An idea I’ve pondered for awhile now is adapting other FF games’ magic systems into this one.
Considering how FF4 has Fast/Haste as a White spell, and Slow as well, this is one aspect to investigate. And Regen seems like a Time spell that White wizards would study; indeed, only Rosa has access to a Regen effect (!Pray) in FF4.
Likewise, in FF4 (and FF1 and FF3) Stop is a Black Magic spell, because there was no discrete Time Magic in the series yet.
So what would FF5 look like if Time spells were distributed across White and Black schools, and what would that enable?
In the under-rated FF12, Black Magic includes Water and Dark elemental spells, although only Red Mages have access to Dark. Allocating Time spells to the Black and White magic schools could perhaps open up more changes, such as giving Black magic extra elemental damage options. But what would become of the Time Mage Job?
Well, I think I have a good solution that would balance this all out. In exchange for giving White the Slow and Haste spells, and Black the Stop spell, most of the status spells from White and Black could get swapped over, to make a status-themed mage. Some Time spells would be removed, or possibly remade in Blue magic spells, and the potential to import Green spells from other games exists.
<aside> 📌
My design notion is to fold Time Magic into Black and White, freeing up Time to get rebranded as the status magic school, sometimes called Green Magic.
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It is declared its own school in both FF12 and “FF Tactics Advance 2”, which is known for its huge job system. FFTA2 assigns Green Mage nearly all of the status effect spells, to include the traditionally White mainstays of Protect and Shell; Heal/Esuna the status clearing spell is still a White spell, however.
I like this setup a lot. Here are the full Green Magic lists from both games, for further consideration.
Protect: traditional White physical defense buff; already in FF5
Shell: traditional White magical defense buff; already in FF5
Tranq: boosts Accuracy / Hit Rate (much like LOCK in FF1)
Leap: increases vertical movement, no direct analogy in turn-based JRPG battle system
could translate to an Agility boost yet Haste has this niche (perhaps it’s closest to Quick?)
Blind: already in FF5 as a Blue spell (Flash) and a monster attack effect
Oil: interesting debuff that doubles subsequent fire damage on target
Silence: already in FF5, as both White and Time spells (Mute and Void (aka Silencega))
Sleep: already in FF5, as Black spell