Teach my fighter and thief white and black magic?

[RaustBlackDragon]

Yeah, I have a final fantasy I party arrangement going; I have a fighter who's pretty much pure strength, a thief who uses bows, has cave lore and tool use, and goes for pretty much pure dexterity. Then I have a white mage who goes pretty much pure INT and focuses on priest spells, and a black mage who focuses on pretty much pure INT and mage spells.

 

I'm thinking that once I get my fighter and thief to level 15 in weapon skills, I might change track a little bit and start teaching them priest and mage spells respectively, just like the knight and ninja in the original. Their stat allocations wouldn't change, they'd just start learning some magic, mainly buffs and healing, stuff that doesn't require an intelligence investment. Is this a good idea, or should I steer clear of magic for them?

[Aoslare]

Having an extra person to cast Mass Healing and Unshackle Mind would be useful; whether or not it would be as useful as whatever else you could do with those 8 or so skill points is a different question. It would be a fair choice to make.

 

There's no real need for extra buffers, though. And I have a hard time seeing any benefit at all to a non-Int-focused character investing in mage spells.

 

(That said, I'm also the kind of person who considers FF1 to have had exactly three functional classes, so take this with a grain of salt. )

[RaustBlackDragon]

You're pretty much right, that's why I play FFZZHT, which is what I like to call a "noble hack". The steps of a noble hack are as follows:

 

1: Fix every bug

2: Buff every underpowered character

3: Increase difficulty up the rear end

 

 

So if I get what you're saying, teaching the fighter priest spells is a decent idea, while teaching the thief black magic is a bad one?

[Randomizer]

The only use for fighter types getting spells is for healing in long dungeon fights and there are only a few. Now to be able to add resistance onto hardiness does help a little at harder than normal difficulties.

[Lilith]

Yeah, extra healing is always potentially useful if only to give you more staying power between combats, while an archer with minor investment in Mage Spells will be effective at casting Haste and Blink and not much else. You don't need another person who can cast Haste that badly.

 

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S

(That said, I'm also the kind of person who considers FF1 to have had exactly three functional classes, so take this with a grain of salt. )

 

thieves and red mages, as eventual sources of Fast, become a lot more useful if you're playing without a black mage. black mages are actually kind of bad for a lot of the game so this is a viable option. red mages are better than thieves overall but also way more expensive to outfit. likewise black belts aren't as powerful as fighters for most of the game but they're cheaper to outfit, which is important if your ultimate goal is to minimise the amount of grinding you need and your bottleneck is cash rather than levels

 

thieves would also be a lot better if the luck stat wasn't broken. having by far the best chance of running away from battle would be super useful in ff1

[Aoslare]

Actually, I was counting Fighters, Black Belts and Red Mages as functional classes. Red Mages are basically White Mages that don't suck. The only serious advantage of the White Mage, IMHO, is HEL2 (which is itself a bug). On the other hand, if you stick TWO Fighters in the first two slots, it's amazing how much less healing you need. Two Fighters, two Red Mages has become my standard party.

 

Lilith, agreed re Black Belts... except that the less you grind, the better Fighters are compared to Black Belts, even if you give them almost nothing to wear except what you find in chests. For example, let's say you want to finish the game on the early side, at level 25. Every time a Black Belt hits Chaos, he'll do 1 damage. Can't do more unless he gets a critical. How bout level 30, which is more typical if you don't want to grind? Okay, now only 2/3 of the Black Belt's hits will do 1 damage. The others will range from 2 to 20 damage... for a total average damage per hit (again before criticals) of approximately 4.

 

Oh hi, Knights with Masmune and Xcalbr, acquired without paying a dime! Lovely to see you.

 

RBD, do you have a link to this FFZZHT thing? Google doesn't think it exists.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S

RBD, do you have a link to this FFZZHT thing? Google doesn't think it exists.

you're welcome

[RaustBlackDragon]

Heh, lilith beat me to it. Fair warning:

 

Red mage can't use fast, and intelligence (and all of the bugged spells) actually works.

[Aoslare]

This is fascinating. I'm a little surprised that they actually named a spell XDTH.

 

What do you all think of the class balance in it?

 

EDIT: According to the readme, Red Wizard can use FAST, which I think is more important.

[RaustBlackDragon]

Oh right, yeah the WIZARD can use fast, but not the mage.

 

Anyway, Black mages definitely feel more useful than before. The vast majority of bugged spells were the ones that were exclusive to the black mage. Tmpr works, sabr works, mages get a few more spell charges, level 1 elemental spells work on all enemies, a lot of stuff. Red mages are still good, but they're no longer "if you use a black mage instead of a red mage there's something seriously wrong with you" broken, ESPECIALLY since intelligence works now.

[Aoslare]

FWIW, I don't think red mages were especially broken before; they were just better than the other mages. Despite all their magic, they were probably less useful than fighters.

 

It does seem like a bit of a no-brainer, now, to run a fighter and a thief for damage absorption, plus some combination of mages and black belts in back. Actually, white mages still don't impress me: the only standout spells from reading were SLEP and HEL4, but HEL4 is level 8 and a poor replacement for bugged HEL2, and SLEP is great, but I'd rather have a decent offense like any of the other classes. Especially since healing spells are more prevalent now: every promoted class gets them (except masters). I dunno. I guess I should just play it and put my money where my mouth is.

 

One thing that jumps out at me is the RUN! spell. Between that and fixing luck for running, it seems like it must dramatically de-emphasize the element of attrition via random encounters that was so prevalent in the original -- especially later in the game when you could easily have 15 RUN! spells to toss around.

[Black Owl]

=D and i thought i was on the wrong forum