Sorcerers with the ability to summon magical beings and harness their power.
Description
The Summoner is a job in Final Fantasy V obtained after the Water Crystal shatters. It is a spellcasting job that calls forth summon monsters to various effects. Most summons are damage-dealing, inflicting elemental damage to all enemies, while some have a variety of defensive and utility abilities.
Summoners choose spells from the Summon skillset. Summoned monsters are acquired through various means, and many require beating the summon first in a boss battle. Most of their spells target all enemies for high damage, making the Summoner one of the best crowd control jobs. Though Summoners innately have access to all summons acquired, one must gain levels in the job to achieve different tiers of the Summon skillset, so that the character's other jobs can use the abilities.
Mastering Summoner for all four characters in the now defunct mobile and Steam versions earns the achievement "Master Summoner".
Characteristics[]
The Summoner wears green and yellow/white robes; Lenna's robes are shorter. Each character appears to have a horn growing out of their head. Based on other games that introduced this concept, it is either a clip-on, or a headband that can be removed and is only for show.
Gameplay[]
Stats[]
Stat | Modifier |
---|---|
Strength | -10 |
Agility | -1 |
Stamina | -1 |
Magic | +33 |
The Summoner has the highest Magic modifier.[note 1] It has small Strength, Agility, and Stamina penalties, affecting its physical damage, turn rate, and HP respectively. It has no Agility bonus, meaning its speed is average. Summoner is a good job to master for spellcasters to gain the high Magic stat, but is not essential. Summoner's strong Magic stat and access to rods makes them potent when equipping other magic skillsets, since rods can boost the power of elements, and their magic stat will further strengthen them.
Equipping the Summon ability on other jobs also grants the Magic modifier, depending on the level:
- Summon Level 1 = Magic +17
- Summon Level 2 = Magic +21
- Summon Level 3 = Magic +25
- Summon Level 4 = Magic +29
- Summon Level 5 = Magic +33
This will apply assuming the character does not already have a higher Magic modifier.
Upon mastery, Freelancers and Mimes gain the Summoner's base Magic.
Equipment[]
Summoners equip knives, rods, magic hats, robes, and armlets. With rods, Summoners can further increase damage outputs of specific elements by 50% on top of their spells already being strong, potentially devastating enemies by targeting their elemental weakness.
Rods will randomly deal anywhere between 0% to 200% of its listed damage based on the attacker's Magic stat and the defender's Magic Defense stat and deal full damage from the back row. Many rods can be consumed to cast item magic. Wonder Wand will cast spells in a specified order, starting from Cure up to Osmose, and then loops back to Cure. It can be used when the Mute spell has been cast. The ultimate rod in most versions is Magus Rod sealed weapon, which is Fire/Ice/Lightning-elemental and raises power of all elemental magic except Water and Holy by 50%. Demon's Rod is a new even superior rod added in the Game Boy Advance version, found in the bonus dungeon Sealed Temple.
The ultimate magical headgear the Summoner can wear in most versions is Circlet, bought from the Phantom Village. The superior Royal Crown is available from the Sealed Temple in the Game Boy Advance version. However, another good hat to wear is the Golden Hairpin, which halves MP use. The best robes in most versions are the White and Black Robes, bought from the Phantom Village, though the Game Boy Advance version added the superior Robe of Lords.
- Knives
- Magic hats
- Generic accessories
- Command-specific
accessories
- Armlets
Abilities[]
Ability | Job level | AP required | Type | Innate | Description | Spells |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Summon (1) | 1 | 15 | Command | Yes | Summon magical beasts for aid. | Chocobo, Sylph, and Remora |
Summon (2) | 2 | 30 | Command | Yes | Summon magical beasts for aid. | Shiva, Ramuh, and Ifrit |
Summon (3) | 3 | 45 | Command | Yes | Summon magical beasts for aid. | Titan, Golem, and Catoblepas |
Summon (4) | 4 | 60 | Command | Yes | Summon magical beasts for aid. | Carbuncle, Syldra, and Odin |
Summon (5) | 5 | 100 | Command | Yes | Summon magical beasts for aid. | Phoenix, Leviathan, and Bahamut |
Call | 6 | 500 | Command | No | Perform a random summon for 0 MP. Who knows who, or what, will come... | N/A |
The Summon skillset grants access to offensive and defensive abilities. On the offensive, Summon allows access to the Fire, Ice, Lightning, Earth, Water, and Wind elements, as well as two powerful non-elemental attacks. These abilities hit all enemies, and cannot be reflected, but have a restrictively high MP cost in comparison to Black Magic, meaning they should be used sparingly; the Half MP trait from the Golden Hairpin is especially useful on this job.
On the defensive side, Summon grants the ability to grant Reflect to the entire party, revive one KO'd ally with full life, nullify physical damage up to a certain point, and drain HP from enemies to restore to the party. Summon also grants the ability to inflict paralyze or petrify to a single enemy, and a chance to inflict Instant Death to all on-screen enemies.
Summoner innately has access to all summons that have been obtained. To be able to use all summons as a non-Summoner, a character must level their Summoner job up to level 5 and equip the Summon level 6 ability.
The Summon skillset can be used with Red Mage's Dualcast.
Summoner also learns the Call ability. This randomly summons any of the party's obtained summons for 0 MP. It is a gamble to use, as the summon called could be entirely ineffective or even heal the enemy, but could also be devastating.
Etymology[]
Evocation is the act of calling upon or summoning a spirit, demon, god or other supernatural agent, in the Western mystery tradition. Comparable practices exist in many religions and magical traditions and may employ the use of mind-altering substances with and without uttered word formulas.