Fixing Knight in Final Fantasy Tactics

[@tcgoober]

You know what would be neat? Knights with exclusive abilities when mounted. Knights always have a steed.

[@Overdoseplus]

I've reset so many battles because of rare items breaking. Also its hillarious the CPU knights seem to have a 70% chance of breaking your things but when you use a knight its practically a wasted action.

[@BSS6248]

That is because you lack understanding of the zodiac game mechanics clearly.

[@FatherMulk]

I wish Knights in FFT were more like Knights in Tactics Ogre. Phalanx, Rampart Aura, Guardian Force, etc. Rend skills feel like they were made for a game with much spongier enemies.

[@conundrum60690]

I don’t think they can do a rampart aura. Remember you aren’t the only one who has knights and the maps weren’t designed to have knights that could stone wall you.

[@FatherMulk]

@ True. FFT also focuses on skirmishes rather than huge battles the need for rampart aura is of questionable value either way. I do really appreciate how creative and how well rampart aura fulfills the class fantasy of a knight though. The Rend skills just lowering stats is so unbelievably boring in a game like FFT.

[@deedoubs]

First time I read that sentence I was like "What, just a soldier but with slightly different stat growths?" If you can't tell I played this game the first time on PS1.

[@saulotrigueiro5890]

A Taunt ability or even Cover are very necessary for a Tank Class, but i guess they wanted the knight to be a saboteur/debuffer

[@conundrum60690]

@@saulotrigueiro5890 either would be fine, but not rampart aura. That would require redesigning every map which in a tactics game could mean a complete rebalancing of multiple game mechanics and abilities.

[@goodmanwiseman303]

2 swords break speed is one of the best combos in the game. Up there with guns/break speed combo.

[@TitaniumLegman]

@@goodmanwiseman303 But if you have two sword, just kill them.

[@andrewbakescakes9684]

​@@TitaniumLegmanThis. A dead enemy has zero speed.

[@dansmith1661]

@@TitaniumLegman Enemy still lives. Now what?

[@dansmith1661]

@@andrewbakescakes9684 Make everyone a Ninja since they kill enemies dead.

[@DustinDonald-cz9ot]

@@dansmith1661 It is a good strategy when farming for JP or leveling characters.

[@andrewbakescakes9684]

For the Knight skills to be useful as is, equipment would need to be much stronger. If armor gave 500 hp when an attack only did 50 hp, then it would make great sense to break it. After this, lower success of steal equipment, and the break skills become way useful.

[@saintriot]

For a Knight movement skill I would like to see them lean into the idea of the heavily armored mounted unit. Give Knights bonuses for attack while mounted, or make them harder to hit while mounted. You could also give them a passive mounted ability and increase their odds of landing Breaks while mounted, etc. Would also incentivize the mounting mechanic a bit more and open up gameplay a bit in regards to using Chocobo units in battle.

[@Nyzer_]

Holy shit, increased Rend odds when mounted is actually really good. I might just use that in my mod.

[@xercespriest]

I remember when I was like 20 I modded FFT. Made the knight into Mystic Knight with elemental blade attacks that were 1-3 range. Good times.

[@franimal86]

Neat idea!

[@hv433]

So... you essentially made them Parivirs from FFTA2 with Heavy Armor. Nice.

[@xercespriest]

@@hv433 Yep. Imma see if I can find the patch on my old laptop, refine it, and release it.

[@GenJuhru]

You can probably add so much things that you learned up to now, may become a time sink.. Did you add anything to the chocobos/mount?

[@pot_of_greed2414]

Was your idea motivated from Dragon Dogma Dark Arisen ? The hybrid vocation - Mystic Knight

[@hv433]

14:55 This is the EXACT same issue with the Soldier class from the sequels. Break should deal damage... 16:40 Provoke doesn't cause targets to go one-on-one with the user, it JUST makes them Berserk. Great for mages, bad for physical attackers. Personally, I think that Knight should lose the Rend skills and get Greased Lightning, Body Slam, Defend, Cover, Mow Down, Piercing Blow, Nighthawk, Beatdown, and Blitz from Tactics Advance. Defend and Cover from Paladin showcase that Knights are protectors, while the other skills showcase their deftness with swords through a mix of Defender, Warrior, Fencer, and Fighter/Gladiator skills.

[@atmosdwagon4656]

FFT Knights are an attrition-oriented Job in a game where only the player faces any consequences of attrition. Hypothetically, if battles were more Casualty oriented rather than "to the death" as they tend to be in video games, this would give Knights a rather major role to play, and it would make sense within how things are portrayed within FFT's Ivalice. Of course, that isn't the sort of game anyone actually wants to play, so pure damage and hard CC rules over Attrition every time.

[@lutherkrin7629]

I used to use a Knight with Dual Wield and two Chaos Swords. 999+999 with each basic attack. Made short work of basically any boss or any enemy that I came across in the late game, end game or post end game. Their heaviest armour, plus an evasion cloak for physical+magic and it's basically impossible to get one of them killed... At least easily. They've always been a super solid unit.

