Making "classic" final fantasy classes.

[Icestorm245]

Hey guys, I just wanted to know if there was any homebrew or 3rd party stuff for Final Fantasy classes; black mage, white mage, red mage, etc. I know the fighter, monk, and thief classes are pretty much spoken for, but for a class that relies entirely on elemental and restoration magic, is there a way to make it work? Even good?

I was thinking for Black Mage, give it 9 stages of spells, like in the original FF. Make the damage scale with level, and even give the lowest level single target spells infinite uses a day, and each does maybe 5d6 damage at 20th? All the higher level spells, of course, will have uses per day.

[deuxhero]

Black Mage: War Mage
White Mage: Healer
Red Mage: Mystic Thuege.
Summoner: War Mage with Spell Thematics, possible Rainbow Warsnake.

[Urpriest]

Actually, most of these originated in Dragonlance. Wizards of the Black Robes and Wizards of the Red Robes in that setting are what became Final Fantasy's Black Mage and Red Mage, while their Wizard of the White Robes bears a passing thematic resemblance to White Mage (for the latter you'd be better off with Healer though, since Wizards of the White Robes is still a Wizard and lacks much healing).

[tyckspoon]

Wizard/Sorcerer and Cleric are fully capable of representing Black and White Mages; the FF foibles of them are basically just build choices in D&D. They're not especially good build choices, but you can do them. Bard is actually really close to Red Mages, if you ignore the Bardic Music- moderately good combat, moderately good spellcasting, ability to select from both 'White' (Cure X Wounds, Neutralize Poison) and 'Black' (although the D&D Bard list covers more of what would later be called 'Time', 'Grey', 'Oracle', or 'Status' magics) kinds of spells, proficiency with a limited selection of non-mage-like weapons and allowed use of armor.

That said, there certainly is a reasonably large amount of homebrew dedicated to capturing the Final Fantasy mechanics more exactly, although I'm of the opinion that this tends to result in somewhat crippled classes when trying to apply it to D&D. I've never seen any that impressed me enough to remember where it was so I can link it to you, unfortunately.


Summoner: War Mage with Spell Thematics, possible Rainbow Warsnake.

There actually is a difference between the styles of Summoners and Black Mages, although it's one D&D is not very good at emulating. Black Mages are typically better for status effects and single-target blasting; a common Final Fantasy mechanic is to reduce the strength of a spell when you multitarget it. Summoner spells are straight up AoE nukes, usually with an oddball effect or two in there that is rare or non-existant in Black/White magic (Carbuncle/Golem/half of FF6's Espers). These do full damage to all targets, but they tend to have much higher MP costs to match.. that's a difficult distinction to make with Vancian casters in D&D, where you can't just scale the MP cost and where standard blasts like Fireball functionally operate like Summoner nukes while still being basically Black Magic in nature.

[deuxhero]

Ok,

Black Mage: Psion
Summoner: Wilder.

[grarrrg]

I was thinking for Black Mage, give it 9 stages of spells, like in the original FF. Make the damage scale with level, and even give the lowest level single target spells infinite uses a day, and each does maybe 5d6 damage at 20th? All the higher level spells, of course, will have uses per day.

:smallconfused:Lolwut?:smallconfused:

ORIGINAL NES Final Fantasy had 8 levels of spells, damage did NOT scale with level (not appreciably anyway), casting for ALL casters was "sorcerer"-like, spells maxed out at 9 castings per spell level.
Certain items had infinite uses of certain spells. These items almost never had the 'best' spell options, but hey, free spells!


More on topic, going by Final Fantasy 1
White Magic = Healing, Defense Buffing Spells, Undead Killing
Black Magic = Damage, Offense Buffing Spells, Enemy Debuffing
For the sake of argument (and the sake of not rewriting all the spell lists)
White Magic = Divine
Black Magic = Arcane

Fighter = Fighter
Knight = Paladin
Black Belt/Master = Monk (give Full Bab)
Thief = Rogue (give Full Bab, remove Sneak Attack)
Ninja = ? (Thief + limited Black Magic) Duskblade maybe?
Red Mage/Wizard = Bard (remove 'performance', add more 'divine' spells to list) (technically the Red Mage is better than D&D would normally allow)
White Mage/Wizard = Favored Soul (needs tweaking)
Black Mage/Wizard = Sorcerer (doesn't really need tweaking)

[T.G. Oskar]

The big 6:
Fighter: You don't get much from entering Fighter, aside from feats. Most FF games have their Fighter only be good at hitting stuff, so it's no big deal.

