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Final Fantasy V Research & Development / An idea for Job expansion (Meta-Jobs)
« on: January 30, 2014, 05:58:39 PM »
In a discussion about adding a Sage job to FFV over at ROMHacking.net I came up with this:
What do you guys think. Is this something that could be done with less hassle than expanding the number of full jobs and associated menus? Or is it more trouble than it's worth.
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Quote from: ZoinkityAs far as FF5 not having sages, you're sort of confusing what they were doing with jobs as classes. In many respects the vanilla guy is the sage, as they're able to utilize the abilities of all the jobs they've mastered. Black mages specialize in attack magic, white mages in defense, but red mages despecialize in order to become spellslingers. Quantity versus quality, if you will.
You can have so many crazy OP abilities in that game that the lv5 runthrough is, in many ways, easier than a normal playthrough. Chemo-ninja-thief-blue-mimes.
In terms of Final Fantasy, jobs are what other RPG systems refer to as classes. So you're making a distinction where none exists.
As far the Freelancers (the vanilla guy) being Sages, that is really not the case at all. Any character in FFV can use any command and it's associated abilities that they have learned by gaining job levels as long as they have an open slot in their menu to equip it. Given that magic in this game is split int Black, White, Time and Summon it's technically impossible to have a functioning FF3 style Sage (has all Black, White, Time, and Summon spells) and the only way to have the FF4 version would require the use of the Mime job which is the only one with 3 slots available but you'd be sacrificing Items.
To create a true Sage job in FFV would require the creation of a custom command that contains all the spells from at least White, Black, and Time. Given that to add a whole other job to really flesh it out, the next best thing would be to create a sort of meta-job system where, for example, setting up a character to use the Mime job and a specific set of abilities would trigger a special routine that would make changes to the game to make it seem like a normal job.
So essentially let's say that the requirements are that a character must master White Mage, Black Mage, and Time Mage. Then you take that character and set them to the Mime job and set up their menu to be Mimic (default), White Lv6, Black Lv6, and Time Lv6. Then when you go back to the party menu the custom code takes over and overrides specific values like changing the job name displayed to Sage, altering the magic menu so that the affected character can access all three sets of the associated spells for use in the menu. When a battle begins the custom code would then swap the character's commands for custom ones associated with the Sage meta-job.
A hack of this sort would only be limited by ROM space for the custom commands and any custom graphics that might be used. Plus it could be used to create several meta-jobs so that Necromancer, Gladiator, Cannoneer, and Oracle can be implemented without having to expand the menu system. Not to mention any other extra meta-jobs a hacker might want to create.
What do you guys think. Is this something that could be done with less hassle than expanding the number of full jobs and associated menus? Or is it more trouble than it's worth.
