Quote Originally Posted by Gleeok View Post
Spells/ Skills / Monster Skills :
-Should these use the same stats/atrributes as items, and should these be condensed into one list?

..If you make a blue mage class I guess it would be dumb to have 2 "white wind" spells. :\ Does anyone know how, say, FFIV or VI do these internally?
I think what the classic Final Fantasy games have is one big list of "battle effects".
This list comprises every possible action that can happen in battle, regardless of whether it is a magic spell from any school, a monster ability that players may or may not have access to, a skill, or an item.
In this manner, the code that executes these effects can be generalized.

The different schools of magic/skills/etc. are just another system that you navigate through for a battle effect to be chosen and handed off to the system that applies them.
If an effect should behave differently when used by mobs vs. by players, you define the effect twice with the same spell name but different ID numbers.