No but it's kind of funny that Barich starts out by talking about purging the corruption within Ivalice before revealing that he doesn't believe equality is possible, he just wants to reverse the positions so he's the exploiter rather than the exploited, and then he calls Ramza a hypocrite.
Oh, there's a reason why he calls Ramza a hypocrite. In the original Japanese exchange, he calls Ramza out for being noble-born more frequently than he does in this translation.
...was, in the original Japanese script, "They have had enough of a kingdom dominated by nobles like you."
Which makes me think that he doesn't believe that Ramza Beoulve, of the great House Beoulve, cares anything about the oppression of the common man and is just playing at this "justice and idealism" thing.
Duke Goltanna: "How has the sluice been opened? I suffer a plague of fools!"
[Delita enters and kneels before the Duke.] Delita: "You called for me, Excellency."
Here's his absolutely INCREDIBLE voice acting from his boss fight in the third of FF14's Tactics alliance raids, where he absolutely lives up to the hype in terms of spectacle...and, on release, in terms of difficulty as he was infamous for regularly wiping whole alliances.
"I have been called the God of Thunder. You will now know why. Upon my holy blade the very world lies in balance, AND NOW THE SCALES WILL TIP!"
HOLY SHIT HES SO GOD DAMN COOL
And if you want to see the full boss fight, here's a video of that too:
I mean just look at him, he's an awesome looking giant with THREE swords!
One of his more interesting mechanics is that he has SEVERAL attacks named "T.G Holy Sword" which all do very different things and need different responses (ie when he jams his swords into the ground you need to get in close behind the swords to avoid the attack, and when he pulls his blades back for a spin attack you need to stand back out of his reach) meaning that you need to actually pay attention to what he's doing to respond to it rather than just reading the skill name. It basically implies that his swordsmanship is so perfect that you can't just instinctually read his moves like almost everyone else you fight - he's truly a cut above the rest in terms of skill. It's a pretty great fight.
The FFXIV reinterpretations of the original Chants are so fucking good, man.
"Seven shadows cast, seven fates foretold! Yet at the end of the broken path lies death and death alone!"
"Open your eyes to the darkness and drown in its loveless embrace! The gods will not be watching."
"To live by the sword is to die by the sword. There is time enough for regret in the flames of Hell!"
Recruiting Cid and immediately foisting his Excalibur onto Agrias for compatibility with Tynar Rouge's Holy boost just seems kinda rude
I always thought the idea here was that Delita caught up with the scene, too late to save Duke Goltanna, but just in time to personally slay Orlandu in single combat. Because, you know, if you're going to build yourself a legend, might as well make people quail in fear at your being the second coming of the Thunder God. It seems like it works very well to further gild his historical reputation as this incredible hero.
I suspect the plan was always "Delita kills fake Cid" in this scenario rather than a suicide or double murder, myself - just makes him look a bit better if he comes out and says "oh sadly Cid murdered Goltanna, but I was able to avenge him". Places him as Goltanna's close confidant who was able to avenge him and was able to take on The Thunder God.
A couple of people have made this suggestion and yeah, it makes sense.
I suppose the reason that wasn't my immediate read of the scene is that, like... If I was the guy who is currently standing above the dead bodies of two of the most powerful (and one of the most well-respected) men in the realm, holding a bloodied sword, when the guards come in, I would expect to be tossed in a cell before I'm even finished saying "I arrived too late to save the Duke and was forced to put down the traitor Orlandeau," you know? Sure I might eventually clear my name but I would expect instant suspicion so I assumed Delita would just slip out of the room and come knocking an hour later with some clueless guard only to "walk in on" the two dead nobles and go "Oh no, how could this have happened!"
But I suppose if there's one thing Delita has demonstrated is that he is extremely talented at making people swallow bullshit of varying degrees of obviousness, and his ploy to smear Orlandeau somehow worked completely, including having the man's own loyal soldiers turn on him because they believed the accusations. So he could have just decided to stare anyone in the face and say "It was only by my heroic efforts that the murderer Orlandeau was put down" and challenge anyone to call him out on it.
While holding the only sword present in the room. (Okay I realize that part is just a quirk of the spritework it's just funny to me.)
