(12-04-2014, 04:39 PM)Val Wrote: I'm not dismissing it entirely. A Dragoon that gets the drop on someone will mess them up if they don't see it coming. It's a powerful strike that SHOULD be justly balanced, and that balance is that it's hard to hit if someone sees you coming. Why? Because you can dive/roll/run/whatever after the Dragoon commits. While they can maybe move in their descent slightly, they can't make up for the sporadic movements of their targets (which dragons can't do, mind you, and thus my previous point).
EDIT: Not to mention that, in Final Fantasy Tactics, Dragoons missed ALL THE TIME against quick targets. The slower the enemy, the higher your chance of success was. As someone stated earlier, they needed someone to distract them. Dragoons had the ability to do a quick hop which did little to no damage and was largely useless, or power up their strike but also take a loooooong time (you know, balance).
Again, I think this falls under the basic concessions made for any sort of RP fighting. Which is less a matter of the mechanics and how the jump works than an agreement between the participants on how the combat flows. The balance comes from the cooperative efforts of those involved, and how much the balance is tweaked either way is upon those participating.
Trying to place an overarching restriction is the same as putting an overarching restriction on any other RP element. "A spell MUST allow the opponent to interrupt it" or "Stealthed characters MUST be able to be detected" or even "Enraged Warriors must be uncontrollable and attack with impunity." It's all basically the same thing to me, thus making a Dragoon's jump no less of a unique situation than any other conflicting RP action.
The only differing thing is how the Jump actually works, which is ultimately unnecessary beyond the aforementioned need to explain things and fluff one's own head-canon.