Fixing Squire in Final Fantasy Tactics 

Rather than leaning into axes, I'd shift squire into a bit more of a support role -- maybe turn focus into "rally," a single ally buff that boosts physical attack & accuracy. Would give them another earlygame niche that would only really get replaced by late-unlocked classes. It would work with the "squire supports their knight" flavor.

"Why is he talking about a 30 year old game" That's like someone getting mad talking about 1500 year old chess.

How can anyone hate FFT? It's literally, objectively and without a doubt the best game ever made. My first turn based game when I was a kid and defined my taste in games till this day.

I like the idea of removing jp boost from squire, I think they should make a master system where when you master a job you gain permanent skills and jp boost should be the mastery skill given after mastering squire or the special characters starting class. Would make staying in classes worthwhile to master and they don’t need to be game breaking boosts.

JP Boost is a solution to the problem of ridiculous JP totals for all jobs. 6000+ JP required to master White Mage is ridiculous. 5100+ for chemist, a STARTER CLASS is just terrible. 2500+ for squire is also bad. Cut the JP costs of things by between 20-50% depending on how useful they are and the JP boost ability can just be removed, no need for giving it as a passive for every job. Equip Axes for squire should cost like 120 JP. Accumulate, no matter how useful, is a little expensive at 300. Lower it to 250. Heal is so situational and replaced by other abilities that it should only be 90. Move+1 is useful enough that 200 feels fair. You can apply this logic to every job.

I always rated squire higher than most. Move +1 and jp up are 2 abilities that I’m gonna put on every character for every play through as their first 2 abilities. And use them both skills for like 50% of the game. To be it’s a B at least just for those.

One thing I'd add is make the knock back effect of rush more reliable. FFT has a severe lack of repositioning skills in my opinion so having an early, reliable, ability to move the enemy (or your units) would be very welcome.

Maybe you could replace Move +1 with Critical: Move +1. If you give Move +1 to a different class, then you would equip a character with the Critical: Move +1 early on and transition later.

All classes should have one "passive" ability that cannot be learned but is active. The squire's passive ability should be powerful relative to it's learned abilities (which should be weak). My preference for the squire passive would be something like an extra 150% JP spillover rewards from other classes. So to clarify, in the game, whenever a character earsn JP, a small portion of that JP is spread out amongst the other characters you control. This is called spillover (I think). A squire, who is supposed to be "learning" how to do other warrior abilities, should get a massive boost to spillover, essentially meaning that any character who is currently a squire is going to learn what is happening around him at a much faster rate. This could be a way to speed up a character that you are trying very hard to level up (much like JP boost does). So while a normal character might get 1-2 JP spillover from a Samurai doing his thing, the squire would get an additional "free" 3-4 JP on top of the 1-2 just earned. It would make sense thematically, and would provide a way for characters who join late in the game a way to get up to speed quicker.

I'd give them one single new ability: Patch wound. It would have a short but noticeable charge period, range 1, and give the target regen. Hardly a replacement for a real healer like a chemist or white mage, but definitely something nice to have. Edit: I also like the idea of them having crossbows since the whole point of crossbows historically was that they were easy to use.

JP Boost being required is part of why I do mods on FFT that auto add things like that

All the unique characters replace squire with their unique jobs, so it's like the game thinks of it as the non-job job. I think I'd like to see them lean into that. To me, that would mean the squire position is where you would train the unique and fundamental abilities of a character that can always be used without using an ability slot. Kind of like racial abilities in DnD. Then you could randomize it for standard characters, so different characters can unlock different abilities. And, you could give characters a way to learn such abilities through combat events, like how you get the ultima skill.

JP Boost reminds me of the Double Sword problem in FFTA. Double Sword's already broken for multiple reasons, but it also essentially doubles your AP gain for any ability that's on a weapon. It's hard to resist the temptation of using it based on power alone, and that makes it even harder from a minmax standpoint. I always felt like Double Sword should half AP gain on weapons, and JP boost just shouldn't exist or at least be a smaller increase.

I almost always start with every champion getting jp boost and move +1 Then I go to tavern, grab a few champs, level them uo and see if focus or tailwind is available. Then once I get luso, the whole team becomes auto chicken and luso goes berserker.

I'd rather abilities be buffed, not nerfed. What other move options exist for other classes and how to fix them? I would *greatly* like remakes to have individual adjustable GP, EXP, and JP growth rates like 4x, 10x, 20x, and more. I've already put a *lot* of time into the Playstation version of this game and I want to avoid further grinding. Thankee!

