Final Fantasy d6 (Complete System)

[Bloody Jaws]

You're awesome, Thread.
Let me spend the next few days pounding out the changes that I KNOW I want to do ahead of time and I'll start the new thread with the new pdf.

Welcome back Dust! While you were away we decided not to stand still, so after playing your awesome system, we made an attempt to rebalance some of the issues you listed above while not breaking the style of the game itself (we centered most "fixes" around the fighting system, balancing all the classes, introducing a few more, and rebalancing the DP system making it less abusable). We would gladly contribute in making this game even better, so if you are interested, we could link the documents for you to give them a look and see if there's anything that could interest you.

[Kip Shades]

I'm really interested in seeing how this gets updated. Some friends of mine (Who run a WIP Fire Emblem-based system) plan on starting up a Final Fantasy campaign soon, and I'm talking them into holding off until the update.

[Dust]

Welcome back Dust! While you were away we decided not to stand still, so after playing your awesome system, we made an attempt to rebalance some of the issues you listed above while not breaking the style of the game itself (we centered most "fixes" around the fighting system, balancing all the classes, introducing a few more, and rebalancing the DP system making it less abusable). We would gladly contribute in making this game even better, so if you are interested, we could link the documents for you to give them a look and see if there's anything that could interest you.

Please do! We're running out of room in this thread, but the changes are coming along rapidly and I'm expecting a big update sooner rather than later.

[Soultastic]

I want to see the link, too!

[Bloody Jaws]

Ok, here we go, since i'm not quite fond with sharing links yet, if you have any trouble getting to the zipped file please do tell me!
The Zip contains 2 files:
-The general changelog, containing all kinds of balances regarding general gaming
-2 new Jobs, the alchemist and the Gladiator

There should be a third new job, The Summoner, who is already nice, but since we aim to rebalance summons, and his job is, well, mainly summon espers, we waited to add it, because we need to see what will happen to our beloved espers (or eons, or Gfs ).


http://www.mediafire.com/download/kl..._Changelog.rar

Tell us what you think about it in general, and if you have any more ideas coming up from our suggestions, we can of course give help.

[Soultastic]

Oh! I checked the document and noticed these looked familiar.

Your comrade in arms in writing the revisions here posted the class changes to reddit. I linked it in the thread on the last page, the subreddit with THOSE changes.

I was unaware combat changes also went with the class changes. There was also no mention of new classes that I can recall.

I do like some of the changes you put in here. A friend of mine is especially a fan of the Samurai changes and another friend likes the Red Mage changes.

This is some good stuff. I'll have to read over these new classes to see if I have an opinion on them. (Also Dust plz no remove time mages, we like it. Well, me and the GM of my game I'm in like it. ;____;)

[Rikiaz]

(Also Dust plz no remove time mages, we like it. Well, me and the GM of my game I'm in like it. ;____;)

Please Dust, please :(

They are my favorite class in all of Final Fantasy.

[Lorkhan]

Oh gosh it's Dust. And here I thought... well a lot of things that don't matter any more.

If you're taking suggestions and/or listening to tales of tragedy and wonder, then I've got some. I've been running the system for a bit over a year straight now for a group (FFT Ivalice). I've made some tweaks and changes, but most of these I put in place before the game even began to allow for a smoother game. Some of them were made after looking at stuff others had done, some of them were all me. Like linking Elements to Attributes for Spellcasting. Which in turn made Mages more reliant on specific elements, and thus more easily countered.

Homebrew Rule Changes

The other big change I made was in introducing something completely new, but oddly enough something you sort-of hit on. Basically, I took the old, old FF1 Idea of 'Job Change' and applied it to the system. And the result was Prestige Jobs, notable increases to the regular Job upon which they're based, with an Innate that either improves or replaces their normal Job's, additional Job Abilities, an additional Limit Ability, and a unique Capstone for hitting Lv15.

Prestige Jobs

Mostly this was because I hate dead-levels in a System, and by mixing in Limit Breaks and Limit Abilities at odd levels, everyone is always getting something. Other than that, YMMV as I was running a game in a Tactics-Verse where I wanted Job Changes to be common. I also tend to run NPC foes as often as Monsters, and we've a /very/ high Power Balance due to the Party my group has.

Spoiler: Party

Show

A Samurai/Gambler, who uses Double Up to spawn fake-swords to Draw-Out from every round. The only one who didn't Prestige because the Samurai Prestige is one of the few that changes its Innate.

A Dragoon/Warrior gone Prestige who uses Bonecrusher to trigger all of her Critical Effects (Follow-Through, Spellburst Items, Threaten, and Overdrive Limit Breaks).

A Blue Mage/Ninja who is really dang hard to hit, and then has a bunch of support from Chocoball and enough Time Mage for Mind Over Matter.

And a Paladin gone Prestige who, despite the fact that most of the game's opponents have a good two levels on them, still manages to keep the rest of the party alive despite them being made mostly of glass.

Anyways, feel free to take what you like and leave what you don't~ Without this system I wouldn't have spent an entire year of my party slowly uncovering a massive and complex plot involving witches, necromancers, and good-old fashioned political backstabbing.

[Bloody Jaws]

Oh! I checked the document and noticed these looked familiar.

Your comrade in arms in writing the revisions here posted the class changes to reddit. I linked it in the thread on the last page, the subreddit with THOSE changes

Yeah well i asked him to update the links on reddit and he said "lol i think I can't access it anymore, you'll have to link the updates manually" :P

And the prestige jobs from Lorkhan seem pretty interesting as well, we are doing massive brainstorming :D

[Ryoto]

Hello Dust and all of you. I was lurking around in this thread for a long time, but I have never wrote here. But now I have one question for Dust. In 2011, you had wrote something about ability trees, do you think you can implement it to your next update?

Because when I see final fantasy game, I think there should be something like sphere grid, license board or something. I think it can add more strategy and fun in leveling up your character.

When I was GMing "Final Fantasy RPG 3rd Edition" with that procentual system, my players were always stuck just with one class and ability aquiring was... you know what. So I was thinking in that time about some sphere grid, and I have created something, but we stopped playing, and my motivation for it was lost, so its unfinished, but I will post it here.

Spoiler

Show

Its a big picture in 6400x6400, so if spoiler doesnt work, try this: http://ryotocz.deviantart.com/art/Sp...253A1428664133
or direct link: http://orig14.deviantart.net/52c9/f/...cz-d8p59gv.jpg

I was planning to implement there even base attribute growth, similarly like in FFX (+2 STR, +1 AGI...) and spells, but it ended unfinished like this.

So, what do you think about adding something like that? If you will add it, I can even volunteer to make it, under your instructions.

