LFT: An FFT mod (The final release is a lie. Download here!)

[Grefter]

There is some shit you can fiddle with editting saved games if he really doesn't want to shark it.  Can't remember what it is called though.

[OblivionKnight]

If someone could set it up so that it would run on HELL INCARNATE (Vista), I'd be all for playing LFT.  My computer hates emulating, sadly ;_;

...well, I do have the older XP one.  I might try that.

[Grefter]

FFT should emulate fairly fine on your XP machine.  Just use a 2D centric plugin IIRC.

[superaielman]

LFT: Hard mode.

I got Laggy to cook this up for me when Altima was.. well, Altima in LFT. He promised to show no mercy and amp up the challenge. He didn't change anything from the PC end, with the exception of removing Speed Break and nerfing the damage dance.

I started on Sweegy woods.


Sweegy- New enemies of note: Blue bomb (can't remember name), Chocobo, Skeleton.  Made Algus and Delita Knights. Used an Archer with black magic, Priest Ramza with black magic, a Squire, and a Time Mage with black magic.

I let Algus and Delita go forward to absorb the worst of the enemies's attack. They have 80 HP and Knight defenses, making them the only unit in the fight not 2HKOed (or overkilled by Flame Attack. Whoof, that attack hurts). Chocobo charges in, I magic it to death. Most of the fight's falling backwards and keeping the enemies's away with attack magic. Had to kill the skeleton and Blue bomb last- skeleton for obvious reasons, bomb because it had reraise. Tough fight.

Dorter- No new enemies that I noticed, but the Archers all had weapons and the wizards had better faith. More JP in general it looked like. Had one reset when my only reviver (Ramza) got butchered by arrows.

Team- Mediator Ramza with White Magic, Time Mage with White Magic, female Thief with black magic, and a Monk with secret fist/basic skill.

Thief went up and started attacking the archers (She had best sign with one of the male archers and 2HKOed with magic). Ramza/Time Mage sit back and heal as need be. Monk accumlates for a couple turns, then charges ahead and attacks and kills the first mage as soon as he's in range. I make sure to protect him so he isn't one rounded by the archers. Delita/Algus mostly chase the uppermost archer and stay out of the range of the enemy Knight. Thanks guys.

Ramza Stops the enemy Knight as soon as he gets in range with negotiate. Had a bit of luck here (63% chances that hit a few times in a row), but still. Monk managed to bait the second mage into fire 2ing him. What do you know, he got in range as he was charging! OHKO. Fight was managable after that.

Sand rat cellar- ....Laggy you whore. The gloves are clearly off here. There are two archers, one of whom starts on top of the roof of the cellar. Worse, he's replaced the shitty monks with Priests, both of whom trail the archer.

Notable changes to my team: Ramza's a wizard, my Thief is a Geomancer with White Magic (Raise only), my Monk has learned chakra. Decided to leave my Mime on the bench so he wouldn't smash shit up too badly/get overleveled. Algus/Delita have learned Weapon Break. The Knights charge out and start breaking shit (Grefter broke two sets of armor, another generic Knight broke every single helmet I had. Whore). Archers start targeting my poor Time mage, trying to keep pressure on her. My Monk accumlates round one, and spends the rest of the fight chakraing. I need the MP badly, as I use Raise like 20 times or so in an attempt to keep up. I fought the enemies to a deadlock, with one small advantage- their revivers had limited MP, mine didn't. I had the fight won as soon as I got that stupid archer dead for good- 3 57% chances of raise worked on him three times in a row.  So glad I decided to use a monk early. Chakra's MP restoration really is key, gives you unlimited shots of revival.  What's up with the tranny priests in that fight by the way?

Picked up attack up on my Geomancer. Cool. Do a couple of randoms for cash and JP, go to the thieves's fort.

Thieves's fort-  Improvements: Priests are L2, have enough JP for revival/curing as well. There's an extra priestess, Miluda had a Germinas boots and was L13, a Thief had spike shoes (May have been there before, never noticed though.). I had steal accessory learned freakishly, just didn't set it. Miluda's an L2 Knight, has Mythril gear.

Ramza is a Mediator with sing, Delita and Algus are chemists (Algus with battle skill, Delita with Guts). I also bring my Mime and my Time Mage with white magic. Decided to not use my Dancer (Geomaner female).

Should have left Delita as a Knight, but I wanted to unlock Mime. Oh well.  Doubled Life song pretty much controlled damage that wasn't a OHKO.  Thieves have good offense but still aren't all that great at durability, they get overwhelmed quickly enough.

Alternately: could have won the fight with Silence Song. Couple of uses of that kills the priests, no one else is likely to have silence curing.


Miluda 2: I made Delita a mime (Used two for the fight), set Sing and Dance. *splat*  Nameless dance pretty much crippled every single mage in the fight and frogged one of the knights/slept the other to boot.  Mimed dance/sing is pretty mean, as I've noted before.