Axes really do need a change. The wild damage they do is just never an option compared to more reliable damage from other weapons. I guess a “leap into danger” kind of ability to take a hit for someone else could be Brave activated or something.

TL;DR Focus is GOAT, Squire's current form makes flavor sense and also acts as starter for Chemists, Stat detriments for something you already have to unlock is un-fun, Axe Masters sounds really great especially since Axes aren't available right away. I only sometimes bother with Move +1 due to potential to just pick up something else sooner, but what I ALWAYS get with Squire next to Gained JP up is Focus. Focus is the best grinding skill in the game, (except Tailwind of course) and it remains useful for a long time utility wise. I just spam Focus until the enemies come to me and then annihilate them after getting to grind exp and JP with an always successful move that doesn't require moving so you get turns faster too. The last time I started a new team I had them master Focus before JP up so they could get more actions in and clear monsters better, if I have extra JP for Move +1 after Focus and JP up I definitely grab it next, but Focus is so underrated. Child me also used the throwing stones at eachother technique I hear about a lot, but Focus is so good it makes special character feel bad. Just remember if you power level a white mage this way keep them weaponless for finishing the enemy/s. I ruined a grind session with solo Ramza cause I put a staff on him and thought focusing all those times would let me one shot. Also the role of the Squire job in FFT and IRL is a springboard to a higher job. AKA Gained JP Up and Focus are perfect for it flavorfully. The idea of counter-acting the strength of skills you have to earn and unlock with stat detriments sounds wild to me. Game is for fun, grinding for something in-effective or sideways effective is not fun. Effort means stronger characters, stronger characters means weaker enemies are weaker, and stronger enemies are possible. Reminds me of the ridiculous notion a lot of people have about scaling everything all the time (Looking at you Tactics Ogre Reborn) and how people just don't seem to realize just how boring and lame that feels in execution. If I spend a bunch of time beating difficult battles and leveling up, gearing up, and acquiring new skills and strategies and I don't FEEL any more powerful it's just awful progression, or no progression at all more accurately. If it's not PVP it doesn't need balance. I love your Axe Master idea, i'd just let them negate the lower half of the damage potential otherwise they're still just better off with a sword, but it does give Squires something to shine in AND makes rolling a new character as a Squire later game feel less bad because at least now that you have access to Axes they are better, while still staying where there power is for early game, which is to say they leave enough to be desired to entice you to actually want to unlock other jobs.

The squire that Ramza could become seemed to have better balanced stats.

Your ideas are excellent! Some of them (beastmaster working for all beasts, JP Boost being universal) have already been implemented in mods, which just adds to how good those ideas are. While watching your video I thought about something a bit more extreme, but that could be done in a new engine or in a remake: Squires evolve after chapter 1/2. Does it make sense that Ramza Beoulve, the guy that frequently fights alongside/against holy knights, fell knights, Lucavi, etc, is still recruiting Squires to his cause? My idea is after a certain point all squires in the game become "warriors", axe specialists. Dash becomes a skill that, if you are equipping an axe, deals half of the normal damage and pushes the enemy 1 or 2 panels away. Throw stone becomes Throw axe, dealing half the axe's damage at range. Salve becomes first aid, it heals some HP on top of removing status effects. Focus could stay the same, or it could also give you 5 bravery as well.

Way back in 2008, I made a romhack of the original PSX version of FFT that was fairly popular here in Brazil. People knows it as "patch do Luis". In my version, I buffed the random damage formula of axes to go from 50% to 150% of its power and made it so they always had around 50% more power than swords of similar rank (to make up for the fact they are 2handed weapons). I also gave flails the same damage formula as the gun, with fixed damage and 100% acc. Those two changes alone made squires a lot better. I also gave squires shields and crossbows, made JP Boost innate for everyone and removed it from the game, so you don't need to learn/equip it. Gave squire innate Beastmaster and move Parry from Knight to them. I also slightly improved their base stars and growths, they got a little more attack power and speed, but they still had less attack than Knights and less Speed than Archers (renamed Ranger in that hack). I made tons of other changes to classes and monsters and gear and skills (I gave Orator's Provoke to the Squire too, and nerfed Focus) and the game was pretty balanced. In my hack, the Squire was this weak kind of mix of everything that would come after them. They were weaker than knights, but faster and more versatile, they were slower than archers and thieves, but bulkier, they could use a variety of weapons and overall a very usable job up to the end of the game. The fact monsters were also a lot better helped too, because you had more use for your innate Beastmaster.

