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

[Tomiz]

Does anyone know the stat growth of each class? Same for the multipliers. Some of the patch notes on page 1 say things like "* Speed Growth increased from 90 to 80" for thief, and I'm not sure whether thief speed was nerfed or buffed. I was trying to figure out the best class to level up as to get max speed, MA, etc, but I can’t seem to find an accurate source. Some classes have better multipliers than growth for a given stat, correct? Like will a char that levels up as a thief and stays a thief have more speed than one who levels up a thief and switches to a ninja? (not talking thief/ninja in particular, just an example. I dont even know if this is true.)

I'd like to see a table of this information if anyone has it, not just the changes from the patch, but the info for the classes as a whole post-patch. Its a chore sometimes looking at a FAQ for vanilla FFT, the patch notes on page one, and the rest of the thread to determine what the patch notes actually meant, all to figure out the actual growth a class. Forget about comparing class’ growth without a pencil/paper handy lol. Anyone else looking for this information, or am I just OCD in my RPGs? Thanks if anyone could help.

[Archmage]

The growth numbers are in the denominator of their equation, so a lower number means a higher growth rate. Consult Aerostar's FAQ:

Code: [Select]

bonus = (current_RX / [C + Lv])

   where RX is a generic term for any raw stat (RHP, RMP, RSp, RPA, or RMA)
         Lv is the LOWER level in question -- so if you are leveling up
            from 50 to 51, Lv = 50. 
   
C is a constant that varies for each class. The value of C is what
differentiates one class's growth pattern from another's. Keep in mind
that since C is in the denominator of this expression, LOWER VALUES OF C
YIELD HIGHER STATS.

[metroid composite]

Growth chart; lower is better.  Stars indicate classes that have changed.

Code: [Select]

JOB NAME          IDENTITY   HPP  MPP  PAP  MAP  SpP
----------------- ---------- ---  ---  ---  ---  ---
4A Squire         generic     11   11*  50*  50  100
4B Chemist        generic     12   16   75   50  100
4C Knight         generic     10   15   40   50  100
4D Archer         generic     11   16   45   50  100
4E Monk           generic      9   13   48   50  100
4F Priest         generic     10   10   50   50  100
50 Wizard         generic     12    9   60   50  100
51 Time Mage      generic     12   10   65   50  100
52 Summoner       generic     13    8   70   50  100
53 Thief          generic     11   16   50   50   80*
54 Mediator       generic     11   11*  55   50  100
55 Oracle         generic     12   10   60   50  100
56 Geomancer      generic     10   11   45   50  100
57 Lancer         generic     10   15   40   50  100
58 Samurai        generic     12   14   45   50  100
59 Ninja          generic     12   13   43   50   90*
5A Calculator     generic     14   10   70   50  100
5B Bard           generic     20   20   80   50  100
5C Dancer         generic     20   20   50   50  100
5D Mime           generic      6   6*   35   40  100

Oh, random tidbit: Growth is more important at lower levels (particularly for growths like 6, since the formula multiplies in (C+Level), so HP growth is about 10x as potent at level 1 compared to level 98, whereas speed growth is only about 2x as potent at level 1 compared to level 98).

EDIT:

Like will a char that levels up as a thief and stays a thief have more speed than one who levels up a thief and switches to a ninja? (not talking thief/ninja in particular, just an example. I dont even know if this is true.)

Switching into a class with better multipliers/equipment will always get you more of that stat right now.  Levelling up in a class with good growths will get you more of the stat later on.

Ninja levelled as Thief is faster than Ninja levelled as Ninja.
Thief levelled as Thief is slower than Ninja levelled as Thief.
Thief levelled as Ninja is slower than all of the above.

[Excal]

Another week, another update.

Having saved Elmdore, the company returns triumphantly to Igros, only to discover that in their absence the ability to make both Longbows and Axes had been discovered.  The Axe is considered a mere novelty until Fargus takes a closer look and notices the +1 PA now afforded by the Axe.  Instantly smitten, he's off to Geomancer and using an Axe powered Repeating Fist despite not actually ever using the axe itself.  Shaker decides to use this moment to head over to Archer, and Cyril decides to nip over to Chemist in order to unlock some mage classes.  It's in this state that we wander over to say hi to Miluda.

Miluda starts off in a fairly classic way.  Kill a white mage, maim a thief or two.  The offensive output is a bit higher thanks to the thieves, but a mage also lucked out and got Bolt 2.  It was the one we offed.  Then the tide starts to turn.  The other WM has Raise.  The Thieves manage to kill someone, and Wish can get them back up, but it can't get them turns before they die again thanks to charge time.  And Wish is still our only ressurection.  Eventually, one of the thieves decides it's in his best interest to kill the healer.  A few tense rounds of combat follow which end with a hurt Cyril, but a dead thief.  Then comes the Bolt 2.  We're now on a timer, half the team is dead, and Miluda's untouched.  Game, set, match.

So we redo the teams.  Or, at least, intend to.  Person with the controller decides to head to Mandalia to save before doing party rejigging.  Cue random encounter with a Black Goblin and 4 Cats.  Axe RF goes first and KOs one of the cats before they can do anything.  But the other three are able to close, two of them opting for Poison Nail, slowing Jasmin and Shaker, while the other Charms Fargus.  Cyril rushes in and uses some emergency treatment on Shaker, allowing him to act fast enough to pelt Fargus with an arrow.  Fargus then rushes to rejoin the group, taking out another Cat in the process, and he gets Poison Nailed for his efforts while Shaker then gets Allured.  Cyril uses some treatment on Shaker, as Jasmin comes out of Slow and kills another cat, while Fargus moves up and whiffs.  Shaker now gets Charmed and then promptly Eye Gouged, leaving him charmed, confused, and blind.  Thusly, he gets ignored as the party mops up the rest of the battle.

That bit of accidentalness got the party what it needed.  Namely, Jasmin got Sylph, and so left Summoner behind for Knight with Summon secondary.  As well, Cyril got the Chemist JP he needed but went back to Knight with Maintenance in order to provide durable support as well as equipment breaking services for the upcoming battles.  As such, Miluda 1 is easily dismantled the second time.  Miluda 2 falls with similar ease, with the high point being the effectiveness of Shaker, who is now a Thief, with Battle Skill, Speed Save, and Maintenance.  Ends the battle at around Speed 10, and left Miluda at Speed 2 before Cyril went in to wreck her helm and armour and Fargus pummled her to death.

Shaker, currently training his way to Ninja, holds on to Thief, while Jasmin, headed to Samurai, has her levels of Knight now and becomes a Female Monk, in Chapter 1.  She is backing this up with RF, Cure, and Raise, but her offensive output is now lowest in party and erratic as Cyril moves up in the world with a Mithril Sword.  Fargus, of course, still destroys worlds, and Shaker's got dual shiv action.  Visiting Igros nets us two randoms.  The first involves three cats and a Chocobo.  As it's weaker and we're stronger than the same one before, it's a cakewalk.  Only thing of note here is that we see Cat Kick for the first time.  Does about 65% damage to Cyril.

The second random is far more impressive, as we get to face three Black Goblins, a Chocobo, and a Dragon.  The plan is for Shaker to poach the dragon, as we quickly activate Dragonheart.  This hits a bit of a hitch as the Dragon casually oneshots Shaker.  So, Jasmin and Fargus decide to hold off the three goblins while Cyril and Shaker deal with the Dragon and the Chocobo.  Cyril blocks draconic access to Shaker and Wishes he were alive, and the Dragon moves in to whack Cyril, only to find that PDefUP nerfs his attack to hell and back, and Cyril only gets scratched.  The Chocobo comes in and heals at this point.  This is followed by Jasmin charging up and killing it (with help from Cyril) but the dragon escapes.  It's also at this point that the Goblins glitch/get lucky, and Fargus gets hit with Stop Bracelet.  Fortunatly, another Cyril/Shaker team up happens, the Dragon goes down, and there is no more Stop Braceleting.  Battle victorious!

At this point we reach Wiegraf, with roughly the same setup which hadn't changed from Miluda2.  So we go in, Delita rushes to his death, we let the monks rush in, and then charge.  We drop two RFs that should, on average, kill, on the same Monk.  It survives both with about 25% HP.  We charm the Knight who proceeds to walk next to Wiegraf and Helm Break him, only to whiff and get countered and decharmed.  So we try a bit harder, and get the repeating fist monk down.  Turns out the other one has Revive.  So we charm the Knight again.  It breaks some Monk armour, and gets countered.  At this point we have a dead Sp9 Thief, our attackers are busy trying to keep the support down so we can live, and Cyril acts precisely one clock tick before Wiegraf does, so trying to revive anyone is suicide.  Eventually the other Raiser goes down, Shaker's at 0 Count, and Cyril's one hit away from death.  So we reset.

Take 2.  The monk that had Repeating Fist last time?  She has Secret Fist this time.  The other Monk has Wave Fist, and kindly eats max damage Fargus RF early on while Jasmin offs Boco.  Shaker, for his part, whiffs on a max compatability Steal Heart before eating the random status on Crush Punch.  This time, Jasmin brings him back only for him to get...  Secret Fisted?!  During all of this, Cyril duels the other Knight, breaking her down to an easy kill, while getting attacked by Wiegraf, and Jasmin takes on the role of healer.  Fargus assists by taking down the other Monk, and then assisting on the Knight, while Shaker just goes in and breaks Wiegraf down to 1 Speed.  Oddly enough this doesn't stop Wiegraf from getting turns just after the crystals of the two monks appear, such that Fargus goes before he does, but Jasmin, the MP depleted mage, does not.  Fargus then benefits from the fact that the two Monks had the entirity of Punch Art except for Chakra, Revive, and Stigma Magic.  We then end the battle with Jasmin having no MP, Cyril having next to no HP, and the three non-Cyril people penning Wiegraf in and beating him to death after what was still a closely fought battle.