Resetted and did the fight a second time. I knocked out the mages with Silence Song, it was easy from there. Neat fight (Added a time mage), but status really is damn good at shutting down the enemies there. Helps that they tend to come down and use attack magic, making them bait for physicals/status.


Wiegraf 1: Here I was thinking Laggy was playing nice. I ran into a Monk with Hamedo here- lost that time. Had.. two resets on this fight, and all three fights took for fucking ever.

Team: Mediator Ramza with White Magic, Mime Delita (Status immune+benefits greatly from accumulate, makes him a good healer/knight buster), Monk with Basic skill, female thief with weapon break, female oracle with black magic.


Wiegraf moves forward to LS the team. Thief breaks his weapon. This only does so much good, as his secondary is charge and he has the PA to punish you with this. The monks have tons of JP- so I had to deal with earth slash and other pleasant skills. Delita charges forward and blocks the Knights/Monks from getting down and attacking round one. My Monk accumulates and blocks off the new Knight who starts right next to you at the bottom of the shed. He has counter attack and a shield, so he won't get physically attacked too often.  I had a bit of luck my third time and had two of the girls be best sign with Ramza. I stopped one of the Monks (99% odds, yay) and moved my Oracle right behind Delita. An Ice 2+miming later and the second enemy monk was dead and the knights were badly hurt.

Had control of the fight. Not that I didn't get killed several times, but having three revivers was enough.  Damn good fight.

Fort Ziekden. Was a joke. Delita with a bow and weapon break=Algus is fucked range wise. And you'll never be able to reach him. Even ignoring that it was too easy to retreat and turtle. I did use a Dancer here for nameless dance, but what really smashed poor Algus was Talk skill. Mimic Daravon hits everyone on the map, and of course you know how well the enemy responds to getting status crippled. Oracle+Monk=Knight buster of doom. One don't act and secret fist later and the knight on the far side of the map was down. Algus got more brave and better stats, but it's not enough.

Challenge rating. I skipped the first three fights, had a save at Igros.

Sweegy>Wiegraf>Sand Rat>Dorter>>>>>Thieves's fort>Miluda 2>Ziekden.  Miluda 2 had potential to be solid, just Silence Song shuts down too much of the fight to respect it a bunch otherwise.  With the exception of Ziekden every fight felt notably improved.

Chakra was really awesome here. You are going to be using revival a lot early on. Maintence is a good bet as well, enemy Knights burn right through your gear. Suggestions- give the Wizards more JP there, they were a really bad joke as is. Maybe stick someone on the top of the fort as it is Algus gets zero pressure on your troops when you retreat to the back up the map, giving you ample time to buff up and kick the shit out of whoever comes to attack.

Chapter 2- Dorter 2 was unchanged. NEXT. (To the AI's credit, I saw it factor in a mime's action in what it decided to do. That was cool.)

Goblin forest- Respectable? Ye..yes? Sort of. Black Goblins are somewhat of a threat thanks to their ubered version of spin fist., and they're overleveled. Some L3 goblins as well. The ice weakness still applies and Boco's improved range means he can scamper over to Ramza's side on turn one. I used my male thief (Formerly a monk) as bait to draw fire away from my mages, and then smashed with magic. Ramza used Life song to heal, my Oracle has a field day.

Use Mediators by the way.

[superaielman]

Zirekile falls: Hardest fight in the first half of chapter 2. You can lose this one before moving if you have poor luck- the two knights by Ovelia can reach her turn one, and they have double the offense they used to have (Two hands on one, two swords on the other.) Neutral sign means Ovelia takes.. 104 damage to her 109 HP. On the bright side, Mbarrier's cost has been way dropped so she can spam it. Any high speed/move class should be able to get up and meat shield some for Ovelia at worst. You have to act fast, as the Knights can make short work of Delita if he's stupid and charges them.  I used Life Song to control all the chipping damage coming in and used an Oracle with White magic to keep Ovelia in one piece while my male Archer meatshielded for her after turn one.  0 resets, but had to do the fight twice due to the PSP freezing up.

Zaland: Male archers instead of female archers, Knights just generally better overall, and the Wizards.. um. Elemental boosting weapons+Triangle+Wizard robes. That means horrible death to anyone besides a low faith unit or a Knight. I had a good spot of luck here- My Geomancer stoned the second Wizard with elemental. Earth Slash+Gunshot killed the second. Fight was largely academic after this (Musty died but who cares, chose the don't save him option). As always, Agrias is more useful as a healer/reviver than an attacker as a guest.

Barius Hill: Laggy replaced the first Knight with a summoner. This.. actually made the fight easier. Summoner offense is scary but they're slow and have to charge everything of note, where Knights take ages to kill.  Push the Summoner in the back of the hill for eviltype please. Pretty typical Barius Hill otherwise. Watch your flanks and don't charge- fuck the archers, take the arrow damage and let the summoners come forward. My Ninja with punch art got a lot of work here. Talk skill on Lancer Ramza kicked several types of ass as well. Goo Mimic Daravon.

