This isn't really in-dpeth strategy or anything but still stuff that is pretty useful and that you should know before you really get into playing the game. Mos of this stuff is explained in the manual though.

Basic Information:

Timed Attack        Flower Points        Status        
Status Problems    Elemental Attacks    Level up Bonuses
Special Flowers        Back Entrences        Frog Coins
Exp. For All        Invincibility Stars    Easy Money    
            The Ultimate Exp. Trick
  Timed Attacks
If you've played many Rpg's then you're probably familiar with Critical hits, where your physical hits cause more damage than usual. On Super Mario RPG you can control when you perform critical hits by pressing the A button at the right time. Toad will explainthis in more detail early onin the game, also you can tim it right to guard against enemy attacks.

  Flower Points / Special Attacks
First off, instead of Mp on this game they call it Fp [Flower Points]. And everone shares them, there's one amount of Fp that decreases whenever anyone uses a special attack [Magic]. Youc an recover Fp with Syrups, which are rel;ativel cheap compared to Ethers on the FF games. Fp doesn't increase at Level up, instead you must find floers throughout the game to increase your Maximum number of Fp, you can increase it by finding Flowers in treasure boxes or picking them ont he ground or recieving them as items. You can also time Special attacks [which take floers to use] just like you time physical attacks, on the menu screen it tells how to charge each individual attack. Your characters will learn their different speical attacks as they level up.

  Status
There are six stats that each character has that determine how powerful they are. They are:
Hp- Hit Points, they serve as your life energy when you run out thst character is Ko'd. IF everyone becomes Ko'd then it's game over.
Attack- Your Physical Attack, deals with A button attacks [weapons].
Defense - Your defense against physical attacks.
Magic Attack - Your Magic Attack power, deals with Y button attacks, [special attacks].
Magic Defense -Your Defense against Fp consuming attacks.
Speed - How fast your turn comes uo in battle, whoever has the highest Speed gets to take their turn first. It also figures into how well you can escape battle and doge enemy attacks.

On the status screen it will have two numbers for each stat for Hp the first number is your current Hp the second is your Maximum Hp. For all of the others the first number is your base nyumber, how high that stat if you had no equipment equipped. The second number is how high it is with your current equipment on.

  Status Problems
There are seven different staus problems that enemies will give you during battle, each wears off at the end of battle and can be healed with Able Juice and Freshen Up Items or with the Therepy and Group Hug spells.
Poison - You lose a little bit of Hp each turn, due to your posioned state.
Fear - Your Attack, Defense, Mag. Att. and Mag. Def. are all cut in half.
Silence [Mute] - You can't use any Special Attcks [Y Button]
Scarecrow - You can't use Regular attacks or Items [A or X buttons]
Sleep - Your turn is skipped until you're healed or hit by a physical attack.
Mushroom - You can't do anything period but slowly regain lost Hp.
Ko'd - Your knocked out and have 0 Hp revive yourself so you can fight again, if everyone is Knocked out then it's game over.

  Elemental Attacks
Certain enemies are weak against certain elementals.

Jump/ Earth - [Jump, Super Jump, Ultra Jump, Crusher]
Good on: Koopa [Turtle] enemies, Bombs, Treasure Box enemies, some Plants
Bad on: Spiked enmies, Pirahna Plants, Crab-like enemies.

Fire - [Fire Orb, Super Flame, Ultra Flame, Fire Bomb]
Good on: Aquatic enemis, most Plants, Goombas
Bad on: Treasure box enemies, Fire elemental enemies, Dragons

Ice - [Snowy, Ice Bomb]
Good on: Bugs, Fire elemental enemies, Dragons
Bad on: Treasure Box enemies, Clones, some aquatic enemies

Thunder - [Shocker, Star Rain]
Good on: Most aquatic enemies, Metallic enemies, Some Undead enemies
Bad on: Treasure box enemies, some aerial enemies, Puppet enemies

  Level Up Bonuses
When a member of your team gets a Level up then all of their stats will increase [except for speed which never goes up]. Aditionally you can choose a Level Up Bonus to make one of your stats go up even higher on that Level up. You have three options:
Hammer - Attack and Defense will each go up more usual
Mushroom - Hp will go up more than usual
Star - Magic will go up more than usual

The amounts that the bonus will raise your stats varries from level to level as well as from character to character. Hower it is highly reccomended that you choose the following Bonuses for your characters [unless thetotal points increase  bonus suggested woudl be two or less Example: Hp goes up from 210 to 212, than chose whicheverbonus would help you the most].
Mario -Mushroom
Mallow -Star and an occasional Mushroom [about once every 5 level ups]
Geno -Hammer
Bowser - Hammer
Toadstool - Star

  Special Flowers
One of the many unique features of Super Mario RPG are the occasional special flowers which you will gain occasionally from defeating enemies. They are as follows:
Attack Up - Attack is slightly raised [same effect as Energizer]
Defense Up - Defense is slightly raised [same effect as Bracer]
Lucky - You get to play a chance game after the battle to possibly double your Exp. or Coins that you've just won.
Max Hp - The character's Hp is completely recovered.
Once Again - Your character gets a second turn

  Back Entrences
If on the world map, you enter a level from the way that you first had to pass it [such as going to Bandit's Way from Muchroom Kingdom] then you will start from the beggining of that level. However if you enter it from the opposite way, such as entering Bandit's Way coming from Kero Sewers, then you will tsrt from the end of that stage and can progress through it backwards. This is useful if you need to chek somethign towards the end of that stage.

