FINAL BATTLE: Thief vs. BB

[ValiantKnight]

He was adding humor.

The black belt had his stat growth stretched across 99 levels.. so a lvl 50 DoS Black Belt is equal to a lvl 20~ NES/PS1 Black belt.

While a lvl 50 DoS Fighter is equal to maybe a 35~ NES/PS1 Fighter.

They messed up a little on his absorb, evade, hitrate, and other things.. overall he grows much slower, can't get as high damage/absorb/evade/etc.. as he could in NES/PS1, and generally gets outclassed by far by thief in DoS, who gains more base hits along with the mages as well...

(Everyone is usually getting 3-4hits by lvl 20 if memory serves.. or sooner... and thief is getting 3-4 hits at like level 8~)

Just from memory and a short consensus...
(this is just early on, they seem to pull back in line after leveing extensively)
Thief hitrate(number of hits)..... tripled it
Mages hitrate.... doubled it
Black belt crit rate.....halved it
Black belt stat growth... halved it.

It may not be that extensive, but you see a pattern... they stretched out BB, making him a little weaker, and much slower to grow, while increasing the hitrate of every other class except fighter in the early game.

[Captain Maxx Power]

OK, I'll actually give a serious answer.

In terms of NES BB, nothing compares in terms of high amounts of damage to a BB. For one thing, he automatically has double the amount of Hits available to him (one per 16% as oppose to 32%). Secondly his damage is proportionate to his level. I don't know the exact level on which a BB can outclass a Knight with Masamune, but I think it's around Level 35ish. What's interesting about the BB is that once you get to the experience plateau (the point where you always need the same amount of experience to level up, baring 1 point every other level), most of the other characters are essentially "maxed out", gaining only small stat bonuses and HP amounts (MP we'll put to one side here). The BB however will always increase in strength past this point at the same rate as he does in the rest of the game.

Simply put, the BB in the NES version is a character who, in terms of striking power, is constant, whereas other characters will experience jumps in strength. This is most prevelant when one is involved in the lighting of the last two orbs, since there are a bucketload of powerful swords that become available very close to each other. Usually at this point the BB will be continually outclassed by the other melee characters.

Then of course there's the old armour, and this is where the BB falls down. No matter how much HP you may have, if your defence sucks you're going to get hit, and hit hard. No one seems to know the exact calculations involved in Chance to Hit. However the consensus seems to be that Evade does next to nothing to help avoid attacks. Mages, who usually pack a lot of Evade by default due to lighter equipment, will nearly always get hit by an enemy. Very rarely do you ever see the "miss" icon involved in an attack against your party. Then of course there's elemental spells. Since a BB can't wear any equipment without ruining his defence (his defence is either his level totally unequiped or the sum of his equipment), what little equipment he can use can help him in elemental defence, but cripple him in his already lacklustre physical defense (to put this into perspective, a Knight with the best equipment for end game (Dragon Armour, Ribbon, Aegis Shield and ProRing) will have about 80+ absorb, which is 30 more than a Level 50 BB!). A BB's best equipment end game is a Ribbon, Opal Bracelet and ProRing, coming to around 40ish, which is what your mages can be expecting to pack. So this basically means that BB is infact a back-row fighter.

Then there's the spells. O golly gee, the follies of Old-School Square, with their redundant statistics (read: Intelligence) and unbalanced ways. BB's get no spells, and Master's get...well, nothing really. In terms of pure comparison, there is absolutely no difference between a BB and a Master. There's no equipment a Master can equip that a BB can't, and vice versa. There's no bonus stats, and of course no added magic. I always find it amusing when people claim to be doing a solo BB challenge with no-class change. I just think "and getting a Class-Change would change anything how exactly?". Now I'm not a big fan of spells in terms of offensive capability (a BM with no MP is a wasted slot that could be holding a juicy Knight), but I do enjoy them buff and debuff spells, specifically the likes of SLO2 and FAST. BB's don't get anything like this baring any castable items they may have. This of course can be advantageous since a BB will always have at least one equipment slot open for armour (it can even be a piece he's already equipped, e.g. a Heal helm whilst wearing a Ribbon). Without FAST, BB's aren't the uber powerhouses they could be. However, with FAST they can do four figure damage at Level 50.

So in summary, BB's are not made to be front-line fighters. Heck, RM's are better at being up-front than your average BB. What they do (and do very well) is hit hard for most of the early and later game. The part in middle though you're going to wish you had a Theif/Ninja or Fighter/Knight with you instead since their attack will be much lower in comparison to their counterparts. If you want to have some fun, have a BB in the back, FAST him, and watch all those unnecessarily large numbers pop up with glee.

As for DoS, well the BB's just gimped on that, but so is every other class. Go figure.

[Nerevarine]

ok i just got DoS yesterday and i am about to enter the earth cave to fight lich. my fighter has the great axe and my thief has the wyrmkiller(dragon sword) there are times when my level 19 thief will have six hits for dam near 250 damage to most enemies. most of the time my fighter will not do so. he does have less hp then a aproxametly the same expiereinced thief in the NES version but he is packing much more of a whallop. from what yal are sayin in the thread here is that the BB/Monk is nerfed big time in DoS but i have not expierienced this myself.

there is no question of who is better in the DoS version.

i cant wait for him to be a ninja so i can cast both Haste AND Temper

[ValiantKnight]

34 with gold
43 with opal

74 with dragon/etc

At least as far as my memory went.
I seem to remember evading helping some, but that could be me.. he may have not evaded completely, but the hits were down... you'll notice when you hit something with a high evade, even BB's 10hit barrages are reduced to 2... 4.... 1.. hit

On the NES version his multiple hits helped him because of his crit rate. He could hurt high absorb enemies because of having so many hits giving him an strong crit rate. Or that was my take from playing the PS version.. which is as close to NES as I can get on normal.

His armor has always been horrid throughout all versions, save PS1 easy, where he can have the highest armor.. 99.
However at level 99, BB's pinky could theoritcally destroy Chaos in 3 hits...

NES - there is debate, Thief has run and low level superiority, Thief has armor and black magic after class change. BB has crit rate, decent HP, and scalable damage that gets quite high

PS1 Normal - Thief lose run ability... Not much else changed

PS1 Easy - BB allowed to grow 49 more levels of damage at NES growth rate, making the cannon on his arm much bigger.. and his defense isn't horrid anymore once leveled. Faster leveling and less gold in this version when related to levels make it so BB is still cheap and becomes stronger faster, offsetting his bad qualities.

DoS - There is no debate, Thief wins hands down.
They tried to stretch out 50 levels into 99 levels..
This was a little harsher on BB whos power depends on levels first of all.
They gave BB a little penalty too.. so it was even worse.
Thief, whose power depends alot less on levels, also got innate extra hits, making him more powerful.

Thief = more damage.... slightly less HP growth
BB = less damage growth, damage growth spread over longer level track, armor growth spread over longer level track, less armor growth.

That's a bit more detailed if it helps...
Basically what i mean by less armor growth... and these are purely guesses atm because it's been a while since I played the DoS version.

At 99, BB should have 50armor naked and hit for.... 3000~ or 4000~?
He may make the 3000 mark in DoS at 99, but his armor is around the low 40s I believe at 99, not 50.

Basically there are only 5 characters to choose from in Dawn of Souls FF1. Just delete BB from the menu This coming from a BB fan.

[Crossblades]

Both classes are good, but I'm going with the BB because he has more attack power and HP than the Thief

[ImAFarmer]

BB punches hard.

Hard is good enough.

Who cares about spells if one punch will kill the monster?

Punching is boring though... still BB>Thief