Swamp: Meeplina on Ice, so par for the course. Enemies need a level advantage here to be competitive. On a 'oh fuck you FFT' note, I saw Uribos 6/10 times I loaded this fight. (I wanted to recruit a Morbol instead). Won this in two turns.

Goug- "Oh Laggy's going easy on me, he flipped genders on the archers but that's it..." *Checks summoners* "Fuck."

Fuck you say? Mmm yes. He gave the Summoners short charge and a lot of JP. Seeing Salmander is about as fun as you'd expect! The thieves have respectable offense thanks to two swords as well. Downside? Salamander blows through MP in a flipping hurry, and even the Shiva/Ramus tier is fairly expensive. If you can weather the early rounds the fight is very managable.

Team: Lancer Ramza with Talk skill, Mime (Bait), female Samurai with White Magic, Priest with Yin-Yang, Ninja with Punch Art.  Round robin revival has been the key to the game- two is the least I can get away with in most story battles, three is more of what I go for. I made use out of here, because goddamn did I get toasted with a fierceness by Summons and the Thieves physicals. Wasn't anything I couldn't control though.

First time I've really used my Mime in a story battle that wasn't super controlled. I had ran one of the Summoners out of MP (Ramza had Jumped on the other, was going to kill in a couple of turns)- which was good, I was sweating some when the Summoner got a turn. Out of MP! Tragic. Tanked the physical, then my Ninja came up. I charkaed without noticing where my Mime was.. yep, right by that fucking Summoner. He has nearly full MP!  A physical the very next turn  (Thief was cutting up my healers, he had to die) got mimed and killed him. Thankfully it was just healing and not revival.

Mime makes an excellent bait unit. 200 HP and status immunity? Perfect for handling all kinds of nasty fights.

Rest of C2 tomorrow, but the easy times of no resets comes to a crashing halt soon enough.

This is what a hard mode should be *Punts V1.3*. It's challenging by and large without resorting to hamstringing the player (V1.3) or overpowering the enemies beyond reason. Even the battles where I have no resets requires planning and careful use of status and marshalling my revival so I don't get overwhelmed. I've even died on normal randoms which is not at all common in normal FFT.

Talk skill's been a lifesaver. Instant sleep that's better than 50/50 chances? Decently accurate stop? CT-0 spell with a 2 radius? A good berserk? It's just damn solid all around, and has perfect brave/faith altering if that is your thing as well.

[ThePiggyman]

Heh, reading people talk about their playthroughs is surprisingly enough, a lot of fun. ;p

This seems like something I might wanna try as well. It seems very well reformed, and more difficulty on a SRPG is always welcome.

[metroid composite]

This is what a hard mode should be *Punts V1.3*. It's challenging by and large without resorting to hamstringing the player (V1.3) or overpowering the enemies beyond reason. Even the battles where I have no resets requires planning and careful use of status and marshalling my revival so I don't get overwhelmed. I've even died on normal randoms which is not at all common in normal FFT.

I suppose I should mention, the plan is still to only release one difficulty level of LFT.  It's the whole 1.2 versus 1.3 mentality (people forget about 1.2, but it's a similar idea to LFT--rebalance all the classses; don't touch the difficulty much, though the fact that Knights and Archers are improved makes the game harder anyway.  Granted, from what I remember it's inferior to LFT since IIRC 1.2 didn't touch JP costs).  The problem is that whenever there's a harder mode, the internet seems to forget about all easier modes--1.2 is all but forgotten in the wake of the badly-designed 1.3.  Touhou is a good example too (the majority opinion I've come across on the internet is "don't play Touhou on any difficulty other than Lunatic--it's just not right!")

This wouldn't be a problem, except FFT mechanics don't scale well.  Jack the difficulty too high and SCCs become impossible, really lowering the replayability in the long run.  Jack the difficulty high enough, and there's a greater temptation to level at which point bare-hands attacks make people stop using most weapons (just ask the solo-challenge community).  So...LFT will probably stay with only a single difficulty released.

That said, I know Laggy's thinking of incorporating some of the "special super edition" ideas back into LFT.  Noteably a few of the monster improvements.  And as far as interesting hard fights go, could probably squeeze some of those into the Deep Dungeon.

[superaielman]

SCCs don't matter a whit for how a game should be balanced or it's challenge. I don't disagree with the other comments, but this hard mode's been fun and I have no complaints. Some of the ideas need to make their way into LFT but yeah Laggy's working on that. It's been a very good way to test game balance as well.  It's holding up fairly well, which is remarkable.

