Uh, no, I'm not.
Step one. Take dancer.
Step two. Equip dancer with Chicken Knife, and a Ribbon. Ribbon gives the status effect Sword Dance Up, which changes the algorithim so that there is a 50% chance to use Sword dance, a 50% chance to use either of the two drain attacks, and zero for Tempting Tango. Read the algorithim FAQ for information on that. Stealth Edit: Correction, ribbon doesn't give that, but Red shoes or Rainbow Suit does, and you can get those from the Phoenix tower when using a thief knife.
Step three. Equip the Dancer with the Sword Magic ability. THAT is what I was referring to.
Step Four. Start Battle, use Sword Magic Flare.
Step Five. Use dance.
Now, watch. Your using chicken knife, the most powerful weapon in the game. Normally, it has a 25% chance of using escape, doesn't happen due to dance negating that effect. Dancers are a fairly agile class, so it boosts damage there as well.
Ribbon negates all statuses. Just a bonus, and makes em fairly tanky.
The shoes or armor give you a 50% chance to use Sword Dance. That is Double Attack power and Double M. Being in the back row reduces M by 1/2, so that is negated. The formula goes, (Attack - Defense) * M. So, doubled power from back row. Note that this is before Flare is added on.
Flare's modifiers to attack is Attack = Attack + 100 and Defense = (Defense/4). So. 127 attack power + 100 more =227, and flare drops ALL enemy defense by 1/4. If the enemy has a weakness, tagging it with that would be better, but otherwise, Flare works. So, from the back row, you do basically an additional Double plus damage, depending on the enemies defense.
Now, I'd like to note something further. Mystic Knights can't do this. Even if you give them dance, they can't equip the Dancers gear. So, they'll have a 25% chance of sword dance, rather then 50%. Ninja's get the two attacks, and yes dance works with dual wield, but again, they can't use the dancers gear, and they won't get the mystic knight boosts either.
So, lets break down what you'll have end game. A white mage. Awesome. A mystic knight with dual wield. Also awesome. A ninja with Sword Magic. Pretty awesome. A dancer with sword dance and Sword Magic throwing out MASSIVE attacks. What's that? More damage then anyone else in the party? Yes please.
Also, you complain about the back row modifiers, yet a properly equipped dancer negates them much better then a Ninja, and god forbid you throw that squishy thing in the front row.
Let's take a look at what you said originally.
Also again to reiterate, you'll only have these things for basically the last boss.
Give the dancer a ribbon, the chicken knife, Magic Sword, and an elf cape. First step in battle, have the dancer cast either drain or flare. Second step, hold down A on dance. Make sure the dancer is in the back row. Watch as she's never effected by status effects, and routinely (50% of the time) throws out quad damage attacks. Seriously, Dancer will be more powerful then the mystic knight.
Oh, and give em guardian instead of any other weapon if you don't have the chicken knife yet. 25% physical block is nice.
First let's go over the ingredients.
Flare, you get in the third world.
Chicken Knife, you get in the third world. It requires you to run away from battle 255 times with it equipped to get it to max power. Which is annoying, tedious, mind numbingly boring, and grindy as hell. More than that equipping it causes some issues with just general level grinding given that it has a 25% chance upon using it for the characters to escape from the battle. I would take a character dual wielding the ragnarok and the brave blade over the chicken knife. Alternatively if we are getting really silly and bringing up weapons that most players miss and are so far into the game as to be irrelevant while leveling, I could have an Ultima Weapon, a kage nui, a brave sword , 177, 133 or 150 attack power being the default for each of those, them in the sealed dungeon. I'd like to note something the dancer can't do this. The dancer can only equip daggers.
Ribbon you get in the third world.
The Algorithm FAQ is based off of observations, and is thus flawed. Also I find flawed logic in how he structured the dance section. Given that in my own observations from equipping the red shoes on another playthrough, it adds maybe 15% chance to the roughly 15% chance that sword dance has originally, with the rainbow suit it gives a 25% or so increase. Trending towards a 35-40% chance. With the addition of the Lamia's Tiara you can get it to, 45-50% again roughly. I tested 100 dances with each item on an all dancer party. He's also basing it off of the SNES version which is a fan translation, rather than the actual proper retail american translated release on either PS1, or the GBA. Therefore my stats may differ given that I ripped my rom myself from my copy of FF5 for my GBA.
Also, flare's attack power = attack + 100, with a ultima weapon and apocalypse you can get..., let's see, 145 + 100 is 245 and 177 + 100 is 277. Now the x4/2 is pretty beefy 227 attack with the chicken dagger, being 454 however, the attack with the ultima weapon and the apocalypse is 522 beating out the attack power of your combo. Not only that but the mystic knight and ninja are still tougher and I could equip the bone plate to the mystic knight. Now, that's just one of my mystic knight with dual wield. The Ninja could be wielding the chicken dagger and the kage nui, you still get even more damage than a dancer standing in the back row doing /2 damage.
Again I'm currently in exdeaths castle, she's a walking corpse now. And to be effective with her I'm going to have to pour like 3 hours into her devoted to just running away. Not even mentioning the whole, you know, being 5 hours from any of the dance+ gear or the chicken dagger, being 10 hours from any more of the dance plus gear. Being 30 hours from ending my game normally. The only time dancer can become marginally effective is at the tail end of a 50 hour playthrough, and even then, a mystic knight dual wielding is 10x more survivable while at the same time doing more damage.
I actually chuckled a little when you said the chicken knife was the most powerful weapon in the game by the way.
So in essence, here's the base facts.
One. Daggers are weak bar one found at the tail end of a fairly long game.
2. x4 damage 50% of the time, is x2 damage all of the time. Which a Ninja or Mystic Blade can do, with naturally higher attack power and better defence.
Trecera. Other classes don't have to stand in the back to not spontaneously die when the boss so much as targets the party with 3 aoes in a row. They can survive those moments without standing in the back row, which again would be making making the x2 damage all of the time, into x1 damage all of the time.
iv. There are other weapons stronger than the chicken dagger which other more effective classes can use, and most don't require you to grind like the chicken dagger does and then interfere with grinding like the chicken dagger does. Just from the SNES version you have the Brave Sword, starting at 150 attack power. Unless you retreat and then you've fucked yourself out of the actual best weapon in the game. In the GBA version, you have Ultima Weapon, Hebinui
Epsilon. There are other classes that do what the dancer does, better, are effective earlier on, and have more utility than the dancer. Admit it, it's a fighter/rogue without agility, strength or vitality.
Finale. It's not immune to confuse, therefore you're epic damage class is going to fuck you over a somepoint. Hitting your white mage for 4x damage with a flare blade, and then hitting her again next time around. Remember, the ribbon gives you immunity to, Instant Death, Petrify, Toad, Poison, Darkness, Old, Berserk, and Silence. That and my Mystic Knight with dual wield and ninja with Sword Magic, will be sitting there cocksure and confident, with their bone mail on having the most armor you can get in a chest piece, immune to most of that + confuse. Knowing there's basically no way to make them attack their allies. Yeah it means they can't be healed by the white mages, but Drain solves that.