[@lens_hunter]

I think with their huge HP pools, something like Minus Strike would be good for Knights.

[@matthewlandoll7812]

Knight seems to have been tailor made as an enemy class. High damage, high toughness, high block/evasion, and the ability to destroy your precious equipment makes them annoying as all get out.

[@kevinbourque1354]

I kept 1 knight in my party because they look so cool, with the Samurai reaction Blade grasp and the Ninja 2 swords for double break chance

[@kageris6]

Same. Would always keep one as a self-insert because they looked cool, but never used their actual knight skills. Always rocked two weapons like you said or 1 powerful sword and shield.

[@carnackketral9904]

I had always imagined the knight should have been more shield focused, with the 'defend' skill as an innate job skill. Scrap the gear break skills for stat boosting skills. Add in shield bash/rush, with knockback effects. attacking with shields could also apply elemental damage of said shield, possibly. Maybe add something like the Monks chakra skill, but instead of healing you and an adjacent unit, it raises block/defend rates or resistances. Add in a shout style battle cry to either stun or reset a targets CT gauge. Now there is a ability that gets over looked. Only 1 or 2 skills in the game can target CT. And yes, a 'cover' skill would be a great skill to have, but I am uncertain how to implement it off of the games known systems.

[@jonathantifone8001]

Time to address the elephant 🐘 in the room: auto hit skills. As long as there are so many of them in the game, especially later game it is hard to justify dodge and block tanking. What's the point when a hydra can breath you down in one shot because it hits the times with perfect accuracy? Or the unbelievably busted sword skills like lightning stab?

[@trymv1578]

The one mod gave them passive Defense and M-Defense abilities to make them actual tanks. It made them pretty solid in that mod.

[@goodmanwiseman303]

The other thing is that Beowulf just ends up better than any generic knight. Just buff his bravery up to 95 and he can break speed, bravery, silence, absorb MP, or just turn everyone into stone statues.

[@TitaniumLegman]

That's an issue with how overpowered the special jobs are in general, but yes.

[@axel8406]

That can be said about every unique unit. Mustadio makes a great knight because of his seal abilities.

[@tygerfisk7519]

Beowulf is one of the special classes that obeys faith stat so his success is always gonna be 50/50 on debuffs, in my list of best special ppl he loses the 5th spot to Reis and her mega HP

[@TheForceApplied]

I think a viable move skill would be "bulwark": if you *don't* move that turn, you get a 50% defense buff vs physical attacks. It could also scale so based upon % of your movement used that turn, the less you move the tougher you are.

[@IveBeenWithBruma]

Only problem is that blade grasp exists. What they need is a way to get the highest magic evade possible so they can face tank magic.

[@Crase1986]

The problem there is that Blade Grasp is probably way too strong as is.

[@EbiLMunkeY]

Knight felt annoying to me because I never felt “great” leveling it up, it had some fun shenanigans with bow/gun rending. I considered it more of a stepping stone to better jobs. But it always felt strongest on enemy units where permanently destroying my equipment felt needlessly punishing at times and if they randomly got an important one-off, I’d just groan and load up the last save. If you could repair those broken equipment at a castle I think it would be preserve that “noooooo” moment while also not forcing a reset.

[@pot_of_greed2414]

Support ability - Safeguard from the Chemist

[@EbiLMunkeY]

@ again that’s an ability that feels more impactful on enemy units than my own. If it’s really an issue I can just swap out gear before the battle and essentially just lose money.

[@pot_of_greed2414]

@@EbiLMunkeY then change to other jobs to Thief, meditator, geomancer and samurai or dark knight (FFT WoTL) and hybridization your knight(s) solution to your problems will be intriguing. I'm only a man who likes the combination theory as to fill in the weak blanks for games I'm playing . Have you ever heard of Dragon Dogma dark arisen !?

[@pot_of_greed2414]

@EbiLMunkeY forgotten to mention or you probably knew about the Zodiac signs and Monk , you can chose what to select in equipping a secondary ability and support (equipment)for your hybrid knight even become white or black mystic knight (I just added that to make it sounds fancy)

[@EbiLMunkeY]

@@pot_of_greed2414 my solution is usually just kill them faster, never find the need for anything fancy. And yeah I just played/finished DDDA for the first time a couple months ago, great game.

[@mooseclamps]

idk if you have ever played as an Arc Knight via the gameshark but it has the knight break spells as instant cast aoe's that cost mp to use. kind of like Beowulf's temple knight skills. seems like just giving this to the knight would 'fix' it

[@cullenlatham2366]

personally, i would probably combine the break skills. Break weapon and break atk do much the same thing, so combine them. Break offense or something along those lines has a 50% chance to lower the relevant stat and a 25% chance to break the relevant equipment. Depending on the target, those base chances can be modified. No relevant equipment? stat drop goes up to 75% chance. Equipment immune to breaking? 65% chance to drop stats, 15% chance to fail to break equipment. Equipment not immune to breaking? 35% chance to break equipment, 40% chance to hit stats. Class mastery level perks can further modify chances, including a universal increase to chances simply for having the class active. From there, the skill list has shrunk, so now we can add a few skills all about increasing tank potential, like a job-specific protect different from and stacking with the equivalent skill from white mages. Provoke to force aggro control. berserk to sacrifice defense for offense and/or speed/movement.

