Maybe that's why my characters each 'feel' like they have a different role then. By Raithwall's Tomb, I had delineated my characters into armor types and roles that *I* felt were working for them. And it really has made a huge difference in what each character does in my party.

Vaan is my Mage who covers melee support. He's not the most powerful of fighters in my party, but he doesn't need to be because he's one of the games fast characters. In fact, his speed was the primary reason I made him my main caster.

Balthier is in the heavy support role. Flat out, the man is just hard to kill, and besides that, he's using my only packet of Silent Shot, which is very useful in all the right situations.

Fran... it took me a while to figure Fran out. I've determined that Fran is like Vaan, only more fighter and less mage-something that makes sense when you consider Vaan is definately designed around the old FF thief build, and when you consider that in FFTA the Vierra never get particularly good with magic-they just have the flexibility for it. Fran seems to fight best with 2 handed weapons, though I'm going to be giving her that new bow I got and we'll see how that goes this time.

Basch... yeah. Basch is a warrior. With some training, he might make a decent Paladin, but I prefur Basch with Regen and Berserk on him at all times. He's my hulking brute who breaks stuff.

Ashe is like a traditional Red Mage in her flexibility and a Blue Mage in her melee prowess. In fact, power wise, she's everything that I always loved about Quistis in FFVIII. ...on a purely unrelated note, why did FFVIII have a great cast, a crappy story, and a broken system? You wanna talk about characters that became clones, whoo... Ashe fills the role of my 'other' party leader.

Penelo is my other Mage, and my other gunner. Penelo is kind've like Balthier in my party-she doesn't really have a role of her own, but she fills in quite nicely for anyone else, especially Vaan when the enemies are flyers.

Like I said, this whole 'problem' feels kind've artificial to me, and I really think that if gear did more than just affect some numbers this whole topic wouldn't exist.