Spells and abilities?

[Knislinge]

What's everyone's approaches to the game-mechanics? I'm thinking spells especially.

 

I come from ESO, where pretty much everyone agreed that gameplay and lore were strictly seperate; the classes didn't exist in the lore, nor many of the spells, and as such we usually ran on logic and what was established in in-game books. I enjoyed that quite a lot, as I felt it left a lot up to the imaginations of the players and allowed for a lot of creative writing.

 

By now, I've seen more than a few times someone casting 'medica' or 'cure' IC, and I'll admit, it's a bit jarring to me, simply because I'm so used to mechanics not playing a part in RP.

 

I've personally been running mostly on the old habit of "Character casts an unnamed spell and descriptions of magic happen" rather than "Character casts Cure."

 

Is there a general preference around the community? I know what my own preference is, but I also don't want to make a complete arse of myself, should I ever try my hand at some more serious healing-RP.

[Neems]

On my character whenever he's casting a spell I don't specifically emote like 'Edwin casts fire 2' or anything like that but I do use some of the spells THM gets as a basis for what my character can do ICly since he trained with the Thaumaturge guild. I try to avoid the more complex spells and stuff like Manaward since iirc it's stated they don't teach many mages how to do a manaward in the THM class quests. 

 

I've not messed with magical healing though but I imagine most people don't look at it like 'insta-heals' and stuff. A few of the people I RP with mix conventional medicine and aether healing so it hits a nice balance.

[PhantasticPanda]

While I make up my owns spells from time to time, my character having some signature ones that aren't overly complex or powerful, but still unique to him and his style of spell casting, I still use in-game spells as inspirations.

 

While I don't explicitly state that say for example, Zanzan is casting Fire III now! Instead, I would emote that the air around a target would suddenly grow unbearingly hot before the air would combust into flames. Not only am I tailoring the emote in a way that describes how the spell looks like in-game, but also giving cues or hints for the target for them to avoid being engulfed in fire since its not a projectile spell.

 

Another example would be my character casting a miniature version of a Flare. He would throw out an small orb of fiery light, nothing too threatening. Though once it reaches its target, the air would feel frigid and cold as all the surrounding heat and aether are sucked into a central point (the fire orb) before exploding out into a flare. Its a Black Mage spell, so it would make sense for it to affect the environment in such a way, and the spell effects does look like a thermic implosion!

[Kibu]

As an arcanist, I've generally referred to Cam going over the angles and calculations in his mind while projecting aether through the corresponding symbols in his grimoire. No outright spell names unless they're already vaguely descriptive (Miasma is a good example of both a spell name and a descriptor). As stated above, a lot of description of what's happening and a lot less emphasis on specific names.

 

He's the healer side of arcanist, with scholar as a title (scholar, researcher, student of magic) rather than referring to his class. In my limited experience, there are some points in rp where the "insta-heal" sort of thing is desired and other times when magic+mundane healing is the better option, but the times where he does invoke a more OP "insta-heal" comes with a lot of backlash on him. Not sure how it would work for something like CNJ, where I think the aether comes from outside them rather than internal... but I like it as a helpful sort of power limiter for the way I rp ACN. You wanna heal someone instantly? That's cool, bro, but you're going to have a monster headache and if you keep pushing yourself be prepared to spend the next few days unconscious.

[Silmanos]

With FF14 it is different because classes and jobs do exist in lore. That said with my Conjurer I never used the abilities name, though I did use the abilities as a reference. In addition Conjurer spells were limited to certain elements for game play reasons not lore reasons so in reality a conjurer if they had been practicing before the calamity would be trained in all the elements. Its a little more difficult for things like Dragoons, as they mix things in a rather interesting away. Yet again I do not use ability names, but I do study the animations of the abilities as again a reference point for explaining the things my character does.

[Gerel Kha]

I try to approach it with a healthy balance: I have Gerel use abilities that're related to her specific profession, but at the same time, occasionally diverge from what's established to give her a sense of individualism. It's good to keep the base of a class as the foundation, but I also feel you shouldn't let that act as a restriction. It's good to experiment a little.

 

Granted, I don't use the actual ability names often. Would be a little weird (if funny) if she just went around Bootshining everybody, or Demolishing them. But it's also important to note that a few abilities are named by the quest giver themselves as being known techniques of the specific guild/job mentor, so that's another thing to keep in mind.

[Yssen]

Most of what has been said is good stuff. The spells cast by the jobs are canon, all of them (even stuff like Sword Oath, Shield Oath, Grit, etc.). Part of the whacky world we traipse through. It should be noted that it is only part of it though. NPCs use spells of their own in combat, and there are many references to spells that are not combat useful so we don't have them on our bars. A primary example of this is stuff like Flow, the magical stuff Matoya is using to animate her brooms, and the nifty utility spells Arcanists use to help them in their jobs as customs agents. It is a wide open world out there.

 

I wouldn't balk too much at people using the existing spell abilities as reference, or even as exactly what they are doing ICly. I mean, they exist and most of them would qualify as commonly known. Yar.

[Unnamed Mercenary]

I find there's a balance to it. Certain spells are used within the lore, as others have said. Or the NPCs in game directly refer to spells, like Holy. Other things like Fire 2, Ruin 3, etc, I don't think are necessarily said in game, but there's probably a general "fire" spell or so. It certainly doesn't help that a lot of magic was moved and redefined in a Battle Team vs Lore Team shift from 1.0 before and after Yoshi-P, which was then carried over into 2.0 and later.

 

Because jobs weren't actually in the game until patch 1.20, they were effectively only there as NPC skills and were for the most part, their own things. Then classes were reworked to what we have today. So "Flare" might be a named spell, but perhaps "Blizzard" is not.

 

In my own RP, I dabble with arcanima. I usually make reference to geometries for tasks, but I don't typically name anything directly. Each school of magic/techniques likely has far more practices than what we see in game. Battle mechanics are lore-inspired, but I don't think they're necessarily bidirectional.