The general problem with "trade a skill/ability/talent/tree pick for more resource generation or growth" things in RPGs is that they're almost universally either so good they're worth never using anything else, or they're completely useless. So one way or another they render something useless and uninteresting, and if unbalanced in the positive direction, they can destroy difficulty. I don't think JP Boost is so imbalanced it destroys game difficulty, but it is definitely not great that it is so centralizing in its slot.

I think another problem with squire as a class in general, is that it feels like a class that is shoehorned into the story to give us the perception of ramza and delita being young and inexperienced. Part of me thinks that we should throw that concept away and let the story tell that as it is and rename the class to just warrior or mercenary or man at arms or something like that. Especially considering the point you made about chemist sort of not being a novice magic user and being very versatile throughout the entire game.

JP Up gives a 1.5 multiplier to gains. JP gains already scale with job level by default. I think JP Up as a skill should stay, as it makes perfect sense for a starter skill, but I agree that the JP grind is unacceptable (even with JP boost).

Whenever I mod FFT or play another mod, the JP Boost changes you suggested are one of the first things I do. Just, every job gets innate JP Boost and it gets removed from the Squire. I would much rather not get FOMO every action I take when I could have been getting JP quicker. I do also sometimes scale down the job level JP requirements to speed up unlocking without completely bypassing the system.

Goodness do you honestly get haters talking about FFT? It's the quintessential SRPG and most aspire to achieve a fraction of the love it has and even the green Greatest Hits broken jewel case version I have holds up to this day as a spectacular playthrough. I guess it's not everyone's cup of tea but I can't imagine where the genre would be without it. Play whatever you feel like talking about my man, real fans of the genre will be here to support you.

Throwing this out (pun intended) early just in case I forget by the time the video ends, but I often keep Throw Stone around just because of what seems like higher knock back odds. Not too many of those, but it seems to be like the Monster Boulder in TO in that regard. I'd argue for Move+1, it would make sense to have Jump-1 instead. The rookie deciding to sprint or watch their feet sounds fun. I recall axes having some sort of niche for better for equip breaks or something....some sort of physical check saw some bonus from them somewhere.

AXE option suggestion for squire.... have them be able to use them but with no real bonuses, sort of like i can use this but not really well.....then axe mastery gives you bonus dmg, hit and crit %/dmg ....

I'd say Move +1 is already double edged for a beginner at the game. It creates an issue if you put it on 1 or 2 characters, and you make the mistake of overextending. Separated from the rest of your deployed characters, they can get ganged up on. Now you have enemies blocking a Chemist from throwing them an item, and you probably don't have a Priest built up well enough, or fully comprehend the Faith mechanic. While I agree compared to other options, its hard to top for Move Abilities in the early game, but new players may just as easily get their character killed of they use it recklessly. It's a simple teaching tool given early on so a player can be wary once they get better unlocks.

I'll stop talking about the 30 year old game when someone finally makes a better alternative. World's had 30 years for someone to craft a strategy game with FF5 cross-classing and the grim tone and narrative that was so painfully lacking in FFTA and A2 and so far the world has failed to deliver. Plenty of strategy games with political narratives,but godspeed trying to find FFT's breadth of build freedom anywhere among them outside of Tactics Ogre. Until then,I have WOTL Tweaks. Y'know how long it takes Ramza and an army of dragons and wyverns with 97 bravery to topple the church? Not very as it turns out. Maybe it's time to try that again with chocobos.

I have a tweaks I'd make to your suggested changes.... I'd have it to where when you master squire Move +1, Jp up, and equip Axe all are passive skills your characters has as all classes. Mastering classes does basically nothing for most part. I think some passive traits should be enabled by mastering a class. Or make to when you have the classes ability equipped, then you get the mastery bonus. with Move +1 passively on (which doubling up does nothing just to remove this let's make early move 2 out of this.) this allows players to pick movement abilities that do other things besides go futher. As far as potentially removing Jp up, can see a case being made for that as well. In general I think so many skills are grossly overcost. (why does any ability cost 15-- jp?) While I'm sure most of grind our brains out , if you were play straight thru the story battles, you'd be lucky master 3-4 jobs by the end of the game. The game Jp cost just isn't scaled for the content in it. I feel like all skills should be cover with in the jp to reach lvl 8 as the job. I might take that a step further just make skills unlock as you lvl up the class automatically, till you master it at lvl 8. Sure you can just grab the 3 skills you want and bail, but if you can master the entire class in a reasonable timeline, that works better in the long haul over cherry picking skills. Does it really make sense a chaarcter can learn fire 4 without having learned by 1,2 or 3 first? Overall I don't think it benefits the game making it so grind heavy. There's more than enough classes to play , that you will be busy enough unlocking stuff. (I've played with gameshark, where you could just buy all the skills you have enough jp for, it still takes awhile unlock some classes.) I agree putting a beast master class in the game would make more sense for to carry certain skills, like beast talk too. It should do all the beast stuff, and replace any jobs that have it with something else. I'd add some other squire job skills. I'd make them on theme with the notion the squire in the grunt who does the b***h work for the army. Like Chop the wood, is an axe attack to make them have some axe special ability. (It can do bonus damage to treants/treefolk hehe.) Make polish armor a one time reflect skill for allies. Shine your shoes, as a movement buff/remove slow/immoblize effects(or make this movement ability to replace move 1. You get one movement bonus at the start of the fight, then have normal movement after that.) Protect the weak- Cover any allies in range with low hps. Overall there's tons of potentially good directions to go here. I would love to see another tactics game.

