The original FF1 was pretty brutal. I still have an NES cart for the game. I played the game on a real NES back in the day. Playing the game on a real system instead of an emulator with save states is the way to go. Getting ambushed in that game by certain groups of enemies was basically game over. It wasn't just game over it was a slow game over, lol. It was easier just to hit the reset button instead of watching your party slowly get demolished by breath attacks or stone. Getting a party member killed in the middle of a dungeon early on left you with few options, easiest usually being to just reset and try again. There were no phoenix downs, and life was a level 5 spell, even if you had it you probably didn't have many of those to spare. They were very liberal with the spell count in the later versions in FF1, max used to be 9 spells of each level and until you got very high level, you didn't have more than a few of the higher level spells so you had to conserve those. You couldn't just nuke every group you came across or you weren't gonna make it very far before you ran out of spells. Those 1 or 2 level 8 NUKE spells you may have had were reserved for only the most dangerous encounters, basically NUKE or die. I preferred Thief/Ninja over Black mage/Wizard, especially if you had a Blackbelt/Master in the group. Ninja gets Haste which doubles the number of hits on your Master which turned him into a wrecking machine. And with a Ninja, you were much more likely to be able to escape those really tough random battles instead of using up a bunch of spells to heal up with after the fight. And also less likely to be ambushed.
My favorite team was 2 Blackbelt/Master 1 Thief/Ninja and 1 White mage/Wizard. Early in the game that was a very tough team to use. But they were great after about level 15 or so. Large groups of small enemies I was mostly running from, and picked to fight the small groups of larger/higher HP enemies to take out for XP, like Giants/ogres. The later usually gave better XP anyway. At least the White mage/Wizard could make quick work of undead, which were some of the deadlier enemies in large groups.
Never was a fan of the Red Mage/Wizard, they got fewer of and didn't get the most potent spells of either Black/White, and overall a Ninja was more useful, they usually acted first and could use an item, or one of their Fire2 spells to take out a large group of weaker enemies before your party took any damage. Gear was also relatively cheap for that team, you could have used what you found and spent your money on White Magic.
There isn't a better name for a Black Belt/Master than Chck, short for Chuck because you could only use 4 letters
