creating a character suggestions

[Ouch!]

THF is a pretty tough job to start with, I suppose. If you want to pursue a career as a THF, I'd level WAR first. That's one of the easiest jobs to start with, and it's THF's best sub until level 24. I'd argue that it's a better sub than NIN in a lot of cases anyway. MNK also makes a decent sub through the Dunes if you want to go hand-to-hand with THF for Sneak Attack Combo.

But yeah, THFs don't get much love until level 15 when they get sneak attack. You can always solo to that level if you want to, but post 11 or 12 it really starts becoming a pain in the rear to do so and gets rather costly if you want to do it effectively.

And in response to the comment on the RDM above, I'd argue that you shouldn't melee in a party at all. We do piddly damage; it's free TP for the mob. Granted, if you throw on an en- spell corresponding to the monster's elemental weakness, you can tack on a couple extra points of damage without adding extra enmity, but there's no real pay-off to dealing such low numbers of damage. THFs don't dish out a whole lot of damage per hit (in comparison to other melees), but at least they have sneak attack and trick attack to dish out some huge numbers at least once a fight.

Then again, there's Discordion on Midgardsormr who has excalibur which has a hidden effect of dishing out something like half your HP as extra damage (so it gathers no hate). He can melee all he wants.