Multiple Jobs/Classes? Public opinions wanted!

[Reaper]

I want to play a character who is a Mechanist and an Arcanist/Scholar, and potentially adept (not great, but tolerably not terrible) at perhaps a single gathering profession or crafting one.

 

Fluff is that he is an Ishgardian Mechanist who loves tech/magitek and wants to pursue ancient civilizations' knowledge to drive modern tech forward. To that end, he studies Garleans and Allagan technologies, and Nym magics. Once Ishgard signed on with the Alliance, he became an adventurer for Ishgard and signed up under their banner and became an Arcanist to acquire arcane knowledge which may have applicable use for his work.

 

I have a little experience with WOW RP. Back on WOW, the general consensus was "Don't do it", but FFXIV obviously leans towards a more... versatile approach on a class basis. On WOW, the IC Shaman typically focused on one element. If he focused on multiple elements, typically it was considered he wasn't a master of any, but may be very skilled with 2 or even 3. I am curious - if I have the fluff for it, are multiple classes/jobs acceptable? And is the above a generally acceptable fluff reason to do it?

More importantly, in the event I get involved in an IC fight (probably with a person), is it acceptable to use 2 weapons at once if reasonable? For example, could I either enchant my spellbook to follow me around while I use both of my hands on a pistol so I can both shoot and have access to my spells a moment later (or alternatively just have a pistol in one hand and the book in the other, though I understand the issues with books requiring 2 hands to accurately change pages and get where you need to go, and guns needing 2 hands to reload), rather than the mechanic of being forced to draw only 1 class/job's weapons at a time?
Another application of this would be - can I have my turret and faerie/carbuncle out at the same time from an IC perspective?

Thoughts? Opinions? Ideas? Emotional outbursts? I want to hear them all!

[Kieron Lohengrin]

Class changes are established in canon. Tataru does it several times in the MSQ, as does Thancred. The latest expac trailer hammers it home even further with Derplander. 

 

That being said, the question is how adept do you want your character to be known at different skillsets? Some players have every DoW/DoM/DoL leveled to 70 but still have their toon act IC like they have only one vocation. 

 

My toon doesn't introduce himself as a DRK/SAM/MNK, but others know him as someone with a reasonable amount of skill at using either katanas or greatswords, and a family background of a grandfather who was a Fist of Rhalgr. So he's decent at punching and swords, with an IC flavor of using both in combat. He's no doctor or wizard, though - he asks others for their respective expertise in those fields. 

 

Then speaking from the DM viewpoint, whenever a player asks me if they can try something from their field of expertise, I always allow the attempt - but I'm under no obligation to tell them the DC of what they're trying, or to hint that only a pure expert could do it. It will vary from clique to clique, but, for example, the healer who establishes himself as the healer who runs a clinic all day or is a combat medic for one of the Grand Companies, seems much more deserving of plausibility than someone who's 70 WHM on the side but never brings it up until that super special moment. 

[Valence]

Keep in mind that jobs are rare and often forgotten jobs. Some more than others. Some are pretty common in the far east but still gated behind various things like social status (samurai) and secrecy (shinobi). Some are even illegal (blm, whm). Some are just starting to be discovered (mch) or rediscovered (smn, brd, etc). Some are just left among a handful of survivors or practitioners (monk, drg), or just one survivor (rdm).

 

Being the practitioner of a job, can be a rare thing, depending on the job. Two of them...? All of them? Warrior of Light material. THE WoL. Not the 1.0 WoLs.

 

Classes are very common though. Then it's mostly a matter of believably. How much time do you think it takes to master swords, katanas, daggers, polearms, unarmed combat and martial arts, a wide array of different magic sciences..? Depends on what everyone considers believable or not here.

[Nebbs]

My advice is don't be a job or class, be a character. Be a person that has some life experience and some skills first and then associate yourself to one of the class/job/guild ways of life while not being defined by it.

 

[Reaper]

@Nebbs, that's the approach I was going to take. But I just wanted to make sure that technically having the IC skills of two separate fields of study is acceptable in FFXIV.