Does he even need to unlock all of them? It's helpful sure, but he already looks like he starts with multiple good ones, at most one or two battles will give him the Dark Knight ones for extra sustain.
I think realistically I could have Cid just learn Hallowed Bolt (for ranged AoE at various levels of verticality), Crush Weapon (to trivialize any martial-type opponent who doesn't have Safeguard) and Shadowblade (for effective immortality through lifedrain) and he could still just solo most of the game.
So, no, strictly speaking, he probably does not need all these skills. He also doesn't need anything else, really, so it's not like there's even a point picking just a few skills then branching out into other jobs. In theory I could spend a couple hours teaching him Geomancer so he can equip Attack Boost, but, like...
You officially beat Final Fantasy Tactics when he joins up, the man is singlehandedly capable of beating the entire game, the question is, are you going to have the courage to not use him?
See this is a real tough question to answer because on the one hand he is incredibly cool and also a massive narrative weight
On the other hand there's a reason I've been walking into every single main story battle underleveled and it's because I like it when I actually have to think about how to play the game
I've been taking Cid for a few runs and he just turns the game into a point and click adventure
As in point to an enemy, click, and that's the end of their adventure
I've been thinking about reclassing him into Monk, he spent a while in there and it had nice damage, plus our boy has Bravery 97 now (100 with Shout active). That would make all that work acquiring Iaido useless, though... Unless I ditch Mettle which doesn't seem worth it.
@Omicron: If you're having issues smacking enemy Knights, I believe Concentration will allow a unit to completely ignore evasion, including weapon and shield blocking.
Also I'm not sure the Agrias / Cid comparison was completely fair since you have her in Geomancer instead of her own sword class. Not sure how exactly it'd change things but every class has a different set of multipliers to the base stat pool that shift things like PA/MA/MP/HP/etc around.
As a Geomancer, Agrias has significantly lower HP than she would as a Knight (or Holy Knight) because she can't equip heavy armor.
However, while heavy armor boasts massive HP bonus values... That's all it has? Compare and contrast:
A Crystal Helm boasts a +120 HP bonus. A Thief's Cap grants only +100, somewhat lower, but an amazing +2 Speed bonus, and immunity to Immobilize and Disable, two of the most annoying status effects. Crystal Armor grants +110 HP; while the Power Garb grants a much lower +70 HP... But also +2 Physical Attack!
And most heavy armor classes can't equip clothes and hats - you can see it grayed out here; Ramza cannot equip the Power Garb even if I wanted to jack up his Physical Attack. Of course, changing the Job also changes the PA/MA calculations, and Samurai (for instance) gets a better base PA calculation than Geomancer, just from playing around with Job changes, but... How the whole thing shakes out as a whole is pretty opaque to me!
The historical example of this that comes to mind is Admiral Yi Sun-sin, most famous for kicking Japanese arse up and down Korea when they tried to invade in the late 16th Century. Funnily enough, it happened to the man twice. First time he was charged with desertion and served his sentence, and the second time was after he refused to follow a stupid order prompting his enemies at court to call for his arrest. His supporters managed to get his punishment set to demotion and he was placed under the command of a general.
He remained there until his replacement got himself killed and Yi got put back in charge of the Korean navy, where he would remain until his death in the final naval battle of the war.
Anyway, historical tangents aside, Delita has managed to maneuver himself through the various factions pretty neatly. It's interesting, because I think he's managed to portray himself to everyone bar Ramza and Valmafra as just being totally loyal to whatever side while also being minor enough that people just hand him stuff to do without really thinking things through.
He's sort of like a janitor. Every large organisation needs them, but people don't think a lot about how much freedom to move they've been given.
Yi Sun-sin was one of the examples that I had on the tip of my tongue and was trying to remember to illustrate this with an example but just couldn't, thank you.
Sooo... the thing is... IRL poison gas got invented, got used like, once, and then everyone just went "hey we have these Gas Mask things" and Poison Gas achieved hilariously little for the rest of the big ol war. Like, it made some soldier's life suck, but on a strategic/operation/tactical level it did basically nothing. It got labeled a War Crime and basically no one has bothered to try to circumvent that at all.
