Red Mage was terribad in FF1. My Monk and Warrior do like 3x more damage than it and my RDM has Masamune. My RDM hits for like 300-500 and my WAR and MNK hit for like 1700. In FF3 RDM is crap too, its stat gain sucks and it only learns like up to level 4 magic. Any melee outdamages it because their weapon selection sucks badly(in the original, I know nothing of how they rebalanced it in the DS version. In FF5 RDM was actually awesome until the middle of the game when Blue Mage, Geomancer and Summoner rock it death. RDM's only good feature is Double Cast which is a half decent sub ability(but Blue Magic is far superior because White Wind> Cure IIx2)