FFT: Brave/Faith?

[Sasquatch]

... So I bought a PS3 recently, and realized that I could get FFT and FFVII through the Playstation Network ... which is nice, because I've been wanting to play FFIV or FFVI or FFT again, but my Platoon Sergeant is big into RPGs, so I let him borrow all of mine and he's still got 'em. Anyway, so I'm playing FFT again, and I wanted to figure this crap out once and for all.

Brave and Faith.

Now, what I think is this: The higher your Brave and Faith levels, the more damage you will do and the more damage you will take from physical and magical attacks, respectively. Thus, if you have a Brave of 90 and a Faith of 20, you will do a lot of physical damage, but you'll also take a lot of physical damage -- but you'd also be very resistant to magical attacks, though healing spells wouldn't help as much.

Is this correct?

If it is, it would make sense for classes like Knight, Ninja, Thief, Lancer, Monk, etc. to have very high Brave levels and very low Faith levels. Likewise, it would make sense for classes like Wizard, Priest, Summoner, Time Mage, Calculator, etc. to have a low Brave, but a very high Faith.

Now, I know about wanting a low Brave for the Move-Find Item ability, and I know what'll happen if one's Faith or Brave gets too high or too low. I just want to know what would be the best for battles. It's prettymuch the only reason I bother with the Mediator job.

For the record, the way I play is this: Ramza and two other males plus two females. The females are the magic-using jobs, and the males are the more physical jobs. I do this because when I first played, I thought I noticed that the females typically have one more Magic Power, whereas the males have one more Physical Power. And I prettymuch only keep those five characters, until the special characters come in. That way, all of my characters are used every battle, instead of having to spread the Exp. around and not level nearly as fast. (I don't get the Bard job usually, but I don't care much for it.)

Thanks.

[T.G. Oskar]

... So I bought a PS3 recently, and realized that I could get FFT and FFVII through the Playstation Network ... which is nice, because I've been wanting to play FFIV or FFVI or FFT again, but my Platoon Sergeant is big into RPGs, so I let him borrow all of mine and he's still got 'em. Anyway, so I'm playing FFT again, and I wanted to figure this crap out once and for all.

Brave and Faith.

Now, what I think is this: The higher your Brave and Faith levels, the more damage you will do and the more damage you will take from physical and magical attacks, respectively. Thus, if you have a Brave of 90 and a Faith of 20, you will do a lot of physical damage, but you'll also take a lot of physical damage -- but you'd also be very resistant to magical attacks, though healing spells wouldn't help as much.

Is this correct?

You're right on the Faith part, but not exactly on the sense of Brave.

Faith controls pretty much most of your magic spells, just as much as MA (Magic Attack). When you use a spell from the White, Black, Time and Yin-Yang magics, Summon spells, and one or two other abilities, both your Faith and the Faith of the opponent are added in the calculation. This is shown in the following equation, in the case of damage:

MA * spell power * (Your Faith/100) * (Enemy Faith/100)

Mostly, the closer you are to 100 Faith, the closer it gets to full strength. If both your opponent and you are on 100 Faith, the full damage would be equal to your Magic Attack times the power of the spell (and multiplied by enhancements if you use, for example, the Fire Rod with a Fire spell)

Faith also affects your chances of succeeding on status effects, but it uses a different equation:

(MA + spell power) * (Your Faith/100) * (Enemy Faith/100)

So, the higher the Faith, the higher the chances of success because you're effectively taking the chances to their highest amount of success.

One other ability uses Faith, but in a different way. Malak's Untruth uses the inverse of Faith in order to deal greater damage, but apparently having the Atheist status nulls that. To put it clearly:

0.5 * MA x (MA + skill power) * (100-Your Faith)/100 * (100-Enemy Faith)/100

In theory, this should mean that having 0 Faith should make you vulnerable to Malak's "spells", except that as mentioned before, Atheist makes you invulnerable as well.

Brave is different. What Brave does is determine the activation rate of all Reaction Abilities; the higher the Brave, the better are the chances of activation (when it activates, of course). Success chance is a rather simple (Brave/100) * 100%, or simply (Brave)%. You can notice that with Blade Grasp, which uses this equation exactly as mentioned (and hence, why it's so good). The only two Reaction Abilities that ignore this are Weapon Guard (it depends on your weapon) and Reflexes (it doubles your Evasion rates). Also, as you mentioned before, the lower your Brave, the better the items of Move-Find Item result. This is crucial in the Deep Dungeon and also on Nelveska Temple.

One thing you probably didn't knew was that, apparently, fighting barehanded or with Knight Swords and Katanas depend on your character having a High Brave to deal full damage. This may explain why you feel Brave deals higher damage, since it influences it. Other weapons are influenced by Faith, as well (Magic Guns), while others are influenced by your character's speed. Finally, Staves depend on Magic Attack, while the Bard weapons and the Books depend on both Physical and Magic Attack.

For the record, the way I play is this: Ramza and two other males plus two females. The females are the magic-using jobs, and the males are the more physical jobs. I do this because when I first played, I thought I noticed that the females typically have one more Magic Power, whereas the males have one more Physical Power. And I prettymuch only keep those five characters, until the special characters come in. That way, all of my characters are used every battle, instead of having to spread the Exp. around and not level nearly as fast. (I don't get the Bard job usually, but I don't care much for it.)

Thanks.

That's not a secret. Male characters tend to have a tendency for physical jobs, while Females tend to have a tendency for magical jobs. This reflects in a difference of about 5-10 more MP on females and 5-10 more HP on males, as well as the difference in magic power.

