Kira's Final Fantasy Tactics Job Guide

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Kira's Final Fantasy Tactics Job Guide every job · how to unlock it · what to keep · my endgame party

Jobs

Job Tree

My Party

Hello. My name is Kira, I'm sixteen, and this is a guide to the job system in Final Fantasy Tactics for the PlayStation.

My brother Allen bought the game when it came out in January of last year. He got as far as the duel with Wiegraf, the one where you're alone and you can't go back and change your equipment, lost it eleven times, and gave me the disc. I started a new game from the beginning. I've now finished it twice, and I'm partway through a third time with a party of nothing but generic units, just to see if it can be done.

I also read every Final Fantasy Tactics thread on the newsgroups, which is where I learned most of what I know beyond what I worked out myself. Where something on this page came from somebody else, I've said so. Where I'm not sure of something, I've left it out. There's enough wrong information about this game going around already.

How the Job System Works

1. JP. Every time a unit does something useful in battle, it earns Job Points, or JP, in whatever job it's in right now. You spend JP on the abilities of that job, on the unit's status screen, between battles.

2. Abilities stay learned. This is the important part. Once a unit learns an ability, it keeps it forever, even after it changes to another job. A unit that spent time as a Monk can be a Knight and still have Monk abilities to use.

3. The five slots. Every unit has:

Action	The current job's own command, like the Knight's Battle Skill. You don't get to choose this one.
Second action	Any other job's command that the unit has learned abilities from.
Reaction	Happens by itself when the unit is attacked, like a counterattack. How often it goes off depends on the unit's Brave.
Support	Always on. Things like Attack UP, or letting a unit use equipment its job normally can't.
Movement	Changes how the unit moves, like Move+1 or Teleport.

Reaction, support and movement abilities can come from any job the unit has learned them in. That's where all the strategy is. A Ninja with a Samurai's reaction and a Thief's movement is a completely different unit from a plain Ninja.

4. Job levels. As a unit earns JP in a job, its level in that job goes up, from 1 to 8. Job levels are how you unlock new jobs. The job tree page has every requirement.

5. Spillover. When one unit earns JP, the other units in the battle pick up a little JP in that same job too, even if they aren't in it. It doesn't seem like much, but it adds up, and it's why a whole party can unlock things at about the same time.

6. Brave and Faith. Every unit has a Brave number and a Faith number. Brave affects how often reaction abilities go off, among other things. Faith affects magic, both how strong a unit's spells are and how much spells affect it, including healing. A high-Faith Wizard is wonderful. A high-Faith Knight takes a lot of damage from enemy mages.

The Twenty Jobs

In roughly the order you'll get them. "Keep" is what I'd learn first and carry around afterward.

Job	What it's good for
Squire	The starting job. Weak, but it teaches basics everyone uses. Keep: the support ability that raises JP earned, and Move+1.
Chemist	Uses items: potions, ethers, Phoenix Downs. Never useless. Keep: Auto Potion, Throw Item, and the Item command as a second action on almost anybody.
Knight	Heavy armor, swords and shields. Battle Skill breaks enemy equipment and stats. Keep: Speed Break and Power Break, and the equip-armor support for jobs that can't wear it.
Archer	Bows and crossbows, good from high ground. Keep: Concentrate, which makes attacks ignore the target's evasion. I put it on lots of people.
Monk	Fights bare-handed and hits very hard. Can heal itself and others and even revive. Maybe the best early job in the game. Keep: Chakra, Revive, and the Counter reaction.
Priest	White magic: healing, Raise, Protect, Shell, Regen, and Holy late. Keep: Raise and Cura on a backup healer.
Wizard	Black magic. Fire, Bolt and Ice hit an area, so watch out for your own people. Spells take time to charge. Keep: the support that raises magic attack.
Time Mage	Haste, Slow, Stop, Float, and eventually Meteor. Keep: Haste, Short Charge (spells charge faster), and Teleport.
Summoner	Calls monsters that hit big areas and only hurt enemies. Expensive in MP and slow to charge. Keep: Half of MP, and Moogle for cheap group healing.
Thief	Steals equipment right off enemies, which is how you get some things you can't buy. Keep: Move+2.
Oracle	Yin Yang Magic: status effects like Sleep and Petrify, plus spells that raise or lower Faith. Better than it looks. Keep: the Faith spells for setting up your mages.
Mediator	Talks instead of fighting. Can recruit enemy units, raise an ally's Brave or Faith, and use guns. Keep: Invitation, Equip Gun, and Monster Talk if you like monsters.
Geomancer	Attacks that change with the ground you're standing on, grass or water or stone, and often add a status effect. Keep: Attack UP, my favorite support in the game.
Lancer	Jumps into the air and comes down on enemies, avoiding attacks in between. Keep: Ignore Height, for getting anywhere on the map.
Ninja	Very fast, fights with two weapons at once, and throws things. Keep: Two Swords, for anybody who should hit twice.
Samurai	Draw Out uses the spirits of katanas for big area attacks (sometimes the katana breaks). Keep: Blade Grasp, the best reaction for a high-Brave unit, and Two Hands.
Calculator	The strangest job. Casts any spell the unit knows instantly, for no MP, on everybody on the map who matches a number rule, like "level divisible by 3." Weak on its own, unbelievable with the right spells. See my party.
Bard	Men only. Songs that help the whole party a little at a time. Slow, but a good Bard sitting safely in a corner makes everybody stronger by the end of a long fight.
Dancer	Women only. Dances that hurt the whole enemy team a little at a time. Keep: Fly, the movement ability, which is wonderful on any map with cliffs.
Mime	The hardest job to unlock. A Mime copies whatever the ally before it just did, for free. Two Mimes after a Summoner is a sight to see.

A Note About the Translation

If you've played it, you know. The English in this game is very strange in places. Some sentences sound like they went through a dictionary twice, some names are spelled more than one way, and a few lines I still can't make sense of after three times through. People on the newsgroups argue about what some scenes were supposed to mean. I don't mind it. The story underneath is the best of any game I've played, about class and war and who gets to write history, and it comes through anyway. You just have to read carefully, which I do.

Job Tree · My Endgame Party

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since November 1998

Corrections are welcome, with a source: [email protected]
Last updated September 23, 1999