AURORA ~ princess ashe of dalmasca ( from dusk to dawn )

fighter

FFXII offered a nice change of pace to the RPG genre: no set job roles for the main cast, in fact, no specific classes at all. The License Board allows for full customization of your characters: they can equip whatever you want them to or use any magic you please, provided that they have the correct license. All characters

have nearly identical License Boards, so you're free to customize them. They'll come with some licenses already set, but there's nothing stopping you from choosing whatever equipment you want. Penelo with an axe? Sure! White Mage Basch? Why not? And I have to admit, the fact that the female characters entered the scene carrying daggers, swords, and bows made me more than happy. Of course, character stats do differ, like strength and magick power, but overall you can create your own custom party and have them be effective fighters.

Personally, I chose to equip Ashe with swords and shields, mainly for the "YEAH chick with a sword!!!1" factor. But I also used her as my primary healer, since her magic and MP growth is fairly high. (Fitting, considering FF Wiki classifies her as a Paladin.) My approach to the game to was to have everyone in my party "hold their own," so to speak, by giving them all licenses for healing magicks and a variety of technicks alongside powerful weapons. (Seeing as my basic strategy for FFXII became "beat the crap out of everything with swords.") But Ashe's proficiency in magick caused me to set her gambits to heal, though the other party members were set for dire situations. I rarely found myself using offensive magick, but I provided Ashe with a good number of black magick licenses for those pesky bosses who decided to become immune to physical attacks for a period of time. Plenty of status buffing magicks, like Bubble and Protect, also became part of Ashe's arsenal. (Hastega = indispensable.) So the moral of the story is: Ashe is well-rounded in terms of physical and magical power, so use her as you see fit.

Revenant Wings has Ashe equipped with those Hand-Bomb things (depsite having a sword in her official drawing?), which I found about as useful as Measures in my FFXII game. Odd choice for a weapon (though I'm griping over White Mage!Penelo more; my Penelo used spears and none-o-that sissy healing stuff), but I have to admit, the idea of a queen hurling bombs at monsters makes me quite happy. Ashe learns many Time Magick abilities as she levels up, so I suppose she could be called something of a Time Mage if you want to identify character classes. Ashe deals ranged damage, the downside of which is that most bosses are Melee types, which are resistant to and strong against Ranged types. Still, Ashe has the ability to learn some great stat buffing moves like Hastega and Regenga, which makes her very useful.

victory

Depending on the weapon (or lack thereof) equipped, characters have different victory poses at the end of boss battles. I scanned in the screencaps of Ashe's poses, for your enjoyment. Click on the images to check out the full page :D. I apologize for the crappy quality! When I get a new scanner (mine clearly sucks) I'll put some better looking ones up :).

statistics

Numbers galore. Ashe's projected stats as she levels up.

Level	HP	MP	ATK	MAG	VIT	SPD
3	100-106	31-34	22	22	24	23
10	253-284	43-54	26	25	26	24
20	589-679	66-94	31	30	29	25
30	1020-1189	89-135	36	35	33	26
40	1428-1671	117-186	42	40	36	28
50	2081-2445	142-320	47	45	40	29
60	2656-3127	165-270	52	50	43	30
70	2982-3511	182-289	58	55	47	32
80	3359-3955	199-327	63	60	50	33
90	3872-4563	210-344	68	65	53	34
99	4452-5251	216-349	73	69	57	36

She's really quite well-rounded, like I stated above.