ASM hack: improved Gale Hairpin; please help

Nice work Synchysi! That's a clean way of doing it. As it is it conflicts with Lenophis' Unhardcoded Tintinabar, but of course it could easily be changed to make use of one of the unused (?) bits in special byte 2 or 4.

It still bugs me that I don't understand entirely why bit 0 of special byte 1 can't be reused. That whole byte is initialized to $11D6 from item properties stored in another bank and most of those properties are single-character. The way I understand it is the $11xx bytes are temporarily initialized from item data, then those are used and reused to initialize in-battle character properties in a set of variables that ARE indexed by character ID. I thought it would be possible to insert code right where $3C44,X is initialized to lift one bit from $11D6. It's a mystery to me right now.

Other party-wide item effects are handled in another byte entirely, the one called "Item effects." next to the permanent status bytes in FF3usME (the one that contains Sprint Shoes, Charm Bangle and Moogle Charm). There are a number of undocumented bits in there that, if unused, would be perfect for handling Back Guard and Gale Hairpin (and Lenophis' party-wide Unhardcoded Tintinabar). Thus freeing up two bits for added item effects. I think you used one of the item bits for something in BNW, didn't you?