Barius Valley- Hahaha holy shit. Gloves are OFF again. Protecting Agrias is pretty easy. Why? Two Oracles+Two mediators+Knights. The offense isn't that scary. I cruised through the fight- until they got status happy. Ramza and my Samurai got silenced, shutting down revival and talk skill. They then berserked my Ninja. This sounds good, right? The Ninja has now godly offense, even OHKOing an LFT Knight with armor. The mediator then goes behind the Ninja, and due to dead bodies can't be reached except by the Ninja. No big deal- except she Berserks Ramza, who goes to attack my Priest and hits the Ninja in the way. Fucking Lances!


Agrias can still reach her! She is hit by the mediator's stop of course. I had to haul ass and bring Mustadio from the back of the map to gun her down in time. Other side of the map was easy enough, except my healer/trump card Summoner got DSed and had the way over to the other side of the map where Agrias was blocked.

The fight displayed the best of LFT's changes. Who needs damage when you can annoy your opponent to death with status?

Execution site- Two resets. Gafgarion has a Bracer and.. is rather immune to stealing and physicals in general. He's also got a level advantage and armor.  His draining game goes from a joke to a serious problem- he's the best damage dealer on the map, and overwhelming his healing is a serious challenge unless you have a lot of magic.  Fought the battle a few times. Every time I made good headway but had my units overwhelmed by the sheer volume of offense the fight throws at you.


Winning team:

Side 1

Lancer Ramza with Talk Skill, Oracle with White Magic, Two Sword Monk with Basic skill


Ramza's job is to put the two knights near the ramp to sleep, while the Oracle statuses Gaf and the Monk starts killing.

Side 2

Mime, Female Geomancer with Steal


I put the Mime on this side to draw fire. Ravel (Mime) has 47 faith and 200~ HP at this point. That and the status immunity means he can take a hell of a magical beating. Front evade also means he's not easy for the Knights to kill either. Geomancer has a Green Beret and has hit the L18 speed point, so she can move out of the Time Mage's line of fire.


Ramza puts the two Knights to sleep, my Geomancer moves and manages to stone the archer by Gaf. It was rather good luck. My mime moves to the far side of the map away from Ramza and takes a swing at one of the archers.

My Monk kills one of the Knights. The other is awoken by an Archer arrow, and then promptly goes and cures stone with a soft potion. Shit. My Mime's drawing fire pretty constantly, which is good. The archers ability to cure sleep is what killed me the second time (My mage has arrow guard and the other units are tanky).

Oracle starts statusing out Gaf constantly. My Geomancer is blocking the Knight/TM from reaching the bottom part of the map, while my Monk/Ramza kill the other enemies on the ground. I hold on long enough to overwhelm the support (Took three-four turns) and had to be very careful to keep my revivers alive.

I managed to nab Gaf's bracer and blood sword. I heal, wait for things to crystalize, and win the fight.


Lionel Gates-

0 Resets. I didn't take this fight as seriously as I should have. No rubber shoes and I didn't use my mime, instead using Agrias and Mustadio.  I win this fight due to reak fucking luck- I go 3/3 on Invite on the first chance. I took a loo kat what I was facing and knew I was fucked if I went on straight offense, so I go to invite the male archer on to the left of the starting team. It works! (Granted said archer does nothing useful, but still) Ramza can't win a duel with Gaf, so I go to lower the gate with him.

I get lucky with Stasis sword on Agrias-she stopped the reviver Knight. The TM Knight casts stop on Agrias, who then walks over next to her. Stop works on both! Invite recruits the knights, I hold on in spite of getting my ass kicked bad by the one summoner on the map.

Inside Lionel-

To give you an idea how good some of the enemies are, I used the Time Mage knight I just recruited in the previous fight as a PC here. Quick is rather nice.


Team: Lancer Ramza with Guts (Status curing), Mime, Time Mage (see above), Two Sword Monk with shiny new bracer, mediator with white magic. Live play by play of the fight:


[<01/01/2009>[21:19:03] > ..I see the gloves are off Laggy.
[<01/01/2009>[21:19:19] * Laggy smirks.
[<01/01/2009>[21:19:53] > What's that? Quek charges bio magic?
[<01/01/2009>[21:19:57] > IN RANGE OF MY MONK?
[<01/01/2009>[21:20:01] > *800 damage*
[<01/01/2009>[21:20:11] > Better luck next time.

Bio needs to be instant, but we hashed that out. Due to the Mime being status immune and positioning, you can make it near 100% that he'll use Bio instead of status magic. His HP isn't too hot still, so he can be overwhelmed.

[metroid composite]

SCCs don't matter a whit for how a game should be balanced or it's challenge.

Depends what kind of game you're designing.

I remember a conversation with Elfboy years ago that went something like...
"Know how Balk has that poison trick where everyone starts poisoned?  There should be a boss with a Blindness bomb...and then that boss should equip Elf Mantle and Abandon to have 100% evade!"
"That would be a cool boss......although it doesn't really feel like an FFT boss.  FFT never forces you to use a particular party."

