[Chronosplit]

I always use every job in some way in FF5.  Earlygame it's pretty useful before the water crystal in that it's the only one of two jobs that can use the best weapons available, and the spells mostly have general purpose use in all builds through the game (White Wind is great on a Monk's HP for example).  Doesn't hurt that the spells are pretty easy to learn in most cases in the game too so long as you weren't crazy about grinding, outside of the healing spells and Big/Mighty Guard.  Either way you can pretty well just level up the class until you learn !Blue and change jobs for learning until much later.

In 6 you just gotta use Lores, the rules for learning them are so relaxed that there's no reason not to.  They just come in as you play most of the time.

In 9 I'm not a fan of Quina in battle (forks are weird, some spells are neat but not nearly as fun as other games IMO), but it's the third-easiest way to learn them as it's basically the same as monster catching in other games.

Tactics Advance had some really cool spells attatched to play around with.  They're mostly built for non-mages for some reason, because only a couple of spells actually used the magic stat in a way that mattered.  So you can easily make a Paladin setup using Blue Magic for much better support options than White on the same build for example.  If you didn't have a beastmaster it was very hard learn them though, so I don't always use them or find reason to build one.  I really wish it wasn't locked into humans either, Blue Mage would sure be more useful to a Bangaa than a Bishop.

[MysticLord]

Tactics Advance had some really cool spells attatched to play around with.  They're mostly built for non-mages for some reason, because only a couple of spells actually used the magic stat in a way that mattered.  So you can easily make a Paladin setup using Blue Magic for much better support options than White on the same build for example.  If you didn't have a beastmaster it was very hard learn them though, so I don't always use them or find reason to build one.  I really wish it wasn't locked into humans either, Blue Mage would sure be more useful to a Bangaa than a Bishop.

In that case, shouldn't Beastmaster belong to the Bangaa too? Makes more sense there, since Nu Mou Beastmaster is useless against non-monsters. At least on a Bangaa you can treat it like a warrior class.

[Chronosplit]

In that case, shouldn't Beastmaster belong to the Bangaa too? Makes more sense there, since Nu Mou Beastmaster is useless against non-monsters. At least on a Bangaa you can treat it like a warrior class.

Good point.  Beastmaster was also weird on Nu Mu because it's physical based for some reason.  Technically you could just have Morpher be there from the get-go in job selection and have it be the Sage requirement, and no one would be the wiser.

[MysticLord]

Back on the Blue magic tack, my hot take is that Blue Magic should have weird niche spells and it should allow you to manipulate everything that can be manipulated in battle. If anything it does is also done by other classes, it should have it's own unique way to do those things. To find this out, I look at whatever values exist in battle that can be manipulated.

In FFT, this means:
* Stat damage/healing/absorb (PA, MA, SP, Brave, Faith, CT, Experience)
* HP/MP damage/healing/absorb
* Zodiac sign and birthday alteration
* Status effect infliction and cancellation
* Various status effect CTs
* Revival
* Gear break/theft
* Using consumable items
* Sprite, gender, monster flag, and job class alteration


Quina has a spell called Angel's Snack that uses a Remedy on each party member, and is a good example of this perspective.

[FAST6191]

I can certainly see the potential there (and it is not like we have not seen a thousand hacks play with such systems for similar reasons) but how you would avoid it being overpowered whilst also making people want to play it vs having specialists, or everybody having similar powers by one means or another, I don't know.

[MysticLord]

I can certainly see the potential there (and it is not like we have not seen a thousand hacks play with such systems for similar reasons) but how you would avoid it being overpowered whilst also making people want to play it vs having specialists, or everybody having similar powers by one means or another, I don't know.

That's just an example from FFT, there would be a different set of things you could manipulate in other games.

To balance power levels (lol): power should be directly correlated with particular or conditional limits on utility.