If it is, it would make sense for classes like Knight, Ninja, Thief, Lancer, Monk, etc. to have very high Brave levels and very low Faith levels. Likewise, it would make sense for classes like Wizard, Priest, Summoner, Time Mage, Calculator, etc. to have a low Brave, but a very high Faith.

Now, I know about wanting a low Brave for the Move-Find Item ability, and I know what'll happen if one's Faith or Brave gets too high or too low. I just want to know what would be the best for battles. It's prettymuch the only reason I bother with the Mediator job.

I put this last because it fits with the recommendation. It is best that ALL of your characters except for one get high Brave, and let all magic-inclined characters (plus some specials like Beowulf) have a high Faith, and letting the others have low Faith. A Faith of about 88 is enough to be reasonable while not risking your chances. As for your low-Brave character, make it the official searcher for treasures using Move-Find Item, giving said character Reflexes or Weapon Guard. Preferably, make the character a Ninja so it benefits from high Evasion rates, high Move and high Jump, then give that character Germinas Boots (when you get them) and make it the sole character that goes searching. Some people say Rafa is best for the job as she already has low Brave, but anyone can be a treasure hunter with Beowulf's help. Just make sure your Brave is around 12 so that you're on the safety zone.

[Rocky]

Personally, throughout battles I keep everybody's brave/faith stats medium-high to high at all times. (like 75+ in both) Because, yeah you'll take more damage, but 9/10 battles (like storyline for example) you will be able to outclass the enemy in equipment, and later on with good job/skill choices so it's not really worrying about the enemies KOing you, it's more about getting them back up so they don't crystalize and you lose hours and hours of training with them. Later on in the game, if an enemy wants you dead, then you usually will die; it's more about having the skills to get them revived in time that will count. If you have a mage with a low brave for example, and he gets killed by some dragon, it may end up coming down to the Monk using the Revive skill which could end up determining whether you have to reset the game or not. A mage with 40 brave is a lot harder to Revive than a mage with 75 brave. And for the record, Revive from the Monk counts as a physical skill, which is why I'm talking about brave instead of faith. It's happened to me before, and it could happen to you.

Another word of advice is always keep the fastest characters healed up at all costs. If they get KOed, then they may crystalize before you can get a chance to revive them, because of how the speed mechanics still work even with a downed character.

[Sasquatch]

So characters with high Brave won't take any more physical damage than characters with low Brave, but characters with high Faith will take more magic damage than characters with low Faith.

So everybody should have high Brave -- unless I designate somebody to walk around and find crap -- but only the magic-users should have high Faith.

Gotcha.

Thanks, y'all.

And while you're here ... The jobs at the bar. Do they do anything for you, other than get a few of your characters some extra JP? Since I only have four "generic" characters, I don't do the jobs unless there are two non-battle spaces next to each other, so I can move between them for long enough to come back and get them back (since, if I get into a battle, I'll only be doing it with Ramza and one other).

I thought there was a bar job that you had to do to get Cloud, but I'm not sure. And is Cloud really worth getting? I mean, you've got to level him from nothing, he's weak, and his Materia Blade has a low attack power.

[T.G. Oskar]

And while you're here ... The jobs at the bar. Do they do anything for you, other than get a few of your characters some extra JP? Since I only have four "generic" characters, I don't do the jobs unless there are two non-battle spaces next to each other, so I can move between them for long enough to come back and get them back (since, if I get into a battle, I'll only be doing it with Ramza and one other).

I thought there was a bar job that you had to do to get Cloud, but I'm not sure.

Not really. Jobs are mostly meant to allow you to gather Treasures and find Locations, which are mostly Easter Eggs of all FF games until FF7. If you finish them all and get all Treasures or find all Locations, you get a star.

So yeah, not more than an excuse to get some JP for your characters. Although, it's not that bad if you're into raising JP while keeping your characters at an average level.

In Cloud's case, what you need is to get into Goug Machine City at Chapter 4 and play the Beowulf/Reis sidequest. You'll be capable of getting Cloud after the battle at Zeltennia.

And is Cloud really worth getting? I mean, you've got to level him from nothing, he's weak, and his Materia Blade has a low attack power.

He's not Orlandu, but he's pretty strong. Mostly, all you need for Cloud is Short Charge and Finish Touch. Unlike on FF7, Finish Touch is a fixed 100% to cause an enemy either Stop, Stone or Death. It can be a lifesaver if you know how to use it. Also, Blade Beam and Climhazzard are decent given that they ignore reductions, immunities and defense for straight damage based on HP (either yours, or the opponents)

It's mostly effort and finding a method of how to make him more effective.

[Rocky]

The bar jobs are decent, yeah they can get you extra JP for doing basically nothing but they are not necessary by any means. But if you find any area where you can go back and forth between two towns without getting a chance of random battles, then go for it, thats like up to a few hundred free JP for characters. It helps for getting JP for tough jobs, like calculator. Also, once you get more special characters, you can send your generics on the job while you battle with Agrias and such.

For being at level one, Cloud has some decent stats, its all about building him up. The tough thing about him is his limits are only occupied by the square directly next to him, and they are on charge time, so unless you have quick charge (the time mage support ability I think) you will have trouble pulling off a lot of his limits. Some of them are useful like Oskar said, especially Finishing Touch. If you still have the persistance to get him strong after going through four chapters, then he can be a force to be reckoned with.