How do I do that? I heard something about “epic” something or other…
No, you’re confused with Epic skills.
You need to find the manuals for both combat and magic, which are in treasure chests in… lots of places. Pretty much just like new formations. As usual for Suikoden, a walkthrough is recommended since a lot of them are annoyingly hidden. Mind you, you don’t begin to find manuals for a long while and you only get the ones that allow for the highest ranks close to the end.
You dont need ALL of them, since higher-level manuals work even if you don’t have the lower ones. So even if you don’t get Basic Combat Training (Up to B), you can still get the manuals that let you go to A and S with no problem. There is no manual for the SS level, you can upgrade to that as soon as you can get to S, provided your character can get that high.
Also, I’m not sure, but I think random trainers in city shops can’t get you past C no matter what, so you need either the castle trainers (Zegai for Combat, Levi for Magic) or just someone on your team with Combat Teacher or Tutor skills (Like Georg or Zerase).
Remember that not just any character can get all skills to any level. Many characters can only get some skill up to a certain level, even if you get the books needed for higher ones. How high can a character get what skills determines a lot of their usefulness.
Epic Skills are skills that are found in chests or by beating certain bosses (Or one from completing Egbert’s game) that raise two or more attributes at once. In order to use an Epic, you need to get all the basic skills it influences to at least A. That means that in order to use Triple Harmony (Agility/Vitality/Attack) you first need to get the Attack, Vitality and Agility skills up to A. Needless to say, if a character can’t get the needed basic skills up to that level, s/he can’t use the epic skill.
So are these epic skill manuals used one time only, or can they be used by everybody?
Everybody. Once you get them, you will see that all characters capable of using the skill (I.E. all those who can get the necessary base skills up to A) will suddenly have them in their skill list, but grayed out. They become equipable once you fulfill the requirements.
It’s actually a good way to roughly predict the usefulness of several characters before using them. For example, if someone has Untold Clarity and Triple Harmony, he’s probably an above average fighter.