Thief: Expert. Really, expert. However, make sure you give it lots of Sleight of Hand, Escape Artist and buff disarming, so you can steal. Thieves in FF, unlike what you may think, have no sneak attack to speak of.

Monk: Monk. Really, Monk. Wholeness of Body = Chakra (however, they can use Wholeness of Body infinite times), Kick = Flying Kick feat, plus their innate Counter ability is dealt with prepping for Karmic Strike/Robilar's Gambit, with a decent enough Dex for Combat Reflexes. You may attempt unarmed Swordsage, but the core Monk oddly fits.

White Mage: Archivist, sans the knowledge stuff. They wield light armor, wield bludgeoning weapons, and use lots of divine spells. Pray and any similar abilities are dealt with the Touch of Healing reserve feat. Cloistered Cleric is also fine.

Black Mage: Wizard, plain and simple. They get Empower Spell for free instead of Scribe Scroll, tho.

Red Mage: This one is a bit hard, but the Bard fits the idea well. Mystic Theurge, on the other hand, is a really bad idea because, while you can have both kinds of spells, Red Mages never get the full extent of spellcasting, but they have Doublecast. However, Bards get three quarters of what a Red Mage gets. They're, honestly, the hardest to duplicate.

Other classes:
Knight: I would like to say the Knight class, but the Crusader fits the bill a bit better. Knight has stuff like Shield Ally (and Improved), but Crusaders get the maneuvers that act like Cover.
Summoner: Hard one, but technically a Conjurer might work. However, thematically, the Binder is the Summoner, except you don't summon them. Ideally, it would be the Binder, but with the Vestiges acting like pets.
Geomancer: Arguably the hardest, but a Druid. The problem is that Druid doesn't fit the bill a bit. Maybe a Druid/Rogue, since they get the ability to bypass traps, but the random-esque trait of Geomancy can't be duplicated with ease.
Ninja: Rogue/Ranger. The Ranger levels grant TWF, which is basically Dual Wield, while the Rogue grants them the skills. If you want the minimal magical potential, then a dip into Beguiler and maybe Warmage (or just plain Sorcerer) and then Arcane Trickster might do the trick.
Time Mage: Again, Wizard, but this time it's a specialization of Transmutation and maybe Conjuration (Transmutation deals with the Time spells, Conjuration with the Space spells alongside Evocation). So it's a dual-specialization school.
Dragoon: Ugh, this one will be harsh to emulate. Perhaps a Half-Dragon Fighter, or maybe a Fighter/Dragonfire Adept/whatever else. Their technique is easier to emulate: Leap Attack + Battle Jump, then charge, jump and land upon the target.
Archer/Ranger: Fighter or Ranger with Rapid Shot and Manyshot.
Bard: Bardic Music covers this pretty much.
Dancer: This one is a tad harder, but technically Dervish and Tempest cover you up. Battle Dancer covers the class as well.
Samurai: Warblade, period. Particularly covering Diamond Mind.
Paladin: Paladin, maybe dipping Crusader every few levels for Devoted Spirit maneuvers.
Dark Knight: Hexblade? You may need to add a few more spells to the Hexblade, and maybe replace the Hexblade's curse with a "Souleater" ability. Divine Sacrifice is a good start for it.
Scholar: Very difficult to handle, but there's a good chance the Savant from Dragon Compendium deals with that class. It's pretty weak nonetheless.
Berzerker: Barbarian, obviously.
Sage: This one fits Mystic Theurge, coming from an Archivist/Wizard build. They won't get the most powerful spells but they'll get nearly all of them, using the same stat.

[gorfnab]

Blue Mage - see my sig

Red Mage - Could almost be done as SotAO Mystic Ranger, maybe with the Spontaneous Healer feat.

[NNescio]

:smallconfused:Lolwut?:smallconfused:

ORIGINAL NES Final Fantasy had 8 levels of spells, damage did NOT scale with level (not appreciably anyway), casting for ALL casters was "sorcerer"-like, spells maxed out at 9 castings per spell level.
Certain items had infinite uses of certain spells. These items almost never had the 'best' spell options, but hey, free spells!