I'm really against perks that do something positive and negative simultaneously. My advice for Squire is to just make it identical to Ramza's class for everyone and make a new Chapter 4 Class for Ramza. They should have the most diverse pool of equipable items in the game. And boost their MA growth to be on par with Geomancer.

There's so much one could do... Transferable class bonuses to weapon types: Thief to get innate crit+ on knives and a support ability to transfer it to other classes. Now you have an assassin chemist! Axes having chance to stun on hit. No cumulative buffs please, like at all, you don't want your merry bunch just standing in the corner passing tailwinds for minutes. No farming boosts, just rebalance gain, yes! Status effects on ranger shots so it doesn't suck as much (silence arrow those pesky mages). No unique classes, if you can make anyone an arithmetician you should be able to make everybody Agrias or Orlandeau because there's no balance anyways.

In my personal mod for FFT I made Squires a Pseudo Onion Knight. I gave them the support equip crossbow, armor, shield skills and weapon guard reaction. Removed everything else. I also played around with giving them default access to Rods & Staves and changed Rods to have a 3 Range MA atk while Staves have a 3 Range MA Healing.

Change "Squire" to "Warrior" and have it wield crossbows, knives, swords, axes, and maces. Give it more limited, but useful, support abilities, decent arsenal and attack, decent movement. Really leaning in to the "jack of all, master of none" role but with all the versatility, it may be a reliable option late game. Honestly, the Squire should have Items too with innate Throw item Rework the Chemist in "Acolyte" or Mage or something to represent a beginner magic user with a wide array or beginner magic. While the higher classes have the purer forms of each. For example, Acolyte can have Fire1, Thunder1, Ice1, Heal1, Esuna, and Harmony/Dispel Magic (low cost, low charge, low damage spells) while something like Black mage would have Fire 2, 3, and 4 (also reworked so that fire 1 and 2 have the same charge time, range, and AOE, but fire 2 just costs more mp). I personally believe the Geomancy should be the expert Axe wielder. But pretty much all the weapons that deal random damage should be reworked to be more consistent. Axes should have Attack and Brave in their damage calculation. Lol ok... im ranting... cant wait for more content like this! I love seeing people's ideas on fft!

I liked all your ideas except I’d put “move +1” on another class like, say, ninja instead of giving it a negative. That way it just comes later in the game and you get to try out other stuff. I love the idea of the support ability “axe master” although I’d give that ability “deal 100% damage” so that axes can become predictable (which, as you said, is important!!)… In FFT, the number that shows up when attacking with an axe/flail/bag is actually the max non-crit attack. And it’s RNG that multiplies by your character’s attack all the way down to one, so that also makes axes feel worse - they almost never do the damage they say they’ll do unless you get lucky and also get a crit.

The Squire is perfect. Average all across the board, they are very well rounded. Except when it comes to magick, of course. They can heal and recover allies from statuses, and they have not one, not two - they have THREE ways to dislodge enemies. It comes in the form of Tackle, Counter-Tackle and Stone (ranged, at that). Dislodging may cause enemies to take fall damage, activate traps and even get hit by spells they otherwise wouldnt. If I were to make them stronger, I'd fiz the Axe damage spread, and make Flails have increased chance to dislodge on hit. And then I would make dislodging cancel any charge the enemy may be charging (so it's a new, soft form of crowd control). Consider Squires with equip gun or crossbow.

