The Final Fantasy Job System in a Class: Freelancer

[Fizban]

I'd think the easiest fix for switching between melee and casting would be. . . not allowing the switch between melee and casting. It never actually occurred to me to do that (in FF) since I specialize my characters as much as possible anyway. Chameleon doesn't let you do so until 10th and it's the only one I can think of that actually switches out spellcasting since Factotums have all their stuff active (and very few spells) while Binders have at best a few warlock or 1/5 round spells. Really all the variability can just be stripped out by stages depending on what the rest of the party is made up of and how much of a problem it is: I'm sure it'd be playable even if it took 8 hours to change jobs or you only had one job at each tier, possibly both.

I'm not actually familiar with most of the later games you're referencing: it looks like they started letting you equip more and more stuff from your non-primary jobs, which rather muddies the water when you've got the ability to switch mid-day. If you can equip extra stuff you shouldn't need to change jobs mid-day, or if you can change you shouldn't get free stuff without stopping to change. Always having 3 Command abilities even at 1st is kinda huge and I'd expect it to be the biggest problem: it's a Chameleon who gets Triple Aptitude at 1st instead of Double Aptitude at 12th (with potentially fewer spell slots). I imagine this comes from later games basically letting you keep any spell you learn which would be modeled here by keeping the Commands active, but that's not very compatible with a system where you're supposed to switch jobs. Delaying extra Commands until later levels (and possibly penalizing the levels of the non-primary Commands) would go a long way towards keeping everything in line.

Regarding MP, well I've never thought the UA tables made any sense, but then again if you want to have spells auto-scale with caster level to allow efficient use of MP via lower level spells then you can't use the psionic tables which assume all damage is paid for. I'd have gone with spell slots but it looks like you have some MP-cost intensive abilities later on so that wouldn't work very well.

I'm not sure what the last paragraph/line in the job system general section means. At the moment I think it means that even though you change jobs in 10 minutes, the extra commands and passives assigned to your jobs persist and must be changed with a different 1 hour action which is limited by rest and only changes 2 jobs at a time.

Edit: and let's return. Upon further review, I'd also go so far as to say that a lot of these abilities are probably more powerful than they should be. A lot of people would probably say my balance points are all out of whack, but anyway.

Black Mage: This section has Kill and Death, black magic section has Kill at a high level which is probably a copypasta error. Damage Dispersion is a nice way of dealing with squishies in the back. See Invis and Arcane Sight are some nice utility for a blaster and helps with the JRPG feel of always knowing when you're in a fight and if they're buffed, even when you can't see anything obvious. Fight Fire With Fire is the only problematic ability I think: while most people would say that high level magic is won before the fight based on save or lose and immunities, that really just means it comes down to who chooses the right time to start blasting. FFWF just straight up doubles your spell output against another caster, which is only not-broken in a game where other casters are allowed to double their spell outputs (not my games). Is this meant to make up for the lack of Quicken Spell (which I find rather overrated)?

Knight: Cover Ally has no range. Rending Blow's ability damage seems a little high to me for having no save: Rending Strikes is only a bit better unless you have extra attacks from another source. Vengeance needs a line requiring the allies to have been downed by foes to prevent cheesing. Bravery's a bit poorly worded but readable.

Monk: lots of proofreading but legible. Commands are interesting, Ki Strike (Total) is nice, stuff fits better as you re-read it, all in all the only thing I'd make note of is the (first?) appearance of the Counter [Counter], as it's one of the clear draws that's easy in FF but huge in DnD. Obviously DMs should already be expecting this, but the Freelancer stuff allows you to take the wide area lockdown builds of DnD, add on the ability to force hits onto yourself, and get free counter attacks. So what people call actual Tanking.

Thief: early abilities are heavily dependent on weather or not you can use sleight of hand to steal from people during combat. I don't know if there's an official ruling, but I generally assume you can't because it'd be crazy powerful and doesn't make much sense when someone's watching you-that's what Disarm is for. I also don't really support the idea of an ability for +20 initiative, and immediate action full attack would be dependent on weather or not I've decided to allow Celerity. So if I'm running a game where I've cracked down on initiative/action abuse this job gets pretty screwed. The rest is mostly fine, Masterful Theft is amusing and Thief's Grace feels like it should show up sooner if AC is supposed to be a thing but eh.

White Mage: not much to say, it works. Compared to FFWF, Reactive Restoration just forces them to burn (equal?) resources trying to kill you, rather than letting you kill them twice as fast. You're still throwing offense every round and healing for no action cost, but there's more room to play.

Hope no one was waiting for me to come back, though it seems more likely either interest was low or it just got pushed down the page too fast. I'll bump after I've added enough critique to make it worth it.