Some people prefer parties with superfluous gimicks like "defense" and "healing" - as if "surviving" is important to their FF1 playing style. My party doesn't bother with any of that. A master, and three black wizards are my pure offense party. The whole idea is to kill the badguys before they can kill you. It only works if you overlevel - a lot. The early levels, where the black belt is gimped, and the mages have only a handful of single target spells are quite simply hell. I almost gave up when my party died enroute to Provoka. However, after the Elfland/Marsh Cave portion of the game, the party picked up the pace, and was more along the style I envisioned when putting it together.