LogFAQs > #966034190

What I learned is that it's best to only equip the skills you want them to use.

This can mean always having your favorite skills equipped on them; this is better for melee focused classes where the pawns should only be using specific skills. I don't like them to have skills that require charging up before attacking, or attacking with specific timing. The truth is pawns just simply have bad timing and a total inability to land attacks reliably. Giving them rapid fire attacking skills or wide AoE skills makes them a lot more useful in combat.

For magic using pawns it's usually better to change their equipped skills based on what you are going to do. Limit them to only Anodyne, Your preferred Elemental Buff, and one or maybe two attacking spells. Pawns are too stupid to correctly choose what to do. You need to limit their options as much as possible. If their only offensive spell is Ingle then they will keep chucking fireballs. If their only elemental buff is Ice, then they will always buff you with Ice. That's the idea, anyway.

I don't remember all of the spell names anymore but the one that summons a wall of fire is usually a good offensive spell to have equipped if you know there's no flying enemies. This can massively clear out packs of monsters, especially if you are good at drawing aggression and grouping all of the monsters in one place before your mage pawn sets them all on fire.

The spell which summons lightning bolts is bizarrely effective against cyclops. Whenever I have a good mage pawn with lightning in my party, they usually shock the cyclops face and will almost always break its tusks and knock it to the ground right away, dealing massive damage and opening them up for further attacks.