Part 61: Trasson's Infodump on SD3 Stats: Great Info
Basically, the way level ups work is that you pick a stat to raise and it goes up. This would be fine if it weren't for the the fact that not all stats are created equally:Strength: Influences physical damage. Obviously important for most of the cast
Intelligence: Influences damage and magic defense from all non-Holy elemental spells. For Angela, this is a key stat, both for damage and also to learn her moves. For everyone else, the magic defense gain is too inconsequential to concentrate on the stat for.
Now, a few extra notes:
The game won't let you raise the same stat over and over. Why, I'm not sure, but it forces you to diversify.
When you class change, your stats are set to the minimum for that class; which is to say, your previous class's caps. So, for example, Angela's (Magician) Strength starts at 2 and caps at 8. You're a smart person, so you concentrate exclusively on Intelligence, Spirit, and occasionally Vitality when the game won't let you raise the first two. By the time you class change at level 18, her Intelligence and Spirit are capped (12 and 11) and her Vitality is about halfway there (5), and you never touched her strength. As a, say, Delvar, her Strength will automatically be raised to 8, as well as her Vitality, but her Intelligence and Spirit will remain as they are, capped. The lesson to take from this is that there's no need to touch your unneeded attributes; they'll catch up well enough.
Some stat minimums are needed to learn spells for classes. This affects Duran, Hawk, and Lise. Kevin will never need to raise any stats to learn spells, and while Angela and Carlie technically have to occassionally, if you're not pumping Intelligence/Spirit respectively with them you're Doing It Wrong (tm). The stats needed to raise are as follows:
Duran needs a point of Spirit as a Gladiator.
Hawk needs two Agility and two Intelligence as a Ranger, one Intelligence and one Spirit as a Wanderer, five (!!) Agility as a Ninja, and one Dexterity as a Nightblade.
Lise needs one Intelligence as a Star Lancer.
(source: http://www.angelfire.com/realm/drag...ken3Classes.txt)
So yeah, that's far more than you ever needed to know about Seiken Densetsu 3's stats.