Hey, why do wizards always go on the bottom?

[KentaRawr!]

In Final Fantasy 1 and 3, I always seem to put the White Mage and the Black Mage on the bottom two rows. I can't remember why I did this, and in every gameplay video I see, they do the same thing. (In fact, in the DS version of FF3, I moved Arc next to Refia, and Ingus next to Luneth, because I wanted Luneth to be a Melee-job and Arc to be a casting job)

Is there any impact this has on the gameplay at all? Putting them on the bottom two rows, I mean? :o

[VeloZer0]

In FF1 the chance people would be attacked increased the closer you got to the top. For instance the character in the top position would take 50% of the attacks directed at your party.

In FF3 when they added the back row/front row they did away with the relevance of the party positioning. It is probably just a hold over habit of players to put casters in the bottom spots. I personally like to go for a physical character in top on bottom and my squishies kept in between the two.

[Jiro]

I like symmetry as much as possible. So I always put my mages (or physically weak characters) in the middle spots. With rows it's the same. If I have a four party, it's front back back front.

In VII it's Front Back Front unless I'm using straight up short rangers, and Back Front Back once I get the Long Range materia

[Remon]

Being a mage lover, I used to put them on top. (Though I had a mage only team in FF1 once.)

[TrollHunter]

In ff3 if I remember correctly putting units on the back row lowers the amount of damage they take. The downside to this is that melee attacks do less damage but range attacks do the same. Hence why mages are punted to the back row.
EDIT: now if you're talking specific character order then no that has no impact.

[Laddy]

Because they're submissive.

[Roogle]

As Laddy mentioned, those who use magic are seen as more intellectual and submissive compared to warriors who are seen as more physical and dominating. The truth is that those who wield arcane arts are no less capable of physical activity than those who wield martial arts, but this may be done as something similar to gameplay balance rather than storyline balance.

[Laddy]

As Laddy mentioned, those who use magic are seen as more intellectual and submissive compared to warriors who are seen as more physical and dominating. The truth is that those who wield arcane arts are no less capable of physical activity than those who wield martial arts, but this may be done as something similar to gameplay balance rather than storyline balance.

[ljkkjlcm9]

The correct answer is the first one, and it has just been carried over by people from then on. I still do it, even with the back row thing. I honestly sometimes even forget about rows (or when I first played FFVI as FFIII didn't even realize there were rows), so all my characters are always in the front anyways.

The top character got hit the most in FF1, which is why it was almost always a Fighter, and the bottom character got hit the least, which is why the fragile Black Mage almost always filled that slot.

THE JACKEL