Blue Mages tend to dress in blue outfits with domino masks, in addition to wearing hats and capes of various designs, often with red highlights. Beyond this, Blue Mages vary in equipment and physical prowess. They are not as weak as other mage classes in terms of attack or defense, and are usually capable fighters. Of course, their true strength is their magic: Blue Magic, a special subset of magic that uses attacks otherwise exclusive to enemies.

Blue Mages often have a wide range of usefulness due to the varied spells they gain. Blue Mages usually learn Blue Magic by having enemies (or occasionally, another Blue Mage ally) use it on them, but some games have other methods to learn their magic. In some games, Blue Mages benefit greatly from the ability to control monsters allowing the player to manipulate monsters to use their skills on the Blue Mage. In some games, Blue Magic is a Limit Break command usable by particular characters.