And that is where this log ends.  Tune in next week for Death of an Algus.

[Archmage]

Riovanes Roof

Watching Barinten get hurled off the castle by Lede kills me every time.

Rafa uses Seal to petrify Ashley. Rafa...GUARDS...an attack. Muramasa isn't enough to kill her; Hakaril summons Odin. Celia seals K-Variable. Lede kills Hakaril. Laggy punches the daylights out of Celia and the three retreat. Win!

Nevermind that everyone at Riovanes was just massacred; they have a store! And Hakaril has new ass-cheek armor!

Hmm. Random encounter. A dragon? Interesting. And four red minotaurs. Anyway.

Dougula Pass:

Currently, the team is:

Hakaril: Summoner/White Magic
Zane: Priest/Time Magic
Ashley: Time Mage/Summon Magic
Laggy: Knight/Punch Art/Abandon/Two-Swords
K-Variable: Lancer/Steal/Blade Grasp

That's funny, I don't remember there being a samurai in this battle. I'm sure there wasn't one. He runs forward and uses wave fist on Ashley. Laggy introduces him to 2x ice sword. I buff, and Odin rips through the enemy lines. Laggy finishes off the wounded priest with wave fist. After that, it's basically just mop-up. These guys are just a speed-bump.

Bervenia:

Man, what's up with everyone in this game wanting to kill me for things I didn't do?

Strategy: Buff up and let the enemy come to me. Or maybe not. Archers are annoying and some summoner is going to hurt me. With...Bahamut. What. That takes out Hakaril and Zane. With a start like that, I might as well reset.

OK, Bahamut is going to hurt. So. First buff this time is Shell2. Hopefully that'll take the edge off any summon. Thanks to ignore height, Laggy is able to get up on the roof and abort a summoner's casting. Salamander, it would seem. Hakaril and K-Variable are still gonna eat one. It is fortunately non-fatal--and Hakaril learns salamander, blue-magic style!

Aaaand an archer finishes Hak off. Oh well. Ow. Enemy ninja with equip sword hurts. Shellbust stab breaks Laggy's armor. K-Variable gets the other summoner; Zane Raise2s Hakaril...the ninja throws a morning star at him for 176. OW! Meliadoul breaks Laggy's helmet and kills him. Hakaril wastes the ninja with Odin.

...I should've been paying attention. You can't steal Meliadoul's crap because she has Maintenance. Damnit! Why didn't I just kill her? >_> She blasts Hakaril, breaks his armor, and kills him. Uh...let's try this again.

I have to blitz her; I hit Meliadoul with Odin once, and Laggy does the rest of the damage. Golem saves my ass, preventing the archers from getting in any hits.

Finath River:

It's a chocobo rebellion! 2 reds, 4 yellows. Oh. I forgot. Laggy is wearing a circlet. So he's asleep.

Hakaril goes down before he ever gets a turn. Zane raises him immediately. K-Variable jumps and Hakaril charges Odin. Ashley uses Ramuh. Odin + Jump kills a red, Ramuh kills a yellow. Zane uses Haste2. Couple turns later, Hak uses Ramuh. Second red's down. Left: Two yellows.

Laggy really does snooze the entire fight because I'm too lazy to wake him. Overall, though, not too hard. I got lucky with the chocobo draw; it could've been much harder.

Zeltennia:

Silly Zalmo. Huh, I don't remember samurai in this battle. Must be an LFT touch. Zalmo has a positively stupid amount of MP. o_O Oh hell. He has MP Switch!? And Br100 Fa100!?!? Fantastic! I am unclear as to why the samurai are wielding axes, but...anyway, I can't just nuke Zalmo outright with summons, he has move-MP up and is going to be a huge pain.

An oracle silences Zane. Oh, damn. I don't think I can fix that.

...berserk, hasted Laggy wakes up (damnit, I need to change his equipment), Ignore Height jumps all the way up to where Zalmo is, and stabs him. XD

Hakaril prepares to nuke a samurai through the building with Odin; maybe he can get some of her friends, too. He does, damaging a couple oracles. One oracle tries to zombify him; the other uses dispel on Laggy and he loses haste and protect. Laggy has actually pinned down Zalmo; I'm not sure if he can move from his location. A samurai heals her allies with murasame; they just barely survive a second Odin as a result.

Zalmo gets lightning stabbed by Delita; damnit, watch the friendly fire! Well, he has no more MP now. An oracle turns both Hakaril and Ashley undead. Laggy keeps wailing away on Zalmo and we charge more summons. Out of MP and unable to move, Zalmo tries to smack Laggy. Not gonna happen. Zalmo eats a Ramuh, a jump, and a Leviathan. Finally, the heresy examiner is dead. Dude had as much effective HP as a Zodiac boss!

Bed Desert:

Aw, Balk shoots fire now. The enemy mediators spend the first turn...praising each other. Okay? Stigma magic fixes some of the poisoned people. Haste2, Shell2, Golem...that should shut down the enemy offense. Well, sorta. Salamander still finishes Hakaril off. Golem saves Ashley, though. Well, she died from poison next turn she got, and then Zane raised her, then Balk shot her and she died again...well. Laggy gets put to sleep.

Odin kills the everloving crap out of a summoner. K-Variable charms an archer for fun. A mediator casts fire on the archer to snap him out of it, but the archer has already queued up charge+5, and he shoots his buddy. Aww.

Finally, Odin gets to taste some blood. Hakaril's spell badly wounds four enemies! Balk makes GREAT use of his turn to potion an ally. Hakaril dies to an arrow, K-Variable lands on a mediator and kills him, Zane raises Hakaril...mimic Daravon puts Ash to sleep, aborting her charging spell...man, those mediators are annoying.

I haven't had a good opportunity to wake up Laggy. That's kind of annoying. K-Variable lands on the mediator. Balk and the two archers are left. Balk uses Leg Aim on sleeping Laggy (...) and Hak wakes Ash with a rod smack. K-Variable lands on an archer. Man, she's getting all the kills this time. Finally, Zane has a chance to use esuna on Laggy and K-Variable to fix their various problems. Haste2 happens. Laggy uses Chakra to restore some of Zane's MP. An enemy summoner crystallizes; Ashley steals Balk's gun on the first try. I'm not thinking I'll be able to get any of those enemy crystals before Balk can...oddly, he doesn't grab any of them. Instead, he tries to punch K-Variable in the leg, misses, and flees. Huh?

Balk, having stupidly run toward the allied archer, gets his friend killed by Ramuh's AoE. Laggy double speed breaks Balk. Ashley learns Ifrit, Titan, Salamander, and Fly from a crystal. Hakaril inherits a mediator crystal--invitation, persuade, threaten, insult, and mimic Daravon! Zane sadly only gets blind and blind rage. Laggy breaks Balk again; he still has 7 speed! He had 11 before!? Mages smack him with staves for fun. Laggy learns charge+2, +4, and +10 from an archer crystal.

Stole Balk's helmet. Don't care as much about the armor. Laggy lets Balk have it and the battle ends.

Cid gets arrested. Funny how he could've killed everyone in the room with zero effort if he'd decided to resist. Zane masters the priest job; time mage is clearly next. Ashley learns short charge and goes back to being a summoning oracle (with fly, because it's funny); K-Variable learns level jump 8, so she's going back to samurai with jump as her sub-ability. Laggy learns a few more breaks. After Hakaril's acquisition of the mediator crystal, the guy has nearly a full set of abilities. Given Ramza's canonical role in the story and his insistence that everyone should just put down their swords and talk, I think it would be highly awesome for him to abandon the summoner's life for that of the mediator; he picks up Balk's gun and flash hat. I can't decide on a secondary for him; Guts is appropriate, but his MA is actually still really good. Also, short charge is kind of a stupid support now, but he doesn't have enough geomancer JP for Attack UP. I decide to keep his secondary as white magic so he can back-up raise and leave short charge in place for now.

We decide to detour; instead of heading to Bethla, Laggy informs Hakaril that he'd really like to pay a visit to Goug Machine City.

Random encounter on the way. I dispatch: Mediator, samurai, knight, oracle, and time mage.

Oh. My. RNG. Here is what I am fighting: Dragon, blue dragon, hydra, hyudra, behemoth, dark behemoth, king behemoth, and red dragon. And a yellow chocobo, just because. I have a guest black choco and a guest king behemoth (!?). Man. This is crazy.

I'm gonna have to recruit some of these bitches. Uh, or maybe I'll die horribly. We'll see.

The enemies kill my behemoth guest. Hak casts Pro2 to start the battle (all of the enemies outspeed me) and Zane uses Haste2. Triple Flame OHKOs Ashley. This is starting well. It doesn't end well, either. I take a few monsters down with me, but their damage output is just too high for my poor mages. GG, monsters!

After a few randoms, we reach Goug. After several more, we finally start the sidequest.

Colliery Underground:

Oh man, it's a Ko clone army! ...with a lot of chantages! I was gonna steal the chantages, but Laggy convinced me not to. D:

Rocks fall, everyone dies. Uh. Gonna have to try this again.

Hakaril opens with Shell2. Survive! No, not so much. Die again after a mess of rocks and other things. The Ko army outspeeds me (they're all speed 9) and their offense is actually pretty respectable what with slow, haste, meteor, and demi.

The team makes some adjustments; I'm twinking hard for speed and going to try using disabling abilities that don't kill outright (stop, don't act, etc). Petrify would be awesome, but I don't know it and don't want to take the time to learn it. If I lose again, I might.