Bear in mind that I like the ideas behind the Final Fantasy job classes, I just think they're poorly implemented. My ideas are alternative implementations. And to get to Blue mage I kind of need to cover all the other color mages, so please bear with my effort post. I'll use FFT as an example.

Feel free to skip if you're impatient.

Spoiler:

Example 1: Black mage should IMO get access to most elements except holy and oddball effects (gravity, poison), and should have several levels of each spell with varying power, MP costs, and if applicable casting speeds. Maybe range and AoE too. Since all of its skills are powered by MA, and they have long charge times, it needs MA most of all and isn't served by particularly high SP. Let's call it a Power Mage.

Logic: The Black mage as elementalist blaster lets you hit every weakness, which if your elemental affinities on enemies/gear are balanced should always give you a good offensive option. This also gives you an option for synergistic builds around elemental absorbing gear/classes/characters/etc, which gives your Black mage two roles: primary elemental damage dealer, secondary elemental healer.

Example 2: White mage is almost perfect, it just needs slightly improved buffs and holy elemental damage spells that work just like the Black mage. As its skills are more useful if they are put on your party before they close with the enemy, and many of its skills don't use MA that much (buff hit rates are MA + X, while healing/damage amount is MA * X), it can afford to give up some MA for SP. Call it a Speed Mage.

Example 3: Green mage (AKA Oracle/Mystic) needs better debuffs, and the AoE and hit rate of its skills should be improved. It's two damaging spells - Drain and Osmose - use MA for hit rate IIRC, or not at all. I think their damage should be MA * X instead of a (X * max HP / 100), so they are more useful for other mages. Either way all its skills are (MA + X) hit rate, and getting two turns to inflict a debuff is more useful than 1 or 2 more percentage points to inflict a debuff, so it should be a Speed Mage.

Example 4: Gray mage (AKA Time mage) is similiar to the White mage, but is more offensive support while White mage is defensive support. Its only damage options should be 2 or 3 Demi spells, and a very powerful and slow Meteor spell (which I want to be the only non-elemental damage spell in the game). I really want the Demi spells to do (MA * X) as a percentage of the unit's current HP, and to accept an element (Dark). While its role as support mage and its fluff seem like it should be a Speed Mage, I think it should be a Power Mage since I also think it should promote from Black mage and because I want all types of stat growths available at any level.

Example 5: Summoner should IMO be the generalist Power Mage: it's slow, it's powerful, it has a wide AoE, and it can do everything that all the other mages can do. That said, it should do so in a limited manner: massive MP costs, randomized (1...n) de/buff infliction/cancellation. Since it's slow and it's damage spells are (MA * X), it should be a Power Mage.

With all that in mind, and the "monsters must be able to use these skills too" consideration, here are my ideas for a FFT Blue Mage.

Stat Growths: Balanced PA, MA, and SP growths/multipliers. It's spells don't necessarily rely on MA, and it can use something to do when it hasn't learned many spells, so it should have decent PA and gear options so it can stab things until it grows a bit.

Gear Selection: Probably everything but heavy armors for the head and body slots. It could stand to have knives, swords, rods, staves, sticks, and crossbows.

Skills: Have a way to do everything that can be done in FFT, but in a way unique to you.