[steelsmiter]

Problem: As interesting an experiment as the 4 attribute points were, ultimately it felt like too many things defaulted to each individual stat.
Solution: TBD. I had previously written out a system wherein the current 4 attributes had moved back to the highly-suggested 5. However, Sasaisen's four-attribute summary of Might, Quickness, Willpower and Insight is inspiring and I'd like to talk over that math with him before finalizing decisions here.
Being able to combine a single stat for both magical and physical might will continue as a Shared Ability regardless. From there, how skills are handled will also require tweaking, although not as much as one might expect.

I completely stopped playing the game when mental and physical acumen were consolidated into the PWR stat. I would come back to it if there was a complete and thorough separation. I would not be opposed to the compromise of a shared ability for those that prefer the consolidated stat. Also, 5 stats was really awesome for me. Oh and more than 20 levels. Any number of levels more than 20. Less doesn't really feel epic, at least not to me, and Final Fantasy has always felt epic to me. Sorry.

Problem: The Goals system is abusable.
Solution: To be replaced instead by Purpose/Ideals (unsure of the naming scheme I'll be going with) which in turn power your Limit Breaks when threatened. See the following section for details.

Interesting, I will.

Problem: The Destiny Point system encouraged players to hoard these encounter-winning tokens, thus making it impossible to plan encounters.
Solution: The point system is being changed entirely, moving instead to two seperate mechanics. The first of these is the milestone system - several times throughout the campaign, the GM will be able to claim the PCs have hit a major milestone, at which point they can make larger, sweeping changes to their character.
Each Job will have one passive ability (Cover), one pre-built Limit Break (Invincible) and a handful of job-specific abilities (but no 'epic abilities'). Upon reaching a milestone, a character may choose to change jobs, 'master' their current job in order to augment the passive ability further, or build their own limit break while still keeping access to the one belonging to their Job.

Giving everyone Cover seems weird unless it's gimped in some way at the start (like Protect Girls) or some classes are the only ones that can achieve automatic success.

Limit points will be tracked separately, and will refresh at the start of each game. You obtain a limit point the first time each game whenever one of the following events occurs:
- The first time each adventure that you are severely weakened by an enemy - 25% health, hit with a majorly debilitating status effect such as petrification, etc.
- One point can be awarded for good rp/keeping the story moving (such as having your character believe a lie the player distrusts)
- An ally is killed.
- You gain up to one point per session whenever your PURPOSE/IDEALS (as listed on your sheet) are challenged/threatened or you actively work towards them.

I like this. I may yoink it for the Key Point based Limit Break system I'm working on FF3e.

Problem: Many of the Job Abilities are 'made-up' or from an obscure source.
Solution: The release of FFXIV, FFXV, Type-0, and the upcoming Heavensward expansion for the mmorpg all provide a far larger pool of well-known abilities to draw upon for naming conventions, and will provide a greater flexibility in a job's 'identity' when converted to the tabletop format. The goal is to reduce the list of abilities with no pre-existing parallel to 0.

Never really had a complaint about that. The wiki is nice in that regard, but as long as we don't have to go that route, it's cool.

Problem: Magic beats martial.
Solution: The initial design was for magic to be reliable and powerful at all stages of the game, where elemental weaknesses would be exploited for the equivalent of a 'guaranteed critical' for double damage. Conversely, martial fighters would be about 25% lower at all times but with the capacity to spike up and deal far larger amounts of damage on a critical hit or via personal limit breaks. Through revisions and poor planning, this initial idea was lost.
While returning to that base idea I will be removing the Time Mage job completely from the game and doing a total rewrite on the remaining four types of magic - White, Black, Blue, and Summoning.

Ick... I hope at least their spells are shuffled into other types of magic. The class had its ups and downs, but I would hate to see it go entirely. I'd prefer it not be eliminated at all, but I'm not without understanding in that regard.

For example, the Arcane weapon category, when equipped, will now cause you to deal one fewer damage step in combat at all times. However, they allow you to take spells which restore HP or deal direct elemental damage and change them from a Single target to a Group target at any time, simply by applying this same penalty and reducing their damage step by one. This will cut down on both the total number of spells as well as provide greater divisiveness between martial and magical characters as they must make decisions about specializations.

Yeah, I liked that about FFIX. One thing you might also look into is the possibility of reducing MP cost for something that is reduced in effectiveness by having LVL. X attached to it. So like a Lvl. 5 Death should be cheaper than any ol' death. You could specify point breaks, like Level 3 death would occur at more levels than level 5 Death, but less than Death unhindered by levels and thus have a different point break. I don't know, maybe that's overthinking it.

Problem: Dual-Wielding, man. Like, are you ****in' kidding me?
Solution: I had always claimed that it would be the penultimate trade-off by choosing to be a true glass cannon, purchasing two weapons instead of a weapon and armor. I was absolutely wrong.
Weapons will gain fewer properties overall, Armor will gain more,

I'm down

each character will be able to equip two accessories instead of one, and an accessory-only property will be introduced that grants the wearer ARM or M.ARM as if it was a shield of the same tier to represent defensive 'guard' items, which will be discussed greatly.

I was OK with just one accessory, but there's a lot of different effective "slots" that could be used like belts, rings, boots, and so forth. I also think that with 2 accessory slots, you don't really need a separate shield slot as such if they would now count as shield items. I've got no particularly strong feelings on this issue though.

Classes which currently do not have access to Dual-Wielding or Shields will gain access to them, but the idea of 'handiness' will not exist. You can still use a massive lance and a shield simultaneously.

I don't like that, while at the same time I want to play a 9 year old girl that dual wields greatswords. Actually quite a few of my characters use 2 handed weapons so removing the potential for a weapon to be so large it needs two hands eliminates a concept for me. Or if anyone can use any weapon essentially one handed, using it two handed significantly downplays that.

Problem: The PDF is ugly, and also, enormous.
Solution: Art has been commissioned to replace the less-attractive portions of the book (such as the crystals by each job ability) and this next revision will have a heavy focus on visual appeal, as well as the complete removal of the monster creation section to be added to the half-finished Bestiary that already exists.

I liked most of the art, but not all of it. One of the major reasons I picked up the system was for its monster creation system. I would be disappointed if I couldn't create my own monsters.

I can't provide any hard and fast deadlines, but for the next three months of my life I'm free 24 hours a day and this is my priority. We'll be treating this project like a graphic designer treats a client - with hands-on updates in rapid intervals instead of long silences with a 'wait and see' approach.

Awesome.

[Soultastic]

I still maintain that removing Time Mage kind of unsettles me.

A time mage is more a dimensional/spatial/time mage according to the wording used in japanese, hence why they have such moves as meteor as well as enervate. They pull objects from another 'space' and use it to fight. That also works with the chrono pocket, which is another dimension altogether for them to store their equipment.

