This may seem a little off topic, but it substantially affects Beast Mountain, so it seems relevant.
I've done some research to see what sort of tricks we have at our disposal regarding Magus and Beast Mountain. Ultimately, the problem with Magus is that he has no "weak" spells to speak of. Each of them costs 8+ MP (very much unlike the other heroes -- half their skills are 4 MP or less), and he starts with 14 Max MP. As is, Magus is ineffective as a magic user at this point of the game, so some adjustments may be in order. We could...
1) Kick Magus up a few levels (to 5 or 10). By the time he joins the other heroes, his levels should have covered some of the gap, and it isn't like he would completely outclass the other characters.
2) Put a SilverStud in a Beast Mountain chest. Cutting MP costs in half would help a bit, and while this is a pretty strong accessory for this point of the game, the same really could be said for Magus's Amulet.
3) Downgrade the power and cost of his level 2 spells (Fire2, Lit2, Ice2). This isn't entirely a drastic idea, because his level 2 spells use a base power of 18, whereas other characters with level 2 spells use a base power of 14. Taking his base power of 18 (for all 3 spells) down to 14 would put him in line with the other PCs, and decreasing the cost of level 2 spells for ALL characters to ~6 MP could be justified (this affects a lot of characters, but level 2 spells *are* a bit overpriced).
4) Cannibalize an existing spell to make it weaker and inexpensive. For this action to "make sense," you would need to choose a spell that is unique (this eliminates Lit2, Fire2, Ice2) and is something that could feasibly tweaked without changing lots of undocumented code (which I was unable to do with Black Hole). The logical remaining candidates would be Dark Mist and Dark Bomb. Dark Mist would be preferable, but it's problematic in that Dark Mist is the sixth spell learned. It's a pretty easy task to have Magus start off having learned his six spell, and you don't even have to teach him all the spells before it. However, if you want him to learn earlier spells, he will have to "relearn" Dark Mist later (he won't ever "forget" the spell, but he will have to earn the TP again, and after having done so, the game will report he has "learned" Dark Mist). That's probably not a "glitch" we want to have in the final product, and letting Magus start with his first six spells is a bit much.
4a) The last option is to instead sacrifice Dark Bomb and make that a weak and cheap spell. There's no "harm" in having Magus start with having learned four spells instead of just three, but it seems a tad cruel to neuter Magus's ONLY single-target (well, nearly single-target) attack spell.
I would advise against 4 and 4a, but some combination of the first three seem appropriate. It may not be so necessary to empower Magus to use spells throughout Beast Mountain, but it would be kind to allow the player to be effective with spells during the eventual boss battle (Golem's pattern of Iron Orb + physical attack is hellacious against single-character parties, so allowing Magus to use more magic would give a player a means of keeping damage in check). Making Ether available for sale and/or putting a couple Ethers in chests is an option that can help things out, but I would not rely on them alone to fix the MP problem (they're too expensive). Or we could do nothing, and just have Magus use his melee attack.
So, please advise.
I actually like the idea of using the Red and Blue beasts, but would they be able to attack on their own? I always remember them needing to be provoked by that nigh-invincible Imp.
