FFT -- Gained JP Up

[Sasquatch]

Alright, I've tried playing through FFT a few times, but after I get so far, it gets extremely difficult. I don't know why. I usually don't level up that much -- but I figured since most enemies are at equal levels, it wouldn't matter much how much I do or don't level.

Another reason I don't level is that I always have Gained JP up on all of my characters. So I don't have to get that much Exp. while still getting good JP.

I figured I could come in here and have people who know much more about it than I do. Is the Gained JP Up ability a good idea? What abilities in what classes should I have my characters learn? (I'm talking about earlier in the game.) And how much leveling up should I do outside the regular storyline battles?

Also, usually, I keep very few characters -- eight or ten, at max. When I get somebody new, somebody old gets booted. This is mainly because Ramza must be in some battles, which means he'll level up faster than everybody else -- and if the storyline battle enemies level up with me, they'll match Ramza's level, and I'd rather not have everybody else at lower levels, so instead of taking all the time to level up everybody, I just dump the most useless ones.

[Mistress Sheena]

I always use Gained JP Up when I get the chance, early on in the game. I never dump everyone, though. I think I just have like 3 created characters. While everyone else are special party members. Cloud, Agrias, Beowulf, etc. And everyone is usually within the same level group, so eh. The only low ones are Cloud and Mustadio. They're in their 40s, heh.

[Sasquatch]

Yeah, but you start out with six or eight extra characters, then you get another three after the first chapter, then you collect all the special characters ... what's the use of 'em all? The three new ones, usually, I just un-equip and dump. If I'm not going to develop 'em, there's no point in keeping any. So the ones I have at the beginning, I'll keep them because I have the most time to develop them. And then most of the ones I pick up I'll keep, for their special abilities.

The Heaven Knight and Hell Knight, though ... I didn't like them. So out they went.

And I always use females for my magic-based jobs, as from what I've seen, females have a higher base Magic but a lower base Attack. Is this a good idea, or are there points against it?

[Mistress Sheena]

I didn't particularly like the Heaven/Hell characters either. I discarded them as soon as that story line was done. I threw out a lot of my characters ever since I discovered that there's a limit on party numbers. I had chocobos and such, but eh. I threw them out.

[Omega]

Well I used Gained JP Up like it was the best thing since sliced bread. I used it throughout the whole game except for maybe one battle, which is the end of Chapter 3 the battle with Weigraf. As you need everything possible to help you simply survive that battle.

Gained JP Up made the ardous task of getting JP for jobs alot faster. Even with that said, it was still somewhat slow. Certain jobs took forever to learn regardless, but also it really depends on how you go through the job heirarchy. If you do the easy jobs first it creates a nice cascading effect of JP into other jobs, however the disadvantage is you have to go through all the average job classes prior to getting to the really good ones or more advanced ones. The obvious bonus indifference is the advantage of using the job earlier indifference to gaining the cascading JP. It's hard to explain, you'd need to read an FAQ of how the JP goes.

I used it all the time, if I didn't things like the Summoner class would take ages to master, but I was also trying to master everything, so it was a necessity.

As far as the women, it's good because you'll have strong magicians, but if you don't train them as Warriors as well, you'll never get the Dancer job class, and vice versa for men, they'll never get the Bard class. I found it better to train them in all classes, that way they get more rounded out abilities indifference to being good at magic and horrible at physical attacks, and vice versa.

I liked the Heaven and Hell Characters, but there Philosophy Skill Magic was difficult to use. I kept them because they were badasses and I loved there storyline.

[Sasquatch]

Originally Posted by Cobain

Gained JP Up made the ardous task of getting JP for jobs alot faster. Even with that said, it was still somewhat slow. Certain jobs took forever to learn regardless, but also it really depends on how you go through the job heirarchy. If you do the easy jobs first it creates a nice cascading effect of JP into other jobs, however the disadvantage is you have to go through all the average job classes prior to getting to the really good ones or more advanced ones. The obvious bonus indifference is the advantage of using the job earlier indifference to gaining the cascading JP. It's hard to explain, you'd need to read an FAQ of how the JP goes.