I liked the entire idea, though their abilities aren't necessarily elemental aligned. But, to be fair, Blue Mage doesn't seem elementally aligned either. Nor does Geomancer. That's why I feel it's a but... strange to remove Time Mage. I think there's still a nice niche for the class to fill.

That and I'm a huge fan of them. ~_~

[Rikiaz]

I still maintain that removing Time Mage kind of unsettles me.

A time mage is more a dimensional/spatial/time mage according to the wording used in japanese, hence why they have such moves as meteor as well as enervate. They pull objects from another 'space' and use it to fight. That also works with the chrono pocket, which is another dimension altogether for them to store their equipment.

I liked the entire idea, though their abilities aren't necessarily elemental aligned. But, to be fair, Blue Mage doesn't seem elementally aligned either. Nor does Geomancer. That's why I feel it's a but... strange to remove Time Mage. I think there's still a nice niche for the class to fill.

That and I'm a huge fan of them. ~_~

I agree with this post. Time Mages are, in my opinion, the most interesting job in the entire Final Fantasy multiverse, with Blue Mage being a distant second. My friends and I are likely to homebrew it in anyway if you do remove it.

[Bloody Jaws]

With the fixes we attempted Time mage should be more playable now (and with that i mean less overpowered oriented (and with that I mean less abusing on comet spell >.<). We also tried to balance some of the spells we considered the most "useless" compared to their preferable counterparts. About the matter concerning the fact that MAGIC>MARTIAL well, i personally found some ways to stay behind magic classes until levels 9-10, then it clearly became obvious that i could not stay on the same level of a mage with a samurai.
Then i realized that it wasn't necessarily needed; our master set up kinds of boss battles that would make a mage alone last for half turn alone,so it became clear that what we needed was a more classical approach on the party setup.
And that's why now almost every MELEE class has job abilities that allow to:

- taunt, being it easier to do depending on the primary role of the job
- reinforce themselves and/or support their team, allowing more hits to be taken without feeling powerless

I believe the only thing that really needs to be improved is the variety/flexibility on some of the classes, opening for new combinations depending on the skillset chosen, thus adding diversity when a player decides to pick again the same class but with a different approach. The only way it can be done is by creating new abilities, and I admit it was pretty hard to come up with something original and at the same time "balanced".

I hope Dust will find the time to read some of our document :P

[Lorkhan]

I...wha... Could you explain, precisely, how you 'balanced' Magic and Martial characters with your changelist? Because I don't see it. You actually made Comet stronger. Spells aren't reduced in damage at all. Mind Over Matter and Charismagic -two of the strongest Abilities in the game- still exist. Paladins are buffed by everyone else having more HP. All the Mages got just as much 'new' stuff as everyone else, keeping the curve constant. I really don't see how you can claim that this brings casters down, or martials up enough?

Furthermore, you're comparing apples to oranges, but then only trying to change their color to make them match. Or to put it another way, all of your changes are more 'this is a neat idea' rather than having balance in mind. For example, including the above:
-Tripping and Grapple simultaneously make Large even more pointless, and mean Monstrous Foes either have to invest everything in Force or get stun-locked by a PWR/RES melee character without anything they can do about it. And you also made Huge Weapons mostly pointless.
-You removed all the Accuracy Penalty Attacks, and decreased everyone's Accuracy... but you also decreased all monster's AVD. This is Sum Zero, aside from slightly boosting Skitterish. Seems a lot of trouble to me for nothing.
-Geomancer retains the cheesy Forest/Underground Stat*(Level) Geotrances. Heck you made Forest better.

I'm not saying there aren't good ideas in there. I'm saying most of it either flat out doesn't fix anything, or any impact it might have had becomes pointless due to other changes. Like Initiative? What, precisely, is wrong with the 'We go, they go' format? How is that damaging, and how is Initiative superior?

Whatever flaws are in the system, your homebrew fixes don't actually change. Whatever improvements there are to 'weak' Jobs are overwhelmed by similar boosts to 'strong' Jobs. And really, all the Jobs are actually fairly fantastic if played right. Dragoon is arguably the only one with issues, and even their minor schizophrenia is manageable if you play your cards right and plan ahead.

Anyways, I apologize if I come off as ranty. I'm just stuck questioning 'Why?'. On a lighter note, we both clearly had some similar ideas in (Al)Chemist as a Job.

[Soultastic]

I agree with this post. Time Mages are, in my opinion, the most interesting job in the entire Final Fantasy multiverse, with Blue Mage being a distant second. My friends and I are likely to homebrew it in anyway if you do remove it.

Funny you should mention that. My Time Mage I play has crossed into Blue Mage territory in our current session.

And, as you said, for the game I'm in, it'll be homebrewed back in if it's removed outright. If we convert to the newer system we'll likely just 'make time mage work' since it's already established in our game.

This said, I look forward to see changes regardless.

---

One thing me and a few friends can agree on is our lack of understanding the oddities of Black Mage as well. It seems you need to either have bad stats across the board to use as many spells as possible, or just dump stats into a normal pool and not use some of the other useable spells. Also there seems to be a lack of the abiltiy to pick up a lot of spells as Black Mage. Black Mages are meant to be utility on top of elemental spell masters.

It's hard to justify having multiple elemental spells when you have a limited spell slot and some spells use DEX instead of PWR and then at times something will call for you to use MND. It's hard to have three stats boosted up enough that you can switch between something like Fira and Thunder when they use opposing stats.

I thought monsters having elemental resistances and weaknesses was enough to cause someone to have to swap spells on their Black Mage. If you don't pick up Thunder due to the inability to pick up more spells and with your DEX not being particularly high, it really hurts when something resists anything you do and you lack utility spells due to the spell slot limitations stacked on top of that.

---

Sorry, that's my ten cents, since I've shared more than just one opinion. :)

[Rikiaz]

One thing me and a few friends can agree on is our lack of understanding the oddities of Black Mage as well. It seems you need to either have bad stats across the board to use as many spells as possible, or just dump stats into a normal pool and not use some of the other useable spells. Also there seems to be a lack of the abiltiy to pick up a lot of spells as Black Mage. Black Mages are meant to be utility on top of elemental spell masters.

It's hard to justify having multiple elemental spells when you have a limited spell slot and some spells use DEX instead of PWR and then at times something will call for you to use MND. It's hard to have three stats boosted up enough that you can switch between something like Fira and Thunder when they use opposing stats.

I thought monsters having elemental resistances and weaknesses was enough to cause someone to have to swap spells on their Black Mage. If you don't pick up Thunder due to the inability to pick up more spells and with your DEX not being particularly high, it really hurts when something resists anything you do and you lack utility spells due to the spell slot limitations stacked on top of that.

