Having looked at skill lists (both online and the deluxe edition game guide), there is one thing that occured to me: Could a cleric, mage, or divine summoner make a good fighter?

I'm thinking, if I opt to boost physical stats (rather than magic oriented ones) and boost weapon skill high enough, could a character in one of these classes be a decent physical attacker? I'm thinking along the lines of, say, having a cleric or mage use a halberd.

There are only two issues I see: the cost of raising the weapon skill, and the lack of physical techniques. Hence, the character might be a bit lacking in other respects (like spellcasting), but I am wondering if that could be fixed by giving that character extra herbs.

One other question: Who is better at direct damage: a mage with high-end spells maxed and plenty of PP, or a mage who has good physical stats and maxed halberd skill (and a good weapon, of course)?

Mages can stun-control enemies and stack wounds, but physical damage doesn't scale well. Spell damage doesn't scale at all, but you get massive nukes in the end. They aren't feasible for front raw either because of low HP and necessity to invest a lot of skill points into armor.

You can check this savegame to get idea on how damage is playing out.

Physical attackers rely on stacking bleed effect, pole weapons don't cause it. And daggers require casters to be in front row. Surely with super-high stats everything is possible, but you don't have such luxury. Casters have limited mana pool, so they need to invest into Meditation, their buffs, spell nukes, heals need be on par with current threat, you might be able to allocate some skill points in weapons.

Also, casters are your main source of damage, because, as I mentioned, physical damage doesn't scale well and relies on too many factors and stat/skill investment. If you will start making physical attackers out of mages, enemies will simply outlast you.

You make me want to pause FF V perfect playthrough and restart LoX :) Seems that you still didn't give proper go to this game, I strongly advice it (keep in mind, that it was balanced around "Old School Veteran" difficulty, not "Normal"). You will see what I mean by scaling, luxury of making fighters out of mages, etc. :)

I still haven't gotten around to actually start the game. (I did decide to get the Deluxe Edition upgrade, but I am deliberately not installing the DLC.)

One reason I haven't started is that I still haven't finished deciding my party. Aside from the forced character, my current party idea has both hybrids (Paladin and Arcane Soldier) and two pure casters (Mage and Cleric). The question is who should my final character be. Ideas I have are Bard (for songs), Divine Summoner (for summons), Barbarian (for criticals), or Rogue (for shurikens; still don't know if I would put lots of points into thief skills if I take this route).

By the way, would Pier Solar be a game to look into, or is it not my type of RPG? (I posted that question on the Pier Solar board and haven't gotten any response there.)

I am sure you will make mistakes during first playthrough anyway (most people did). I;d recommend taking bard for songs, they really help. One of first songs increases Hit Chance, and you will need it in this game. Other song has chance to stun all enemies (which is invaluable when you fight things like giant bees), and his other songs are also quite good.

Rogue is mainly melee/support character. Having 4 melee characters will make for a very hard game as you will lack class synergy and firepower.

Bard will also help you save some gold as he has cheap Item ID skill and also skill to lower shop prices. There is way to convert gold into exp (by buying items and sacrificing them), so having bard is double useful. I've read reviews, watched videos on youtube and I wasn't too much excited by it tbh. You also can read on low level challenge on gamefaqs to get ideas about balance in this game. Not wanting to bash that game, but it lacks diversity and puts too much focus on making maximum out of SMD gfx-wise.

If you are into jrpgs and didn't play Agarest games yet, I strongly recommend (shame to say, i saw screenshot of one of Agarest characters and bought first Agarest just because of him >.<). It is TRPG however, so more like Shining Force/FFT/Disgaea games. There is also Legend of Heroes game, but it is first part of trilogy (if not quadrilogy or even more, where you use characters from previous game to play in next), I bought it just to support translators but didn't play it to not get upset over unfinished story (we might not see english continuation of it at all).