I would probably give Move+1 to Thief or something and instead give Squire a skill that's like "not impeded by terrain penalty" or something so it has an interesting niche in chapter 1 with all those swamp maps. If you combine this with someone elses suggestion in the comments to make Rush guaranteed to pushback enemies then squires early and mid game are actually really useful for arranging and repositioning units as a somewhat beefy semi-support job that can line up perfect shots for your black mages and holy sword skills. Also really agree that I think every job should have like one innate skill that's a great idea

Honestly, yeah, 100% agree with removing JP Up and making that the base JP gain rate; you just don't have the option to put anything else there if you're at all into optimizing your game. Remove that and you'll have much better variety in your support options. EXP Up would also have to be removed as well for a similar reason, though it ain't as big an issue as JP Up. As far as options for the character, I'd say take a page from other job based Square RPGs and make the class similar to the Freelancer class, act as an all rounder support class. Access to more weapons and armor would give them some niche equipment combinations, access to a minor heal other ability (like cheer) and possibly even a miniscule (say, 10%) MP heal other ability would give them a role supporting more powerful characters. I'd even go as far as to say make their "Accumulate" ability instead increase the strength of other party members. Make them a marginal physical class that helps other classes be more capable around them, that'll give them an interesting niche while not making them too powerful, themselves.

Like you, I really hope they remove JP Boost in a remake and just boost JP received across the game. I would also want them to increase the knock back chance on Rush and Stone to have an interesting niche. Beastmaster having a range of the whole map should also be done. Everything else I think is probably fine.

Ive learned that most remakes are just remasters; and most remasters never change anything. That said, once upon a time I was addicted to modding FFT and the one thing I still believe in is getting rid of JP Up and just reducing JP costs across the board; it helps enemies learn abilities too since they can't use JP Up.

I say remove the mime class, just get rid of it and preferably replace it with something cooler like a pikeman or something that also focuses on spears, because polearms are awesome and I can always use more than just the lancer. Anyways, get rid of mime and give most of its niche to squire, as a squire's role is to follow someone else and assist them/learn from them, let the squire mimic other team members and maybe get extra jp for doing it. And having mime abilities from the start might make the role more useful, or at least more accessible.

Axe damage should be -35% to +15%. Axe master skill will grant +20% static damage. JP unlock not inert. Normal axe damage is 10% weaker on average Master damage is 10% stronger on average

lower base att for axes and flails give axes higher crit% and flails higher knockback % give axes a damage boost based on user's remaining hp give flails a damage boost based on # of target's armor pieces give squire throw axe ability (non-negotiable) give squire self-buff react that procs when there are critical/KO'd party members give squire a passive or conditional ability that boosts any knight class's stats leave move+1 alone, come up with more appealing alternatives rather than hike the cost of the good ability all i got rn

Squire is just a prime example of tweaking the game overall and not just JP costs. TO:Re tried the important task of making niche uses still worth packing around, something FFT fails at miserably. Game devolves into 'who hits harder' instead of all the utility options way too quickly by comparison.

Having played the original and the most popular FFT mod FFT 1.3 and watched various other mods be either showcased or played through, I can say FFT community is still alive and well. They have done various things to try and add more flavor. You have some solid arguments for changes. A lot of it boils down to what kind of changes would you like to see? Balance changes mostly which try and keep things as close to the original as possible while removing some huge outliers or things that simply didn't work (like JP Boost and random damage weapons being poor choices like you mentioned) Or do you want to see more change then that like a potential remake, where they keep the spirit of the classes, but rework the entire game. If you want to spend a bunch of time on this and boil it down to a final list of things you'd like to see, maybe you could even get a modder on board and they could implement it, wouldn't that be cool! As far as seeing an actual remake, I would be extremely surprised if it happened, considering it got the war of the lions update on PSP and even had a mobile port, I doubt they see much potential in a remaster, so it would probably need to be an actual remake. That's a big gamble because the FFT community has been around so long and the games mechanics so beloved it would be a monumentally difficult task to please that crowd with a remake. I think the audience is there though, look at the sheer volume Baldur's Gate 3 sold. It just needs to be good!

Would I be alone in wanting a job specific piece of gear like they did for hitting Job Level 99 in FF 3 DS? You would need to send a mastered job on a certain bar quest to be able to find that item, so it would require actually mastering the job with 9999 points to be able to unlock it. Yeah?

You should try playing the remixed mod. They took jp boost out. I think squire should be able to re equip others. I kinda like your idea with movement, but I think you should actually get +1 movement from more things. I wish axes and flails had a shield evasion thing instead of the rng. It's just bad. Like shields are just less effective against them. I would also like a distract or teamwork support ability - An enemy has 10% reduced evasion if they are facing a squire. It would have limited usefulness, but I can imagine using it early. I kinda wish squire had a flee on critical reaction. I like your idea of taking hits for another person, but I think that should actually be a knight. I also could go with a pocket sand thing, like a blinding dust. I am ok with the squire being a base class though. I just also think thief should be one. Thief is just bad but interesting. I wish it was squire, chemist, thief instead of needing so many levels to finally get thief which sucks. But then they all need to be worthless in the end. Chemist should get a next level chemist, maybe an alchemist.

