Employs the life force of leaves to grant Protect to adjacent units.
The Ivalice Chronicles' description
Guardian Nymph, also known as Protect Spirit, is a monster ability in Final Fantasy Tactics used by certain monsters of the treant monster family. It grants the Protect status to adjacent units around the user, but not itself.
Monsters can be recruited to the player's party through the orator's Entice, or a different job equipped with the Speechcraft job command and the Beast Tongue support ability, or if the unit has the Tame support ability.
Obtained
Elder treants have the ability available by default.
Dryads can use it if next to an allied human unit equipped with the Beastmaster support ability, available from the squire and other default special jobs (e.g. machinist, holy knight).
Mechanics
Guardian Dryad's chance of success is based on the following formula:
The Protect status does not directly reduce damage from attacks, but subtracts the attacker's physical attack power by ⅓ in the damage formula. If the attack is done with a weapon that uses magickal attack or speed, then protect instead reduces that stat for the attack. In addition, physical attacks that have stat-dependent success rates will face a penalty such that revised stat = [stat * 2/3] when targeting a Protected unit; consequently, Protect can lower either the success rate or the damage of physical attacks. The status lasts for 32 clock ticks.
Protect can be removed with other abilities, such as the mystic's Harmony or the templar's Dispel.
Etymology
In Greek mythology, nymphs are nature entities in the form of nubile women associated with a particular landform or location. Nymphs tended to frequent areas distant from humans, but could be encountered by lone travelers outside the village, where their music might be heard, and the traveler could spy on their dancing or bathing in a stream or pool either during the noon heat or in the middle of the night. Such encounters could be dangerous, bringing dumbness, besotted infatuation, madness or stroke to the unfortunate spectator.