I mean, yes: you can design a game that's meant to force you to use different classes--WAXF does it (enemies on a height 5 plateau, battle you can't beat without an excavator, battle you can't beat without a sentinel, battle that becomes insane without a fantastica's object attack, etc).  You can also design a game that isn't meant to force the player into using particular classes.  Both are perfectly valid design approaches.  LFT, for better or worse, tries to go consistently with the latter (not counting optional fights).  This is why, for instance, we decided not to give Rofel Reflect Mail.

[superaielman]

Not forcing you to use a certain party? Sure, I'm down with that. But game design shouldn't at all be based around artificial challenges, which is what SCCs are. That abandon trick shuts down physicals in general, not a narrow subsection- say the way a 90 brave boss with Arrow Guard would shut down archers.

[Grefter]

I am with Met on this.  You aren't looking at a fresh brand new audience here Super, it is an established one that SCCs are a really strong and important part of at this point.  This isn't a total conversion or something, it is a rebalance mod and should be keeping the heart of the game in place.  Capability to do SCCs is certainly part of it.  I would almost say the ability to do even something as crazy as SSCCs if you really pushed it and were great at the game would be an admirable thing to see happen.

Also Met is on the ball with communities tend to do the "Oh you aren't playing super stupid retard mode?  What are you a pussy?" thing which is a real shame because there is as you can see here a lot of work going into balancing a game to be challenging but still fairly reasonable and forgiving.  You can see the effect in the FFT community anyway.  The guys that do SCCs tend to consider the normal game ridiculous and anyone that has issues with say Velius fight as kind of pathetic.  Then go look at the guys that do the solos.  Then go lick Orion.  Then consider that yeah there is place for just a rebalanced but not incredibly punishing rebalance of FFT.

[superaielman]

Chapter 3!

I've had a few resets each chapter on randoms, and this was no exception. The map where you fight Miluda 2 has a Dragon you can recruit. I fought.. couple of Goblins, a Chocobo, a Red Panther, and a Dragon. I knew I was in deep shit when I saw the Dragon had -8- move. I got my ass kicked around the block, didn't bring enough offense.

Poaching list: Dragon Whisker (First time, what the fuck), Salty Rage, Dragon Rod, Mamlagen, Defender. Defender was total stone cold fucking luck, fought a tree in a random and it gave me that. Defender/Salty Rage go to Knight Agrias, who now refuses to die to anything short of an ICBM or extended exposure to XS3 plot. Also keep a Red Dragon as a PC.

Goland: 1 reset. Forgot to heal Olan, who got 2HKOed by a Thief. My fault there. Enemies have lots of revival, but as always the map's so small that you can really dictate the terms of the fight without tooo many problems. get a healer up to Olan, attack the thieves, win.


Zalmo 1: Mastered Geomancers and Monks plus Zalmo with a bunch of MP. Doesn't sound too bad, right?

*Hell Ivy3x* Over and over. The narrow chokepoint at the start of map gives the enemies plenty of time to annoy you to death with it. Zalmo doesn't run out of MP ever and can't really be sniped without a gunner with battle skill. I berserked Zalmo and chain revive to keep ahead of all the constant sniping attacks. I brought three revivers and ended up needing all three to win the fight.

Fight before Izlude: Chemists have full healing and revival, time mages have quick. Doesn't help enough, they prefer to spam haste. Lancers have tons of offense, but as always they can be smashed with status. I have to revive a half dozen times or so (Had one semi close call, my Mediator got down to 0 on the counter), but very managable. Ramza got Quick out of it as well.

Izlude: Izlude stays way the hell back now thanks to his positioning and jump spams. The bad? A mastered Lancer still smokes him really badly, and the Giant Axe is storebought right before this. I also build my team around the male gemini sign so yeah, he was fucked. Tai had 50 faith and a Linen robe. *Snort*


Wiegraf: Attack up and killer PA, plus plenty of HP. My orginial plan was to be a total jerk and meatbone slash his ass to death, but decided to put my Red Dragon to use.

Used my Mime, a Red Dragon, Ramza as a Squire with Jump, Agrias, and my Mediator. Wiegraf comes forward and nukes my mediator and puts a hurting on my dragon. He is then crushed horribly by Jump/Dragon Breath (Which he evaded, fuck him)/Holy Explosion/Mime physical. My Mime/mediator die and Ramza is near death, but it doesn't matter.

Will catch up to the rest later.

Notes: I'm way higher level here (24-28 right past Yardow) than normal. I couldn't figure it out till I remembered how much tougher all the enemies are. Fights last far longer due to having to constantly revive/heal, and I've sat back and waited for enemies to crystalize as well.