This is (G)Old, one of my favorite game of all times, a really good art and Characters designs. Watching someone analyzing a topic that "no one cares" it's my drill now! Really good content

I do agreed removing the JP boost in the game some of fft mod had remove the JP boost for better gameplay experience. Like soul of destiny or the lion war mod (not too sure abt JP boost but easy to get to dark knight class as I had not played this mod yet.)

Jp boost is fine. It's a skill that has the tradeoff of not using anything else. Move plus one is easily replaced in chapter 1 by move plus 2 from the thief. Beastmaster is the skill i would change. Maybe add more skills that add to the theme of a squire. Like giving all chocobos more movement because the squire takes care of his or her lords mount.

I want the squire to have chocobo knight skills. Hear me out…squires always took care of the knights mount. So maybe lean into the monster skill ability and give them the ability to do things with chocobos. Like while riding chocobo u can walk through enemies and damage them. Chocobo can take an attack while riding. Etc. lol

Having to grind for the two abilities you use for 1/2 of tge game kinda does suck unless you you rushing a certain team... I agree having to have jp up sucks but having it is a stepping stone. Same could ve said for auto potion tho...

Somewhat off-topic, but this video made me wonder about making the squire more like pawns in chess, and now I want a +3 Move/Jump for the first three turns as a movement skill.

All I can think about is how FFT for the original Playstation had the original names for the items and abilities, and is the only FFT I want to think about.

Cover doesn’t really feel like a Squire ability. That kind of tanking always feels like a heavy armor class ability. So either a Knight or Paladin style class.

I would replace move+1 with something else, I don't think it suits the class on top of it being "OP". I would give move+1 to thief or something.

If squires were on the same level of Ramza squire, I would love to use one. Always liked learning those extra skills like Cheer and Ultima.

Not hypothetical, Jason Schreier confirmed a remake is coming! Look it up on the Games subreddit.

I'd would modify axes to allow damage to scale with the character's level rather than just Brave and strength stats. Brave and strength would instead narrow the damage range the higher they are.

I believe for every move plus one you should get a minus one to jump. If you were that nimble on your feet and able to carry heavy weight you should not be able to jump higher

It would’ve been cool if squires could’ve had a free “change equip” ability they could use on others.

I would lijw squire if they had more utility and slightly better stat gains, also why does the squire learn Ultima? Lol

I vote for just take all JP requirements down to whatever the boost does, half or whatever. Same effect I think

Could swap move +1 with charge-- that gives +1 move only in the direction you started the turn facing

You should play WOTL 2.0 it has alot of the things uve mentioned including the jp boost

I was going to say 100% of your jobs will most likely use squire for even just jp boost

Squire is about the same as the minotaur, leave them alone too long after all the buffing and they'll KO with their normal attack.

Change Squire -> Soldier. Start there and everything else will fall into place.

Come play FFT EZ-8 and see its take on the Squire!

I have finished this game before, but i'm only now learning that axes deal random damage

Rename Squire to Cadet and it frees up a lot of insinuation about Squire-theme assumptions lol.

I enjoy your content Tom! Just dropping that here. Be well!

Equip skills should give a damage boost to classes that can already use them

On my latest play, I ignored the JP boost almost entirely, allowing for much fun gameplay because I was able to use other skills in that slot through the entire game that otherwise I wouldn't have. It felt refreshing and fun.

While the argument could be made that JP growth needs to be higher in general, I’m fine with Squires having JP Boost as an ability, as I feel it’s appropriate for the starter class. The Squire is someone still learning the ins and outs of combat, and it is often said that one of the most valuable things one can learn is HOW to learn. JP Boost could be argued to be just that, a young recruit putting in the effort to get that fundamental skill down.

I'd like to see classes have a diversity (maybe 2-3) of options for weapon types and not be specialized into any one particular type, but that might be the FF11 player in me speaking. The Warrior in that game also fulfilled a generalist role with weapon types (1H Sword, 2H Sword, 1H Axe, 2H Axe, Scythe, Shield, you name it, they could use it) and allowed you to skill up proficiency in a wide manner. FFT doesn't have a skill proficiency system like Tactics Ogre PSP/Reborn, but what if it did?

V1.3 difficulty mod did squires pretty well

Defend could give adjacent allies a defensive boost as well.

