There are 34 "jobs" in "Tactics Advance" that govern a character's stats, equipment, and abilities. Most items that can be equipped have various abilities assigned to them, each available for use by characters of a certain job while the item is equipped. When a battle is completed, characters will receive Ability Points (AP) distributed over their currently equipped weapons or items (such as armor). Once a target amount of AP has been accumulated for a given ability, the character will master that ability, allowing the character to use them at any time, regardless of items equipped and job chosen. Mastery of abilities in different jobs will eventually allow the character access to more jobs. For example, if a human unit wishes to change jobs to Paladin, it needs to master at least two "action" abilities from the Soldier job.