Setups:

Ramza as a Squire with Equip Lance and a Dragon Whisker. A slasher's stronger for Jump but Lances are more reliable in general. Equips: Dragon Whisker/Flame Shield/Twist Headband/Power sleeve/Diamond Armlet. Skills: Guts/Jump/Blade Grasp/Equip Spear/Move +3

Mustadio: Finished most of Engineer/Chemist (Thanks for the crystals Goug). Moving onto Knight. Equip Gun makes him a damn good Knight. He doesn't care about armor being only good for durabilty and guns fix the range woes. Mythril Gun/Diamond Shield/Diamond Helm/Diamond Armor/Germanias Boots.

Agrias: Knight with Holy Sword. Nothing shocking here. Defender/Diamond Shield/Diamond Helm/Diamond Armor/Salty Rage. Complete defensive setup in spite of the 16 power sword, it works. Battle Skill/Holy Sword/Speed Save/Maintenance/Move +1.

Generic Male Thief: Monk build. Doing this to have some thief JP handy for stealing. Will switch back to Monk once the twist handband stops owning. Fists/Twist Headband/Power Sleeve/Bracer. Steal/Punch Art/Counter/Martial Arts/Move +2.

Generic Female Mediator: My mage. Decided to do something different and use her as book user instead of the usual Wizard/Priest nuke. Need to get her some more Priest JP though and she's mastered mediator. Talk Skill/White Magic/Arrow Guard/Equip Shield/Move +1

Generic Male Mime: Duh. Level 23ish. Has really trailed off on offense, but still has tons of use due to stats/innate skills and being a Mime.

Generic Female Samurai/Geomancer: Never done a Geowith drawout. Just trying to slog through Samurai right now (Augh draw out takes too damn long). Just about caught up though. Been very effective as an attacker and as a reviver in a pinch. Heaven's Cloud/Diamond Helm/Wizard's Robe/Diamond Armlet. Draw Out/Basic Skill/Blade Grasp/Attack up/Move +1.

[metroid composite]

Not forcing you to use a certain party? Sure, I'm down with that. But game design shouldn't at all be based around artificial challenges, which is what SCCs are. That abandon trick shuts down physicals in general, not a narrow subsection- say the way a 90 brave boss with Arrow Guard would shut down archers.

Actually, that abandon trick only shuts down two SCCs.

Knight...has nothing.
Bard...has nothing I can think of.  Maybe if this boss has support they can hope said support has evade-ignoring and then try to confuse them with the Ramia Harp?

Other than these two classes...

Priest/Wizard/Oracle/Time Mage/Summoner/Chemist/Mediator/Spell-Calcs are obviously fine.
Squire has to use Dash or...wait, they can cure blind with Heal!
Archer has Concentrate
Monk has Earth Slash
Thief can get auto-transparent with Setiemson (assuming this is a chapter 4 boss) and if that's not enough, possibly win with some charm shenanigans.
Geomancer has elemental
Lancer has Jump
Samurai has Draw Out
Dancer has Wiznaibus
Ninja has Sunken State
True-Calcs might be able to pull it off with Damage Split, or by curing Blind with Octagon Rod.
Mime has Concentrate

Dunno--sure SCCs are artificial, but they're an easy way to quantify "various different playstyles", they're pretty resilliant (even a boss designed to shut down "physical setups in general", only shuts down about two SCCs), they're a very well-known well-studied entity (it's not like I'm insisting on MR4M, RAC, NEC, or anything like that), a lot of them aren't that unusual for normal game setups (Wizard with MAU?  Check.  Time Mage with Short Charge?  Check.  Chemist?  Check.  Ninja?  Check.  Monk?  Check. etc...).

Honestly, SCCs are a pretty good way to measure "varied parties". There are a couple ways in which they are NOT a good model, mind.  First, movement in SCCs tends to be artificially low.  Second, as many SCCs lack revival, they wouldn't be able to handle long survival battles such as "Altima has 2x 9999 HP"--though to be perfectly honest, FFT mechanics don't handle that scenario very well either since the only worthwhile offence at that point would be Demi; also, that fight's screaming out for Speed Break.  Third, the SCC model itself is known to break in a few places (Truecalc SCC, Mime SCC--these are not good representations of Calculators/Mimes), though fortunately we already know about these places and thus ignore them.

So...it's not perfect, no, but a surprisingly good litmus test built on a large library of existing research and knowledge.  Even if we assumed nobody would ever do an SCC in LFT, the SCC-lens is still a handy and intuitive analysis tool much faster than finding 10 people with different playstyles to play a certain fight.

[Ranmilia]

Dying and Reraising cures Blind, I think?  In that case Bards could win anytime by getting Reraise from Nameless Song, and Knights could win with Angel Ring in chapter 4.

Agreed with MC in general about SCCs, though.

