Final Fantasy VIII Question: Job Classes for Rinoa and Kiros

[DigificWriter]

This is a question for anyone out there who is a Final Fantasy fan. I've embarked on a project dedicated to determining the job classes for characters in those Final Fantasy games which do not feature a defined job class system. I've already worked on Final Fantasys II, IV, VII, X, and XII, and am currently working on VIII, but have been unable to determine which character/job classes best fit the characters of Rinoa Heartilly and Kiros Seagill, and thought I'd ask anybody who's a fan of the series to help me out. Which job classes best fit these two characters, based on their individual characteristics within the game?

 

[Sephiroth]

Rinoa is a white mage and Sorceress Rinoa a black mage and Kiros a dancer

 

[DigificWriter]

Thanks for the reply. Those job classes definitely fit, although, now that you said that Sorceress Rinoa would be a Black Mage, I actually think Rinoa's best job class would be 'Red Mage' since it covers both bases, and would cover the fact that she uses a non-traditional 'white mage' weapon as well.

 

[Sephiroth]

but Rinoa and Scorceress Rinoa are technicaly 2 different charaters, it's kind of a Ranma 1/2 thing, get her pissed off and those cure spells turn to Thundaga

 

[Elemental]

How could you define the characters in 2 and 12 as having a particular job when they're fully customizable in weapons, armor, and abilities? Unless you go by story traits to define them. In 12, I did spend a great deal of time pre-planning how I would break down abilties among the characters by defining each with a "job" - one of the originals from FF1 and the original jobs from FF11. As I recall, Vaan was a Warrior, Penelo was Black Mage, Balthier was Theif, Fran was Red Mage, Baasch was Monk, and Ashe was White Mage. Of course there was more to it then that but that was the basic framework. It worked greatly as it sounds like many of my friends lost patience early on with the game when they quickly ran out of gil and ability points from wasting the same spots on the grid for multiple characters.

 

[DigificWriter]

How could you define the characters in 2 and 12 as having a particular job when they're fully customizable in weapons, armor, and abilities? Unless you go by story traits to define them. In 12, I did spend a great deal of time pre-planning how I would break down abilties among the characters by defining each with a "job" - one of the originals from FF1 and the original jobs from FF11. As I recall, Vaan was a Warrior, Penelo was Black Mage, Balthier was Theif, Fran was Red Mage, Baasch was Monk, and Ashe was White Mage. Of course there was more to it then that but that was the basic framework. It worked greatly as it sounds like many of my friends lost patience early on with the game when they quickly ran out of gil and ability points from wasting the same spots on the grid for multiple characters.

With FF12, even though the License Board offers you a lot of customization, the characters in the game are actually about 2/3 of the way towards having pre-defined character classes simply because of the licenses they start with, their stats, and their individual backstories and the role that they play in the story. For example, Penelo's extremely high magic stats, and the fact that she starts out with Daggers as her primary weapon, put her into the Red Mage class, or at least push her strongly in that direction, while Balthier fits all the typical qualities of a Gunner.

The same thing applies to the FF2 characters, although with that game, it's based more on base stats and initial equipment.

 

[Elemental]

I went classified my FF12 characters by the same means, but whereas you felt the high magic stats and dagger use classified Penelo as a Red Mage, to me it stood out much more as a Black Mage. Red Mages have generally had more balanced stats and Dagger has been a Black Mage weapon since FF1. I only bring this up to show how easily interpretations could differ. As for Balthier being a "gunner"... when has this class ever been defined in FF lore?? Nearest I can think of are the "Gun-Mage" in FF10-2. Irvine in FF8 used a gun but I never saw or heard of him being defined as "gunner". We could just have easily classified Squall as a "Gunblade Master".

 

[Rincewiend]

I think a Gunner is a class in Final Fantasy Tactics...

 

[DigificWriter]

Gunner has been an official job class in Final Fantasy X-2 (where it's Yuna's default Dresssphere), Tactics Advance (where it's a Moogle-only job), and Tactics A2 (where it's called Fusiler and is still a Moogle-only job). Also, although FF7 and FF8 don't have defined job classes per se, Barett, Vincent, Irvine, and Laguna all fit the basic parameters of the class.

 

[Sephiroth]

there's a gunner/marksman class in FFT/War of the Lions as well, I believe that it's Delita's Default