Final Fantasy RPG 3e & 4e by WhitemageofDOOM

Standard Shit

posted by WhitemageofDOOM Original SA post

Returner Games-FFRPG 3e
FFRRPG Part 1: Standard Shit

I was going to do BESM 3e, but eh never played it and i'll need time to digest it. Let's go with something I know, Something I know all too well. As I helped develop it for far too long, and I can tell you inside secrets of why it's a broken pile.

I'm going to rush my way a bit through chapters 0, 1, 2, 3 Because bluntly, none of this is the fun stuff.

Chapter 0- Introduction

This is your standard introductory chapter plus some stuff on final fantasy games as well, as well as a history of the franchise up to when the game was made and a chapter list, which you've seen if you've been here because of the games online lay out.
Nothing fancy, it's serviceable and functionable and I can't mock it. We will begin mocking soon.

Chapter 1- Playguide

Oh good, terrible mechanics FINALLY.
Not a lot sadly, but some.

Skills are percentile and range from 1 to 100.
There's a lovely difficulty chart which places heroic, you know the shit you should be doing, at -60. So enjoy a max 40% chance of success at mastery.
Since I'm mentioning skills and I never want to mention their abortion of a half assed skill system again. I'll note that your base chance of success is Attribute*3+10%, but if you put even one point in a skill you use that, you start at said 1%.

The skill system is so tacked on and weird because we get a much better system that fits the games blatantly combat priorities immediatly after.

Intuitive magic, if you want to use magic the GM looks at what you want to do, checks some keywords based on your class to see if it makes sense, then slaps an mp cost on it and it works.
This is good, it resolves instantly no muss, no fuss.

Great we are done.

Chapter 2- Giant Piles of Numers, I mean Character Creation

At this point you get to assign 40 stat points(though you don't know what they do or what your class needs) but here let me group the stats for you.

Vit is hp and magic armor.
Spd is initiative and dodge.
Spr is mp magic armor and magic dodge.
Str/Agi/Mag are all the same thing, they multiply your damage by your stat, if your class needs more than one ignore it right now and pick another.

These are limited by racial limits which are recovered in the races chapter but why explain that? All the rules for races are right here.
So instead of races being anything interesting they SOLELY determine stat caps starting and end game, maybe it'd be somewhat if they affected starting and everyone was human for end game stats but nope! There are no unique bonuses, no anything except stat caps. Here let me just chop down the race list to what matters.
Human- 10s in everything, absolutely worthless.
Mithra- 12 Agi, 12 Spd, If you are an AGI using class this is the best you get.
Qu- Remember quina from FFIX? Nor do I! But she has one of the few relevant races, 13Mag, 13Spr, 11Vit.
Tarutaru- 12 Mag, 15 Spr, 11 spd, generally better than Qu, but Qu offer more bulk if you want to be a bit tankier these two are the only time you get a meaningful choice.
Yeti- 13 Str, 15 Vit, the perfect race for every fighter build! You might say "But clearly if my fighter type uses mp Yeti are bad right?" Nope! Yeti have 10 spirit so they even make the perfect paladins.

Great now that your party is tiny midgits giant yeti's and a giant cartoon mouth, we can go to the giant pile of derived stats.
Oh but before that advantages and disadvantages.
I don't generally consider the disadvantages worth taking as they are all combat based and a giant opening for the GM to screw you, and that's what it will feel like getting screwed a disadvantage that is only relevant when the GM decides you should take double damage. However a few disadvantages are absolutely worth it because they don't materially affect you, 1 free point for making your mage blind? Weapon inability tanks your weapon skills and makes it so you can't crit, but only two classes care about that(it's 3 points too!).

Then is the combat modifiers aka giant pile of derived stats.
Mind/Dex- Same thing diffrent stat, these are your status hit chances modified by target evasion. Mind is modified by mag, Dex by Agi, hope your fighter type's statuses are flat %.
Accuracy- Uses Weapon skill(ewwww skills) and Agi with a class bonus, the AGI isn't relevant here because your fighter will have 130% before anything or just 30% because you took weapon inability and spammed your specials.
Magic Accuracy- It's accuracy, but for magic, and starts at 100. Why magic doesn't auto hit outside statuses, I don't know, why accuracy needs weapon skills and doesn't start at 100% I don't know. Why Accuracy is not just base 100% and evade can make you miss, I REALLY don't know.
Evade/M.Evade- Reduce the chance of success of anything that might miss, oh by the way there is no level bonus to these unlike accuracy, and if you aren't the right attack stat these tank further.
Hp/Mp- These do what you think, except the +1 per 2 points of vit/spr per level ISN'T retroactive, but IS retroactive on characters made at higher levels. So make sure to kill your character off mid campaign to get back your hp/mp. Did I mention most of the playtesting was at high levels?
Arm/M.Arm- So I saved these for last because they are dumb, they subtract flat amounts of damage from attacks(already dumb) and are % modified by vit/spr yes %modified, so you might think "Man I'm taking a lot of mag damage i could use some spirit", don't your heavy armor has no base M.Arm to speak of that spirit can modify.

Then there's rules on leveling up i'll ignore the numbers and tell you they assumed people would level about once a session, in a system where end game is 70ish level system. Where almost all playtesting went into the 60+ range.

Chapter 3- Races

I covered this, it has a bunch of useless flavor text but the only relevant shit was covered.
Yets, Mithra, Qu and Tarutaru only need apply.

Am I done rushing through the standard or fiddly bits, good time to get to the classes. Remember how I said they playtested mostly high level end game stuff? It's going to show, it's going to show SO HARD.

Warrior Jobs, Part 1

posted by WhitemageofDOOM Original SA post

FFRRPG Part 2: Warrior Jobs, Part 1

So first off, I'm going to be talking about these jobs some what in depth. Secondly I'm going to at the end of my review give each job a Playable Level rating, That is to say at which the job can be called complete and new abilities are expanding the tool kit rather than giving you the basics.

I also should explain how warrior abilities WORK instead of having mp costs, they have initiative penalties. This means their costs actually matter, this means there's some variance in what you can use since you never want to pay more init than you have(taking multiple turns), and it means you can ignore SPR entirely. But your GM can drop a status on you while your attacks are charging.
God this is such a better system than MP.
Oh they also completely ignore accuracy and your weapons properties except damage, so ignore that death touch and go for the stat stick.

Archer
Our first off is the archer, the stat line is a little disappointing(these class stats are added to your race stats to determine your actual caps as you level.)
15 Str and 15 Agi, That strength is solely because bows are strength weapons, boomerangs, crossbows and guns aren't.

Level 1- Take Aim, This auto hits for 100% damage and while normally attacks don't apply weapon abilities this does with a +30% chance of any status effects except ranged weapons use ammo not weapon abilities.
Level 8- Charge Shot, This is kind of awesome it does 125% damage and you can at higher levels pay more initiative to deal more damage, most classes waste multiple slots for this privilege.
Level 15- Leg Aim, this inflicts immobilize which drops evade to 0 and disables reactions it's useful at low levels(where evade can be relevant) and for enemies with reactions.
Level 22- Arm Aim, this inflicts disable which disables the attack, guard, and item commands. Ie by this level nothing relevant.
Level 29- Mind Blow, For a whopping -10 init you attack their MP rather than hp, yeah skip it.
Level 36- Table Turner, This is neat in that it ADDS their armor to their damage, it's not neat in that it only does 100% damage for -12 init.
Level 43- Arrow Guard, Add your level to evasion against ranged attacks, considering you have shields this isn't AWFUL.
Level 50- Barrage, This lets you do 100% weapon damage to all enemies for -16 init(crap), but it applies weapon abilities AND ammo(amazing).
Level 57- Triple Foul, Applies confuse, disable and silence this would be amazing if it wasn't single target and -18 init.
Level 64- Unlimited Shot, your first shot has a 100% hit rate, second 90%, third 80% etc. They strike randomly but it's pretty great as a capstone.

Playable Level: 8/50
It's clear what the archer WANTS to be, a status based fighter who uses weapon abilities and ammo for utility, but the statuses they inflict in class can be rather situational. If your GM rules you can use ammo with take aim, then this class is great at lvl8 having a wide variety of statuses on a 60% success rate for only -2 init and charge shot for damage, if you can't use ammo it's not till you get barrage that you really make use of your class.

Dragoon
Next up the dragoon, I think you know what they do.

Level 1- Jump, You become invincible for a turn then land for 200% damage. This is amazing because the damage is multiplied before armor so 2 turns for double damage and a turn of invincibility(dodging pesky group attacks) is well worth it.
Level 8- Cherry Blossom, for -4 init you hit a group for 75% damage, You aren't really getting more damage for a long time, don't worry you don't need it.
Level 15- Ancient Circle, This gives your party Dragon Killer(x2 damage vs. dragons) if you are beating the snot out of dragons it's great, if you aren't it's arse.
Level 22- Lancet, hits for 125% damage and half that to mp, look every time MP damage comes up i'm not going to respect it, it's usually lower than hp damage and totals aren't lower.
Level 29- Reis Wind, gives your party regen this is fucking amazing.
Level 36- Dragon Heart, a 30% chance on taking damage to get reraise but only 1/battle, why it's not just reraise the first time you drop I don't know.
Level 43- White Draw, Continuing the trend of dragoon's having random ass shit because Jump&Cherry blossom are the best This does more MP damage(Meh) BUT it's an MP drain that divides the stolen MP among the MP users in your party. Congrats with Reis wind you have infinite sustain.
Level 50- Power Jump, This is a 3 turn jump giving 2 turns of invincibility, the second turn you hit for 150% damage to a group, the downside is all three actions have -16 charge time, it's not a straight upgrade over jump or cherry blossom but it's certainly serviceable.
Level 57- Dragon Breath, does 999 damage for -18 charge time, well ok it does damage equal to their (max-current hp) so if they've taken 999 or more you will damage cap, it's basically your boss attack if you want to push out more damage.
Level 64- Dragon Horn, This is a jump with a -20 charge time on both "turns", after landing you hit 1-4 random targets for 75% damage. Dragon breath is a better boss killer turn by turn but this let's you get that turn of invincibility.

Playable Level: 8
The dragoon is without a doubt one of the best designed classes, it's early levels give it two strong and reliable attack abilities, and the mid levels giving it ever increasing utility with a focus on sustain and mp damage, it's top end gives it new attack options but they are just that options, not really straight upgrades. If you are going to play a warrior dragoon has my blessing.

Fencer
Well from the heights of the heavenly, to the pits of hell.

Level 1- Swarm strike, inflicts poison.
Level 8- Reflex, Adds half level to evasion I'd say "so evade becomes worthless at half the rate" but you have the evade stats and shields.
Level 15- Feather Blow, your first attack ability for -6 init does 10 * Agi damage....oh boy i'm just going to get to this in the ending analysis. But suffice to say this ability is ok when you get it and falls off rapidly the other fencer abilities like it do not fare so well.
Level 22- Greased Lightning, Your attack actions ignore reactions, ummmm ok, that would require me to want to auto attack. Then again I might have to considering this class.
Level 29- Shadow Stitch, -10 init for 14 * Agi shadow damage and agility break.
Level 35- Checkmate, Inflicts Condemned and Slow. It's okish.
Level 43- Swallow Strike, -14 init for 16 * Agi damage to a group.
Level 50- Mana Strike, Look it attacks mana, my opinion is known.
Level 57- Nighthawk, -18 Init 27 * Agi shadow damage.
Level 64- Piercethrough, This is it the ultimate fencer ability......32 *Agi damage, IGNORING ARMOR!!!!!

Playable Level: Never
So the fencer is first off at war with itself it's trying to do a viable thing and a really pointless thing. The viable thing is it's attempt at an auto attack and passive focused AGI attacker, and there is a good auto attack and passive focused warrior, the fighter, they are next. It's other thing is using initiative penalties to do flat unscaling damage with no weapon component, it has 5 of these, 3 of which do nothing but damage! and you have to use the high init versions because feather blow and shadow stich do less than your weapon at high levels.
Give the fencer a pass.

Fighter
Oh finally, let's look at the class BUILT around auto attacks.

Level 1- Battlefield genius, weapon abilities and crits apply to this classes attacks, neat.
Level 1- Mighty Blow, halve your attack Chance to hit including evasion, add any +crit chance bonuses, this is your chance to hit with this ability which auto crits. At low levels it's risky, by mid levels you'll have Chances of success of 150+ and this becomes better than auto attack. Those legendary weapons that you go "Meh They have Crit+10% and triple critical" become a Beast in a Fighter's hands.
Level 8- Third Eye, Automatically evade the next evable attack against you.
Level 15- Scream, Gain Power Up and Agility Up, This is amazing. 25% more damage, +2 iniative, and +25 evade.
Level 22- Quick Hit, Does 75% damage but gives +8 initiative next round, this is an incredibly strong ability but it's just on the wrong class. The Fighter doesn't need to set up long charge times.
Level 29- Double Cut, -10 Charge time to attack twice, explicitly attack these can crit, miss, and weapon abilities apply.
Level 36- First Strike, ALWAYS act during the surprise round.
Level 43- Bone Crusher, Lvl/3+Agi% chance to use the attack action for 150% damage when you take physical damage.
Level 50- Slash All, -16 Charge to attack everyone, again attack.
Level 57- Final Attack, Gain an immediate action when dropped to zero hp, this action ignores charge time. You can't use a potion on yourself(as you have 0hp), but you can use a phoenix down.
Level 64- Finishing Touch, Inflicts Death, Stone, and Stop. Cute but the only things I want to use this on are bosses who have Immunity to those.

Playable level: 15
The fighter is very different from other warriors in that is mostly stacks passives and actually cares about weapon's as more than stat sticks. As stated he does the passives and auto attacks thing better than the fencer by actually doing that. All his abilities stand out as useful except finishing touch and to a much lesser extent third eye. But his playable level is 15 as by that point you have Scream and Mighty Blow is hitting at the 60-70% range that it always wanted.

Next time
The Knight, Monk, Samurai and Sword Master finish up the warriors.
Two of these are fencer tier, can you guess which?
Also playable levels in the 20s.

Warrior jobs, part 2

posted by WhitemageofDOOM Original SA post

FFRRPG Part 3: Warrior jobs, part 2

Nothing to do, so i'll finish up warriors.
The first batch of warriors was pretty ok, classes were playable by around 8-15(wait no, that's NOT ok.), and besides fencer were pretty decent. The back half of the warriors really are the back half.

Knight
There's a distinct lack of witty openers to the knight.

Level 1- Life Break, It deals damage equal to your Max-Current hp this would be fine as a "Mid level" utility power, but it's your opener and has nothing to do with what knights DO.
Level 8- Armor AND Mental Break, you get both of these, they reduce Arm or M.Arm by 50% which is not bad but not amazing but it shows where the knight is going.
Level 15- Speed Break, This deals 125% damage and inflicts agility break(-2 init, -25 Evade/Acc) for -6 init, it's pretty good.
Level 22- Power AND Magic Break, FINALLY these reduce physical or magical damage the target deals by 50% these are an order of magnitude better than their offensive counterparts.
Level 29- Spirit Break, This is the same as speed break except it inflicts spirit break(-25 M.Acc/M.Evade) instead, why this isn't at the same level I have no idea.
Level 36- Thunder Slash, this does 150% weapon damage as lightning damage and hits M.Arm, that's cute but you are taking an extra -6 init penalty over Speed or Spirit Break for it.
Level 43- Climhazzard, Does 125% weapon to all enemies this is the first more than than 100% AoE we've seen and it has a similar init penalty to it's 100% contemporaries in fighter and archer.
Level 50- Lai Strike, 30% chance of causing death, if it fails it does 100% damage. For -16 init it's not worth it.
Level 57- Shock, 150% weapon damage to all enemies, it's a strict upgrade over climmhazzard for -4 init.
Level 64- This hits all enemies with Armor, Mental, Power and Magic break. It's -20 init but who cares even over 2 turns it's worth using over your old breaks. No better capstone there could be for the knight.

Playable level- 22
The Knight Is great for enabling boss killing, but takes 22 levels to get it's most important tools. It also starts transitioning into some decent AoE damage but that's at 43. A lvl1 knight just sounds painful.

Monk
Oh great, fencer mark 2.0 except your flat damage attacks use mag which you are awful at. Mind the monk is BETTER than the fencer, but still.

Level 1- Martial Arts, you can attack twice when using the monk weapons, explicitly the monk weapons.
Level 1- Punch Rush, auto hit for 150% damage for -2 init this would be broken if you had the really good weapons....
Level 8- Meteor Impact, for another -2 init also inflict confuse basically a straight upgrade to punch rush.
Level 15- Earth Slash, It does mag based damage to all enemies...oh boy.
Level 22- Counter, Chance to counter for 100% damage.
Level 29- Aura Cannon, Flat single target holy damage.
Level 36- Fire Dance, Flat fire based damage to all enemies.
Level 43- Soul Spiral, This ability is unique, you give up a certain amount of hp and multiply that by your vit/4(round up) and all OTHER allies regain that much. Giving up 100 hp to group heal for 500 sounds a good trade.
Level 50- Razor Gale, Flat wind damage to all enemies.
Level 57- Demi Shock, Reduces a target by 50% of it's MAX hp, capped at 999. Man this sounds awesome, and it would be, except it's classed as a gravity effect, which falls under fatal, which bosses are immune to. So go ahead and ignore it.
Level 64- Phantom Rush, Hit for 300% damage, this can break the 999 damage cap but with your puny won'ts won't....

Playable Level- Never
Look at least the fencer's shitty flat damage abilities did AGI based damage like his weapons, these are MAG based, also while those damage %s may look impressive you use weapons that at end game do 14*Str damage vs. the fighter doing 21*Str with a great sword
Hmmmmmm 21*Str well there's this advantage for 5 points that let's you become proficient with ANY weapon. Now you can take weapon disability, scrounge up 2 points and voila A great sword wielding monk slapping people around for 150% damage at lvl1. Now you'll be doing gob smacking levels of damage that will make everyone's jaws drop, but that's it besides Soul Spiral that's your character. It's cheesy but it's never really PLAYABLE.

Samurai
And We thought the monk and fencer had it rough, ooooo boy.

First we need to talk about "Exhausting the blade" whenever a samurai uses an ability they have a chance to exhaust their weapon inflicting them with curse for the next 3 rounds, which seals non-magic abilities. This goes down by -1 per level but never less than 10%.
This would be sort of fine(no it wouldn't, 3 turn stuns randomly suck) except IN ADDITION you have charge times.
Lastly the samurai ONLY uses mag for damage but gets no mag bonuses to their stat line, only Str/Vit.

Level 1- Iaido, A large collection of scaling effects that can do just about anything if you have the right katana equipped.
Level 1- Soul Blade, See the above but inflicts a status effect on a single target.
Level 8- Mineuchi, This skips the target's next action THIS ROUND sadly it doesn't break charges. Also it can fail, then curse you, skip it.
Level 15- Meatbone slash, If you take physical damage, while at 25% or lower hp, you have a 50% chance to trigger this. What happens if it goes off? You deal damage equal to your max hp, which sounds like a much better pay off than it is.
Level 22- Dragon Flame, deals flat AoE fire damage and has a chance to halve targets initiative, again no charge break.
Level 29- Double Handed, If you go without a shield you deal 25% more damage with one handed weapons. But....you have no weapon attacks.
Level 36- Shooting star, attempts to eject target and deals 18*Mag damage on a miss.
Level 43- Shirahadori, Adds your level to evasion against melee attacks, which you have a shield so not bad.
Level 50- Banishing Blade, Deals 28*Mag damage and Armor/Mental/Power/Magic break to one target.
Level 57- Tornado, Deals 14*Mag fire and 14*Mag wind damage to all enemies ignoring arm.
Level 64- Meikyo Shisui, Ignore your CT to auto curse yourself. I mean I guess as a finisher.

Playable at: 1/Never
The samurai is....interesting, If they didn't have charge times I'd call them a legit attempt at a damage code fighter, with lower level abilities eventually becoming free use...But they do. Which kills them dead in the water, so any interesting dies with the simple fact they are reliant on a stat they are bad at for everything and need CT to do it with their lower abilities just becoming weaker and weaker. Looking at banishing blade for instance, it does only 28*Mag damage about 125% damage for a CT-14 ability. It's just awful.

Sword Master
Yeah this class was broke in the previous edition, let's see how it holds up.

Level 1- Delay Attack, Deals 100% damage and halves the target's initiative also BREAKS CHARGES. Boss doing something with -12? Delay attack turn skipped.
Level 8- Dispatch, Deals 125% damage nothing fancy.
Level 15- Fated Circle, This is exactly like Cherry Blossoms doing 75% damage to a group but has a higher init penalty. Man Cherry blossoms is amazing.
Level 22- Provoke, It does what you think it does, why isn't this on the fighter?
Level 29- Cross Slash, Inflicts 150% damage and disable.
Level 36- Spiral Cut, Inflicts 150% damage ignoring armor, this is extremely niche over the quicker cross slash or the next ability.
Level 43- Blade Beam, Inflicts 150% damage to the primary enemy and 75% to everyone else, This is amazing.
Level 50- Strikeback, Has a 30% chance when attacked to just evade and hit them.
Level 57- Flurry, Hit four times at random for 100% damage, this is your real capstone.
Level 64- Cleave, Mass Instant death, better than finishing touch because it's an AoE.

Playable at: 15
Swordmaster isn't a god class but it isn't bad, a number of it's abilities are lacking and it severely lacks utility, but if it's straightforward brute force from a warrior class the swordmaster beats everything but Great Sword Monk, and has enough tricks to be worth playing. Delay Attack/Dispatch/Fated Circle is probably the best -2/-4/-6 set any warrior class gets, blade beam and flurry are the big upgrades from that basic tool kit sure they are "more damage" but that's what you came for and Cross Slash and Spiral Cut are hardly worthless just somewhat useful utility.

Expert Jobs Part 1

posted by WhitemageofDOOM Original SA post

My apologies for interrupting chaos corner, but I started this.

Part 4: Expert Jobs Part 1

So unlike warriors who are rather straight forward Experts are mostly furiously dumb, also we have to bring in the terrible skill system again.
Expert ability CoS is based on Half Key Skill+Lvl+Main Stat*2, So I need to remember the terrible skill system. A skill can start with a max of 40% and can be raised by 10% per level(of the 20 points you get) up to 100% so after wasting half your skill advancement for 6 levels you hit 100% in your key skill. This gives you an Expertise of 50+Lvl+Stat*2....The same chances fighters have been using since lvl 1. WHAT IS THE POINT, WHY NOT JUST SAY THEY START WITH 100% IN THEIR ASSOCIATED SKILL AND USE THE NORMAL MIND AND DEX SCORES.

Right, that complaining over, the jobs themselves are mostly a flaming pile like expertise, except the Bard and Chemist....who we start with.


The Bard
Bards have a charge time on their abilities, bards have basically a magic school. Now as dumb as picking spells is, Bards get EVERY SONG SPELL OF THEIR LEVEL ALL OF THEM.
Also all bard songs either hit all enemies or all allies, I'm just going to list the giant long list of statuses they can apply at level up.