[superaielman]

Grog: Laggy did two very unpleasant things from normal mode to LFT here: He made the lead Squire level 54, and he basically made everyone in the battle mastered at their respective jobs. The squire thing doesn't sound so bad, right? You recruit the fucker, get a Slasher/Thief Hat/Light Robe and you get a super highly leveled unit. The bad? Enemy levels are based on the highest level person on your team. It includes guests in this, and people you recruit and boot. Guess what happens if you Invite said Squire? Yes, L55 randoms when you're in your mid 20's at most! The super Squire is easily handled if you're so included- one weapon break and his offense is gone. But the Slasher is a really strong weapon now, and the best weapon for Jumping till the Javelin 2.

Had one reset here when my revival was overwhelmed. Reloaded and took another crack at the fight. Brought Agrias near the very front of the map to draw heavy fire and had.. three or four revivers, can't remember which. I stopped the Squire via Talk Skill and swiped the thief hat (Couldn't manage the light robe or slasher) Had to just pound the hell out of the chemists (Round robin revival: as much fun to fight against as it is to use).


Yardow: Largely unchanged from LFT/FFT. A bit easier than normal FFT in fact, Ninjas/Summoners got the nerf stick. I used a Red Dragon to charge ahead (8 move!). He took a full round of punishment from the enemies while my forces got in range. Fight was really easy overall, Rafa even evaded both attempts to hit her.


Undead forest: Meteor is scary as all hell to see- 'cept for the fact that Meteor takes ages to resolve and there's no place for the TMs to run. If you're going for hard mode improvements, I'd give the TMs here innate teleport 2 just for the 'fuck you' value. They're still very snipable thanks to seal evil and a small map, but they'd be less prone to just getting bumrushed while Meteor charges. Ramza dive bombed the mages, Musty sniped some ghost ass and Agrias did her usual ass kicking routine.


Outside of Riovanes: Just better versions of the normal fights here. I invited three units here (Mastered thief, mastered Geo, nearly  mastered monk) for brutal killing/crystal abuse. I also badly need the gear, as I'm too poor to buy armor and weapons right now. The Geomancer ended up giving Agrias Attack UP, so that's cool. Fight put a hell of a lot of pressure on thanks to insane DS spam (Three people got hit with it?) and lots of enemy offense. Three revivers and a Mime managed to keep things in check though.

Wiegraf 3: Jump, near death. Next!

Velius: He charges down and uses Cyclops. This ended about as well as you would expect- my Monk/Thief punched his face in, Ramza dive bombed him, Agrias blasts him. Glitch note: Auto regen/shell/protect did not work on Agrias here. She had a Salty Rage/Defender equipped.

Velius's offense is as scary as ever and the support has you dead by turn two at most, so you have to win fast. Thankfully Velius is an idiot and moved down to oblierate my poor thief with Cyclops. (Thanks again for that by the way. You couldn't have done that on my Knight SCC, asshole?)


Rooftop: Eat shit and die, Rafa. One near reset here. IT should have been a reset- Rafa CHARGED THE ASSASSIN OH YES BRILLIANT- but she was only stopped by Celia. Lede chose to move down and kill my Mediator instead of Rafa. Ramza has best sign with Lede and scored a quick KO with a physical.

Messing around in C4 now. Randoms are soliding kicking my ass around the block, I had two resets on the Volcanco, going for Cloud's Materia Blade.

"What's this, some undead. No big.. and a Behemoth, what's the worst it can do??"

*Giga flare overkills Mustadio, my only reviver*

*Reset*

This happened the second time- I had more revivers, just that damage splitting, 300 HP, crack whore of a Giga flare spamming Behemoth destroyed me. Fuck him. I'm bringing Orlandu and I'm going to shove Excalibur sideways up his ass for that. I'm not even touching the SMB till my team gets a bit stronger.

Rafa/Malak I'm trying to feed a bit of JP to , but it's hard. On any of the C4 fights I'm having to bring a full team or I get crushed.

Funny note: I ran into the ubermonk fight. They couldn't break Agrias's regen, because goddamn she's tanky. Thought I could pull it off in spite of bringing the wondertwins instead of real PC's, since I forgot you get that fight at Grog. *DS*

*RESET*

Also nearly got wiped out by a Sand rat random. A ninja (with an angel ring), bunch of level two bull demons, and a dragon. Fuck me if I didn't have to round robin revival to win that fight- even WITH me recruiting the ninja on the first try and bringing Agrias. Dragon nuked reviver 1 right off the bat, reviver 2 was busy just trying to kill the stupid bull demons. Reviver 3 was Mustadio, who was frantically reviving and just keeping me ahead of the ever present timer.

[Grefter]

Enemy levels are based on the highest level person on your team. It includes guests in this, and people you recruit and boot.

Does this hold true for if you recruit enough guys to fill out all of your character slots again? Say try it out with level 1 recruits. Tthinking it might store and refer to the data for all party slots without actually wiping them when you kick them out, having to actually overwrite the character slot instead of just having a unit flagged as unusable and invisible.  Other option that I can think of is that it stores max character level as a set variable, which would be kind of fail, functional under normal circumstances (and I guess saves running checks on character level every fight...) I guess, but just so unflexible and not as much cool fun as a floating char level variable (Thought you could manipulate the level to get specific items from the Catch abuse Ninjas...) .