Unlike say, White Phosphorus which ALSO got labeled a War Crime and which several countries have gone "but it's so useful though" and either just kept using it totally ignoring the War Crime label or otherwise weaseled out of THEIR use of it being War Crime O'Clock by playing games with the letter of the law.
EDIT: basically, what I'm saying is, Poison Gas is actually a hilariously bad weapon IRL, it's inconsistent, it's easy to deal with, it's unreliable, it's hard to use at all, and for your reward, you get a very slow killing that leaves the area annoying for YOU just as much as it is the other guy, even if everything goes WELL.
Well, if they had mustard gas in the War of the Roses, they wouldn't have had the technology to make the gas masks to protect against them, would they?
The tricky thing is presentation. Poison gas historically has a number of issues as an effective weapon of war (on top of, y'know, the horror), but we see the effects of the mossfungus gas in the specific context of Final Fantasy Tactics where it doesn't have to follow these limitations, and it's clearly extremely effective, if heavily weather-dependent. Equip it on some siege weaponry for ranged throwing so it doesn't have to suffer from the wind and we could be seeing some nasty new developments.
It's interesting to go back to first updates and see how the brothers came across then, with Dycedarg seeming a straightlaced "duty and honor" type of guy chiding Ramza for recklessly abandoning his post (but possibly secretly caring about him) and Zalbaag being the cool brother indulging Ramza's youthful drive to adventure.
How mighty have fallen indeed. Or, I guess, revealed their true natures would be more accurate to say.
I feel like it'd be easy to look at the way Dycedarg and Zalbaarg are now and to project that backwards into the early game, and claim they were always power-hungry cynics who never cared about Ramza at all. And, if Duke Larg is correct, then Dycedarg killed his father, so it's definitely true to an extent.
But I think it'd be easy to read too far into it in a way that diminishes the tragedy of everyone involved in the war. They might have not truly loved Ramza, but they had fondness for him, and they thought him useful, a Beoulve on probation rather than just a disposable bastard. I don't think Zalbaag encouraging a bit of reckless adventuring was a cynical ploy; I think he genuinely had that kind of brotherly instinct in him, he just fronted it as more powerful than it actually was, when in truth it would recede in the face of self-interest and loyalty to his brother the moment he was pressed. And I think, once, Dycedarg might have felt genuine loyalty for the Duke. I think he didn't go into this war with the intention to murder him and usurp his position. But how many military setbacks did the Northern Sky suffer because of what Dycedarg perceived as mistakes born of not going along with the exact suggestions of Tactical Genius, Dycedarg Beoulve, The Superior Mind?
Evil men can have qualities, as we see in Dycedarg's dogged determination to fight through the poison to seize his opportunity and kill Larg in this update. But their positive qualities, any kind of love or loyalty or kindness they might have felt on top of their ambition and pride, all those were ground away by the war until nothing remained but the hunger for power.
I commented in the spoiler thread ages ago, but honestly Omi I had expected you to see Cid joining the party coming. In the Return to Ivalice raids, the first three bosses in the final raid all have one thing explicitly in common: they are Ramza's companions and allies. Mustadio, Agrias, Cid.
I think there was a missed comedic opportunity earlier in the scene to have this exchange:
Article:
Duke Goltanna: "You ask the very question that vexes me. I am gravely disappointed in you, Cid." Orlandeau: "Surely you cannot mean that, Your Grace! I am no turncloak! I am your most loyal man!" Duke Goltanna: "The proof speaks otherwise. It seems you have been in league with members of the Church, working secretly to see me ousted from my rightful seat." Orlandeau: "That is absurd! From what lying blackguard did you hear such reverie?" Duke Goltanna: "Even yet you deny it? My information comes from the High Confessor himself. You can imagine his distress upon learning of the plot." Orlandeau: "Your Grace, the High Confessor deceives you! It is he who schemes in the shadows!" Duke Goltanna: "The High Confessor? Now there's an august claim! Have you any evidence of this?" Orlandeau: "Twenty and more years of loyal service, and still you require evidence? Words fail me, Your Grace." Duke Goltanna: "As you fail me. I cannot hope to fight a war without your Order's forces. Still, I am left with no choice. A lamentable situation for us both. Take him from my sight!"
