Waddler Rebalance

Hello there! First of all, thank you for taking the time to read this or even consider playing my rebalance. I really appreciate it! You can feel free to give me critique or suggestions or report any bugs in the FFV Goons Discord server, or message me directly at The Great Waddler#3967 on Discord.

My design goals for this hack are pretty simple: Give the weaker or less interesting jobs more interesting or powerful things to do. In addition to that, I'll be doing my best to fix some old bugs in the game that have been in there forever, ergo the Power Drink not actually increasing your attack and !Mineuchi having the proper paralysis associated with it.

Later on, I'll be releasing a secondary hack alongside this one that fine tunes bosses to be more fun and engaging, but this will always be an optional opt-into hack released in addition to the class rebalance. It will not be pure numbers go up, and in fact, it will include some things like tanking Omega's Evade so that non-!Rapidfire or Stoplock means of hurting it exist.

Here are the general changes from the base game to the hack!

Class-Specific Changes

Knight

Skills

• !Bladeblitz replaces Equip Armor.

Monk

Attributes

Equipment

• Monk can now equip Staff weapons and Mage armor.
• The Kaiser Knuckles now grant Always: Haste in addition to their other effects.

Skills

• Level 4 !White replaces HP+10%.
• Level 4 !Spellblade replaces HP+20%.
• !Drink replaces Counter. Counter is still Innate.

General

• Fists are now Magic Sword OK.

Thief

Equipment

• The Thief Gauntlets now grant +5 speed (previously +3 speed).
• The Thief Gauntlets now grant Always: Haste. They are still only equippable by Thieves and Freelancers.

Skills

• Read Ahead replaces Find Passages. Find Passages is still Innate.
• Long Reach replaces Sprint. Sprint is still Innate.
• !Open Fire replaces !Steal. !Steal is still their Job command.
• !Combine precedes Artful Dodger. Artful Dodger is now the Level 6 ability.
• !Mug replaces Vigilance. Vigilance is still Innate.

Drops

!Combine ammo now drops outside of the Sealed Temple entrance:

• Buckshot is a guaranteed drop from Black Flames in World 1, Birostris in World 2, and Elm Gigases in World 3.
• Blastshot is a guaranteed drop from Blood Slimes in World 2 and Executors in World 3.
• Blitzshot is a guaranteed drop from Mummies in World 3.

Geomancer

Attributes

• Base Strength is now 35 (previously 28).
• Base Magic is now 52 (previously 48).

Equipment

• May now equip Axes and Rods.

Skills

• Equip Axes replaces Find Pits. Find Pits is still Innate.
• Equip Rods replaces Light Step. Light Step is still Innate.

Dragoon

Attributes

• Base Strength is now 48 (previously 42).
• Base Magic is now 35 (previously 12).

Equipment

• Spears, except for Longinus and Dragon Lance, have received significant Attack upgrades.

Skills

• Lure replaces Equip Spears.

Berserker

Equipment

• The Rune Axe now has First Strike and its Attack was raised to 102 (previously 71).
• The Gaia Hammer now has a chance to cast Quake 50% of the time (previously 25%).

Innate

• Counter added.
• Two-Handed added.
• Exp Up added.

Skills

• Exp Up replaces Berserk. Berserk is still Innate.

Ranger

Skills

• !Aim replaces the !Attack command.
• !Animals replaces !Aim as the Job Command.

White Mage

Equipment

• May now equip Hammers.

Skills

• !Revive replaces MP+10%.

Summmoner

Skills

• !Call is moved to the first ability slot, followed by Level 1

Red Mage

Design Notes: Red Mage has been redesigned from the ground up. This was intended to fill their niche as a unique hybrid rather than a sub-par fighter and mage past world 2.

Equipment

• May now equip Flails and Bows.

Skills

• !Dualcast replaces !Red as Job Command. Later, they will have three empty slots with !Dualcast taking place of !Attack but this is unfeasible for the moment.
• Level 3 !Red replaces Level 1 !Red.
• !Focus replaces Level 2 !Red. This is to facilitate being able to fight rather than being a pure caster.
• Level 3 !Time replaces Level 3 !Red.

Dancer

Attributes

• Base Vitality is now 22 (previously 14).

Innate

• Magic Shell added.

Gladiator

Equipment

• Cannot equip Spears.

Oracle

Equipment

• May now equip Spears and Knives.

Monsters

• The White Serpents in the Wind Shrine now have a chance to drop Daggers.
• The Octokrakens in the Torna Canal now have a chance to drop Staves.
• Page 128 now has the Healing Staff as a rare steal.
• Moldwynd, Calcruthl, Undead Husks, Ra Mages, Kuza Beasts, Skull Eaters, Cure Beasts, Magic Dragons, and Level Checkers now have Elixirs as their rare steal in addition to dropping them normally, opening up varying amounts of crime.
• Reflect Knights now have Reflect Rings in both drop slots.
• Metamorph now has Staves of Light in both drop slots.
• The wild Garula near Carwen and the Ship Graveyard now rarely drops the Thief Knife.