[Dark Holy Elf]

I was under the impression that "highest levelled character" was checked at the start of each battle, so dismissing would remove the problem.

[Grefter]

That is what I thought, which is why if it was true wanted to see if it was the thing that I thought it might be.  I know that you know that I know but do you know that I know that you know that I know?

[superaielman]

I was under the impression that "highest levelled character" was checked at the start of each battle, so dismissing would remove the problem.

It's possible guests function weirdly with this. I h ad a level 60 Algus (GS testing), lost him, and still had the uber enemies of doom to deal with. I'm going to check this in some detail tonight.

[metroid composite]

Dying and Reraising cures Blind, I think?  In that case Bards could win anytime by getting Reraise from Nameless Song, and Knights could win with Angel Ring in chapter 4.

According to the BMG: no -- Blind, like Silence, is not canceled by death.  (Also: Balk's battle is glitchy in that start:poison causes the start:reraise from angel rings to never trigger...so presumably a start:blind boss would work the same way).

[Dark Holy Elf]

Actually, if you set up the PBF in the proper way, you can keep your Reraise in the Balk battle. Don't ask me what that proper way is; it's been years.

[Ranmilia]

Proper way is to put Ramza in the far back corner of the PBF, so he gets numbered last out of your units.  (His actual starting position is fixed to a spot outside the actual PBF no matter where you put him, like many story battles).  Didn't know that about Blind though. 

[Laggy]

So!

I'm currently the midst of editing the Deep Dungeon fights. With 4 possible fights per floor, and 10 floors total, that's 40 total fights to come up with.

Needless to say, while I intend to tap out my creative juices (and mc's) as much as possible, if you've got some whack or crazy idea for an encounter setup... here's your chance.

The following limitations apply:
* You can have up to 4 unique enemy sprites. Monsters of the same race share sprites, so it's okay to intermingle those (Bombs and Grenades, for instance). Genders do NOT share, so a male Knight and a female Knight would count as separate sprites.
* You can have up to 11 enemy units.
* For enemy generics: you specify a job (which is what their sprite will be) and gender. You can specify all equipment and all their ability slots (secondary, reaction, support, movement). Brave and Faith values as well as Level are editable. Aside from Job and Gender, all of these values can be left as the default (randomized). The more confusing part is how enemy skills work. You specify a Job and a Job Level - they'll get a random assortment of skills learned as though they were of that specified Job and Job Level, including all unlocks. For example, a JLV 4 Mediator would have 550 Mediator JP to spend, as well as JLV2 in Chemist, Priest and Oracle (Mediator's prerequisite classes) - 200 JP in each of those respective jobs. Random abilities will be learned, so you CANNOT specify what abilities they'll have on demand. The best way to get around this is to simply make them JLV8 in the particular class you want (which, in LFT, is 2900 JP, usually enough to master the class or close to it). Note that this means enemy generics typically cannot master more than one class's abilities, so keep your design with this limitation in mind.
* You can give a unit Zodiac stats. This will make them have the zodiac status quirks (HP/MP/CT appear as , and their stats/equipment are unviewable). Zodiac stats are simply x10 HP and MP. Use this sparingly if at all.
* You can give a unit the Immortal flag. This causes the unit, when KOed, to not crystallize (stars over their heads, ala Guests). Aside from that gameplay effect they also gain several status immunities (most fatal statuses like ID and stone, probably some others I'm forgetting). Like the Zodiac modifier, use this sparingly.
* Monsters were edited pretty heavily, so if you want to discuss what a monster has just feel free to ask me in IRC or on AIM.
* I unfortunately do NOT have room for name edits, so you'll have to live with random names on your units.
* You can specify the map you want your encounter to be on, but it's not necessary and I may move stuff around for thematic reasons.
* I reserve the right whether to use a fight design or not/editing at my discretion etc. etc. usual control freak disclaimer goes here.

Send stuff via PM, post here, contact me in IRC, whatever you prefer.

[Dunefar]

A suggestion: Maybe make each floor have a random that is a zodiac style boss? Maybe remix the zodiacs and other notable plot bosses?

[Dark Holy Elf]

For generics, can you set R/S/M that they shouldn't be able to have by JP limitations? (e.g. a Level 8 Monk with MP Switch)

I know that FFT battles choose between different possibilities for each slot (forget if it's two or three for DD fights). Can I make special R/S/M/equips for say, either a Knight or a Squire, who occupy the same unit slot? e.g. a Knight with a certain fixed setup, or a Squire with a certain fixed setup?

;_; Post a monster list, Laggy!

How cruel/not should we aim for? I'd kinda tend towards superbossy fights in general (it's the DD), but I don't want to make anything completely out of whack with LFT.