[The Knights and Orlandeau leave.]
[Delita and Valmafra enter.] Delita: "You summoned, Your Grace?"
Instead go:
Article:
Duke Goltanna: "You ask the very question that vexes me. I am gravely disappointed in you, Cid." Orlandeau: "Surely you cannot mean that, Your Grace! I am no turncloak! I am your most loyal man!" Duke Goltanna: "The proof speaks otherwise. It seems you have been in league with members of the Church, working secretly to see me ousted from my rightful seat." Orlandeau: "That is absurd! From what lying blackguard did you hear such reverie?"
[Delita and Valmafra enter.] Delita: "You summoned, Your Grace?"
Well, if they had mustard gas in the War of the Roses, they wouldn't have had the technology to make the gas masks to protect against them, would they?
The tricky thing is presentation. Poison gas historically has a number of issues as an effective weapon of war (on top of, y'know, the horror), but we see the effects of the mossfungus gas in the specific context of Final Fantasy Tactics where it doesn't have to follow these limitations, and it's clearly extremely effective, if heavily weather-dependent. Equip it on some siege weaponry for ranged throwing so it doesn't have to suffer from the wind and we could be seeing some nasty new developments.
Ok, here's the thing... View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNCU4WndtYk
As it turns out, historical fire arrows could, in fact, include toxic smoke ranging from tear gas type irritants to actually trying to be lethal amounts of poison... and none of that stuff ever actually took over warfare wholesale. So... like... given that other characters knew what the thing was, and the thing is also not used literally all the time, the reading for me is a lot less "wow, new way to wage war" or "why isn't everyone doing this all the time" and more "I wonder what complicating factors we don't see here... how hard is this stuff to make exactly?"
Duke Goltanna: "You ask the very question that vexes me. I am gravely disappointed in you, Cid." Orlandeau: "Surely you cannot mean that, Your Grace! I am no turncloak! I am your most loyal man!" Duke Goltanna: "The proof speaks otherwise. It seems you have been in league with members of the Church, working secretly to see me ousted from my rightful seat." Orlandeau: "That is absurd! From what lying blackguard did you hear such reverie?" Duke Goltanna: "Even yet you deny it? My information comes from the High Confessor himself. You can imagine his distress upon learning of the plot." Orlandeau: "Your Grace, the High Confessor deceives you! It is he who schemes in the shadows!" Duke Goltanna: "The High Confessor? Now there's an august claim! Have you any evidence of this?" Orlandeau: "Twenty and more years of loyal service, and still you require evidence? Words fail me, Your Grace." Duke Goltanna: "As you fail me. I cannot hope to fight a war without your Order's forces. Still, I am left with no choice. A lamentable situation for us both. Take him from my sight!"
[The Knights and Orlandeau leave.]
[Delita and Valmafra enter.] Delita: "You summoned, Your Grace?"
That's a fair point. Looking back once more, I do think it's more interesting to interpret the scene with Dycedarg drinking wine as him needing to steel himself before ordering Ramza's death rather than being indifferent to it.
Though, speaking of evil men in general, I think we can all agree that Argath is just a walking piece of shit.
The FFXIV reinterpretations of the original Chants are so fucking good, man.
"Seven shadows cast, seven fates foretold! Yet at the end of the broken path lies death and death alone!"
"Open your eyes to the darkness and drown in its loveless embrace! The gods will not be watching."
"To live by the sword is to die by the sword. There is time enough for regret in the flames of Hell!"
When I first played through Orbonne and realized that we were fighting through the old party and that they were busting out swordskill chants with all the glorious ham they could muster I was so fucking hyped.
Whatever issues that storyline may have had were almost justified by that alone.
Thankfully Delita was able to overpower the traitor Orlandeau with his bare hands, wresting the blade from his grasp and slaying him with his own murder weapon. Truly he is a successor to the Thunder God and we are blessed to have him on our side!
Meanwhile all the guards are nodding along furiously because, bullshit or no, nobody wants to be on the wrong side of whatever Delita has going on if they can help it.