[@IveBeenWithBruma]

That's why I mentioned an ability to give magic evasion to keep them simple.

[@kalamander8563]

My idea for a movement skill is called Intercept. They would get a move bonus when moving in a straight line toward an enemy unit, as long as they were on the same level. It would be a conditional movement bonus thats on theme with a heavily armored character trying to prevent an enemy from attacking their more vulnerable allies.

[@matthewlandoll7812]

Give 'em a support skill called "Shield Cleave" which automatically breaks a target's shield if they use it to block an attack. Make it innate to the Knight class. For a movement ability, "Advance & Guard" which puts the unit in Defend stance right after moving without using up the unit's action for that turn, but the defend goes away if the unit takes an action after moving.

[@i2egulus]

Gafgarion's Blood Sword at Golgarana Execution Site is a good use case for getting rid of the weapon, but you're better off Stealing it than Breaking it. The Ancient Sword at Lionel castle you could also argue for it. In both cases you neutralize his ability. But those are the main two.

[@strategywars5198]

Two things come to mind for passive and movement abilities - being resistant/immune to knockback and having channeled/charged abilities interrupted, and being able to move about the battlefield efficiently. Ideas for passives : Stalwart - confers immunity to knockback for the knight, along with resistance to interruption of adjacent friendly units (via the knight either taking the hit outright or being available as a "support" for the channeling character), would allow for their ability to act as a "body guard" and provide a way to protect vulnerable casters or archers trying to get off a charged attack that takes more than a couple other units' turns to charge up. Would reflect that they are comfortable in their heavy gear, and can offer that added morale boost to their allies in a pinch. This would be a knight-exclusive innate trait. Intimidating Presence - whenever an enemy is directly adjacent to the knight, but targets the knight's allies instead, their chance of landing a hit, as well as damage dealt is halved. Essentially acts as a passive "taunt" that does not force the agro, but penalizes the enemy for choosing squishier targets when the knight is around. Allowing this as an assignable passive skill while requiring a bravery/PA-based weapon would limit this to the more martial classes, preserving the "big scary melee threat" aspect. Ideas for movement (Both reliant on the monster mount mechanic, to give it additional use) : Mounted Combatant - When mounted, using the "attack" command with melee weapons after moving deals 25% more damage and ignores S-EV/parry. This would play into the idea of the mobile battlefield master, mimic having the high ground and the benefit of moving faster than unmounted units, giving them the advantage of more damage and less chance of being blocked/evaded. Not applicable to bow, xbow or gun users, but usable by classes that have a melee-range weapon they can swing. This is balanced against "break" skills being used at a distance by ranged classes as a meta already. Mounted Mastery - Knight-exclusive/innate ability, conferring the ability while mounted to either be able to move, strike a target/use a skill or item, and move again afterwards for an additional 2 tiles, or allow the knight and their mount to both use their basic "attack" command on the same turn. Plays even more into the mobile damage dealer, and allows them to do something no other class can.

[@ItalianAvalanche]

I think that your “cover” idea for the knight where they can jump in front of an ally is very cool. One of my favorite ways to use shield classes like knight and especially lancer is to make a defensive line (usually diagonal) and tank hits from enemies and then counterattack. It would be very cool if the knight could cover allies on adjacent tiles. That way the defensive abilities could stack more and create a very effective defensive line.

[@NickG8420]

You pretty much need the speed break skill in order to steal all of Elmdor's equipment. Aside from having Beowulf with chicken speed break is so useful for that battle.

[@Gelwain]

Give em Stasis Sword and I'd shut up about how "meh" they are. I want HOLY knights, dammit; even if they're discount ones!

[@lainhikaru5657]

One of each special knight class, the weakest of each would be nice.

[@trymv1578]

Meh the Holy Knight abilities are all busted as hell as is, dont give them to Knights lol.

[@lp5380]

I've played probably 2000+ hrs on both versions of the game. I think your overall breakdown is really good. Some thoughts. Reflect: IIRC reflect bounces over in FFT, not back. You can use this to launch reflectable spells past their base range. With some timing (check that turn list, folks!) you can catapult a spell across the map. Break: The change to equipment break in WotL is great, and I agree stat breaks should do less damage, if any. Currently the break stats are only really good at the start of the battle, to mitigate damage over the course of turns, and as you note, becomes less relevant when damage ramps up late game. Break speed is a must if you want to min max your characters (one battle, get enough JP to master your class (use steal exp if you don't want to lvl)). Cover: While 'cover' is a classic FF knight mechanic, I think it could get out of hand (I'm thinking about pvp as well). Imagine a ninja with a 999 HP buffer. Sort of a Voltron strat I suppose. If the cover action only took one single hit, it would still provide some safety, and force the opponent to commit extra resources to damage the covered character (which also psuedo covers other teammates). Rampart: A borrow, maybe, but something that would be really good. The problem with knights in FFT is they don't protect shit. You can bodyblock, but without a chokepoint, enemies just walk around you. A movement blocker would be neat. It could be a support skill that activates on the "defend" action (knights could have it innately, like how ninjas have double weapons innately). MP: Making instant skills use MP is a great idea. Casters get outclassed in the game because they have to charge and use MP, while other classes don't. I think every samurai would love to spend MP instead of risking a sword breaking lol.