---

Sorry, that's my ten cents, since I've shared more than just one opinion. :)

Yeah I agree. My playgroup have errata'd all damaging Black Magic to use PWR and added this ability to the Black Mage

Achilles:
Achilles is a slow action that causes the target to become more susceptible to an element of your choice. It reduces the target's resistance to the chosen element by one step (Immune/Absorb > Resist > Normal > Vulnerable > Weak)

[Lorkhan]

Except, only the Thunder Spells use DEX for Black Magic Damage, and only up to Thundara for anything approaching a concern. And even then only for Group Casting. The only Black Magic that uses MND for Damage is Doomsday, and it's both optional and only if the foe makes a 21+ Roll or is immune to instant death.

The way I see it, it makes it so a Black Mage can -if they want to- not be forced to go all in on PWR. They could be a Finesse based Caster, with high MND and DEX and stick to Lightning and Opposed Debuffs. As for Stats, they really only need PWR, with a slight emphasis on MND and RES. Even with a measly 2MND, a Lv15 Black Mage can still cast Scathe or Break.

Personally, I errata'd in all spells to use their Element to determine what stat they use for damage. Eight Elements, Four Stats; made sense to me. And it encourages Mages to either specialize in what they do, or generalize and be able to do multiple things. Considering the Black Mage eventually gets to hit for upwards of 1200 Damage with Ultima, if anything they should be encouraged to diversify rather than just dump everything into PWR and then do two to three times as much damage as everyone else with relative impunity. Ethers are only 20gil, after all, and Mega PWR Black Mages can easily end up like 3.5 Casters; a majority of combat decisions on the GM's part ends up revolving around neutralizing their advantage without crippling the other players.

[Soultastic]

I wasn't looking at the book when I was making my post. I was just recalling from memory, but you get the gist of what I was saying. :) It just seems your stats as a black mage need to be all over the board if you want to use certain spells.

[Rikiaz]

Except, only the Thunder Spells use DEX for Black Magic Damage, and only up to Thundara for anything approaching a concern. And even then only for Group Casting. The only Black Magic that uses MND for Damage is Doomsday, and it's both optional and only if the foe makes a 21+ Roll or is immune to instant death.

The way I see it, it makes it so a Black Mage can -if they want to- not be forced to go all in on PWR. They could be a Finesse based Caster, with high MND and DEX and stick to Lightning and Opposed Debuffs. As for Stats, they really only need PWR, with a slight emphasis on MND and RES. Even with a measly 2MND, a Lv15 Black Mage can still cast Scathe or Break.

Personally, I errata'd in all spells to use their Element to determine what stat they use for damage. Eight Elements, Four Stats; made sense to me. And it encourages Mages to either specialize in what they do, or generalize and be able to do multiple things. Considering the Black Mage eventually gets to hit for upwards of 1200 Damage with Ultima, if anything they should be encouraged to diversify rather than just dump everything into PWR and then do two to three times as much damage as everyone else with relative impunity. Ethers are only 20gil, after all, and Mega PWR Black Mages can easily end up like 3.5 Casters; a majority of combat decisions on the GM's part ends up revolving around neutralizing their advantage without crippling the other players.

I understand your point, but at the same time Red Mage is just completely better at a debuffer. Most Black Magic status spells are opposed Force checks not Finesse. Ultima may do huge damage but it also requires three Destiny to not destroy your party. Which means less Job Changing and less cherry picking abilities which means no Mind over Matter, which hurts Finesse Black Mages even more. Also, at least in my game, the GM can just give monsters MP Damage stuff. Even if a monster Rasps you for 1 MP you can't cast Ultima. Finally, addressing your two elements per stat, having damage spells scale off MND is a bad idea, as shown by how utterly broken Charismagic is. Speaking of Charismagic, my group have errata'd it to make spells scale off DEX and not affect weapons. It has worked out much better than the original.

[Lorkhan]

3 things.

1) No Black Magic explicitly uses Force for Opposed Rolls. They're all just Opposed Rolls, with no emphasis on Secondary Stat usage.
2) Changing what Stat Charismagic uses does not really change its effectiveness for Red Mages. If you make it all RES, you get Mages with massive HP Pools. All MND, massive MP Pools. All DEX? Congrats, dodgy Mages, with Dodgy Ruse, and Dodgy Invisible. And either massive Finesse if they just go MND/DEX, or the same it normally would be for a Red Mage (RES/MND for HP/MP/Damage)
3) Changing Elements to be the keys for Spell Stat Usage does change the effectiveness of Charismagic. Here's a breakdown of my logic behind splitting the Elements:
PWR for Fire, Shadow, and most Non-Elementals not stated otherwise; and which are the core of the classical 'Fire and Destruction' Black Mage.
RES for Earth and Water, one of which entire groups of enemies just flat out are immune to and the other which is normally circumstantially good, not heavily rewarding HP Bloat Mages but giving them a space to call their own.
DEX for Wind and Lightning, one of which already used DEX and the other of which happily goes hand-in-hand with Lightning thematically.
MND for Ice and Holy; Ice being as circumstantial as its more solid brother, and with all Cure Spells keying off of MND anyways the only spells actively changed are Holy, Dia(ga), and Flare Star.

Basically, Spellcasters are either encouraged to broaden their stats to put the variety of their spell lists to better usage, or to specialize and come to terms with the fact that being generally more powerful has the risk of sometimes being less powerful than normal. Charismagic is still fairly good, it lets a Red Mage use Fire/Ice/Shadow/Holy equally, letting them bring opposite elements into alignment. But it isn't the end-all be-all because it's still a heavy specialization for the Spellhungry Red Mage whose normal name is diversification and unpredictability.

And, again, a mage doesn't have to invest much in MND if they continue to invest in BigAlchema and buy Ethers. It's helpful, but it's not necessary. Changing Charismagic to use DEX instead just means Red Mages don't need PWR anymore; another nail in the coffin of the least-useful-Attribute. It's an interesting change, but I think we'll have to agree to disagree since I'm naturally prejudiced towards my own solution.

[Rikiaz]

3 things.

1) No Black Magic explicitly uses Force for Opposed Rolls. They're all just Opposed Rolls, with no emphasis on Secondary Stat usage.
2) Changing what Stat Charismagic uses does not really change its effectiveness for Red Mages. If you make it all RES, you get Mages with massive HP Pools. All MND, massive MP Pools. All DEX? Congrats, dodgy Mages, with Dodgy Ruse, and Dodgy Invisible. And either massive Finesse if they just go MND/DEX, or the same it normally would be for a Red Mage (RES/MND for HP/MP/Damage)
3) Changing Elements to be the keys for Spell Stat Usage does change the effectiveness of Charismagic. Here's a breakdown of my logic behind splitting the Elements:
PWR for Fire, Shadow, and most Non-Elementals not stated otherwise; and which are the core of the classical 'Fire and Destruction' Black Mage.
RES for Earth and Water, one of which entire groups of enemies just flat out are immune to and the other which is normally circumstantially good, not heavily rewarding HP Bloat Mages but giving them a space to call their own.
DEX for Wind and Lightning, one of which already used DEX and the other of which happily goes hand-in-hand with Lightning thematically.
MND for Ice and Holy; Ice being as circumstantial as its more solid brother, and with all Cure Spells keying off of MND anyways the only spells actively changed are Holy, Dia(ga), and Flare Star.

