You can smoke certain herbs that give you +1 start ap and -1 ap costs.
You can? Do you use them before combat or waste ap to do it in combat?
The gears in this game are quite lacking and it could have been used to add more depth and choices.
Stuffs like "Less stat, more AP" or "Horrible stat, super school" type of gears are really needed. Mages for one would probably thing about using Staff more if there's a +AP Staff so they have to make a choice between +AP or shield.
The gear was pretty lacking, especially considering how quickly you have to switch them. Having +AP gear would be pretty good, but speaking off which, I don't think I came across a single Memory stat gear. Only 2, one was withermoore that gave +1 which is early game, and then another unique later down the line, which was a one handed sword I believe. Aside from 2 uniques, not a single other piece of gear that gave memory.