Final Fantasy III/Magic

Many spells and skills exist in Final Fantasy III. The spells are divided into 3 categories: Black Magic, White Magic, and Summon Magic. This section also describes the effects of the Geomancer's Terrain skill and the Bard's Sing skill.

White Magic
These spells are mostly used to heal and protect your allies, though there are some attack spells among them.

White magic users:
 * Wind crystal jobs: White mage (L1-7), Red mage (L1-4)
 * Fire crystal jobs: Knight (DS only, L1), Scholar (DS only, L1-3), Ranger (NES only, L1-3)
 * Water crystal jobs: Mystic knight (NES only, L1-3 field only)
 * Earth crystal jobs: Devout (L1-8), Sage (L1-8)
 * Secret job: Onion knight (DS only, L1-8)

Spell list
In the table below, only the first shop is listed. Spells are usually available in later shops after the first one.

Spells analysis

 * Healing spells

These are the most important spells in order to survive through the game.


 * L1/3/5/7 Cure/Cura/Curaga/Curaja: These four spells restore health; the higher the level, the more HP are restored; Curaja (Cure4) always fully restores HP to the maximum, unless used on more than one party member.
 * L5/8 Raise/Arise: They restore a dead ally to life; Raise restores a minimal amount of HP, while Arise fully restores HP.
 * L6 Stona: Petrification is similar to death, as the character cannot act in any way, but Raise and Arise won't work; the Stona spell is required to restore to life a petrified character.
 * L1 Poisona: Cures the poison status.
 * L3 Blindna: Cures the blindness status.
 * L7 Esuna: Cures every status ailment, except petrification and death.


 * Field spells:

Spells that are typically used outside battle.


 * L1 Sight: It shows a map of the world; it cannot be used in dungeons.
 * L2 Mini: It miniaturizes the heroes; this is necessary to crawl two dungeons; miniaturized characters have physical attack and defense reduced to 1, and can only fight using magic; The Devout and Sage can also effectively use this spell in battle: a miniaturized enemy is forced to leave the battle, resulting in instant-defeat.
 * L2 Toad: It transforms the heroes in toads; this is necessary to access two dungeons; toad characters have physical attack and defense reduced to 1, and cannot even use magic; The Devout and Sage can also effectively use this spell in battle: a toad enemy is forced to leave the battle, resulting in instant-defeat.
 * L3 Teleport: It teleports the heroes back to the entrance of the dungeon. The Devout and Sage can also effectively use this spell in battle: a teleported enemy is instantly defeated.


 * Support spells:

Battle spells that target the heroes.


 * L5 Protect: Increases physical defense of the target.
 * L6 Haste: Increases physical attack of the target.
 * L7 Reflect: If the targeted hero is attacked with magic, the spell will bounce back to the caster.


 * Debuff spells:

Battle spells that target the enemy, but deal no damage. If the caster has low skill, they can miss.


 * L4 Libra: It shows the attributes of the target enemy.
 * L4 Silence: The target cannot use magic.
 * L4 Confuse: The target is confused and will attack himself or a random monster.


 * Attack spells:

Battle spells that deal damage to the enemies.


 * L2/6 Aero/Aeroga: Wind-elemental attacks.
 * L8 Tornado: Reduces the enemy health to less than 10 HP, but does not kill them.
 * L8 Holy: Holy-elemental attack.

Black Magic
These spells are used to deal damage and to cause status effects.

Black magic users:
 * Wind crystal: Black mage, Red mage
 * Fire crystal: Scholar (DS only)
 * Water crystal: n/a
 * Earth crystal: Magus, Sage
 * Secret: Onion knight (DS only)

Spells analysis
Field spells:
 * L6 Warp

Debuff spells:
 * L1 Sleep
 * L2 Blind
 * L4 Shade (paralysis)
 * L5 Erase (erases enemy status upgrades)

Attack spells:
 * L1/3/4 Blizzard/Blizzara/Blizzaga (element: ice)
 * L1/3/6 Fire/Fira/Firaga (element: fire)
 * L2/3/5 Thunder/Thundara/Thundaga (element: lightning)
 * L2/6 Poison/Bio (inflict "poison" status)
 * L4/7 Break/Breakga (petrify)
 * L5/8 Raze/Death (instant-death)
 * L7 Quake (element: earth)
 * L7 Drain (restores HP to caster)
 * L8 Flare (non-elemental, targets one)
 * L8 Meteor (non-elemental, targets all)

Summon Magic
Summon magic users:
 * Water crystal: Evoker
 * Earth crystal: Summoner, Sage

There are two types of Summon Magic: a type with two effects that occur randomly, and a type with one fixed effect. The former is used by Evokers, and the latter is used by Summoners. Sages can use the two-effect summons in the DS version, but in the NES version they used the fixed effect ones instead.

Unless specified otherwise, Evoker attacks target one enemy only, while Summoner attacks (and Evoker indirect effects) target all enemies. Unlike other debuff spells, the Evoker's debuff effects have 100% accuracy, missing only if the enemies are immune to the specific status ailment (sleep, stop, instant-defeat, petrify).

Evoker's spells analysis

 * Debuff/attack spells:
 * L2 Shiva (sleep)
 * L3 Ramuh (paralysis)
 * These spells should be used early in the dungeons, to make battles easy during early exploration of the surroundings. Remember that physical attacks can wake up the enemies, i.e. remove "sleep" and "paralysis", so choose well your targets!


 * Support/attack spells:
 * L1 Chocobo (escape): only useful in miniaturized dungeons (e.g. Cave of the Magic Circle), where it's hard to win all battles with magic alone.
 * L4 Ifrit (heal): more useful in the deeper levels of dungeons, when the party suffered damage after fightning many battles.
 * L6 Odin (reflect): only useful against spellcasting enemies and bosses.
 * L8 Bahamut (haste): cast this spell at leisure, but not against bosses, because they are immune to istant-death attacks.


 * Attack-only spells:
 * L5 Titan: best left for battles against bosses, that are usually immune to status ailments.
 * L7 Leviathan: useful against large groups of enemies, but not against bosses (immune to instant-death and petrification)

There's no need to analyze the Summoner's spells, because all of them are attack spells that target all enemies.

Terrain
The Terrain skill is useable only by Geomancers. It harnesses the power of the earth to cause different elemental damage. The determining factor of what effect is caused is the environment the skill is used in. This skill does not consume MP.

Each dungeon can be associated to one of the five elements at the top of the next table. The second row lists the main terrain attacks associated with each element. Note that the Geomancer job is obtained after the only Fire Dungeon in the game. In the World of Darkness the Geomancer's Terrain is different again: 25% Earthquake, 25% Flameburst, 25% Ice Pillar, 25% Windslash.

In the NES version, there is a chance that the Terrain ability backfires and hits the Geomancer himself. It happens if the Terrain technique misses all possible targets.

In the table below, the names in brackets are the corresponding or most similar effects from the DS remake.

The following table shows the Terrain effect for each dungeon:

Sing
The Sing skill is useable only by Bards. Using different harps can have different effects on the songs sung. Note that the strength of the effect increases with job level.

Note that the effects of Minne, Minuet, and Elegy only last for 2 rounds of battle.

In the NES version, the Sing ability simply attacks the enemies, with no added effect. Instead, the NES bard has two more skills, as shown in the table below. Because the effects of Cheer and Scare are small but cumulative, it would be a good strategy if the Bard uses continuously the same command during a battle.