Laggy stops a Ko with negotiate. Hakaril sleeps a Ko with mimic Daravon. K-Variable steals the sleeping Ko's chantage (score!). A Ko charges meteor targeting Zane. Another meteor charges. Third meteor. Ashley uses Foxbird, lowering a Ko's Br by 40. Zane's stop misses; this costs him his life, but the meteor also takes out a Ko. Hakaril barely survives a meteor; K-Variable does not. De-chantaged Ko goes down after Hakaril shoots her. Laggy somehow misses a Ko with Negotiate despite an 80% hit rate. K-Variable stands up--she has reraise thanks to her angel ring! A single Ko hastes herself. Ashley hits a Ko with Foxbird again--her Br is now 0...but she doesn't chickenify because this battle is rigged against me in every way possible. All right!

I raise Zane, then K-Variable. If I can raise Laggy and Ashley I can win by outlasting the Ko army; they'll run out of MP eventually. Ashley is up. And Laggy crystallizes. Nope. Retry again.

Laggy tells me he's pretty sure they're immune to petrify. Gonna have to do this the hard way.

Laggy stops a Ko. Hakaril stops a Ko. K-Variable nicks a chantage. Meteor locks onto Zane. Zane misses with Stop. Paralyze ALSO misses. Zane dies. K-variable dies. Hakaril is near death. The third meteor kills both Ashley and its caster. Hakaril will raise Ashley. Laggy stops a Ko. K-Variable reraises and kills the chantage-less Ko.

Ashley paralyzes a Ko to cancel her meteor. Laggy restops the Ko he stopped before; K fails to steal her chantage. Hakaril raises Zane. Zane prepares Haste; Hakaril stops a Ko, stopping a Meteor. Laggy fails a negotiate attempt; K steals another chantage. A Ko kills Laggy with meteor.

Nope, a few rounds later a mass-destopping results in the death of my everything.

Three tries later, I finally manage to pin down the enemies with stop and sleep long enough to chip them away one by one. I get three chantages out of the deal!

Battle Two:

Two sleeping angry samurai. Two mediators with stone guns. A squire with a bag (97 Br, 03 Fa). Wait, a level 99 squire with a bag, 97 Br, and blade grasp. And a zombie bard. Huh. This could be tricky.

WHAT? There's...a vampire bard with blood suck...and a bag...bag that causes blood suck...uh. The bard sings the nameless song and the squire runs around playing medic.

The vamp bard blood sucks Hakaril....who blood sucks Ashley...who blood sucks Laggy...Golem saves K-Variable's life. Well, I have no way to cure blood suck. The enemies, of course, are immune to it. No way to win this one this round! Reset time. With that, I decide to turn in for the night.

[Just Another Day]

Jasmine *SMASH*

Okay, well, some feedback from last night's LFT, specifically regarding class balance. It's been pretty fantastic thus far, throughly enjoyable on a number of levels. We're already talking about our next playthrough.

Knights feel almost overbalanced, but I'll touch on that in more detail with Samurai and Lancers.

Thieves are good, although I worry somewhat that Ninjas supplant them completely. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but part of the point of this patch feels like every class becomes a potential carrier, and thieves don't really seem to get that. With Battle Skill supercharged, Steal's accuracy could have stood to go up at least a little bit, maybe? Something like innate Concentrate would certainly do the trick (might have abuse ramifications elsewhere; haven't thought that through completely), or innate 5 move/jump. Or maybe the Poach thing is enough. They've been fine so far (we're only in Chapter 2), I just worry for the class's future.

Lancers feel like they underperform. What with Knights become these indestructible powerhouses, Lancer durability is not all that impressive, and Jump, though tightened and more cost-effective, is not really any better than it ever was. Geomancers will be consistently better Jumpers, between Axes and the Izlude option. Concensus among the group suggests giving them innate Fly (and move the ability from Summoner; it really belongs on them) and innate Defense Up; this makes them as mobile as they logically should be, and super-tanky against physicals. And immune to fall damage!!!!! You can also give them 7 jump, the elf points out, just to make it perfectly clear what you're doing.

Samurai feel similarly left behind. They were a bad, bad, bad class in standard FFT, and would have been no more than mediocre even with the Two-Hands ability they always should have had. As a heavy armour class, to mirror Knight and Lancer, maybe give them innate Magic Defence Up? Additionally, Draw-Out is broken on mage classes; on mage classes they always feel like cheating. Suggestion: pump up Samurai MA to Time Mage level or so (if not higher), reducing Draw Out power accordingly (leaving damage in the same ballpark on Samurai, making it nonbroken on nonSamurai). Additional benefit of making Samurai a solid (low MP but high MA) magic carrier. The Elf thinks it could be cool to give them ludicrously high MA and crank their MP right down, to give them a sort of limited nuclear fallback function, although this would necessarily make Draw-Out actively bad on lower MA classes.

Secondly on Samurai, the two-hands thing is cool and all, but doesn't really change the fact that you will never use their attack command unless completely retardedly abyssmally strapped for cash. Suggestions to give Samurai a useful attack command: one or possibly more of innate concentrate (makes it fail less compared to Draw Out, gives other skill carrier options), Swords and Spears (historical resonance, possibly combined with some improvement of Katanas power to keep them a relevant option), use Stick formula for Katana (take advantage of pumped MA, make builds easier). Improving Katana straight-up statistically to make them more desirable is also a possibility, of course, and possibly even desirable, but I think the general goal should be to make Samurai better, rather than just their stuff and skills.

Classes otherwise feel comfortably balanced against each other, both in terms of coolness and playability. Haven't seen Bards, Mimes nor Calculators yet in our playthrough, but I get the feeling they'll do alright. Chemists neither, but nobody's worried about those jerks.

Monsters are supercool now, though Monster Skill is pretty bugged. It seems like most monsters have access to their fourth ability at all times, even if it doesn't show on their ability lists: we've seen Drain Touch out of a Gust who had at no point been anywhere near other monsters, Flame Attack out of a Grenade in a similar situation, Shadow Snitch repeatedly out of Revenants, Stop Bracelet out of Goblins with similar frequency. However, it is worth noting that we haven't seen a normal Chocobo pull out Choco Ball yet, which would seem to indicate that they don't all have their Monster Skills all the time, since we have seen totally wimpy Choco Attacks. All this is fine, of course, and actually makes monster battles somewhat nerve-wracking and cool, but probably not intentional.

Coo. That's all for now with totally unsolicited thoughts. This is Ryan, if you hadn't guessed and might know me.

[Fuzzypickles]

I'll agree with the comment about Knights being buffed a bit too much. 100% Equipment Breaks is a bit much. It's just really obnoxious to have to constantly keep rebuying equipment. Get a Thief with Weapon Break and you can effectively remove just about any physical character from the fight in a turn. Kinda overboard.

Monster AI always gets screwed up with Innate: Monster Skill. I don't think there's anyway to fix it at this moment in time.

Other than the Knights, I'm really enjoying the patch though. I'd personally tone up the enemies a little bit more in the ENTD files since with the increased JP gain the player tends to be really far ahead in abilities (then again, I'm only in Chapter 2) but it's certainly a good patch.

Edit: Bug I just found now; the Defend command is unusable. It seems to be treating it like Math Skill since it's saying I don't have any combo abilities to use it with. Huh.

[Laggy]

Yeah, funny story there, I was trying to see if I could make the Defend command simulate Math Skill (the original idea with Calculators was to make Math Skill inherent to them only, and I was attempting a workaround by making them have innate Defend and making it unavailable to anyone else). Oddly enough, I'm pretty sure I corrected that attempted fix, and... on checking, looks like I did. My own testing confirms that the bug is still in, though, which means FFTPatcher is being troublesome about rolling my changes back.

I'll look into it when/if I release a bug-fixed patch (there's a small list right now, but if it grows longer I may very well do so).

[metroid composite]

but part of the point of this patch feels like every class becomes a potential carrier, and thieves don't really seem to get that.

Actually lots of classes aren't really potential carriers.  Summoners, for instance...well you use them if you feel like you want to be slow, but in general their stats are just worse.  Well...let me revise that: lots of classes aren't really potential carriers looking at stats/innates alone.  There's classes with better stats than Priest, but hey, Priests have Raise so you use them as a carrier anyway.  Lancers can jump to avoid spells.  Etc.

With Battle Skill supercharged, Steal's accuracy could have stood to go up at least a little bit, maybe?

Here's why we didn't up Steal's accuracy--it will never be a strong combat move.  You can't stick it on a gun like with Battle Skill.

Rather than trying to make people care about Steal in a combat sense, we tried to make people care about Steal in a looting sense.  For instance, every battle in the Beowulf sidequest has rare stuff to steal from enemies that can't be invited.  Elmdor's Genji Gear is much, much more useful now.  It's really just a question of "would making Steal more accurate make it more fun to steal from Elmdor/Sidequests" and my gut reaction is no, that wouldn't feel as satisfying.  Since that's the target role for Steal, that's what the percentages are being tuned for.

Something like innate Concentrate would certainly do the trick (might have abuse ramifications elsewhere; haven't thought that through completely),

Right, so currently Thief vs Ninja is...

Thief: innate poach, better speed growth, lets you learn Move+2, almost double the HP multiplier.
Ninja: damage, speed

Yeah, I'd call Ninja overall better, if only because my default feeling with FFT is offence > durability, but Thief definitely has niches here.  The problem with innate Concentrate is that it tips offence back into Thief's court.  Or at least, puts offence in Thief's court against enemies who have evasion...which are pretty common.

