
I recently rolled an alt, and I'm wondering how I should go about playing an element of his personality that could, but doesn't necessarily have to, incorporate actual gameplay.
The short version is that he's a Conjurer who has more or less the opposite problem to Sylphie. Rather than neglecting the elements of earth, air, and water and focusing only on the healing, he scorns healing to a certain degree in favor of the elemental side of conjury. I've decided against him outright refusing to heal, but ICly he treats being a Conjurer more like it's a Disciple of the Land job or even a DPS class than like a healer.
The reason behind this is mostly due to personal reasons- he is very interested and even emotionally invested in the balance of nature, and prior to the Calamity was content to observe and research the natural world without interfering in it. This didn't just mean being a pacifist and not harming plants or animals- he actively avoided preserving things past their natural lifespans and intervening in the circle of life. He's the kind of person who'd be at peace with letting an orphaned opo-opo starve, is what I'm saying. He's not entirely heartless, but he's definitely not a bleeding heart, and frankly finds it offensive that he's expected to be a field medic and not somebody who works to keep nature in balance in a horribly unbalanced time. In his eyes, adventurers and the people of Eorzea are just as much of a part of the grand cycle of nature as the plants and animals are, and he isn't there to save every person from dying, just because mending comes with the territory of studying magical ecology.
So the issue I'm running into is thus: how do I keep him IC without being a dick to other players? Do I just treat all times I'm playing him out in the field as OOC, and only play his quirk IC when I'm in sanctuaries and places where I wouldn't be expected to heal other players in the first place? I wholly intend for his position on the matter to change over time as an element of his character arc, but in the meantime, I want to figure out a way to portray his qualms interestingly. In the original context this character concept was taken from, he was alright with regular healing but refused to use his power to raise the dead. In FFXIV, there's not much of a precedent for player characters capable of necromancy- that seems to be entirely the territory of supernatural entities like Siren- and IIRC skills like Raise don't actually bring people back to life. So unless I want to make him a lore-breaking Gary Stu, I can't really make his area of NOPE in re: healing be raising the dead.
Thoughts? I'm really curious as to how you all think this particular characterization should be played in terms of RP and gameplay integration.
The short version is that he's a Conjurer who has more or less the opposite problem to Sylphie. Rather than neglecting the elements of earth, air, and water and focusing only on the healing, he scorns healing to a certain degree in favor of the elemental side of conjury. I've decided against him outright refusing to heal, but ICly he treats being a Conjurer more like it's a Disciple of the Land job or even a DPS class than like a healer.
The reason behind this is mostly due to personal reasons- he is very interested and even emotionally invested in the balance of nature, and prior to the Calamity was content to observe and research the natural world without interfering in it. This didn't just mean being a pacifist and not harming plants or animals- he actively avoided preserving things past their natural lifespans and intervening in the circle of life. He's the kind of person who'd be at peace with letting an orphaned opo-opo starve, is what I'm saying. He's not entirely heartless, but he's definitely not a bleeding heart, and frankly finds it offensive that he's expected to be a field medic and not somebody who works to keep nature in balance in a horribly unbalanced time. In his eyes, adventurers and the people of Eorzea are just as much of a part of the grand cycle of nature as the plants and animals are, and he isn't there to save every person from dying, just because mending comes with the territory of studying magical ecology.
So the issue I'm running into is thus: how do I keep him IC without being a dick to other players? Do I just treat all times I'm playing him out in the field as OOC, and only play his quirk IC when I'm in sanctuaries and places where I wouldn't be expected to heal other players in the first place? I wholly intend for his position on the matter to change over time as an element of his character arc, but in the meantime, I want to figure out a way to portray his qualms interestingly. In the original context this character concept was taken from, he was alright with regular healing but refused to use his power to raise the dead. In FFXIV, there's not much of a precedent for player characters capable of necromancy- that seems to be entirely the territory of supernatural entities like Siren- and IIRC skills like Raise don't actually bring people back to life. So unless I want to make him a lore-breaking Gary Stu, I can't really make his area of NOPE in re: healing be raising the dead.
Thoughts? I'm really curious as to how you all think this particular characterization should be played in terms of RP and gameplay integration.