Band (The After Years)

Band (バンド) is a gameplay term in Final Fantasy IV: The After Years. They are special combination attacks between two or more characters, activated at the cost of some MP, and can either grant beneficial effects to the party or strike enemies with a powerful attack or spell.

Overview
Some Bands are learned in accordance with a story event, while others are learned by the player manually inputting commands in battle to discover them. Within the story, Band abilities can only be performed between characters with a deep bond, such as friendship or relatives. The powers of the Bands usually reflect the characters using them and the bond that allows them to Band.

To discover a Band that does not require a story event to be accessed, the player selects the Band command, then "Search for Bands." The player then inputs the proper commands from party members to combine powers (for example, Cecil's Attack and Rosa's White Magic), and executes the Band. If the correct abilities have been combined, the appropriate Band will activate. The character whose turn it is does not need to input a command. The first time a Band has been discovered this way it costs no MP to use. After a Band has been discovered by searching for it or through a story event, it will appear in the Band menu and can be selected to execute without having to input commands.

When a Band attack is issued, if one of the characters involved in the Band has not filled their ATB gauge yet, the Band will not begin to charge and execute until the gauge is filled. Bands have various ways to calculate damage - they can be either physical or magical, can hit multiple targets or just one, and some deal elemental damage. Band abilities take into account the Moon Phase and its effects on the commands the Band's power relies on. For example, during the Waning Moon, Bands that incorporate a character's Attack strength into their damage will be stronger, and Bands that use special commands will be weaker. Bands are generally extremely powerful, and several can exceed the damage limit to do 10,000 damage or greater.

Offensive Bands override the element(s) of a participant's equipped weapon (ie. if using a non-elemental Band that involves weapon contact, such as Vibra Plus, while wielding elemental weapons against an enemy that would normally resist or absorb said element, it would deal regular damage instead of reduced damage).

Porom's Tale
Thunderstorm does not carry over into the Final Tale and must be relearned.

The Crystals
Bands involving Cecil are impossible to perform before the True Moon's Subterrane is cleared.

Unused Bands
These Bands were left unused in the final version of the game; they will not activate even if the correct commands were entered, unless one hacks into the game to enable them.

Trivia

 * Particle Bomb is cast by Palom and Leonora in the opening FMV of The After Years.
 * When Ultimate Art: Advent of the Phoenix is used, Edge and the Eblan Four say the following lines, the first letters of which spell out Eblan, and, probably coincidentally, the six first letters spell the original english translation of Eblan, "Eblana":
 * Zangetsu: Endless night, lit by fiery wings...
 * Izayoi: Bound by the darting, dancing sword...
 * Gekkou: Let it slice the encompassing dark...
 * Tsukinowa: And sound the tolling bell of tomorrow!
 * Edge: Now! We call forth Eblan's ancient technique...
 * All**: Advent of Phoenix!
 * The Final Fantasy band, aside from being a nod to the name of the series, has the characters perform the attacks used against Golbez and the Archfiends in the FMV opening for the DS remake of Final Fantasy IV: Rosa and Rydia use magic, Edge throws his shurikens, Kain jumps, and Cecil slashes with his sword.