One thing to consider: Laggy's theory was that Ninja should feel like an overall combat upgrade (even if Thief still has a bunch of niches) just because Ninja is a very one-dimensional class with a decently high unlock requirement.  For that reason, I'm cautious about overly blunt Thief upgrades.  Quirky niche upgrades, sure....

or innate 5 move/jump.

That would make Squires cry.

Lancers feel like they underperform. What with Knights become these indestructible powerhouses, Lancer durability is not all that impressive, and Jump, though tightened and more cost-effective, is not really any better than it ever was.

We've actually gotten a lot of reports that enemy Lancers are more threatening than enemy Knights, and from what Laggy and I have played recently, this sounds right.

Not that enemy threat levels imply class balance, just...food for thought.  (Sure, enemy Knights could be set up better, but Jump can be used way better than how the enemies use it too, so...).

Geomancers will be consistently better Jumpers, between Axes and the Izlude option. Concensus among the group suggests giving them innate Fly (and move the ability from Summoner; it really belongs on them)
You can also give them 7 jump, the elf points out, just to make it perfectly clear what you're doing.

I'm okay with moving Fly away from Summoner (the problem being that non-mages have literally one thing to spend their spillover Summoner JP on).  On Lancer, spillover JP would compete between Fly and Defence Up, which is more interesting.

Innate Fly/7-jump...Laggy was definitely arguing against having another class like that, as it takes away from Archer uniqueness.  (And I'm generally wary of innate Fly because the animation is slower than walking).  Archer uniqueness may not be so big of a deal in this case, though, as we're talking heavy armor class vs light armor class.

and innate Defense Up;

This would almost certainly overbalance them.  In a lot of fights this makes them flat out match Knights (except better in Chapter 2 and 3 because their evade is higher and spears have higher WP).  In the few fights where there is magic damage, they can often avoid taking any damage just by jumping.  In short, it might actually make them effectively tankier than Knights (before we consider all their other advantages).

Samurai feel similarly left behind. They were a bad, bad, bad class in standard FFT, and would have been no more than mediocre even with the Two-Hands ability they always should have had. As a heavy armour class, to mirror Knight and Lancer, maybe give them innate Magic Defence Up?

MDU wouldn't break anything.  Although...I should note that we were sticking to what we felt was FFT's design, which is that Samurai are somewhat Calculator-like (bad stats, good abilities).

Additionally, Draw-Out is broken on mage classes; on mage classes they always feel like cheating. Suggestion: pump up Samurai MA to Time Mage level or so (if not higher), reducing Draw Out power accordingly (leaving damage in the same ballpark on Samurai, making it nonbroken on nonSamurai).

Ehhhh...I want to say that Draw Out is maybe the 5th best lategame skillset in LFT (and doesn't even exist earlygame).  For all that we did nothing but buff the skillset, I feel it even lost a little since the original game, since Teleport is very expensive, and level 99 parties can learn Noncharge, so DO longer has the "but it's instant speed so at high levels it's one of the only useful skillsets".

Additional benefit of making Samurai a solid (low MP but high MA) magic carrier. The Elf thinks it could be cool to give them ludicrously high MA and crank their MP right down, to give them a sort of limited nuclear fallback function, although this would necessarily make Draw-Out actively bad on lower MA classes.

That...sounds like it makes the carrier choice less interesting: "Use DO only with Samurai."
There are already some magic carriers with lower MP (Bard, Mediator, kinda Geomancer--actually I wouldn't object to nerfing Geo MP to differentiate them a bit more).

Secondly on Samurai, the two-hands thing is cool and all, but doesn't really change the fact that you will never use their attack command unless completely retardedly abyssmally strapped for cash.

Hmm...okay, we've had totally the opposite experience from you here.

At least when Laggy and I have been playing, we usually unlock Samurai sometime around start of Chapter 4, and usually have some spare JP for Equip Sword.  With Bracer, Ice Brand, and Black Robe that's...390 damage (more if Ice 2 casts!!)  Alternatively we could equip Wizard Robe and Magic Gauntlet to deal.......120 damage with Koutetsu (180 if we have 580 Samurai JP...which we usually don't).  Our problem has actually been that we almost never use Draw Out for damage while in Samurai because of how good the physical is....

Suggestions to give Samurai a useful attack command: one or possibly more of innate concentrate (makes it fail less compared to Draw Out, gives other skill carrier options),

Hmm...innate Concentrate on Samurai I could see.  Unlike Thief it's not like they're going to step on any classes' toes.  And between Samurai with Equip Sword and Knight with Two Hands (the two Ice Brand/Black Robe combos), it would be cool to give Samurai some incentive...or rather more incentive than their 5% PA advantage over Knights >_>.  Dunno how I feel about improving Samurai physicals, mind (as mentioned they've actually felt overbalanced compared to Samurai DO damage the few experiences I've had). 

[equipping] Swords and Spears

I'd rather not, just because Equip Sword/Equip Spear get a lot of their use from training Samurais now.  Letting Samurai equip those weapons naturally makes the support abilities fade back into nonuse.

[Excal]

Eh, here's my two cents on the class balance debate.  First off, while it was pointed out that Lancers do have a perfectly useful skillset, it then ran into the counter argument that in about a dozen or so playthroughs over eight years involving 6 or 7 people, the only time Jump was used was to support Axes and not for any other merit it had besides stabilizing damage.  And because in PC hands Lancers have no real merit besides Jump (in fact, they have less merit than before due to better classes getting buffed, but them getting nothing but JP reductions), means that it's a class that really exists only to be a speedbump on the way to Samurai or Dancer.

As for Samurai, I can see the argument about just wanting it to be a skill class where you pick up the skillset and then forget it exists.  But, comparing it to Calc is a bad example now, because that's not what Calc is anymore.  I mean, sure, they still have the shitty stats, but the Innate Teleport 2 and No Charge means that they have a niche of their own.  I am actually excited about the idea of playing as a Calculator, and have some fun ideas for the class.  Not so much Math Skill, which sounds, well, I don't know if it sounds more or less boring than usual, but Calculators themselves have gotten me excited.  And in a way that Lancers and Samurai do not.

Anyways, moving on to the report.  There may be a bit more vagueness as I was half asleep for this.

When last we left off, it was about time to go after Algus.  Knowing about his increased tankiness, we figured this wouldn't so much be hard as it would be hard on Cyril's Brave.  It helped a little when we turned Delita into a Weapon breaking Knight with our spare gear because that meant he'd live longer.  Algus started by letting his Night Killer fail to live up to its name before Delita ran up and smashed it.  Then the mage and Super ran up, mage got killed, Super got ignored (hmm, why a crossbow instead of a flail?  Super needs to whip things).  Thief Jasmin tried to control the other side of the battlefield with Charm, and failed her first attempt.  Her second attempt succeeded and left her fleeing for her life in critical.  Super then picked her off.  Oddly, none of this mattered as Cyril ran up behind Algus and broke his armour, and Shaker hopped onto the top of the fort and then broke Algus' hat.  this was then followed by a merry round of beat the sucker into the dirt just before he could inflict the Brave loss.  Sadly, Super survived the battle, though his whereabouts have been...  unknown as of then.

Dorter gets a bit of excitement when Andy starts things off by charming Jasmin, lovable Rogue that he is.  Since the only person going before our female monk is Shaker, now a Thief, we decide whatever she might do is less of a threat than what Shaker would do to her.  So he starts our beating Andy into the ground, then gets smote himself.  Cyril does some emergency treatment on Jasmin, and someone pulls out Raise on Shaker, and the rest is a mop up.

Boco battle...  We've got Shaker, back to Archer for Ice Bow goodness, Cyril in fresh minty Ice Wizard flavour, and still a forest full of gobbies.  There's a tense moment when three of them get to try and Eye Gouge three different members of the team, including the first attempt to status Cyril.  All three fail, though only two choose to fail by whiffing.  Aside from that, we are healthily paranoid about Stop Bracelet, so that round turns the battle into a route.

Ovelia battle, round 1, Armour Break on Ovelia.  Bastards!  Oh, and Delita gets his hat and sword broken.  Things get a bit tricky in our attempts to avoid having stuff broken, but Gaff is kinda enough to toss off a Haste that two party members can jump into before we kill him the clock tick after Haste resolves.  And otherwise, this battle is standard Zirikile.

Some of my memories of this battle are fuzzy.  Just that Mustadio is smart, manages to fail despite one or two good moves.  Oh, and that Shaker got himself in pretty rough shape, and decided to go to a safe place on the arch, only for Mustadio to blindfire Arm Aim him.  It was awesome.  Aside from that, Silf + Silk Robe shows its true power here for the first time, splattering knights + wizard, as well as a fun finisher with Monk Fargus running along the roofs on the far side of the battlefield in order to kill the archers with an Earth Slash.

Bariaus Hill sees us pulling out MP Break for Mustadio.  Naturally, despite good compatability with the summoner he's next to, it never sees use.  This battle does see the extended range of Poison come into play though, as we hit the two knights with it.  This later forces a summoner to use Moogle to avoid forced stupidity.  Anyways, as per usual, Fargus/Shaker offense save the day.

Here we have a few random battles while wandering about to take advantage of the checkpoint and new katanas, since Jasmin has Samurai unlocked and Shaker's been playing with Ninja.  Mostly, this just sees a dancing Summoner as well as the one use of the Death spell so far.  It was fun, but it's gonna be so much more fun as a Calc.  This is also the point where we realise that all monsters are effected by their own monster skill, but it only shows it if they're next to a fellow monster.

And now we reach the point where Fargus goes Archer and starts picking up Charge abilities, Jasmin goes summoning Samurai, Shaker is knife ninja, and Cyril is Gutspriest.