 

I'm in Pathfinder and I try to refrain from ever using class terms ICly. I know that classes/jobs (especially in FFXIV) are just fighting styles, primarily. In FFXIV, not every man who holds a sword and shield is bound to be a paladin or a gladiator, though theoretically there are some striking similarities for everyone who holds it.

 

In this case, the character would actually have worked at Ishgard's gun factories and the Arcanist's university.

Technically, had this character before and RPed him much the same way - but I was a light RPer back then and after a 1 year hiatus I want to get back in with Med/Heavy RP this time.

 

@Valence

I have no intention of going all out ultimate multiclass bad RPer style. I remember a guy back on WOW named Knight who leveled 1 of every class to max level and RPed as being literally everything. Great guy, but very questionable RP. That is not at all my intention here. I just feel a man dedicated to science/magitek would happily study the dualistic fields of technology and magical knowledge. Plus, I was thinking of in his youth having something about helping a parent do some knitting, or his father talking about ore mining so he has some small degree of knowledge in one of those fields (one - definitely not both). Fleshing it out naturally. My mother IRL is involved in HVAC, so I know a little more than some other people about it. I also have a friend who works in an HVAC field, and I know nothing compared to him.

 

My character's current IC goal would be something along the lines of scouring Nym to find more knowledge of the Scholars and fairies - as Ishgardian Chirurgeons could probably use the help. Probably.

 

Thanks for the answers and advice, Nebbs & Valence! Really appreciate it!

 

Unrelated question... are there any good RP hubs on Mateus in Ishgard?

[LiadansWhisper]

21 hours ago, Reaper said:

I want to play a character who is a Mechanist and an Arcanist/Scholar, and potentially adept (not great, but tolerably not terrible) at perhaps a single gathering profession or crafting one.

 

Fluff is that he is an Ishgardian Mechanist who loves tech/magitek and wants to pursue ancient civilizations' knowledge to drive modern tech forward. To that end, he studies Garleans and Allagan technologies, and Nym magics. Once Ishgard signed on with the Alliance, he became an adventurer for Ishgard and signed up under their banner and became an Arcanist to acquire arcane knowledge which may have applicable use for his work.

 

I have a little experience with WOW RP. Back on WOW, the general consensus was "Don't do it", but FFXIV obviously leans towards a more... versatile approach on a class basis. On WOW, the IC Shaman typically focused on one element. If he focused on multiple elements, typically it was considered he wasn't a master of any, but may be very skilled with 2 or even 3. I am curious - if I have the fluff for it, are multiple classes/jobs acceptable? And is the above a generally acceptable fluff reason to do it?

More importantly, in the event I get involved in an IC fight (probably with a person), is it acceptable to use 2 weapons at once if reasonable? For example, could I either enchant my spellbook to follow me around while I use both of my hands on a pistol so I can both shoot and have access to my spells a moment later (or alternatively just have a pistol in one hand and the book in the other, though I understand the issues with books requiring 2 hands to accurately change pages and get where you need to go, and guns needing 2 hands to reload), rather than the mechanic of being forced to draw only 1 class/job's weapons at a time?
Another application of this would be - can I have my turret and faerie/carbuncle out at the same time from an IC perspective?

Thoughts? Opinions? Ideas? Emotional outbursts? I want to hear them all!

 

Well, my personal advice would be, don't.  At least, it's fine, I think, for you to be multiple classes, but Jobs are very, very specific and, in the case of Scholar, incredibly rare.  Arcanomancy is widely taught, Machinist is a "new" Job that is actively being taught in Ishgard, gathering and crafting aren't hard to believe.  But all of that plus Scholar is...a bit hard to swallow.

 

Is there a reason why you want to be an IC Machinist and an IC Scholar?

[Reaper]

I suppose not. Thanks for the feedback. 1 job (at least, the non-BLM/WHM jobs) seems to be okay, but multiple jobs is when people are generally less receptive from what I'm seeing.