Level 1-Hide, oh you can also hide which is the invincibility portion of dragoon's jump if you don't want to apply AoE status effects.
Level 1-Reduce Init by 25%(doesn't break charge), Spirit Up, Agility Up, 1*Mag Water Damage.
Level 10- Sleep, Mental Up, Armor Up, 4*Mag Shadow damage with a chance of curse(Black mages don't get access to single target curse til 33)
Level 19- Poison, Power Up, Magic Up, 7*Mag damage with a chance of silence
Level 28- Eject if hp 25% or lower, Add element to all weapons, Gain Resistance to any element, 10*Mag damage ignoring every defense short of invincibility
Level 37- Reduce init by 50%(no charge break still), Accuracy & Critical Up, I: Sleep Poison Blind Berserk Zombie, 13*Mag damage with a chance to slow
Level 46- Reduce hp by 50%, Reduce mp by 50%, Regen, Random positive status
Level 55- Mini, Reduce mp use by 25%, Protect AND Shell, 19*Mag damage with a chance to confuse
Level 64- Inflict weak to any element, Haste, Power Magic Armor and Mental Up, 22 * Mag with a chance to petrify

Playable Level: 1
The bards ability to grant tons of statuses for the entire party is straight up, no joke, broken. I could nominally diss their Flat damage CT abilities....but why? Who cares? You have so many abilities you aren't missing out having one attack per ability tier. Sure some of their abilities are kinda weak, but again who cares you have so many that are so good. Like there's not enough I can say about how crazy brokenly good the bard is.

Chemist
Oh boy the chemist, chemists are the only other playable expert along with bard. They are also the ONLY viable replacement for a white mage, which yes a healer is mandatory, this is an FF game remember?

Level 1- Pharmacology, This is the core of your class and a potent ability. Recovery items get x2 as effective, Raise items heal 25% max hp, and Status healers grant immunity to the status. THIS IS AMAZING.
Level 11- Treatment, Negates any bad effects from negative statuses until the end of the turn. It also hits the entire party. Also the statuses will wear off even while you use treatment. Don't have the cure? Just treat it.
Level 22- Distribute, Any overhealing from your items you get to divide up, if you use a group item only one person's excess gets distributed, if you use an item that full heals the overhealing is their current hp/mp. Ummmm yeah, This is just good not much to say.
Level 34- Mix, groan fuck mix, while it only uses normal items you have to consult a giant ass chart with i shit you not 304 results to get what happened from the two things you mixed. This is a HELL of a lot of power and utility at your finger tips, but consulting the chart is awful. Also Graviball+Ink, You're welcome.
Level 47- W-Item, When you use the item action you get to do it twice, no CT or anything here, you just get to chuck two items.
Level 61- Auto Potion, Are you hit by something? Are you alive? Use any item that helps deal with what hit you.

Playable Level: 1
Chemists as stated are the only viable heal slave than the white mage, they are possibly better at that, they don't obsolete the whitemage but they sure are good. They also have a lot of power and versatility at high levels with Mix and W-Item allowing them to basically do anything(for a chart) or chuck two different relevant effects at once. Also their expertise skill is alchemy which let's them use the crafting rules to brew potions, you know those items you'll by consuming by the buckets since you replaced the whitemage? Also yes there are crafting rules, they don't make me want to tear my hair out beyond their existence.
Welp as noted, this is the last playable expert, it's all down hill from here.

Dancer
Ahhahahahhahaha, oh my god, dancers, sweet god dancers.
You pick an ability tier, roll 1d6 on 1-5 you use that ability on a 6 you make a normal attack doing 75% damage.

Level 1- Flirt, This makes people not attack you, it uses your mind and not your expertise, on the plus side that means it isn't randomly shit until lvl7, on the downside it uses your MAG instead of AGI.
Level 1- Perform tier 1, Sleep, Poison, Confuse, 50% attack damage as mp damage, Blind
Level 15- Perform tier 2, Slow, 50% attack damage drains, Share someone's "Space" making them take the damage you do, Cancel all barrier statuses on enemies, Reduce enemy hp by 33%
Level 30- Perform tier 3- Sap(time poison), attack ground for 100%, Petrify(stoned in 4 turns), Power down(a shity version or power break) with a chance to crit into power break, magic down with a chance to crit into magic break
Level 45- Perform tier 4- Random status on all enemies, attack for 100% and 50% to mp, Mini, Death, Weak to Element
Level 60- Perform tier 5- Attack for 200%, Skip next action for all enemies, Meltdown(Def=0) on all enemies, Venom(Super poison), Dance twice

Playable Level- Completely Unplayable
This class isn't a never, it's just unplayable, let's ignore the 1/6th chance of your abilities randomly defaulting to "Attack but worse". The ability you get is COMPLETELY RANDOM, all you do is dance and that requires a die roll every time, and god help you if you need a specific debilitating status or you roll something the enemy is immune to, or you absolutely need a certain single option like the barrier break. Ignore the dancer and never look back.

Engineer
Fucking hell you actually have to play with the crafting rules.

Level 1- Invention, This is basically a full class progression in itself, that you custom make. There's a number of limits for how many points you can spend, what effects you can apply, and you can only have one invention of each "Tier" (1 at 1, 1 at 2 etc.), it uses a point system to create abilities. So yeah basically whatever your party doesn't need go supply it. You also have to put a defect on these, these include chance of shooting yourself(or the enemy with positive statuses), charge time, pretend your a samurai but with no CT, chance to just fail, or pay money every time you use the invention. For your starting invention I suggest single target damage 4*Agi with charge time, that will put you above the great sword monk.
Level 11- Peep, It let's you see enemy stats. Useful enough I suppose.
Level 22- Reclaim, A CHANCE to get crafting materials for your inventions after CONSTRUCT type enemies were slain in a battle.
Level 34- Dismantler, Fast action death but only on constructs. Who are likely to be immune to death by flavor...
Level 47- Maintance, grants the party immune:Weaken status(Stat down/break) doesn't remove any existing ones so when you find a use it's a bit late.
Level 61- Dual Invention, You can use two lvl5 or lower inventions.

Playable level- 8
I'll say 8 because you have your 4*Agi death beam and an invention that does something useful. That doesn't make this class GOOD. Invention is a giant fucking hassle for both you the player(Having to make inventions), and the GM(the ability to rearrange basically your entire kit functionally at will is kinda stupid.). This isn't a bad class in the power sense, Not at all it's plenty breakable as the 4*Agi lvl1 laser shows, it's just TERRIBLY TERRIBLY DESIGNED going against all the core precepts of the other classes. But hey maybe that's what you want, that case go use your big engineer brain to have the perfect tool for every occasion by "mid" level.

Gambler
Hahahahhahaha, oh my god, it's back to randomness isn't it? Yes, yes it is.

Level 1- Fortune, You get critical hits and crit succeed skill checks at 1-20 it's...there? It's cute to get +Out of Combat Crit.
Level 1- Double Up, When you use a slot you can pay 50% more gill to roll twice...Yes, slots cost gill, because RANDOM OUTCOMES isn't enough of a payment. If you get the same result on both dice you lose your action and take 10% max hp damage, yay.
Level 15- Dice, Roll 2d6 multiply by your level, do that much damage. It's ummmm, it exists? It does ok damage when you get it I guess?
Level 29- Lucky 7, Anytime your final digit of hp drops to 7 from damage counter for 7 damage if you miss, 77 on a hit, or 777 on a crit. This is will occasionally just kill shit at the level you get it, but that's rare and at later levels it has to crit to do relevant damage.
Level 36- Do Over, Repay for a slot to try again but if you get the same result lose your action and take 10% max hp damage.
Level 36- Bribe, Pay a monster for a chance at success based on it's gil value(which you don't know), if you succeed it is ejected and drops it's very rare item. Just, just, WHAT? There is so much wrong here I can't begin to fathom, pay money and an action for a basically random chance of success, which if you succeed you get the very rare item of the monster(But not the exp or gp.)
Level 43- Phantom Dice, no draw back random statuses to the group, now THIS is what i'd expect from the gambler, pay randomness for powerful effects. Positive statuses include exp and gp up, i shit you not.
Level 64- Spare Change, Spend an amount of gil deal that much/10 to all enemies max of 999. Now see, this is a fine ability for chucking around gil. It just works. Get it at lvl64 though.
Wait where are the slots you have two abilities refrencing slots, well they are listed after all that so I'll save them.
Level 1- Elemental Reels, Roll to attack with a random element....Wow this was nerfed this used to be roll three times pick one and if you got three of the same you hit a group with that element. This is crap, never use it. 10gil a wasted action.
Level 8- Moogle Reels, Pay 25 gil and roll a d10 to see what you MIGHT do, then make two gambling checks if either fail either you get the shitty toy box effect, of course you have 100% gambling so you could ignore this if the best 2 effects didn't apply a -20 and -30 to your skill check. Still it's a decent array of effects for the level you get it.
Level 22- Status Reels, Pay 50 gil and roll a d10 to see what status you might hit everyone with, use expertise-evasion one for the highest evade target one for the lowest if one succeeds hit a random enemy with that status if both succeed hit all enemies with that status. Monsters unlike players add lvl to evade so there's a good chance this doesn't work, pass.
Level 43- Chocobo Reels, Pay 200 gil to use the upgraded moogle reels, everything but the weakest result has a gambling penalty now but the fail result is a half decent party heal but if both rolls fail you inflict death randomly on half the combatants.
Level 50- Attack Reels, Pay 400 gil Attack 3 times on a single target using expertise but it can crit. It exists i suppose.
Level 57- Magic Reels, Pay 500 gil and roll 3d10 to determine the spell's level(3-8), number of times cast(1-3x) and the spell used, There's also a chance of getting some special other effects. There's also no gambling rolls and the worst outcome is "Nothing happens" (a 9 on spells cast and no 10s).

Playable level: 8/43
I mean you are nominally playable with moogle reels but that will fall behind, by the 20s until you get to chocobo reels, at that point you'll stop being bad and do well throughout the rest of your progression. But that's the 40s which is way too late to be playable.
I'd call the class out for it's randomness, but it's the GAMBLER you signed up for that, and unlike the dancer you have a lot more control over what you are getting. Want positive status? You get that. Want damage? you get that. Of course the random gambling rolls on you know random effects, and gil costs on random effects, are incredibly stupid. As is you know TAKING TIL LEVEL 43 to do what the class wants to do reasonably reliably.

Next time: Mediator, Mime, and Thief

Expert jobs, part 2

posted by WhitemageofDOOM Original SA post

Well let's finish off the insanity of the experts so we can get to a new type of insanity, mages!

Part 5: Expert jobs, part 2

Mediator
Remember how I said chemist was the last good expert job? Mediator is almost good, almost.

Level 1- Tame, This let's you pick a monster that died this turn and tame it(it's a mystify effect, status groups etc. doesn't work on notorious, boss and endboss mosnsters) it still gives full awards(surprisingly), and the monster gets to "live". Because you let it live you can summon it in battle to attack or out of battle to overcome any obstacle once, then it leaves. You can have one tamed monster, plus an additional 16, 31, 46, and 61.
Level 10- Entrust, This let's you swap initiatives with someone else, ANYONE ELSE. If they don't have a turn you lose yours, if their initiative is lower you get to go again at their initiative. If used on someone charging this charge breaks and your new initiative is when they WOULD have gone. Yep, this is quicken and mess with enemies all at once, this is amazing.
Level 19- Parley, Ejects an enemy at 25% or less hp, they are at 25% or less hp WHY? I use instant death on things with 100% hp.
Level 28- Advice, you give the target critical up who cares no one is auto attacking at this level.
Level 39- Intimidation, This increases their botch/auto miss range from 95+ to 75+ and removes their ability to quit. I'm noticing a pattern of incredibly worthless abilities.
Level 46- Manipulate, FUCKING FINALLY SOMETHING WORTHWHILE, it inflicts charm, it has no charge time, no limits. Fucking everything is going to get I:Mystify from here out.
Level 55- Invite, This is like tame, ON CRACK. When used they immediately get up and fight on your side, and you get to keep your new pet monster buddy. Congrats you are the pokemon trainer, it's you. Now watch your gm head desk as every monster went from "Attack once for them maybe" to "Possible invitee".
Level 64- Charge!, what could beat invite as a capstone? Well it sure ain't fucking this, You pick 4 allies each of whom has a chance based on their hp% to make an attack action...Flurry this is not, considering your party members can both not attack(40% chance to attack at 76-100% hp) and then miss. I'll stick with entrust.

Playable level- 10
This class has 4 abilities, Tame, Entrust, Manipulate and Invite. Ignore everything else. And it is an INCREDIBLY STRONG class with just those four abilities. I'm not going to call it good though, Tame and Invite are massive GM headaches as every monster has to be scrutinized by what you can do with them. And your main ability is "Skip my own turn to give an ally another" that's.....incredibly powerful but not exactly FUN as you don't really get to do anything. Also there's manipulate, which is well, it's a spammable 0 CT charm, nothing wrong with that.

Mime
Remember Entrust? Remember how good it was? That ability is better than your class.

Level 1- Mimic, you copy the last ability used not by your party, used, and make it with the same target. You still have to pay MP or CT costs.
Level 9- Mirror Mimic, You can now choose to target the user of the last ability used so you can ACTUALLY MIMIC ENEMY ATTACKS.
Right we are stopping here, it's pretty fucking obvious how Mimic and Mirror Mimic should have worked, Mimic targets party actions, Mirror Mimic copies enemy actions and let's you pick targets. But nope, can't do that, has to be the exact last action and you have to use MP or CT killing any utility you would have over entrust. This needed to be said.
Level 17- Command Mimic, Pick an ally and take ONE ability from them, if it's spell casting you take one level of spells.
Level 25- Memory Mimic, you can pick any action used this round.
Level 33- Final Mimic, when dropped to 0 hp mimic the attack that killed you targeting your attacker.
Level 41- Command Mimic II, You get two abilities or spell levels from command mimic.
Level 49- Target Mimic, you can choose targets freely when using mimic.
Level 56- Counter Mimic, whenever you are attacked you have a 30% chance to respond with the attack that hit you.
Level 65- Job Mimic, COPY SOMEONES ENTIRE SKILL SET....up to lvl50, except spells of lvl7 or 8, blue magic of 100+mp, or summons of 150+mp. So yeah don't copy mages.

Playable level- 49....I suppose
Fuck mimes, mimes are awful, and I'm not kidding when I say "Entrust is better than your class" besides not needing all sorts of upgrades just to hit somone. MIMIC USES YOUR STATS NOT THEIRS, Yep that's right, you want to mimic a spell it's based on your mag. Mimes need ALL SIX ATTRIBUTES. What's more, what's worse, is their attribute caps? 9s across the board so their stats are bad for doing everything even at top levels AND their caps are lower. So Entrust further kicks your ass by just using the target's stats.
And you still need to fucking pay MP/CT killing any of the coolness mimes have in the FF games.
Fuck mimics, mimics are the EPITOME of "We only tested high level shit" the class doesn't come online until lvl50 and needs everyone else to have capped their attack stats to stat catching up, and is still very much a 5th wheel....and another class does it better at lvl10.

Thief
Oh the thief, what will we ever do with you. Nothing.

Level 1- Steal, you make an expertise roll and depending how much you succeed by you steal the item in the approriete slot, a crit ups the slot category by one.
Shows over, class is done.....
What you want me to tell you the rest? FINNNNEEEE.
Level 8- Gil Snapper, you steal gil not with steal, but as a seperate action that eats your entire turn.
Level 15- Catch, You are targeted by an attack that uses the thrown ability or ammo and you can negate it and add it to your inventory. I mean...What? WHAT? How often are enemies going to be using throw or ammo? Seriously?
Level 22- Distract, For CT-8 give the target unaware, it's well....their turns are probably more valuable than yours.
Level 29- Mug, for CT-10 you get to do 100% attack damage while stealing, yaaaaay.
Level 36- Detect, You see someone's treasure table also when you steal from them you steal 2 items instead of one.
Level 43- Steal heart, Remember manipulate? Remember how that had no CT? This does, still pretty good for the thief.
Level 50- Countertheft, Any time you are hit by a physical melee attack use steal. Nothing to complain about beyond the hugggeeee complaint that goes at the end of this class.
Level 57- Robber's Evidence, Deal 100+Expertise*2% damage, so assuming you are mithra and have max AGI. 250+Lvl% damage.
Level 64- Footwork, +20 passive iniative.

Playable Level: 64
The thief is another huge example of only testing high levels, furthermore it is deeply enmeshed in the idea that the player's are getting gil and item drops as real resources that they worry about and could get screwed by not enough item drops. Rather than "gil is kind of irrelevant, sometimes monsters have rare shit the thief yoinks". This really kind of shows why at 43, 57 and 64 they get these huge combat abilities that let them actually do something as the game approaches the "End game" and players now only get artifact/unique gear and those shouldn't be missable the thief has to change.
Robber's evidence has one of the highest single target damage %s, and footwork guarantees the thief gets extreme initiative.

Of course how much player's WILL care about the economy, was never really tested, or the simple fact the GM will probably provide gil and weapons in chests outside their "Balanced" Xp/Gil ratios. Also god knows no one ever picked thief in playtests, why would you, money didn't matter in those.

Mages

posted by WhitemageofDOOM Original SA post

FFRRPG Part 6: Mages

Mages, mages use mp and have spells, spells have levels and you get to pick multiple spells from each level. So basically you only ever cast your highest level spells.
Mages also have flat damage codes but that's fine as you can just ignore your lower level spells.
ALSO spells have prereqs, which you have to taken at previous levels, and you CAN end up not having enough spells to take at certain levels because of prereqs.

For mages I won't be reviewing individual abilities but more reviewing their spell lists and by extension the class.


Black Mage
Technically black caller is first, but we are skipping them for a bit.

So black mages just get black magic, a level 1-8 progression of spells.
All black that progression EVER does until the very end is give you a long string of single target debuffs/save or dies and elemental attacks, which you expand your selection of save or dies(with flat mp costs) and get higher damage code versions of your elemental attacks(with scaling mp costs), so 2 of your spells per level going to keeping up with the joneses for damage and the other two expand your ever increasing ways to kill a single creature.
And that's it, that's ALL this class does.
It doesn't get damage and status attacks besides poison/bio until lvl7 spells(lvl49), it doesn't get group status attacks until lvl8 spells(lvl57) or multi status spells until lvl7 spells(lvl49). It's just more and more ways to do the same two things.
And the other developers? They thought this class was COMPLETELY BUSTED. Why? Because to make a monster resistant to their damage you'd need like four resistances(or you could just....not do elemental damage.), and they could easily exploit elemental weaknesses(If you know what they are and the GM gives them).

Of course this ENTIRE CLASS could have been reducded to the following.
Elemental- Pay increasing mp at higher levels to do elemental damage.
Status- Get access to single target status effects as your level increases.
All Magic- Pay x2mp and an init penalty to change a ST effect to group targeting for elemental or status.

Throw in some abilities at the mid levels for Bio, Flare, Pain, Break and Ultima. Congrats you have basically the same fucking class.
Fun fact there is a class that almost works this way!

Playable Level- 1
I mean they are nominally playable out of the gate getting 3 level 1 spells, did i mention mages get 3 spells at level 1? Because they do. But you know, the next two mages are better in every way.

White Mage
Welcome to possibly the second best class in the game after the Bard, but the White mage is mandatory.

White mages get white magic, full 1-8 progression. Duh.
White magic first off provides the heals and....this is your biggest weakness. Healing is mandatory and you will spend a LOT of time and MP doing it. You are all the horror stories of the cleric. But white magic isn't just for healing!
White mages get both the Wind and Holy line of spells! Wind at odd levels Holy at even levels, meaning YOUR DAMAGE EQUALS THE BLACKMAGE YOU JUST HAVE FEWER ELEMENTS. Now your GM can screw you by deciding the enemy is R: Holy, Wind. You also get a decent list of save or dies having silence, mini, confuse, berserk and charm. Also dispell(Remove barrier/enhance statuses) is on the white mage and NOT the black mage for some reason.
Of course we come back to what we expect from the white mage, a bevvy of support effects are also at your disposal, nowhere near the Bard but you have them, and that's a thing the Black Mage can't say you also get them earlier than the Bard but they aren't group targeting mostly. Notably Null Element(Grant the party immunity to one element) is group targeting and lvl3, so you can shut down any encounter involving elements trivially.

Basically the white mage is a strict upgrade over the Black Mage in every possible way.

Playable level- 1, and i totally mean it.

Time Mage
Welcome to the other possibly the second best class in the game after the Bard, the time mage is possibly not mandatory.

Time mages get time magic, level 1-8. Yada, yada.
We start with damage, let's get this out of the way. Time mages have two damage streams like the White mage, But they have the best set for a single reason it's all non-elemental. The GM can't screw you, you aren't trying to exploit elements. You are legitimately getting two types of attack spells. The Ray burst line is just Non-elemental damage at odd levels, at lvl3 it becomes group targeting so you have non-elemental group damage. The comet line has random targeting armor ignoring multi-hit attacks. So legit two distinct ways to do damage not just different elements your GM has to play too.
Of course you also get a bevvy of utility skills(such as teleport,ie auto escape) as well as eject, % based damage(way earlier than anyone else), and of course every single time based status. HOWEVER, DON'T TAKE STOP. You see if you take Stop the GM basically has to slap I:Time on every boss to prevent you from Stopping them, but if you don't and something has I:Time then the GM is clearly fucking with you.
I also wish to call out that while obvious the Time mage gets haste and slow, and at the lowest levels of any class. Initiative is super important in this system, and haste means you can let the fighter really wail away with his moves or possibly even get extreme initiative.

Playable Level- 1, it's a mage, it's going to be 1.

Red Mage
The Red mage is certainly interesting.....

Red mages get red magic a mix of all the greatest hits of white, black and time magic, level 1-6.

Red mages have noticeably lower max magic(12 Mag/10 Spr) stats than the other mages but make up for it in variety and having shields. The only thing they meaningfully miss out on is the time mage attack spells.
However red mages spell progression is slower than the others and again caps at level 6, At mid levels 35-49ish they will start to fall behind until they get the ability that cements them as incredible for the rest of the caimpaign.

Level 50-Dual Cast, for -6 CT you can cast two spells as one action.

There it is boys and girls, the reason you suffered through mid levels as a red mage, you cannot BELIEVE the utility this gives you, I mean you could if you played the chemist. Yes, yes you can Flare*2 for a good impression of a ST ultima for far less MP, More importantly cast Mass Protect+Mass Haste on turn one, cast Flare while steal healing that near death ally. The Possibilities are........very large but still limited to your spell selection, which you should choose carefully in consideration of the eventual unlocking of this ability.

Playable Level- 1, though they dip noticeably in power as they fall behind in spell levels, they don't stop having options and things to do. Just rely more on utility than nuking.

Sage
Right so sages......

Sages get red magic, level 1-8
They also get more spells per spell level than other mages, So bluntly, out of the gate Sages are just better. However Sages have lower magic stats than red mages(10 Mag/10 Spr), the same pathetic 5Vit of the other mages, and remember how I said "Red Magic doesn't lose out on anything at 1-6" that isn't true of 7-8 when spells start getting interesting so sages are like more extreme red mages who when they start falling off NEVER GET BACK UP.

Playable Level- 1, they are still mages

Next time: Summoners and black/white callers

Mages part deuce, The Summoning

posted by WhitemageofDOOM Original SA post

FFRRPG Part 7: Mages part deuce, The Summoning

So part 2 is on summoners and callers.
I'm going to start with callers.

Black and White Callers
Both callers get the same two basic things.

They get either Black or White magic with the progression of the red mage. Hint, white caller's are better.
And they get to Invoke or Call Summons, this is your standard one shot and done stuff. Which isn't bad at all, calling is mp hefty at low levels(Ramuh will run you 21mp and he's a starter!) that however can be ignored as you can just use your black or white magic, at mid and high levels however you get access to a huge variety of powerful effects which many of them are interesting or even completely unique effects not seen anywhere else. The only big downside is the GM controls what summons you get, but almost all summons are pretty good once you get past the starters so as long as you accumulate a reasonably sized collection you should be good.
Callers are great alternative to other mages with greater variety of effects, though their skill advancement is plot based.