Just in time for Goug, where there's a Thief with a pair of Platina daggers who, well...  decides to Dash Mustadio.  So Mustadio takes three actions to kill, and lands an Arm Aim on the other thief.  Battle gets a little risky when Shaker gets himself killed by Platina thief, but we manage to both a) get a Wish locked on him in time, and b) end the battle before he could crystalise.

Finally, Bariaus Valley.  This one is also tricky, though not for the victory condition.  Ninja Shaker, complete with Basic Skill secondary is on the other side of the map with Summoning Samurai Jasmin.  First thing he does is, instead of tossing something at one of the mages, he Accumulates instead, while using knives.  This leaves the two mages open to first Zombify him, and then zap him, leaving him in very poor shape, and no way of healing him.  Jasmin pulls out Sylph, and between the two of them, they manage to take down their opposition before Shaker goes down.  But they just barely managed to beat out that Cure 3.  The other side is a bit of a cakewalk as Agrias opens by stopping half the field, and Fargus then comes in and splatters things while Cyril keeps them alive.

[Just Another Day]

Actually lots of classes aren't really potential carriers.  Summoners, for instance...well you use them if you feel like you want to be slow, but in general their stats are just worse.  Well...let me revise that: lots of classes aren't really potential carriers looking at stats/innates alone.  There's classes with better stats than Priest, but hey, Priests have Raise so you use them as a carrier anyway.  Lancers can jump to avoid spells.  Etc.

Hmm... Point well taken about Summoners. It's probably indicative of how I play FFT (and even more specifically how you and I differ in our FFT style ^_^) that I hadn't thought much about the magic side of things when making the assertion, despite the fact that I'm playing a Summon-oriented mage this playthrough

So in any case, I could be approaching this from a slightly different angle than the two of you, but I might almost argue that it is a weakness of the Summoner class that there isn't much to recommend it as a carrier. Not sure what you'd do to solve that offhand... Jack up MP? Innate half MP? Something to let them keep casting Bahamut when other classes give up crying, I guess?

Here's why we didn't up Steal's accuracy--it will never be a strong combat move.  You can't stick it on a gun like with Battle Skill.

Rather than trying to make people care about Steal in a combat sense, we tried to make people care about Steal in a looting sense.  For instance, every battle in the Beowulf sidequest has rare stuff to steal from enemies that can't be invited.  Elmdor's Genji Gear is much, much more useful now.  It's really just a question of "would making Steal more accurate make it more fun to steal from Elmdor/Sidequests" and my gut reaction is no, that wouldn't feel as satisfying.  Since that's the target role for Steal, that's what the percentages are being tuned for.

That makes sense, and was kind of my gut feeling, it just also really stood out to me as opposed to the ubering of Battle Skill. Improving Steal by providing additional worthwhile opportunties for it makes sense to me; we just aren't here in the game yet

Right, so currently Thief vs Ninja is...

Thief: innate poach, better speed growth, lets you learn Move+2, almost double the HP multiplier.
Ninja: damage, speed

Yeah, I'd call Ninja overall better, if only because my default feeling with FFT is offence > durability, but Thief definitely has niches here.  The problem with innate Concentrate is that it tips offence back into Thief's court.  Or at least, puts offence in Thief's court against enemies who have evasion...which are pretty common.

One thing to consider: Laggy's theory was that Ninja should feel like an overall combat upgrade (even if Thief still has a bunch of niches) just because Ninja is a very one-dimensional class with a decently high unlock requirement.  For that reason, I'm cautious about overly blunt Thief upgrades.  Quirky niche upgrades, sure....

Although Knight defenses make thieves cry regardless, I do see the point on the concentrate thing. Doesn't necessarily make huge sense intuitively either, and I'm not sure if Battle Skill thieves need more encouragement; they're already awesome awesome awesome in the early game.

If one of the strengths of Thief over Ninja is supposed to be durability, though, mebbe something small but neat like super badass class evade might be a bone to throw them? Quirky, but cool if you know how to spin it (50% so that Abandon makes them impossible to hit from the front?)

or innate 5 move/jump.

That would make Squires cry.

Squires still have a few things going for them, but not so much that I can really disagree there.

Lancers feel like they underperform. What with Knights become these indestructible powerhouses, Lancer durability is not all that impressive, and Jump, though tightened and more cost-effective, is not really any better than it ever was.

We've actually gotten a lot of reports that enemy Lancers are more threatening than enemy Knights, and from what Laggy and I have played recently, this sounds right.

Not that enemy threat levels imply class balance, just...food for thought.  (Sure, enemy Knights could be set up better, but Jump can be used way better than how the enemies use it too, so...).

Can't comment on enemy Lancers, as we haven't hit them yet, although I will note that I've been really impressed by how the rejiggered JP costs and enemy job levels have changed the game (see Ty's account of the first Weigraf battle: Revive!). I'm completely biased towards more challenge, though (within reason), so I don't think making enemy Lancers terrifying would be an undesirable side effect of balancing them. Nor is it a bad thing stylistically (this is the apposite class to Summoners, after all, some of the most brutal enemies in the normal game, kind of the ultimate shock-troop pure physical class).

I'm okay with moving Fly away from Summoner (the problem being that non-mages have literally one thing to spend their spillover Summoner JP on).  On Lancer, spillover JP would compete between Fly and Defence Up, which is more interesting.

Innate Fly/7-jump...Laggy was definitely arguing against having another class like that, as it takes away from Archer uniqueness.  (And I'm generally wary of innate Fly because the animation is slower than walking).  Archer uniqueness may not be so big of a deal in this case, though, as we're talking heavy armor class vs light armor class.

Archer and Lancer have always been similar, but there are differences. Keeping Lancer move to 3 (which you should definitely do if you were to give them Fly) would help preserve that difference, along with existing Height/Range limits on Jump. That said, the classes have always had some odd similarities (mostly in them being the ranged physicals).

A real, but 100% impossible coding-wise, fix would be to change Jump such that it would move you to a spot adjacent (or as close as possible) to their targets after executing a jump attack (changing them from snipers to bull-rushers), but anyhow...

and innate Defense Up;

This would almost certainly overbalance them.  In a lot of fights this makes them flat out match Knights (except better in Chapter 2 and 3 because their evade is higher and spears have higher WP).  In the few fights where there is magic damage, they can often avoid taking any damage just by jumping.  In short, it might actually make them effectively tankier than Knights (before we consider all their other advantages).

I'm not sure if I buy flat-out better than Knights, even in no-magic fights. They're slower, lower move, with a vastly different (and charging rather than instant) physical, a less flexible weapon-type, next to no ability to use a magic secondary etc. Advantages are more damage output (except against enemy Knights/bosses), range, a degree of accuracy, and air-time. This might make them better overall, but by no means shatteringly so. And Jumping to dodge is an option, but not always an unambiguously good one, limiting target choice and/or sacrificing a useful action just to get into the air.

So yes, it would make them the tankiest class physically, but I don't think it'd make Knights redundant at all.

Samurai feel similarly left behind. They were a bad, bad, bad class in standard FFT, and would have been no more than mediocre even with the Two-Hands ability they always should have had. As a heavy armour class, to mirror Knight and Lancer, maybe give them innate Magic Defence Up?

MDU wouldn't break anything.  Although...I should note that we were sticking to what we felt was FFT's design, which is that Samurai are somewhat Calculator-like (bad stats, good abilities).

Valid enough, although I guess I feel (again, personal bias/preference) that FFT's design re:Samurai is a poor choice overall.

Additionally, Draw-Out is broken on mage classes; on mage classes they always feel like cheating. Suggestion: pump up Samurai MA to Time Mage level or so (if not higher), reducing Draw Out power accordingly (leaving damage in the same ballpark on Samurai, making it nonbroken on nonSamurai).

Ehhhh...I want to say that Draw Out is maybe the 5th best lategame skillset in LFT (and doesn't even exist earlygame).  For all that we did nothing but buff the skillset, I feel it even lost a little since the original game, since Teleport is very expensive, and level 99 parties can learn Noncharge, so DO longer has the "but it's instant speed so at high levels it's one of the only useful skillsets".

My feeling is that Noncharge shouldn't really be a factor, given how ludicrously difficult it is to obtain (in that I don't think you can reasonably get it by level 99 without dancing/singing Calculators, and even then it's a slog). But as before, can't comment yet on later game stuff

Additional benefit of making Samurai a solid (low MP but high MA) magic carrier. The Elf thinks it could be cool to give them ludicrously high MA and crank their MP right down, to give them a sort of limited nuclear fallback function, although this would necessarily make Draw-Out actively bad on lower MA classes.

That...sounds like it makes the carrier choice less interesting: "Use DO only with Samurai."
There are already some magic carriers with lower MP (Bard, Mediator, kinda Geomancer--actually I wouldn't object to nerfing Geo MP to differentiate them a bit more).

I guess I'm conflating two separate ideas; the goal with cranking MA with Samurai (and lowering DO commensurately, although not necessarily that low; even at, say 75% power it would still be fine on mages) would be to make the class funner to actually be in, giving Geomancers some competition for the Fighter/Mage position.

The ludicrously high MA low MP option would give them something they're uniquely good at, but would do bad things to DO generally, which I agree is undesirable.

Secondly on Samurai, the two-hands thing is cool and all, but doesn't really change the fact that you will never use their attack command unless completely retardedly abyssmally strapped for cash.

Hmm...okay, we've had totally the opposite experience from you here.

At least when Laggy and I have been playing, we usually unlock Samurai sometime around start of Chapter 4, and usually have some spare JP for Equip Sword.  With Bracer, Ice Brand, and Black Robe that's...390 damage (more if Ice 2 casts!!)  Alternatively we could equip Wizard Robe and Magic Gauntlet to deal.......120 damage with Koutetsu (180 if we have 580 Samurai JP...which we usually don't).  Our problem has actually been that we almost never use Draw Out for damage while in Samurai because of how good the physical is....

