Meliadoul always had that ability. It was basic knight break skills that sucked balls and couldn't hit monsters, since they don't do actual damage, just the item break effect.
On easytype: You'll only have to grind if you do something retarded like turn your whole team into archers and have to take some time out to level up some other skills. With a decently balanced team (Strong armor user, an offensive mage, a healing mage, a high movement melee char) you can easily get through the game just going from story battle to story battle. You'll definitely have to reload a few times for some of the harder fights, particularly NPC saving ones. But it's perfectly viable. People have been doing challenge playthroughs for years finishing the game with either Ramza alone or with just 2 characters, or all 5 characters but of a single class, and the rules stipulate level caps so they aren't winning them by grinding. If you can win the game with 5 normal levelled thieves, you can certainly do it without grinding.