Quote Originally Posted by squiggit View Post
*Actually the party's 'black mage' just started their character out as a red mage since Red gets more spells than black does. Which is another issue entirely... if you can find a way to make up for the loss in MP there's basically no downside to playing Red over Black... Red gets more spells in the Novice, Intermediate and Expert categories... and Black's abilities are by and large utilitarian (nothing on the level of spellblade, flourish, charimagic, at least IMO)... Black's only real advantage as a class is its access to Ancient spells, but Red doesn't actually get anything at levels 13 or 15 anyways, which makes it easy for the mage to stockpile destiny for those two levels.

Granted, you can say the same for White and Time vs Red, but at least they have access to some particularly intriguing abilities that more directly enhance their play
Everything you said aside from this I agree with, that said I agree with the general idea, planning to go black mage? Eh just stay Red for a little while, they get more of everything and have sweet job abilities to boot.

Low level blackmages get the very nice specialization and Elemental Seal is not bad. Favored spell gets real nice later on.