But if you're using Equip Sword on a Samurai, you may's well put 2hands on a Knight or Geomancer; you'll have a comparable or better attacker with (much) better stats otherwise. And comparably good or better at Draw-Out, if it comes to that.

But even with an extremely over-the-top physical, draw-out still has uses for multi-target, status, healing, and range. It's a pretty versatile skill-set.

Ach, done work, gotta run. Good talking to you again

[Archmage]

I am going to have to do something different. Priority: Deal with vampire bard. No holy water, so I just need to kill him outright. Golem will protect me from the rain of bullets. The enemy bard might be an issue if he starts cheer song or something.

So. Haste2, Kiyomori, Golem. Nobody moves. K-Variable blade grasps a stone gun shot. Hakaril raises her brave with praise. Gina the squire plays medic; the mediators are up and about and one of the knights is awake. The enemy bard is singing the nameless song. Zane hits himself with reraise; Strago the vamp bard runs to the other side of the map.

...HEAL FIXES BLOOD SUCK!? Oh, right. We begin to approach the enemy. Golem totally saves Hakaril's ass. An enemy samurai runs down the hill and OHKOs him. Laggy gets sniped with arm aim. Ashley's Leviathan kills a bard and weakens both mediators. This round ultimately doesn't work out so well either. Hrm.

OK. We buff and start moving up the hill. Laggy uses Yell to get K-Variable that extra speed point to act before Strago; Strago blood sucks a confused mediator (due to muramasa) and Laggy kills him. One down. Hakaril then kills the mediator by dead-firing his blaze gun. Two down. Refresh Golem to keep me safe from bullets. K-Variable blade-grasps an enemy samurai's attack, nameless song goes off, and Zane hits Hak with reraise. Mimic Daravon puts the samurai to sleep before a mediator OKHOs Hakaril with her stone gun. Draw outs are exchanged and the squire puts the hurt on Ashley with her handbag. Zane casts Reraise on himself. Shiva finishes off that samurai. Ashley is shot and dies; Laggy eats a 300 damage harp attack (and dies), but then he reraises and kills the female mediator.

Nope. Another loss.

After a long hiatus, let's try this again.

Win! Mediator/Time Mage/Summoner/Geomancer/Knight team, very conservative play with a lot of raises. Threatened the squire to lower her Br a bit, but that wound up not being a factor since basically all the damage to her came from draw out and elemental. Oh, and battle skill was useful; Laggy broke a mediator's stone gun during the fight to prevent her from OHKOing Hakaril every round.

Colliery battle three:

Well this is interesting. Geomancers with Holy and Dark magic? Laggy the multi-perfumed mime? mc the zodiac boss calculator? And Excal, who is going to rip me a new one with his knighty-ness?

Unsurprisingly, I lose this one first round. OK, round two. Laggy is going back to ninja for speed twinking. Mime Laggy runs up and punches Ashley, triggering speed save. Ciato is going to try to drop slow 2 on half my units; gotta stop that, so Hakaril tells a boring story and puts her to sleep. K-Variable uses kiyomori on herself, Hak, and Zane to boost our defenses; Zane follows with Haste2. Excal starts charging confusion song and Hakaril goes crazy; he tries to hit Zane with negotiate, but it fails. Shiva damages Excal and Ciato; damage split reflects some of that back to Ashley. Ciato and Excal eat a muramasa; Zane smacks Hakaril to snap him out of confusion (and triggers speed save, woo). Mime Laggy throws an X-potion to Ciato and my Laggy yells at K-Variable. Hakaril shoots Ciato (almost got her) and Excal flees; Ultima, cast by Elfboy, drops Ashley and wounds K-Variable. K finishes Ciato with Elemental.

Zane hastes Ninja Laggy and he throws a dagger at K to snap her out of Excal-induced confusion. Mime Laggy draws my ire by phoenix downing Ciato. Ashley reraises, but Elfboy giga-flares her (bah). mc attempts to smack K-Variable with her purse, but she blade grasps. Zane slows Excal.

Gah. Several rounds later somehow Reflect fails on Hakaril (95%) and Excal confuses him, preventing Hak from raising Laggy. Reset.

Another attempt is ruined by zombie (!?) when it prevents me from raising Laggy and he crystallizes.

New strategy: SING! Laggy and Zane are going to perform a beautiful duet. WTF. ZOMBIE. Ultimately lose this one, too.

Win! The 2x cheer song bit did the trick, but the battle dragged on forever due to enemy reraise, Mime Laggy healing, and other various factors--including m.c. throwing out doubt faith and preventing Hakaril from doing any damage for several rounds.

Colliery battle 4:

I'm not ashamed to say it: Mimic Daravon won this fight for me. I put four of the five enemies to sleep near the beginning of the fight while Reis soloed one of the dancers and the archaic demon, allowing me to slowly chip away at the lancer army. Many, many castings of esuna were required to undo petrify from Finish Touch. Thankfully, the enemy with Starry Heaven only used Galaxy Stop once, and I easily undid most of the damage with esuna.

I really think this battle was way easier than the previous ones if only because the enemies weren't reviving themselves constantly.

Cripes, Hakaril gained 10 levels getting through the Colliery. Off to Bethla!

[Luther Lansfeld]

^_______^! You died~ Because of us~ Yay~

[Laggy]

Okay, so tentatively, mc and I are discussing the following changes:

* Increase Lancer's Jump stat to 5
* Increase Lancer's HP multiplier from 120 to 150
* Increase Lancer's PA multiplier from 120 to 150
* Equip Spear JP cost: 400 -> 200

Yes, these stat changes are pretty radical. The argument is that Lancer's the physical offense powerhouse to mirror the Knight's defense (DU/MDU definitely still laugh at that HP boost, but Lancers are now better users of Golem!!) The thing is that PA doesn't actually do that much outside of Punch Art and Jump, and they still can't equip Hats and Clothes, so it doesn't seem overpowering. On the other hand, spear physicals (and Jump) get a boost, which they could probably appreciate.

This incidentally should make enemy Lancers even scarier than before, since they were already considered better than enemy Knights by sheer virtue of offense alone.

* Decrease Samurai's HP/MP multipliers from 75 to 64
* Increase Samurai's MA multiplier from 90 to 128
* Give Samurai innate Concentrate
* Lower Kikuichimoji's multiplier from 16 to 12

mc wanted the shiny numbers for Samurai mults to be 64 and 128, because their PA mult was already 128. OK, I wasn't going to argue with her on that >.>

Following the same vein of thought, we decided that Samurai would still make most sense as a hybrid physical/magical class (Ninjas already are the epitome physical class; Calcs the magical; Samurai should be inbetween to balance it out). The debate as to which stat to emphasize is something not really seen on any other class, either (Geomancers are largely magic carriers, whatnot with Rune Blade/Aegis) so Katanas were kept unchanged (although I may do something weird and niche with them, but not the formula). Innate Concentrate emphasizes the Samurai's lone physical more, which coupled with innate Two Hands is pretty brutal. The improved MA mult (better than Oracle and Summoner!) makes them much more competent at using their own skillset, but they're still marred by their Move 3 and subpar durability + equip options. They're an offensive powerhouse of both flavors, but not terribly mobile nor durable.

The nerf to Kikuichimoji was a result of mc and I debating if Draw Out was an overpowered skillset in general. We concluded that its close range DOs weren't really that OP (since magic often hits similar numbers with far greater range), but Kikuichimoji broke that rule. It still remains a very solid skillset due to its versatality, with its main hole being lack of revival.

Oh, also:

* Decrease Knight's Speed multiplier from 100 to 90

Gonna play with this one; it should be interesting. Knights are kinda due to a nerf, but the interesting part about this is that while it nerfs PC knights rather hard, ENEMY knights will now all tend to go right after your casters, which makes them a royal pain in the ass.

[metroid composite]

But if you're using Equip Sword on a Samurai, you may's well put 2hands on a Knight or Geomancer; you'll have a comparable or better attacker with (much) better stats otherwise. And comparably good or better at Draw-Out, if it comes to that.

It's a training support; Kind of like I'll use Equip Axe on Monk in the earlygame for PA+1 (yes Attack Up would be better, but it's like 600 JP and I want to be learning Monk abilities right now).  I use Equip Sword while learning Draw Out.

Anyhow, should comment on the stuff Laggy and I just hashed out over the past couple hours.

Okay, so tentatively, mc and I are discussing the following changes:

* Increase Lancer's Jump stat to 5
* Increase Lancer's HP multiplier from 120 to 150
* Increase Lancer's PA multiplier from 120 to 150
* Equip Spear JP cost: 400 -> 200

Honestly, where I pulled this out of was...

Knights have multipliers...
120/80/100/120/80
Lancers have multipliers...
120/50/100/120/50
Wouldn't it be funny and broken if Lancers had...
150/50/100/150/50
'Cause, y'know, 50+150 = 200 = 120+80.

And the answer is...well...nobody cares about HP, and PA only really matters for Jump and Punch Art (and I already have a handy table of the four physical classes that you might use Punch Art with, so I was able to check that pretty fast, and it was...sensible if we assume no Genji Gear).  So actually no: it's not clear that would be broken.  It might also bait people into using some interesting but ultimately not that great setups (Equip Sword Lancers with Swordskills.  Lancers with max HP and Golem.  Lancers with Dance).

It also differentiates from Knight (not a defence class) and doesn't pressure you into staying Lancer after you master Jump (in fact you might want to switch to a class with more speed to land on faster enemies).