Also at lvl30 Callers can pay an Ct-8 and +25% mp to give an invocation +25% damage or healing which is some nice flexibility.

Playable level- 1 as a black/whitemage, 20ish for feeling like a caller(just for mp even if your gm frontloads summons).

Summoners
You'd think the dedicated summoner would be better......

So summoners work on Yuna rules replacing the caster(not the party). Summoning takes an action and lasts until the summon hits 0hp, or you dismiss them. The summon uses your stats for damage, has a multiplier of your hp for it's own pool, and uses your mp pool for abilities.
Beyond the action tax to summoning there is one other glaring weakness to summoners.
Unlike invoking which always uses MAG for damage DIFFERENT SUMMONS USE DIFFERENT STATS. Like the Mime you need all 6 stats.

What's more, SUMMONERS CAN'T INVOKE. You can't even just say "You know what, I need status healing, i call unicorn." Nope, gotta summon him first.
At level 33 you will get for -15CT grand summon which let's you use the grand summon ability while the summon is on the field, this is basically a souped up version of it's invoke effect.

So you would think the dedicated summoner would be at least better at using summons, but nope the simple lack of invoking meaning they can't use the general signature abilities of summons until level 33 and no quick invocations makes them WORSE.
Oh except Cerebus, he's busted on summoners, so busted no GM will EVER let you have him. (183 MP for Mass Haste+Mass Quicken)

Playable Level-Never

Also if you have a summoner AND a caller in your party, A summoner is supposed to only get 6 summons ever. Callers meanwhile should have about twice as many, try working THAT out. Actually having twice as many summons might make the summoner almost not total shit if just from the increased probability to get enough mag based summons to have variety.

Edit: Also Summons are in an appendix in the actual PDF, NOT the magic rules on the site.

Adepts Part 1

posted by WhitemageofDOOM Original SA post

FFRRPG Part 8: Adepts Part 1

Adepts are the fighter/mages, the classes that use MP but not magic.
Alright that's a very clear, very understandable distinction. Let's immediately throw it out the window.

Blue Mage
It's right in the name, they have a magic list. Why is summoner not in the adept list and blue mage not in the mage list, fuck if I know.

Blue magic is....random as hell, normally i praise variety of effects but blue magic is just RANDOM. You also need to learn it by enemies using it. Now this is "From the GM" all cavets of caller apply, except monsters have to use it and we will describe the learning process in a bit, but the big one is monster's have to use it. Not the GM gives you a plot hook and a boss or quest for your new spell, he has to design a monster with **that** particular spell, then they have to use it, then you have to get hit with it.
I don't trust blue mages in normal FFs, in those you have guides.

Azure Lore, you get hit with a blue magic spell and it doesn't kill you, you get it. Pretty staight forward for the damaging spells.
Assimilation, You have a CoS% chance(that's what it says, it doesn't specify AT ALL) to learn a blue magic spell you SEE cast as long as you aren't affected by a long host of statuses, including blind.

Playable Level- By the GM's good graces and good luck
Yeah Blue mages aren't just unplayable, they are unrateable your class is a giant pile of GM fiat and luck.

Dark Knight
Do you want to be incredibly broken at high levels by abusing MP on weapon damage abilities? Than do I have the class for you!

Level 1- Darkside, Pay 25% of your max hp for 200% damage. Wait isn't this supposed to hit all. Eggghhh, It exists, I wouldn't consider it worth the price of admission but it is a good sometimes food.
Level 8- Black Sky, 19 Mp for 75% Weapon Damage as Shadow Damage to a group and a chance to inflict blind. Remember how fucking great cherry blossom was? Well that's better at 8, but this gets better as the cost gets better and better and better.
Level 15- Night Sword, 17 Mp for 100% Weapon damage and hp drain. FUCK YES, HELL FUCKING YES.
Level 22- Corruption, 40mp for a chance to inflict zombie, zombie reverses healing, despite only getting 10 abilities they never all are winners even dragoons.
Level 29- Duskblade, 12 Mp for 100 % Weapon damage to MP AND MP DRAIN. YOU ARE THE INFINITE ENGINE, IT'S YOU!
Level 36- Beastflare, 65 Mp to do group fire damage, this should be a huge part of your toolkit being your first group option, not doing shadow damage......17*Mag damage, instantly rendering it pointless.
Level 43- Catastrophe, 70mp Removes all barrier and enhance status effects from all enemies, when this is good, it's VERY good.
Level 50- Nightmare, 90mp, 100% weapon damage as shadow damage and a 30% chance to inflict....Curse, Mini, Sleep, Poison. Yeah 4 statuses. This is cheaper than the black mage spell pain, has more statuses, and does damage.
Level 57- Demon Slice, 125mp, Halves the targets hp and has a chance to inflict sap. Well this is time magey, since % damage is ignored by bosses you can forget about this being relevant, and it costs more mp than the time mage equivalents.
Level 64- Soul Eater, Attempts to kill every enemy those that survive take 150% weapon damage as shadow damage, 175mp. Well we sure took our sweet time breaking the 100% damage barrier and get an AoE besides black sky but a hell of a capstone.

Playable Level- 15
The biggest problem with the dark knight is basically every other ability is a stinker, but your good abilities are SO GOOD, like REALLY GOOD. and those costs don't scale. Black sky is the same 19 MP at level 64 at level 8. Your other big problem is you won't be doing a lot of damage outside using dark side, but who cares, your abilities are still amazing.

Geomancer
What the, why are you an adept and not an expert, you don't use mp, YOU EVEN HAVE AN EXPERTISE SCORE.

Welcome to dancer 2.0, you randomly roll which ability you get based on the terrain and your level. BASED ON THE TERRAIN.
I sure want to do fire damage in a volcano! or ice damage in the tundra!
HOWEVER....This was actually thought of! And you get geotrance, at first level you get to pick one terrain type, every 8 levels after you can pick another you have been too. You can use any terrain you mastered this way....by making a survival roll, yay.

Magic Knight
Remember how I said there was a class that worked like I said black mages should work? Meet the magic knight.

Spellblade- At first level you get 1 element and 1 status, you can add these on to your NORMAL ATTACK for the MP cost(so weapons aren't stat sticks.), they.....think the elemental adding is great to be fair it's okish later as you can drop literally every element by end game so it's literally does it have a weakness? if yes pay 5mp for x2 damage. More importantly you can drop a giant fuck ass list of statuses ontop of 100% weapon damage....for the same MP cost as the black mage.
Starting at 22 you get effect strikes these let you do more interesting stuff like halve hp.
Starting at 50 you get ultimate spell blades, this let's you actually do more than 100% damage and target groups! and that's what you will use it for, because shit like black hole strike is awful, sure instant death and if that fails drop to 1hp sounds great but bosses are immune.

In addition Magic knights get a blevvy of SOS abilities.
Level 1- SOS-Shell, when at 25% or lower hp you have shell up(50% less magic damage)
Level 15- SOS-Protect, when at 25% or lower hp you have protect up(50% less physical damage)
Level 40- SOS-Haste, when at 25% or lower hp you have haste(x2 iniative)
All your SOS abilities stack.

Playable Level 8- At this point you will have 2 elements but more importantly 2 statuses to inflict, and probably a weapon that naturally does cool stuff.

Ninja
Dear god, this class, this class is such a chop shop. Let's just get into it before the analysis.

Level 1- Throw, you can throw a weapon to destroy it for x2 damage(this always uses agi).
Level 1- Dual Wield, you can equip two weapons, and attack with each.
Level 8- Utsumi, Gain agility up, this ain't no scream that's for sure.
Level 15- Katon, 28mp, 12*Mag fire damage and a chance to inflict confuse.
Level 22- Image, Get a crappy version of blur that loses 5 of the evade every time you are hit.
Level 29- Suiton, I'm just skipping the mp costs now, 16 * Mag water damage and a chance to silence.
Level 36- Shadow Stich, Inflicts disable and immobilize, this is WAYYYYY too late for this.
Level 43- Raiton, Costs mp, 20 * Mag lighting damage and a chance to inflict blind.
Level 50- Sunken State, When you take damage a 30% chance to gain vanish(Can't be targeted by single target effects from enemies), yeah this is great.
Level 57- Doton, 24 * Mag earth damage and a chance to inflict slow.
Level 64- Elan, Add CT-10 to change Katon, Suiton, Raiton, or Doton to group targeting.

Playable Level- Never
Once again we come across a class that is trying to do two things. One which can work and one which can't. The "Can work" Is the Dual wield, utsumi, image, shadow switch ninja who uses mp costing abilities to buff and support his single awesome attack ability(ie dual wield) if the ninja was this for his full progression he'd be fine.
The can't work is Katon, Suiton, Raiton, and Doton which well, it's sort of what I'd want for the black mage except stupid in every way. To begin with, the abilities don't scale if you want to do fire damage or inflict confuse you only do 12*Mag damage, also elan is level 64 which blows.
Also you'd need two stats(Agi and Mag) to do both, also you only have a 12 AGI and 10 Mag.

Pass on the Ninja.

Adepts 2

posted by WhitemageofDOOM Original SA post

FFRRPG Part 9: Adepts 2

Whoops guess i should have saved the ninja, there are only two jobs left.


Paladin
While the dark knight is a clear upgrade over the blackmage, the paladin is far from an upgrade to the whitemage.

Level 1- Cover, choose an ally when they take damage you take it instead. You can end this or change who is under cover without using your action, and cover won't trigger if you are at 25% or lower life.
Level 1- Sentinel, If an ally at 25% or lower life and you aren't as a reaction ability you take the damage for them. So yeah even without cover you get to tank.
Level 8- Hallowed Bolt, Deals 75% weapon damage lighting damage to all enemies, with a chance to silence. A clear parallel to the dark knight's level 8 with one huge upside. It's lighting damage and that means it gives you a real alternative to holy.
Level 15- Healing Wind, For 34 Mp heals 9 * Mag hp to everyone, sadly it uses mag and you use strengh...well paladins CAN use magic weapons(staves) but they are inferior to swords. If you do use a staff though this falls aside for being a flat amount....EXCEPT that you can spam it out of combat. It's pretty efficient at mp to healing.
Level 22- Cleansing Strike, 125% weapon holy damage and a chance to inflict condemn. It'll do.
Level 29- Astra, This negates the next instance of one or more negative statuses being inflicted on EACH PARTY MEMBER.
Level 36- Seal evil, a flat 60% chance to inflict stone to undead. Not worth it.
Level 43- Holy Circle, Grants the party protect and increases all holy damage they deal by 25% seeing as you only DO holy damage this is great protectga that gives you +25% damage at around the same level/mp cost. You will be spamming the hell out of this until you get great gospel.
Level 50- Judgement Blade, Inflicting 125% weapon holy damage to all enemies with a chance to inflict stop on all of them. IT BEGINS.
Level 57- Divine Ruination, Inflicting 150% weapon holy damage to all enemies with a chance to inflict confuse on all of them.
Level 64- Great Gospel, For the low LOW price of 200mp this heals 17 * MAG hp to all party members and grants wall negating ALL DAMAGE RECEIVED FROM ATTACKS&ABILITIES for the rest of the turn and the next three turns. This is THE single best ability in the game besides grand summon Cerebus "Give everyone haste and an extra turn", but you don't have to be a summoner who was allowed anywhere near Cerberus to get it.

Playable Level- 22
Whitemages, Paladins are NOT. Dark knights, Paladins are NOT. What paladins are, are an early game tank that slowly becomes THE BEST ENDGAME CLASS IN THE GAME. Judgement blade is fucking ridiculous, Group Damage with a chance to stop? Sign me up. Great Gospel is the second best ability in the game, with Astra shoring up the only whole in your perfect defense game.
However it's getting there, I put their playable level at 22 for a reason, and that might be generous a lvl22 knight is a lot more complete than a lvl22 paladin.

Rune Knight
Oh god rune knights, let's get into this shit. At least Paladins had a payoff.

Level 1- Runic, by giving up your action you absorb the next spell or monster ability that consumes mp ignoring it's effect into mp healing for you, runic ends at the start of your next turn. Also RUNIC CAN ABSORB YOUR FRIENDS SPELLS! This is a great example of why they shouldn't have been slavishly devoted to how things worked in a game.
Level 36- Return Magic, This is much better whenever you are hit by a spell(or monster ability with mp cost) you have a Level/2+Spr*2 chance activating this ability, In which case choose one regain mp equal to it's cost or have the effect ALSO hit whoever cast it. I mean the choice is obvious. Smack their face.
Level 64- Quadra MAgic, See Return magic? Pay the MP costx3, DO IT FOUR TIMES!

Level 1- Fury Brand, Do 100% weapon damage with a chance to inflict berserk.
Level 15- Stardust Ray, Do 75% weapon damage to all enemies with a chance to inflict spirit break.
Level 22- Shellburst Stab, Deal damage equal to target's MP for the low LOW cost of 35mp, it can't break the damage cap but if you meet a boss with MP? Enjoy doing the damage cap repeatably for 999 damage.
Level 29- Blaster Punch, Deal 100% weapon damage to all enemies with a chance to inflict magic break.
Level 43- Viper Bite, Deal 125% weapon poison damage to an enemy with a chance to inflict venom.
Level 50- Hellcry Punch, Deal 150% weapon damage to an enemy with a chance to inflict power break and silence.
Level 57- Icewolf Bite, Deal 150% weapon damage to hp and 200% weapon damage to mp. GOD DAMN IT RUNE KNIGHT you almost got all this way without doing mp damage.

Playable Level-1
I mean rune knights only do one thing and that's murder mages, but with runic and fury brand they are doing it just fine from level 1. How good a rune knight is plays heavily into how many MAGES ie enemies that use MP the GM throws at you. If they are common the rune knight will do great, if the gm just has mag based enemies doing magic damage but not using mp because why track that shit for enemies? The rune knight will cry.

Skills

posted by WhitemageofDOOM Original SA post

FFRRPG, Part10: Chapter 5 Skills
No, no, oh god why. WHY.
You mean I actually have to COVER SKILLS?

Alright, I'm going to read the rules so first off. Let's cover starting skill points.
Warriors get 240, Experts get 260, Mages get 280, Adepts get whichever of those they basically should be in anyways.
I what? Why do mages get the most, why do warriors get the least? WHY?

Secondly, skill defaults your default in a skill is 10+Stat*3, EVERY SINGLE SKILL uses Agility or Magic for it's default, except social skills those use spirit, and climbing it uses Strength. I...What? What? WHAT?! So yeah fuck warriors.
If you have a mag of 12(like say a taru taru mage) that gives you a default of 46, for a good chunk of the skills in the game. Remember this as we go forward.

Skills are bought on a 1 to 1 ratio even the ones with infinite under skills like lore, if you have a skill aptitude from your class you spend 1 point for +2. Skills must be within 20 to 50 to start....4 points higher than our Taru Taru mage defaults to on half the skills, and lower than what he defaults to on social skills.

Advancing skills, oh you get 10 skill points per level and can raise a skill by.....TWO POINTS PER LEVEL? SO IT TAKES AN ADEPT TILL TWENTY SIX TO HIT 50%+Level+stat*2% expertise? (Sorry gambler your playable level just hit 43 with chocobo slots if you can't guarantee moogle slots always work.) You also get 6 points that can only be spent on infinite under skills, hope you bought 3 of those, i mean unless you went for lore master mage with your skill aptitude, then you needed SIX, which the skills you trained will probably be worse than your defaults for 30+levels.

To learn new skills you can either crit when defaulting which gives you a rating of 20. Your mage critted that streetwise check, he did so good he lost 30 points from it! Now realize you have a 1 in 10 chance of doing this every time you default.
Or you can spend time and gil to learn a skill, which gives you a skill ranking of 20 OR your default whichever is higher. Now why didn't it work like that for crit learning? I have no idea.

This system was so obviously just hacked on because they needed a skill system like 3e had, rather than thinking "What works for final fantasy". It's awful, the list is huge, it's poorly conceived, and it made the gambler worse by me mentioning it. Fuck skills, i'm out.

Fuck skills, just, fuck skills.
I'm out.

Equipment

posted by WhitemageofDOOM Original SA post

FFRRPG Part 11: Equipment

So equipment comes in two flavors (Equipment) the permanent stuff, and consumables(the uhhhh one shot stuff), there is also crafting materials which thankfully just have a level.
Each of these have a rank from 1-8 then Artifact(9) and Legendary(10), with the last 2 being GM only, and legendary being unique.

Now unlike what sanity would dictate, prices aren't determined by just checking rank to equipment/consumable/material, each has their own price.
Also items have an availability value, rather than the GM allowing you to buy on level stuff you have to hope on level items are for sale....or have the GM hand out treasure. My suggestion for your fighter? Save your cash until you can buy a level 8 weapon, roflstomp the game until 40.

Weapons use Str, Agi or Mag(Well Staves use Mag, Rods use Str, one more reason to go white/time mage), with each weapon category having a die type(yes there is random damage after all that math and flat DR), and weapons of a die type all share the same progression with Str weapons having the best. So far so good, besides you know random damage.
So let's talk about some big problems with equipment design.
First off, as we talked about most characters use weapons as stat sticks, while fighters care about their weapon's base damage they don't care if it does fire damage or a 30% chance to inflict death, most weapons even mage weapons are invested in these as the thing. This is especially notable on artifact/legendary weapons, as those can make or break your endgame. For instance say you use swords. The Ultima weapon adds 1/5th your current hp to your attack actions, the Caladbolg gives auto-power-up and auto-magic-up, A boost to auto-attacks or 25% boost to damage, one of these is a clear edge for your ultimate final sword.

Armor you'd think is a little better right?
Well assuming your armor is up to date, on par armor will reduce auto attack damage by 1/4th to 1/3rd, getting worse and worse for stronger attacks. Armor also has more variety of special abilities. So for armor you can basically ignore the base stats entirely just for stats, and you don't have any silly attack boosts.
Oh armor is also divided into.
Armor
Armwear
Headwear
Possibly a shield
And an accessory slot.

Consumables includes a long list of standard healing items(which if you have a Whitemage and not a chemist ALWAYS BUY MP HEALING ITEMS they are much cheaper per hp), and battle items(which do mag based damage and you will never use.).

Yeah, this game is......not well designed.

Combat part 1, oh boy here we go

posted by WhitemageofDOOM Original SA post

FFRRPG 3e Part 12: Combat part 1, oh boy here we go

So we begin, this will cover the general combat rules.
Combat works like your standard FF game, enemies and allies line up in rows and take turns and beat each other up, after a million games that bitch about positioning of 5ft. and end up kind of stale because of it that is honestly kind of refreshing. There's nominally a tactical engine in here from character options, heh, nominally.

There's some rules about using movement which we cheerfully ignored during playtesting, if you were going to play this please do so, they weren't playtested.

Good, Good.

So combat begins, first everyone gets to roll for initiative.
1d10+Speed stat.
You will be repeating this each round, now normally I would complain but considering the whole charge time system this actually becomes tactically interesting, sort of. However....Not every class uses that and they should it is a good system. So basically, that is a problem.
If two people have the same initiative(Including while charging) then the highest speed goes first, if they are still tied you roll a die(ew).

There's a giant list of action types for abilities.
The actions everyone can take, Attack, Defend, Item, and Escape. (And full move if you are using positioning for some reason).

Then we get to resolving actions.
If you use an attack ability you do your % damage, add the dice, modify THOSE by a % and subtract their armor....
If you use a spell calculate your magic to-hit by taking your M.ACC% and subtracting their M.EVA%(Let me calculate it for you, you only miss on a crit miss of 96+), then do your damage+dice, and subtract M.Armor.
If you use a normal attack(are you a fighter or magic knight? No? Then never use those!) it works like a spell except you can actually miss, and a 1-10 being a crit.

The problems are immediately FREAKING OBVIOUS.
Why are you calculating hit chances? Why not rolling 1d100 and trying to get above their evade? With a base of 91+ getting a crit and crit enhancers lowering that number.
Then why are you ROLLING DAMAGE AT ALL? The amount of damage you do is astronomical compared to the roll. A Tier 1 weapon is Stat*2+1 die, this is about the only time the die matters, how about just stat*3 the numbers are near identical, it also completely messes with % damage attacks as you can't precalculate the dice.
Also why have ARM at all? Even for auto attacks arm is so constrained it doesn't make meaningful dints in the damage. While I can get behind the idea of a stat that exists to protect from plink attacks but not big hitters, it doesn't do that, if arm subtracted from all damage and was notably higher it would at least serve a role in the system. It doesn't however.

At the end of each round is the status phase, I've sort of alluded to this with the way wall works. But each status has a number which is how many rounds it lasts, normally this is 4, at the end of each status phase things like regen, sap, and poison trigger and every status effect counts down. So by having high enough initiative you sort of get an extra round of effect, again there's a lot of half formed mechanics around manipulating initiative but no way to DO it.

Next time: That's a lot of status effects, too many are save or dies but enough aren't you can actually inflict some

Combat part 2, that is a lot of ways to say die

posted by WhitemageofDOOM Original SA post

FFRRPG Part 13: Combat part 2, that is a lot of ways to say die

Welcome to the status portion of combat, statuses are grouped into types, for the most part immunities and cure items target those groups rather than individual statuses.
There's a lot more stuff with I: Fatal than I: Death.

Fatal Statuses
Death: The target hits 0hp, they are done.
Condemned: When the timer runs out it inflicts death.
Eject: The target is removed from battle, enemies give no xp/gp/items.
Frozen: The target can't act and if they take physical damage they shatter and die.
Heat: If the target takes any actions they explode and die.
Gravity: Oh how the mighty have fallen, This used to not fall under fatal and bosses get I:Fatal free. Which means any % damage effect doesn't work on them, so your time mage can't chuck demi for 999 damage to bosses.
Near-Fatal: Instant 1hp.
Mystify
Berserk: The target can only use attack actions but deals +50% damage.
Charm: Whoever charmed the target control's their actions. Considering the difference in PC and monster hp, a charmed PC can wipe the party.
Confuse: Roll on a table to see how you will act!
Unaware: Basically surprised, in fact this is the status that you get from being surprised.
Toxin
Poison: Lose 10% of current hp each turn. Doesn't expire.
Venom: Lose 10% of max hp&mp each turn. Doesn't expire.
Seal
Blind: Reduce your Accuracy by 75% with physical attacks. (Yes, after calculating, have fun.)
Curse: You can't use slow actions.
Petrify: When the timer runs out it inflicts stone.
Sleep: You can't act but any damage wakes you.
Stone: You can't act or take damage. Doesn't expire.
Time
Disable: You can't use Attack, Item, Defend or Escape. Laugh at this puny status if the GM hands it out.
Immobilize: Evade% 0, and no reactions.
Sap: At the end of round take damage equal to initiative*5.
Slow: Initiative is halved.
Stop: You can't act, all other statuses are on pause until the timer runs out.
Transform
Mini: Reduce Arm&M.Arm by 50%, reduce physical damage dealt to 1.
Toad: Reduce Arm&M.Arm by 50%, reduce attack actions to 1 damage, can only use the toad spell.
Zombie: Take damage from healing.
Weaken
Agility Down/Break: -25/50 Eva% and Acc%, -2/4 Init.
Spirit Down/Break: -25/50 M.Eva% and M.Acc%.
Lock: -20 Eva&M.Eva%
Armor Down/Break: -25/50% Armor.
Mental Down/Break: -25/50% M.Armor
Power Down/Break: -25/50% Physical damage.
Magic Down/Break: -25/50% Magical damage.
Meltdown: 0 Armor/M.Armor

Barrier
Element Spikes: Deal 2*Mag damage of the chosen element to attacks, uhhh it's cute when the black mage gets it?
Protect: Take half damage from physical attacks.
Shell: Take half damage from magical attacks.
Resist: I: Fatal, Mystify, Seal, Time, Transform, Weaken
Wall: Remember why paladins are broken cheese at lvl64? This status is why.
Shield: Take wall, add resist, remove the ability to be broken by debarrier&despell. You have shield. It's on a single white mage spell that applies it for the round applied and the following.
Strenghen
Accelerate: Raises speed for movement.....
Accuracy Up: Acc% becomes 255
Critical Up: +10% Crit Chance
Blink: +20 Eva%
Ruse: +40 Eva%
Agility Up: +25 Eva%&Acc%, +2 init
Spirit Up: +25 M.Eva%&M.Acc%
Armor Up: +25% Armor
Mental Up: +25% M.Armor
Power Up: +25% Physical Damage
Magic Up: +25% Magical Damage
Flight: Can only be hit by ranged attacks.
Float: I:Earth, also some stuff involving movement.
Aura: Halves all charge times.
Haste: Gives you extreme initiative, I mean doubles iniative
Mp Half: Halves mp costs.
Mp Quarter: Reduces mp costs by 25%.
Vanish: Enemies can't target you with single target effects, group attacks still work.