Yeah, how does that work? I heard everybody gets 1/4 of the JP in the class earned by another character -- meaning, if you have one Summoner, and he/she earns 16 JP in a battle, everybody else gets 4 JP added to their Summoner stuff. But then, sometimes I won't have any of a certain class, and I'll still have some random number of JP in some random class. (For example, I might not have a Summoner, but for some reason, some of my characters will have seemingly random numbers of JP for Summoner.)

I'd like to figure out exactly how the JP works. Who gets what, and why.

[awall]

Ooh, a mechanics thread.

Sasquatch, you're right about the 1/4 rule. As far as I can tell, the ally JP is only given to characters who have unlocked that job for themselves; therefore, if you want to maximize the amount of JP character A gets from ally B, then B should wait until A has unlocked the appropriate job before spending a lot of time building JP.

The seemingly random amount of JP you notice appearing on classes you've never used... well, it is random. When you unlock a new class, you'll receive a random amount of JP to start out with. I believe you'll always start with between 100 and 200, although I could be misremembering... it might be between 100 and 150. This is rarely enough to buy anything, but it can give you a jump start to learning your first ability.

So is Gained-JP UP worth it? In my opinion, it is early on, but eventually you'll need a S-ability that actually does something. I feel that the JP you get as Squire on your way to unlocking Knight/Archer is best spent buying that ability, as you probably won't be getting any other support abilities for a while. Furthermore, classes further along the job tree tend to have better stat gain at level up, and this is especially important early in the game (see below), so you'll want to unlock advanced classes as quickly as possible. However, if you keep Gained-JP UP on the whole game, you'll finish learning all the abilities you'll ever need by chapter 3 or so, thereby wasting all the JP you get in chapter 4. Unless your goal is to master every single job in the game, I'd recommend taking it off once you get a better ability.

If you really need more JP, go to the bar and take some propositions. Each one you do nets 3 of your generics about 100 JP each in whatever job you want, without imposing the risk of having them level up as something bad.

Speaking of leveling up, how does that work? Well, the short version is that the amount of stat gain you get at level up is based on what your current stats are. If you have high PA, for example, leveling up as any class will get you a sizable PA boost. Without going into specifics, think of it as "stat gain = current stat * some multiplier for the job you're in". A Wizard might have a low multiplier, but if his current PA is high, then he'll still get a fair PA increase. This is why your early game stats are so important, as they'll factor into every level up you get for the remainder of the game. In actuality, the values the game uses aren't the displayed stats, but they're "invisible" numbers that the game keeps track of for each character. This means that your "real" PA can be high even when you're in a job like Wizard (again, think "current stat = real stat * multiplier for your job"). It also means that it's possible for two people to have the same displayed number, but for one person to have a slightly higher true value than the other.

So, the point of what I just said was to explain that yes, girls really are better mages than guys. The two sexes are treated the same from a stat growth point of view, but girls start out with better MP and MA than guys (and guys have better HP and PA than girls), and since this affects how much bonus they each get at level ups...

Regarding party size: You can actually get away with training 5 characters (including Ramza) and ditching the rest of your team. More will also work, but then you'll have to pick somebody every battle to leave out, and it will take longer to level up your party and build JP. Story battles don't (as far as I can tell) level up with you*, but enemies in random battles will always match the level of the highest levelled character in your full party (i.e. highest of your 16, not just highest of the 5 that fight) so the disadvantage in training too many characters is that Ramza will get too far ahead and then random battles will be nasty. Then again, they're usually not that difficult, so it might be worth doing to add a bit of challenge to the game... up to you.

(*except monsters. Monsters in story battles do level up with you... go figure)

And finally, random battles: You can get away with never fighting a single random battle if you want. You will be on the weaker side of things, and toward the end of the game you'll likely be dealing with enemies who are about 1.5 times your level; that said, I feel that this is a good thing and makes the end of the game fun. Random battles are mostly there to make it where, if you feel you're stuck at a particular battle and are tired of banging your head into it again and again, you can go level up once or twice before coming back. If you don't feel you're having this problem, then by all means avoid fighting them.

EDIT:

Originally Posted by Sasquatch

I'd like to figure out exactly how the JP works. Who gets what, and why.

If you'd like, I can dig up the exact formula for you. It depends roughly on your level, your job level, and whether you have Gained-JP UP.