Skills List:
* White Wind: Heal up to 5 targets in a cross shaped AoE up to your current amount of HP.
* Explode: Kill yourself and damage everything but you in the AoE with your (max HP - current HP).
* Bad Breath: inflict 1 debuff at random from the list of all debuffs, AoE of 3.
* Reincarnate: turn a monster into another random monster; or switch a generic human's gender flag, change their job to a random one that they have available, randomize their equipped secondary skillset and skills from those available, and randomize their zodiac sign. There will be limits on this depending on the target, since only a certain number of sprites are available on each battlefield.
* Seagull's Snatch: Steal a random equipped item from the target.
* Sunder: Break a random equipped item on a target.
* Sacrifice: Kill yourself and revive all your allies on the battlefield at 1 HP.
* Forest Song: Remove a random debuff from all allies in a wide AoE.
* Dragon Soul: Add a random buff to all targets in a 5 square, cross shaped AoE.
* Soul Steal: Absorb a % of current HP and MP from a target adjacent to you.
* Transfer: Give a certain % of your current MP to target within 3 range.
* Blood Transfer: Damage your HP by a certain %, give half that amount in MP to a target within 3 range.
* Steal Essence: Reduce an adjacent target's PA, MA, or SP by 2, increase your own by that amount.
* Heart Feed: Reduce a target's Brave or Faith by 20%, increase your own by that amount.
* Warp Time: Damage yourself by a certain percentage of your HP, damage CT all targets in AoE by that same amount (10% HP damage = -10 CT).
* Blood Sin: Damage a target in 4 squares by the amount of your current Experience, and reduce your Experience to 0.
* Renewal: All allies in an AoE have the duration of their debuffs halved, and that of their buffs doubled.
* Curse: Single target has the duration of its debuffs doubled, and that of its buffs halved.
* Potion Spray: give all allies in a  5 range line a the lowest available potion.


Some of these are terrible, some are unbalanced (but that's easy to fix, just tweak the AoE, range, hit rate, damage, and so on), but the gist of the Blue Mage is that it is the wildcard generalist: it can do anything that any other class can do, just not as good as them.

[PowerPanda]

For your suggested changes to the other mage classes, you should check out my patch "Final Fantasy Tactics: Emergence". I am pretty happy with how I was able to handle the White (healing), Black (attacking), Green (debuffs), Purple (buffs) Magicks, by focusing on specializing those classes. I turned the Squires into Red Mages (a little of everything), and the Orators into a class that could directly affect Faith/Brave/PA/MA/SP.

I REALLY tried to create a Blue Mage. Originally, that's how I redesigned Luso's special class. Ultimately though, the game system doesn't support it. In order to make an effective Blue Mage in the Tactics engine, you need to block off access to nearly all equipment. There is only one character who is set up for this, and that is Reis. She has to be set up like this, because she uses the Dragon Breath abilities. So, in lieu of a true Blue Mage, I was able to make Reis learn the Hydra's "Tri" abilities on contact.

[MysticLord]

For your suggested changes to the other mage classes, you should check out my patch "Final Fantasy Tactics: Emergence". I am pretty happy with how I was able to handle the White (healing), Black (attacking), Green (debuffs), Purple (buffs) Magicks, by focusing on specializing those classes. I turned the Squires into Red Mages (a little of everything), and the Orators into a class that could directly affect Faith/Brave/PA/MA/SP.

I downloaded it a few months ago, just have such a lack of motivation and disgust at doing anything on a screen that I haven't got around to it.

I disagree with splitting healing from buffing. These roles are too minor on their own - even together they aren't always useful, you need an offensive option even if it is very conditional (holy element).

There's a point where the fluff makes more sense than role categorization. White mage has stuck around because it's just good, and good things tend to last.

My take is that Squires should be the Brave/Faith de/buffer and PA/MA/SP buffer as those skills are useful for everyone, and everyone starts as a Squire (usually, but also especially in my hypothetical mod).

Really no idea what to do with Orator since making a Blue Mage is pretty much impossible due to reasons below, the lack of formula customization, and my own ignorance of AI hardcoding. Other ideas for it include:
* Warlock, aka all the oddball target/caster/(current hp)/(max hp - current hp) skills plus some MP transfer and HP for MP skills.
* Inquisitor, faith drain swordskills that deal more damage the lower the targets faith and the higher yours.
* Roué, which is de/buff inflict/cancel class that uses only the hit_opposite_gender(MA + X) formula.

Only Roué is feasible, so I'll probably go with that.

