The third tier of the tower in the final battle contains two targets. One of them will do an instant-death move on one of your characters before you move up. A good thing to do is put LIfe3 on your most important characters, but for the ones that you could deal with them being replaced, don't bother. If you're completing the game with only 3 characters, or, I'd imagine, if you were at the bottom of your list, any dead characters will remain in the party when you go up to the next level. I only had Celes, Edgar, and Setzer one time, and the damn thing killed off Celes, but she came with me to the next level so I could revive her with Life2 and use the Atma Weapon and Offering that I had given to her .

While you're moving up the tower, concentrate on killing one enemy at a time. The quicker you get one gone, the less you have to worry about while you work on the next one.