Thematically this seems a reflection of why TG Cid was so busted; Ramza is the ultimate example of an Almighty Janitor as he never rose above the Squire class and yet… And yet, his virtues - his will to act as his conscience dictates, his compassion for his fellow people, his honour as a leader who his friends would follow, and his love as a brother who would suffer the worst eternal sufferings to save his sister - saw him fight a shadow war to dismantle the otherworldly powers that were taking advantage of human sins and vices in an attempt to subvert the world order and enslave all sentient life. They drove him to be beyond what would be possible, allwhile still ultimately being a baseline and non-extraordinary person… Even so, I agree that from a gameplay design perspective, making the class *viable but not better than almost everything* would absolutely be the right choice. If Matsuno is willing to take suggestions like this and board, we’ll definitely have a game that could surpass all for realises… as if FFT wasn’t already pretty much that! Oh, and my itsy bitsy request to rebuild the maps and battles in the map to balance parties of 7-8 instead of 4-5 - which might even be why we’re stuck waiting *huff-puff, huff-puff* - then we’re more than golden… We’d be platinum.

It is time to move! ability that lets you use your action to move again. Accumulate reveals hidden power of squire up to 1000 jp to learn and this shouldnt give you plus 1 strength that is cheap it should give next action special properties it would make dash do twice damage always knock back defend sunken state equip change twice time to move lets you keep 20 ct. Make throw stone interrupt charge and knock back Axe always do damage indicated Knife gets concentrate and no counter Sword gets concentrate 50% crit rate Flail gets don't move status added to attack Pole arm pushes back enemy Harp doesnt lose ct from attacking Cloth deals minus 20 ct to enemy or minus 10 Spear gets don't act added to attack wears off after one turn Rods drain mp Staves drain hp Knight Sword Always crit Gun magic three spell Gun regular poison Bow further range concentrate Crossbow double shot Ninja edge always special like adding effect or spell for koga iga Katanas double attack Fist don't move to attack Stronger monk revive 100% Earth slash darkness Spin fist extra tile Secret fist 100% death sentence on allies Bard effects up Katana never break It makes steal 20% more effective Reduces charge for charge jump Mp for some spells charge for others For Ramza accumulate would make scream able to be given to others not plus one speed gives ct instead 20 Cheer up heal and brave Yell haste and speed plus 40ct Wish revives also And in last chapter accumumlate is not greyed out He can give it to others. Heal becomes a remedy cures all ailments like stigma magic And accumulate is greyed out For Ramza until chapter4 it would until max level mastered ultima becomes altimas big one Cloud instant limits Mustadio 100% chance snipe ignores resistance seal evil monsters not just undead or new zombie shot then seal evil on monsters Balthier 100% snipe steal crit You get the idea

Equip Axe - should incorporate flails, this would be handy for abilities like the knights Battle skill which cares about the weapon damage but not the weapon variance. Monster Skill - should affect all allied monster on the field > agreed! Defend - Same evasion percentages on back/sides as the front Gained JP UP - I only use this for my calculator, everyone else uses fun abilities, like a Thief with equip axe. No changes needed for me :P Fun video, I enjoyed it. :)

throw stone is amazing for early game jp and xp farming

If anyone wants another game very similair to this. Vandal hearts 2. The story was better than tactics to me. I only played it because I couldn't get another copy of tactics which was chipped and copied for my Pal ps1 An absolutely amazing game, holds hands in my heart with FFT

multiple mods old and new tried to “fix” squire (generic squire specifically). usually it involved changing its skillset to more of a support one (single digit revive, regen with or without healing, better status treatment etc). Some mods made more unique abilities like defy pain that restores half hp in critical condition, or free mp restore. in my opinion support skillset of free abilities is the only squire’s saving grace. in any case squire by design is a class you want to get out of, so i don’t understand why are trying to fix the class itself, and not try to make skillset (which consists of useless trash abilities) better, so it could be a viable option on other classes. as for axes, there’s a very simple fix: instead of literally having damage range of 1 to max damage, it should have 50% to 150% damage.

Alot of rom hacks actually remove JP boost (FFT 1.3, Ramza has Blade of ruin, ect...)

Do people really call you a grifter for talking about FFT? That's wild. Don't listen to them lol.

It's interesting to hear you say this about JP up... I've often thought that it was broken myself to the point where a lot of times when I would replay the game, I would not allow myself to use JP up but I would use a gameshark to make it so that my earned JP never goes down. Essentially taking longer to get access to all of my abilities, but getting all of them faster. And another thing to mention of course is how chemist doesn't even start with it so you always end up having to turn your chemist into a squire and just grinding the squire just to get JP up so you can level up your insane JP cost mages.