So...whatever, worth testing.  Might need to tone it back a bit, but the symmetry is cute.

* Decrease Samurai's HP/MP multipliers from 75 to 64
* Increase Samurai's MA multiplier from 90 to 128
* Give Samurai innate Concentrate
* Lower Kikuichimoji's multiplier from 16 to 12

mc wanted the shiny numbers for Samurai mults to be 64 and 128, because their PA mult was already 128. OK, I wasn't going to argue with her on that >.>

The thing Laggy doesn't mention is that we're considering putting Always: Faith on one of the Katanas.  128 mult with bad other stats and poor equipment on its own isn't much of a selling point.  Concentrate does a good job of arguing for physical skillsets to consider it.  A faith weapon would do something similar for magic skillsets (without simultaneously overdoing Draw Out like, oh, say, an MA+2 Katana would).

The nerf to Kikuichimoji was a result of mc and I debating if Draw Out was an overpowered skillset in general. We concluded that its close range DOs weren't really that OP (since magic often hits similar numbers with far greater range), but Kikuichimoji broke that rule. It still remains a very solid skillset due to its versatality, with its main hole being lack of revival.

Yeah, it went something like:

"Draw Out doesn't need its mults nerfed, it's range 2!"
"Draw Out does need its mults nerfed, it's range 8!"
"Draw Out doesn't need its mults nerfed, it's range 2!"
"Draw Out does need its mults nerfed, it's range 8!"

In retrospect the argument was pretty silly and had a simple solution.

Honestly, we could drop Kikuichimoji to 10 mult, and optimized Kiku setups would still deal slightly more damage than optimized Earth Slash setups at normal levels.  (Granted, not at level 99; ES actually passes 12 mult Kiku by level 99).  I believe the argument was "you get Kikuichimoji at the same time as Orlandu.  It being really good is acceptable.  Just not that good."

[Hunter Sopko]

Cripes, Hakaril gained 10 levels getting through the Colliery. Off to Bethla!

Remember, North Wall. NOOOORTH WALLLL

[Archmage]

Sorry, I forgot to go North 

Bethla South:

After the Colliery fight...this is not even worth describing. Hakaril shoots things, Zane uses Haste2, Ashley busts out Leviathan. Laggy is now a samurai two-handing a murasame awith Attack UP for support while wearing a bracer; he OHKOs the enemy thief with a mighty 384 damage slash and then runs over to drop an enemy samurai by hitting for 448. After three rounds, everyone is dead except a couple samurai. I completely control the battle with Slow2 and Mimic Daravon so the crystal harvest can begin.

Hakaril decides to talk to himself for a little while, mostly Glabadosian apologetics, and his faith goes up a bit. Ashley gets a full complement of mediator abilities from a crystal and chests cough up largely uninteresting items. Laggy gets murasame and walk on water (oh boy!) as well as heal (odd) and meatbone slash (yay!).

Bethla Sluice:

Laggy hits a charging wizard for 512 damage; Ashley kills another wizard with Leviathan and Hakaril puts an enemy knight to sleep with Mimic Daravon. K-Variable charges forward and uses muramasa; the enemy knights hit hard (capable of 2HKOing Hakaril) but I hit harder (and faster).

K-Variable learns gilgame heart from a crystal (WOOO) and we flood the valley. Orlandu-wan Kenobi joins the party and brings a shiny new Excalibur with him. And flash hats, hurray! A brief detour to Goug is necessary to pick up Worker 8. After a few more equipment purchases (kikus, rune blade) we're off to Germinas Peak.

Germinas Peak:

The ninja runs down the peak and hurls a rune blade at Hakaril; Hak responds by shooting him with a Fire3 spell from his blaze gun, dropping him instantly. This sets the tone for the entire battle; Laggy and K-Variable mow down the enemies with little resistance.

Poeskas Lake:

Oh no, undead people! The ghosts go down quickly enough with MP Switch keeping them alive a little longer than normal. The oracle clearly wants us to join his army of the dead and zombifies Laggy

Limberry Gate:

Hakaril opens the fight by OHKOing an apanda and Laggy ends it by dropping a space rock on Celia. Fun!

Limberry:

Oh, what the hell, I've gotta steal Elmdor's stuff.

K-Variable goes ninja/steal/attack up while Laggy
 is going to take the thief/battle skill/martial arts route. Hak and Zane get 108 gems. Plan: Neutralize the assassins, then speed break Elmdor into submission and gank his gear.
 

Elmdor 'ports forward into the thick of our party and uses kotetsu; half of us get a speed up thanks to that lovely reaction ability. Hakaril shoots Lede. Laggy and Ashley get death sentence (so what); Ash casts reraise on Laggy and Zane Haste2s. Celia and Lede seem to be favoring Ultima for some reason. Laggy punches Celia, but she's not quite down yet, so Hak shoots her and K-Variable finishes off her true form. Hak shoots Lede and K finishes her, too; one demon left before Elmdor takes center stage. Laggy double speed-breaks him and he loses 2 speed. The other ultima demon goes down quickly. Time to toy with Elmdor.

Muramasa sadly kills Zane and Laggy both. Hak and Ashley play medic and pick them back up. Elmdor has teleported across the map, but thankfully he comes back to play. Another speed break brings him down to 6. Everyone is on their feet and healed (thanks to Ashley casting Fairy). We slow Elmdor. Hak's going to need to bring down his Br if this is ever going to work. One threaten gets the ball rolling and Laggy steals Elmdor's shield. A second threaten brings Elmdor's Br down to a much more manageable 30. K gets his weapon, then his armor. Laggy ganks the helmet. Finally, K-Variable yoinks the Genji Gauntlet. Naked Elmdor goes down quickly.

Zalera:

Meliadoul runs in just in time to see Elmdor transform into a horrible beast. Zalera approaches the party and throws out Confuse2...which hits everybody except Ashley.

OH WHAT THE HELL MELIADOUL

She decides to Shellbust Stab K-Variable's genji armor to unconfuse her. ;_; RESET

Round 2, Zalera repeats his Confu2 performance; only Hakaril escapes unscathed.

MELIADOUL YOU STUPID BITCH *RESET*

Zalera uses Nightmare instead of Confuse 2 this time. Maybe Meliadoul will STILL ATTACK MY PARTY OUT OF BLOODLUST WHO KNOWS!? No, she runs to the corner for no good reason (her weapon skills are basically useless this fight except AGAINST ME, GO FIGURE).

K-Variable has death sentence, so she charges in to unleash muramasa. The skeletons tickle me a bit. Ash throws Leviathan; Zalera speed saves, then he eats a Demi2 for over 300 damage. Nightmare disables Hak, Ash, and Laggy. Kiku does another 128 to Zalera (who keeps speed saving...hrm). Esuna wakes up the sleepers.

Flare2 kills Zane; Hak gets hit with Nightmare...man, Zalera is getting progressively faster and he's still not dead. Laggy hits him with muramasa...nope, still going. Another shot from Hakaril? Nope, still going. Finally! A kiku draw out from K-Variable ends Zalera's reign of terror.

Fun fight design, what with the progressively-faster Zalera and whatnot. Zane was dead at the end and I decided to blitz him rather than play conservatively (he was still at 2 on the timer). Highly entertaining. Meliadoul get! And she brought a Defender!

Before going to Nelveska Temple, I need to train Rafa a bit so I can use her to move-find items. And I need gil. So I turn Zane and Ashley into calculators and send them along with Laggy on props, running back and forth between Zarghidas. Many props later, Ash and Zane are level 6 calculators with ~1400 JP each. Hurray! (I don't set math skill on anybody at the moment, I just kinda wanted to have it.)

We head to Germinas Peak to hit a random; I dispatch a silly party. Orlandu, Rafa, Beowulf, Hak, and Ashley (as a healer). The whole point of this, of course, is to gain some JP for the special characters; Orlandu I don't care much about, but Beowulf is fun and Rafa has some value to me. Having three special characters means spillover JP, yay!

Or not. Screw Rafa. Laggy talks me out of whoring Nelveska's OP equipment, so I don't need to mess with her. Next up: Nelveska Temple!

[Grefter]

Well since no one else really responded to it....

My feeling is that Noncharge shouldn't really be a factor, given how ludicrously difficult it is to obtain (in that I don't think you can reasonably get it by level 99 without dancing/singing Calculators, and even then it's a slog). But as before, can't comment yet on later game stuff Smiley

That is the point isn't it?  Calculator isn't great, but it can do a ton of things and it does actually have a niche in the main game theoretically here, most people won't use them probably, but people that are weird (mc) will get use out of them in the main game and they still have that ridiculous aftergame broken thing and it is frankly a million times less boring.  It really mirrors Red Mages in other FFs you learned skills I think.  They aren't really great and have kind fo weak spells, but they are super versatile and if you grind for a fucking eternity you get that bonus spreading to other similar classes (X-Magic in FF5 and FFTA I guess being the equivalent of Noncharge spells here).

Not tempted at all to give a late game Katana an elemental affinity Laggy to have an aftergame Icebrand equivalent for training there?  Could be a bit broken maybe I guess... there is a lot of multipliers in play there.

[Just Another Day]

Okay, so tentatively, mc and I are discussing the following changes:

* Increase Lancer's Jump stat to 5
* Increase Lancer's HP multiplier from 120 to 150
* Increase Lancer's PA multiplier from 120 to 150
* Equip Spear JP cost: 400 -> 200

(...)

This incidentally should make enemy Lancers even scarier than before, since they were already considered better than enemy Knights by sheer virtue of offense alone.

