Question about passive skills

[Befbo]

I'm still at the very beginning of the game and the 2 characters in my party are Leo and an unnamed robot. The unnamed robot has a skill called "Ally Barrier" which casts barrier on a single ally at the start of combat. The issue I have with it is that barrier costs 8 MP, so even if I can one-shot kill the encounter with Leo, it still forces me to burn 8 MP every battle on a skill I don't need to use at the time. Is there any way to turn the passive skills off? Or is this the intended functionality, to drain your MP over time when you don't need to use it? Thank you.

[Durgha]

Prickle only uses this skill at the start of battle. Later in the game you'll have more control over who is in your active party. If a fight starts and he's not one of your three characters then he won't spend the MP. Prickle's weird auto-barrier is the only skill I can think of that operates this way. More customization options unlock later on that allow for reactive abilities that also cost MP, but all of those can be toggled on/off.

That having been said, I haven't found a way to shut off auto-barrier. Small Ethers are relatively cheap and can also be farmed from incredibly easy enemies in En Old Town for free. It's definitely an inconvenience early on but later in the game it's trivial.

[Befbo]

Thanks for the info! That is helpful and reassuring.

[Minuos_劣势路猛男]

in late games prickle & clicker will learn the passive skill to save the cost of mana... so this could not be a problem anymore. in the meantime, the robot pair is no good for start lineup to the entire party, since EZ is better at buffing the whole team, prickle 's job is to make barrier to ignore the weak aliment or using mega barrier to protect some guy in trouble...