Breath of Fire 3 Best Masters for Each Character

This Breath of Fire 3 Best Masters guide will teach you all about how to maximize the potential for each character in Breath of Fire 3 by making use of the masters system.

If you’re playing Breath of Fire 3 (BoF3), you’re going to want to know which masters are best for which characters. Breath of Fire 3 is a PS1 game that came out in the late 90s. In the game there’s a system where you can apprentice your characters to a ‘master’ who will teach them a variety of moves depending on how many levels they’re apprenticed for, and also alter their stat gains.

Having played through that game ten times or so, and really, really over-researched the master system, I feel pretty confident I can tell you the general consensus for which characters to pair with which masters.

Because character stat bonuses on level up are hard-coded and not random, you can really go nuts with picking exactly the right master to optimize bonuses at every level individually. That’s a little bonkers, because if you’re willing to go that far to boost your stats, it’s much easier to just collect stat boosting items. So we’re keeping it simple here. These are mostly fire and forget suggestions.

Ryu – Breath of Fire 3 Best Masters

There are generally 2 schools of thought here: the first is to make Ryu a physical powerhouse, and the second is to make him a pure mage and get his AP really high so he can stay in dragon form as long as possible.

Warrior Ryu

For a warrior version of Ryu, it’s generally suggested to throw him on Bunyan throughout most of the early game and then toss him on Deis when Deis becomes available.

Mage Ryu

The second school of thought is to make Ryu a mage, which has you start on Mygas to collect the spells, then switch over to Emitai, then to Deis. To be honest with you, this is just OK. Very mediocre. Typhoon (a spell you learn from Mygas) will wreck random encounters most of the game, but spells really taper off at the end and frankly, intelligence as a stat does absolutely nothing except with one spell (Mind Sword).

AP Ryu

What Ryu really needs is AP, and although everyone on the forums will call you a noob if you do this, it’s probably better to apprentice him under Giotto, then Deis to maximize AP if you’re going for the “mage” route. Giotto gives you a bad hit to all stats and a big boost to HP and AP, but mage masters also give a bit hit to all stats to give a boost to AP and Int, and Int is totally useless as a stat.

Rei – Breath of Fire 3 Best Masters

No brainer. Put him under Bunyan. That’s all you need to do. Leave him on Bunyan the entire game until you get to Ladon (at the very end), then put him under Ladon.

You may have an inclination to put him under Merryleep to double down on his impressive speed. It’s unnecessary, Rei doesn’t need any additional speed. His natural speed growth is more than enough to EX almost every enemy of the game, and EX even the fastest enemies with just a speed buff.

You really just want the Strength from Bunyan, and by the time you get to Ladon, Rei’s HP will be fine and his natural HP growth will have already started to fall off.

Nina – Breath of Fire 3 Best Masters

Nina is fast, but fragile and not particularly powerful. I’ve found the best use for her is to make her a speedy support mage and to use her as a skill doll, sticking her under masters whose skills you want to learn but who don’t give good growths. Yggdrasil, Hondura, etc.

If you’re not going mage Ryu, throwing her under Emitai is probably a good idea. I like to have her under Merryleep, because at least then she becomes fast enough to get EX turns on everything.

Momo – Breath of Fire 3 Best Masters

Momo is kind of like a second Ryu, statwise. Similar to him, you can either go more physical or more magical. My opinion is that physical is better, so Bunyan -> Deis is the way to go. A lot of people put her on D’Lonzo because of the accuracy bonus. I think that’s fine, but not optimal. I would do Bunyan -> Deis.

Peco – Breath of Fire 3 Best Masters

Choosing Peco’s master in Breath of Fire 3 is easy. Fahl, the entire game. Put him on Fahl at level 1, never take him off of Fahl. He will very quickly become the most powerful character in the game, take almost no damage, regenerate insane amounts of HP every turn and be basically unkillable.

Fahl gives crazy defense and health bonuses at the expense of speed. Peco’s speed will always be abysmal and he’ll always go last, so you’re not losing much by turning him into a defensive juggernaut who hits incredibly hard.

Garr – Breath of Fire 3 Best Masters

Some combination of Bunyan and Fahl. To be honest, despite looking really cool, Garr is pretty mediocre and there’s not much you can do about it. No matter what you do, he’ll be a worse version of Peco. Peco has the same shtick (slow, high HP, high physical attack), but Peco’s HP is higher, his defense is higher, he’s stronger, he regenerates automatically, and he naturally counterattacks. So you may as well just use Garr to pick up extra skills.

Best Party – Breath of Fire 3 Best Masters

Most people generally agree that the best party in the game is Peco, Ryu, Rei with Peco in the point position in Attack Formation.

That about covers it when it comes to the Breath of Fire 3 Best Masters guide. Be sure to check out the Games Section for more content like this, and click here for more game guides for Breath of Fire 3.