Edit:
I also think that Dycedarg and Zalbaag really do work best if the affection they showed to Ramza early on wasn't a charade, and there was some genuine good to be found in them. There's an inherent tragedy to a character with good and noble qualities taking them and grinding them away in the name of ambition that's lost if you think of them as monsters from the start.
We have ontologically evil creatures in the Lucavi, on the human side you have terrible people with some genuinely good qualities - even Argath, awful person that he was, was primarily motivated by some genuinely relatable motivations of fear and a desire for the world to make sense - and I think that's important for the themes of the game.
See this is a real tough question to answer because on the one hand he is incredibly cool and also a massive narrative weight
On the other hand there's a reason I've been walking into every single main story battle underleveled and it's because I like it when I actually have to think about how to play the game
Honestly, I'd say use him. While there was much discussion about how easy FFVIII was to break, it never gave you the YOU ARE WINNER button quite as hard and directly as Orlandeau does.
It might be somewhat anticlimactic, but benching him outside of the self-imposed challenge factor wouldn't make much narrative or gameplay sense, and if you run into another wall, the temptation to unleash the person of mass destruction will always be there.
Yeah, this here is probably why I always hear "Clothes/Hats > Armor/Helms" when it comes to lategame equipment discussions. Since there's no actual defense stats and instead just HP boosts, eventually you're hitting big enough numbers that the returns aren't as worthwhile on the heavy armors compared to lighter stuff coming with all kinds of bonuses. It's one thing when it's "Clothing gives +5 HP, Breastplate gives +40" and that's doubling your max HP, it's another entirely when you're only losing out on like... 10-20% max HP and getting status immunities and damage boosters out of it.
Funny enough, this playthrough specifically and Omi's analysis of Argath kind of turned me around on him slightly? Still an asshole, don't get me wrong, but it goes from "irredeemable shithead" to "I understand why he's a shithead, shame he got so desperate being fucked over in his backstory, anyways let's murder him now".
Yeah, this here is probably why I always hear "Clothes/Hats > Armor/Helms" when it comes to lategame equipment discussions. Since there's no actual defense stats and instead just HP boosts, eventually you're hitting big enough numbers that the returns aren't as worthwhile on the heavy armors compared to lighter stuff coming with all kinds of bonuses. It's one thing when it's "Clothing gives +5 HP, Breastplate gives +40" and that's doubling your max HP, it's another entirely when you're only losing out on like... 10-20% max HP and getting status immunities and damage boosters out of it.
Funny enough, this playthrough specifically and Omi's analysis of Argath kind of turned me around on him slightly? Still an asshole, don't get me wrong, but it goes from "irredeemable shithead" to "I understand why he's a shithead, shame he got so desperate being fucked over in his backstory, anyways let's murder him now".
That's true but even completely shorn of equipment, different classes have dramatically different health pools, PA, MA, etc. It's most noticeable with something like a Monk v. a Black Mage or similar. Or swapping amongst Squire - Thief - Chemist, say, which all have identical potential kit but very different numbers.
As a Geomancer, Agrias has significantly lower HP than she would as a Knight (or Holy Knight) because she can't equip heavy armor.
However, while heavy armor boasts massive HP bonus values... That's all it has? Compare and contrast:
A Crystal Helm boasts a +120 HP bonus. A Thief's Cap grants only +100, somewhat lower, but an amazing +2 Speed bonus, and immunity to Immobilize and Disable, two of the most annoying status effects. Crystal Armor grants +110 HP; while the Power Garb grants a much lower +70 HP... But also +2 Physical Attack!
And most heavy armor classes can't equip clothes and hats - you can see it grayed out here; Ramza cannot equip the Power Garb even if I wanted to jack up his Physical Attack. Of course, changing the Job also changes the PA/MA calculations, and Samurai (for instance) gets a better base PA calculation than Geomancer, just from playing around with Job changes, but... How the whole thing shakes out as a whole is pretty opaque to me!
About the equips, generally heavy armors give +HP and nothing else. There's a few exceptions, but by and large if you want something more than +HP you go for clothes, robes or hats if your Job allows it.