Right also, I forgot an essential rule about the initiative system. If your initiative is over 30 you get extreme initiative.
If you have extreme initiative you get two turns, once at your rolled initiative and once at your initiative -30, now this is really hard barring a faster class and race, or you know haste. I suggest haste. Haste is stupid, the entire time mage class is justified on the idea of not giving the white mage haste, no joke.
This is NOT continuing the trend of interesting initiative positioning this is just "Haste gives you two turns.", so i honestly consider it less a combat rule and more a property of haste and the Thief's footwork ability.

Some other stuff

posted by WhitemageofDOOM Original SA post

FFRRPG Part 14: Some other stuff

Chapter 8: Magic
Because mage abilities should be seperate from their jobs.

Chapter 9: Adventuring
aka regaining hp&mp.
Interestingly there are more than just "Sleep at an inn."

A breather(15 minute rest) will restore 5% max hp&mp.
A break(1 hour rest) will restore 10% max hp&mp.
A fitful rest(3-4 hour rest with a meal) will restore 25% max hp&mp.
A travel rest(8 hours and some sleep) will restore 50% max hp&mp.
A full rest(8 hours and a decent sleep) will restore 75% and restore dead&stone.
An intensive rest(A full day) will restore all hp&mp.

That's....not bad actually, one of the few rules that treats the game as an rpg and not just a mechanics simulator, Breather's should be reasonably plentiful and can help and breaks aren't unreasonable being a pretty decent heal. The split between travel&full could go just being 10%/25%/50%/75%(+stone/dead)/100%, but the core rule is solid.

The heal skill's effect on resting is explained, it allows you to with some seriously random modifier's upgrade a rest type by one category. Which makes the heal skill actually somewhat relevant.

After healing we have towns, and besides shopping there's a price list of random services you can't buy if the gil economy matters. (I so loathe when the magic/adventuring economy and service economy don't use different currencies.)

Then you have rules about navigation(a paragraph), scavenging crafting materials(more than a paragraph), weather, and shelter.

Chapter 10: Gamemastering

A mostly blah blah blah chapter.....but.....


Really?


Four or five combat encounters to level. Because yeah this game has no guidelines or suggestion you ever should give exp for anything but stabbing.

and of course this gem.


Fuck thieves, literally "This class is weaker in combat to make up for breaking the economy, so give them less rewards."
WHAT THE CHRIST.

Next time: Monster creation, OH GOOOOODDIEEEE

Monster creation, I mean Appendixes

posted by WhitemageofDOOM Original SA post

FFRRPG Part 15: Monster creation, I mean Appendixes

These aren't on the site, you need to download the pdf for them.

First off we have summons which you know couldn't go in the magic chapter for some reason.
Second off we have the crafting rules including inventions and mix, crafting except for inventions uses generic crafting materials and mix uses standard combat items.

No, but we aren't here for that are we? No we are here to see just HOW BADLY they fucked up monster creation.

Let's start with the obvious, there are no guidelines, no predefined roles, just miles and miles and miles of modifiers.

Secondly how might you think it works? Maybe determine monster base stats as pure multipliers, assign some special abilities that increase with levels and weaknesses give some more to spend, maybe a mandatory elemental weakness even? NOPE NONE OF THAT SHIT.

Monster's get 35+Level STAT POINTS, like the kind PC's use.
But it gets better, after that you THEN get to assign things like hp, mp, armor etc. multipliers. You would think if you want a high hp monster you would give it high vit, high hp multiplier...which leads to high hp monster's being VERY high indeed. Which will see. Also speaking of armor multipliers while armor is stupid monster armor goes up with level your damage goes up every few levels this is actually pretty noticeable at 1-6 as your damage goes down and down by almost relevant amounts and their hp goes up by definitely relevant amounts.
And the most expensive thing of all to build? Attacks, and each one has to be paid for separately, in fact monsters don't even get a basic attack that itself has to be bought, and an attack doing 50% more damage is doing more than x3 hp or just causing instant death.
In fact, let's just build some monsters to show off! Because I am NOT going over EVERY SINGLE MONSTER ABILITY

However some highlights
* Multible forms that switch cost more exp than spawning a monster on death or having two monsters.
* Monster attacks can't have charge times.
* Can't Scan and Bad scan exist, just, WHY.
* You can't have a monster counter with an attack it doesn't have, no joke, it has to be able to spam the attack to be able to counter with.
* If the intent is to give 1gp per 3xp, why not just DO THAT instead of having separate XP/GP values on abilities?

First, let's build some standards. All customized monsters will be level 22. For the first 3 we will build monster's like you are "Supposed" to, and for the last one....Well I called them kill reapers for a reason, and they called me obsessed but they exist to show why the monster creation rules Make NO sense.

Our first monster's will be Mind flayers.
We immediately give them the following Stats.
Str: 1 Vit: 10 Agi: 1 Spd: 10 Mag: 15 Vit: 10
They have a base xp value of 40.
We give them the normal hp multiplier, x2.
They need mp so, x1 there. +15xp
They are "weak" to physicals so x.5. -5xp but "resistant" to magic so x2 +10xp.
Now for some attacks, we give them two blue magic spells Stare and Matra Magic +33xp...each
We also give them a normal attack with a d6 damage code(and despite doing physical damage, it uses mag, obviously.) +8xp
Our Mind Flayer now looks like this.
Hp: 968 Mp: 220 Spd: 10
Arm:16 M.Arm: 49 Eva%: 33 M.Eva%: 47 Acc: 103% M.Acc: 174%
Matra Magic: 36MP, Target: Single, 225+4d8 - M.Arm damage
Stare: 36MP, Target: Group, 135+2d8 - M.Arm damage with a M.Acc-50% chance to inflict confuse
Tentacle Slap: Target: Single, 75+3d6 - Arm damage
Level 22 Exp: 2,464 Gil: 1,408
Normally I would have to do items, but sod that.

Let's give those Mind flayers some protection.
Rune golems get the following Stats
Str: 24 Vit: 24 Agi: 1 Spd: 5 Mag: 1 Spr: 1
Rune golems clearly have plenty of hp, x4 for +18 xp
Rune golems are heavily armored x2 for both, +20xp
The first thing i wanted to do was give rune golems the ability to counter when mind flayers are attacked, but that isn't in the rules, and we are going by those.
Instead we give them the cover and sentiniel abilities from the paladin. +10xp each.
We also only give them a single attack a d10 damage attack(+30xp), with a 30% chance to inflict silence(+10xp)
However Golems ARE slow, let's give them the low evade&low m.evade abilities. -33xp each
Also golems are not alive and also mindless, we give them I:Fatal(25xp) and I:Mystify(18xp)
Our finished Rune golem looks like this
Hp: 2,112 Spd: 5
Arm: 56 M.Arm: 44 Eva%: 17% M.Eva%: 13 Acc%: 103%
Cover
Sentiniel
Rune Smash: Target: Single, 144+1d10 damage and a 30% chance to silence
I: Fatal, Mystify
Exp: 2,596 Gp: 858

Those two went swimmingly, let's build a boss.

Bosses base exp is 225, they get 4x hp/mp and I:fatal as well as some boss only abilities, like field effects(Wait why are those monster and not encounter tied?)
After the Mind Flayers and Rune golems there is only one choice of Boss.
A DRAGON OBVIOUSLY! No, the Elder Brain!
Let's make some stats! For base stat's the mind flayer's works fine. 15 Mag, 10 Vit/Spd/Spr
The Elder brain is much tougher than previous enemies, at x6 hp for +40 xp
The Elder brain also has a x2 mp multiplier, for +35 xp
Like the lesser mind flayer's the elder brain is weak to physicals -5exp, but is heavily armored against magic getting x4 m.arm +19exp
It's mind is too powerful to overcome it gains I:Mystify.
For attacks it keeps the Stare and Matra magic attacks of it's lesser cousins.
We also create a single target charm effect called enthrall, because eh it's cheaper and less MP than the spell. 48xp
Finally we give it a normal attack using a d6 called mind spike, to round out it's attacks.
We also give it X-Action, because it's a boss and needs to murder an entire party. +80xp
And seeing as it LITERALLY can't move, we apply low evasion. (because auto-immobilize isn't an option.)
Elder Brain
Hp: 5,280 Mp: 1,760 Spd: 10
Arm: 16 M.Arm: 93 Eva%: 16 M.Eva%: 47 M.Acc%: 174
Matra Magic: 36MP, Target: Single, 225+4d8 - M.Arm damage
Stare: 36MP, Target: Group, 135+2d8 - M.Arm damage with a M.Acc-50% chance to inflict confuse
Enthrall: Mp: 54 Target: Single, M.Acc-50-M.Eva Chance of Charm
Mind Spike: Target: Single, 75+3d6 - M.Arm damage
I: Fatal, Mystify
X-Action
Exp: 9,592 Gil: 3,278

Finally of course the Kill Reaper
Notably not notorious because I was just obsessed with them not I was using them as an example of something busted in the engine.
We set our hp to 4x. +18xp
We dump both Arm&M.Arm. -10xp
We also dump Evade% and M.Evade%. -66Xp
We take one attack, Reaping Scythe a flat 60% chance to inflict death(we class it as whatever the party can't lock). +67
Hp: 2,112 Spd: 30
Arm: 23 M.Arm: 11 Evade%: 26 M.Eva%: 12
Reaping Scythe: Target: Single, 60% chance to inflict death
Exp: 1,078 Gp: 352

So according to their formula's, that kill reaper who gets extreme iniative every round, has 2k hp, and has a straight 60% chance to inflict death. Is half as strong as the mind flayer, it's barely stronger than a monster with no abilities!

Now, I'm not going to go do all that math and suffering, without MORE math and suffering.

Let's see JUST how terrible this system is, there's a reason every monster was level 22.

Give me 5 characters to fight the following 3 encounters (with a break between each.)
3 Mind Flayers + 3 Rune Golems
The Elder Brain + 2 Rune Golems
2 Kill Reapers

Any class except thief(because economy) and inventor(because I don't want to touch that), is an acceptable choice, level is 22 and you can just tell me what classes you want to see. Skills will be assumed at 90%(It should be 92% but meh.)

Example characters

posted by WhitemageofDOOM Original SA post

FFRRPG Part 15: Example characters

Our party looks pretty good actually!

Overman is a yeti dragoon
Str:24 Vit:26 Agi: 1 Spd:8 Mag: 1 Spr: 1
He's maxed out his possible investment in vit, and dedicated himself to strengh otherwise, Spd 8 is enough to hit lancet if he needs it after all and he only REALLY needs cherry blossom.

Godna is a yeti bard, because yeti's also make the best bards....I checked. Moogles look tempting but low Vit man.
Str: 1 Vit: 18 Agi: 1 Spd: 20 Mag: 11 Spr: 11
He's maxed out both vitality and speed, He's balancing mag and spr growth now for more damage and more success%.

Snorb is our resident midget, a Taru Taru blue mage.
Str:1 Vit: 16 Agi: 1 Spd: 12 Mag: 15 Spr: 16
He surprisingly hasn't capped his SPR! only at a 16 out of 26! However this is because this a one shot, if it was a real game you would make him have 26 spirit. (Technically 27 but odd points don't add to hp/mp.)

Hildebrand is a human(boooo) magic knight, under the theory both magic knights and Hildebrand are awesome.
Str: 19 Vit: 14 Agi: 1 Spd: 16 Mag: 1 Spr: 10
He has a relatively balanced spread of stats, in a real game again this isn't possible.

Sirphoeboes brings up the rear as our second midgit, being a taru taru white mage.
Str: 1 Vit: 10 Agi: 1 Spd: 4 Mag: 15 Spr: 30
Sirphobeoes has burnt all pretense of speed for hitpoints and most importantly mp, the whitemage wants to go first(to throw up protective statuses) or last(heal) at this level group protects don't really exist.

After a quick shopping Trip of 15,000 gp, and spell selection we can look at our heroes.

Overman's Final Stats
Hp: 437 Spd:8
Acc%: 144 Evade%: 9 M.Eva%: 2 Arm: 50 M.Arm: 22
Viper Halberd (Rank 6)- 13*Str(338) + 3d12 damage
Soldier's Armor- 21 Arm, 15 M.Arm, +1 Str
Cross Helmet- 9 Arm, 7 M.Arm, +1 Str
No armwear
No Accessory
Jump: Does 676 + 3d12*2 damage.
Cherry Blossom: Does 254 + 3d12*.75 damage.
Lancet: 423 + 3d12*1.25 damage
Overman despite what his vit might say is no tank when it comes to arm, but he can certainly lay down the smack down.

Godna's Final Stats
Hp: 299 Spd: 20
Expertise%: 99 Eva%: 21 M.Eva%: 22 Arm: 23 M.Arm: 24
No Weapon
Survival Vest- 13 Arm, 13 M.Arm, +10% Expertise
Triangle Hat- 4 Arm, 6 M.Arm, +1 Mag
No Armwear
Guard Braclet- Auto-Protect, Auto-Shell. These are a rank 7 accessory that costs 12,000gp to buy. It says a lot i buy 3 of them.
Water Rondo: 12 + 1d12 damage
Foe Requiem: 48 + 2d12 damage, 30% chance of curse
Silence Song: 84 + 2d12 damage, 30% chance of silence
Godna here is going to be invaluable for one thing, MASS SLEEP.

Snorb's Final Stats
Hp: 276 Mp: 276 Spd:13
M.Acc%: 152 Eva%: 13 M.Eva%: 31 Arm: 10 M.Arm: 13
Mage Staff, 2*Mag(32) + 1d8 damage, +1 mag
Mantra Band- 7 Arm, 9 M.Arm, +1 Speed
No headwear
No armband
Guard Braclet- Auto-Protect, Auto-Shell
Spells Known:
Level1ish- Flash(4xmag and blind all enemies), Choco-ball(4xmag x1.5 if they are flying), Leap(8x str and armor down)
level2ish?- Flamethrower(8xmag single target), Poison Gas(poison all enemies), Blaster(4xmag and immobilize all enemies), Hastebreak(Inflict agility break or if agi down/break is there inflict slow and refresh), Nightfall(Sleep EVERYONE)
Level3ish?- Death Force(Give I:Fatal), Drillshot(Make an attack ignoring weapon abilities that ignores armor)
Hope you learn that blue magic in the example! also multible strengh based damage spells, sigghhhh bluemages.
4xMag= 64
8xMag= 128
Remember how I said blue magic was random? There really aren't good level3ish blue magic spells.

Hildebrand
Hp: 276 Mp: 207 Spd:16
Acc%: 154 Eva%: 17 M.Eva%: 15 Arm: 47 M.Arm: 32
Break Knuckle- 10 * Str (210) + 4d6 damage, stone touch.
Soldier's Armor- 21 Arm, 15 M.Arm, +1 Str
Cross Helm- 9 Arm, 7 M.Arm, +1 Str
Savage Gauntlet- 5 Arm, 2 M.Arm, +10% Acc
No Accessory
Spellblades
Elements: He has 4 but i don't CARE
Status: Sleep(10mp), Slow(15), Silence(15), Confuse(30), Blind(10mp)
Effect: Drain Strike(30 mp, delicious hp hildebrand must eat it)
Hildebrand is lynchpin number 2 of the parties strategy, ie spam seal statuses, I:Seal would wreck this team. Hildebrand could have taken meltdown strike instead of drain strike which is drill shot that ignores barriers except shield, like say wall. He also does the 2nd most damage.

Sir phoeboes
Hp: 184 Mp: 460 Spd: 4
M.Acc%: 152 Eva%: 5 M.Eva%: 45 Arm: 15 M.Arm: 20
Mage Staff, 2xMag (34)+1d6 damage, +1 Mag
No Body Armor
Triangle Hat, 4 Arm, 6 M.Arm, +1 Mag
Echo Wrist, 5 Arm, 6 M.Arm, I:Seal
Guard Bracelet- Auto-Protect, Auto-Shell
Spells
level1- Aero, Cure, Elemental Guard, Poisona, Scan, Sight- 68+d8
Level2- Berserk, Fade, Faith, Stona- 136+2d8
Level3- Cura, Aera, Brave- 204+3d8/153+3d8*.75
Brave can up Overman or Hildebrad's damage by 25% assuming sir phoeboes has the free turn from spamming mass cura for 153hp. Yes he can basically full heal himself with group cure, no this will only get more true with time since his hp multiplier has maxed out while his magic is only a bit above half.

The party has around 6k left between them, I could buy an item for someone....
Or i could buy 56 tinctures which heal 15mp, and 5 phoenix downs.
Yeah obvious choice.

Also LOOK at the diffrences in those stats, freaking LOOK.
Also look how irrelevant Arm&M.Arm are, blocking 15-50 damage.

Round 1, FIGHT!

posted by WhitemageofDOOM Original SA post

FFRRPG 3e Part 16: Round 1, FIGHT!

I will assume the party knows what Mind flayers do(Being they are heading to the elder brain), but not Rune Golems. This fight being an introduction to their gimick in preperation for the Elder Brain fight. (But somehow our blue mage never learned stare or matra magic, shrug.)

We begin with initiative for each combatant.

The three Mind Flayer's get
14, 19, 11

The Three Rune golem's gem
13, 6, 12

Our heroes get
11(Overman), 26(Godna), 23(Snorb), 17(Hildebrand), Sir Phoeboes(12)

Init Order
Godna (26)
Snorb (23)
Mind Flayer (19)
Hildebrand (17)
Mind Flayer (14)
Rune Golem (13)
Sir Phoebes (12)
Rune Golem (12)
Mind Flayer (11)
Overman (11)
Rune Golem (6)

BEGIN!

Godna immediately begins charging lullaby, let's end this before it begins.

Snorb does what he can, he casts Poison Gas. 1Hit, 69Miss, 95Miss, 25Hit, 90HIT!, 32Hit
While snorb did miss the mind flayers, poisoning the rune golems will make this go a lot faster.

Godna's lullaby now goes off. 2Hit!, 47Hit!, 61Miss, 25 Hit, 100 Miss, 97 Miss.
And in one turn the fight has been decided with the 19, and 14 init mind flayers asleep hildebrand goes before the last and can go for a silence strike.

Hildebrand's Turn, he charges up a silence strike to use on the awake mind flayer, this is their last chance to shut it down before it can try it's mass confuse attack! His attack roll 32, 34, 39. He silences the Mind Flayer but just barely manages to not turn it to stone. It also takes 205 damage.

It is now Sir Phoebes, said white mage's turn, they cast brave on the dragoon. Because, Really, why WOULDN'T you want 25% more damage during mop up.

The second rune golem goes....and the GM remembers Sir Phoebes is immune to silence. So Silence hildebrand is the best option here. 34, 50 no silence. 105 damage.

Our silenced mind flayer gets to go, he tries to get some tentacle action going on Hildebrand. 43 that hits, He takes 36 damage, huh armor was relevant.

Overman Jumps.

Poison damage hits the first mind flayer and the three rune golems.
Hildebrand: 132 hp
Mind Flayer #1: Asleep(3), Poisoned, 888hp
Mind Flayer #2: Asleep(3)
Mind Flayer #3: Silenced(3), 781hp
Rune Golem #1: Asleep(3), Poisoned, 1901hp
Rune Golem #2: Poisoned, 1901hp
Rune Golem #3: Poisoned, 1901hp

You know what, you know that point in a 4e encounte where half the enemies are dead and so the gimick is broken, and the other half are bloodied and you just say "Can we skip this?". This is that point, it's round one.
Fuck this game, I'm not playing this shit, you've seen what combat looks like. You can probably tell where it's going. The party lands save or sucks on the enemy or they die horribly to save or sucks themselves, Overman is currently hitting damage cap with his next 3 jumps and that would kill 1.5 of the Rune Golems, the poison will do as much damage as he does. Damage is a CHORE to slog through the enemies massive hp pool. And if the enemies had I:Seal being immune to silence, sleep and stone? Well the party is basically just dead right there aren't they?

Fuck this, let's review a GOOD FF game.....

Wait there's a 4e?!

posted by WhitemageofDOOM Original SA post

FFRRPG 4e Part 1: Wait there's a 4e?!

Apparently yes.

And you are saying it's good?

Better than d6 from a cursory glance.

Cursory glance?

It was released while I was reviewing 3e, so my in depth analysis of this is totally blind kids. Apparently my sheer glaring at my old shame brought it from the bowels of nothingness into reality.

So ready to do this? I am.

It starts with the standard RPG stuff, I'm ignoring that.

It goes into design principles, yes it is up and center with them. I'll bullet point.
* Recreate the "feeling" of old jrpgs: 8-32 bit and nostalgia get priority.
* Group Focus: The group isn't just the GM.
* Avoid downtime: Self evident.
* Quick Production: Make it faster rather than having every possible option.
* Create 2 Games: Old school rpgs had a hard divide between exploration and combat, so this game has a hard divide between non-combat and combat. They use entirely different systems.
* Tabletop: The game has to be playable on a tabletop unlike what the original design team went off to do which they proudly proclaimed required a computer.

Then we have Group Creation, wait group creation? YEP! GROUP CREATION!
Step 1) Choose traits: Choose what kind of heroes your group are. (This is awesome.)
Step 2) Choose name: Your party has a cool name, obviously.
Step 3) Choose roots: Choose how your party formed.
Step 4) Create the evil: What is the current main antagonist, this probably will change over the course of the caimpaign.
Step 5) Generate Destiny: You get 4 destiny points, however unlike ffd6 these are ONLY a non-combat currency, i just wonder why it's in group creation.

