Level up bonuses

[Del Murder]

All my characters are the same level and same job, and have basically the same equipment, yet Del has about 100 more HP than two of my other characters. He's been in the lead the whole game, and therefore gets pounded the most. Is there any correlation between these things and level up stats or was it just luck that he ended up the best?

[Psychotic]

My Knight in slot one has less HP than my Knight in slot two, so I don't think so.

[XxSephirothxX]

My Knight in slot one has less HP than my Knight in slot two, so I don't think so.

Same, except for I'm pre-class change. One of them has a slightly higher luck stat.

[rubah]

I think it has a little bit of a random element. some of avara's posts in the main thread lead me to think that anyways. I don't have any duplicated classes so I can't judge for myself.

[Captain Maxx Power]

In each version of the game (as far as I'm aware), the central stats and HP work on a partially fixed/partially random system.

For HP, it works thusly; each class at each given level will have what is known as a "strong" growth or a "weak" growth. Both are based on your Stamina stat on levelling up, NOT your Stamina stat after levelling up.

The strong one is as follows;
20 + Rnd6 + Vit/4

Where Rnd6 is a random number between 1 and 6 and Vit is your Vitality before levelling up.

A weak level up is as follows;
Vit/4 + 1

Where again Vit is your Vitality before levelling up. On average characters will have the vast majority of their "strong" HP gains at the lower levels. The "melee" classes generally get more strong levels-up than the "caster" classes. It's also worth mentioning that, in my experience, the "strong" HP gains in DoS/PSP are partially randomized. So what does this mean for the average player? Well it means that HP can fluctuate quite a bit for different characters. Of the six character classes, only the Black Belt can consistently get 999 HP by level 50. Fighters can reach 999 but have a chance not to reach that limit should they get a lot of low rolls. In DoS pretty much every character class can reach 999 HP. The only possible exception is the Black Mage/Wizard since I had a level 99 BW with less than 999 HP, but that's nothing a few Silver/Golden apples won't fix. My advice of course would be to save before a strong level-up (you'll know a strong level because the HP gain will be in double digits). And of course to level-up your Vitality stat. Which brings us nicely to...

...base stats! This is a bit more simple. There are strict stat growth tables where certain stats are guaranteed to go up when you gain a level. Like HP you get the most stats at the lower levels compared to the later. However you can still gain these stats when you level-up regardless if they're guaranteed to go up. The approximate chance for them to rise is 50%. This may sound like good odds, but if you were levelling up and only one stat was guaranteed to rise, you would have a 1 in 16 chance in getting all of the other four stats to go up, which can prove tedious. In general your characters won't deviate too far from their intended "averages".

There are a few things worth mentioning; Firstly there are absolutely no differences in HP/Stat growth between the initial and upgraded classes. When you upgrade you neither receive a bonus nor a penalty. In other words a Fighter can have the exact same HP/Stats as a Knight. Secondly MP growth rates are fixed with the exception of Knight and Ninja for the first level after you change. Once you level-up it'll normalise. Thirdly if you're not playing DoS/PSP version, Intelligence does nothing. Nada. Zip. Magic spells are predetermined ranges/chances to hit and magical defense is dealt with using an entirely different calculation. Fourthly I have no idea about MP growth rates in DoS/PSP, only that MP only grows for the Knight/Ninja when they get their class upgrade. Most other classes who start with MP (Red Mage/White Mage/Black Mage), they can easily reach 999 MP by Level 99 provided their MP rolls don't suck, and if not it'll only take a few Soma Drops to bring it to max.

Any questions?

[Wareya]

You sound like the guy who wrote the FF3 DS mechanics guide. :P I can understand you, dunno why, and I was about to ask the same question as the guy who started the topic.