A question about Thomas' potential..

[Justice Johnny]

[Beecham]

Melville, Thomas and Cecile are the three characters in the game that has the potential to go far. This is in comparison to their formerly pathetic selves. It need not mean they are great characters, it is just a surprise they can be so good.

To put it simply, Thomas has potential, but he isn't the best character in the world, and that goes for Melville and Cecile (and Alanis? :? ) too.

[Zaj I mean Mike]

Yeah I got every one that was below lev.30 and trained them in the mountain near the bug trainers.They got to 50 easy when Alanis gets there she get to learn Pale gate she is like one of five people that get that.
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[Justice Johnny]

Alanis makes a pretty good support/healing mage. Not to the level of Viki or Sasarai, but still pretty good. She gets two swings eventually too, if anyone cares. :P

Thomas, along with Cecile, Shabon, Melville and Alanis (or Belle) are the ones I like to use in my party the most. There's something about little kids beating the hell out of huge monsters that just makes me happy.
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"Oranges can't fit into circles because rectangles are made of cheese."

[codemasterda]

I used thomas in the final battle, up until I got to put chris, hugo, and geddoe in the same party, all I can say about him, he is a pretty decent character, not the greatest but a decent one at that.

[Watari]

I liked useing Thomas. I guess I just like to use the wind rune alot in this game. So him and his A+ wind magic skill was used alot in my party.
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Sti?rth?ir le Machaire B?iteach

[Admiral Ackbar]

One of Alanis' strengths is her Precision skill, the rare skill that lets her avoid friendly fire when using area magic. This makes her an ideal Fire Rune specialist.

Thomas is indeed a good characters if you have the patience for it. His Parry skill makes him worth having on that alone, but I for one think he's a great Wind Rune specialist. He's the only char in the game that can get S rank with Wind Magic besides Luc since there is only one Wind Magic Ring in the game.

Then take into consideration the odd stat growth of Thomas, Cecile, Juan, and Piccolo. They have certain stats that grow at an abnormal rate compared to other characters. I don't remember the specifics (AKA too lazy to check Suikosource's stat growth charts) but they mostly deal with the fact that those four are used for Thomas' first chapter. In the end, Thomas has one of the highest (or maybe *the* highest?) skill stat in the game.

Thomas isn't the only character with 7 open skill slots. Beecham and Gadget Z also have 7 open slots.

Unlike Thomas, Beecham has mediocre ratings in *every* skill. If I remember correctly he cannot exceed B+ in anything. He's not a bad character; he doesn't really have any weaknesses or low points. But he doesn't have any high points either.

Then Gadget Z cannot use any magic runes so all tutor skills except Magic Resistance are useless and he cannot equip armor so Armor Protection is useless...meaning he can only really use the 6 skills that are left. This means he has one open skill slot to fill with a skill he cannot use.
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[Justice Johnny]

It's not only Thomas and Luc who can get an S in Wind Magic. Yuiri and the two Viki's can get S too if you equip them with a Wind Hat, in addition to the Wind Magic Ring. Also, Thomas doesn't have the highest SKL. He starts out with the highest skill till about early Level 30's, when Kenji (YES, KENJI), overtakes him. Not that Kenji's better. :?

Beecham is the very definition of mediocre. He would have been better if he had higher Swing and Damage ratings. Belle only gets six slots. Also, I wouldn't completely discount Armor Protect on Gadget Z. The skill also helps in guarding attacks and being able to have "Full Defense!" so it's quite helpful in another way.

Man, this skill talk's pumping me up for Suikoden V's system.
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"Oranges can't fit into circles because rectangles are made of cheese."

[Starslasher]

[Justice Johnny]

Melville can get an A+ in Heavy Damage. If that ain't badass for a kid, I don't know what is. Add to that that he also have lots of free skill slots (6, I think), and he can be quite a killer, with a pretty good survivability. He's also in my opinion the second best user of the Sword of Magic skill (next to Chris) because he has the skill slot for it.

I disagree about SKL being not important. It's one of the most important assets of a physical character, in my opinion (with STR and SPD), especially one with Heavy Damage.

8 is the maximum number of skill slots. The 7 of Thomas, Beecham and Gadget that we mentioned was the free skill slots, with the 8th one being a preset skill slot--Parry for Thomas, Continual Attack [WTF?] for Beecham and Fighting Spirit for Gadget Z. All of the main characters have 8 skill slots, but most of them are preset.
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"Oranges can't fit into circles because rectangles are made of cheese."

[Kikito]

I think that the four kids represent the major types of character in the game. Cecile is the knight type, Melville the damage dealing strong character, Thomas the quick but not that strong fighter, and Alanis the mage type. Their not so good stats come from the fact that they are just kids(15 years old at most). This also explains why their skills are so hard to raise. However since thy're just kids, then they have the potential to go really high since they are learning these skills at a really young age.

My guess is that if the kids were to appear as adults in a future installment, they would be really strong characters, or at least above average.

However, I only found Thomas really useful on his chapters, and that's only after leveling him enough to not get killed by the furryflies. Cecile however is more useful, in my opinion, since she's got the extremely handy Shield Protect skill that helps you nullify damage completely every once in a while. Plus, she's quite strong, mainly because of her weapon developement.

[MariGreywords]

Meh, i'd really rather just swap Thomas out with Emily. I don't remember quite what I did to her . . besides levelling her up and buffing her skills to hell and back . . Maybe I gave her a Hazy and Killer rune? I don't know! :(

But . . . she was doing massive amounts of damage, in massive amounts of attacks. I was pulling thousands of a damage a round, in fact. All hail the descendant Ronnie Bell!
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"Let's be positive!" ~Amano Maya

"Ok, so I bleed orange-flavored Jell-O. Big deal!" ~AdonisVaMPHuNT

[Admiral Ackbar]

Yeah, Juan and Emily are great hand fighters. And you don't even have to do much to them to make them great either!
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[Kikito]

Emily and Juan are very good characters indeed, but one of their major weaknesses is their lack of defensive capabilities. This goes especially for Juan, who needs to be hit in order to wake him up. Many times I found him dying on me before he got leveled up to about level 50.

That's also basically my preble with Thomas. His defense in not that great, and neither is his HP. This makes him a not so durable character in battle that may need more healing assistance than others would.

[Justice Johnny]

Thomas has GREAT defense. He's got A+ in Repel, A+ in Parry, B in Armor Protect, and he's one of a few characters who have the skill slot to put in Magic Resistance, in which he can get a B+. He's got higher survivability than most characters in the game. Also, Juan can overcome that damn Waking Rune if you equip him with a Yellow Scarf or a Taikyoku Tunic. Sure, all characters have their weaknesses, but there's so many variables in the game that can be used to neutralize, or at least, minimize them.
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"Oranges can't fit into circles because rectangles are made of cheese."