Wanted: Thief Skillset Ideas and Criticisms

These past few weeks have been very exciting. My patch will soon be moving out of concept phase and into an early modding phase. Right now I'm working on the spells list, specifically what should be cut and what should be kept. It seems like I'll actually come out of this thing with one extra 8 spell list complete with field menu and level learning. Which, will most likely work best with Locke. I've got a few idea for spells for him but I'd love to have a few more. I'm stuck at seven. I thought about making Gil Toss a single target ability that doesn't ignore defense and then adding Gil Rain which functions like the original ability, but this seems pretty boring to me. 
Here's what I've go so far:

1. Steal (same as the command)
   
2. Flee (same as smoke bomb item)
   
3. Gil Toss (same as the command)
   
4. Hide (animation undecided, Locke only, add clear)
   
5. Tailwind (animation undecided, Locke only, add haste)
   
6. Steal Heart (animation undecided, enemy only, single target add muddle)
   
7. Poach (animation undecided, morph effect, enemy only, single target)
   

maybe consider some skills like zidane from ffix

Why not add Capture? This is already a nice skill set and it can be a balanced one, maybe not in vanilla but in a mod yes, maybe also this make Locke more appealing than other characters but this isn't a bad thing. You go 3 skills, 2 defensive spells, one offensive and #7 should be his last skill learned since it's pretty powerful, you can't go really higher than this and not make the character OP. Other than Capture my second choice would be a magic based attack, this gives a lot of choices.

Note that having Capture could make Steal useless but you could add a downside to Capture such as higher miss odds than Steal alone.

On a side note, giving new animations to those skills will be hard without touching the animation scripts but copying / changing animation data only can give interesting results, while often not being perfect.

Will everybody still have the Magic command? 4, 5, and 6 aren't too useful if everybody has Vanish, Haste, and Muddle anyways. it saves a small amount of MP though, which may or may not be useful depending on how you are balancing MP costs.

As for the last skill, maybe a Poison based physical attack that inflicts Poison?

Could you add an ability that doubles evasion? How about one that gives him 100% accuracy? These seem like Thiefy things. I know that you were also looking into Steal GP. Did that not pan out?

Why not add Capture? This is already a nice skill set and it can be a balanced one, maybe not in vanilla but in a mod yes, maybe also this make Locke more appealing than other characters but this isn't a bad thing. You go 3 skills, 2 defensive spells, one offensive and #7 should be his last skill learned since it's pretty powerful, you can't go really higher than this and not make the character OP. Other than Capture my second choice would be a magic based attack, this gives a lot of choices.

Note that having Capture could make Steal useless but you could add a downside to Capture such as higher miss odds than Steal alone.

On a side note, giving new animations to those skills will be hard without touching the animation scripts but copying / changing animation data only can give interesting results, while often not being perfect.

My patch limits certain Espers to specific characters in order to give characters individual spell lists. Every character will either get an eight ability command menu or a Natural Magic list. The characters with the natural magic like Celes, Terra, and Relm will get a higher total number of spells. So while Flee and Hide have overlap with Warp and Vanish, Locke won't have access to those spells.

I thought about including capture as a spell but in the end I decided it was better for it to replace the Fight command. What I'm unsure of is whether or not I'll give that to Locke by default or I'll keep it a relic upgrade. I'm leaning toward the latter.

Finally, how do I change the animation scripts? I thought that I just needed to change the palette with FF3usME and the animation with FF6MDE

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Could you add an ability that doubles evasion? How about one that gives him 100% accuracy? These seem like Thiefy things. I know that you were also looking into Steal GP. Did that not pan out?

Long story short, without extensive coding, Steal GP is enemy only. The problem with Capture and 100% accurate attacks like Aim is that spells can't really include weapon attacks. So, no Genji Glove, no offering, and no variable damage.

I am currently wondering if the multi-steal fix patch would allow for a functional multi-target steal spell? If so, I'm calling it Heist.

Finally, how do I change the animation scripts? I thought that I just needed to change the palette with FF3usME and the animation with FF6MDE

See Attack Animations here: https://www.ff6hacking.com/forums/showth...p?tid=3428

Short story, the Anim1 value 01D6 you change with FF6MDE often point to a script (at D0/D601 in this example) unless it is something like a command animation data. I think all spells point to 1 to 3 scripts though.

Finally, how do I change the animation scripts? I thought that I just needed to change the palette with FF3usME and the animation with FF6MDE

See Attack Animations here: https://www.ff6hacking.com/forums/showth...p?tid=3428

Short story, the Anim1 value 01D6 you change with FF6MDE often point to a script (at D0/D601 in this example) unless it is something like a command animation data. I think all spells point to 1 to 3 scripts though.

I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel. It looks like I can simply use FF6MDE to basically copy existing 8 and 14 byte animation scripts. Which was my plan along. Am I missing something?

Does anyone know if it would work if I added special effect $51 to fire, applied Multi-Steal Fix, and mass cast it against all enemies? I won't have time to test anything out for a couple days.

I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel. It looks like I can simply use FF6MDE to basically copy existing 8 and 14 byte animation scripts. Which was my plan along. Am I missing something?

This is what I meant but my statement was probably not clear enough: copying the whole animation data will likely give the same result, changing randomly the animation data or copying only part of it can cause a glitchfest or give interesting results, changing / adding scripts and pointing to the new scripts in the animation data will give brand new animations.