  Frog Coins
In addition to the standard currency of the worl [Coins] there are special Frog Coins. Frog Coins are larger than normal coins and are green rather than gold, and are worth much more than normal coins. They are used as onemay expect, to buy items that normal oney can't buy from various Frogs throughout the game. However, Frog Coins can not be won through battle, they must instead be found throughout the game.

  Exp. For All
In most RPGs [witht he exception of Chrono Trigger] only the members of your team that participate in a battle will gain Epx. from that particualr battle, in this game that's not so. At the end of every battle every character [even if they didn't fight int hat battle] gains an equal amount of Exp. For this reason, you don't really have to switch members when level building to make sure that all your members become strong you can just use your three favorites and know that everyone is getting Experience.

  Invincibility Stars
Probably one of the best things in the game are tyhe invincibility stars. Which are in just about every one of Mario's adventures. In this they are particularly useful. Find them when going throughout a stage and you will become invincible meaning that every enemy that you touch, will automatically be defeated and you will gain the Exp. and Coins without even having to fight them! In fact not only is this trues, but instead of enemies running away from you they will actually run towards you while you're invincible. Of course invincibility only lasts a short period of time.

  Easy Money
There are several ways to make easy money. Here are the four best:
One requires good jumping and timing, one requires some fighting, one requires runnign around and one requires nothing but time. none of these are cheats or anything, they're all meant to be in the game, it's just that most people wouldn't think to do this in order to getthe gobs of money that they need for equipment and such.

1. Jumping on Wigglers - In the Forest  Maze there are Wigglers [the caterpillars] that will walk around on the screen. If you jump on a wiggler [out of battle], you will gain a coin and bounce a little, the trick is to stay on and jump continously to gain coins. Jump on them ten times in a row, without falling off, and you'll even get a Frog Coin.

2. Pure Waters - You can easy gain Pure Waters by fighting in the Kero Sewers, while Pure Water has no monetary value in itself you can trade themin Mollevill at the "Point Shop" for a significant number of points [20] and once you have 100 points [that's only five Pure Waters] you can get a Fire or Ice bomb in exchange which can be sold for if I'm right about 150 coins each.

3. Rose Way - Go through Rose Way from the back [that is coming from Rose Town] and you'll be at the exit, go to the next screen [which is nomrally the screen before] and there will be many treasure boxes, each containing coins or a Muashroom [the kind that automatically recover you]. Get the coins and if you need to recover with the Mushroom, then got back to the screen beforehand and return to the treasure bixes, they'll all be reset and still have all of their treasure in them! There are other treaure boxes liek this throughout the game, which you can get the treasure from over and over again, but there's a large cincentration of them here so you can easily get a lot of coins here.

4. As Much Money As You Would Ever Want: The Goodie Bag - In Booster's Tower, there is an Item that you can get called the Goodie Bag, thjere is only one of them in the whole game. Most people would say that you should sell it, becuase that will net you 111 coins right away. Heck even Nintendo's official Player's Guide for the game says "Sell it as soon as possible", but NO! Don't do that, especially if you have a Turbo type controller. Here's what to do, every time you use the Goodie Bag in battle, it gives you s single coin, yes only one. But that's alright. Go back to Mushroom Way [you know way the heck back over by Mushroom Kingdom]. Get in a fight containing a Goomba. Beat all of the enemies except for that one Goomba and if you are at a high enough level then the Goomba will do 0 damage when it attacks you, or in other words it won't hurt you at all].Now use the Goodie Bag and it will give you a coin, so if you have the Turbo type controller, just switch over X and it will keep giving you coins, just leave and watch a video or something. And when you come back a few hours later you won't be hurt at all by the Goombas and you'll be a whole lot richer. Use this trick whenever you want.

  The Ultimate Exp. Trick
This trick is very, very nice. It's sort of the equivilent of the Goodie Bag trick but for Exp. It's not a cheat, in fact it was puposely put into the game and the manual sort of even alludes to you doing this, but I've never seen this trick on any other web sites.Okay here's what you do. Find an Invincible Star near lots of enemies and use that star to get all of the Exp. you can, be sure to equip the Exp.Booster if you have it. Then after your star runs out unequip your whole party and get into a fight and purposely die. Yep, that's right purposely get a Game Over, and DON'T save beforehand. You'll die and lose all of the coins and Items that you obtained, but you'll keep allof the Exp. that you just earned, PLUS the Invincibility Star will be set back up again, and you can get the Star all over again. Which means that you can by doing this get the invincibility star as many times as you want, if you do is at Land's End or Inside Nimbus Castle, then you can easily get tons of Exp. points every time.