Squire Development Thread

[kablizzy]

So, I've done some thinking around Squire. And it's an odd cookie to break into. If I had a concept or two to tie into Squire, it'd be an array of weapons specialties, along with brave-based abilities, and perhaps a focus on Items. Physical party support is also a cool concept to fiddle with, giving weird bonuses and buffs that no other class would have access to.

I ripped into a lot of old development, and I'm gonna pull some stuff out of my ass here - most will be bad. But instead of nullifying, give suggestions to make it work.

I had also pondered giving Squire access to some Limit Breaks, only usable while at Critical. Or all the time. Whatev.

I've also borrowed some abilities from Chemist here, and from a couple other classes in the original, wayback HoI drafts.

There are also a couple cool ideas - Give Squire something conceptually similar to Edgar's Tools (AutoCrossbow, Noiseblaster, Bio Blaster, Drill, Flash, Chainsaw, etc.), except have it be weapons-based. It'd be cool to see Squire as a jack-of-all-trades type, using a sword and shield and bow and spear and flail and bag for different situations, and give him skills to match. Since he can Equip Change for free, it'd be neat to have a class that can fill some of these roles easily by flipping out a sword for a bow and attacking in that same turn with it.

Equip Change - This or Well-Prepared could be the 0-cost skill, active ability.

Well Prepared (inherent, unlearnable class feature. Allows the Squire to swap an equipped item for an item from their inventory once per initiative as a free action. Allows Squires to transform unequipped items in their possession into other items of equal or lesser Gil value.)

Gather Strength - Raised Chance for Crit
Accumulate - +1 PA
Focus - +1 MA
Dash / Rush - Damage and Knockback
Throw Stone / Stone - (ranged damage, low knockback%)
Heal / Salve - (heals self or adjacent target of minor status effects)
Yell / Tailwind - (adds +1 Speed to user; Agreed that this should likely be Squire-only, or at least only be active on one person at a time)
First Aid - Heals an adjacent wounded ally. (Currently Knight Skill)
Wish / Chant / First Aid - (heals adjacent target of X damage, deals X/2 damage to user OR in terms of First Aid, heals a small portion of HP)
Cheer Up / Steel - +Brave
Riot Blade - Terra's Limit Break from FF6. Deals magic damage to a single target there.
Fury Brand - In FF7, one of Aeris' limit breaks. What it does there is fill two ally limit break bars to max. I like the concept of this for Squire, perhaps giving an ally a 100% chance to proc their reaction ability the following turn or something similar?
Standard Bearer - Squires traditionally carried flags for their Knights, so perhaps an ability that gives +Brave to folks in-range?
Greased Lightning - Nullifies enemy Reaction abilities.
Swordslap - damage and chance to stun

Reaction
Takedown - Shadow's counter from FF6. It ignored enemy P-EV, basically.
Auto-Potion
Counter Tackle
Weapon Guard
Clear Tranquil - Reaction ability. Chance to automatically purge status ailments when they're applied.
Equilibrium - Brave% chance to turn to face a side or back attack
Critical: Haste
Perfect Practice - If you miss an attack, make another attempt at 80% strength.

Support
Throw Item - Nice, simple support ability borrowed from Chemist.
W-Item - Another borrowed from Chemist.
Expanded Backpack / Expanded Arsenal
Adventurer - Loot bonus for the party?
Gained JP-Up
Maintenance - Probably unnecessary, except if we include Shellbust Stab and the like - cool ability to equip vs. some of the crazier NPC classes. Then again, it's probably not the best idea to include those in the game anyway, except when players get up to that level and could potentially compete.
Equip Axes - Expand Equip options here? Perhaps multiple Equip ____ abilities?
Versatiliy - Squires can equip all types of armor and helmets
Bypass ZoC - Would need a better name, but the concept is cool.
Weapon Lore / Item Lore - There was a dummied command in FF4: The After Years called 'Knowledge', which upped 'weapons knowledge'. Concept. 
Luck UP - Increased something?
First Strike - Gets a free move during the first turn of combat

Movement
Move +1
Move-Find Item

[Schwerpunkt]

There is so much there that is just terrible. Move-Find Item and Gained JP-Up both skew the entire resource system, so they're out. Iron Bravery sounds nice, but since the Squire has no bravery-dependent skills (that's Lancer territory), it's bleh. If the limit breaks are active all the time, the Squire becomes obscenely unbalanced; if they're only active when he's in critical range, they're near-useless. Adventurer reduces the Thief's niche.

I also think "this class gives you temporary bonuses to stats" is just so goddamn lazy. It really is and you all know it. Come on. If your niche for the Squire is that he can increase his own stats, he shouldn't even be a class.

[kablizzy]

I was pondering moving some of the Brave-based stuff onto Squire instead of Lancer, but that's eh. We can also make some bravery-dependant skills for Squire to use as well.

Limit breaks can be any power level we want, so no unbalancing would be had. Adventurer does step on Thief's toes, though.