[@NabaniSaa]

I feel like if you consolidated Break Power, Break Speed and Break Magick and Break MP into Break Body and Break Mind respectively, that could leave some space for other abilities and giving each of those a 60% (could change) damage mod would be at least a good initial fix. As for a "provoke" ability. I feel like something akin to a "Challenging Shout" or something like that where the Knight essentially "marks" istelf, giving it some defensive buffs as well maybe (like what Aura does but maybe not as strong) and as long as the Knight is marked, it has a higher chance of being targeted by enemies. I do like the "cover" idea, maybe something like "Bulwark", where the Knight takes the damage of nearby allies (1 tile from the Knight) except for AoE attacks. I really like the Movement ability you recommended and can't think of anything better off the top of my head. Lastly, for Support ability, I feel like having a unique, non-equip one would make Knight that much more worth investing time into levelling and feel like something akin to a "Flankless" ability be good to have. Due to a Knight's training with their shield, all attacks on a Knight's flank are considered front attacks instead, putting more emphasis on Knights being defensive powerhouses when equipped with a shield. Just some loose spitballing off of initial concepts you brought up and some ideas on my own. Really love the Knight Job in general and would love to see it reworked in a hopefully 2025 FFT:Remaster release XD

[@HasegawaRayven]

For the "Get Down Mr President!" Skill, don't Knights already get "Cover"? Which is already a Final Fantasy staple before we got Tactics. A knight ability that lets the character using it take damage in place of a party member, usually with a bonus activation chance % if the party member is at critical health.

[@kamikaze82]

Hey! It's that Tomtonium Leg Dude!

[@lolimmune]

2025 around the corner. And boom fft how to fix knights! From 1997. Sir i love this, take my sub

[@supersaiyaneevee1573]

I love the concept of this series! Like having all jobs be at least viable end game would allow for so much more creative game play and actual role playing. I tend to grind a lot early game. The Knight's Break Skills are amazing for this. 1 speed and 1 power enemies allow me to just grind up as much as i want with little setup. But otherwise, I'd agree that knight is a little underwhelming. I normally mod in some of the Orator's speech skills onto the knight, the Odin summon, and one or two of the holy knight skills. Helps a bit and allows me to reuse the Orator as another custom job. Im looking forward to seeing your take on Ninja! Stats are awesome but the Throw skill is dumb...

[@SpringDryad]

The main break skill I remember using is Break Weapon... and even then, using it as a second skill on Archers to break enemy weapons from a distance. Especially in the Deep Dungeon it made some battles much easier.

[@keldon_champion]

I think that adding the knights attack damage (all of it) to the break skills would make the class a lot more attractive and I don't feel like its unbalanced because the break skills all have much lower accuracy. The knights issue is that the break skills are bad and their exclusive equipment isn't good enough to offset this so there is no reason to stay as a knight. This is especially true once the dark knight becomes an option and even before that a dragoon is straight up better unless you use a chaos blade or really need the buffs from knight swords. However though its not like they are completely unusable as is but you are handicapping your team by not switching.

[@leoscott7541]

If you're talking in the context of a remake, one way to make the break skills matter more is to have them affect NPCs that you fight more than once. For example, Gafgarion. Obviously, if you break or steal his weapon the first time you fight him, he'll find another one before he faces you again. But maybe he's scrambling, and this second weapon isn't quite as good, so you're making your next fight easier by breaking his equipment this fight. Alternatively, you could go the other way, and have some characters that find BETTER equipment, so breaking their equipment now means the next time you fight them they'll have something really rare for you to steal. And of course, make breaking equipment have a much higher success chance than steal. Now, there aren't a lot of characters you fight multiple times, but you could easily add them into fights, like the generic ones in the plains and swamps, having you chase them back as they retreat to their fortress, or have more multi-stage fights.

[@IveBeenWithBruma]

What I would like to see is their blade spells join together while still dealing damage. They also need an action that can boost their magic evade even if by a small amount. Movement is fine since they are supposed to be tanks.

[@Kennythesamuri]

I like the idea of love brave up for Knights and move faith up for white mage

[@Endarire]

Change break item to disarm item. Spawn treasures that either side can pick up and use by walking over them.