Basically, Spellcasters are either encouraged to broaden their stats to put the variety of their spell lists to better usage, or to specialize and come to terms with the fact that being generally more powerful has the risk of sometimes being less powerful than normal. Charismagic is still fairly good, it lets a Red Mage use Fire/Ice/Shadow/Holy equally, letting them bring opposite elements into alignment. But it isn't the end-all be-all because it's still a heavy specialization for the Spellhungry Red Mage whose normal name is diversification and unpredictability.

And, again, a mage doesn't have to invest much in MND if they continue to invest in BigAlchema and buy Ethers. It's helpful, but it's not necessary. Changing Charismagic to use DEX instead just means Red Mages don't need PWR anymore; another nail in the coffin of the least-useful-Attribute. It's an interesting change, but I think we'll have to agree to disagree since I'm naturally prejudiced towards my own solution.

1) Page 156 "Generally, when a spell or attack attempts to cause a Status Effect, the victim has a chance to resist the effects. This often entails an opposed roll between the target and the user of the status effect. Most of the time, status effects require an opposed Force roll, representing very physical, tangible and material changes in the target. Status ailments that are opposed completely on an emotional or mental level and require an opposed Finesse roll are more rare, but might include things such as Charm or Confuse. Which type of opposed roll will be used is ultimately up to the GM’s jurisdiction."

Yes it is up to the GM, but most of the time it should be Force for every Black Magic status aside from Berserk. Doesn't mean it has to be, but also doesn't mean that every GM is going to let you use either. My GM only lets us use Finesse for mental statuses.

2) and 3) Upon further thought, I do agree with these, for the most part. I don't like making them spread their stats too much, but your reasoning is sound and it's actually an interesting idea. Though there is still the problem that it makes mages a one-stat class. Ultimately I think it's best that ability be fundamentally changed.

[Kiton2]

[QUOTE=Dust;18983501]First, congratulations on your free time (I had similar freedom several months and a hard-drive full of passwords,etc ago - thus the 2 on the name). I liked the project, balance issues aside, and would like to chime in as well as offer help, if you need playtesting or numbercrunching. Boredom, spreadsheets and net traffic too heavily monitored to have any fun at work means maths can sometimes pass the time!

Problem: Many of the Jobs and abilities suffer balancing issues.

This was the big one, I think. Charismagic made the Red Mage BEST, "permanently increase stats" made white mages and dark knights insane, Dragoons couldn't do damage if they jumped, and blue and time mages couldn't cast their currently-highest-level spells without a heavy investment in MND or equipment, not even once in many cases, which black/white/red had no such issues with. Geomancers were also in a bloody hole (aside from one or two specific exploits), because let's never forget that lava don't do much to fire elementals, and is even less impressive when your special ability hits about as hard as your weapon does! I've got... some ideas in regards to engineers, but that depends on whether people like magitek.

In regards to Attributes I totally back the 'five' as well. Well personally I'd see six or seven, but I like too much complexity sometimes.

To be replaced instead by Purpose

That can work; FF characters are often rather 'dimensionally challenged' so this could be made to work by having a specific limit gauge with activators. These would allow building it up separately from the usual point expenditure, so even if you've spent everything, you might still manage to pull one out if things have been going counter to your tastes enough. Some rare specific situation/condition for out of combat, and a more 'standard' from a list (could be class based) build-up in combat.

Example: an ex train-conductor might have extreme issues and horrific flashbacks whenever he sees someone do a wrestling move, and doubly so if a supplex. His trip to the gym that day not only had him seeing red, but also gave him two ticks on, maybe a five charge per level affair. That's his out-of-combat limit builder.

Combat would work as you've stated, priming limits off terrible things or killing blows, perhaps depending on the class. A paladin snaps when the back row goes down despite his best efforts, but a black mage might instead spool-up from slaughtering the mooks around a boss.

Hoarding destiny points was definitely an issue. Those points to feed abilities, limits, etc... probably still going to get either hoarded or cause limits to be ignored depending on how many you need for what - due to the refreshing system. I'd suggest going a bit more 'Fate Points' with the system; separate from regular limit accumulation, destiny are your "change a roll, power an ability" (though perhaps somewhere one can obtain a limit break converter ability/item/whatever), and refresh to a base level, not 0 between sessions. MAJOR milestones can increase it by 1 or recover (same thing really) one burnt from something like party-wipe recovery. TPK? everyone that can burn one burns one permanently, allowing the defeat to be one of those "plot battles scripted for you to lose". If for some reason the numbers get uneven, anyone with 0... well... sometimes someone gets Galuf'd.

Solution: The release of FFXIV

Arcanist/summoner is sad at highest levels. Those carbuncles and Egi are cute and all, but they do lack the major combat summoning aspect. That's not really what makes things sad though: DPS is just not good enough on summoners by late coils. Well, it's fine once built up, but too many mechanics require instant Flaring or the such and can't wait for Shadowflare, Miasma II, Bio II, Miasma, Bio and your pet to tick it through. When Black mages do a bit more DPS AND can do it as instantly as needed... this is depressing just get me my mechanist already.

While returning to that base idea I will be removing the Time Mage job completely from the game and doing a total rewrite on the remaining four types of magic - White, Black, Blue, and Summoning.
For example, the Arcane weapon category, when equipped, will now cause you to deal one fewer damage step in combat at all times. However, they allow you to take spells which restore HP or deal direct elemental damage and change them from a Single target to a Group target at any time, simply by applying this same penalty and reducing their damage step by one.

But but muh TIMES! Well, Blue could use a bit of help/work too; their abilities were kinda limited, and MOST of their spells well below what other mages can do. They had a few exploits, mind, but better if near everything is worth taking, rather than everything worth tossing just electrocute, right?

dual wield, shields

One big problem there was that for classes that can't use shields nor dual-wield, you can get seriously left behind. too many buffs and abilities on too many items made getting something in each far too valuable. I'm not sure if "filling the slot" is the proper fix, but something definitely needed to be done.

Anyways, that's one more set of complaints/comments/suggestions.

[Lorkhan]

True. I tend to forget I actively encouraged my players to come up with the most frustrating builds possible including a Blue Mage with the horrendous combo of Mind Over Matter, Charismagic, and Evade Magic. But at the same time my game is both high-power and high-difficulty. My players need every advantage they can get when the average boss is 2-3 levels higher than them. Or they have to play rocket-tag with NPCs, because War of the Lions is funtimes like that.