For MA/PA (and Speed, HP and MP), the way it works (simplified) is that a character has hidden base stats, and then each Job has its own multipliers that apply to these base stats. Equip bonuses then go on top of those. Then at each level up the current Job adds its growths to the base stats.
So if Ramza has for example base PA 10, as a Knight he'll have a effective base PA 12 (PA multiplier for a Knight is 1.2), while as say a Baack Mage (PA multiplier 0.6) he'll have PA 6. Now of course each Job has its own set of multipliers, and some are similar enough that the difference is seen only after many levels.
Move, Jump and Physical Evade don't grow, so what your Job gives you is the baseline, modified by abiliites and equipment. Technically the Job also gives you a baseline Magic Evade, but in practice every single Job in the game has this set as 0%.
The multipliers also help to explain why Orlandu has higher stat than Agrias: Sword Saint has PA multiplier 1.22, MA multiplier 1 and Speed multiplier 1.1. Holy Knight has all three multipliers at 1, so even if the stat growth and base stat distribution was the same Agrias would still have lower stats than Orlandu.
Very fun to see Agrias's power just spike for the entirety of this update. Shame that the one battle given so far with a non-combative objective ended up... not really allowing for any tactics to bypass most of the enemy anyway. And goddamn, Cid looks built as hell. Frickin' Sword Saint? Gosh, but that's so sad though, judging from precedent, is Thunderchad Orlandeau GOING TO LOSE ALL HIS STORY PARTS NOW THAT HE'S JOINED THE PARTY??
But hell, Goltanna was faced with a claim of a new danger that could topple him in an instant, and he instantly bet wrong regardless of how suspicious the claim itself was and how many years Cid has built his loyalty for. I imagine that if paranoia was the reason, Cid speaking out against his expectations and plans for the war at the start of the previous chapter must have also played a part in Goltanna convincing himself of this. I must admit Delita is very successful at being a damn snake in this update, even accounting for Ramza's actions. That scene with Zaalbag and Dycedarg is also interesting, even though it's doing the opposite of endearing the audience to either of them at this point - it kind of furthers Dycedarg's character with both viciousness and resolve.
each Job has its own multipliers that apply to these base stats. Equip bonuses then go on top of those. Then at each level up the current Job adds its growths to the base stats.
Of note, while they're often aligned, Multiplier and Growth are separate values, and some classes have the same multiplier but different growth, or vice versa.
If anybody's interested, a few notable thing about stat distribution that are interesting to know (with the usual caveat that I'm using the PSX data as reference, so I'm unaware of any particular changes that might have been made for WotL):
As far as generics (ie, not special ones like Swordsaint or Machinist) classes are concerned, there are only five classes which have 4 move, and only five classes that have 4 jump; every other class has 3 in both stats. Interestingly, these aren't the same five classes; Ninja and Thief have 4 in both, as does a spoiler class, but it's Squire and Geomancer that have 4 move, while Monk and Lancer are the classes which have 4 jump.
As mentioned, Growth and Multipliers are different across classes, and the most blatant case of this is Speed. While there's an amount of class variance between Speed Multiplier, from the slowest class (whose name shall remain unrevealed) having 50 - or x0.5, if preferred - to the fastest class (Ninja, to no one's surprise, along with another spoiler class) having 120 / x1.2, with one 90/x0.9 (Summoner) and three 110 / x1.1 (Monk, Priest and Thief), the Growths are almost universally fixed at 100, with the only two exceptions being Ninja (80) and Thief (90) - note that, for growth, the lower number is better, because the growth formula adds a fraction to the base value, and the growth number goes on the denominator; therefore, adding 25/100 is less growth than adding 25/90.
Since, unlike Physical and Magical stats, all units have the same Speed Growth regardless of gender, it is possible to perfectly predict the specific levels at which a unit that was never a thief or a ninja will reach specific speed values, and a lot of single class challenge runs use this to their advantage to know which benchmark levels are necessary to outspeed particular enemies - Gafgarion and Wiegraf being the two most important ones.