Now let's go over the Traits. first off TELLS HOW YOUR PARTY GETS EXP. Did you not take monster hunters? Then random encounters don't give exp. Did you take treasure hunters? Then act like old school D&D characters and take everything not bolted down...then take the bolts. Each trait has a way it gets exp, a way the party can spend destiny(The good), and a thing they can't do WITHOUT spending destiny(The Bad). But The Bad is always "Turn down being the heroes you are" so it's more a loss of destiny than spending.
Monster hunter: You get XP from murdering monsters, You can spend Destiny to know or discover stuff about monsters, You can't have non-hostile encounters with monsters unless you spend destiny.
Sense of Duty: You work for some person or organization and get XP for helping them, You spend destiny to receive help from them, You can't tell them to piss off from a mission unless you spend destiny.
People's Hero: You get XP by serving the proletariat I mean protecting the people, You spend destiny to receive help from them, You can't refuse a request for help from the humble masses unless you spend destiny.
Relic's from the Past: You love old magic or technology you get XP for finding it, You spend destiny to figure out how this shit WORKS, You must take the horrible cursed relic unless you spend destiny. (That....is hilarious.)
Mercenary: You are in it for the Gps and you get XP for getting paid and finding treasure, You spend destiny to have black market contacts in fucking dungeons man, No one will think of you as anything but a treasure hound when they know your intentions unless you spend Destiny.
Nemesis: See the evil you get XP for fighting the evil kind of keeps the evil alive a LOT longer, You can spend destiny to escape your nemesis pretty much no matter what, If you try to use destiny to make a plan against them though well they know how YOU work and it costs an extra point. (I'd prefer spending destiny not to punch in their smug face.)
Protege: You have something precious something worth protecting you get XP for protecting(Protege really?), You can spend destiny to reroll tasks involving doing so, If it dies if you fail you lose all your destiny.
Reputation: Instead of D&D you are playing Mazes&Minotaurs it's glory for XP baby!, You can spend destiny to have your reputation proceed you, You have to spend destiny to pretend to not be that famous guy who you definitely aren't.

Then is character Creation
1) Choose a name: duh.
2) Choose traits and quirks: You see those 3 group traits? You can replace one with your own trait....your sidequest if you will. Then you pick 3 quirks which are defining non-combat features, races are under quirks, as is intuitive magic. Quirks let you spend destiny on task checks after a roll, or they might cause you trouble generating destiny.
3) Choose your Jobs: Each character has a primary job and a secondary job, the secondary jobs come from their OWN LIST, thus preventing combination explosion as the secondary jobs are designed around being combined while the primary jobs are designed as "This is what I do." Just as an example there is no Primary job Tank, there are two Secondary job Tanks.
4) Spend XP to increase your stats: This is weird. Your stats are....Earth, Air, Fire & Water. They generally overlap to Str/Con, Dex, Int/Mag, Cha/Mag, but not entirely. I'll explain how stats work later but you spend XP to increase your stats, and the sum of your stats determines your level for anything that is based on level(such as hp/mp and ability tracks). (Standard starting characters have 200xp)
5) Assign Skills: You get 1 skillpoint per 3 levels, but a skill point is a MUCH bigger deal. You can't have more skills total in a stat's associated skills than your stat level.
6) Aquire your abilities: Get the level 1 abilities from your job and subjob.
7) Buy your starting gear: 200gp.
8) Finishing touches: Calculate your hp/mp, check over your quirks, that sort of things.

Past this is mechanics, and here I stop till next time when we cover....all of non-combat.

Non-combat

posted by WhitemageofDOOM Original SA post

FFRRPG 4E Part 2: Non-combat

For reference: Any time i mention the rules, I am using the simplified rules, Because the game seems built around them and the complicated rules feel like an artifact for people who want the old system. I will mention the difference when we come to the explanation themselves.

Challenges aka skill rolls
Whenever your GM calls for a skill roll they declare a difficulty, probably between 3 and 7. You roll a d10 if you get that or higher you win, for each point you have in a skill you roll an extra die. So if you have strength 2 and you are trying to be strong, roll 3d10 if any equal or exceed the difficulty you succeed.
A challenge should have
A) A chance for success or failure: No rolling to tie your shoes.
B) A meaningful consequence for failure: No rolling to pick a lock if you can keep retrying until you do it.
C) An impact on the story: No rolling just to ride a chocobo cross country, roll to ride a chocobo out of a burning castle.

You may choose to fail at a challenge whenever you wish.

Destiny Points
Unlike d6 which probably(almost explicitly) inspired these, you only use destiny out of combat.
You get destiny with the following things.
If a quirk is annoying you get 1 destiny, if a quirk is a serious hardship requiring a hard or multiple challenge 2 destiny, if a quirk causes inescapable consequences 3 destiny.
Any time the party succeeds on a significant goal related to their traits the GM may hand out points along with the exp.
Any time you choose to forfeit a challenge related to one of your quirks you get a destiny.

You spend destiny on the following things.
If you have a quirk related to the roll you can spend 1 destiny for +2, or 2 destiny for +4 this is after the roll. So you won't waste destiny.
You can spend 4 destiny to do a feat of heroism, something humanly impossible. This is where you hold up a house with your glorious muscles, or turn a raging river threatening to sweep the party away into ice and save them.
You can spend 1 destiny to walk up to random NPCs and get relevant Info. What, it's final fantasy.
You can spend 7 destiny to have some miraculous reversal of fortune bail your butts out, if you happen to DIE but the rest live this only costs 4.
You can spend 10 destiny to survive despite it being impossible or bring someone back from the dead.

Aspects....I mean quirks
Every character has three quirks, the main uses of these(gaining and spending destiny) have been covered.
Races are quirks, letting you spend points for things they are good at in the fluff, and getting it for things they are bad at. (Thus you may continue to have a party of magical midgets.)
Intuitive magic is under the quirks, incase you wanted to use your magic skill for more than magic lore. (Why yes i would like illusion magic.)
There are some other magically quirks like bottomless pockets, lycanthrope or visions.
There is also more normal quirks like arrogant, honest, compulsive liar(I AM THE MOON! stuff is what are SUPPOSED to be doing even.), Naive idealist, uncommon beauty, etc.

Overall, the non-combat system is pretty solid for what it wants to do. I can't really fault it. If you are going to fault the game, it will probably be in every other section which focuses on combat.

Stats&Levels, The Basics of Combat

posted by WhitemageofDOOM Original SA post

FFRRPG 4e part 3: Stats&Levels, The Basics of Combat

I mentioned the stats are Earth, Wind, Fire and Water?
You don't get exp which levels you up, then get 1 stat point per level. The relationship is reversed you spend exp to buy up your stats, and your level is the sum of your stats with all attendant benefits. The first point costs 10, and each point after costs 20*Current+10. So 10, 30, 50, 90, 110, 130, etc.
Now these stats are both the attack, and associated defense to such attacks.
Earth= Strengh/Fortitude
Wind= Dexterity/Reflex
Fire= Intelligence/Insight
Charisma=Charisma/Willpower
If any stat is a god stat it's Earth. As it determines hp and can be your attack stat, and doesn't fall behind as a defense. But over investment means falling behind in level with attendant abilities, and falling behind in hp/mp growth from level.
If any stat is a dump stat it's Water. It's extremely common as a defense and does determine mp, but lacks attacks I mean it's not even used for Cure magic Fire is.
Fire has more attack variety than most stats, but gets attacked the least. Wind is basically balanced.
Criticism: Give water more chances to be an active stat, Cure spells at the minimum, possibly trigger more Reactions and Offensive status spells. It's fine being the "Not for damage" stat, but "Not for attacks" is a bit far.

Into combat

We start with with initiative, each player rolls 3 dice. Those are their initiative counts, when they get to act. Yes you get three actions per turn at different initiatives. Haste adds an extra die.
Once everyone has rolled the GM starts counting up, if multiple people go on the same phase, they count up their initiative total(all their dice) and highest goes first, if there is still a tie you use wind. If there is still a tie I have no bloody clue.
So your turns come up and there are two questions immediately in front of you Act or Delay, You can delay to hold one initiative die that can be used to interrupt. That is to say at any time "Nope I go now not you", or for triggering reactions. Instead of spending a delayed dice you may also dump any two dice to interrupt. You can have one delayed action at a time, you do not drop it between rounds. If the next round comes up and you haven't used it you roll 3 new dice and keep your delayed action.
Actions come in three speeds, Quick actions which just happen, slow actions where you add+X to the dies value and it happens then as usual however if it goes above 10 it won't happen this round but just rolls over into the next round as phase(Result-10), And Reactions I basically talked about.
Criticism: While I love that reactions are completely a tactical decision not being % based but dropping init dice, needing to ready them sucks, they are reactions, let me just drop them. For the more powerful reactions It is fine to classify them to require an interruption but it shouldn't be the default. There is also a rule that if you are charging a slow action you can't take other actions except to delay, people are going to forget this they are going to see it's their turn and they are going to take an action, also you can only delay one die and losing dice is just not a good thing for my own abilities to randomly do.
Personal Talk: Ok I'm going to explain that THIS is a huge reason this game makes me super stoked, i said in 3e that initiative penalties for abilities were the most interesting thing. This is a game built from the ground up around initiative positioning, not taking the things we do for grid based tactical games and removing the grid. Controlling the flow of battle means controlling rounds and initiative. A low die on the first round immediately asks questions, is this for statusing enemies(as most statuses last until end of round) or for saving to interrupt when I need to do a thing? While high dice are for your huge attacks, even your slow ones.

Basic Attack Resolution
You roll 1d10+Stat, vs. Difficulty+Their Stat, sometimes a task has a higher difficulty for a second effect like hitting with status touch weapons.

Basic Actions
!Attack- It's your basic attack, the difficulty is 4. If you are unarmed it is Earth for Attack and Defense, and does 1xEarth+5 crush elemental physical damage, weapons have their own attack and defense stats as well as higher damage.
!Dodge- A reaction against basic attacks, Roll Air vs. 7+Earth if you win the attack is negated. This reaction is pretty bad but exists to give everyone a reaction.
!Draw- You draw an item or weapon to use with item....WHY DOES THIS COST AN ACTION?!
!Item- You use an item or equip a weapon you pulled out with !Draw, no seriously why is !Draw an action?
!Flee- Roll Wind vs. 4+Wind using the highest enemy Wind, If it succeeds you get away.

Critting
I'm going to admit this is the one rule that seems built around the complicated rules.
If you roll a 10, you can reroll your action and if it succeeds it crits. Mostly only basic attacks can crit(for x2 damage) but some other things can as well.

Elements and Damage
So the elements are Cut, Puncture, Crush, Fire, Ice, Lighting, Air, Earth, Water, Bio, Light, Shadow. That's 12, that's a few too many.
Criticism: I like that physical attacks have elements and non-elemental is this big spicy thing(Because non-elemental is better than elements when there is a GM), but that's just a few too many elements for resistance to matter. Maybe cut down to just Fire, Water, Air, and Earth with Light&Shadow for the magic elements?

Calculating Damage
Step 1) Calculate Base Damage, Stat * Damage code.
Step 2) Calculate Ability modifiers, if a thing says does 3x weapon damage.
Step 3) Account for Strenghen/Weaken.
Step 4) Add 5, just, add 5. (This basically just fixes low level damage because you are doing like 2*3 damage at charter creation.)
(You should have everything up to step 4 precalculated)
Step 5) Apply target's Armor, yeah there is still armor, it is a LOT more relevant.
Step 6) Apply target's modifiers, this is where you apply things like protect, shell, critical hits etc.

The complicated rules are awful

posted by WhitemageofDOOM Original SA post

FFRRPG 4e Part 4: The complicated rules are awful

Before we begin on the horribleness...a quote.


The very first paragraph to the simplified rules admits to how awful the non-simple rules are!

Let's break this shit down piece by piece.

Anytime you would roll a d10 roll a d100 instead....because.

Skills
Instead of rolling X extra dice based on your skill level, you can reroll up to X times and keep one from which you then spend destiny.

Stat values&Stat levels
So you have a stat value, this is used for only two things instead of adding Earth*10 to hp and Water*10 to mp you add your stat value, and you use stat vlaue attack/defense checks. Every 10 points it raises the associated level by 1, and everything else is referenced to stat levels. Including your level, stats cost 1 point to raise plus their level*2 exp.

Attacking
Obviously you multiply all difficulties by 10, in addition you add the 1s digit to the damage in stage 4 instead of just adding 5 meaning it's not precalculated and does a worse job of bumping auto-attack damage at low levels.

A couple of abilities work differently, using d100s. So Geomancy would be 1d100+Level. Wild magic would also be 1d100 etc.

Critical hits
The thing designed around the complicated rules in complicated if you roll doubles 100, 99, 88, etc. and hit you get a Crit. Crit related abilities work very differently but I will as i explain the rules explain those abilities simple forms, and give the complicated form here.
The Berserker's Unwavering let's you add or subtract 1 to your opponent's attack roll. Instead of deciding if a critical threat confirms on you.
The Dervish ability Deadly Accuracy let's you add or subtract 1 from your attack rolls. Instead of making you threaten crits on an 8+
The weapon ability Improved Critical let's you crit if you get doubles and miss. Instead of skipping a confirmation roll.

Job & The Adept

posted by WhitemageofDOOM Original SA post

FFRRPG Part 4: Job & The Adept

Oh hey my net crapped as i was posting, FUN. Now i have to rewrite this, FUN.

Right to begin with Jobs. Each character has a Primary and Secondary Job, Primary jobs are the big WHAT DO YOU DO thing and Secondary jobs are designed as support for those.
At certain levels you'll get a core ability that all members of your job have, and you can pick one specialization at that level. Specializations have stat requirements often higher than you will reasonably have at that level, so they give you a good goal to push your development towards.

I also need to talk about Hp&Mp multipliers, These are based on primary job, your hp multiplier goes up by 1 at 15, 30, and 60. Your MP multiplier goes up at 30. So everyone's growth rates increase largely at the same rate. For Hp you add your Earth*10 to Your Hp Multiplier*Level, for Mp you add your Water*10 to your Mp Multiplier *Level.

The Adept
The Adept is the inheritor of well the adepts, the Actual ones. The Mystic Knight, Paladin, Dark Knight and to a lesser extent rune Knight.
Their gimmick is they give up %max or current hp for their abilities, which is bluntly a bit off putting and sort of weird because of their whole "Boost my weapons with magic" flavor you'd think they would use mp.

Level 1- Martial Discipline: This is the level 1 ability everyone gets that determines weapons, armor, Hp multiplier, and Mpmultiplier. Really these are abilities to justify having a specialization at lvl1.
Specializations
Arcane Connection: Choose the Fire, Ice, Lighting, Light or Cosmic Spell line and gain it. I'll go into magic in more detail when we get to well a mage. But spells come in lines and if you learn the line you will learn the entire thing.
Spirit Strength: Let's you use mp instead of hp for abilities
Arcane Fury: If you are berserk, and have at least 1 mp, you deal 150% weapon damage. Berserk doesn't give a standard damage boost it just locks you into that command so no 225% auto attack adept of death sadly.

Level 1- Arcane Discipline: Choose !Elemental, Holy or Shadow Sword. Gain that ability.
!Elemental Sword: For a Slow(1) action swap the element of your weapon to fire, ice or lighting for the attack. Why this is slow i have no idea, also just to make it absolutely clear weapon abilities apply to weapon attack abilities no more stat sticks for your warriors! Though abilities still can't crit.
!Holy or Shadow Sword: For 10% Max hp do 150% weapon light or shadow damage.
Specializations
Dualism- Select another of !Elemental, Holy or Shadow sword and gain it.
!Will Shield- Roll Water vs. (1+Earth or Fire), if successful you negate damage from any source and lose that much hp, a great example of why most reactions shouldn't need prepping(if dodge wasn't example enough), also why doesn't this require water if you roll water and use mp?
Last Resort- Delay the hp lost from using an adept ability!.....until the end of the tick. Yeah it's an obvious choice, go pick dualism and never look back.

Level 15- Blade Magic: Choose !Snake Fang, !Hallowed Bolt, !Black Sky
All of these are Slow(1) and cost 10% of your max hp, they make your attack ranged(Ignores flight) and add an element and inflict a status on hit.
!Snake Fang: Bio damage and poison until end of next turn.
!Hallowed Bolt: Lighting damage and mute until end of next turn.
!Black Sky: Shadow damage and blind until end of next turn.
Criticism: Look there are exactly two durations a status should have besides petrify and condemn, Until end of round, and Rest of Encounter. Anything else is unnecessary bookkeeping when each round is 3 actions per character.
Specializations
!Shadow Blade: 150% weapon shadow damage to everyone else, including party members.
!Stasis Strike: Pay 25% current hp to inflict 150% weapon lighting damage and immobilize until end of next turn. Also why isn't this holy?
!Fury Brand: Pay 25% current hp to inflict 150% weapon fire damage and berserk until end of next turn.
This is a choice? I don't want to murder my party, and negating reactions is cute but not at all comparable to "Make them spend every action on attack". Fury brand 4 lyfe.

Level 24- Elemental Soul: Gain I: Fire, Ice, Lighting, Holy, or Shadow. Really? I: one magic element, that's it my core lvl24 ability? I:one magic element?
Specializations
!Nightsword: A Slow(3) action costing 10% of my current hp which deals 100% weapon shadow damage and gives me that much hp.
Light's Judgement: Gives !Cleansing Blade a Slow(3) action costing 25% of my current hp which deals 150% weapon ice damage and inflicts disable. (Disable is pretty awesome having absorbed curse, sealing everything but reactions and spells. Also why isn't this holy it is literally called light's judgement.)
Criticism: Well it's finally come up, abilities that give you actions with different names, WHY, JUST WHY.
Reckless Sacrifice: If your adept ability inflicts a status you can skip the attack roll but you get hit with the status. It should probably be lower, but it's fine, and you can make a build around it.

Level 42- Arcane Shock: Gives you !Demishock a Slow(3) action where you roll Fire vs. (7+Earth) and if it hits they lose half their current hp. So this has nothing to do with your gimmick, or theme it's just there, and the demi spell does the same thing 20 levels earlier.
Specializations
Mana Safe: Allows allies to give you mp at a 1 for 1 ratio, and you to give mp at a 2 for 1 ratio.
Dark Pact: You can spend 10% more max hp when you use a adept ability dealing shadow damage to have it deal 50% more weapon damage.
Elemental Overload: You can double the hp cost of an adept ability dealing fire, ice or lighting to have it become target group. (Group fury brand you say? Tell me more.)
This is basically a forced choice, have you tried your damnedest to take holy? Enjoy mana safe. Lots of elementals? Enjoy overload. Dark knight? Grab the pact.

Level 60- Staggering Blow: This is it the ultimate, the pinnacle of the adept Whenever you deal damage you can......Halve the damage to charge break. Yeah, that's your ultimate. Woooo. Ok let's look at your real ults now.
Specializations.
Shellburst Stab: At the cost of 10% of your max hp deal either their mp or 999 whichever is less, why isn't this on the rune knight job? Well for one the rune knight hates their mp total, and it is kind of weird to go "Oh a boss with mp, guess i should become dps since it's I:all the shit i do to shut him anyways." as the rune knight. Second well this becomes a core thing you do.
Soul Eater: At the cost of 25% of your max hp attack everyone, anyone hit dies, if they are immune they take 150% weapon shadow damage instead.
Divine Ruination: At the cost of 25% of your max hp attack everyone, anyone hit is charmed, if they are immune they take 150% weapon light damage instead.

Criticism: The adept is a path class, and there are other path classes, classes that make a sub-class choice at level 1 and then just run with it giving you the appropriate ability at each primary job level, with the specializations serving all three. Not only do the specializations of the Adept fail to serve all three, they are also often core actions that define the class(Night sword isn't a core dark knight action? FOR SHAME). No where is this more apparent than level 60 where the core ability is utterly irrelevant and the specialization is your real capstone, where if this was a proper path class you'd see "Mystic knight gets shell burst stab, Dark knight gets soul eater, and Paladin gets Divine Ruination".
This was a bad class to start with, the Adept really needs a dev pass to figure out what's core and what's a specialization.

FFRRPG 5e Part 6: The Archer

posted by WhitemageofDOOM Original SA post

FFRRPG 5e Part 6: The Archer

The archer is the archer though they aren't nearly as good as status inflicting as they were.

Level1- Sharpshooter: This is your standard issue equipment/hp/mp ability and starting specialization.
Specializations
Precise Shot: The gun/crossbow speciality, you can always defend against reactions with fire.
Quick Throw: The thrown weapons speciality, if your first attack in an !Attack action misses you can reroll, this is how the game represents dual wielding and there's two other ways to get it.
Point Blank: You can drop range from your ranged attacks, that's hypothetically useful for enemies who resist ranged attacks but not really compared to the previous options and is THE ONLY OPTIONS FOR A BOW ARCHER.

Level 1- !Charge: A Slow(3) action that deals 150% weapon damage. No frills no muss.
Specializations
Ambush: On the first round of combat all your stats are +2 for damage calculations, not very good early on your multipliers are low and later on your stats are so high it's minor. If this included accuracy I'd say it was great.
Ungramax: !Great Charge, is a Slow(7) action that deals 250% weapon damage. If everyone is forgetting that you can't do anything else while charging this is an interesting option, if they are remembering this is too slow to use.
!Reflex Shot: A reaction which can be used only while charging, when attacked you can drop any die to counter with !Attack. Considering the number of charges if your party remembers that you can't normally do stuff while charging a must take.

Level 15- Nutcracker: Gives !Vitals Aim, a Slow(3) ability that ignores armor. I have two problems with this ability it has the same iniative penalty as charge which will do probably more damage in most circumstances, and the action is !Vitals Aim I KNOW WHERE I AM AIMING.
Specializations
These are all basically the same thing a Slow(2) action that inflicts a status and no damage until the end of the next round.
!Arm Aim: Disable.
!Leg Aim: Immobilize.
!Head Aim: Slow, two rounds.
!Eyes Aim: Blind.
Yeah um, you take arm aim moving along.

Level 24- Mind Strike: Gives !Mind Blow, which does your weapon damage to mp. "You know how i feel about mp" except really my complaint is it's core, it's quick, it's 100% damage, it's just not a core thing every archer should do.
Specializations
Patience Shot: When you use a damage dealing ability you can add 4CT to make it do +50% weapon damage, this can be fine or super weak. This explicitly doesn't work with !barrage.
Marked Quarry: Once per round when you hit someone with an attack you can reduce you can reduce the difficulty against them by -3, my only complaint is it's once per round and i can't chain gun someone down. Maybe make it so you can only have one quarry as well to reduce tracking.
!Wing Aim: It's a Slow(1) action that removes float and flight.

Level 42- Danger Sense: You get Auto- (Strenghen) Speed....I don't know how to rate this, I'd really need to play with it. It does feel weird as the level 42 core for a primary class(as a fencer core absolutely).
Specializations
Deadly Precision: Your !Arm, Leg, Head, Eyes and Wing Aim and !Triple Foul do 75% damage, ok that's a fine specialization if i had more of those....
Toolbox: You get another of !Arm, Leg, Head, Eyes Aim. This being in conflict with deadly precision kills the status archer dead.
Colossus Slayer: Your !Vitals Aim adds their armor to the damage rather than ignoring it, wow i might actually use it.

Level 60- Always Prepared: You get any specialization from a previous archer core ignoring prereqs. This is....cool, but not ult worthy.
Specializations
!Barrage: Much like 3e, A Slow(5) action you make an attack at difficulty 1, 2, 3 etc. with a cap of 10 and keep going until you miss, there's no modifiers just a straight roll.
Projectile Rain: Every time you drop an enemy to 0 you get an iniative die at current tick+1, my only problem is if it's tick 10 you don't get an 11 that would then roll over into next round at 1.
Crippling Shot: Gives !Triple Foul, a Slow(3) That hits with all your !Aims except !Vitals Aim, this is pretty awesome as a finisher to a build except you have to give up your 60 core, and your 42 specialization just make this actually a triple foul and then it doesn't do damage.