[@burtblando8806]

There isn't much I'd change about knights. They have high hp and some of the best weapons. They're tanky. Their main problem is that they are overshadowed by all those special unit knight characters like Agrias, The oddity with Battle Skill is that it depends on your weapon's range, so it's better on something like a chemist or archer. Really the only thing I'd change is Speed Break. Instead of causing -2 speed it should inflict Slow.

[@kkahakusan5591]

A knight move ability: Gain "x" defense/block the less you move. - A true blockade stance of sorts (:

[@zaythleon5847]

I think what I'd like is to give every class something unique that cant be learned by other jobs in order to differentiate between them. For instance like knight with provoke or with chemist something like alchemy which uses mp to create an item during battle

[@jaytaytay3205]

What if knights got an "anti-movement" type of move skill? Like they have a rampart aura type effect but it only activates if they didn't move during their last turn? Or have the attack intercept type of effect you discussed in the video activate under the same conditions? Increase their defense until their next turn if they don't move? I feel like there's a lot of potential for that concept.

[@TitaniumLegman]

Something where they stand sentinel and get bonus effects would definitely be a cool direction to explore, good thoughts!

[@CrashCraftLabs]

yo for the movement i had an idea, what if they simply got "mount choco" and if you have a choco in your roster you could combine them to add movement to the knight or make it an option that pops up when placing the knight in the pre battle scene, like when he is placed down a pop up pops up and asks which choco you want them to ride into combat, with no dismounting mid combat. potentially adding fly if you use a black choco. this ability could also be used for other classes to mount dragons and what not, depending on the class oh, just call it "ride mount" and the knight and a couple others could ride chocos, reise and beowold could ride dragons, ramza and the onion night could ride any mount, could get very intricate with it to be honest.

[@Riastrad04]

i think in lieu of movement abilities, they could have auras that buff nearby allies in various ways, similar to D&D paladin auras. i think the high opportunity cost of losing that additional mobility is enough of a balancing point to do some cool things. i think of knights as large, imposing forces that lead the charge, hold the line and inspire those around them and i'd like to lean into that. another thought is allowing them to attune to a single element giving them some use of elemental damage at range. doesn't have to be big nukes, but some lower level spells to cast at an MP cost.

[@robotbombo]

I think they would need to revamp the classes to make the more unique in their role, currently everything can just be dps or healer, etc. For the knight I would “borrow” some of the tank abilities from Sword of Convallaria ; Incorporate a protect/cover skill and reaction skill can be pre-empt to attack units and stop as they try to walk passed, or attack before they are attacked.

[@benedict6962]

The biggest issue with the break skills are how static they are over the course of a battle. The accuracy is fairly fixed and knights don't exactly get a lot of rolls. While damage certainly makes them usable, I was thinking of other options: - melee break skills target all adjacent enemies, to encourage being surrounded. - A new reaction ability that permanently debuffs evasion on the attacker These would let you make tradeoffs between tankiness and outputting more breaks faster. A movement ability reducing physical damage the less you move sounds great. Particularly meaningful against those giant crit axe monsters. While rampart aura and Ally cover are strong, I feel like they add so much to the job that it might as well be a new job that has more support actives.

[@blazearmoru]

I'm probably terrible at the game but I remember running so many knights w/ skills from other classes bc knights had enough hp to not get one shot as easily.

[@joshhowe3551]

The problem is you can break the game as early as the third battle. You can level all job classes and hit 99 without doing a single other fight. I promise you if you do that you will never have a knight in your party ever again

[@noone3972]

So - the Knight Active skills are great when used with a ranged class such as Archer or Chemist or Mediator for guns. You can break equipment at a distance. Secondly once you master the Samurai Job you can have blade grasp coupled with the Samurai Active skills. Just add in blade grasp but keep the shield that a knight can use which would equal almost un-hittable, also the Aegis shield has a nice magic evasion so you could do that. The knight is a stepping stone only and can be used end game, if wisely. Also movement is earned so you don't add movement in unless that job class takes time to get to or discover. Too many good moves early ruin the fun.

[@TitaniumLegman]

@@noone3972 If the only thing making a Job good is a later Job's Skills, it's a bad job. I want a world where EVERY job has a place.

[@chrislyngar9081]

Movement skill, move +Defense. Every step you take adds 5% evade until the end of your next turn.

[@Amanofan7777]

Keeping it within what's easily possible with modding, I'd give Knights Zalbaag's skills. Going beyond what's modable, the movement restricting abilities from Tactics Ogre.

[@maximuscesar]

I use knights for the "equip swords" skill so I can dual wield swords in my ninjas

[@adamjunk2162]

I think the movement ability should be Charge the Enemy: sacrifice your action and reaction to move twice.

[@richardheck3794]

Knights are under powered as soon as you get Agrias. Needs at least the option to slot multiple counters or something overpowered so that knight isn’t forgotten for the better variations

[@PunkFiddler]

Maybe the only fix to Knights in FFT is to give them Cheer Up. Imagine using a Knight Sword with debuffed Brave that lasts for the whole fight.

