More like a question, specifically why include a crafting system.
Seriously most games include it "because reasons" cuz it's very rarely necessary, especially for a game like that.
Also please oh God don't handle leveling the way Tactics Ogre did, game got so slow trying to grind up new classes I had to quit.
I'm going with a crafting system mostly because I can't really stand the notion of shops in these types of games. I just don't buy that after every battle every shopkeeper has magically upgraded their inventory to a level and story-appropriate degree. Plus, in an Ogre Battle-style game, a map might have 7-8 towns, and I don't like the concept of having to dig through all of them to find a shop, every town having a shop, or having an 'incorporeal' shop on the world map screen.
So, as a solution, you'll get a crafter/smithy that joins your party fairly early on which can be accessed via the world map or your HQ/camp on a battle bap, most mats will be plentiful, and (as of now) crafting will be fairly straightforward, possibly straight out of a manual TO-style. Rare mats will be rarer, obviously, and I think the possibility of hidden recipes is worth tooling with.
I also don't plan to have crafting be all that essential, at least for now. Initially, most of the game's best equipment will be found/dropped, and crafting will serve as a stopgap for characters that don't get their hands on a dropped item. I have equipment split up into 5 tiers right now, so as an example in the first tier crafted items give +15 in a single stat or +8 in two stats. On the other hand, 'found' items have better and more fluid stats. For instance, +12 in one stat and +9 in the other, or +20 in a single stat. That discrepancy will even out over the course of the game as you get better at crafting (possibly via quests to upgrade your crafter's tools) and you gain access to rarer and rarer mats. You won't be doing as much crafting as something in TO regardless, because as I have it now, characters can only equip 1 item at a time. I'm much happier with a character having a single signature item than having to equip all 40-50 characters with "Leather Jerkin... Buckler.... Iron Sword". That stuff gets on my nerves.
As for leveling, it should be much faster than in TO. As of now, there are 4 base classes for generic units, all of which start at rank 0. Every battle is worth 1 experience point to every class involved, and every 10 experience points a class gains a rank. Every rank they gain increases in 3 stats automatically and 1 you can choose for yourself. At rank 3, each class gets two classes to upgrade into, which both follow the same process. It sounds like a lot of battles, but these are just typical turn-based JRPG battles that go a lot faster than something like TO. The second tier of classes should be available within the first 3-5 maps.
There won't be any grinding for new classes, either. I'll also probably have a ceiling on class advancement so that even if you grind one class to rank 3 before the others, you won't be able to upgrade any class until a certain point. Should help with the overleveling issue.
