FFXII. No random combat.

[A Black Falcon]

I thought, that YOU thought I was saying I want ALL items in the game to be obtainable at all times. No, don't care about that. Honestly, I just care about the items I can steal from ENEMIES being obtainable whenever I want if possible. I like to know I can find a lot of enemies whenever I need them just in case. I know it's kinda arbitrary, but I don't care, that's just my own little preference.

Um, so you didn't mean what you said? Because it seemed pretty clear that you meant more than just having accesss to any enemies at any time, you were talking about having access to specific kinds of enemies at any time...

White mages cast defensive magic. That includes stuff like cure and remedy, and a LITTLE offensive magic like dia which harms undead only, and the ultimate magic for them, Holy, which does BIG holy-element damage.

Aka "Clerics". :) Yes, I know them, they're in FFTA...

Black mages cast offensive magic, like fire and poison. Their ultimate magic is flare, which does MAJOR fire damage.

Red mages are a mix of black and white mages which also have fighting ability. They can do a little of everything, but aren't as good at any of it as a specialized class.

Time mages were added later to further specialize. Their magic manipulates space and time. They can cast haste and gravity and such.

Yes yes, I know these four classes from FFTA... I don't have any blue mages (yet?), though, so I don't know their specialty.

Anyway, all of them learn their spells, in most games, in one of two ways. Either they buy or find the spells, or they have to equip special items in order to learn the spells over time.

Summoners, as you can imagine, summon creatures called phantom beasts to do their bidding. Every game has it's own unique story explanation for their existance, from being from another world of magic, to being a manifestation of pure imagination, to being spirits created by the dreams of an ancient world. They learn their summons by either obtaining rare crystals containing their spirits, or defeating them in battle and thus earning their servitude. They can almost never be bought, because they are one of a kind creatures.

Summoners in Disciples II are stupid and useless. Always get the mages. :)

Blue mages, which I finally get to (again!), are unique. Monsters in FF games (which is what we were talking about to start with, which is why it applies) have their own unique abilities, based on various factors like being another species or studying a strange unknown discipline of magic. Anyway, a blue mage can learn a large number of these special ability just by experiencing these spells one time. So, as you journey around, you may find a cactuar (cactus creature) that uses a spell called 1000 needles, which causes 1000 HP of damage EVERY time ignoring stats. Just by seeing it that one time, the blue mage after the battle can use it from then on. These spells, as you can imagine, vary widely in effect and have some very unusual properties. Big Guard is a favorite of mine, usually learned from creatures with shells (which are normally required for the spell I suppose). It casts protect (reduces physical damage), shell (reduces magical damage), and haste (increases speed), and sometimes some other buffs, on the entire party. Others include the level variable spells. These are a group of odd blue magic spells learned from various monsters that work based on enemy level. For example, L3 Confuse casts confuse, with 100% accuracy (unless the enemy has 100% resistance to it) on all enemies with a level divisible by 3, but misses enemies that don't match that requirement. Another odd spell is Step Mine, which causes damage with a base that is 1/8 of the total number of steps you have taken. Holy Wind is a cool one. It restores the entire party's HP based on their existing HP (if I remember correctly, it restores 2x the character's existing HP or so, but I'd have to turn the game on and look it up to be sure) Here's one that's annoying. ???? That's right, that's what it is actually called. This spell is never explained in any way in the game. So you have to actually use it to both figure out what it does, and experiment to figure out how it does it's damage. It takes a lot of using that mystery spell to figure out exactly how it works, believe you me... As for an "ultimate", well for this class it varies. In FF6, there was a special boss you had to face to learn a rare spell called Grand Train. That one is straight forward, it does super ultra amazing non elemental damage that ignores magic defense. Anyway, the blue mage is a favorite of mine because of how varied and odd the various spells it learns are, and the unusual way they are learned.

Nothing like FF8? But it sounds quite a bit like that 'steal magic' ability in FF8 to me... you use an ability and take the magic from them, getting it for yourself... a bit different, sure, but a similar thing.

As I said, I've never heard of a PC RPG that uses such a system, so I don't understand your complaint about this issue and American RPGs, which is why I talked about items. That's the only similar issue in American RPGs.