Chapter XLVIII: Templar and Time Mage

In FF series we often had for every mage 2 mixed classes, one more mage than melee and another more melee than mage.

White mages had bishops as mixed mage and paladins as mixed melee, THMs have sage as mixed mage and dark knight as mixed melee, black mages have viking as mixed melee and so on…When talking about time mage, the mixed melee counterpart would be the templar, a bulky spear-user class that have access to several time magic spells.

Templar

Templars are heavy armor users that can tank similarly to THM, based on enmity generated by actions and spells. The spells, though, would be single target only since it’s not a disciple of magic class. Its specialization would be mage monsters that constantly cast debuffs, that also often stay out of melee range, like gnats, wisps and imps.

Some spells he would have are Haste, Slow, Stop (stop and stun are virtually the same spell so they would have shared recast), quick (increases movement speed), that combined with actions like Piercing Cry (temporarily forces the nearby targets to attack you), Astra (drastically increases the resistance against status ailments), Time Sphere (knock back all nearby targets and add heavy effect to them), Mind Piercing (Makes your next action deal damage the target’s MP instead of HP) Retreat (pull your character back, out of melee range) and basic actions that deal smaller damage but that add extra effects, like Pack Thrust (adds, unarmed effect, that blocks the use of ranged attacks), Push Thrust that knocks back the target and Leg Thrust (binds the target).

Another aspect would be the Rapid Spin, a defensive action that negates the next ranged attack that targets it, combined with several ranged retaliation WSs that can only be used after deflecting a ranged attack. I won’t be suggesting names since the names from templar actions already were used.

Time Mage

Since we are talking about them, let’s talk about time mage too. Time mage is the master of time and gravity, specialized in the speed up/down spells, like haste, slow, stop, quick, quicken (spell that makes your next action not have cast, it does not share recast with chainspell since it would have casting time, recast, MP cost and can target allies.), Undo (undo the last damaging attack the target received, healing him by the very same amount), heavy, reflect (returns to the target a portion of the damage taken, like a weaker version of punishing barbs, but that returns just a fraction of the damage taken and that the damage is umbral, so those resistant to umbral will also resist this spike damage) combined with actions like Extend (increases the duration of buffs and debuffs), Instant Cast (this one does share effect and recast with chainspell) and many others.

It also has the damaging spells that are classic, like Gravity (deals umbral damage), Gravira (deals umbral damage and adds heavy effect), Graviga (deals umbral damage and adds bind effect), Meteorite (deals astral damage) and Meteor (deals massive astral damage).

Also, to make things interesting I would love seeing the AoEs with a very “eccentric” shape…the “calendar AoE”. It would be a AoE mechanics that would make those who liked calculator (FFT) and Corsair (FFXI) jobs look forward to it. Let’s compose the calendar AoE one step at a time for a better visualization.

-First, imagine a donut-shaped AoE so it can have an increased radius if compared to radial AoE. This is the base part of the AoE.
-Second, place at the center of the donut the moon phase. So, in short, the inner, out of range, area of the donut will change with the moon. Full moon means it will be completely filled, leaving the AoE as a radial AoE with a much increased range. At new moon, it would be just the donut shape. At waxing and waning phases the donut would have one of its sides larger than the other, following the moon phase.
-Third, to make it even more bizarre, when a time mage casts a spell it will have the “Showtime” effect. It will generate 2 pointers (these 2 are visible to everyone) that will add an extra line AoE to the spell. The range of these pointers is similar to the donut radius and one (green one) will improve positive effects and the other (red one) improve negative effects.

So, if I cast a buff and a target is also hit by the green pointer AoE, the buff effect will be improved…but if he’s hit by the red pointer AoE the buff effect will be wakened. The opposite happens to debuffs. If you cast a debuff and the target is also hit by the red pointer the debuff will be improved and, if hit by green pointer AoE, the debuff will be weakened.

The Green pointer will always reflect the ingame hour and the red one the ingame minute so, while the green pointer buff will be easily planned, the red one will be more of a matter of luck. Also, if the target is hit by both pointers at same time, one nulls the other, having only the default spell effect.