GORHA'S PROFILE

OK, thanks for the info. Thinking about it some more, it kinda makes sense - a lot of people probably wouldn't be interested in incomplete games, so the award is meant for games that were finished but still didn't get much attention, I guess. I noticed that Best Short Game also doesn't appear for games not marked as complete, and again, kinda makes sense since a short game could be longer once it's finished. But yeah, that's just speculation.

If you decide not to use a white mage and heal with items instead, you still need a party member to use those items. Who's it going to be? Usually the one who does the least damage, who then effectively becomes the white mage. Items do give you a little more flexibility; a black mage can use items when you're fighting enemies that are immune to magic, or a thief can do it once they're done stealing. The tradeoff is that you're consuming those items and thus, ultimately, money.

By putting a white mage in the party, you're committing a character to the healer role full time, and in exchange, you get a renewable resource, MP, tied to that character that doesn't cost money (except for the price of sleeping at an inn between dungeons, but you'd probably do that anyway). For the white mage to be worth the opportunity cost of not bringing another damage dealer, they need to be saving you money in that way, which means they have to have enough MP to get through a dungeon without needing ethers, or at least not so many ethers that you end up spending more than you would have on healing potions if you were relying on those instead.

This is assuming you have a use for extra money, though. In most RPGs, all it takes is a little grinding to buy all the best equipment in each new town and maintain a healthy supply of items as well. In some games, you can do that even if you don't grind at all. In those games, where the economic advantage the white mage offers on paper ends up not mattering, what good are they?

The answer is that items and magic don't have to be equal in healing capability, and probably shouldn't be. If nothing else, magic should have an edge late in the game, unless you do something like putting a shop with the best weapons in the game right in front of the final boss so the player has a use for the money the enemies in the final dungeon dropped. Even in a game where healing only with items is viable, I think it's better if they work differently. Like, maybe items are faster, making them better for emergency healing, but magic is the only way to heal multiple party members at once. I think a lot of games go too far to make healing magic too good too soon (the buyable healing items in most of the classic Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest games become obsolete pretty quickly), but even if that isn't always the best thing for game balance, it's cool, you know? Magic is magic. It's supposed to be awesome and let you do things that non-magic users just can't do.

author=Red_Nova
What's the thief supposed to do? Steal their wounds?

...actually....

author=Marrend
Hrm. Lifedrain effects typically apply to the user of said effect, but, it might be interesting to play around with a lifedrain that effects outside that range.

I like the idea of a thief who heals their allies by sacrificing their own HP and heals themselves by stealing HP from enemies. They'd be like the Robin Hood of HP.