Hironobu Sakaguchi has named Dungeons & Dragons, along with Wizardry and Ultima, as what he was working from, and the first game reads as a translation of a tabletop party into a console. Four characters with chosen classes, hit points, a spell list bought in advance and spent per level, and a random-encounter overworld that is a dungeon master rolling. Black Mage and White Mage are the cleric-and-magic-user pair with the serial numbers filed off.