(05-04-2015, 11:06 AM)Mercurias Wrote: First, you say that your blue mage concept would be able to read the aetheric 'waves' caused by aether-based skills utilized by other players and enemies. Functionally, even if you absolutely do not mean it that way, what you're saying is that any skill used by anyone that utilizes aether (rather than a biological component like, say, a barbed tail or breathing acid) is within the bounds of your character's ability to learn, right?
Now the only issue with that is it essentially leaves your character with an extremely perceptive form of magesight, which we've seen in multiple points of the game to be a thing (There are game instances involving both Conjurers in Gridania reading auras to discern a person's identity and the Thaumaturges in the THM questline referencing the use of an 'Inner eye" to see a person's progress). I say this because your character is able to read the 'waves' of the skills being used, like the frequency of the radio.Â
And y'know what? On its own, that's actually pretty cool. Your character might not be a godling, but she can sense when someone is using some kind of magic nearby and exactly what kind. I can dig that.Â
My main issue is the thought that she can, after 'reading' these skills, then duplicate them so easily. It's been on record that magic takes time, training, and dedication to learn, and by seeing HOW a person performs a spell, she would have to reproduce the same methods used by its caster, or create a hybridized version of the spell with her own aether. In other words, she could KNOW that someone is casting Fire III, but even if she knows exactly how it's done, it's going to take time and practice with Thaumaturgy in order to be able to cast it herself.
...correct me if I'm wrong, but the concept described here that is being considered by the OP as the mechanical justification for BLU would be, essentially, a FFXIV take on the Sharingan from Naruto.
If that is the case, fair word of warning: now matter how different you make this mechanic in minutae, there are going to be a lot of roleplayers who will object to this. Regardless of how you spin it, roleplayers of conjurers and thaumaturges and arcanists and every other school of magic are going to be disgruntled that this concept allows the character in question an intuitive, "unearned" understanding of how certain feats are performed or accomplished. Their characters will be disgruntled because they will take this as an invalidation of their own skills and hard work.
Good execution can mitigate this, such as the "you can learn how its done instantly but it will take you months of practice to perform it" idea. That said, this amounts to gimping the character to a significant degree.
For the record, I am not saying the OP shouldnt do this. I am saying that the OP should prepare themselves for a certain amount or degree of rejection should they choose to implement their concept as-is. This is especially true given that BLU has yet to be officially introduced to XIV and its lore, despite the existing numbers, however small, of BLU roleplayers.
![[Image: 1qVSsTp.png]](http://i.imgur.com/1qVSsTp.png)