[Schwerpunkt]

I rather disagree. Limit breaks are either wtfgood or they simply aren't limit breaks. There's a reason they directly replace your attack option in FF7. I think 'balancing' the limit breaks fundamentally defeats the purpose of having them, especially since the Knight already has Climhazzard.

[kablizzy]

Basically, that's just one of many ideas that we could use for Squire - They don't really necessarily have to be limit breaks or only usable in critical or wtfgood, they can just be regular abilities with the concepts therein, like Riot Blade's magic damage, or something that does Brave-based damage.

[Mordred]

This class build is a hair trap - there's no theme in there that I can discern. It's just a lot of random abilities thrown together with no rhyme or reason.

I don't think the concept of a self-buff ability set is inherently lazy or broken, though now that I reflect on it I guess I don't see why those buffs shouldn't be usable on other characters. Though that seems to be more the Mediator's schtick anyway.

As for Gained JP Up and Move Find Item, though, yes, I agree with Schwer that those moves need to be killed with fire.

[kablizzy]

It's not a build, it's a bunch of random abilities. It's all just stuff that I found that may fit the Squire profile for us to build off of. And there's nothing lazy about a class that builds itself up - I think the concept of something that can Voltron itself in combat into something better is kinda nifty.

[Mordred]

Actually, this is a good time to pose this question...

Mediators seem to be FFT's answer to Blue Mages, since their Invite skill and the ability to have monsters in the party make an actual Blue Mage kind of superfluous. However, Mediators also have a lot of party buff stuff thrown in.

Since Invite as a status effect is obv not going to be something we can do in FFS, that kills off a lot of the Mediator's utility from the game. Do we want to restyle Mediators as Blue Mages or as supporting party buffers? If we go the former, we're ok, and just need to come up with a quirky spell list of enemy-inspired moves for them. If we go the latter, that kind of sinks the whole "buffer" concept for Squires.

[Schwerpunkt]

Blue mages are dreadful. Requiring they be hit by enemy spells to learn those abilities is impractical -- HoI found this out the hard way. And if we don't do that, they're not blue mages. They're just something that looks kind of similar.

Mediators are simply a much better choice. And we can make them work just fine when we get around to it.

[Mordred]

Hm. That being the case... A character that can offer buffs to other characters (including self) like the Mediator is always more useful than a character that can only self-buff. If we don't give the Mediator PA/MA/Speed buffs, he won't have much of a skillset since Brave and Faith can't play as much of a role in our battles as they did under vanilla FFT mechanics and Invite isn't praticably transplanted to our context.

It saddens me to say it, because I really love the Equip Change gimmick of Primary Squire, but I don't know that we can come up with an ability set that will justify Squire as a Secondary. Looking again at Blizz' list of sweepings that could be pressed into service as the Squire skill set, I don't feel like there's anything there we could really build a solid action set with.

[kablizzy]

Insofar as Blue Magi, we can make them just straight-up using critter skills - I was very against the Blue Mage's "get hit with an ability and learn it" concept, more akin to Strago's Lore skillset. We can expand it and make it unique and fun. I'm not going to shoot down classes because we're unwilling to try. Especially if we're not balancing POJ / MOJ / HOJ class types, that opens twelve doors

There's still a couple things I didn't throw at Squire, so I'll be posting more here as it all comes down to me, but I don't expect you guys to keep up with Squire anymore. If all else fails, I'll assume we can cut it anyway.

[Ilium]

Heraldry

Dash: 50% chance of knock kback.

Throw Stone: Ranged attack, 25% chance of knock back.

Heal: High
 chance of curing Petrify, Don't Act, Don't Move, Poison, Sleep, Frog,
Berserk, Silence, Blind, Confusion, Stop to Squire or target unit.

Yell: +1 Speed Squire only.

Cheer Up: +5 Brave to Squire or target unit.

Pray: +5 Faith to Squire or target unit.

Minder: If using an item, CT resets at 15.

Parade: +1 Brave, +1 Faith to all allies and guests.

Forerunner: +10 Evade to target adjacent unit for the next turn

Accumulate: +1 PA Squire only.

Embolden: +1 MA Squire only.

Persistence: 75%
 success rate. 1.25x damage to target unit if the Squire successfully
caused damage to same target in previous round. Stackable.

Inspiring Blow: Normal critical percent chance. If critical, +15 HP to all allies and guests.

Reaction

Counter Tackle: Counter with........ a tackle.

Iron Bravery: +5 Bravery when ally is KO'ed.

Consort: Move to reaction. If an ally attacks a target that the Squire is also in melee range with, attack as well at 75% damage.

Intsincts: Critical: +1 Speed

Support

Reinforce: Prevents the Squire and adjacent allies from being effected by Disarm, Break and Steal.

Gained JP UP: We all know and love it.

Movement

Confidant Stance: Movement ability. For each KO against an enemy the Squire causes, +1 Move. For each KO against an ally or a guest, -1 Move.

[kablizzy]

I shall comment on this later.