Thought of a straightforward and useful Skill to replace one of Aesford's more underwhelming Skills:
Block (Level 1) (Active) - Aesford runs in front of one of his teammates and takes the brunt of their attack. The attack does 50% less damage to Aesford and can not result in any status effects.
Since all of Aesford's new stuff will be based on his role to support everyone else, it would be nice to know how feasible and useful everyone else finds this ability and which characters it would be most useful in tandem with, if any. Seeing all the talk about Status Effects and how Boss characters often have some form of resistance to them, I thought it would be useful to have abilities that do not cause status themselves, but rather prevent them from being afflicted on the PC's. The major downside to this ability is that it is completely defensive.
I'm figuring out ways to replace the following:
Hyperagility (Passive Skill) - 15% flat evasion rate. First of all, it only helps Aesford and no one else, which is contrary to his role. Second, it's only going to be unpowered or overpowered, as right now 15% evasion is really non-significant, but if it gets to something like 33%, it becomes ridiculous.
Efficient Metabolism (Passive Skill) Restore 5% of total HP each round (minimum of 1 HP), can be further boosted with consumption of food. In its default state, overwhelming and isn't going to save Aesford from any big attacks with its paltry restoration rate. The food part has never coming into play and doesn't really need to be a new system. I'm likely replacing this with a skill that makes him more Tanky, to increase his survibability to make Skills such as Block more useful, as well as allowing him to be at the forefront of battle more often to protect more squish teammates.
Determination (Passive Perk) - Just overall underwhelming, Aesford gets +1 to all relevant stats if he's hurt, and +2 if he's really hurt. Doesn't do that much, if Aesford's health is already low, a few bonus points are not a big deal.