Equipment

• The Thief Knife's Attack has been reduced to 18, and is a rare drop for wild Garula. The proc rate for its effect is now 100%. This is to facilitate early criming for parties that lack a Thief.
• The Mythril Spear's Attack is now 37 (previously 30).
• The Spear's Attack is now 49 (previously 25). Stolen from Shell Bears.
• The Javelin's Attack is now 60 (previously 55). Commonly stolen from Bone Dragons; as a result, Sand Bears are common Ethers theft targets.
• The Trident's Attack is now 48 (previously 38).
• The Heavy Lance's Attack is now 57 (previously 54).
• The Rune Chime's Attack is now 70 (previously 45).
• The Gladius's Attack is now 95 (previously 118), and it is no longer Holy-aspected.
• The Holy Lance's Attack is now 113 (previously 109).
• The Longinus's Attack is now 121 (previously 132), and now gives +5 Strength. Theft target for Stingrays.
• The Blood Sword's Accuracy is now 75% (previously 25%).
• The Blitz Whip now has a 50% (previously 33%) chance to cast Thundara (previously Thunder).
• The Gaia Bell's proc rate is now 75% (previously 25%).
• The Fire Lash's proc rate is now 50% (previously 33%).

Version History

• 3.1:
  • Updated Ranger, Summoner, gave Thief and Knight the Cannoneer and Gladiator abilities.
  • Rune Axe now grants First Strike.
  • Thief Gauntlet now grants Always: Haste.
  • Logged a bug where Spears are not two handable. This will be fixed in a later release.
  • Fixed a bug where Berserker was dual wielding rather than two handing.
  • Logged a bug where the Moonring Blade was not usable to cast Haste. As a workaround, the Thief Gauntlets now grant Always: Haste but are only equippable by Thieves.
• 3.2:
  • Geomancer's strength has increased to 35 (previously 28)
  • Dragoon now gains Lure in place of Equip Spears. This is intended to leave spears as a niche for Dragoons and Freelancers with their buffs.
  • Dancer's vitality has increased to 22 (previously 14). This is to put it on par with mages.
  • The Thief Knife's damage has been lowered to a base of 18. To compensate for this, it is now available in world 1 as a rare drop off of the fleeing Garula. The Thief Knife in Mirage is still available, but is similarly weaker.
  • All spears but the Dragon Lance and Longinus have had their attack stat increased to lean into the Dragoon niche of hitting as hard as possible, but only once. They are similarly only equippable by Dragoons, Freelancers, and Oracles now. This is an indirect nerf to Gladiator, I suppose.
  • Longinus is now available earlier than the Sealed Temple, though it has been slightly weakened for this. It is now a rare steal from Stingray in World 3.
  • Spears are no longer Throwable.
  • Monks now learn !Drink in place of Counter.
  • Dragoon's base strength has increased to 48 (previously 42)
  • Geomancers can now equip Axes and Hammers.
  • Oracles can now equip Spears and Knives.
  • The Rune Axe's base attack is now 90 (previously 71).
  • The Gaia Hammer now casts Quake 50% of the time (previously 25%)

  Bugs:

  • Noted a bug where Berserkers cannot counter attack due to being Berserk. This will be fixed in a later patch.
• 3.2.1:

  Bugs:

  • Found a bug where Red Mage was not receiving three empty slots as they should be. Will require more major editing to repair, for now as a workaround, Red Mage has !Attack, !Dualcast, an empty slot, and !Item.
• 3.3:

  Bugs:

  • With help from Sí­le, repaired the bug where classes would not learn magic abilities properly without having the levels prior.

  Updates:

  • !Combine is now Thief's capstone ability, costing 300 ABP. Their level 5 ability is now !Mug, while level 6 is Artful Dodger.
  • Shots of varying sorts have been added as guaranteed drops in select locations in each world. Buckshot is available in World 1, Buck and Blast are available in World 2, and all three are available in World 3. The location/enemy for each is noted in the Thief entry.
• 3.3.1:

  Bugs:

  • Thanks to wormsofcan, fixed a bug where Fists would not properly apply !Spellblade effects.

  Updates:

  • The White Serpent in the wind shrine now has a chance of dropping a Dagger, and both of its steal slots have Daggers.
  • The Gaia Hammer's proc rate was reduced to 50% (previously 100%, still 25% more than vanilla).
  • Octokrakens can now drop Staffs.
  • Page 128 now has the Healing Staff as a rare steal.
  • Moldwynd, Calcruthl, Undead Husks, Ra Mages, Kuza Beasts, Skull Eaters, Cure Beasts, Magic Dragons, and Level Checkers now have Elixirs as their rare steal in addition to dropping them normally, opening up varying amounts of crime.
• 3.3.2:

  Bugs:

  • Via Síle and wormsofcan, fix a bug where magic commands would stop rendering when changing characters via L/R in the Abilities menu.

  Updates:

  • The Thief Knife's proc rate is now 100% (previously 33%).
  • The Rune Chime's Attack is now 70 (previously 45).
  • The Blood Sword's Accuracy is now 75% (previously 25%).
  • The Blitz Whip now has a 50% (previously 33%) to cast Thundara (previously Thunder).
  • The Gladius is no longer Holy-aspected, and its Attack is now 95 (previously 118). It's now a rare drop from Iron Giants.
  • The Dancer now has the Magic Shell innate ability.
  • The Monk's Magic is now 30 (previously 24, originally 1).
  • The Gaia Bell now has a 75% chance to cast Quake.
  • The Fire Lash now has a 50% (previously 33%) chance to cast Firaga.