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The 20 Job Classes (from Squire to Mime)
Although the Job Class system is nothing new to players of previous Final Fantasy games or the Ogre Battle series, it reaches its ultimate form here in Final Fantasy Tactics. The beauty of the system is that it gives all playable characters access to 20 different Job Classes, each with its own pros and cons, bonuses and handicaps, and innate abilities. While most jobs have prerequisites before access to that class is granted, the quest to reach that special class is fun, rewarding, and addictive. And with more than 400 action, reaction, support and movement skills from which to choose, you can combine action skill sets with other abilities to create limitless variations on the basic 20 Job Classes. If you’ve been looking for a game where your Knights can cast powerful magic spells, or your Wizards equip a sword to break the enemy’s armor, look no further!
The Job Classes themselves are based around two career hierarchies. The Squire acts as the foundation for the warrior path and is the key to accessing physically demanding jobs such as the Knight, Samurai, Monk, and Ninja. The Chemist class opens the door to training in the magical arts. More powerful classes are made available to your characters as they work their way through the various hierarchies. For example, when a character reaches level two in the Knight class, the Monk class opens up; he or she may switch to that Job Class and train until the next level (Geomancer at Monk, level three) opens up. More complex and powerful classes become available as you gain higher mastery of several Job Classes within a path. Calculator class, for example, appears once a character has reached the fourth level of Priest and Wizard classes and the third level of Time Mage and Oracle classes. These requirements are only logical: The Calculator bases his/her calculations on spells learned from those prior Job Classes. The experience the character gains from training in those four weaker Job Classes forms the foundation of knowledge for the Calculator class. Plus, the more powerful the character is in those four previous classes, the more powerful the character will be when he or she becomes a Calculator.
There are a variety of ways to navigate job paths and train your troops, but no one way is any better than another. The Job Class system is constructed to reward you regardless of whether you move your troops slowly through the job hierarchies, mastering each as you go, or treat certain classes as pit stops on the road to the more powerful and complex professions. Taking the time to reach the higher levels of the earlier Job Classes before progressing to the more powerful ones does seem to have a “trickle-down” effect on the spread of Job Points and job levels. You have a better chance of starting a later Job Class, such as the Samurai or Ninja, at a higher level with more JP if you take the time to reach the fifth level or higher in the classes that precede it. On the other hand, staying in a Job Class only long enough to reach the level required by one of the more powerful Job Classes, such as the Samurai or Ninja, gives you access to their strengths earlier in the game. When choosing your strategy, keep these pros and cons in mind. You might want to try having certain characters master a certain Job Class while the others rush through their training to collect the rest.
You must take one thing into consideration when assigning jobs and planning your characters career strategies. A character’s gender is factored into his or her basic stats. Female units tend to have a higher Magic Attack (MA) strength and more Magic Points (MP), while male units have more Hit Points (HP) and a higher Physical Attack (AT) strength. These differences are subtle (plus or minus 1 or 2 points in the case of MA vs. AT strength, and from 5 to 20 HP and 3 to 5 MP) but will lead you to train female units in magical careers and male units in warrior ones. If you do this, however, the game will sabotage you and deny access to the male only/female only classes (Bard and Dancer) hidden within the Job Class hierarchies. The only way to reach these special classes is to train your female units as warriors and your male units as magicians.
In the pages that follow you’ll learn basic information about the Job Classes, including their baseline statistics, action ability sets, and pros and cons.
Level One Classes (Squire, Chemist)
Level Two Classes (Knight, Archer, Priest, Wizard)
Level Three Classes (Monk, Thief, Time Mage, Oracle)
- Monk
- Thief
- Time Mage
- Oracle
Level Four Classes (Geomancer, Lancer, Mediator, Summoner)
- Geomancer
- Lancer
- Mediator
- Summoner
Combination Classes (Samurai, Ninja, Calculator, Dancer, Bard, Mime)
- Samurai
- Ninja
- Calculator
- Dancer
- Bard
- Mime
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