Criticism: It's clear that this doesn't want to be a path class, while !Triple foul is meant as a reward to dedicated status archers and i'm not going to complain it's a specialization, the real problem is that you need to specialize to really do the whole aim status thing while status archers get to weave in damage. Not that status archer is really good but they do get to weave in core abilities of nutcracker archer.
!Arm Aim and !Leg Aim should just be what you get at lvl15(lasting one round) and the specializations being !Head Aim, !Eyes Aim, and !Wing Aim(Encounter). It being the level you do statuses, nutcracker moved up to the level 24 ability with mind blow made a specialty. This would better let's archers mix and match the status and damage sides of their class to build a viable hybrid which they seem to want to do(with specs deciding what you are better at). Unlike the adept who wants to go all in.

Next time the Artist, oh boy dancers, bards and mimes this has to be awful right?.....

FFRRPG Part 7: The Artist

posted by WhitemageofDOOM Original SA post

FFRRPG Part 7: The Artist

The Artist
So the artist covers the bard, dancer and mime and is our first proper path class (There are others.)

Level 1- Strength of character: This is your basic hp/mp/equipment ability.
Specializations
Singular Courage: Gives !hide which grants vanish for the rest of the round, but you can't take any other actions(besides i suppose save a die). I have a problem with this merely granting vanish rather than invincibility.
Seduction: Gives !Flirt one of those reactions that shouldn't need preping, with a water vs. (1+Fire) roll you chance the target of an attack on you to another ally, on a crit you can have it target enemies.
Roll with the Blow: Gives R:Crush, it may be one element but it's a physical element, and the most common. Take it.

Level 1- Artistic Niche: Choose !Sing, Dance, Mimic and gain the rank 1 performances.
!Dance: All dances attack with water, and hit the enemy with negative statuses. The rank 1 effects are, deal damage to mp(suck it mind blow!), poison, blind.
!Sing: It claims sing is positive and dance negative, this is dirty lies. Sing hits both, sing is better. The rank 1 effects are, Sleep, Strenghen (Speed), Weaken (Speed)
!Mimic: At rank 1 immediatly gives both mimic and mirror mimic(ie target the user of the ability) this is....huge. You can legit mimic from level 1. Note while it says you spend resources it says nothing about charge times. Mimes are legit.
Specializations
Juggler: Gives !throw which tosses your weapon for 150% damage using wind, you get it back at end of encounter. Needing to draw and reequip ruins this, if i could just chuck items sure great, possibly the wrong class but still great.
illiusionist: If your mp mulitplier is 0 raises it to 1, and gives the Image, transform, strenghen, flight, weaken or purify spell group.
Criticism: This is the first time it's come up, and there's several of these and only one of them needs the clause about an mp multiplier of 0. Just give me +1 mp multiplier.
Legendary Tale: Once per round when an ally makes an action as a free reaction roll 1d10, on a 1 this miss on a 9 or 10 they crit. Ok i like the idea but the implementation is off, it needs to do something everytime so 3 or less they miss, and 4+ they crit sounds much better and maintains the same miss/crit ratio.

Level 15- Supporting Niche: Get your rank 2 abilities based on if you have !Sing, Dance or Mimic
!Dance: Confuse, attack with 50% drain, 33% hp loss
!Sing: Mute, Strenghen (Magic), Strenghen (Physical)
!Mimic: You get memory mimic(repeat an allies action from earlier this round), and reflex mimic(if you were also hit by an action mimic a reaction). Reflex mimic needing to prep is kind of meh, but memory mimic is good.
Specializations
Eclectic Artist: Take the rank 1s from a diffrent path. Oh boy, really? So if i'm not a mimic I can grab their two most essential features to even function? Yes, I can.
Phlegm: If you are hit by a status it doesn't start taking effect until the start of NEXT round. This is......actively actually BAD. As enemies can status you on init 9 or 10 and you'll be asleep all next round.
Inspiration: Once per round, when you crit gain an init die at 10.....but.....I don't have crit abilities?

Level 24- Fame: Get your rank 3 abilities.
!Dance: 200% Attack, Slow, Stone
!Sing: damage all zombies, grant r:Element and elemental weapon, cure poison and virus grant R:Toxic. Well that last one doesn't have the maintenance problem. (Resist status means if they hit you with a status they reroll, it's good for low level accessories but....)
!Mimic: Whenever you mimic a magical element you can change it to another. also you can memory mimic enemies now.
Specializations
Narcissism: I: Confuse, Charm and Sleep. I prefer status groups, that's why they exist right?
Perfectionism: Take rank 2 perfomances from another discipline. So basically take sing for mute and damage up.
Undue Criticism: Grants !Hater, a water vs. fire attack that inflicts berserk until end of next round. Feels more like a dance.

Protagonist 42- Protagonist: Get your rank 4 abilities.
!Dance: Inflicts virus(can't restore hp, aka zombie but worse), Attack and drain 50% to hp and to mp, death.
!Sing: Inflict earth to all enemies, haste, toad.
!Mimic: You can now choose any target for your rank 1-3 mimics, and you get final mimic when you die you can drop any die to mimic the action against your killer.
Specializations
Multitalented: Take a guess, but for rank 3.
Encouragement: This a reaction that let's an ally reroll an attack roll, that's really cool. Sad i'll never take it.
Arcane Heart: Your mp bonus becomes 2 if not higher(just give me +1 so i can take it and illiusionst since my mp bonus will be 1 already), gain the spell group shield, armor, regeneration, or divination.

Level 60- Stardorm: Get your rank 5s, hey your ultimate ISN'T a specialization.
!Dance: Attack 4 times, Inflict meltdown, Random debuffs to all enemies
!Sing: Protect & Shell, Extend duration of positive songs this round, Random buffs to all allies
!Mimic: Command mimic let's you take a !Action from an ally at start of combat, and doesn't require an action. Takeover inflicts stop on an enemy for the round and let's you use their actions but if you use your own the effect ends.
Specializations
Artistic Master: **Sighs**, rank 4
Power Chord: Your attacks are physical or magical and get Earth*2 more damage....this is.....decent but on completely the wrong class. Like if this was Fire*2 it would be perfect for adept or monk. There just isn't a punch artist build.
Dedicated fans: Forces your allies to use their reactions as if they were hit, doesn't consume their dice. Again a really cool ability overshadowed by....actually this might be worth it depending on the party.

Criticisms: 1) Sing is just better than dance because it offers a wider array of effects being ability to debilitate enemies and help allies.
2) ALL YOUR SPECIALIZATIONS ARE GOING TO BE SPENT ON POACHING FROM THE OTHER PATHS BECAUSE NOTHING ELSE WILL EVER COMPARE.

FFRPG 4E Part 7:Magic & The Black Mage

posted by WhitemageofDOOM Original SA post

FFRPG 4E Part 7:Magic & The Black Mage

Right so our first mage, i sort of covered this before.
When you learn a spell group you learn the GROUP.
For instance the Fire group has the following spells Lvl1 Fire, Lvl19 Fira, Lvl37 Firaga, Lvl55 Meltdown.
The death group has lvl1 Sleep(well that's honest), Lvl19 Zombie, Lvl 37 Condemn(Inflicts death at end of next round, I accept round tracking here), and Lvl 55 Death.
However you get later groups which have spells that only start at your new level, For instance the Drain group gets Drain at lvl30 and Syphon at lvl50.

This fixes a lot of my problems with magic in 3e, you don't keep up with the joneses. If you know fire, you KNOW FIRE, and you'll get all the fire spells so the spells you learn at higher levels are legitimately more tricks generally.
Though the black mage is still a pile of statuses and damage, no one ever thought it would be anything else It's just you actually unlock new abilities rather than "Now your fire does more". It's "Now you can use Water, Quake or Shadow to supplement your Fire magic."

Also this game loves mage, I'm not going to call it supremacy because they don't seem "Better", but their core abilities really are their core, their specializations really are supporting that, and you get a goodly number of toys. So it definitely loves mages.

Right Onto The Black Mage

Level 1- Arcane power : It's equipment and hp/mp, move along.
Specializations
I'll cover these.....

Level 1- Elemental Magic : You get one of the Fire, Ice or Lighting groups. Fire's ultimate spell does meltdown, ice's does stop, I don't even remember lighting's. Grab fire just for the rarity of meltdown.
Specialization
Elemental Mastery: Every spell tier offers take another group, for elemental magic though you get the third group at 15 so you can have your basic elements.
Elemental Burst: Your ST damaging spells damage a random enemy for 25% ignoring M.Armor. That's pretty sweet and can seriously makes me consider not getting all elements.
Elemental Shock: Your elemental spells increase the target's initiative dice by 1 to a maximum of 10. If this worked on non-elemental damage i'd consider it but i only have one line of elemental spells by taking this.
Criticism: Is this the first time we are seeing knockback? I think so. Call it knockback(X), let it throw dice above 10 and have them roll to value-10 at end of round. That needs to be just a standard rule. If a initiative die is 11+ it goes to the next round and is reduced by 10 in addition to their normal initiative roll.

Level 1- Transmutation: You get one of Death, Transform, or Poison spell groups. All good choices for your basic save or suck needs, poison is the best for damage until it's final spell when it gives virus(aka shitty zombie). Death has the best first spell(Sleep) but a weak middle. While Transform has the most balanced progression(Blind, Petrify, Toad, Stone.)
Specialization
Transmutation Mastery: Standard choose a second deal.
Piercing Arcana: Your spells ignore status resistance, but not immunity. This depends on the GM really.
Magic Resistance: You resist all status you could cause with a transmutation spells, if it was all spells hoooo boy.

Level 15 - Worldly Magic: You get one of Water, Earth or Shadow. The answer is Water which inflicts group sleep with it's final spell, shadow does blind which is fine but isn't sleep, Earth's final spell is amazing(Break) but it's other spells hurt your friends.
Specialization
Worldly Master: I already know water magic, thx.
Worldly Shock: My spells ignore half the target's M.Armor, Pretty decent.
Careful Casting: You can make any spell Slow(3) to reduce the difficulty by 3. Now the difficulty of damage spells is a big fat 0, but status spells are a 7, so if you are going status mage this is maybe worth but the point of status mage it to disable them BEFORE they go I don't want this, now if it was pay 25% more mp sign me up.

Level 30- Expert Magic: You get one of Drain, Hex, or Mage Bane. Drain is uhhh drain, Mage Bane is stuck with just rasp for now but gets you Osmose at 50, and hex is multi status spells.
Specialization
Multi-Expert: Pretty high on my list of options.
Obliterate: When you use an expert spell applies debarrier(remove protect, shell&reflect) BEFORE the spell effect until end of round. Holy shit, this is amazing and it only requires 12 fire.
Favored Element: Choose an element, your spells of the element ignore resistance and treat immunity as resistance. Cute but should have been a worldly spec, sure doesn't compete with obliterate or multi-expert.

Now you aren't getting anything from 30 except you know filling in your spell ranks except well remember your initial "Specialization".

Level 64
Ancient Magic : Scathe- Inflicts 28*Fire shadow damage to all enemies and attempts to inflict death. The ultimate in black mage related related minion slaughter.
Ancient Magic : Flare- Inflicts 35*Fire NON-ELEMENTAL damage to an enemy ignoring Shell, Reflect, and M.Arm. The ultimate in black mage related boss murder. (Also MATH! The highest stat is 25 this does 35*Fire damage ignoring armor, 25*35=875 add 5 to that for 880. So using the ultimate damage spell won't even hit the damage cap.)
Ancient Magic : Ultima- Inflicts 32*Fire NON-ELEMENTAL damage to all enemies ignoring Shell&Reflect(But not M.Arm). For the black mage who wants death for all occasions.
Enjoy choosing, it won't be easy.

Criticism: My criticism is I wish the warriors were this well designed, not this good, but this well designed, and I don't begrudge the specialization is the Ult because you don't really have to build for it you just kind of get it, and bluntly the class could have an ancient magic ability that offers Scathe, Flare or Ultima and it wouldn't feel out of place.

FFRRPG 4e Part 9: The Druid

posted by WhitemageofDOOM Original SA post

FFRRPG 4e Part 9: The Druid

Wait Druids? Those aren't part of FFLore, no but the druid is a class with a cohesive set of paths that all have some relation to each other. The Blue Mage and Summoner are obvious, toss in the Geomancer and "Druid" is a fitting name as they are the class that gets power from the world.

Level 1- Natures Path: Standard equipment and hp/mp ability with lvl1 specialty. However there's a HUGE problem, your mp multiplier is 1 and you need your mp....badly. If blue mage and summoner didn't tip you off, despite that you have the hp of a mage.
Primal Arcana: Increase your mp multiplier by 1, and gain one of the following spell groups. Healing, Fire, Ice, Lighting, Poison, Slow. Bluntly grabbing this feels like the best option just for the mp.
Nature Warrior: Increase your hp multiplier by 1, You can equip heavy armor and two weapons from: Light Weapons, Weapon&Shield, Heavy Weapons, Katanana Polearms, Bows, or Staves.
Primal Music: Increase your hp multiplier by 1, and equip instruments. I'll take warrior if i want hp and weapon options.

Level 1- Awakened: Pick blue mage, Geomancy or Summoning and you'll get your path abilities at the appropriate levels.
Blue Mage: You get two initiate blue magic spells, can learn initiate spells by being smacked around. Blue magic is still a grab bag but has been trimmed down to the good parts of the grab bag, it also comes in 4 levels so the GM has a lot more guidelines on what to give you(namely the tier you can learn).
Geomancer: You get the slow(2) action !Geomancy, roll 1d10 and add +1 per ten levels, on 1-5 you get the basic effect, at 6-11 you get the greater effect, at 12+ you get the master effect. You currently can't geotrance but there's not 8 abilities per terrain just 3, and starting out you have a 50/50 shot of something pretty decent. The basic effects though....condemned after four rounds? Really?!
Summoner: get.....!Tame, yeah no they don't get call right away but instead tame. It can be used to cherry tap a monster for lvl damage ignoring god damn everything and if killed taming them, or on a monster that died as a reaction. I like the cherry tap. Also you don't "Spare" them and so they help you, you steal their soul and use it as a bullet.
Specializations
Martial Channeling: When you make a magic attack with a geomancer ability you can make a weapon attack instead(but the base difficulty is unchanged), if you do the ability if it does damage does damage equal to your weapon. Uhhhhh this is pretty sweet even if you don't take nature warrior, equipping a rod still works, especially for !Tame since you can basically go around beating monster's to death.
Light Steps: You get the flight spell group. No mp bonus? I have more important uses for my mp.
Intimidation: Roll Water vs. Fire, if you succeed they can't crit until end of the next round. Welp martial channeling it is.

Level 10- Nature's Blessing
Blue Mage: You can learn acolyte spells.
Geomancer: You can spend mp to scale up your geomancy effects....and you thought your geomancer didn't need mp. This does mean the flat effects of geomancy can be enhanced and scale if you have mp to burn.
Summoner: You get !Call, I'm not explaining call except that each summoned monster has a minimum level for both !Calling them and for their grand summon effect. ie spend more mp to upgrade.
Specializations
Air Gust: A ranged slow(2) action !Air wave does a non-scaling 10*Wind damage, but you can at lvl30+ spend mp to upgrade it to 15*Wind damage or knock off an init die. If it was both maybe, as it is, passssss or you know have martial channeling so you can scale it's damage without needing mp and pay mp to knock off init dice that is also a good plan.
!Weak Point: Choose an ally they don't need to confirm crits for a round, wooo.
Magical Camoflauge: Whenever you OR AN ALLY uses an action or spell that targets more than one target you can make two unaffected. Great in the right part if not you'll have to stick with air slash.

Level 20- Natural Domain
Blue Mage: You can learn by seeing bagic cast, Roll your level/10 or under on a d10 to do it.
Geomancers: You get !Geotrance, which has an increasing delay based on where on this stupid terrain wheel you are from what you want to do. I wish everything worked like cosmic terrain where it was just a straight Slow(4).
Summoners: Can store two soul bullets with tame.
Specializations
!Parley: Roll Fire vs. (7+Fire) and if it hits the monster flees...So this is our first eject effect, and since monster's don't give exp(except to monster hunters) eject doesn't waste it. It sort of solves itself on bosses as well forcing the dark general or monster you are hunting to flee just delays the fight. Still classed as fatal anyways though, so don't try.
Adaptive Tolerance: Whenever you are hit by a status you gain R:That status until end of counter, this is pretty darn sweet.
!Earth Slash: Is a Slow(2) action, Does a measly 7*Earth damage or immboilize and hits everyone so the question is how much do your allies care about losing their reactions? At lvl40+ you can spend 60 mp to do 14*Earth damage or immobilize until end of next round, or you can have martial channeling and stick with the previous slow(2) 0mp do about that much anyways damage because you have martial channeling.

Level 30- Natural Mastery
Blue Mage: Get +1 mp bonus(wait at the level you normally get +1 mp bonus?!), can learn master and ancient blue magic.
Geomancers: Get an auto status based on your lowest stat. Earth: R: Crush, Wind: Float, Fire: Premonition, Water: Blink. This is permanent once set making it much less interesting than it could be. Goal 1, don't have wind as your lowest stat(float does nothing but make you immune to "Ground attacks"). Goal 2, have fire as your lowest stat harder but auto-premonition is nuts.
Summoners: Get !Summon, which is....much MUCH saner than 3e. On the round you summon you get Wall(I:Physical, not I:all, it's sort of the physical counterpart to reflect.) and some auto-status or elemental absorbs/weaknesses related to your summon, however since you have a summoned monster out you can't !Call anything else. You can however spam gungir with that Auto:Strenghen (Physical) Odin gives.
Specializations
!Quagmire: Is a slow(4) action, still ground targeting like earth slash and hits a single target for 17*WATER damage and does Slow for two rounds, at 40+ you can spend 60mp to make it group targeting. Not bad, not amazing but not bad.
!Truce: Roll Water vs. (4+highest enemy fire), if successful no enemies will attack your party for this and the next 3 ticks. This is a mental effect. Question why FUDGE isn't this on the artist.
Natural Resilience: Choose toxic, transform or seal. Gain I:That shit.


Criticisms: My criticisms are threefold.
1) !Geotrance has that stupid terrain wheel and !Geomancy itself has 4 costs by mid levels(randomness, charge, mp,hoping you aren't in lava terrain).
2) The mp bonus is too low for a mage class. Give them a base of 2mp, or move the bonus mp for blue mages to level....10 and give it summoner's as well. Actually do both.
3) The class could use a pass on it's specializations, but the foundations are strong.

Next up is the Monk who inherited the old magic ninja.....Did they do as good a job updating them to usefulness as the mime?

FFRRPG 4e Part 9: The Monk

posted by WhitemageofDOOM Original SA post

FFRRPG 4e Part 9: The Monk

Ahhhhh The Monk, rather than have two classes that try to do the punch and blast thing, we have one. Let's see how they turn out.


Level 1- Martial Artist, Standard equipment and hp/mp ability....why are these abilities?
Specializations
Brawler: Get the dual wield ability for your gloves/claws, ie reroll first failed !Attack. Not bad, but probably a think you want core.
Drunken Dodge: Whenever you are missed lower an initiative die by 1 to a minimum of this tick, if this was all dice I'd like it, one isn't much weaker just less fun.
Elemental Arts: If mp bonus=0, gain mp bonus=1. gain the Gravity, Healing, Poison or Purify spell group. As with most of these abilities perfectly serviceable.

Level 1- Jutsu: Pick one of the following jutsu's which are a slow(3) action. They all do a certain element of damage and use Fire vs. (4+ that stat), they also on a crit inflict that status. They do 4xfire at lvl1, 8xfire at lvl20, and 12*fire at lvl40.
!Katon: Fire, sleep on crit.
!Suiton: Water, Weaken (Mental) on crit.
!Doiton: Earth, poison on crit.
!Fuuton: Wind, blind on crit.
Specializations
Elan- Your jutsu hits all enemies.
Vengeful Spirits- Your jutsus always crit if they hit.
!Raiton- A reaction which negates an attack with an element related to your jutsu. (Katon: Fire/Light, Suiton: Water/Ice, !Doton: Air/Lighting, Fuuton: Earth/Shadow)
So, is Jutsu good? No, no it isn't for a CT of 3 you do barely more than an attack to start, equals an attack at the first upgrate, than becomes weaker than an attack at the second upgrade.

Level 15- Serenity: Gain R:Mental, R is fine for low level accessories and mid level stuff but for abilities I want I thanks.
Specializations
Jutsu Acolyte- Get another jutsu, why isn't this under Jutsu like the other "Pick another spell group" style stuff.
!Punch Rush- Use two iniative dice in one tick with gloves/claws to do 300% ST damage. This is a pretty unique and powerful charge move.
Swivel Kick- Gives the quick action !Kick, allowing you to attack all enemies halving the damage after the attack, ignores protect and resistance.
This is clearly meant as a punch shit level, why is jutsu acolyte here?

Level 24- Soul Volley: You gain the Slow(4) action Aura bolt(light) or Dark Bolt(shadow), which deals 13*Fire damage, or 20*Fire damage at level 50. How do these compare to normal attacks? Well basically good when gotten, on par with an auto attack when they upgrade.
Specializations
Awaken Chakra: Gives you !Chakra, which restores all status from you, can't be used while under a mental status effect.
Atemi: Gives you !Atemi, which for a slow(2) action....immboilizes. yep, that's it.
Suplex: If you hit twice in one tick with !attack or hit with !punch rush the target is confused. At least i can suplex trains.

Level 42- Release Chakra: Pick one of the following 4 options!
1) When using !Chakra you may spend any amount of mp to gain that much hp.
2) When using !Atemi you may spend 40mp to inflict disable.
3) When using a jutsu you can spend 40mp to increase it's damage to 16*Mag....yep still not competing with on level weapons.
4) When using a slow action you can spend X*15 mp to skip a charge of X.
Criticism: Spending mp to scale is the druids shtick, only one of these feels like a monk ability(x*15 mp to skip charge), and that feels like a specialization. Also i have an entire core ability devoted to spending mp when i have a base mp mod of 0.
Specialization
Soul explosion: When you hit with aura or dark bolt you can drop an initiative die to hit again on a different target. Now this is a specialization I can get behind, it's an upgrade to something for or something i don't actually need to function but really works.
Zen Awareness: I can use reactions while preparing slow actions, I don't get reactions as a monk. It's a great ability it just belongs on a reaction heavy sub job.
Elemental Field: when i hit with a jutsu both me and the target get R: That element until end of round. This blows, if it was "When I use a jutsu I get R:that element" that would be pretty cool(and jutsu's were good, and i didn't only have one), but nope.

Level 60- Timeless Body: You get R:Time, it's one of those levels where the ult is the spec, ugh.
Jutsu Master: Only the avatar master of three elements(you get two for taking this) can use !Kuuton, a slow(5) action. You make an attack roll of Fire vs. (2+Stat) once for each element compared to all enemies defenses(one roll per element), each hit does 6*Fire damage of that element ignoring magic armor. This is.....legitimately pretty dope.
Elemental Union: You get +1 mp multiplier and the Magebane, Enhancement, Regeneration or Divination group. Only take this if you are riding the suplex train for life.
!Phantom Rush: A Slow(6) action that inflicts 33*Earth crush elemental damage ignoring armor. A good choice for physical monks who took kick.