[@DanielMWJ]

17:50 So, a taunt, half damage on all break non-physical skills, self shell skill, and terrain evasion move skill? Sounds great! Maybe slap a coup de grace skill on there too to finish off low-hp enemies that might survive a regular hit but will fall to a critical. (Weakened enemies surviving with single digit hp is very frustrating!) I feel like the break equipment should automatically be known when you gain knight. Those are basic skills. Add the move+1 baked in on all jobs, and it sounds great!

[@paddyotterness]

"Sure Footing" sounds neat, especially since the game already pushes the terrain concept with Geomancer. Probably doesn't push it far enough, despite all of the elaborate maps -- Fire Emblem certainly gives it a run for its money in that regard. One concept I was flirting with for my own TRPG would be a stat called "Attention" that would act like enmity/aggro from an MMORPG. The more Attention a unit has, the more likely the AI will roll an attack towards that unit (all circumstances otherwise equal). I'm not really looking forward to coding it in though, since such a finnicky system would need a bunch of levers to balance (ex. are enmity values granulated down to the individual level, like if Unit A punches Unit B for half their health, is Unit B going to spike enmity specifically toward Unit A? Does it decay over time? Does negative Attention make a unit too invisible if the multiplier/reduction is too strong?)

[@christopherpoole5120]

I didn’t hear you mention the knight’s ability as a frontline tank in the mid chapters after you steal/take Gafgarion’s blood sword. Once a knight has it, it’s ability to solo tank increases so much when each attack gains it life. You have to be careful versus undead enemies, but most battles require little support from your characters to keep the knight upright and tanking. I also didn’t hear you mention the use of “break mp” as a job point builder when you can target your own characters that don’t use magic.

[@ipw6fp]

Maybe for move skills, give Knights an Anti-Pushback ability (or additional Pushback)? I forget if some other job has this already, but that would be a pretty easy to implement ability that isn't breaking but also useful.

[@conundrum60690]

Plus if gear is good enough to want to neutralize then you want said gear. They can’t drop it if you break it. They could make those “disarms” instead and make it increase the chances that slot drops when the enemy dies? Break magic is a bonk on the head clearly.

[@Zahri8Alang]

Knights debuffs should be made easier to inflict, but make it that its effect like, marginal or something But maybe not stacks to itself, like reducing speed should be its own status ailment, and requires other sources to effectively reduce stats If one want to have it stack, since Knight is a single target melee unit, have the debuff able to stack, but must be reapplied within a turn or something, whilst the debuff itself

[@tygerfisk7519]

As a '97 fft minmaxr feels like an odd convo, game felt so solved. If you're rushing through the game the HP and knight swords are good enough to make it OP, and mp break if I remember correctly is useful for shutting down casters you cant 1 shot. Speed break on bosses is strong if it lands. If you're minmaxing you mediator the permanent faith to 03 and brave to 97 and while effectively magic immune, weapon guard makes you effectively physical immune with high brave and it affects receiving counters whereas hamedo cant stop counters and blade grasp only works on weapon attacks not monster skills. If you pretend special classes dont exist, a two sword knight with knight swords has the highest single turn dmg. That means instead of stacking str you can pick a move or absorption accessory. Practically speaking calculators and chemists tuned for big magic gun damage are too OP to worry about balance with their range

[@jonathancook1731]

What if Knight’s movement skill is protection against sealing movement?

[@terence7009]

one of the modded tactics, 1.3 I think gave them the ruin skills which made them way way more useful.

[@lunar2328]

Knight with 2 hand or hamedo (or whatever its called in the psp remake) is super good. I almost ALWAYS play a Knight Ramza.

[@residentgrey]

Shield Bash would be nice. A multihit strike and a sure strike would be too. They deserve combat arts beyond breaking things. They can gain moralizing and demoralizing moves too.

[@jasonvarner488]

The only thing I used the break skills for was to steal the elite gear, like the Genji Gear in the original PS1. Elmdor is a lot easier to handle with his stats broken. One of the most OP physical damage jobs in Tactics is Knight in my opinion. Give them Blade Grasp, Two Swords, Move Plus 2, and they are a mobile tank that rarely gets hit by anything physical, and can one or two shot most enemies. And If you dupe Excalibur, and Save The Queen, they are unstoppable.

[@thekittenfreakify]

I honestly wonder if you have tried war of the visions.

[@wknight8111]

I would make the following changes to knight: (1) Knightswords cannot be equipped with shields. If you want massive offense numbers and auto-stats in the end game you need to give something up. FFXII does it this way. (2) Knights should have Move-HP Up to enhance their tankiness. (3) The Defend ability from Squire (which should be a regular ability, NOT a Support ability) and an auto-defend reaction ability. (3) a Cover support ability that shares a percentage of damage done to allies within a 2-tile range. (4) Replace some of the break abilities with more varied action abilities like a self-heal or self-status-cleanse ability, and maybe an offensive ability or two. I also don't like the Job tree, Knight should unlock Lancer instead of Monk (or at least be part of the formula), and Geomancer should require Knight 2 + Monk 2.