Yes, charges are very challenging.

What I hated about Squire is that Ramza was a "Squire" through the entire game but his version was clearly different. Maybe that was to discourage you from keeping him as one all the time like other characters with Exclusive jobs. Learning Ultima later doesn't really seem that intuative or even fit the job/role. Maybe this is a discussion for a different video though.

Accumulate, alone, is more than enough.

Accumulate is the best skill in Squire's kit, justifying the entire Fundaments set on any physical job. What I would do instead is.... Squire+ - All Squire skills get +20% knockback - Move+1 is renamed and increases chance of self to be knocked back by +30% - JP Boost is reworked to have no effect on regular JP gain, but increases the trickle JP to all other units - New Passive Practiced Swings, increasing damage reliability. Less bang for buck than other passives for non-axes, but possibly affecting spells. - Equip Weapon has an innate +10% damage for basic attacks - Equip Armor has an innate +10% hp when wearing that piece - Remove Beastmaster, gain Beast Whisper, an active skill that allows a monster to use their hidden skill for X turns. Beastmaster will go to the actual monster specialist. - New Active: Mana Burst. Use up all MP to deal half that amount in True Damage to self and melee target.

I would say to treat squire like an "adventurer" job. 5/5 PA and HP growth. 3/5 MP and MA growth. 4/5 PA, 5/5 HP, 4/5 MA, MP, and 7/10 Sp. Give ALL human jobs +1 to move. So, 4-5 move instead of 3-4 move. Remove Move+1 from squire. Remove Gained JP Up from squire. Remove Beast Master from squire. Add Jump+1 to squire. Add Equip Shield to squire. Add Equip Crossbow to squire. Add Weapon Guard to squire. Add Distract to squire, which deals attack damage and nullifies a target's evasion until your next turn starts (based on attacker/target brave). Add Bandage to squire, which has 4 ctr and adds renew. Only targets others, range 1v1. Interrupts on damage. Add Counter to knight. Add Jump+2 to archer. Add Move+1 to thief. Add Move+2 to ninja. Add Equip Bow to archer. Remove Weapon Guard from knight. Remove Equip Shield from knight. (Support, not innate) Remove Jump+1 from archer. Remove Equip Crossbow from archer. Remove Jump+2 from thief. Remove Counter from monk. Remove Move+3 from Bard. Remove Jump+3 from Dancer. Give every job "basic" active abilities that cost 0 jp and start learned. Dash and Throw Stone for Squire. Make "random" damage weapons 50% to 150% damage. This all allows squires to dip their toes in many weapon things, while supporting allies.

Rad is a mad lad.

1st comment nice

I love it dude!!

More fft!

I made some huge changes to this class in my editor that not only acted as a job buff, but made it scale throughout the game as well: Increased speed and scaling to above average to compensate for their niche abilities Gave PA, MA and Jump buff to be competitive with other classes, but still lower than specialist jobs making them a jack-of-all-trades Accumulate: 10 mana cost, 20CT, 2 cast range in a 3 range area Throw Stone < Mud Sling: Throw 3 stones within 4 range that give 3 separate status chance of blind/oil/poison Dash < Grapple: 2 range dash attack that deals 20% Health damage to enemy, and Heals self for the same amount. Guaranteed knockback, and countertackle also uses this. (Range also works on countertackle) Heal < Battle Drug: No longer cures statuses, inflicts Poison, Haste and Shell on 2 range area around caster. Will probably add basic fire spell or new ability to ensure Mud Sling's oil is proccable

This is way out there, but I'd love to see things like JP Boost and Beast Master moved to a system like Knight of Lodis has. There, emblems are required for class changes and provide permanent boosts. So using recruit on dragons unlocks dragon tamer as a class while also giving you a permanent boost to any dragons within a few squares of that character. I'd love to see hitting lv 8 or mastering squire do something similar, just provide a permanent boost to JP on that character that doesn't require losing a passive slot.

I feel like Squire has potential. I imagine them carrying all the gear to the other classes. Like a real squire would. Thus maybe they can equip alot of different items. Granted they wont be the best with anything. Also giving Base Squire Unique abilities like tailwind and wish is fun. on one of my playthru's I made a skill called "Pummel Blade" using repeating fist animation for a weaker crush punch without instant death. 2 range WP+1 bonus dmg and gave it to base knight class

Squire doesn't need to fixed. It's the very first class and only exists to give you some basic skills. You all so thirsty for content that you spend time and effort making a video about stupid stuff