On a more related note... Why not take Time Magic, rename it Green Magic (FFXII/FFTA2), and make it the Big Mix of Buffs and Non-Elemental Spells ala what is Arcane Magic in most games? It lets you shift away from the thematically-limited Time Mage towards a Job that abstains from the pettiness of White and Black Magic, and the uncouthness of Blue. Plus, color schemes! You don't even need to get rid of all the Time Mage Abilities; some just need renaming and refluffing. And as an added bonus it's a chance to get rid of Mind Over Matter once and for all.

Green Mage for 2016!

[Rikiaz]

True. I tend to forget I actively encouraged my players to come up with the most frustrating builds possible including a Blue Mage with the horrendous combo of Mind Over Matter, Charismagic, and Evade Magic. But at the same time my game is both high-power and high-difficulty. My players need every advantage they can get when the average boss is 2-3 levels higher than them. Or they have to play rocket-tag with NPCs, because War of the Lions is funtimes like that.

On a more related note... Why not take Time Magic, rename it Green Magic (FFXII/FFTA2), and make it the Big Mix of Buffs and Non-Elemental Spells ala what is Arcane Magic in most games? It lets you shift away from the thematically-limited Time Mage towards a Job that abstains from the pettiness of White and Black Magic, and the uncouthness of Blue. Plus, color schemes! You don't even need to get rid of all the Time Mage Abilities; some just need renaming and refluffing. And as an added bonus it's a chance to get rid of Mind Over Matter once and for all.

Green Mage for 2016!

While I definitely support a Green Mage class, I don't think it would be a good replacement for Time Mage. I feel Arcanist would be better as a replacement, Green Mage should be standalone.

[Kiton2]

We'd definitely be looking at a 'pet' class then, as arcanist/FFXIV-version-Summoner is pretty vested in the Carbuncle or Egi.

This does, however bring one other interesting aspect/possibility with it: XIII or XIV style status ailments. One thing that's always plagued the older final fantasies was the utter worthlessness - generally speaking - of status effects. They were, to put it bluntly, "**** that happens to you", and rarely ever "things done to the enemy". Anything that wasn't outright immune was probably dead if you'd cast Fir2 instead. Even the few exceptions were pretty much placed there purely as 'secret' ways to take something down, more akin to an exploit or bug than anything remotely resembling a valid reason for the status ability to take up valuable room in your list of things you can do.

Most of the tabletop RPGs were no better, and I distinctly remember even the debuff-heavy classes/ability-sets in the FFRPG editions being damn near useless half the time or more. Anything above "complete and utter mook, will die in an average hit" was immune to death, and anything demiboss or higher was immune to seals, transforms, death and a number of others. What few things worked, if any, usually had nothing to do with the boss' abilities, like a purely physical boss being mute-able... and even then.

XIII brought us a neat 'stacking', build-up mechanic that allowed a far larger number of them to operate, especially in regards to bosses. I hadn't seen status effects worth using since the % weakeners in Skies of Arcadia!

XIV of course, being an MMO, has very very little in terms of status immunity, but resistances of course apply to harder controls. Still, it's often worth using - if only as an interrupt instead of multiple-seconds-of-screw-you an ability might be worth against a normal enemy. And DoTs and soft debuffs? The Bios and Miasmas and Aeros and Viruses and Heavies and Slows? They work. They work, and I don't think anyone could ever make the claim that status effects working on bosses in XIV makes them a cakewalk compared to if you simply had twice as much Black Mage.

The Log Horizon TRPG also has an interesting mechanic in regards to status effects one could be inspired by: as an MMO 'simulation' most enemies are not in fact immune to controls - sometimes even hard controls - but you either let it tick away naturally, or spend actions to break it. In this way, a boss might have, say, three major actions in a turn, but because you've got him under reinforced stacks of sleep and immobilize, getting out of it eats two of his actions on a turn. A character's main job might be to force catch-22s in this way, keeping the big bastard from slaughtering the tank. It all works out just fine when games work from "this can actually be done"!

So whether it's taking effect at a lesser level of power one might wish to build up over time, or whether immunities are few and far between, but the stuff that works can be broken out of by spending valuable chunks of your turn, we could have a solid and amusing system of Mezzes and Debuffs that lets even the time mage feel useful outside of "I spam haste and meteo", without being fatally hobbled without gamebreaking power in the one thing it can actually do in practice.

Or maybe it's just wishful thinking?


edit: Oh. And GRAVITY. Gravity was in a lot of cases considered a 'death' class status AND given hard "no matter what even if you can break the damage limit gravity effects can't", expensive AND inaccurate "because of its potential power" (which it doesn't actually have due to its limitations), so Gravity abilities in the tabletops were bloody pathetic!

[Rikiaz]

We'd definitely be looking at a 'pet' class then, as arcanist/FFXIV-version-Summoner is pretty vested in the Carbuncle or Egi.

Oh cool. I was thinking of the Arcanist from FFTA2, since I've never played XIV.

[Bloody Jaws]

I...wha... Could you explain, precisely, how you 'balanced' Magic and Martial characters with your changelist?

Yikes! Pal you pratically slapped me in the face with that post!
Alright sorry for being late but i owe you some explanations on what we did there.

You actually made Comet stronger.

Wrong. We raised it to MND x4 because now EVERY comet hit damage is reduced by Marm instead of applying it at the total of the damage done. By applying a simple combat test you see how much the damage is reduced, and, boy, it's a LOT.

Spells aren't reduced in damage at all. Mind Over Matter and Charismagic -two of the strongest Abilities in the game- still exist. Paladins are buffed by everyone else having more HP. All the Mages got just as much 'new' stuff as everyone else, keeping the curve constant. I really don't see how you can claim that this brings casters down, or martials up enough?

Ok the problem here is common: the idea that casters are better at dealing damage than martial is a common idea, because in almost EVERY existing RPG, a mage is the classic gracile/old/nerdish man/woman, that could not stand even a slap on their butt as damage; but in exchange they deal massive amounts of damage and that's why they are often referred as "glass cannons" by putting mages at the same DAMAGE level as any other martial class, you could easily decide to remove their mana pool and make them just spam their abilities/spells. Instead i believe that if a mage is constantly in danger, be it for a failed taunt from a melee class or a big number of foes, he will make decisions according to the current given challenge. That's why we didn't really bring down mages, instead we gave some more diversity (we didn't touch many and many of them because most were fine by us) in the usage by touching some of the spells.