[Sasquatch]

Nice. Thanks.

Don't worry about the exact formula, I'm not that interested in it .

But yeah, that information definitely helps, I appreciate it.

I'm taking a long time with this game -- making sure I do plenty of levelling up and learning abilities. I think right now it's mid- to late-March, and I'm about to head to the thieves' hideout. (Not Sand Rat Cellar, but the mission.)

EDIT: Update. I'm just now to Golgorand Execution Site. It's 1 Jan again. Took a while, didn't it? Ramza is nearly master Thief, and I just made him a Ninja -- my plan is for him to have high enough Speed to take the first turn, and use it to Steal the Blood Sword from Gafgarion. If this doesn't work too well, I might go back, make him a Knight, and learn Weapon Break, then make him back into a Ninja and try it again, except aiming to break it instead of steal it. I think Breaks have a higher hit percent anyway, and he would get two chances as a Ninja. That's one of the reasons I love the two-sword ability. Anyway ... we'll see how it goes. All of my characters are at level 17, which I think should be pretty even.

This game sucks

[Sasquatch]

... alright ...

Anyway. It worked out great.

Took his weapon, and he couldn't do his Night Sword attack -- the one that would take anywhere from forty to seventy-something points from one of my characters and add it to him. Without that, he wasn't difficult at all -- well, the battle was, be he wasn't so much. Once he's out of the picture, it's not that bad. So once I took his sword -- plus the fact that I had my Summoner take "Half of MP" instead of "Gained JP Up", so she could use Golem twice, plus a Fairy, plus something else I think, and still have 16 MP left.

So...onward.

EDIT: Did the same thing the next battle -- at the gate of Lionel Castle, where Ramza and Gafgarion are on one side, and your other four characters (and their six) are on the other. I had Ramza steal his Ancient Sword, and then open the gate. It wasn't too bad. Now I'm inside. I haven't been at this battle for a while -- used to, I might start a game, run into a difficult battle like the two I just got through, figure I couldn't do it (as they were about half again my level), and quit.

EDIT (again): I'm real tired of these damn Flails doing completely random damage. 9, then 54?

[awall]

Flail damage = WP * rand(1..PA). So in plain english, choose a random number between 1 and your PA, multiply it by the flail's WP, and that's how much damage it causes. Or, to put it even more simply, flails suck. Axes work the same way. (These weapons are handy for things like Throw and Battle Skill where the weapon's abnormally high PA is considered, but not the crappy damage formula.

Congrats on taking down good ol' Gaff. He's a pain in the buns, but stealing his sword certainly is an effective strategy, and has the added bonus of acquiring a really sweet sword. I had fun seeing how many ways I could win that battle without opening the gate.

- Put a Black Chocobo in your party and have it fly Ramza out of there, leaving Gafgarion stranded.
- Have Ramza teleport out.
- Have Ramza put Gafgarion to sleep, then climb up to the top of the gate and snipe with a longbow.
- Hand Ramza the Blood Sword he filched from Gafgarion in the previous battle, give him Speed Save as an R-ability, and have him go 1-on-1.

Fun stuff.

[Sasquatch]

Holy s***!

I'm in Rovannes castle. Actually, outside. On top of it. Fighting Elmdore and the bitches. I'm supposed to protect Rafa, and she's stupid. She can't even get the hell away from the three characters that can easily kill her -- especially when she starts out with barely half her HP. I've won this battle before, but I know it's harder'n hell ... I've actually heard it's the most difficult battle in the game.

And then, these bitches will use things like "Stop Bracelet", which kills me instantly. No hit percentage, no aiming, just BAM, ****in' dead.

I think I'm gonna try this one more time, and then give it up for the night. Maybe come back to it tomorrow.

My brother also tells me that all I've got to do is get one down to Critical. And that I've got to use something with a high Speed, like a Ninja, and move to a specific spot so that stupid twat Rafa doesn't try to attack and leave herself wide open to get slaughtered.

EDIT: Killed one of 'em. The easy thing about it is that you don't have to worry about keeping characters alive or healing them, only dishing out maximum damage to one enemy.

EDIT: Now I'm stuck with Rafa and Malak. Should I keep 'em, or just strip them and dump?