I found Nunchucks to be rather useless in that game… just keep the Monk with his fists and you should be a lot better off.
And I consider black mages a whole lot better off than Red Mages if you have to use Magic. Red Mages don’t get a whole lot of spell castings as much as Blacks or Whites do. Then again, I only stopped using Red Mages when you had to fight that Giant rat or whatever in order to get the ship.
This is Final Fantasy 3, which was released in Japan on the Famicom (NES). Final Fantasy 3 for the Snes was the American version of Final Fantasy 6.
And the reason Black Mages are worthless as far as I’m concerned is because Black Magic itself is generally not very helpful in FF3 (obvious exceptions to this are places like Nepto Shrine, where Black Magic is required to be your offense). If you have a Red Mage in your party instead of a Black Mage, not only is your physical strength much greater, you also get to use some white magic on the side (as well as some black magic, should the need arise).
Red mage!?! They’re useless after you crash the first airship. Black mages do about twice as much damage with their spells. Red mages are almost useless. Don’t they also have limitations on which spells they can use? They can do everything but are good at nothing. They’re not good fighters, their not good healers, their not good attack mages. The only reason to have a red mage is to be able to use the W. Slayer in that cave north of the pond full of undead monsters.
I typically use: Fighter/Knight/etc., specialty class (varies depending on point in game), White Mage/Wizard, Black Mage/Wizard.
As for equipment, if that’s the most expensive stuff you can buy, or if you found it and it’s better, than it’s good. For the monk, just check when you level up if the equipment is still better. But for simplicity sake, I’d just sell it off anyway.
Other than the tonfa (which I recommend that you remove and let your monk attack with his bare fists), I had the same equipment in use at that stage of the game, and I conquered the tower without mishap.
I tried using a red magician briefly, but soon converted him to a white magician. I found that his well-rounded attributes and choice of equipment and spells were only decent at the beginning of the game; his attacking power remained decent in the Tower of Owen, but his spell capacity was rather low.
Sheesh, must one be always crucified for offering a suggestion that the mass doesn’t agree with?
Anyway, Red Mages are definately helpful for style points. If you really just want to absolutely dominate, just change everybody into a Fighter (although you’d probably want to keep a White Mage handy).
Although, to be perfectly honest, I never found magic to be extraordinarily useful in any Final Fantasy game (except for healing). Perhaps that’s why I seem to have some sort of repressed disdain for Black Mages?
We’re not crucifying you, we’re just amazed at your foolish preference of red mage over black for practicality. Style is a whole other issue. Yeah the red mage is stronger physically, but there are plenty of other classes that are tougher than both. If you want to have fun, there’s no reason not to bring a red mage, but if you seriously want a second healer, a white mage would be a better choice without a doubt. And since you don’t like attack magic much I’m not going to compare a black mage. So then why do you find a red wizard so useful? What can they do that the other classes can’t?
Since Red Mage is part of the first set of Jobs you can get, and his weapon, armor, and magic capabilities are very limited, he isn’t very useful after a little while (if you can use him halfway through the game, more power to you, but after that it becomes really challenging). Yes, physical damage is generally stronger than magical damage in FF3, but there are a few perks to magical damage, including status ailments, the fact that it doesn’t cause enemies to clone themselves, and the fact that it can target multiple enemies. So by that token, the Black Mage-type jobs (BM, Warlock, Sage) are pretty useful in FF3.
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