FF 5 job system

[Diskordant]

After seeing the FFT thread and realizing he wasn't trying to make jobs, just the setting I thought I'd get the ball rolling on a "job" system.

Right now the way I would do it is create job stones, like the crystal pieces, and have everyone start off as an expert. Your skill points and class skills always remain the same as an expert.

Your BAB, Saves, HD type, base weapon and armor proficiencies, and spell slots would all be based off your character level and the job stone you have equipped.

All other abilities would be based off your job level, including things like bonus fighter feats highest spell level you can cast, wild shape, sneak attack damage, and monk abilities.

When you gain XP you split it however you want between job level and character level. Level ups occur at the same XP, you just track how much XP each job you've equipped has.

For example if you start with 4 job stones(fighter, wizard, cleric, theif) at character level 1, and gained 6600 XP. As he gained it he could apply 3300 to character level, and 3300 to fighter level. Now he has 3 bonus combat feats and bravery +1 and armor training 1. His saves are F +3 R +1 W +1, he has martial weapon prof, and heavy armor prof and 3d10 HP. Now he switches to rogue. He retains the 2 bonus feats and bravery +1 and armor training 1 but now his saves reflect that of a rogue(F+1 R+3 W+1) and 3d8 HP, he is only proficient in light armor and rogue weapons sneak attack +1d6 and trapfinding. He also retains his feats gained when his character level reached 1 and 3.

Or he could have applied 1300 to thief, 1300 to cleric, 1300 to wizard, and 2400 character experience. The switches to fighter. He would have 1 feat F +3 R +0 W +0, 2d10 HP, 1 bonus combat feat, sneak attack 1d6, trapfinding, two domains, channel 1d6, a wizard sub school power, scribe scoll feat, arcane bond, and I'll probably implement a spell point system of somesort and he would have access to prepare spells from either wizard spellbook or cleric list. Though not many as a fighter would have few spell points, maybe even none.

I'm not sure about how to handle spells yet, as many classes would lose spells altogether with what I originally thought.

Any thoughts?

[Talonhawke]

Create a generic class then have each job give a bonus to Saves BAB and HP

EX. Fighter +1 fort save for every 3 lvls. BAB equals HD. +4 hp per HD. Special would be as the class levels.

[jlord]

I would apply xp twice. Xp and JP (job xp). Whenever you equipped a job from a crystal, you get the xp gained from an encounter to both regualr xp and towards the current job you have. Use the slow xp tract for the class and the fast xp class for the jobs. That way jobs level up quicker. A job can never be at a higher level than the player's default/bare/freelancer class.

Instead of using expert, for the real ff5 experience, you can make a freelancer class.

Quote:

What makes the Freelancer class special is the fact that it has every innate ability from every job the character has mastered, as well as the stat bonuses, but not the penalties (such as the boosted Magic of a mage with none of the reduced Strength). So while it starts off very weak at first, at the end of the game, Freelancer becomes the strongest job. When a character has mastered every job in the game, the three "mastered" stars appear above the Freelancer on the Job Selection screen. Also, the Freelancer has the ability to equip everything in the game without needing the "Equip X" abilities. Finally, the Freelancer class has two ability slots instead of one.

Using this as a guideline, here is something I quickly came up with: When the Freelancer uses a job, the job's BAB, and saves overlap the freelancers. Use the bonuses in parenthesis to figure out the total bonuses if the freelancer's class level is higher than the jobs. The freelancer loses all class abilities, class skills, and proficiencies while using a job from a crystal.

Freelancer:

Alignment: Any.
Hit Die: d6.
Class Skills
The freelancer's class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Craft (Int), and Profession.
Skill Ranks per Level: 6 + Int modifier.

Lv | BAB | Fort | Ref | Will | Special
1st | +0 (+0) | +0 | +0 | +0 | Jack of All Trades, Weapon Mastery, Dilettante
2nd | +1 (+1) | +0 | +0 | +0 |
3rd | +1 (+0) | +1 (+1) | +1 (+1) | +1 (+1) | Dilettante
4th | +2(+1) | +1 | +1 | +1 |
5th | +2(+0) | +1 | +1 | +1 |
6th | +3(+1) | +2 (+1) | +2 (+1) | +2 (+1) |
7th | +3(+0) | +2 | +2 | +2 |
8th | +4(+1) | +2 | +2 | +2 |
9th | +4(+0) | +3 (+1) | +3 (+1) | +3 (+1)
10th | +5(+1) | +3 | +3 | +3 | Mastery
11th | +5(+0) | +3 | +3 | +3 |
12th | +6/+1(+1) | +4 (+1) | +4 (+1) | +4 (+1)
13th | +6/+1(+0) | +4 | +4 | +4 |
14th | +7/+2(+1) | +4 | +4 | +4 |
15th | +7/+2(+0) | +5 (+1) | +5 (+1) | +5 (+1) |
16th | +8/+3(+1) | +5 | +5 | +5 |
17th | +8/+3(+0) | +5 | +5 | +5 |
18th | +9/+4(+1) | +6 (+1) | +6 (+1) | +6 (+1) |
19th | +9/+4(+0) | +6 | +6 | +6 |
20th | +10/+5(+1) | +6 | +6 | +6 | Gestalt

Class Features

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: The Freelancer is proficient with all simple and martial weapons and with all armor (heavy, light, and medium) and shields (including tower shields).