Criticism: Lemme just quote for a moment.
This in a nutshell is the fundamental flaw of the monk, in addition to magic monks being awful until jutsu master and then you have one awesome spell, the class isn't designed for me to utilize both physical and magical abilities into my combat style like it's inspirations do in the FF games.
Besides buffing their magic side, make it clear what levels are magical and which are physical for cores and specs. I'd even say include a choice in the ult for !Kuuton or !Phantom Rush if not find a way to make an ult that uses both. (ie 1 & 24 give magic stuff, 15 & 42 give physical stuff.)

FFRRPG 4e Part 10: The Freelancer & Rogue

posted by WhitemageofDOOM Original SA post

FFRRPG 4e Part 10: The Freelancer & Rogue

Freelancer
The freelancer can use points to buy class abilities and specializations, 1 point per ability......
NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE MOVING ALONG.

Criticism: It exists, it is a giant pile of ways to break the system(not good) or fail points(extremely bad). At least it's got proper warning labels, and will have around half the main job abilities of a non-freelancer(though not by much).

The Rogue
The gambler and thief converge to make.....well let's see.


Level 1- Survivalist: Blah blah blah blah blah.
Specializations
!Steal: Get their common item, on a crit get their rare.
Gillionaire: An ability rather than an advantage, 25% more gp. The book tells you to be generous with interpreting this not a dick. A behemoth carcus is worth 4,000gp, you sell it for 4,250gp with 4 players. There's a 10,000gp reward and 5 players? The gillionaire argues the reward up 500gp. He sells his own old equipment? He sells it for 25% more.
Treasure hunter: Whenever you win a combat roll twice for random loot groups. ie x2 the gold&items.
This straight up is one of the best specializations in the book, it's just that a specialization. It sticks to a core theme "You get more money/stuff" and asks you how you implement it.

Level 1- Clinical Eye: Choose !Detect, !Peep, !Lucky Odds
All of these check hp/mp of monsters and something else.
!Detect: Elemental resistance/immunity/absorption/weakness.
!Peep: Status resist/immunity/weakness.
!Lucky Odds: The only one that stands out let's you look at common/rare items and swap them.
Criticism: Whitemages can get scan at level1 that does detect and peep as part of a spell school, lucky odds should just be a specialization that tweeks how your !Peep/Detect works.
Specializations
Feint: You can re-roll enemy reactions.
Fight Another Day: The difficulty of your !flee actions is 0. Ahhhhh good ol FF1 thieves only good for running.
Karma: You gain the reaction !Karma, when you are critically hit you can remove resistance/immunity/absorb of one magic element and add weakness.....Seriously? SERIOUSLY? This is dumb.

Level 15- Dice: Roll upto 5d10, do the total times*10 crush damage to an enemy ignoring m.arm, but if any Crit instead you take the damage(subtracting M.Arm). This is an ability not designed that works well with simple, one of the few. Also, this does 250 average damage when you get it so yeah it's broken until it's not. 0/10 for design.
Specializations
Arcane Trickster: +1 mp bonus, and one of the Transform, Poison, Images, Teleport, Weaken or Slow spell groups. SEE YOU CAN JUST GIVE THE MP BONUS.
!Dismantle: Hit to do inflict death on a construct, this has gotten no better.
Gambler: Gives you the quick action !Moogle Reels, attack 3 times with Water vs. (4+Highest enemy Fire), 0 hits: Confused until end of next round. 1hit: !Attack a random enemy. 2hit: 10xWater damage to all enemies. 3hits: Confuse, Slow and Poison on all enemies until end of next round. I really like how reels work in general, though moogle reels is pretty darn week, the other two are worth it.

Level 24- Invention: Is a bit complicated, when buying armor&weapons you can swap....
Monster killer/destroy to a different monster type.
Elemental damage to a different type.
Critical Spell, Spell Weave, and Arcane Focus to any spell of the same or lower level.
Resistance, Weakness, Immunity, Absorb for a physical element to a different one and likewise magical elements.
And SoS-Status, Auto-Status, Status Resistance, Status Immunity, Status Touch, Status Strike to a different status of the same or lower tier.
Now this is a much saner way to do invention, on the other hand, ahem. WHY IS IT ON THE ROGUE?!
Specializations
Steal the spotlight: You can spend allies initiative dice...this uhhhh, needs a with their permission clause. Also ON WHAT?
Lucky Number: You gain the reaction !lucky seven if your hp ends in 7 you can make a roll, miss 7 damage, hit 77 damage, crit 777 damage. Worse than 3e despite the lower numbers because this costs an action.
Abandon Subtlety: When you !Steal you can also !Attack, well mug is free, awesome.....Level 24 sucks.

Level 42- Charity's Lesson: You get !Gil toss, for every 100gil tossed you deal 1*Wind damage. This has....improved....massively. From a straight 10 for 1 to 100 for 10+ with lower base damage numbers. And this is the level's rare(ie non-buyable items) become the standard so gil becomes kind of irrelevant.
Specializations
Jackpot: Gives you !Moogle reels, 0 hits: condemned, 1hit: cura, 2hits: random 20*water elemental damage all enemies, 3 hit: Shell, protect, and haste on part until end of next round. As 3e reels don't get good until the setzer set.
Counter Theft: You can use !Steal as a reaction...even if you don't have it, mind by this point if you did take steal and abandon subtlety steal is actually pretty nice.
Steal Heart: It's quick action charm, I don't need explain that this is awesome.
.....I sense a pattern from the 3e thief emerging.

Level 60- Measured Risks: If your hp are 25% or lower you can perform one free reaction around. OH COME ON, this is the definition of specialization or secondary job material and has nothing to do with the gambler.
Specializations
Footwork: You get an extra initiative die at 10 each turn. A fine choice.
Distract: Inflicts meltdown on one enemy, sod that. Footwork or what is coming next every time.
MAGIC REELS: SWEET GOOGLY MOOGLY THIS IS GOOD. You'll roll an extra d10 over the other reels to determine what spell category to cast from. 0hits: you die the enemies heal for your hp, 1 hit: a meh spell, 2 hits: a fine spell, 3 hits: A good spell. In addition each crit gives an extra cast, you have 3 chances to crit, go wild.

Criticism: While this class way of getting gil has improved massively over it's previous version, it's still got a massive case of "High levelitis" from it's 3e counterparts still having no real abilities until high levels when it becomes able to contribute meaningfully. Well except you have dice, which kills you or kills them with no in between.

FFRRPG 4e Part11: Time Mage

posted by WhitemageofDOOM Original SA post

FFRRPG 4e Part11: Time Mage

Mage Job #2 time for some love from the game i suppose.


Level 1- Arcane Studies: Core Ability acquired at level 1. You can equip light armor and the following weapons: Claws / Gloves; Light Swords / Knives; Staffs; Wands. Your HP bonus is 3 times your level, the multiplier increasing by 1 at levels 15, 30 and 60. Your bonus MP is 3 times your level, the multiplier increasing by 1 at level 30.

Level 1- Astral Magic: Gain the cosmic, gravity, or teleport spell group. So Cosmic is the old Non-elemental line but now doing puncture damage, not quite non-elemental but still. Gravity is demi, right from lvl1 but you don't really need it, and teleport well it's lvl1 spell is shitty(auto flee) but every other spell is gold(party flees, ST:eject, MT:Eject) the fact that ejecting is teleportation changes up the flavor to "OUT STOP BUGGING ME" from the old "Banished to another dimension".
Specializations
Cosmic Mastery: Get another astral spell. So you know use it to get gravity or teleport to go with cosmic since those require levels to get good and cosmic is just some nice early damage.
!Phase: It's a fire vs. (4+water) dodge.
Arcane Archer: You can equip medium armor and bows. Yeah get cosmic mastery, leave the equipment tweeks to secondary classes.

Level 1- Subtle Magic: Slow, Weaken, Strengthen, Flight. Flight is terrible you can ignore it, Slow weaken and strengthen are all great.
Specializations
Subtle Mastery: It's on the tin.
Levitation: You have float always on, maybe if float DID something.
Procrastination: You gain the free reaction !Delay, once per round when a spell is cast you can delay it's effects until the start of the NEXT round. Why yes, I would like to delay my stop till the start of the next round at init tick 10. Why yes, I would like to deal that damage spell till After the white mage takes 2 actions.

Level 15- Void Magic: Speed or Meteors. Speed gives haste, meteors is the old hit random targets line doing crush damage, the choice is clear.
Specializations
Void Mastery: But I HAVE haste.
Acceleration: After casting a void spell i can reduce an init dice by 1 to a minimum of the current tick....not all dice, only when i cast haste.
Wild Magic: As a Slow(3) action you may make a spells difficulty 1d10 instead of the base. An average of 2 gained for status spells and 5 lost for damage spells. Why is this slow?

Level 30- Magical Inspiration: Regeneration, Paralysis, Divination.Well paralysis gives immobilize and disable, but i already have stop. Regeneration gives regen and mass time status clear(ewww), and divination gives me 1 reroll/round or party rerolls/round, well this is obvious.
Specializations
Inspiration mastery: Eh, i can live without regen.
Action and Reaction: At the start of each combat roll 2d10, replace any roll with these dice at any time. I'd be happy for this at 60.
Fluid Time: Roll an extra initiative die, then discard a die. It's good, but not ACTION AND REACTION good.

Level 64- Ancient Magics: Pick Old, I mean Meteor, Time Stop or Old.
Meteor- A crush element flare that doesn't ignore shell, hits for less, and if there is more than one enemy does less damage.
Time Stop- Stop on all enemies, my black mage did death, and shadow damage if they lived.
Old- Weaken GOD DAMN EVERYTHING, ok there we go, that's an ultimate spell.

Criticisms: Action and Reaction is capital B:Busted, there's a number of non-choices in the schools/specializations, and meteor and time stop are just bad. But it's still a mage, it's still a perfectly serviceable character.

FFRRPG 4e Part 12 : The Warrior

posted by WhitemageofDOOM Original SA post

FFRRPG 4e Part 12 : The Warrior

The warrior a pretty eclectic mix, seeing as they are basically the only pure warrior class in the game besides archer. 3 mages, 4 if you count druid, 2 pure fighters, the games don't reflect that kind of party makeup. So in a way I'm arguing this as an advantage of 3e, there's more warriors.

Level 1- Master of Arcs: You know what this doessssss.
Specialiazations
!Arc: This adds ranged to your attack and....adds normal equipment abilities. But nothing previously SAID you didn't add equipment abilities, and the fighter items are still built assuming i care rather than they are stat sticks.
!Pommel Strike: This does half damage and breaks charges. Hey remember unwavering? THIS IS THAT!
!Dirty Fighting: This for not adding the 5 to damage does....no reactions this TICK? WHAT?! Ok yeah grab Arc or Pommel strike.

Level 1- Power Strike: Pick Jump, Mighty Strike, or Lunge
!Jump: Gives flying(need ranged to be attacked) until your next action and then does double damage. A pretty major nerf from invulnerability in that a good chunk of shit can hit you but compared to the alternatives....
!Mighty Strike: The difficulty of your attack goes up by 3(7+Stat), but does x2 damage.
!Lunge: This does double damage, but the difficulty to hit you goes down by 3....for 10 ticks....and you can't use this again during that time. Considering the tracking nightmare and shittiness don't take this.
Specializations
Dragon Horn: When you use power strike you can do it again by dropping a die. For mighty strike this is simple. For lunge it adds 10 more ticks you can't lunge and have a defense penalty. For Jump....Either this let's you spam 200% attacks, or you fly back into the air, and the wording leads to spam 200%.
!Quadra Slam: A Slow(4) action that hits 4 times for half damage ignoring armor. This should be halved after armor like kick probably. But why would you take this over Jump-Dragon horn? Also why are this and dragon horn early game abilities.
Adroit: You can use earth or air to attack with warrior special abilities, but not for damage and not for !Attack. Pass.

Level 15- Feign Weakness: You get the slow(1) action !Life break, which does your (Max hp - Current hp) damage ignoring armor. Guess what the specializations are?
Specializations
X Break: Look i'm not explaining them, the fucking time mage is now a better knight than the warrior will ever be.

Level 24- Cleave: Pick !Slash-All, or !Blade Beam
!Slash-All: Hit 3 enemies for 75% damage....but it's called slash all.
!Blade Beam: Hit 1 enemy for 100% damage, and 2 others for half the damage dealt to the primary ignoring armor.
Specializations
Powerful Cleave: Makes your cleave do 100% damage regardless.
Wide Cleave: Makes your cleave a proper you know GROUP ATTACK.
Master of Destruction: Your break can target 3 enemies, SHAME YOU ONLY HAVE ONE.

Level 42- Dragon's Breath: A slow action(3) that Deals (Target's Max - Current Hp).
Specializations
Lethal Blow: When using dragon's breath apply armor BEFORE the 999 damage cap. Interesting that armor is applied after the damage cap, and kind of cool, gives real teeth to armor even in late game.
Double Cut: Gives the slow(2) action double cut, hit twice for 100% damage applying weapon effects. Again no where does it say i shouldn't.
Martial Versatility: You get an extra break. Yey.

Level 60: You get I: Weaken (Strengh, Magic, Armor, Mental, Speed). Jesus just say I:Weaken, sure you'd have I:Meltdown but it's basically the same.
Specializations
!Finishing Touch: A Slow(5) action. Make two attack rolls, if at least one hits inflict death and 200% damage and death, if both hit inflict stop.....where is the stop part?
!Shock: A Slow(4) action that does 200% damage to all enemies. Almost certainly the best option.
Iajutsu: Gives the Slow(4) action !cleave which inflicts death on all enemies.


Criticisms: Well here's my biggest criticism, AHEM. KNIGHT ISN'T EVEN AN OPTION, AT ALL. The class is 100% focused on just hitting stuff harder. I'd say about making a break warrior build but no. The class needs to be split between the Knight(Tactics fighter) and the Warrior(I hit shit), dragoon can stay as I hit shit, that's fine. But the game needs another fighter in flavor and the class needs room to breath to make the knight work.
My second criticism is despite being solely focused on hitting shit, basically you never get better or more options to hit shit after jump+dragon horn other than slash all/blade beam and then shock. At three dice you at your second action hit 2 times for 200% damage, with haste 3 times.

I'm pretty sure the warrior is capital b Busted at damage, but they are declared to be under the rule of the great sword monk. So let me bring this old thing back out.

Playable Level- Never.

FFRPG 4e Part 15: The White mage

posted by WhitemageofDOOM Original SA post

FFRPG 4e Part 15: The White mage

The last primary job

Level 1- Arcane devotion: And i never have to pretend i'm witty for these abilities again. Oh you also get healing magic.

Level 1- Heavenly Magic: You get the light, air or purify spell school. Not having damage blows. The lvl4 light spell deals Mute, the lvl4 air spell is the best AoE spell outside water or ultima.
Specializations
Heavenly Mastery: So get purify.
Heavenly Blessing: You can target two characters with a heavenly or protective spell for x2 mp. Considering both of these groups get MT stuff anyways, not worth losing esuna.
Heavenly Warrior: You can equip medium armor, and equip medium weapon&shield. Your hp bonus also increases by 1. Ok so you are a cleric. This is definitely something to consider, if you take it dump light or air and just use MACE TO THE FACE.

Level 15- Protective Magic: (Protection from) Elemental, Life, Armor, Shield, or Images group. Yeah welcome to the hardest group choice in the game. The elemental group doesn't group target and can't hit physical elements so it's a crappy version of shield.
Specializations
Protective Mastery: Well this lessons some of the choice paralysis of how good protective magic is.
Magic Shield: I said some, this let's you cast self targeting protective magic as a reaction.
Magic Armor: You can just take damage to mp, suck it will shield.

Level 15- Versatile Protection: Yeah we know how hard picking between protection magic is, here have another, that's what this ability is saying. Armor&Shield is a solid choice, Images&Life is also but more swingy. It's still hard.
Specializations
Deep studies: Gain a Heavenly, psychic, or protective spell group. Man, black and time mages WISH they had this somewhere in their trees.
Martial Dabbler: Choose a weapon other than twin weapons or instruments. Gain proficiency. If i wanted weapon proficiency I'd have taken cleri....heavenly warrior.
Offensive Barriers: You can with Fire vs. (7+Water) debarrier any status you can inflict with protective magic. Man, where IS the despell group.

Level 30- Psychic Magic: I have a complaint, these don't use water it's called psychic magic and inflicts mind attacks. Take vulnerability (Scan+Weaken:Element), Enchantment(Silence&Berserk), or Madness(Confuse&Charm). Enchantment is the stinker here, but vulnerability is amazing as is confuse and charm.
Specialization
Psychic: Take Vulnerability AND Madness....or have taken deep studies and not needed this.
Asceticism: If you are stoned, berserked or stopped you can cast status removal spells on yourself to remove them. Why not mute?
Elemental Blessing: You gain R: any element, you can actually pick crush, but....why?

Ancient Magics
Holy- Does less than flare, doesn't ignore shell, reflect or m.arm. The only difference should be that that Holy isn't non-elemental.
Shield- Because it being a spell and a spell group isn't confused. But it grants someone old style wall for the rest of the round, can i have my status immunity?
Arise- Full lifes the party, cute but you'll use it once or twice. Go with holy or shield.

Criticism: Still the best, still do everything(damage, status, healing, protection), possibly even MORE mandatory with how hard potions are to use(2 actions? really?). On the other hand most of their specialization choices are legit choices as are their spell groups.

Final Criticism on primary classes: Like 3e too many classes don't know what they are doing, and Primary classes are supposed to be WHAT YOU ARE DOING. Go through every class, ignore the specializations outside the gil bonus from rogue and the ancient magics on mages and ask "Hey what is this class doing?" Then make sure their main abilities work towards that.
Also a lot of times specializations are no brainers and i don't mean "For your build", so then make a specialization pass where you ask yourself what the specializations are doing at that level. Specialization sets like ancient magic and Rogue gil bonus, or The AoE attack on warrior offer the best choices because they really are specializing you not sticking you down a build path.
Also split out the Knight from the Warrior as the "Tactics Fighter" rather than the "Smash Fighter", the game needs more primary class fighter types. Only one class using most of the weapon groups is just weird.

FFRPG 4E Part 14: Secondary Jobs Alchemist & Berserker

posted by WhitemageofDOOM Original SA post

FFRPG 4E Part 14: Secondary Jobs Alchemist & Berserker

So Primary jobs are what you do, while secondary jobs are a support to that. For instance the two tank jobs are secondary jobs, no primary job says you are the tank but secondary ones do.
In general the secondary jobs are better designed as they have a good idea of what they want to do(one note worthy exception later.).

The Alchemist
Are you not a white mage? Do you want to play a healer anyways? Then the alchemist is the secondary job for you!

Hey no level 1 filler slow!

Level 1- Quick hands: You can use !Draw as a free action. Ahem "Why is !Draw an action." I mean it's kind of mandatory for the alchemist to do it's thing, but you know it shouldn't be.
Specializations
Combat Medic: You can equip rifles/crossbows. I don't mind specs to give new gear on secondary jobs, it kind of makes sense.
Improptu Magic: Your magic items can use water for attack and damage instead of fire.
!Treatment: It suppresses all negative conditions on a single target, not group targeting unlike 3e so not the obvious point.

Level 19- Pharmacology: This doubles the effect of your hp&Mp healing items. As I said do you want to be a healer? Also add Wind to your Armor and Water to your M.Armor.
3e Design Corner: OH BOY THIS, Back in the days of 3e early on you added your Vit to arm and Spr to m.arm instead of that weird calculation system. HOWEVER, This made character's too tanky at low levels, so they came up with this stupid % system based on your worn armor(24 vit on lvl22 character....10 arm). But look at this, EVERY subjob adds Earth or Wind to Arm, and Water or Fire to M.Arm at lvl19. So instantly escaping the low level problem with few hurdles.
Specializations
Alchemical Fire: Your magic items do 10% of their base damage again at the end of the round ignoring armor.
Vaccination: When you cure a status with an item they gain immunity to that status for the next two rounds.
Poison Distilling: When your item inflicts a negative status it lasts an additional round.

Level 35- Distribute: Whenever your ST healing overheals someone you get it is divided among the rest of the group.
!Mix: OH GOD MIX IS THERE A CHART?! Thankfully...no mix is actually simple it's a Slow(1) action that mixes two items together, If you mix two of the same basic item together you get the next stronger version. Potion+Potion=High Potion. If you mix two different items in the same category the weaker becomes group targeting. Tonic+Antidote=Mass Tonic. If you mix items from different categories(ie healing and magic items) the GM has license to start building the chart of weird shit, but only for what you've experimented with. I like it, it has a simple and clean core function but does allow for the weird shit mix does but you have to explore around the item combos in game.
Al chemical Tenacity: +1 Hp&Mp multipliers. Or you know you can skip all that are just have lvl more hp and mp.

Level 50- Unstable Potion: You drink weird potions, gain W: one transform status and R: all others, swapable each day. Why can't it just be R: or I: Transform? So another, the ult is the specialization, but you know what they are going to be right?
W-Item: Use two !Item commands at once, no muss, no fuss. I wish this game in general was a little more willing to just give "Slightly better" free commands more often.
Auto Potion: When you are attacked as a reaction you can use !Draw and !Item as long as the item targets yourself. No requirement it make sense for the attack, oh no.

Criticisms: Ummmm quick hands exists because of a silly rule? The Ultimate is kind of meh and you get the whole specialization is the ult thing? Not a lot of criticisms here, outside the ability to have Group Treatment and W-Item AND Auto-Potion you are basically the 3e Alchemist stapled onto your old job. Which means you legit can play healer.


The Berserker
Welcome to my favorite secondary class.
The Berserker is a TANK, yep, they are the first tank. They however do not prevent allies from taking damage and take less, oh no. Berserker's as you would guess WANT to take damage, and do tons of it while they are at it.

Level 1- Counter Attack: Any time you are physically attacked you can use the !Attack command dropping any init die(see it's not a scary thing, just let us do it.), also the difficulty of counter attacks is 0+Stat.(so +4 to-hit)
Specializations
!Hamedo: This requires you to store an init die, but means your counter attack is triggered before their attack and therefore can stop their action. It is the lynchpin of the best thing about being a berserker.
Riptose: Use counter attack even if they miss you, pretty awesome.
Kharmic strike: Ignores flight and increases the difficulty of reactions to your counter attack by 3. This is almost good, but not quite maybe if your counter ignored barriers too? Nothing gets between you and their face? Go with hamedo or riptose.

Level 19- !Provoke: Choose an enemy for the next 2 rounds whenever they attack and don't attack you, then you can !Attack them as a free action. Of course if they attack you then you can counter attack. Just imagine an entire party of berserkers every time the boss uses a ST ability the other 3 characters smash his face. Air to Armor, Water to M.Armor(wait not fire?)
Specializations
Ignore the Pain: 50% more armor against targets of provoke.
!Howl: It uh, is a water based mental break, move along kids, nothing to see here.
Sovereign Mind: Yes, HELL YES. You can use any non-slow action to Counter Attack or more Importantly !Hamedo, BEHOLD THE RAGE MAGE. Every time they hit you smack them in the face with a status to stop them....Btw jump isn't a slow action, so you can legit COUNTER JUMP with !Hamedo. Then since you provoked throw spears down at them because neener neener they can't hit you.

Level 35- Fury: When your hp is 25% or below you gain Strenghen (Physical). In addition you gain the dispel spell at level 40(Wait there is a dispel spell?)
Criticism: It should say (Magical) as well, DON'T PUNISH MY RAGE MAGE.
Bloodlust: When you are at 25% hp or lower the party has Strenghen (Physical), This is standard issue for this sort of ability.
Critical Comeback: When you take a critical hit gain an init die at 10.