Furthermore, you're comparing apples to oranges, but then only trying to change their color to make them match. Or to put it another way, all of your changes are more 'this is a neat idea' rather than having balance in mind. For example, including the above:
-Tripping and Grapple simultaneously make Large even more pointless, and mean Monstrous Foes either have to invest everything in Force or get stun-locked by a PWR/RES melee character without anything they can do about it. And you also made Huge Weapons mostly pointless.
-You removed all the Accuracy Penalty Attacks, and decreased everyone's Accuracy... but you also decreased all monster's AVD. This is Sum Zero, aside from slightly boosting Skitterish. Seems a lot of trouble to me for nothing.
-Geomancer retains the cheesy Forest/Underground Stat*(Level) Geotrances. Heck you made Forest better.

-On tripping and Grapple i had some arguments with my pal because i felt it was not necessary but ended up in adding it anyway, in fact i didn't put much attention to it and it ended up being utterly useless, i apologize for that, maybe somebody might find some fixes to make it better though as it might add up to game diversity.
-The idea on changing accuracy and AVD was guided by the fact that they scaled with levels and almost nothing could be done about it. My plan was to enchance its scaling with DEX without making DEX based characters impossible to be hit by melee foes, it ended up like this, but i could have done better to improve its mechanic and will probably do so because I WANT AVD/ACC to be useful stats for everyone.
-Geomancer is.. well a strange class indeed, but we decided to leave it as it was because we deemed it useful enough, without the need to make him more mage/like (remember that he does NOT use mana for his attacks) including forest and underground, that could be easily pumped up if necessary though (any ideas are welcome)

I'm not saying there aren't good ideas in there.

Well, you didn't really endorse any of them <.<

I'm saying most of it either flat out doesn't fix anything, or any impact it might have had becomes pointless due to other changes. Like Initiative? What, precisely, is wrong with the 'We go, they go' format? How is that damaging, and how is Initiative superior?

Some of them may appear pointless but believe me, after many tests they end up being very good ideas; just not every one, no one is perfect.
On the initiative matter.. well.. we changed absolutely nothing except specifying the "change in finesse" matter, meaning that if someone lowers your finesse during combat, your initiative order is changing accordingly. That does not seem very strange, but more logical to me (I slow you, you are slower on your movements including initiative)

Whatever flaws are in the system, your homebrew fixes don't actually change. Whatever improvements there are to 'weak' Jobs are overwhelmed by similar boosts to 'strong' Jobs. And really, all the Jobs are actually fairly fantastic if played right. Dragoon is arguably the only one with issues, and even their minor schizophrenia is manageable if you play your cards right and plan ahead.

Starting with the fact that the target was to help players that felt some game rules to be in need of a "rebalance", and that i believe that we actually did something nice for real, i agree that, depending on the kind of challenges that your GM puts you into, every job is playable. Then the problem of some classes being "more powerful" than others does not exist, making all the "mages op jobs/spells" point a contraddiction.
That's why we didn't want to really change the gameplay by only "nerfing" something, but the effort was spent on increasing the game variety by adding some mechanics, and making some of the most used on par with others that were by our humble opinion utterly ignored. After saying that, of course we didnt make these rules "official", they are just some guidedlines, often tested on our very game sessions, that make this great game system even more enjoyable with our personal touch.
I agree of course that we did not explain clearly enough some things inside the DOCs, sorry about that we did it on our free time and we could have spent more on them :(
I personally plan on doing even more by completing my summoner class and eventually changing the summons on their very core, but that's also why we still didn't post it yet, we didnt want the people to feel something they liked completely changed/removed

[Lorkhan]

Spoiler: Shrink-Wrapped

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Yikes! Pal you pratically slapped me in the face with that post!
Alright sorry for being late but i owe you some explanations on what we did there.




Wrong. We raised it to MND x4 because now EVERY comet hit damage is reduced by Marm instead of applying it at the total of the damage done. By applying a simple combat test you see how much the damage is reduced, and, boy, it's a LOT.



Ok the problem here is common: the idea that casters are better at dealing damage than martial is a common idea, because in almost EVERY existing RPG, a mage is the classic gracile/old/nerdish man/woman, that could not stand even a slap on their butt as damage; but in exchange they deal massive amounts of damage and that's why they are often referred as "glass cannons" by putting mages at the same DAMAGE level as any other martial class, you could easily decide to remove their mana pool and make them just spam their abilities/spells. Instead i believe that if a mage is constantly in danger, be it for a failed taunt from a melee class or a big number of foes, he will make decisions according to the current given challenge. That's why we didn't really bring down mages, instead we gave some more diversity (we didn't touch many and many of them because most were fine by us) in the usage by touching some of the spells.



-On tripping and Grapple i had some arguments with my pal because i felt it was not necessary but ended up in adding it anyway, in fact i didn't put much attention to it and it ended up being utterly useless, i apologize for that, maybe somebody might find some fixes to make it better though as it might add up to game diversity.
-The idea on changing accuracy and AVD was guided by the fact that they scaled with levels and almost nothing could be done about it. My plan was to enchance its scaling with DEX without making DEX based characters impossible to be hit by melee foes, it ended up like this, but i could have done better to improve its mechanic and will probably do so because I WANT AVD/ACC to be useful stats for everyone.
-Geomancer is.. well a strange class indeed, but we decided to leave it as it was because we deemed it useful enough, without the need to make him more mage/like (remember that he does NOT use mana for his attacks) including forest and underground, that could be easily pumped up if necessary though (any ideas are welcome)


Well, you didn't really endorse any of them <.<


Some of them may appear pointless but believe me, after many tests they end up being very good ideas; just not every one, no one is perfect.
On the initiative matter.. well.. we changed absolutely nothing except specifying the "change in finesse" matter, meaning that if someone lowers your finesse during combat, your initiative order is changing accordingly. That does not seem very strange, but more logical to me (I slow you, you are slower on your movements including initiative)



Starting with the fact that the target was to help players that felt some game rules to be in need of a "rebalance", and that i believe that we actually did something nice for real, i agree that, depending on the kind of challenges that your GM puts you into, every job is playable. Then the problem of some classes being "more powerful" than others does not exist, making all the "mages op jobs/spells" point a contraddiction.
That's why we didn't want to really change the gameplay by only "nerfing" something, but the effort was spent on increasing the game variety by adding some mechanics, and making some of the most used on par with others that were by our humble opinion utterly ignored. After saying that, of course we didnt make these rules "official", they are just some guidedlines, often tested on our very game sessions, that make this great game system even more enjoyable with our personal touch.
I agree of course that we did not explain clearly enough some things inside the DOCs, sorry about that we did it on our free time and we could have spent more on them :(
I personally plan on doing even more by completing my summoner class and eventually changing the summons on their very core, but that's also why we still didn't post it yet, we didnt want the people to feel something they liked completely changed/removed

Ah, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to come across as rude, just severely questioning. Because in comparing what you say you set out to do with what you did, several discrepancies arise.