 

Machinist it is, with studying Arcanomancy on the side to potentially implement knowledge from it into magitek machinery.

[Teadrinker]

When it comes to these kinds of things I think falling back to the storytelling is always how it should be done. This goes for pretty much anything. Classes, Jobs, disabilities, professions. Basically anything you can think of. What is the narrative reason for the specific things you're adding to your character? If you can't think of one and how it adds to your story then it's probably just cumbersome and you can drop it.

Tacking a lot of flair onto a character doesn't make them interesting to a reader and this is a pitfall I think a lot of writers and RPers succumb to. On the other side of this coin, it's always very rewarding when you can think of ways to weave new things into your story and how they affect your character, their emotional state and why this new addition is necessary now.

 

[LiadansWhisper]

2 hours ago, Reaper said:

I suppose not. Thanks for the feedback. 1 job (at least, the non-BLM/WHM jobs) seems to be okay, but multiple jobs is when people are generally less receptive from what I'm seeing.

 

Machinist it is, with studying Arcanomancy on the side to potentially implement knowledge from it into magitek machinery.

Some jobs are also a lot easier to come by than others. For instance, Machinist is brand new, and the soul stone you receive is basically blank (because that's how new the job is). So it's relatively easy to do that.  Same with Astrologian - there's a school for it in Ishgard proper.

 

Other jobs are way more esoteric or rare, such as Scholar, Summoner, White Mage, and Black Mage.  Those are "lost" arts that are difficult to come by, and in the case of Black Mage, without an actual soulstone, you immolate yourself.

[Valence]

Little nitpick but many people heavily confused machinist with magitek, and that couldn't be furthest from the truth. 

 

As far as I know, machinist doesn't use anything magitek. No ceruleum power, no ceruleum engine, nothing garlean or Garlond/Scaevan made. Even their tech inclined science and tools are powered literally by magic and aether through the aetherotransformer. MCH is not that far from a magic caster in its own right, but here with heavy mechanical contraptions instead of canes and jewels and books. It's some kind of hybrid between tech and magic: they use the same resource, but churn it into devices and doodads instead of casting properly.

Edited November 19, 2018 by Valence

[Reaper]

@Valence
That is intriguing.

I had assumed that MCH was Ishgardian magitek, a different school from Garlean magitek and with different results but along the same premise.

To clarify, magitek is more like actual functional technology (requiring a physical power source and what-not), whereas Machinist is literally magical technology?

@LiadansWhisper
To clarify then, out of curiousity, would any old soul crystal work theoretically for the machinist's aetherotransformer? And how do Soul Crystals come into being? Is it like a 1/100 people create one on death, or more like 1/1,000,000?

@Teardrinker
That's the plan! I always just like to know before overstepping my bounds. To reference WOW, I saw someone do just that once. They RPed a battle-mage which did not exist (it did canonically, but there was no in-game class for it). The two character classes they used to best represent that were the paladin & mage. While it's entirely possible to canonically be a plate-wearing battlemage in that game, because of the fact he was on a paladin and RPing he was using arcane magic a lot of people unfortunately considered him a troll and refused to RP with him. From the sound of things, this game is more open to creativity such as that since the primary concept behind classes is not just "This is the weapon you use", but is instead, "This is the style/technique that accompanies the weapon, of which there may be many" - which is honestly more true to the D&D concept of classes than any other MMORPG I can think of offhand (aside from maybe GW2 where a different class can pick up environmental weapons and use them differently based on their class - but that's irrelevant to this discussion).

[LiadansWhisper]

13 hours ago, Reaper said:

@LiadansWhisper
To clarify then, out of curiousity, would any old soul crystal work theoretically for the machinist's aetherotransformer? And how do Soul Crystals come into being? Is it like a 1/100 people create one on death, or more like 1/1,000,000?

 

No, "just any old soul crystal" wouldn't work for Machinist, primarily because their soul crystals are manufactured and completely blank.  If you came by another soul crystal, it almost certainly is already aligned to another Job, with memories and abilities already stored inside.