On a tangential note:

Unda Pugneus (http://www.nuklearpower.com/2004/11/27/8-bit-chronicles-3-of-3/)
Evocation

Level: 9th Sor/Wiz
Components: A heart of purest evil
Casting time: 1 standard action
Range: Several million miles
Target: One object or creature
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Ref. halves
Spell Resistance: None

Love is a very powerful force, even more so when it's focused into a coherent beam of destruction.

A beam of energy that does 10d10 x 10 + d10/level of caster in damage. Anything in the blast radius (approx 8mi) takes half damage.

[Telonius]

Fighter: Dungeoncrasher Fighter
Knight: Crusader
Mystic Knight: Duskblade
Dragoon: Warblade focused on Tiger Claw
Hunter: Ranger
Viking: Barbarian
Bard: Bard
Thief: Rogue
Scholar: Factotum whose player didn't know how to build him right.
Geomancer: Druid, minus shapeshift and animal companion
Sid: Artificer :smallbiggrin:
White Mage: Healer
Black Mage: ... going with Wizard.
Summoner: Thaumaturgist
Black Belt/Karateka: Swordsage
Ninja: Gestalt Warblade// .... something with low magic casting
Sage: Gestalt Wizard//Cleric
Onion Kid: Truenamer

[grarrrg]

....
Sid: Artificer :smallbiggrin:
....

:smallwink: I see what you did there.

One very small note is that FF7 Cid seemed to be more an Artificer/Dragoon.

Then again, FF7 has VERY loosely defined character roles/classes. The only simple one was Aeris = Healer

[Yora]

Why always Healer? Cloistered Cleric seems a much better coice.

[Zeta Kai]

Well, there's always the Final Fantasy X d20 project (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=4260468#post4260468). I hear that there are a few good FF-themed classes there. I also hear that there's a downloadable PDF (http://www.pdf-archive.com/2011/10/27/ffx-d20-v1-1/#).

[Telonius]

Why always Healer? Cloistered Cleric seems a much better coice.

Healer has no domain access, very limited number of spells known, no particular aptitude at knowledge. Sounds much more like White Mage than a brainier Cloistered Cleric. The class spell list doesn't really capture the offensive spells at the high end, but I suppose those could be gotten by other means.

[The-Mage-King]

Heh. I've actually been thinking about this, only more for FFT/A/A2 than the regular games.


Black Mage: Psion
White Mage: Worldthought Medic (http://dsp-d20-srd.wikidot.com/worldthought-medic)
Fighter: ...Fighter, sadly.
Archer: Scout
Thief: Rogue.
Monk: ...Monk.

But here's where it gets FUN...
Warrior: (Prestige) Warblade
Knight/Paladin: (Prestige) Crusader
Red Mage: Ardent/Psychic Warrior
Sage: Erudite
Summoner: ...Something with Astral Construct. Not sure on what, though. Maybe another of the DSP psionic classes...
Ninja: (Prestige) Swordsage (Shadow Hand focus)
Black Belt: (Prestige) Swordsage (Unarmed)
Hunter: (Prestige) Crusader with an archery discipline
Parivir: (Prestige) Warblade



That covers the major archetypes of the series. Stuff can be mixed and matched, of course. The "(Prestige)" tags mean a little bit of homebrew I'm tinkering with, to make Warblade/Crusader/Swordsage into classes like the Prestige Bard, Pally, and Ranger.

[deuxhero]

On a note for Samurai, I think PF's gun rules explicitly mention that snatch arrows does in fact work on bullets. Go go blade grasp!

[Scottbert]

Played in a final fantasy game that's gone through two iterations. Here's how we handled the classes chosen each time:

3.5 campaign:
Fighter - Fighter
Black Mage - INT-based Sorcerer
White Mage - Healer
Red Mage - Custom. 3/4 BAB, Wizard feat progression (can spend on magic or combat feats), bard spell progression, INT-based, chosen from wizard and cleric lists. All skills as class skills, 6+int SP/level

Pathfinder campaign:
Fighter - 3.5 Warblade
Summoner - Sorcerer (Summoner class hadn't come out at start)
White Mage - Cleric
Thief - Rogue
Red Mage - Spontaneous Magus (Bard spells known progression) who adds all Cure and blasting spells to the Magus list, other spells at DM's discretion.