- I created a Ranger so that I would get access to the Water Walk spell, but I (briefly) looked at two very old playthroughs on YT that don't include a nature spell caster (RPGLoony and Elanarae), and they crossed water just fine, so I assume they used the Swimming skill?

- After Iooting the storeroom of Fountain Head, I noticed that my Robber now has a few thousand more total experience than the others. Before, she had the exact amount. Do Robbers gain experience when they pick lock off large treasure chests or something?

Swimming skill only lets you cross shallow water and wade a bit out into the sea.

Thieves do get exp for doing thief things.

Really? That explains it. Thanks.
Makes no sense though, since Clerics gain no exp for casting cleric spells, etc. That is is hilarious that they bothered to do this when by now in MM4-5 every party that has at least a clerical OR nature caster, so 4 out of 10 possible classes, has access to Walk on Water. Interesting. I take it you're talking about damage reducing spells, like Power shield.

I also play old school JRPGs, and in earlier Final Fantasy games, armor was mostly used to absorb damage (some heavier ones lowered evasion!) AND shields were mostly used for evasion. But most games had a minimal damage amount of 1 damage, no matter how weak. (this worked for both the player AND monsters).
FF2 and FF5, however, did it differently by having 0 damage attacks possible if the armor absorb of the character or monster was high enough.

And in those two games, if you WERE hit and did not evade the attack, you WERE gonna be hit with the status ailment.
Worked great in FF2 with weapons that inflict curse, sleep or darkness vs Hill Gigas.
But, some drain-attacking enemies could still massively hurt you, so boosting your evasion was the way to go ultimately.
In FF5, enemies could still poison/age you through your uber-absorb. (That game also happened to have an ability that lasted 1 turn and nullified all physical damage to 0)

I am talking about Power Shield and Protection from Elements; those spells are incredibly useful when fighting certain enemies. (There's one enemy in particular that I'm thinking of._

Final Fantasy 2 and 5 are actually my favorite games in that series, though I note that FF2 does have its balance issues. For example, armor, especially heavy armor, is bad in FF2 because it tanks your evasion, which also affects initiative. (Worth noting that, if you get hit in FF2 by a status effect causing attack, you still get to use your magic defense to block the status ailment (unless you're playing the pixel remaster where there's a bug). This is also the reason that status weapons aren't likely to work on the final boss.)

Incidentally, I find that I don't find armor worthwhile in World of Xeen, either, as:
* Many enemies solely use attacks that are not physical, and therefore AC is no good against them. (This is also true in Isles of Terra.)
* If you reach -10 HP, *all* equipped armor breaks, and you need to go back to town and spend money to repair it. (In Isles of Terra, only torso armor breaks in this situation; still annoying, but not as bad as what happens in Zeen.)
* At the high levels you reach later on, against the high level enemies you face at this point, AC is useless unless you have a lot of it. Unless your AC is close to the enemy's attack bonus, increasing your AC isn't going to make a difference. (This problem is found on all RPGs that use a similar to-hit mechanic and which are played at higher level; this includes some D&D-based games, and even sometimes D&D itself (particularly something like, say, 3e's epic levels).

Back when I used to play Diablo II, in the early 2000s this was also the case.
They had to implement two separate evasion stat mechanics to compensate for this flaw, for crying out loud!!!!

A) The basic armor class, (useless at higher difficulty levels for the exact scaling reason you just described)

and

B) Shield evasion dependant on: your level, your agility stat, and the shield's own evasion stat.
It was not just shields that used this formula, either, if I recall every class has a special evasion skill that used a similar formula, and for some of them it was tied to their weapon.
Unlike the basic AC stat, it was so good that they balanced it out by slightly lowering your evasion every level unless you ALSO raised your agility to keep it up.

Don't get me wrong they clearly put a LOT of thought behind this mechanic but it made basic armor class EVEN MORE pointless, armor worth was solely judged by its enchantments.

In other words, they made it so that leveling up can make you worse in that particular respect, which is a mechanic I happen to dislike. The solution is to either:
* Not use a fixed die size when determining whether an attack hits. (See, for example, the Disgaea series, where the accuracy rule still feels semi-reasonable at high levels, or at least more reasonable than the d20 approach.)
* Get rid of AC boosting evasion. Instead, have AC reduce damage received, which is a lot easier to balance, particularly at higher levels. It also makes more sense, as a mechanic. (Don't have armor reduce evasion, however; that's one of the issues that FF2 has.)

