Two questions

[spunkytofu]

1) What are these Chain things I see? Sometimes it'll add up (it shows it just above your party's hp) and sometimes my dudes will just hit multiple times. How do I controll this? Is it better if you can build up a larger chain? How do you make them hit multiple times like that? (Ok, that was more than one question.)

2) I was using LP on Balthier and I took him off of guns and went to bows. Mostly because I had bows available to me that gave him a lot mroe attack power than his guns. My question is, what is the benefit of having a character stay on a certain line of weapons? What if I had everybody doing swords, including Fran and Balthier (who both start out using ranged weapons)? Does it make a difference or is it just personal preferance? I'm wondering because I don't see anything on the License Board that would lead me to believe you get special powers or abilities depending on which weapon chain you choose.

[ValiantKnight]

Battle chains are chains of killing the same race of monster.

Ie... you kill a wolf, 4 hyenas, and a named wolf... thats a chain of 6 wolf-type enemies.
As chains grow larger, more items, and better chances for all items increase.
Chains are just for drops mostly tho.

Hit chains.. where players hit multiple times, are random, but based on a percentage. Some weapons have higher multihit percentages than others(ninja swords have some of the highest I think). While others have low ones. It still doesn't forbid a weapon from hitting multiple times, just a ninja sword is more likely to hit multiple times than a regular sword I guess for example.

Each time you swing that sword, lets say theres a 10% chance he'll do another swing.. and on that swing another 10% chance.

On a ninja sword, that chance may be say.. 40%


Weapons are completely up to the player, and you can have 6 people with sword/shield if you like.

Guns = ignore armor, hit flying
Swords = can use shield, steady damage
Axes/hammers = unreliable damage, can be large or small
Bows = ranged, can hit air
Ninja Swords = multiple hit chances are very high.
etc..

I dont really remember anymore, perhaps someone else can give a better explanation

[Renmiri]

Axes hit higher but less precisely: i.e. you can do 40to 90% of maximum damage most of the times you hit. Swords hit consistently the same damage. Bows require 2 hands, i.e., no shields.

Chains is what FFXII calls when you kill the same type of foe in sequence, .i.e. keepe killing wolves on Eastersand and you get a chain going. The higher the chain the better the loot the wolves drop, plus your party gets random healing and good status changes. Kill any other kind of fiend and you break the chain

EDIT: What he said

[Wolf Kanno]

1) The chain number you are seeing is just the number of the same type of enemy you have killed. The larger this number the better loot they drop as well as HP & MP restorations. As for the continuous attacks, they are mostly based on weapons. Katanas, Ninja Swords, and Pole arms have the highest multiple hit rates. Their may be other factors stat wise but I haven't delved into it too much so I'll leave that for someone else to explain. Note that Projectile based weapons don't multi hit, rather they have high critical hit rates.

2) Their is only a slight difference between character's and their weapon preferneces and I do mean slight, you won't really notice unless you experiment and have your characters use specific weapons for a while. Balthier seems to have a rather high critical hit rate with guns as Fran does with bows. As does Vaan has a high chance of doing multi hits with weapons.