 

I'm not entirely sure about the second question. It's never been entirely clear in the quests I've followed, but I bet @Sounsyy would be the one who would know.

[Valence]

19 hours ago, Reaper said:

@Valence
That is intriguing.

I had assumed that MCH was Ishgardian magitek, a different school from Garlean magitek and with different results but along the same premise.

To clarify, magitek is more like actual functional technology (requiring a physical power source and what-not), whereas Machinist is literally magical technology?

@LiadansWhisper
To clarify then, out of curiousity, would any old soul crystal work theoretically for the machinist's aetherotransformer? And how do Soul Crystals come into being? Is it like a 1/100 people create one on death, or more like 1/1,000,000?

 

Magitek is a word personally tailored by Solus when he became de facto emperor of his new empire of Garlemald and decided to be the patron of a promising engineer that came with the combustion of ceruleum, thus creating the first ceruleum engine. The garleans having always lacked in the magic and aetherial manipulation department, he coined the word as a way to replace magic by technology, thus Magitek: a technological way to come on par with magic. 

 

Magitek primarily concerns garlean technology based on ceruleum. The only magitek contraptions "commonly" (not that common though) used in Eorzea so far are mostly ceruleum engines used in Highwind Skyways airships or more generally still handcrafted things incorporating said engines (like the infamous ship of captain Carvaillain having a secret ceruleum engine under the deck). Rowena's commissioned ironworks sets, or the recent scaevan sets, are also using magitek. Another example: the falcon mount is Magitek, but Garlond's manacutters certainly aren't since they don't use any ceruleum engine but just eorzean traditional wind crystals (that's my take on it anyway).

 

To be honest it can almost always boil down to "Does it uses a ceruleum engine? Then it's magitek". 

 

Note that Death Claws are magitek only because they run on a crude ceruleum source of power, but the technology inside is aetherochemical, which is a widely different beast (allagan). 

 

Ishgard industry is quite advanced in regards to most of Eorzea free cities, but it's mainly based on brute force and mechanical devices rather than ceruleum. They make heavy use of firesand to power their cannons and dragonkillers, but not ceruleum.

 

Any old machinist soul crystal would work for a machinist aetherotransformer. Problem is, the job is brand new, so there is none of those around. 

 

Soul crystals come into being by being manufactured. Since apparently it's widely possible by today's eorzean standards since Haillenarte's Skysteel manufactures them for machinists, it's possible to craft empty soul crystals. The soul crystal technology is an allagan invention that was at its origin used by summoners of old. 

Edited November 21, 2018 by Valence

[Reaper]

@Valence
Thanks again. Now that you mention it I'm suddenly remembering the entire lab quest chain (/dungeon?) pertaining to Empire R&D in their captured states.

Really appreciate this lore lesson! It's a pain being gone for a full blown year, forgetting 90% of the lore (or more) and just remembering the core parts of the story.

 

The Skysteel factory produces both tech and magitek, correct?

I'm going to have a go at this. Please let me know if I am wrong!

Magitek Vs. Tech (Tech meaning mechanisms, blackpowder/firesand, and basic non-magical chemical reactions)
Pistols and cannons function identically to how they do IRL and use firesand and what we would consider chemical/combustion reactions IRL to function.

Magitek functions on power and, while not necessarily magical, is effectively advanced engineering using ceruleum (or in the case of the aetherotransformer, aether) as gas. Their Magitek Armor uses ceruleum, but once again their cannons are just basic firing mechanisms arguably no different than the dragonkillers employed by the Ishgardians... or basic combustion.

As such, pistols and cannons do not meet the definition for modern Garlean magitek engineering as it's not powered, but it is still (of course) technology.