Jack of all trades: The freelancer treats all skills as if she were trained, allowing the freelancer to attempt skills that would not allow use without ranks in the skill.

Weapon Mastery: The freelancer automatically gains proficiency in an exotic weapon if she gets it from a Job’s weapon proficiencies, class abilities, or bonus feats.

Dilettante: The freelancer may choose a Job ability from a Job to use. If the ability increases in power with level, you use the Job’s original power at the class’s level. If you’re a 6th level freelancer and chose spell casting from a 3rd black mage, you’re treated as third level. Other class abilities that improve or add to the Job ability do not apply. At third level, the Freelancer chooses another, different, Job ability.

Mastery: Instead choosing a Job ability for one of the Dilettante class abilities, the freelancer chooses a Job from a crystal class and emulates it completely. The Job’s BAB, Saves, hp bonus, and Class skills replace the freelancer’s own. In addition, the Freelance gains the ability bonuses (but not the penalties) of the Job, and all of the class abilities. You only gain the benefits up to the level of the crystal class. See the bonuses in parenthesis in the table to figure out what the total bonus to saves and base attack would be after adding the class bonuses.

Gestalt: The freelancer chooses a Job for both of her Dilettante class abilities, and emulates them both completely at the same time, taking the best bonuses of both Jobs and the Job abilities of both.

If you'd rather use an expert a few things to think about:

No class skills (My idea here is that with no class skills, it gives the players no real incentive for any specific bonus and can treat all skills equally at the beginning. when they get a crystal shard, then the class skills apply to the skills they have ranks in, an then they can start to focus. Maybe give them craft and profession, but this may cause them to put too much stock in these skills. )

Lots of skill points (either stick with 6 or go 8. with the possibility to change classes, the extra skill points will probably help make them more viable)

No racial ability score bonuses. With character's able to switch different jobs, abilities are more important than ever. I would grant ability bonuses and penalties based off of the jobs, not the races in this game. So when a character switches jobs, they gain a boost in the perfect direction towards the job. Here is a list of the jobs stats to give an idea for ability bonuses

Decide how the characters gain their abilities from the crystals. do they simply hold or wear them, Do they crystals enter their bodies?. Magical girl-like transformations? How long does it take? Do they need to rest 8 hours before switching a class? Decide what makes the most sense to you and stick with it.

Be prepared for a high powered game.

Either use the classes from pathfinder as the jobs, or you can tweak them to fit the final fantasy 5 jobs better. I wouldn't bother rolling hp with such a crazy system, and just grant 6hp at level 1 for the exper/freelancer and then 4 hp a level.

Jobs with higher than 1d6 hp grant a +1 hp bonus per hit dice increase for each level the freelancer has in that job.

Might be a good idea to grant a +2 in a skill or two for each job as well.

Anyway, If I think of anything else I will let you know. Hopefully what I posted gives you some ideas.

[jlord]

I like the idea of purchasing spells like you do in the game as Items and passing them around depending on who is what class. Each spell could be an orb or something. It would be like a mix of sorcerer and wizard. You can "equip" a number of spells each level (wizard spells per day) and treat them as known, and use spell points to cast them. or something like that.

[Deiros]

Yeah I'm the FFT guy xD

It's true I went for the setting more than a job system and just created prestige classes for some jobs since some classes already exists like ninja, monk and thief (rogue). Other are just Archetypes like the archer job is only a Fighter with the Archer archetype.

Now the only thing why I left the job system out is because it was just to much to do just to create a whole new class system but if I can help you out with anything I'll be more than willing.

You need to create some base jobs and decide how are thy going to work.

Like d20 kind of jobs by level and let's say 10 level jobs that makes you a master of it and you can then jump to an advanced version of it or just multiclass.

You can also take it as a d100 system from Warhammer Fantasy RP 2ed. In this system what you do is basically take a base race with the set of stats and you add a "template" job that you can advance up to a certain amount that gives you more attacks, special abilities or more stronger stats. You can also pay a bit extra and basically multiclass adding another template and the chance to buy certain abilities from that class to. This is a very expensive cost experience wise so you are only going to multiclass if you want certain abilities or if you are searching a more "advanced" class that would require to to expend a certain minimum of exp in your base class.

The Warhammer fantasy system can be made to d20 but it is not simple and it was just to much work for the bunch of stuff I already had let's just say the setting book I got so far is more than 200 pages lol and I still have 1 more chapter to add + index and stuff.