For instance, suppose you wanted to resist fire damage. These abilities allow you to dedicate instances of magic to your stats. Summons have a third class of abilities that, if I recall correctly, do not take up a slot. These abilities simply affect your stats- 'HP + 10%', for instance, increases a character's health for as long as he has that ability equipped. Other abilities are passive, and get added to a separate menu than the active battle abilities. Once learned, whoever has Quetzalcoatl equipped can replace one of his battle commands with 'Card,' which will try to turn an enemy on the field into a Triple Triad playing card. Don't quote me on this, though, since I haven't played FF8 in years.) Some of these are active abilities you can give to the character who has that summon equipped- for instance, Quetzalcoatl has the 'Card' ability he can learn.

(I believe they have a separate EXP gauge per summon, called SP. What summons do have are special abilities that they learn by leveling up. You can have Shiva equipped on a character that only holds fire spells. Summons (GF's) don't affect the spells you have. Also, while the summons themselves don't cast magic for you, some of them do have elemental effects- summoning Shiva will deal more damage against fire-based monsters than ice ones. You can determine an enemy's strengths and weaknesses by casting the 'Scan' spell on them. Like most magic systems, some spells have elemental effects on different encounters- casting 'Blizzard' at the creatures in the Fire Cavern is super-effective, whereas casting 'Fire' will actually heal them. Each charge of a spell counts as a single item- so, just like potions, if you have 5 'Fire' spells and choose to cast 'Fire,' you'll only have 4 left. You can get spells by 'Drawing' them out of enemies, or by getting them from specific points in the map. Spells are specific items, kinda like potions. That is, suck some of your stock of a particular spell from you and then even use it againsts you. Interestingly, some can also do it to you. For example, you might suck 4 fire spells out of an enemy. To acquire them you can use an ability called draw to suck some of the magic out of an enemy. Like items there is a limit to how many you can have and like your characters just about all other monsters have a stock of various magic spells. I think you could also junction them to various commands or something to impart additional affects from the magic to those commands. At higher levels though, a second best spell might max out a stat when junctioned to it letting you use the best spell (ie fire 3 instead of fire 2) or might max you out when you have something like 50 so if you have 100 you can use then restock when it hits 50 or close to it so it isn't just as bad. The last thing you would probably want to do is use a spell a lot that you mapped to magic. If you map fire to strength then keep using it in battle as your stock gets lower your strength will decrease and attacking will do less damage. This makes it annoying to work out what to do with your most powerful spells, junction them or use them. For example if you have 10 fire and attach it to strength you might get 5 extra strength but if you map 20 you might get 10 extra strength.

The thing is, the more you have the better the effect of junctioning. You use it like items rather than using MP which is annoying because you can also 'junction' it, or rather map it to various stats to boost them and so on. I played this 12 years ago so forgive me if my memory is incorrect. It's not used very often outside of healing/stat magic. (Kinda of annoying because it makes you not want to use magic since your stat bonuses diminish). Having 100 is the max, so you should try to keep junctioned magic at this level. The stat increase is dependent on the quantity stocked as well. They are all different, with Ultima being the strongest junctioner. Each stat is increased a certain amount for each magic. You must equip GF as an ability to be able to use in a fight. Shiva doesn't cast blizzard, but still does Cold damage. They are called Guardian Forces and use their own mechanic/ability. You can also use GF learned abilities to refine magic from items. You must equip Draw as an ability to be able to use in a fight. You must equip Magic as an ability to be able to use in a fight. You do not use MP in this game for casting magic, you have a stock the depletes on consumption like items.

Status magic ff8