Aetherotransformer  (https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Aetherotransformer )

"The aetherotransformer is a magitek device invented by Stephanivien de Haillenarte of Skysteel Manufactory that converts the wearer's aether into lightning-aspected energy, which is in turn stored within the transformer's crystal cores. The machinist then draws upon this accumulated energy to both power and enhance her unique repertoire of weapons, requiring her to master skills far beyond those trained by any mundane musketeer." (quoting the wiki link above)

Or is a fancy way of saying, device that turns magic into electrical power. This is used to empower the auto-turret, and is only controllable/useable with the power of the Soul Crystal. This is where I get the idea that magitek is anything empowered by fuel or magic (though Garlean magitek is always fuel), or that 

Aetherochemistry 

A separate branch altogether that may share similarities with the Aetherotransformer science, and was the method by which ancient Allagan tech works. Theoretically, useless to Garleans as it seems to use some method of aether/magic to function rather than ceruleum.

 

Machinists 

They specialize in both magitek, and normal tech. They're able to empower their turrets and other creations by use of the magitek aetherotransformer, which converts their aether/"mana" into lightning-aspected energy (i.e. power). They're also able to manufacture and use (with proper supplies and tools) guns and cannons, as well as magitek devices like airships.

With all that noted, it's ill advised to be a class-based character, and is instead advised to be a character-based class...
I think that about summarizes all I've discovered so far about lore and the FFXIV RP environment, if I didn't misunderstand anything.

If all of the above is right, then I suppose I should ask questions about the Arcanist - arcanomancy is applied aetherical knowledge in a variety of other ways into things such as unaspected (or "arcane") damage, manifesting a carbuncle, or healing. Their spellbooks functions to store that knowledge so they can access it as needed and read the "formulas" (or equations or spells) to cast the magic. Right?

[Reaper]

Ah, I found a quote defining Ishgardian Machinistry.
They combine magitek (mana-less tech) with aetherology, to create their own brand/school/technique called Machinistry.

Edited November 22, 2018 by Reaper

[Valence]

Well consider me stumped then. I stand corrected, I totally forgot those quotes. Machinistry does indeed combine magitek with aetherology.

 

The Skysteel used to also be a big producer of heavy equipment for Ishgard military.

 

Quote

Once dedicated to the production of traditional arms and armor, House Haillenarte's Manufactory has since become a center for the research and development of ballistas, cannons, and other advanced armaments designed to fell dragons. Recently, they penned an agreement with Garlond Ironworks allowing them to begin mass production of small-scale airships (note: manacutters I believe)

 

The Magitek Reaper Armor actually uses magitek weapons. The main cannon is hard to tell, but the secondary weapons are photon streams. Nero's personal Armor also makes use of several variations of the main Magitek Cannon: Diffractive Magitek Cannon (a scattered shot) and a High-powered Magitek Cannon being an overload of the main cannon dealing a huge beam of energy instead. As seen here

 

There is also a quest in the Fringes where you're asked to use a modified Reaper armor to fire electrical arcs on quest targets.

 

Arcanists, like all casters, have to get a clear picture on their head of what they are trying to cast. Since it's final fantasy, and reinforced by the Polyglot trait of black mage, as well as silencing abilities, spells require the caster to speak in order to manifest said spells. Conjurers and Thaumaturges then use their canes and staves as mediums to channel aetherial energy. Arcanists use the ink in their books that just conveniently represent their spell repertoire indeed, where arcane geometries are what define every spell they use. 

Edited November 22, 2018 by Valence

[Sounsyy]

To quickly clarify some of the above, think of Magitek™ like a brand name.

Garlean-made technology is called Magitek. It came about at the turn of the 16th century when someone decided to use ceruleum as a fuel source in an old steam engine. Since then, they've made leaps and bounds in their technology - a lot of that progress thanks to 1) reverse-engineering and refitting Allagan tech they found in the Burn and other annexed territories, and 2) Cid and Nero's fierce competition in the Magitek Academy which fueled the empire with tons of new designs.