Another interesting factoid is that MA growth is even more uniform than speed, as every single generic class in the game has a MA growth of 50 outside of one spoiler class; meanwhile, PA growth is vastly more varied, with Knight and Lancer leading the pack at 40, Ninja second at 43, Samurai, Geomancer and Archer tied for third at 45, and Monk in fourth at 48, whereas Squire and non-White mages have 60+ (70 for Summoner, 75 for Chemist) on their growth.
This means that a female unit who spent all of her time in physical classes, such as Agrias or Hester, will eventually catch up in PA to a male unit who spent time only as a mage, like Osric, but female units will always be better mages than male ones - so, when examined carefully, the gender imbalance actually favors female units over male units. And, of course, it also means that switching a mage to a physical job for the occasional support or move ability won't hamper their magical growth, but that bouncing a physical units into magical jobs for more than a few levels will absolutely lower that unit's PA in the long run.
Also mentioned was that classes determine the evasion of physical attacks; like with Parry, this only applies to the front, while Shields also cover the side and cloaks also cover the back. Even so, evasion is another stat that is mostly uniform for Squires and mages, at 5%, but has some variant among the physical classes, with 10%, 15% and 20% spread among the physical classes, with only Thief (25%) and Ninja (30%) above that.
Worth mentioning, Ramzasquire class is notable for having better Speed and MA growth than normal - 95 and 48, respectively - so for Ramza, spending levels in his own base class is generally advantageous over normal classes. Of note, that MA growth of 48 is the third best in the game, behind the 38 of a spoiler class and the 42 of... Sword Saint.
Yep, Orlandu has better MA growth than most mages and, in fact, most classes in the game. He also has PA growth of 42, so inferior to a male character who only spent levels in Knight or Lancer, but better than anything else - and, of course, a generic character would need to spend levels as Squire to unlock Knight and spend levels as Archer and Thief to unlock Lancer, all of whom have lower PA growth that'd lower the final result slightly. Just in case anybody thought that Orlandu's brokenness was missing from any aspect of the character.
Just thought this might make for an interesting bit of trivia.
(I'm sorry, I wouldn't be leaning on this joke so hard if the game hadn't thrown up a pastel-painted AK-47 as a sidequest prize, or if modern guns were more presented as muzzle-loading muskets or early hand cannons or the like, but the way FFT guns seem to have chambered rounds makes it unendingly funny to imagine someone just drawing a revolver and blasting someone mid-speech. Yes, this makes it triply funny that Mustadio is the perpetual fall guy of Omicron's run, not just in the one famous scene but over and over again.)
(I'm sorry, I wouldn't be leaning on this joke so hard if the game hadn't thrown up a pastel-painted AK-47 as a sidequest prize, or if modern guns were more presented as muzzle-loading muskets or early hand cannons or the like, but the way FFT guns seem to have chambered rounds makes it unendingly funny to imagine someone just drawing a revolver and blasting someone mid-speech. Yes, this makes it triply funny that Mustadio is the perpetual fall guy of Omicron's run, not just in the one famous scene but over and over again.)
I mean, the fact that swordskill users are, in fact, capable of one-shotting gun users, while guns used against them can't do the same, would seem to suggest that the magical armors are capable of stopping bullets and the sword saints can call down their blades of light faster than people can shoot. So... Indiana Jones would probably not be able to pull off that particular stunt in Ivalice.
I mean, the fact that swordskill users are, in fact, capable of one-shotting gun users, while guns used against them can't do the same, would seem to suggest that the magical armors are capable of stopping bullets and the sword saints can call down their blades of light faster than people can shoot. So... Indiana Jones would probably not be able to pull off that particular stunt in Ivalice.
Guns deal flat damage, swords scale with how strong the user is. That's a point in guns' favor IRL, where superpowers don't exist, but a point against guns in a setting where, for example, Dragoon can from a standstill jump hundreds of feet into the air while wearing hundreds of pounds of equipment via pure instantaneous leg muscle output
Guns deal flat damage, swords scale with how strong the user is. That's a point in guns' favor IRL, where superpowers don't exist, but a point against guns in a setting where, for example, Dragoon can from a standstill jump hundreds of feet into the air while wearing hundreds of pounds of equipment via pure instantaneous leg muscle output