[@liquiddw2]

I really enjoy this series

[@Zahri8Alang]

Ah yes, I think Knights have a passive that grants them some sort of defensive boost on flat surfaces would be real good Or maybe takes reduced magick damage when standing near other allies

[@davidkwong3369]

You don't really need an MP ability since you can equip magic as your second ability.

[@TubeTAG]

A couple of bosses really don’t like their weapons broken. Especially anybody with a gun.

[@shad0ws0rr0w86]

The only time i find break attacks are useful is on mustadio with equip gun while being a knight, or someone with the same setup so you can do it at ranged. It just doesnt make sense to use a break attack that has less than 50% chance of working when u can just 2 shot the mobs anyway, if not 1 shot.

[@dennistang3822]

I make a knight completely physical immune unless hitting by a sure hit.

[@Corlock78]

I wouldn't have the break stat abilities do damage. As that ruins their use in grinding for levels/jp. The fact that they don't do damage to enemies mean you can render an enemy harmless in terms of speed, attack, and magic, without killing the enemy. But given that that's really all the abilities are good for, I agree that the jp cost can likely be dropped, in favor of bringing in new abilities. Additionally, Rend Power, Rend Speed, Rend Magic, and Rend MP, in effect, are healing abilities, in they reduce the amount of damage an opponent can do to your units. Same with Rend Weapon. Which frees up your casters to focus on offense. But, then again, the Rend abilities lower these stats by such a small amount that you need to use them a few times to really make the damage drop feel worthwhile. So, maybe just have them do more damage to stats instead of doing hp damage. That would make them more broadly useful outside of level grinding, as it wouldn't feel like a wasted turn, maybe. But tgere are balance issues there. But still, if the Rend stat abilities saw a more immediate drop off in damage output from enemies, it might make them more attractive abilities to use, without eliminating their use for grinding, which you'll have to do at some point.

[@discodeath8425]

One thing I thought about is that 4 move on knight would be deserved and applicable at the end game, but it’d be way too strong for the early game. I personally have never liked Breaking equipment skills. I always remove them in any game I mod. Stat reduction can be worthwhile, but the hit rate in FFT is horrendously low.

[@tormmac]

my guess is they gave knight crappy abilities because prior playtesting showed that if knights were good people would just use all knights early on and never bother to swap classes throughout the game, i know alot of people who use knight all game even when it stinks, imagine it was good

[@TheGuppy54]

It's not related to the video but will you play the new spiral of destinies story (set up in the past of some characters) that just came out in Swords of Convallaria ?

[@TitaniumLegman]

I definitely want to play more Sword, so I'll say yes

[@Feyerbrand]

I am actually ramping up for a Knight SSC here soon, and I wish they were better. I am actually a little stressed about it, lol.

[@bratttn]

20 mins? Knights are perfectly fine, the only fix, I’d give them is some dash/charge ability to close distance and maybe a threat zone around them, so you can’t get past them.

[@LordReginaldMeowmont]

I want to see new classes like Rune Knight.

[@NagaeMiyakawa]

Give'em the Nightblade innate concentration and slighly superior stats growth, it would be useful without being broken.

[@DelDuio]

All I want to know is when is this coming to Switch?

[@arronknox2884]

i would like brake to be disable. you wouldn't "destroy" the gear, just disable it for that fight. this was you can steal it later that fight if you want to.

[@Jaymunnie]

Knights are a fine class, and potentially very broken depending on your unit composition. The key difference comes down to gender. Females have access to all of the equipment that males have, with only minor differences in offensive and defensive capabilities. These differences are negated by the equipment available to females, in the form of ribbons, and makeup. A female knight may do less overall damage than a male knight, but assuming both to have max level, hp, mp, and identical stats, a female knight is invulnerable to all negative statuses, has permanent protect/shell/haste, reraise, regen, and 75% physical/50% magical. In the end game, female knights are nigh indestructible. Knights and their skills benefit the most from courage, and so a Move - Courage Up movement ability would benefit them greatly.

[@axel8406]

Knight is my favorite class, and like yhem how they are. I think buffing them could make the gane harder because the enemy AI would benefit a lot from them.

[@giacomomasi8718]

Interesting ideas and Knight need something to make it more viable

[@DJBVWA]

I disagree with changing the "break stats" to deal dmg. In early game (before Mustadio), break speed and power and very useful for farming jp, bust the foe down to rarely getting and action, and if they do they have no mp, or hit for 1hp... and then accumulate til you're rdy to finish the fight. Its slow and very grindy, but good if you have time to kill and are patient. Good ideas other than that.

