License Board
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Added by Atlantima- "Hm, looks like you can't even equip that yet, know why? You don't have the License for it. Think of Licenses as mile posts, marking your progress as your combat skills improve. Swords, Bows, Black Magicks, White Magicks... None of it does you a lick of good until you have the License to use it."
- —Tomaj
The License Board is the ability system in Final Fantasy XII. It consists of a tiled board with hundreds of squares, each square representing an ability, spell, equipment piece or augment. By defeating enemies in battle, characters earn License Points, abbreviated LP. Characters must spend their LP to activate squares on the License Board, granting them access to new abilities and allowing them to equip stronger weapons and armor.
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Areas
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The License Board is divided into two sections. The top section contains augments in the lower-left, magick in the upper-left, accessories in the upper-right, and technicks in the lower-right. The bottom section contains armor in the upper-right and weapon licenses around the rest of the board.
The two sections are connected only by three optional Esper licenses - Chaos, Zeromus and Exodus. All characters start out in roughly the center of both boards and from there are free to move about the board as they wish.
Acquiring LicensesEdit
All squares on the board are initially blank, only stating a generic alignment (weapon, technick, augment, etc). Licenses the player already has appear solid, while squares adjacent to already activated squares appear glowing with a number on them indicating the amount of LP needed to activate them, and display what equipment pieces or abilities are connected to that square. When a player takes a new license, it turns solid and the licenses above, below and to the sides of the new license light up. Only licenses lit up in this fashion may be activated, as opposed to being able to activate any square any time.
The License Board is identical for all six characters, with the exception of Summons and Quickenings. These squares appear for all characters until activated, at which point the square vanishes from the boards of the other characters. This means only one character may acquire a summon, and each Quickening license may only be taken once. However, they are eighteen Quickening licenses across the board, enough for all six characters to learn all their Quickenings.
License Points are earned towards activating squares by defeating enemies in battle. With the exception of rarer and stronger enemies including bosses, most enemies give a single LP. Enemies killed by Poach or Zalera's Kill do not give LP. Unlike Experience Points, all characters gain LP regardless of if they are in the active party or not.
Unlocking all licenses, including three Quickenings, requires 13,330 LP. This does not include the Esper licenses, which together cost 1,705 LP. Upon completing every character's License Board, including the Espers and Quickenings, the player earns Rasler's icon in the Sky Pirate's Den.
International Zodiac Job SystemEdit
Added by SteamygorengIn the Japan-exclusive Final Fantasy XII: International Zodiac Job System, the License Board has been revamped. When a character joins the party the player must assign them one of twelve jobs. Unlike the original game where all characters had identical License Boards, each of the twelve jobs in the Zodiac System has a different board. Once a character chooses a job, they cannot change it.
Players may opt to play without assigning their characters jobs, but the characters will not gain LP and will not learn new abilities. Multiple characters can share the same job, but this is not recommended due to the limited, 4, Quickening licenses available on each board. Also some Quickening licenses, like the Esper licenses, are required to connect with the licenses which are separated from the main area of the board. This means only one character on one board can access the license(s) on each separated section.
Also, any unlit licenses can be viewed without activating their adjacent license.
The twelve jobs and their Zodiac sign are:
- Aries - White Mage
- Taurus - Uhlan
- Gemini - Machinist
- Cancer - Red Mage
- Leo - Knight
- Virgo - Monk
- Libra - Time Mage
- Scorpio - Breaker
- Sagittarius - Archer
- Capricorn - Black Mage
- Aquarius - Mononofu
- Pisces - Shikari
DevelopmentEdit
Final Fantasy XII was initially envisioned as having a job system, but the idea was scrapped when the developers thought it too confusing to players and the ideas were condensed into the License Board seen in the final game.[1] Hiroyuki Itō, who was appointed as the game's director along with Hiroshi Minagawa after Yasumi Matsuno left the project, has commented that the plan was for players to customize their characters freely using the board, however, what players did instead was to just acquire every license, not differentiating the characters as the developers had intended. Seeing this, the developers went back to their original idea of using a job system for the Final Fantasy XII International Zodiac Job System version. With the system where the player can't change their mind after having chosen a job, Itō wanted to call back to the games of the past where players couldn't redo things even by resetting the game, to recreate this kind of feeling of tension and finality.
- "With the International version, I was determined to get players to experience that "flavor", focusing on a different style for each player. Thinking about how to implement that, a different license board for each job seemed to be the best. I didn't want to have a kind of [forgiving] 'suspended sentence' system where players could make changes in midstream; I wanted to make it so that they couldn't advance without making a decision at each point."
- —Hiroyuki Itō[1]
The idea to use twelve jobs came about because the game is the twelfth main installment to the series, and because there are also twelve zodiac signs, a recurring theme in Ivalice.[1] The game already had fifteen different types of weapons in place, and the jobs were planned around the idea that what kind of weapon would belong to what kind of job.[1]
Other AppearancesEdit
Dissidia 012 Final FantasyEdit
Vaan's EX Mode is called Obtained all Licenses!, in which he changes his Brave attack low-level weapons from Final Fantasy XII to the best of their kinds. This EX Mode allows Vaan to put away his current weapon without having to use another one.
