a cool spin on it as well!

Makes all those other classes envious of it 

[formerdeathcorps]

Red Mage, as a class, requires that you have every spell in the game be worth using at both late-game and early-game.  In short, having it means you must design your entire spell system around having very little difference between tiers.

1) Your Red Mage spells must have a niche that other units don't have.
E.g. Since I don't have Summoner, Time Mage, or Samurai, I did this by replacing Draw Out with Red Magic, so I have 0 CT, 0 MP, unreflect, single-target, 100% item consume draw outs as Red Magic.  In the red magic set includes the only source of haste and slow, for example.
2) Your Red Mage should be useful in general.

The combination of these two rules means that Red Mage will probably have to have a decent healing or raise skill, a decent set of damage elements, some positive statii, and some negative statii.  It also means that other mage jobs will need to have minimal overlap with Red Mage.  Simply creating priest, wizard, time mage, and oracle while sticking some Tier 2 or 3 spells from the 4 classes onto Red Mage will result in a dysfunctional class that is either too strong, too weak, or too unfocused.

[ArkthePieKing]

That's a good point, and an interesting solution. I think I'd prefer something a bit more traditional myself. I think I'll keep the spell list as it is now, but make some unique, high MP/CT capstone abilities. How difficult would it be to make the truth skills roll 2-2 times instead of 1-6? I'm on my phone so FFTHacker isn't available to me. Thinking of setting up some faux-doublecast spells at a high MP cost as their capstone niche.

[Myrmidon]

Truth's formula has hit 1-X times in it on FFTP.  Best I'd be able to suggest is set it as effect 1, and 1-3 times (should average out as 2)

[ArkthePieKing]

Yep. That's what I ended up doing. Not great on maths, but single target, hits 1-3 times, formula for Diamond Sword (the ability, not the weapon). What would be a sufficient MP cost for that? 32? In that realm? Figured I'd make 3 versions for the 3 Fire/Ice/Bolt and set the JP cost at 600 with a prohibitive MP cost so it couldn't be used early game.

Oh, and slightly unrelated to this, but I'm planning on replacing the Materia Blade with a low level spear. But I can't get the damned thing to show up in shops no matter how hard I try. Any ideas on what could be causing that? I notice that all my shops are unchecked in the item's stats after I patch and come back to it, so it looks like those just aren't being applied. Am I doing something obviously wrong?

[Myrmidon]

looking through formulas, found this:

5E Dmg_((MA+Y)/2*MA) #Hit_(X+1) 6.25% Status
[Triple Thunder, Triple Flame, Dark Whisper]
(This is the only multi-hit formula in the game that ALWAYS occurs X+1 number of times.)

could be useful for doublecast.

As for MP costs for doublecasting, why not just have it as 2/2.5x the base cost for the spell?  You're likely not going about Fire/Ice/Bolt2 anyways, right?

[ArkthePieKing]

Oh, that was an excellent find! The spells scale pretty well. I should probably bump the damage on them a bit from where I've got them now though. Right now they're doing (in total) about the power of a 2.5 spell, and I feel like they should do more since they're single target. But a great find, and one I certainly appreciate you pointing out. Thank you!