ever since playing it for the first time many years ago I've been very interested in the Final Fantasy 5 character development system (Job System)

I've been thinking about it today and realised that it actualy meshes exceptionaly well with D20

For those of you with no clue what I'm on about

The Job System featured a large amount of pre-built classes (jobs), each Job represented the spirit of a legendary hero from long ago, and as you leveled up each job (independant of your character level) your character learned the skills of the legendary heros they were borrowing from to add to other jobs that they were using

Example:
--A Blue Mage is a Job that learns magic and other attacks from enemies after being hit with them
--The innate abilities of the Blue Mage job are to learn and cast Blue Magic
--When a characters Blue Mage reaches level 2, the character becomes able to learn Blue Magic without the help of the Blue Mage Legendary Hero
--The Monk is a powerful barefist fighter with innate counter-attacking abilities, a powerful Kick, and 1 free slot
--The character inserts Learning into the free slot, and as a Monk are then able to learn Blue Magic

The idea is that you go through the game, you keep swapping classes and taking with you some of the abilities of the class you were previously, then later you can swap back and learn more

The Job system is very good because it allows players to continually change their style of play and keep the game interesting

Furthermore, as you master Jobs (get them to maximum level) the various stat buffs and some of the innate abilities of the Jobs become automaticly available to the character when not using a job

Example:-
--A character has mastered the Ninja and Samurai Jobs
--Without a Job he now has the Ninja's Duel Weild Ability and Samurai's Dodging Ability, the large Speed stat of the Ninja and the large Vigor stat of the Samurai, and 2 free slots to use other abilities from these or other classes
--If he were to become a Ninja or Samurai once again, he would only have the innate abilities and stats of that Job, plus 1 free slot (usualy)

In this way, a party must plan ahead, they need to keep a balanced party at all times, while leveling up relevant Jobs to whatever sinister job combination they want to make to deal with things at high level

So, thats the Job system, how would I manage this on paper:-

--We would use the 4 stats from Final Fantasy 5, those being Vigor, Speed, Vitality and Magic Power, the roles of each of the standard D&D stats would be distributed between these, Charisma will be left out, all non combat situations will handled purely by roleplaying
--These stats will be handled as standard D&D stats, they will be roled with 3D6, remove the lowest and add 4, this gives base stats between 6 and 16
--Character leveling would be done as in D&D
--A character would be allowed to change jobs and ability slots once every 24 hours
--A characters Job will modify each of that characters stats by a set amount between +5 and -5, taking the stats to between 1 and 21, keeping things within the range that D20 can reasonably handle
--Feats and Skills would not be used, these will be replaced by the Job System
--Jobs will level up by independantly awarded Ability Experiance Points, these will be awarded per encounter and will not carry over between jobs, if a Knight with 10 AEP towards his next Job Level swaps and becomes a Bard, the 10AEP will not transfer, he will have however many AEP he had as a Bard when last he swapped from that Job

Q and A:

Q: Final Fantasy 5 Sucked
A: For the most part yes, however the Job System was a work of pure genious, its a real shame it was only featured in an otherwise failed game

Q: You wont just be DMing the Final Fantasy 5 Storyline will you? That sucked too
A: No, I wont be, however I will be using the Final Fantasy 5 world, as it is suitably large and expansive and has a surprisingly large potential for campeigns

Q: Will there be Chocobos?
A: *cringe* Yes

Q: What pray tell is a Chocobo?
A: Chocobos are large ridable chickens seen in nearly all Final Fantasy games

Q: What is the idea behind the campeign?
A: It will be set 60 years after Final Fantasy 5 in the unified world seen at the end of the game, the Jobs will not come from Crytal Shards this time, but instead from the disembodied spirits of the legendary heros themselves

Q: Which Jobs will we have access to?
A: All of them, not from the very beginning mind you, you'll pick up new Jobs every so often, you will however have a choice as to in what order you find the jobs
I will probably also include the new jobs added in the Gameboy Advance version of the game, as they seem balanced and interesting enough, and because one of them is a Necromancer :D

Q: Isnt all the information going to be difficult to keep track of?
A: No, I've got information tracking covered, dont worry about it

Q: Races?
A: The world only has Humans and Dwarves, Dwarves are very rare and apart from making Moogles playable theres not much we can do about the lack of Non-Humans, however racial benefits and losses become irrelevant in the face of the Job System, so I think we'll leave it at just Humans

Q: Why would I play this instead of D&D?
A: Its a cleaner system, the character creation will be quicker due to there being only 4 stats and beginning without a class, Job swapping is easy since you only have very few things to pick each time, most things are very simple so there wont be nearly as much reading up or tenuous decision making over which weapons to use, which spells or feats to take, etcetera
On the first session we can just roll 4 stats each and get straight into things, you'll start off without Jobs but will get some quite quickly, when you do so you'll be in a town with the basic weapons of each job available and affordable

Q: What are the Jobs:
A: Knight, Monk, Berserker, Dragoon, Thief, Samurai, Archer, Ninja, Magic Knight, White Mage, Black Mage, Red Mage, Blue Mage, Time Mage, Caller, Bard, Dancer, Trapper, Elementalist, Chemist, Gladiator, Oracle, Cannoneer, Necromancer, Mimic

More Specifics (If you arent interested, stop reading now):-

Modifiers:-

Fortitude Save:- Vitality Modifier
Willpower Save:- Magic Power Modifier
Reflex Save:- Speed Modifier
To hit:- Speed Modifier
Deal Physical Damage:- Vigor Modifier
Hit Point Gain On Level Up:- Either Vigor or Vitality (Havnt Decided Yet)
Armour Class:- Either Speed Or Vitality (Havnt Decided Yet)
Magic Related Stuffs:- Magic Power Modifier (Duh)

Most of the spells transfer accross quite easily, with the standard offensive spells (Bolt/Fire/Ice etc) dealing damage equal to multiples of spell power modifier (with basic Bolt1, Fire1 and Ice1 dealing damage equal to 1x magic power modifier), and most of the status affects also transfering similarly easily

There are a few abilities that refer to %, HP+30% for example, these I will replace with numbers (HP+5 maybe) to scale well with things depending on how things go (they shouldnt get these until a good while after the campeign starts)

The only hitch I've come accross so far is with HP and MP, I'm thinking I might perhapse use some standard Level and Stat Modifier based formula to calculate the maximums rather than the D&D standard system of gains on levels, as that could lead to exploits

If there is enough interest, I will begin assigning stat modifiers to Jobs based on what they modify in Final Fantasy 5, and the system will be ready to go very quickly

kupo?

You said it ajwz

It sounds interesting and I'd be up for it depending when it is (ie next term or nest year or whenever)

And for those still in the dark: this is a chocobo (the cute version)


the normal version

sweet

I'll have it ready to start whenever we need another campeign running