Glee! ^_^

* Decrease Samurai's HP/MP multipliers from 75 to 64
* Increase Samurai's MA multiplier from 90 to 128
* Give Samurai innate Concentrate
* Lower Kikuichimoji's multiplier from 16 to 12

Double-glee ^_^ Stupid number tricks make me happy too. Kikuichimoji will still be fine, Draw-Out will still be OMGWTFBBQ on Wizards and Time Mages.

Okay, so tentatively, mc and I are discussing the following changes:

* Increase Lancer's Jump stat to 5
* Increase Lancer's HP multiplier from 120 to 150
* Increase Lancer's PA multiplier from 120 to 150
* Equip Spear JP cost: 400 -> 200

Honestly, where I pulled this out of was...

Knights have multipliers...
120/80/100/120/80
Lancers have multipliers...
120/50/100/120/50
Wouldn't it be funny and broken if Lancers had...
150/50/100/150/50
'Cause, y'know, 50+150 = 200 = 120+80.

It also differentiates from Knight (not a defence class) and doesn't pressure you into staying Lancer after you master Jump (in fact you might want to switch to a class with more speed to land on faster enemies).

So...whatever, worth testing.  Might need to tone it back a bit, but the symmetry is cute.

Differentiation really feels like the key to me. The niche thing. By doing things like making Archers and Knights usable, you've more or less abandoned the idea that classes objectively improve as you progress through the game (an idea that was never well-implemented in Tactics anyhow, other than Squires being balls and Ninjas badass), for the more interesting idea that classes have different uses and serve different purposes. It'll be nice to see really competitive setups in more than the handful of classes (Wizard, Geomancer, Chemist, Ninja) that were good in the normal game.

* Decrease Samurai's HP/MP multipliers from 75 to 64
* Increase Samurai's MA multiplier from 90 to 128
* Give Samurai innate Concentrate
* Lower Kikuichimoji's multiplier from 16 to 12

mc wanted the shiny numbers for Samurai mults to be 64 and 128, because their PA mult was already 128. OK, I wasn't going to argue with her on that >.>

The thing Laggy doesn't mention is that we're considering putting Always: Faith on one of the Katanas.  128 mult with bad other stats and poor equipment on its own isn't much of a selling point.  Concentrate does a good job of arguing for physical skillsets to consider it.  A faith weapon would do something similar for magic skillsets (without simultaneously overdoing Draw Out like, oh, say, an MA+2 Katana would).

Always: Faith MAx128 Samurai would have a case for best raw magic offense (leaving out Faith Rod and Faith buffing) in the game, no? Of course, low MP means that they'll have limits even so, plus the usual defense issues with Faith. Gives Equip Change a real reason to exist, which is never a bad thing. The theme of katana as mixed blessings could be cute, leading to things like Always: (or Start:, at least) Poison, Zombie, Innocent. Or Always: Blind, to make a particular sword useful to Samurai (Concentrate) but less reliable on other classes. Also, stylish.

Meh, I'm babbling. I like the changes, they seem more sensible than I might be inclined towards, but still cool.

That is the point isn't it?  Calculator isn't great, but it can do a ton of things and it does actually have a niche in the main game theoretically here, most people won't use them probably, but people that are weird (mc) will get use out of them in the main game and they still have that ridiculous aftergame broken thing and it is frankly a million times less boring.  It really mirrors Red Mages in other FFs you learned skills I think.  They aren't really great and have kind fo weak spells, but they are super versatile and if you grind for a fucking eternity you get that bonus spreading to other similar classes (X-Magic in FF5 and FFTA I guess being the equivalent of Noncharge spells here).

Definitely no argument that Calculators are cool now. Just I'm not certain how much the gamechanging nature of Noncharge should be factored into calculations, since it only affects way post-endgame stuffs.

As (apparently, hadn't conciously realized this before this thread) a total Samurai fanboy, I approve of an elemental Katana (Murmasa: Dark?) Also, random thought out of nowhere: could the self-inflicted effect of Please, Eat be added to the Chijiraiden? (fear the ultimate katana. fear it hard.)

[metroid composite]

Hmm, I'll get to the other stuff in a bit, but first...

For the record, 9999 JP is definitely something you can reach way before level 99.  The JP formula:

JP = [(8 + (JobLevel * 2) + [Lv / 4]) * 1.5]

You're going to hit job level 7-8 pretty early in the process.  I'll assume you're doing this during the early aftergame so your levels are in the 30-50 range.  So you gain about 40 JP per action.  Assuming you get 10 Exp per action, you're looking at 400 JP per level, 4000 JP for 10 levels, 8000 JP for 20 levels.  So...if you start about level 30, you can expect to reach 9999 JP about level 55.  If you assume you gain a lot more exp relative to JP, say 30 exp, then it's 160 JP per level, so you'll gain a lot more levels.  Except since you're gaining a lot more levels it's actually more like 185 JP per level (more JP at higher levels).  So...in this worst-case you'd start about level 30 finish at about level 85.

Either way, if you plan to get Noncharge, it will be below level 99.  It's...approximately the equivalent number of actions to..................Unlocking Mime in original FFT (okay, that's really depressing -_-), which...yeah, I remember achieving by about level 50-60 when I started with a level 30 Samurai SCC file and turned it into an aftergame party.

[Just Another Day]

I stand corrected Probably not much worse than unlocking Dark Knight in the PSP version (crystal harvesting aside) either.

I guess uber-setups may have more relevance in LFT too, with presumably harder endgame maps and optional stuff.

[Laggy]

So... here's food for thought (came up while mc and I were yet further discussing things).

We were chewing on the fact that FFT (and LFT), by endgame, has a fundamental issue of damage simply overpowering HP. While damage increases quadratically (not even taking into account things like fists - basic weapon formula of PA*WP means that you have damage shooting up by multipliers), HP is increasing linearly, almost entirely from equipment on the PC side.

Pretty much by the time C3 or C4 rolls around, walking about and OHKOing stuff with a Ninja is pretty common fare (and not even that hard). Or nuking things to hell and back with a properly twinked mage. And so forth.

So... I floated around the idea of making stat-based HP universally more prevalent - that is, HP you get just from leveling up. For the mathematically inclined, I'm toying around with the idea of making all generic classes have roughly 2/3 their normal HP growth and multiplying their HP multipliers by 1.2. The way it works, this doesn't impact early levels much (the HP growth hasn't had time to work its way in significantly yet) and that's fine, because by far and large the damage to HP ratio from C1-C2 is pretty alright. It's later on that I want to tackle and another bullet into the prevalent offense-favoring aspect that FFT has (LFT, with current changes, has definitely balanced this out to a degree, but not to the level I would prefer by lategame).

This ends up with the following chart:

HP Growth alterations (to all generic classes)
(number of classes w/ this growth) (original growth -> new growth)
(2) 20->11
(1) 14->10
(1) 13->9
(6) 12->8
(4) 11->7
(4) 10->6
(1) 9->6
(1) 6->4

HP Multipliers (original times 1.2)
Squire: 110->132
Chemist: 80->96 (tweak to 102)
Knight: 120->144 (tweak to 126)
Archer: 100->120 (tweak to 114)
Monk: 135->162 (tweak to 144)
Priest: 80->96
Wizard: 75->90 (tweak to 78)
Time Mage: 75->90
Summoner: 70->84 (tweak to 81)
Thief: 100->120
Mediator: 85->102 (tweak to 108)
Oracle: 75->90 (tweak to 87)
Geomancer: 125->150 (tweak to 138)
Lancer: 150->180 (tweak to 160)
Samurai: 64->77 (tweak to 84)
Ninja: 60->72 (tweak to 60)
Calculator: 65->78 (tweak to 72)
Bard: 55->66 (tweak to 68)
Dancer: 60->72 (tweak to 70)
Mime: 200 (unchanged)

Note: I tweaked the high-end HP mults down a bit more firmly than others because new growths already make those favorable. (And Knight, for example, doesn't *really* need the help >_>)

HP Multipliers, in order:
60 (Ninja)
68 (Bard)
70 (Dancer)
72 (Calculator)
78 (Wizard)
81 (Summoner)
84 (Samurai)
87 (Oracle)
90 (Time Mage)
96 (Priest)
102 (Chemist)
108 (Mediator)
114 (Archer)
120 (Thief)
126 (Knight)
132 (Squire)
138 (Geomancer)
144 (Monk)
160 (Lancer)
200 (Mime)

This also somewhat balances against the monster changes (from all reports, while monsters are badass now and lots of people like that, their damage really IS skyrocketing especially later on - some more HP on the PC side would help that). Not that monsters would be excluded from the HP bonuses, either; their growths are already modified, but I'm also proposing an identical *1.2 mult to their HP multiplier (monsters, with better HP growths even with the new generic HP growths, will take further advantage of this).

[metroid composite]

I'll have to chew on those HP numbers a little; it's a fairly drastic change and I'm not sure we've thought about all the possible implications.

Probably not much worse than unlocking Dark Knight in the PSP version (crystal harvesting aside) either.

Oh, easier than that.  Dark Knight requires mastered Wizard, which is 8400 JP right there.  Oh, and JL8 in four classes (and in WotL, JL8 = 3000 JP).  So...easily double the JP requirement (granted, in more competent classes than Calc).

[Laggy]

Yeah, not downplaying that this is fairly radical (probably beyond most of the changes already done) - and highly experimental at this point. I'm curious to see people's general reactions to it, though.

[Bardiche]

So effectively it means that... around the start of the game they will have slightly less HP (At level 1), and then from then onward their HP Growth is progressively higher than their current amounts meaning that you should somehow retain the same level of difficulty, so to speak, throughout the entire game? (Difficulty as in, you need three hits to kill enemies early game, you're going to need just as many lategame, and so will they)