Spoiler: Caution: Text Wall

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For example, isn't Comet already reduced multiple times by MArm? I don't see why it wouldn't, in the same vein that any Multihit Limit Break has to deal with M/Arm for each 'hit', or a Warrior using Meteorain doesn't just throw in the damage of all their Attacks combined against Armor. Though in the end that boils down to a GM's ruling, I suppose. It just seems to me that it's purely a matter of interpreting the rules.

Your second point though is just the same argument against, say, 3.5 Wizards. "They're squishy, and the Martials should protect them." Except that given any Mage can invest in, say, PWR and RES and do just fine, they are only squishy if the player decides to play them that way. Furthermore, you run into the same scenario that you're assuming Martials are fine with being arguably encouraged to play Tanks or Aggro Management to protect the Casters, which isn't always true. And what happens if you get a Mageless Party? Or a Party of all Mages?
I'm not saying this is a bad approach, I'm saying this is an approach that needs more thought put into it.

The issue with Geomancers that everyone seems to overlook is that a Geomancer with Geowareness and Home Terrain (Underground or Forest) hits for Level(Stat) NE Damage each Action if they want to. Compared to other Jobs, they pretty much always hit about twice as hard with -what amounts to- their Basic Attack. A Geomancer can go full RES and a dash of PWR or DEX, pick Underground, and out DPS the Dark Knight while out Healing the White Mage. This is, in my opinion, very silly and easily rectified. But I guess at that point in the post I was mindlessly nitpicking everything I disagreed with, including being what was in hindsight incredibly petty and pointing out what I considered easy flaws a set of rule 'fixes' should cover.

My issue with Initiative is solely a personal one, in the vein of 'If it's not broken why fix it and then make it more complicated?' My own view of Combat in FFd6 is that it should be both fast-paced and encourage players to discuss 'Their Turn' amongst themselves, similar to how in a regular FF Game you lock in everyone's actions and then go to town on your opponents. The Death mechanic is similar. A GM that kills PCs without working it through with them beforehand or giving some warning that 'This fight can have lethal consequences' is a bad GM. Changing the mechanic to purely damage based... doesn't really add anything. If the GM wants to kill a character, the character is going to die. Be it to an appropriately dramatic Lich, a bomb going off, or rocks falling from the ceiling.

And I'm not saying that anyone needs to 'Nerf' Mages to bring them in line. True, some abilities are ridiculously good compared to others. True, Magic outdamages Melee in every scenario excepting Haste'd Martials; which is generally only a bit before Mages get Ancient Spells anyways. But you could easily 'Buff' Martials up so that they don't have to rely on Mages for Damage. You added options, which is good, but the majority of the options you added for Martial Jobs can be cynically summed up as 'Quick! Protect the Mage, for He is more important than the brick wall that is you!', which is... well it's neither good nor bad. But it doesn't fix anything that can be considered an issue.
The previous version of FFd6 gave out Damage Multipliers to pretty much every Martial Job, which does fix many issues. That's an example of a way to balance Mages and Martials; put them on an even playing field in regards to capability. They don't have to have the same methods of achieving that capability, but very few people like playing second fiddle in a Party Game.

Again, I apologize if I come across as ranty or mean-spirited, but from where I sit Homebrew should always be questioned for 'What does this add to the game?', 'What does this fix in the rules?', 'What does this improve for the players?', and lastly 'How does this alter what already exists?'.
Your Homebrew adds options, and that I like. The Unique Job and Limit Abilities you added in are neat and generally effective. Alchemist and Gladiator are interesting and bring a lot to the table, though they could use better... syntax? Wording? for their Ability descriptions. Shared Limit Abilities are something I actually really like, they're a great concept that adds options and variety for all players in a good way.
Your Rule Fixes don't generally fix anything wrong; a lot change how the game is played, but in minor ways and altering things that weren't actually problematic. As I said before, they don't strictly 'fix' or 'improve' anything. They're different for the sake of being different. What's already 'strong' remains just as strong, and what's already 'weak' remains just as weak.
Your improvements for players -where unique- are good as I said. But a portion of those are 'Now all Martials can be a pseudo-Paladin!' which is either good or bad based on how you view that as a change. But where it's just a change to existing material, your Homebrew is weak. It doesn't really make underused Abilities more desirable, or overused Abilities less-so.
Your overall alterations don't really, in the end, change anything aside from encouraging a dynamic of 'Protect the Casters, my faithful Martial Meatshields!'. Increases in statistics, changes in ACC/AVD, minute alterations to a handful of spells... most of these don't do much in the end.

Maybe I'm not seeing it. Maybe if it's all taken together it fixes existing problems. But from where I'm looking, aside from trying to angle everyone protecting Mages (who can be just as sturdy as Martials if built with RES), most of your changes... don't really change anything.

Again, I do not intend for this to come across as aggressive, and I really do apologize for the tone I wrote that first summary with. If you can, don't look at this as a rant but as a critique and analysis by someone trying equally to add, fix, improve, and balance the existing version of FFd6. Which will mostly become moot when a new version is finished~

[Bloody Jaws]

No offense taken buddy, thanks for answering. Well about this problem we can put up some more effort and try to power up martial classes by redefining some of their abilities, i remember my last session, our red mage (yes and he used comet) was used to wipe the floor, we had no white mage, and the composition was like this:
-samurai (me) as a complete support/secondary damage (innate ability abuse was the only way for some damage to come in)
-Gambler as (i swear it was great) as support/healer with healing ranged weapons
-Warrior as full tank/desperately attempting to deal damage with a tank build
-Monk as melee dps

The result was we overkilled the given boss (classical giant mostly tank&spank style with aoe abilities) without magic aid, because our monk was something incredible and the heals were keeping us kinda "overhealed". So like you said before, every class has the potential to be of great use.
But, some of them, in comparison, are clearly harder/less powerful. So we focused on the ones we thought needed more care, such as Ranger, Dark knight (which received a complete overhaul) and engineer (which we took from another author, as mentioned in the document).
Because the word "nerf" is so bad, we focused on "pumping up a bit".
And yes, our comet caster scaled on enemy Marm only after the entire sum of damage was calculated. And it was nasty. (again as you say, its a matter of interpretation, that's why we decided to clarify by writing it up)

I believe though that a caster taking RES still lowers his damage output by a decent amount, and the items limitation does not allow for him to become bulky without leaving big chunks of damage behind. Of course there's always some kind of tricks to compensate that (like our red mage getting a summon that gives +4 RES, that b*tch).

Though I believe also that changing the 4 stats system could bring change in the way most mechanics work, I still am thinking about what could be done to not make it a more complicated system.
Either that or a deeper overhaul in martial classes, or a complete rework in how magic works. The idea of redirecting an element to a stat is nice, but again, mages will specialize in one and there we are again.
Sorry about this "train of thoughts" but to remember everything i want to write is a pain, so I simply do it the fastest way possible and the result sometimes appears kinda messy.