Final Fantasy 3 - Jobs

Your default job and the one you'll ditch fastest. Balanced stats sound nice on paper, but balanced means mediocre at everything. Switch to a real job the moment you touch the Wind Crystal; there's no reason to keep anyone as a Freelancer past the first save point.

Heavy armor, swords, and axes make the Warrior your sturdiest front-liner in the early game. Bows give it a back-row option when you're running low on healing items, which is a trick most new players miss. The Knight replaces it completely at the Fire Crystal, so don't invest too heavily in job levels here.

Fist damage scales with level, and by the mid-game a bare-handed Monk outdamages most weapon users. That means you can skip the weapon shop entirely and spend the Gil on spells or gear for your mages. Retaliate counters physical attacks automatically, which adds up in random encounters. The Black Belt at the Earth Crystal is a direct upgrade, so plan to swap when you get there.

Essential from the first dungeon to the last. Cure and Protect carry you through the early game, and the spell list only gets better from there. One trick worth knowing: staves used as items through the Item command cast free spells (the game never tells you this). The Healing Staff alone saves dozens of spell charges over a full run. Upgrade to Devout at the Earth Crystal for level 8 spells like Arise and Holy.

Your best source of group damage for most of the game. Limited spell slots mean you should save the big spells for bosses and use physical attacks or items against trash mobs. Keep the Black Mage in the back row permanently; it can't take hits and doesn't need to be up front. Upgrade to Magus at the Earth Crystal for Flare and Death.

Fewer spell slots than dedicated casters, weaker spells that cap at level 3, and a painful gear gap starting around the mid-game. The Red Mage does a little of everything but none of it well enough to justify a party slot once better options appear. Not recommended for most parties; your fourth slot is better spent on a second physical attacker or a dedicated mage.

Cover automatically protects allies who drop to critical HP, which makes the Knight the best tank in the game until Ninja arrives. It can dual-wield swords for solid damage output on top of that defensive utility. A small pool of White Magic (level 1) lets it self-heal in a pinch. The Knight stays relevant all the way to the endgame and only gets replaced if you pick up a Ninja in Eureka.

Steal sounds exciting but mostly yields consumables you could buy for cheap. The Thief's real value is unlocking doors that other jobs can't open, though that comes up rarely enough that you can swap one in for the specific dungeon and swap back out afterward. High speed does mean it acts first in combat. One niche use: Thief is helpful against magic-immune enemies in Goldor's Mansion where casters are dead weight.

Study works like a free Libra, revealing enemy HP and elemental weaknesses. That information is critical against Barrier Shift bosses like Hein and Amon, where the weakness changes every turn. Alchemy doubles the effect of items used in battle, but you'll need a steady supply of attack items to make it worthwhile. Bring a Scholar for the Hein fight specifically; it turns a guessing game into a solved problem.

Barrage fires four hits at random targets, and each one can crit. That makes the Ranger one of the best sustained damage dealers from the back row, safe from physical attacks entirely. The downside is that Eureka doesn't stock endgame bows (sorry, bows), so the Ranger falls off hard in the final stretch while melee jobs get their best weapons. Solid through most of the game but plan to retire it late.

Terrain casts a random spell based on your current environment at zero MP cost, which sounds great until you realize you can't control what it does. The spells ignore Silence status, so the Geomancer still functions when your other casters are shut down. But the randomness makes it unreliable for boss fights where you need consistent damage or healing. Fine for saving MP during long dungeon crawls; bad for anything that matters.

Jump makes the Dragoon untargetable for one turn and lands heavy damage when it comes back down. Dual-wielding Blood Lances drains 25-50% of the damage dealt as HP, creating a self-sustaining fighter that barely needs healing. Four Dragoons all using Jump on turn one can one-turn Garuda, which is the single most famous cheese in FF3. The Dragoon stays useful through the Water Crystal era but eventually gets outclassed by Ninja and Black Belt.

Provoke draws enemy attacks to the Viking, protecting your squishier party members. It's the tankiest job in the game by raw defensive stats, with heavy armor and shields stacking resistances high. But the Viking's damage output is mediocre compared to Knight, and Knight's Cover ability achieves a similar protective effect while also hitting harder. The Viking works if you need a dedicated damage sponge, though most players prefer Knight for the better offense.

Souleater sacrifices HP to deal damage, which sounds like a steep cost. The ability exists almost exclusively to handle Divide enemies that split when hit with normal attacks. You'll encounter these in the Ancient Ruins, Falgabard Cave, and Cave of Shadows. Bring one or two Dark Knights for those specific dungeons and switch back to your normal party afterward; the job has almost no use outside those encounters.

Each summon randomly picks either its white or black magic effect, and the player has zero control over which one fires. That means your Evoker might heal the party when you need damage, or nuke when you need healing. The Summoner does the same thing with full control and consistent effects. Skip the Evoker entirely.

Songs unlock at job levels 1, 10, 20, and 30: Paeon, Minuet, Elegy, and Requiem respectively. The effects are party-wide buffs that don't cost MP, which sounds useful in theory. In practice, the buff values are weak, the Bard's gear options are terrible, and the job levels required for the better songs take a long time to grind. Other support options contribute more to the party without the investment.

The Monk's direct upgrade and the highest physical damage dealer in the game. Boost stacks up to two times, multiplying your next attack's damage. A third Boost triggers self-destruct at 50% of the Black Belt's current HP dealt as damage to the target, which is a desperation move at best. Ditch weapons entirely; bare-fist damage at high levels outdamages every claw in the game. The Black Belt competes with Ninja for the top physical DPS slot and arguably wins.

The White Mage upgrade you've been waiting for. Level 8 White Magic includes Arise (full-HP revival) and Holy (strongest single-target damage from a healer). More spell slots across the board means longer dungeon runs without resting. The Devout is the definitive healer for the rest of the game; there's no reason to run a White Mage once this job is available.

Black Mage upgraded with access to level 8 spells including Flare and Death. Flare is non-elemental, which means nothing resists it. More spell slots than the Black Mage means you can actually use your big spells on regular encounters without running dry before the boss. The Magus is the strongest offensive caster in the game, and it's not close.

Unlike the Evoker, the Summoner gives you full control over which summon effect fires. Consistent damage and healing from summons is genuinely useful, and the spells hit hard. But the Summoner arrives at the same time as the Magus, who hits harder with more spell slots and doesn't split focus between two effect types. A fine job that's overshadowed by its neighbor on the crystal.

Can equip nearly every weapon and armor type in the game, which makes gearing trivial. Throw lets you hurl shurikens for 8,000+ damage per turn, trivializing most late-game bosses. The Ninja is second to the Black Belt in raw physical offense but makes up the difference with vastly better defensive stats and equipment flexibility. Between Throw damage and near-universal equipment access, Ninja is one of the two strongest jobs in the game.

Access to all White Magic, all Black Magic, and all Summoner spells (not Evoker) in a single job. The Sage has more Intellect than the Magus and more Spirit than the Devout, so its spells actually hit harder than the specialists. The trade-off is fewer spell slots per level than either dedicated caster, which means careful resource management during long dungeons. Paired with a Devout, the Sage covers every magical need your party could have.