 

When Cid defected from the Empire, he brought Magitek technology with him to Eorzea. Before 1562 (15 years ago), Eorzea had almost no exposure to Magitek technology. Cid came to level the playing field knowing we wouldn't stand a chance against Garlemald otherwise. He founded the Garlond Ironworks and worked closely with all the nations to improve their airships, weapons, and infrastructure in some cases using Ironworks Magitek. Machinistry is a product of that sharing of technology. Ishgard already had guns and ballistae and dragonkillers pre-Ironworks. Ishgardian dragonkiller canons even used ceruleum as a fuel source (which is why it's important to make the distinction that Magitek = Garlean brand, and not Magitek = ceruleum, because Eorzeans have used ceruleum for other applications for some time). But Cid's Ironworks came and improved upon them using Magitek technology. That's how Machinistry came to be. 

 

Here's an older post about Machinists for more info!

 

 

As for Arcanist, you can find just about all the information you need in this post on Arcanist Lore and Mealvaan's Gate!

Hope this helps, @Reaper

[Reaper]

@Sounsyy

Thanks for the input and links!

@Valence
Thanks to you too for the discussion!

[Reaper]

After reading the Arcanist link, I can clearly see how the applied magic of the Scholar/Summoner/Arcanist is inherently unable to be used in practicality in conjunction with Magitek. That said, from a practical standpoint, those who have an adept understanding of it can still summon Carbuncles and are exceptionally good with numbers.
Machinists, as field-engineers, would theoretically need to be at least acceptable with numbers, so knowledge from one could theoretically help enhance the knowledge of the other even though there wouldn't be any real "play" between the two schools of thought.

I think instead of what I previously discussed, I'll have my character studying at their guild. Would be practical from his perspective to have both a carbuncle and a turret. Though especially at the start he would be fairly unskilled at it unless he finds some sort of IC mentor for the art (either player or NPC, preferably a player). 

 

With that stated, that births a new idea about being a Machinist/Alchemist at the start of my RP experience in FFXIV on Mateus. The alchemist pairs nicely from an IC standpoint as my character could be trying to focus on being a munitions specialist, and trying to find the right ingredients to push his weapon's to be the best they can be. Granted, he would be studying in that guild as well - perhaps not even as a member. The alchemist's also have their own automatons, which would intrigue him coming from Ishgardian Machinistry to see how other countries implement their tech.

[Sounsyy]

The mammets you see around Frondale's Phrontistery are actually made by the Goldsmiths' Guild in Ul'dah. Mammets are "Clockwork" technology, which is the Eorzean standard. If you see technology around Eorzea that doesn't immediately strike you as Ironworks-improved-upon-Magitek, then there's a good chance it has Clockwork workings. Clockwork machina have a heart (a core that is highly aetherial in nature. in one quest we supplement a heart with a piece of high grade materia) that can develop a pseudo-AI over time, but it powers the machina by sending aether down tiny wires made from hyperconductive soft metals. Mammets of this type are pretty widespread around Ul'dah, and many of the Automaton Servitor minions/dolls you collect are made by the same clockwork principles. So if you're looking into a supplemental technology, try looking at Goldsmithing. That's not to say that you can't still do Alchemist for the crazy experimental science side of things. That's not what the Phrontists are really about, despite what the early alchemist quests show (they're primarily doctors) but the field can have applications that your character might be interested in. 

[Reaper]

@Sounsyy

Sounds intriguing. Thanks for the ideas, again.

I completely forgot they were goldsmiths guild and not alchemy. One of these days my knowledge will come back to me... a 1.5 year hiatus really takes a toll, lol.

[yhvh13]

I've branded my character simply as an "inventor".

 

Her default job would be MCH because it's the most tech-oriented, but I've thought of dabbling in some concepts to incorporate other job's to this inventor fantasy:

 

1) She would use the MCH's aetherotransformer and a Magitek Rod to convert it's energy into offensive Thunder I, II, III, etc spells, granting some sort of BLM fantasy to the tech aspect.

2) She would reverse-engineer the aetherotransformer and some Tech-like WHM weapon to draw ambient aether and convert it into something resembling conjury spells.