Final Fantasy style "Blue Mage"?

[Herobizkit]

It seems to me that if any game will proerly use this concept, 4e is a likely candidate. Monster attacks are different enough from standard player attacks that they could easily be the focus of a whole class.

Or could they?

I wish I had some thoughts to put here, but for now, how might this be done?

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

In Final Fantasy, once you developed an ability with blue magic, it tended to stick around.

IMO, a "blue mage" would have a certain number of encounter, daily and utility slots (the same as a PC would normally have).

(By default, a blue mage would have some "scanning" type attack powers, but they shouldn't remain long.)

The blue mage would have an at-will immediate reaction ability allowing them to "retain" an ability they've been hit with (much like the beasthead giant in Dark Sun's ability). The ability would retain the qualities of the incoming attack (status effects, damage type, range, AoE, defense targeted) but would use the character's key stat and a specified damage table by level. (Monsters usually do more damage than PCs, as PCs have healing abilities, a greater variety of abilities, and action points. Also, this would hopefully control for super-powered abilities dished out by higher-level solos, etc.)

Whether that attack becomes an encounter or daily ability would depend on the incoming qualities. For instance, something that inflicts immobilize UENT would probably be encounter, compared to immobilize (save ends) would be daily. Or maybe recharge abilities would become encounter and encounter abilities would become daily.

Note that this would be really hard to design and balance

Note that a blue mage would able to retain an attack until they give up a slot for something else. So if a blue mage never seems to get hit by daily-worthy attacks, they can retain the ones they have over the course of several days or even levels. (With level ups, the damage would increase.)

A blue mage might be able to use a special ability (Lancet?) to use against a monster, copying a non-attack ability and filling a utility slot. A blue mage might even be able to steal a trait like regeneration, so needless to say there needs to be some way of limiting this.

 

[Karmic_vegeance]

There is an appropriate Wizard Utility you could use to base this sort of thing off of: Beneficient Transformation at Level 16. It's a daily that basically lets you copy a trait of a nearby enemy, such as resistances, special senses, or movement modes for an encounter.

 

[Arctic Wolf]

I am sorry If I am derailing a bit but what is a "blue mage"? I never got into FF so I would not know but would like more info

 

[RangerWickett]

Black mages had attack spells.

White mages had protective and healing spells.

Not sure what red mages got.

The basic gist of a blue mage is that he can't do anything until he learns it from a monster. So if you fight a monster that breathes fire, he can learn to breathe fire. Sometimes you want to go after really tough monsters, because if you survive you get a powerful ability.

I thought they were underpowered whenever I played them, so I just stuck to black magery. I'm sure I was just doing it wrong.

 

[Arctic Wolf]

Black mages had attack spells.

White mages had protective and healing spells.

Not sure what red mages got.

The basic gist of a blue mage is that he can't do anything until he learns it from a monster. So if you fight a monster that breathes fire, he can learn to breathe fire. Sometimes you want to go after really tough monsters, because if you survive you get a powerful ability.

I thought they were underpowered whenever I played them, so I just stuck to black magery. I'm sure I was just doing it wrong.

Ok gotcha. So basically they learn their spells from relying on the heat of battle with their enemies. Sounds interesting.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It would be hard in 4e.

Mostly this is because monster powers are not really balanced for PC use...at. all. A monster encounter has no relationship in power to a PC's encounter power. They are, essentially, totally different effects.

If you had a suite of monsters specifically designed to be used in a campaign with this character, it could work, but only if you used only those monsters. The moment you want to add in a monster from any other source, a wrench gets tossed in the works.

Add to that this: the mechanics of Blue Magic have always been really wonky. In addition to being very difficult to get (the right monster has to use the right ability on the right character, usually requiring charms or the like), the magic a Blue Mage received could be anything from awesome to blah. They aren't reliable, and they aren't well balanced, and, well, that's kind of the fun of them. But in a Final Fantasy game, if you have one useless character, it's not the end of the world -- you've usually got 2-4 other useful characters to use. And if you discover an exploit, it's kind of fun, since you can now win whenever you want to. In a tabletop game, if your character is useless, it can be the dullest experience in the world, and if you find an exploit, it can ruin the game.

In FFZ right now, largely because of that last reason, blue magic is, essentially, a "treasure." You aren't allowed to base your entire gaming experience around the abilities of your enemies, because it's not nearly as fun to do if it is the only thing you can ever do.

That cautionary tale aside, though, I don't want to burst the bubble of your cool idea too hard. Give it a spin if you want, and have fun. Just be cognizant of the fact that, for instance, such a character doesn't even have a useful combat role, nevermind that every power he gets might just fall into only two categories: useless and overpowered.

That's fine for a treasure award in FFZ -- those are extras on top of your character anyway. It's not so fine as the main focus of your character.

Best way to play a "blue mage like" character in 4e is to become an Enchanter or a Psion, and focus on powers that make your enemies hit each other.

You might, thematically, want to consider a Druid, as well. "Beast Form" powers could easily be fluffed as monster powers. It wouldn't be very mechanically similar, but re-fluffing is pretty easy in 4e, so there is that option.

 

[TwinBahamut]

The concept of Blue Mages is that they learn the skills of the monsters they fight. In the earliest incarnations of this ability, this meant either getting hit by a learnable attack or merely watching the attack be performed. Later versions of the concept introduced the idea of learning a monster's abilities by eating either a part of the monster or the whole monster itself. The most recent version of the Blue Mage (from FF11) features the idea that Blue Mages become rather monsterlike in the process of mastering their art, requiring them to conceal their appearances as a result. What is more, most of the major Blue Mage attacks tend to utilize a monsterous physiology (breathing fire rather than conjuring it up, shooting eye lasers rather than firing a magic missile, hardening the body rather than raising a magic shield, etc). As such, Blue Mages are best seen as mages who partially transform themselves into the monsters they learn from in order to use their skills.

Personally, I think it is better to take more from the flavor built up with the later Blue Mages rather than copy the skill-stealing implementation. It would be extremely difficult to create any way to sort through monster statblocks and figure out which skills can work when used by the player and which skills can't. It would be a nightmare of rules to make it work. It would also be difficult to keep some of the classic flavor of Blue Magic that way. It would be better to have a list of powers like any other class, with a few special mechanics to emphasize the "becoming a monster" aspect. For example, borrowing FF11's mechanics of Blue Mages gaining potent passive bonuses based on which attack skills they have learned might work.

 

[Shadus]

Personally, I think it is better to take more from the flavor built up with the later Blue Mages rather than copy the skill-stealing implementation.

I agree with this. I think a refluffed Battlemind could work for this pretty well. Instead of mentally hurting the dragon that breathed flames on his friends with his Mind Spike he spews his own fire right back at the dragon. Also refluff his other powers to him mimicking what he's seen monsters do, like instead of teleporting he is phasing in and out like a Displacer Beast and what not.

 

[Incenjucar]

Blue magic is much more constrained than it may first appear. You only ever get access to a very specific list of abilities, which are spread across a number of monsters. Some abilities are used by multiple monsters. Most abilities CANNOT be learned. As such, the cleanest way to simulate a blue mage is to just play a wizard, but choose your spell choices based on attacks you encountered. Otherwise, you need to convince your DM to plant a number of blue magic powers in the monsters you fight in the game that you can safely acquire.