Honestly, I think it's just crappy item design. In Final Fantasy, weapons are assigned an arbitrary number that higher means better. Arguably, higher is always better, but the approach is somewhat different.

In FFXII for instance, you can make a caster character really suck at casting by stuffing them in heavy armor. And maybe I'm just too early, but Basch is nothing that resembles a good caster-he'd be lucky to make 'decent' me thinks.

In say D&D though, the game doesn't penalize you because you're a wizard wielding a sword. But in all likelihood, with a maximum of 4 HP (not counting any bonuses you might have) per level, you're going to look really stupid when you go down like a sack of wet flower after that Ogre smacks you the FIRST time.

By the same token, and again, I use D&D because I think it really does this right, a Warrior is not going to use a Wizard's staff. The only thing about the staff that makes it any good at all is the fact that a caster (or those cheating Rogues) can use it to cast spells that are stored in it.

So, when I say it's stupid that you can't wield it because the game says you 'can't', I really mean that. I feel there are much better ways than class restrictions to have players choose to make more focused characters. Honestly, at this point, the restrictions feel like they walked out of a nerds fantasy story about four 'Light Warriors' nearly 20 years ago.

And considering when FFI was made...