I REALLY tried to create a Blue Mage. Originally, that's how I redesigned Luso's special class. Ultimately though, the game system doesn't support it. In order to make an effective Blue Mage in the Tactics engine, you need to block off access to nearly all equipment. There is only one character who is set up for this, and that is Reis. She has to be set up like this, because she uses the Dragon Breath abilities. So, in lieu of a true Blue Mage, I was able to make Reis learn the Hydra's "Tri" abilities on contact.

FFT Blue Mage requires you first rebalance or just redo monster stats and skills. Monster skills are designed for high PA and absurdly high (2 to 5 times higher than human) MA. You need to literally make a spreadsheet with graphs and charts so you can plot out the hit rates and damage at each level for your stats, for every skill, for every monster (or monster archetype, if you do that).

There isn't enough known about monster and human animations, specifically getting them to work in tandem on the same skill.

It's easier just to slightly modify existing monster skills to make them better, and replace them with other low lying fruit to make them more effective.


Back slightly on topic, my take on the class implementation is that some classes should be very set in stone, and others more experimental. The player should know if they want to heal without thinking too hard, they become a White Mage or a Chemist. If they want to blast things, become a Black Mage. If they want to debuff or steal health and mana, become a Green Mage.

The goal with this is to enable as many play-styles as possible - casual, power-gamer, experimenter, speedrunner, intermittent.

Blue mage fits into this as both a generalist (it can do anything, and works as both a warrior and mage) and an esotericist (it's spells power should IMO come from weird side effects as much as being just plain ole powerful). It should require thought to wring the most out of it, though you should also be able to grab a few core skills and power through it if you don't want to think too hard.

[PowerPanda]

I want to keep this mostly on-topic, rather than just talking about FFT hacking, but I want to respond to one thing about the Healing/Buff split. In my hack, Faith is not used in Healing or Attack calculations. It's purely the Magick Stat. Faith is reserved specificially for giving/receiving statuses. The healing and buff classes are split so that an attack unit with high faith can still be a decent buffer/debuffer, even if their magic stat is low. I have also added an entirely new line of spells (Refresh) that restores MP. Since everything in my hack requires MP, even Martial Arts, a Healer definitely earns their spot.

Back on topic, are there any good Blue Mages outside of the FF series?

[Chronosplit]

Back on topic, are there any good Blue Mages outside of the FF series?

Technically Kirby does it in the Quina fashion.  That's the only one I can think of.  Brave Fencer Musashi Does a similar thing to that.

[thr]

Technically Kirby does it in the Quina fashion.  That's the only one I can think of.  Brave Fencer Musashi Does a similar thing to that.

Legend of Legaia does something like that too.

[FAST6191]

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PowerCopying would seem to be a choice link at this point.

[bl33p bl00p]

IMO the blue mage is meant to embody the spirit of exploration of and love for the fantasy world. It encourages players to roam the world and check each corner to find and observe (and kill!?) all the flora and fauna. The reward is access to unique spells, which I feel should be varied and proportional to the effort put into finding them.

That said, the mechanisms in some FF games have been overly grindy or luck based as has already been pointed out in the thread. But then a lot of "lists" in FF games are meant to be either partially and randomly complete at the end of the game, depending on your luck and decisions, or comprehensively ticked off through checking and rechecking every corner of the game constantly tapping the B button for hours on end or following a guide full of spoilers. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I was surprised to find that I couldn't think of any true blue mages in other works. Mimics are here and there such as Kirby. I also thought of Rogue, and I know there are others. Also there are characters such as Radagast who embody the spirit of exploration and love of the natural world, but not with the end result of having a new spell in your pocket.

I say love of nature, but in FF you always end up slaughtering them since they are monsters lol. Maybe there should be friendly encounters that teach blue spells as well.

[KingMike]

FF6 had at least one "friendly" encounter: Magic Pots which use healing items/spells on the party then escape.

[MysticLord]

Monsters in Saga Frontier are sort of Blue mages, but not really because most of their skills are terrible and that's their only thing.