[@esteveguineueta2328]

Fixing a knight? what needs to be fixed? Knights are an excellent class that is heavily underrated. If you never used breaks means you don't know what's going on. Sure, they have low success rate, but remember this game is about swords, like it or not, and every class that can equip a Chaos Blade means it's one step above the rest. And no, Equip Swords ability does not allow you to equip Knight Swords, that's why Knights are overpowered when leveled than most of the rest jobs. Honestly, this game was made really well to not having to focus into other job classes than Holy Knights. Actually, any of your plot Holy Knights vastly overpowers special characters like Cloud, and can win solo battles even against the last boss even if not leveled too much, just equip them with a Chaos Blade. I know it's cheap, but if you want powerful characters do not try absurdly complicated strategy combos / abilities, just use a plot character than can equip a Chaos Blade.

[@otaha1988]

What if break skills did full damage. But cost MP

[@CrashCraftLabs]

before we get started i wante to say the knight is among my top 3 classes in the game, thief and tg cid cause duh. the knight is always my first trained and later i make mustadio a knight using his base ability. but just a base knight with a bow is mean, break gear and stats from range. not sure how you do these, just wanted to say as is i already like the knight lol they are key for grinding points when all you do is 1hp dmdg to the ine enemy who gets 1 turn to ever 10 turns of you lol

[@FellowShack]

I kind of do stats and or hacktix myself and I gave them just straight up defense up and higher HP with slight lower dps. They just became damn tanky and some of the best breaker. Just way too hard in the beginning to beat lol. But the tank Idea came along because there are soo much dps classes. Added with Martial Arts in the begging and they became way too op in the beginning. All in all in my revamp, what I did was build a Magic Female build to get MP and HP at the same time, have Knight primary Job for innate Defense Up, high HP and High Evasion, Oracle secondary for Drain and debuffs and crowd control; split damage/Auto potion/mp switch, Magic Defense Up, and teleport etc. this really creates a tanky debuffer. But this is my revamp lol. Regular fft just focus on dps

[@alkaseltzerboulevard1046]

Bro. Its a starter class. Its not supposed to be great, its supposed to be a holdover until you get the good jobs.

[@2underground4u]

I use break power/speed to JP farm. Them doing damage would actually break the only use i have for them other than gun+break which is decently OP until you get magic guns 😅

[@TitaniumLegman]

Ah, yeah that would make jp farming harder with the old berserk frog trick, lol

[@2underground4u]

@TitaniumLegman exactly 💯 if you power break your own chars you can gain same JP but 1 XP per hit making it easier to JP farm without having to go to the lvl down trap 😂

[@davidkwong3369]

But when you are JP farming breaking all of their stats can be a little less boring.

[@dansmith1661]

Knights are bad because they are an early class. Just as how the Thief is only good for situational uses and can't steal equipment from monsters.

[@Jkend199]

So... from a character design standpoint what I want is, what is this class good at, what's its niche. Healing Tanking Damage Dealing Within each you would have flavors, and then of course Hybrids. Knights would be obvious tanks, they would also be damage dealers, so how does that work. Sword and Board knight is the tank, damage is... adequate, but ability to tank damage is outstanding 2h Knight is still tanky but not like sword and board, but the damage is much higher Magic knight mirrors 2h in that it's not as tanky as sword and board, but much more so than a traditional magic dealer, but instead of 2h physical dmg you get magical dmg Do you see, that's what you do with the classes... each class has 2 branches, or maybe 3, different sub specializations within the class and the learnable skills are differentiate what type of knight you have. If you can't come up with a niche and 2 sub classes then that class idea is not good enough and should be merged with another class. Every class has to have an identity, a niche, a reason to play it, it has to be THE BEST at something... and that something has to be useful enough that I want one of them in my army... That is how you design classes in one of these tactical RPG's. Maybe you design a SUPER TANK, but he only has 3 movement, which basically necessitates move 2 but he has an ability that goes on the move slot that benefits another class, I dunno use super heavy armor, or defense +50% now it doesn't benefit him cuz he has to have the move +2 to be useable, but it would sure be nice on a character that has 5-6 movement... The classes have to be designed to be mix and match, every class needs to have something it learns that another class desperately needs, and maybe the ultimate job is a job that lets you use ANY SKILL on ANY SLOT so you can combine skills that normally cannot be combined.

[@timpeterson9013]

Honestly if they remade it I’d love to see a mechanic like in FF5 where if you have a skill from another job -even if it only applies to your secondary active- you get the stat boosts from said job. Would make robe wearing knights more viable as support casters and unlock some bonkers builds. The game is already unbalanced, go all in!

[@drachefly]

You know what is practically the icon of a knight? The thing that made knights viable in real life? The thing that virtually all knights in FFT cinematics do? RIDING. And riding is terrible in FFT. But maybe there could be a Knight movement skill that would make it good.

[@TitaniumLegman]

Innate beast master + a unique class ability that lets the chocobo use their normal action at the same time the Knight moves

[@drachefly]

@@TitaniumLegman Yeah, that sounds right. Do riding units normally stack their HP? If not, throw that in.

[@TitaniumLegman]

@@drachefly they don't, the rider's HP is what's targeted first. But it would be cool to get a buff out of it