When it comes to stuff like this, I typically look to draw parallels between the game's setting and real-world tech/developments. If the tech/development was being worked on in the Renaissance (doesn't have to have been perfected), then I typically think it's fair to be used in-game. Sooo...
There's evidence of use of cigarette use as far back as the 9th century with the Mayans, with the medium being packed into both tobacco leaves and corn husks. Whether or not the medium was exclusively tobacco is unknown, but the smoking of tobacco and various other herbs was a well-established practice in the Americas by that time. Smoking -anything- as a practice goes back as far as 3,000 years worldwide (... some cultures smoked clarified butter and fish guts?), but that's all been either as fire offerings, incense-like setups, bundles, and various pipe forms.
There's reference to matches in China as far back as the 4th century. However, these weren't strike matches, just sticks that had been treated with sulfur to quickly ignite when introduced to a smoldering coal. Various other incarnations were worked on up through the centuries, but it wasn't until about 200 years after phosphorus was discovered that there was a leap from "need a hot coal" to "self igniting". Self-igniting matches chemical matches finally came about in the early 1800's, where the treated end of a stick was dipped into a bottle of sulfuric acid. This was expensive and dangerous. This was followed by a few versions that were variants of "chemicals are contained in a glass capsule at the bottom of the stick and needed to be crushed" that were slightly less dangerous (no sulfuric acid or asbestos), but just as expensive. The first strike matches came out about a decade after the first self-igniting chemical match, but was dangerous and impractical as it included rubbing a sulfur-tipped stick in a tube that was coated on the inside with phosphorus. A jump was made about a decade later to something closer to what we have now, and further improvements occurred over the next eighty years.
So. Smoking cigarettes is probably just fine. Whether or not tobacco as we know it is in Eorzea might be debated by a few, but I consider it to be like coffee -- if someone's going to be dead-set against the existence of a plant that has no icon in the game, there's plenty of substitutes that have icons that would work just as well. All it is, essentially, is dried plant matter that's chopped and then stuffed into a tube of thin paper or dried leaves.
The matches part could be more debatable, as self-igniting matches didn't show up in the real world until the 1800's. HOWEVER... Eorzean alchemists are obviously much more advanced than alchemists/scientists of the real world, so there's a lot of wiggle-room that way. Strike matches being available isn't that much of a stretch to me.
There's evidence of use of cigarette use as far back as the 9th century with the Mayans, with the medium being packed into both tobacco leaves and corn husks. Whether or not the medium was exclusively tobacco is unknown, but the smoking of tobacco and various other herbs was a well-established practice in the Americas by that time. Smoking -anything- as a practice goes back as far as 3,000 years worldwide (... some cultures smoked clarified butter and fish guts?), but that's all been either as fire offerings, incense-like setups, bundles, and various pipe forms.
There's reference to matches in China as far back as the 4th century. However, these weren't strike matches, just sticks that had been treated with sulfur to quickly ignite when introduced to a smoldering coal. Various other incarnations were worked on up through the centuries, but it wasn't until about 200 years after phosphorus was discovered that there was a leap from "need a hot coal" to "self igniting". Self-igniting matches chemical matches finally came about in the early 1800's, where the treated end of a stick was dipped into a bottle of sulfuric acid. This was expensive and dangerous. This was followed by a few versions that were variants of "chemicals are contained in a glass capsule at the bottom of the stick and needed to be crushed" that were slightly less dangerous (no sulfuric acid or asbestos), but just as expensive. The first strike matches came out about a decade after the first self-igniting chemical match, but was dangerous and impractical as it included rubbing a sulfur-tipped stick in a tube that was coated on the inside with phosphorus. A jump was made about a decade later to something closer to what we have now, and further improvements occurred over the next eighty years.
So. Smoking cigarettes is probably just fine. Whether or not tobacco as we know it is in Eorzea might be debated by a few, but I consider it to be like coffee -- if someone's going to be dead-set against the existence of a plant that has no icon in the game, there's plenty of substitutes that have icons that would work just as well. All it is, essentially, is dried plant matter that's chopped and then stuffed into a tube of thin paper or dried leaves.
The matches part could be more debatable, as self-igniting matches didn't show up in the real world until the 1800's. HOWEVER... Eorzean alchemists are obviously much more advanced than alchemists/scientists of the real world, so there's a lot of wiggle-room that way. Strike matches being available isn't that much of a stretch to me.
