Breaking Rods and Taking Names

Rushing to get through my FF5 Four Job Fiesta run in the last couple weeks of the fest, as per usual. My ruleset is what used to be called Chaos (I think it's been rechristened Meteor for theming) and "no 750." In FF5 you can break rods to cast a powerful spell, provided you can actually equip the rod in question; these rods are 750g a pop and are outrageously good in a four job run where you'll only be able to use 2 classes by the time you reach the point in the game where you can buy these things, and you may never get access to offensive magic at all. The set of jobs that can equip rods and other jobs with similar mechanics/themes (casters, basically) has therefore been dubbed "750". I did a Chaos 750 run last year where I somehow ended up with 2 Dancers, a job that I'm not sure why it's on the 750 side at all (I feel like Bard and Dancer should be swapped tbh), but I managed to beat Exdeath right at the deadline.

I decided to do the opposite this year, Chaos no750 (so, no casters). Normal 4JF rules are you get one job per crystal out of the ones you've just unlocked -- Chaos means when you get to a crystal you are just assigned any job out of all the ones that exist in the game (or from the no750 pool in my case).

My first job was Samurai, which is in the last set of unlocks, so...my first job was actually Freelancer until the Water temple, where I got Thief.

A party of all Thieves is kind of a slog but I made it to the Fire Crystal where I got...Freelancer.

I forgot Chaos rules added Freelancer and Mime to the pool of jobs you could be assigned, and just like I got 2 out-of-theme Dancers in my 750 run, I got the one single job that is still considered no750 but can actually break rods.

Oops.

In the spirit of the thing, I'm trying to limit rod use at least (I caved and used a fire rod on Byblos though). Healing is an absolute bitch because I basically have to use items only and for some reason you don't hit a shop that sells Hi-Potions for a while (regular Potions heal 50 HP and I have like..400).

This MIGHT be a fail run but Samurai is really good and I've still got one job to go, so we'll see.

FWIW the game IS beatable by any combination of jobs, including the stupidest combos you can imagine, it's juts a matter of strategizing and/or patience (I might have neither this time around).

I'm playing the GBA version btw and I totally forgot that Faris has this to say when you first meet her at the very beginning of the game:

which is like. Well, it's added a few entries to my future fic exchange requests, that's for damn sure.