I've been dicking around with Zodiac Age over the last week, and even restarted and replayed a few hours when I felt like I had made some weird decisions in terms of classes for my characters. After a bit of research, I will say only that it feels like there is a complete lack of consensus as to what are the "best" classes to choose for each character at various sites. I see pretty much equal amounts of "it doesn't matter, just pick anything!" vs. "You should totally plan everything ahead as far as possible!" and "You don't need to pick every class! Just pair up the strongest combos!" vs. "It's more fun to make sure every class is represented!"

So, for the moment, I kinda picked a bunch of job assignments that just kind of looked alright from this jobs spreadsheet (and you know you're not having fun if you're not playing with spreadsheets to get the most out of your game):

I'm a little annoyed at how little information the game gives you early on; I'm pretty sure the in-game tutorial doesn't even mention that you'll be able to get another job later in the game when it's introducing the system. But then I guess the original Japanese version with the job boards only let you get one? And I hear that the game is therefore way easier than it should be later on since you can activate both job boards you select at the same time? Who knows! For an FF game it's been kind of baffling hard to find authoritative answers for stuff like this.

I made Vaan my tank because I wanted him to hurt. I don't like Vaan.

From what I found, Balthier and Basch seem to be the characters that are more likely to combo. So I put them down as my DPS characters (foebreakers, Shikari). For the other characters who aren't Vaan, they seemed more suited to magic. Vaan seems like a jack of all trades.

I guess that's also one of the things that the game does a real poor job of explaining, like if any character can be any class, why wouldn't they at least surface some kind of tendencies that you might want to spec into? I heard that Fran, despite starting off with a bow and arrow, is actually the worst archer in the game due to her bow animation taking longer than everyone else's? I'm sure these differences are pretty minute by the time you get to the end-game, but not making them clear to the min-maxers like me just makes me frustrated.

@rorie: Welp, guess I'm restarting the game as I specced Fran first as an archer. I was already not super into my class choices anyways.

Edit: How does this look?

@rorie: If I remember correctly, the original release of the game didn't have a job system. It had this weird system similar to Final Fantasy X where the characters shared the same upgrade board but every character starts at a different place. So, I'm assuming it had stuff like Ashe being closer to tiles that dealt with magic and stuff. So, that's why they didn't hint it in the story at all.

Also, Fran is terrible at everything, you just try to make her less bad.

I guess it's not a HUGE deal but as someone who likes to wring every bit of efficiency out of characters it's a bit annoying.

I also restarted when I realized making Vaan a Machinist was a really bad idea.

Here are my first and second job choices:

Vaan: BLM/MNK

Balthier: FBR/SHI

Fran: UHL/TIM

Basch: KNI/BUS

Ashe: RDM/ARC

Penelo: WHM/MAC

• Balthier: Gunner / Foebreaker
  • Unfortunately the least useful, but getting defense and attack down on some powerful foes helped out in the long run. Coupled with a character I could have steal and gun which bypasses armor: he was helpful but not nearly as good as the others.
• Fran: Archer / Black Mage
  • The absolute power house. Archer was for mobs that were immune to elements or I didn't want to bother constantly getting reflect off of. Black Mage is absurdly powerful in this game I don't get it. Exploit a weakness when you can or just let Bio destroy everything anyway. Even running out of MP was never a problem since she had the convert skill that just gave her free MP. The only real danger was being lazy and running into enemies at max speed that had reflect on. Seriously if I had 3 black mages this game would have been a stomp. (can also couple this in with the belt or whatever that lets your spells auto penetrate. Good golly)
• Ashe: Knight / White Mage
  • Think a paladin. She stacked buffs on only herself and had an absurd magic increase for curing, so CURA could take care of everything but near party wipe levels of hp loss. The only downside to this combination is that she has too much to do. Applying buffs to herself is a lot of work, as well as keeping up with any ESUNA or curing duties. The only fight I had to micro to death was the Behemoth King fight and that was due to me being dearly under-leveled.

I never used any other characters if possible. These three carried me through the game and I was able to beat all the bounties that unlocked without grinding (up through killing the shadow party in that huge tower zone). My honest recommendation is to find at least 3 people you think are neat-o and just run with them. I even ran with what y'all mentioned above with certain characters being bad with certain roles and weapons. It was never a big enough issue from stopping me plowing my way through most of the game. My enjoyment of the story and these 3 characters were just a big enough reason to keep them the permanent party.