Level 50- Unwavering Fury: You decide if their crits confirm or not. Ult is the spec.
Furious Madness: You gain !Berserk, inflicting berserk on yourself. ANYTIME you are berserked you get Strenghen (Physical) and can use Counter attack, Hamedo, Howl and Provoke not just !Attack.
Rage Magic: After making your spell attack roll you can pay 25% more mp to give it the ability to crit for x2 damage. Also you can counter against spells now.
Criticism: GIVE ME MY STRENGTHEN (MAGICAL) You even gave me a rage mage ult. More seriously Furious madness should give the 150% attack while berserked not some other thing on the adept as activating furious madness locks you into it and it shouldn't be a build of a single primary+secondary combo, nor should madness work against Fury. Critical comeback and unwavering should be moved into a single ability, because you need both for them to be interesting. I shouldn't need to get to 50 to become the actual berserker or to counter spells, spell crits yeah totally those things are awesome and worth their own ability.

Criticism: Of the whole package not a lot, but ult is the spec, and how late you can spell counter. I get rune mage is their own class, but how hard it is for tanks to stop magic is annoying, and this makes non-spell magic actions basically have no defenses.

FFRRPG 4e Part 15: Defender & Dervish

posted by WhitemageofDOOM Original SA post

FFRRPG 4e Part 15: Defender & Dervish

The Defender aka "I use cover"
Combine with adept to pretend you are the 3e paladin.

Level 1- !Cover: When an ally would take a physical attack you can use this reaction to take the hit, then for free use any appropriate reaction. (You ALWAYS have dodge.)
Specializations
Sentiniel: When an ally at 25% or below hp is attacked physically you may take the hit without spending an initiative die, you can't free reaction.
Arcane Defense: You can !Cover from magical actions, why the hell couldn't the berserker get this shit this early?
Armor Training: Gives you light, medium or heavy armor. Maybe if it gave 1 hp. But Sentinel or Arcane defense are so clearly better.

Level 19- Share the Pain: Gives you !Shared pain, when hit by a melee physical attack roll Earth vs. (7+Earth) to inflict half of the damage after armor to you and half to them. Wind to Armor, Fire to M.Armor.(Not earth/water? bwuh?)
Specialization
Healing Wind: Increase your mp multiplier by 1, and gain the healing spell group.
Defensive Mastery: Reduces the difficulty of your reactions by 2.
Noble Sacrafice: When an ally is hit by an attack with fatal you may take it as a free action, this ignores immunity. (But not resistance!)

Level 35- Astra: Grants you the spell astra which makes one ally immune to status for one round.
Specialization
Astraga: Gives astraga which is well Group Astra
Perseus Mirror: When astra blocks a status you may spend an iniative die to reflect the attack. Meh, the costing an init die kills it vs. Astraga.

Level 50- Immortal Body: Auto-Reraise. No taking damage for a chance to trigger it but only once per combat or anything just "You start each combat with reraise."
Specialization
Immortal Soul: Gain great gospel which gives A: all magic elements for the round, boooo give me I:all elements.
Immortal Technique: Gain ANY reaction.

Criticisms: Ummmm perseus mirror sucks? Armor training is bad? It isn't as hilarious as a team of berserkers spamming provoke? What else is there to criticize defender is damn near perfect.


The Dervish
So really the ninja, minus throw.

Level 1- Ambidexterity: Gives you the two weapons group. Twin weapons have the 2handed damage core(x3-x20) and get the dual wield property(reroll !attack once) free, is that worth a level 1 ability? I have no idea!
Specializations
Quick Draw: You can !draw and !Item to equip a weapon once per round as a free action, well if you are abusing katanas....but if you are abusing katanas WHY ARE YOU A DERVISH?!
Killer's Garments: Gives medium armor, bow, and throwing weapons. If you are using a bow....
Deadly Dance: When you hit with an attack action lower an init die by 1 to the minimum of the current tick, welp nothing better.

Level 19- Critical Speed: Gain haste at 25% or below hp. Wind to Armor, Fire to M.Armor.
Specializations
Blade Barrier: Add Earth to Armor, and Water to M.Armor. This is NOT the right class.
Danger Zone: Spend 25% of your hp to haste yourself for the round at start of round. (ie roll an init die.)
Two weapon Defense: You get the reaction !double parry, against melee physical attacks. Which is Earth or Wind vs. (4+Earth) so a better dodge.

Level 35- Deadly Accuracy: Crit on an 8, 9 or 10.
Specializations
Deep Cut: Your crits ignore armor and m.armor.
Zen focus: At the begging of each round choose one of your initiative dice rather than rolling it.

Level 50- Fierce Assault: When you deal damage 2 or more times in a tick only apply armor once.
Specializations
Rain of Blows: Once per round when you hit with !Attack you may use !Attack again. This should really be the ultimate.
Precise Hits: Once per round you may re-roll an attack roll.

Criticisms: Besides rain of blows not being the ult? And Blade barrier being on absolutely the wrong job? The biggest is the lack of classes who can really utilize dervish. Other than that it knows what it wants to do and does it well. It also lacks a good set of level 1 specializations.


Next up, the only poorly designed secondary class. The Fencer.

FFRRPG 4e Part16: Fencer, Phalanx & Rune Knight

posted by WhitemageofDOOM Original SA post

FFRRPG 4e Part16: Fencer, Phalanx & Rune Knight

Today we will be delving into to two of the more disappointing secondary jobs, one without a clear theme.

The Fencer

Level 1- You get !Arrow guard, which blocks ranged attacks this makes it the only thing to stop jutsu's yay.
Specializations
Lighting Strike: Opponents can't interrupt your actions, is this just interrupts or reactions too if it's just interrupts before your turn that's good. If it's no reactions well fencer is worthwhile just for how broke this is.
Slim Target: Once per round you can drop your lowest init die instead a held die for a reaction, not that you should need to hold dice for reactions. Also gain Bows or Light Blades, as an extra equip goes pretty good.
Swarm Attack: Gives !Swarmstrike, which inflicts poison.....ok.

Level 19- Premptive Attack: You can set one of your iniative dice to 1 after rolling. Wind to armor, Water to M.Armor.
Specializations
Return fire: You succeed with arrow guard you can discard an initiative die to !Attack...why not just let me attack?
Coverage: Use arrow guard when any ally is attacked, fine.
False Weakness: When you succeed at arrow guard you can force the target to repeat the attack losing their next initiative die. That's interesting. I like that this is the improve arrow guard level.

Level 35- Slippery: Increase the difficulty of spells at you by 2. Since their default difficulty is 0....ummmm....yeah.
Specializations
Divert Attention: You have vanish for the first 3 ticks of each round, this is weird. Not sure how to grade it or if it's on the right class.
Just a Scratch: Ignore the extra effects of a crit 1/round.

Level 50- Total Defense: You can postpone any number of actions. I am 100% certain you can do preposterously broken stuff with this, but i'd have to spend 49 levels as fencer.
Specializations
Water Dance: Each time you are attacked reduce your reactions difficulty by 1 to a minimum of 0+Enemy Stat. This resets at end of round.
Lethal Precison: After rolling a crit on a non-spell attack that can't crit you can discard an initiative die to let it crit. Why isn't this on the dervish?

Criticisms: You know, most of the secondary classes are good, then there is this smoking pile. Lemme quote.
So this is the reaction job, but it HAS NO REACTIONS except dodge, parry/block depending on weapon, and arrow guard. In essence none of it's reactions do anything but spend dice to not-die. It's NOT GOOD AS THE REACTION JOB. But hey you know what makes sense for the fencer? How about the goes fast job, there is no secondary job for going first and often(dervish dips there but they are focused on the !Attack command and twin weapons, not actually just having the best initiative.). Here i'll outline a main progression.
Level 1- Auto Strengthen (Speed) (Reduce all initiative dice rolled by 1.)
Level 19- Change nothing
Level 35- You begin each combat with a saved initiative die.
Level 50- Steal Footwork from the rogue(ie get an extra initiative die at 10.)
Behold a functional secondary job. Now if someone wants to be the guy who always goes first they know what to pick.

The Phalanax
Level 1- Impenetrable: You gain !Third eye, when hit with a melee attack roll earth vs. (4+Wind) to negate it. So block/parry but i can equip a two handed weapon.
Specializations
Martial Trainings: Choose two types of weapons: Heavy Weapons, Polearms, Medium Weapon & Shield(Why i have third eye?), Katana or Throwing Weapons. You can equip them. If this gave you heavy armor and the two handed weapons (Polearms, Heavy Weapons, and Katanas) I'd see the point.
Excessive Force- Your crits break charges. Well this doesn't fit the theme at all.
Willpower- You can use fire or earth for hp, and get +1 hp multiplier up to 5. Welp, best option.

Level 19- Tireless: While hp is 25% or lower gain protect. Wind to Armor, Fire to M.Armor.
Specializations
Inspiring Courage: Tireless is now protectga.
Preventive Defense: Tirless is active at 50% or lower.
Bone breaker: ONCE PER ROUND at 25% or lower hp your !Attack does 150% damage. Yeah no, not touching this.

Level 35- Unshakeable: You gain !Shield wall, which let's you absorb PHYSICAL attacks that target you and an ally, if you succeed you negate it, if you fail you take another 50%. Besides being kind of meh being it only works on group physicals this is ABSOLUTELY the wrong class.
Specializations
Runic Shield: You can shield wall spells and magical attacks, ah yes the specialization actually use your ability.
Reinforced Shield: When you use !Shield Wall you get Strenghen(Armor) until end of turn.

Level 50- Indestructible: When you gain a barrier status it lasts an additional round.
Specializations
!Scream: Reaction to negate any non-damaging portions of an attack.
Uncontrollable: Gain the Slow(3) action !Meatbone Slash, which does your max hp or 999 whichever is less. Well that's a hell of an upgrade over life break.

Criticisms: The planet will break before the guard, and you are the guard. That's the pitch, practice does not seem to pan out. While the idea is fine "Boost your defense sky high because no abilities are used on tanking" you get shield wall the worst tanking ability in the game, and the defense buff....isn't that great.

Ugh return me to the world of good secondary jobs.

Oh hi Rune Knight

Level 1- !Runic: is a reaction, it eats spells and magical attacks, but importantly IS A REACTION so you will never eat your own teams spells. For some reason it only affects spells that hit you, but does count group spells.
Specializations
Magic Drain: When you !Runic a spell you get the mp cost added to you. I like how what seems a core feature isn't but a specialization of the ability. (I'm serious.)
Runic Area: Use !Runic to protect anyone in the party.
Offensive Runes: Use !Runic when a monster is targeted....this should just be combined with area.
Exotic Runes: Use Wind or Water for !Runic, if you do reduce the difficulty by 1 to boot.

Level 19- Spell Protection: While hp is 25% or lower gain shell. Wind to Armor, Fire to M.Armor.
Specializations
Protection Circle: Shellga.
Enhanced Protection: At 50% or lower shell.
Desperate Blow: Gain the quick magical action !Magic Ruin, sacrifice your shell while it's up for the rest of the encounter and if you hit reduce their mp by (Max Hp - Current hp)....hahaha yeah no. Not touching this.

Level 35- Dispel Magic: Gain the Slow(1) action !Dispel Strike, an attack that removes all positive statuses from the target. Auto or SoS statuses are suppressed until end of round.
Specializations
Selective Dispel: You choose which statuses to end, positive or negative....ummmm that's really niche.
Anti-Magic Zone: You may use an All version of dispel strike that does no damage. Also very niche(my enemies have all the statuses i have none) also should really be it's own action.

Level 50- Return Magic: When you !Runic a spell discard an initiative die to cast it.
Specializations
Triple Magic: After being hit by a spell use the reaction !Triple magic, to cast it three times. This is ok, in that i use only one init die to counter magic with.
!Spell Ruin: Pay 10% of your max mp to attack for 150% damage and the same to their mp.....Nope not insulting this, 150% weapon damage is a lot in this system and then this happens to wreck mp as well.

Criticisms: The level 35 specializations are terrible, desperate blow blows. Like most secondary jobs the Rune Knight knows what it wants to do and just does it.

FFRRPG 4e Part 16: Squire and Sage

posted by WhitemageofDOOM Original SA post

FFRRPG 4e Part 16: Squire and Wizard Sage

Squire

Level 1- Basic skill: Steal the lvl1 ability from any other secondary job.
Throw Stone: You get the ability !Throw stone, do Wind vs (4+Wind) with the damage of a thrown weapon of your level. So beyond being better than jutsu in every possible way, this is pretty good utility allowing to "Have a second weapon equipped" useful for ranged, breaking through high YOUR STAT enemies if your wind is higher, lots of stuff.
Equip Axe: Equip medium Weapons & Shields, and Heavy Weapons. Meh.
Artful Dodger: Drops the difficulty of !dodge to 3 putting it on par with parry or block.
Draw Out: When you use a Spell Weave item the weapon doesn't break, but the power is still exhausted for the encounter.

Level 19 - Focus: You get the slow(4) action !accumulate that gives Strengthen(Power) until the end of the next round. Yeah, no, not for slow 4. Wind to Armor, Fire to M.Armor.
Specializations
Mana Well: Your !Accumulate also gives Strengthen(Magic).
Counter Tackle: The difficulty of enemies !Flee is 2 higher....I care why? I don't lose xp.
Spell Evasion: You can !dodge spells.
Weapon Caster: Your Spell Weave, Spell Critical and Spell Focus abilities can use the weapon's offensive stat for accuracy, but not damage.

Level 35- Overwhelm Defenses: Once per tick when you miss reroll with +2 difficulty.
Specializations
!Awareness: as an action all enemies lose vanish....lol.
Faith&Bravery: If you have weaken (mental or armor) you get strenghen (magical) or (physical) and vica versa, a really cool way to implement faith and brave up/down.
Mighty Dodge: When you !Dodge, you may also !Attack.

Level 50- Tailwind: Gives !yell, which gives an ally an initiative die at the current tick. So entrust, we know how cheese THAT is.
Specializations
Ordered Retreat: When you succeed with !Flee it becomes teleport ie everyone flees. This is....underwhelming for 50 considering how early the time mage did this.
Graduation: Pick any action from another secondary job and take it. Weirdly the squire has the most actions.

Criticisms: For the focus on the basics class, it doesn't do that. The only basic it focuses on is dodge, if there was an attack, item, and dodge way to build this class it'd be much more interesting. Especially with things like mighty dodge letting you weave the two. Hilariously this class is a better evade tank than the fencer because of how good it can make dodge.

Wizard Sage

Level 1- Arcane Adept- If your mp multiplier is 0 it becomes 1. This is the ONLY time i think this is approriete. Also gain one of spell group that can be taken at lvl1, because i'm not listing all of those.
Specializations
Armored Mage: Heavy Armor and Polearms, Pass.
Residual Energies: Whenever you cast a spell your next spell this round costs 25% less mp. Neat very tactical.
Vital Sacrafice: 1/round you can use hp instead of mp to cast a spell, healing spells do puncture damage. If you don't have enough mp left you can always cast from hp.

Level 19- Counter Magic- After suffering a magic attack or spell use !Attack. Wind to armor, Fire to M.Armor.
Specializations
Arcane Warrior: Once per round after casting a spell use !Attack. Great for mages and fighter sages.
Dispel Barriers: Gain the Slow(2) action !shieldbreak which removes shell and reflect from everyone, just make it enemies and i might give it a second look.
Persistent Curses: When your negative status spell runs out for the first time you can repeat the attack at the start of the next round for free, and THIS is why you don't have durations besides one round or encounter.

Level 35- Silent Spell: Once per round you may cast a spell while muted. Remove the once per round.
Specializations
Shape Elements: Change a spells elemental type for 25% more mp.
Focused thoughts: Gain any spell group, obvious choice.

Level 50- Arcane Master: Gain any spell group. Also....the spec is the ult.
!W-Magic: Cast two spells as a slow(1) action the combined mp cost cannot exceed 150. This is an elegant way to limit dual casting from spamming huge spells and focus on it's utility. The obvious choice for casters.
Forbidden Arcana: Steal any black mage mage job's arcane mysteries. The obvious choice for non-casters.

criticisms: It isn't called the sage, it takes FAR too long to get it's second spell group (35). In general it's not good enough at giving magic to non-casters so much as buffing casters to more casteryness and the "Make non-casters able to cast" should be the primary focus imho. (since sages just need some more spell groups.), some more spell groups and 2 base mp if less would go a long way.

Secondary Job Criticisms: Nothing that really stands out that isn't said in the jobs(fencer needs a total rework, phalanx and squire need a devpass), in addition are Stats to arm supposed to all be the same or not? it seems it's Fire to M.Arm which is weird as Water is magic defense normally.

FFRRPG 4e Part 17: I think i can jam everything after classes into one post

posted by WhitemageofDOOM Original SA post

FFRRPG 4e Part 17: I think i can jam everything after classes into one post

Magic section
It's just spell selection as I've said spells come in 3-4 packs as you level, not a lot to note.
The Gravity lines difficulty is the % of hp they lose, making quarter and black hole harder to hit than death, also those aren't group targeting for some reason, also hard to simplify.

Summoning only has 3 tiers 14th level with lvl34 grand summons(only Valefor has a good grand summon, group !Jump, and fenris who gives group status, the rest is more damage/healing that falls off), 24th level with 54 grand summons, and 44th level and 64th grand summons. It really does lack any good summons till 24, then you get carbuncle and golem but not a lot else.
The lvl44 You get some interesting stuff. In general while 3e overstuff the high level summons, summons at least got their interesting weirdness over spells here a lot of the 9 slots per rank are tank by damage(4-5) then you've got a heal summon, not a lot of room for the fun stuff.
Criticism: You only need about 3 summons devoted to damage per tier(I get this is harder at tier 1 but Valefor is a great example of what you can do.), give the summoner more breathing room. Also it's not clear that !Summon included a !Call as part of it's action in the ability but is here.

Geomancy is a lot of words for a small part of the series, and the terrain chart, make everything work like cosmic and you just need to pay speed, or let me master terrains i can always use.

Performances we covered.

Economy
Mundane shit is free, ok, awesome money is only for combat shit, i accept this. Also keeping those lines distinct.
But just because it's mundane doesn't mean you can just have it(like your inevitable airship.)
If you want expensive train passes or whatever you use your social skills, and use aquiring the airship as a IC goal.
It then mentions of course treasure hunters are going to turn mundane items into gil, duh.

It then talks about earning gp(at least 8 per exp), and including random treasure(especially if your rogue has treasure hunt or steal ofc!).
It reminds the GM that if it's something the party is likely to sell off then you need to think of it as it's sell price(1/2 off).
It explicitly talks about the rogue and not screwing them out of their bonus now, like making sure to include helpful items for coming encounters on treasure lists if they have treasure hunter/steal. It straight up says the opposite of 3e that rogues should bring more money to the table.

Equipment
There's only three types of armor. None of that hands/hands/body slot stuff, so much more reason to keep up. Also Equipment has minimum levels.
Light- Low Arm, High M.Arm
Medium- Balanced Arm & M.Arm
Heavy- High Arm, Low M.Arm
criticism: there's still only 3 items per slot at each tier so it's easy to run out of unique gear for a party, and few enchantment options in each slot.

Then there's weapon where it is mentioned weapon abilities only apply to !Attack, now !Attack is a more relevant command than 3e I admit, but it still sucks to only treat my weapon as a stat stick half the time and heavily encourages more damage weapons. Also All weapons use only one of 2 code damage ranks instead of /5/, one handed(x2-x16) or two handed(x3-x20), and each has some kind of use. If a weapon group offers more than one damage type you choose the type as types can cover a lot of grounds, but sometimes are specific.
Light Blades- Do 1 handed puncture damage, Use your wind(for attack and damage) and are defended against with Wind, Can use !Parry a reaction that works on all physicals as Wind vs. (4+Wind)
Medium Weapons & Shields- Do 1 handed Cut or Crush damage, Use earth(fore attack and damage) and are defended against with Earth, Can use !Block which is the same as !Parry except using Earth for Attack&Defense.
Criticism: Considering shields are part of this weapon type, I really feel that Medium Weapons should get defensive enchantments.
Heavy Weapons: Do 2 handed Cut or Crush damage, Use Earth and are defended against with Earth.
Polearms: Do 2 handed puncture damage, Use Earth OR Wind and are defended against with Wind.
Claws/Gloves: Do 1 handed cut or crush damage, Use Earth and are defended against with Wind.
Katanas: Do 2 Handed Cut damage, Use Wind and are defended against with Earth. All enchanted Katanas have the Spellweaver property, which allows you to "Break" the item to cast a spell(it is fixed at end of combat.). So the Draw Out ability of Samurai from FFT became part of Katana's....Neet.
Bows: Do 2 handed ranged puncture damage, Use wind and are defended against with Wind.
Thrown Weapons: Do 1 handed ranged puncture damage, Use Earth and are defended against with Wind.
Rifles/Crossbows: Do 2 handed ranged puncture damage, Use Fire and are defended against with Wind.
Wands/Rods: Do 1 handed ranged magical crush damage, Use Fire and are defended against with Fire. Most have arcane focus(Can cast a spell even if you don't know it) and spell weaver for a stronger version.
Staves: Do 2 handed magical crush damage, Use Fire and are defended against with Water. Like rods most have arcane focus/spell weaver.

Then we have the accessory list, you can equip 2 of these now, there's still some stinkers.
Criticism:Rip out most stuff with I: Individual Status, and give us stuff to resist status groups, you made R:Status actually use it.

There are then battle items which notably don't have level limits to let characters get things above there level....this is a 4e rituals thing where i need to give them items so they will actually use that feature isn't it? It is? Ok.
Also the cost of some items is....wonky, an item that casts stone is cheaper than stop, and an item that casts break is cheaper than stone. In fact I can mix Stone+Break for less than stop and get Mass Break.....which if i am ever in the designer's campaign, i will do, incessantly, until everything has I:Transform.

Gming chapter

Blah blah, assigning exp. About 200 a session(but exp costs go up....), not group exp costs by default but mentioned as an option.

There's a thing about not worrying about min/maxers as the stat system hurts them, but uhhhhh i worry about the guy who just picks Primary+Secondary job and doesn't know their specialization path, not the guy throwing all their points into one stat.

Monster Creation

Oh man man, I've been looking forward to this chapter.
Check out this system.

Assign a monster stat totals, that's it's level as usual.
Here's about the hp, mp, arm, m.arm and damage multipliers appropriate to that level range.
Now give it any abilities you feel appropriate, either auto statuses, spells, special commands, shit you made up. Oh and don't forget to assign the stats of it's !Attack.
Normal monsters get three init dice, notorious get 4 and more hp, Bosses get 5 and tons of hp. (I'd do 2/4/6 myself, but it's nice to see the fact bosses just get more actions is assumed.)

........This is so much easier than 3e I can't begin to describe how happy that makes me.

Status conditions

Are way less organized, they also instead of stuffing all buffing statuses into own group have a positive/negative distinction(meh).
Mini is gone, as are heat/freeze.
Gravity is fully classed as a status type.
Confuse is still a mess.

Criticisms: Fix the formatting of the status list, negatives by type, then positives by type. Not alphabetical.
Suggestions: Rename toad polymorph to also cover mini, make it less all consumingly sucktastic there's enough save or dies. Make Stone, Stop and Charm also classed as fatal in addition to their normal type because they are save or dies especially since "Don't take stop so your GM won't give bosses I:Time" doesn't work. Make confuse simpler like 1-3 !Attack a random ally, 4+ act normally.