To be fair, MM7 dealt with that somewhat elegantly by granting armor direct damage % reduction to Plate masters and Chain grandmasters. Only knights, paladins and archers had access to it. They should have given it to the ranger too, as it that class wasn't weak enough....

Actually, I think the % damage reduction should be given to *all* armor wearers, including Sorcerers who are wearing armor (if the game allows that), and the ability of armor to boost evade should either be what requires grand mastery or be removed entirely.

In fact, I'd argue that armor should never have boosted evasion, and the first game that did that made a mistake in doing so. (Anyone know what game that was? In particular, is anyone familiar enough with early Chainmail, which apparently is a predecessor to D&D?)

You are describing how FF6 and FF7 did it, which are arguably the best known jrpgs of all time.
All armors have physical % reduction rate, and some of them also have a small % evasion boost

The problem with that approach is that lower class armors have a such a low armor absorb % that armor reduction % is unnoticeable and feels useless early game (In FF7, they are solely chosen for their materia slots).

And then late game armor, especially in FF6, is so strong that every little % of damage reduction offers a huge boost.
FF6 balanced it out by having so many "piercing" physical attacks, but that's ANOTHER can of worms.

I happen to like FF5's approach, where damage is "attack - defense" * n (where n depends on level and stats), so weak attacks can't pierce powerful defenses. To make things interesting, there are some weapons (axes notably) that can partially ignore defense, and some (like daggers and bows), which half ignore evasion (but note that evasion isn't always present, and for party members requires shields or special equipment). The only thing that's really missing are attacks that hit multiple times with lower attack power. (The one ability that hits 4 times ignores defense, which I think may push it over the edge balance-wise.)

(Also, worth noting that I found FF6 to be worse than FF5 (but still good once you manage to get the second airship, until you get Ultima and balance breaks down), and FF7 to be worse than FF6 (to the point where I don't even consider FF7 to be a good game in the first place).)

Is there a way to avoid or disable the swinging axes in the first dungeon?

Don't know about this specific case offhand, but it's worth noting that, in situations like this, the Jump spell might come in handy.

thanks
I haven't found this spell yet though, I've only explored the first town and the 2 surface areas around it, currently
level 5 (taking my time)

So, I haven't really progressed my game in the past month or, so, because I am so engrossed in the youtube stream videos I watch on my main computer, while on my gaming computer I spend ALL that time mindlessly rolling stats.
Seems boring or obsessive to most peeple, but I love creating hundreds of fictional parties, toying with min max, comparing them, etc.
I did that with MM3, but also with a specially installed MM5 standalone (to test level 5 parties) and swords of xeen, to test level 9 parties.

(Disclaimer: I have never finished these games and haven't played beyond level 6 so I have no idea about additional bonuses that happen while questing).

My conclusion, most of which is obvious to MM3-4-5 veterans, not so much for long time MM6-7-8 players:

- The bonuses you get from the next endurace/intellect/personality threshold don't work like in MM6-7-8: Unlike the later games, which got you a flat bonus independent of level (the bonus is multiplied by a Class modifier though), the one in MM3-4-5 scaled, and is multiplied by level.

- Racial bonus to HP/MP doesn't work at all like the racial bonuses to stats in MM1-2 and MM7-8 which are only relevant at character creation.
It acts the whole game, and acts the same as the bonus you get from the next endurace/intellect/personality threshold, which means it's scaled by level. So, I'm guessing that when you reach 100 endurance or intellect and the next threshold is so hard to reach, you start to appreciate the Orc bonus to HP and Elf bonus to MP. ( Disclaimer: I haven't played beyond level 6, so I don't know about any wells that give you a flat HP bonus like in MM2)

- That bonus is multiplied by level, but not by class. So that means that in theory, a level 1 Half-Orc Barbarian with 500 endurance would have the same exact HP boost as a Level 1 Elf Sorcerer with 500 endurance, despite the former starting with 19 HP at endurance 21, and the latter starting with only 1 HP at endurance 9.

- Gnomes and Dwarves' starting resistance and thieving bonuses were switched around between 3 and Xeen.

MM3 Gnomes +5 thieving, 2/2/2/2/2/20 resist (like in MM2, they have strong magic resistance)
MM3 Dwarves +10 thieving, 5/5/5/20/5/0 resst (like in MM2, they have strong poison resistance)

Xeen Gnomes: +10 thieving, 5/5/5/20/5/0 resist (strong against poison now, no magic resist)
Xeen Dwarves: +5 thieving, 2/2/2/2/2/20 resist (strong against magic now)

Their respective HP and MP bonuses remained the same though, as are their racial starting secondary skill.