Multiclassing IC or: How I Avoided Becoming God

[ZindelloTarantella]

This is a topic that is actually pretty near and dear to me. Granted I'm sure it's been touched on before by far better people than myself but since it isn't in the obvious first few pages, I'll bring it up here.

 

Essentially, here is my question; how do you handle a character that multiclasses?

 

I've found this subject to be a bit touchy at times, so I'll approach this delicately. I have found (and this is just my experience) that in games that allow a player to swap classes on a whim (Final Fantasy XI, Champions Online, Final Fantasy XIV, The Secret World), that roleplaying characters tend to also have all of the multiclassed abilities. Now, on the surface, I understand this completely. I build my character's skill sets around what I see them having. For instance, I took up some Arcanist so Tarot could have magical 'tricks' and took Lancer to reflect Tarot's skills with a staff. Once Rogue/Ninja drops, he will move to that and likely stay there for the foreseeable future.

 

But here is where my question comes into play. I know full well that a number of people like to complete everything. Max all classes because they are there and to get all the amazing gear etc. I know I likely will too since I love playing dress up. But what about all those skills?

 

Is it okay that your character who has played as a dragoon suddenly 'has some knowledge of thaumaturge'? That sounds reasonable. But then he is a lancer, and a thaumaturge AND a Monk AND a Bard AND a White Mage AND a Paladin. Suddenly, the character is ranked alongside someone as powerful as Louisoix simply by their complete breadth of knowledge in every aspect of adventuring.

 

Now, I know what you're thinking; 'Oh Tarot, why don't you just play the way you want, and I will play the way I want and we can be friends! 8D' (And yes, you totally think in emotes! I CAN READ YOUR MIND EMOTES!)

 

Well, yeah, sure we can, but part of the problem is a bit of player ego mixed with logic. One more or less must assume that time passes in Eorzea despite us maybe not noticing it. Days pass--technically weeks and months pass while you're leveling. Within the game's system, you're actually taking quite a long time to level cap any given job.

 

Now, add in something else. How you divvy your time. If you're character is a Paladin, and they decide, 'You know, I should learn how to use a lance'. That means they are dividing their attention between the two weapons to learn them both to a point where a player can consider them 'useable as a threat'. But then he/she decides they want to pick up magic too. Suddenly, their attention is divided three ways--because even though you have learned a skill, you CAN lose ability to wield a sword if you don't practice.

 

What all of this leads to is this; giving a free pass to a character becoming skilled or well-versed in every class/job especially in the course of a week or so to the point where they can use said class/job effectively in battle decreases the viability of any player. It makes the players that specialize in a single class or two essentially useless in out of dungeon RP and it makes suspending disbelief in the characters that do learn this plethora of classes that much more difficult. How can a White Mage be something special when Chester B. Arthur over there can heal AND exploded things AND stick things without any consequences? If you were going to pick one to be on your team, who WOULD you pick? You'd pick Chester because Chester can do all those things when he really shouldn't be able to, right? I know I would.

 

Wrapping up this rant explaining my feelings on the subject, I want to hear others opinions. I've discussed this with people on both sides of the fence but never within the same community. This provides a good opportunity to hear the opinions from folks that have played FF XIV (and possibly XI) and what they think on the matter.

 

Again, not saying that the 'All I Learned' style is necessarily bad or wrong. I just want to hear how folks handle this situation or explain it--maybe there is some logical answering that I missed and if there is, I would like to hear it! :thumbsup:

[Unnamed Mercenary]

I handle this myself by playing a character that would technicaly hae been outside the standard classes.

 

To give a little background, Franz doesn't fall into any of the categories because he is a Garlean, and a "pure-blooded" one at that. He never had any form of aether manipulation, and would have been raised with entirely different lessons on combat, and a slew of different weapons. Within this scope, I've said he's good at using a lot of different physical weapons, but isn't particularly amazing at any of them. If there were one weapon he'd specialize in, it would probably be the axe, but that's simply because I like WAR tanking with the character.

 

But then there's magic, where things get much more complicated. I've set this character up to have gained the ability to use aether, but there must also be consequences for it that a normal Eorzean wouldn't understand. Conjury and Thaumaturgy are simply not possible. They require a more innate and natural understanding of using ones aether/the aether around you, and that is simply not thing I feel he should have been able to learn. To this point, arcane magic, based off of mathematical formulas fits best. (And actually, is perfect due to the reason he gained the ability in the first place). He's still in the process of learning how to apply the knowledge he knows, but without that little extra "I'll just stick aether here and make it work", not everything works as well as expected. Case in point, a healing spell or two has backfired before, he accidentally summoned a fairy and had no idea how to unsummon her, and for the love of the twelve, don't ask him to even try healing someone who isn't a hyur of sorts.

 

The only place where I could see a larger amount of multiclassing working together is in regards to crafting and gathering classes. Naturally, a master craftsman would probably have picked a couple fields to get really good at, but a working knowledge of the others seems passable in my book. Why shouldn't a leatherworker also have enough smithing knowledge and weaving knowledge to make their own products that much better? Or why wouldn't an alchemist have some culinarian knowledge? Both would certainly make use of similar practices and potentially have some overlap. The same could be sad for gatherers. Perhaps a that alchemist/culinarian likes obtaining the freshest ingredients possible, and gathers everything himself. It wouldn't be crazy to assume that the person could tell if some herbs, a minerals, or some fish were better quality than others.

 

TLDR Version: Combat should have a limit for mastery, as should magic to some extent. Crafting and gathering allow for much more overlap, unless you are literally perfect at them all.

[Nero]

I'm not sure I can give much genuine advice on this, but let me go ahead and throw in my opinion.

 

1). What purpose does multiclassing serve for the character? That is to say, what aspects of your character do you want the multi-classing to reflect? Why do you want them to multiclass?

 

For example, you can demonstrate that a character has worldly experience by knowing how to use many varieties of martial weaponry, or that a character is very dedicated to be able to study multiple forms of martial or magical combat.

 

It's also important to note that you don't have to justify every class your character has in-game. To try to justify everything is essentially arbitrary and serves no purpose from a writing standpoint, and also reeks horribly of Mary-Sue. 

 

To use Nero as an example, in-game I have every Disciple of War and Magic levelled to 50. However, IC he fights mostly with his fists, an axe, or thaumaturgy. This thinly-spread array of combat skills is meant to be a reflection of his wandering--he went from learning with his fists in Ul'dah, to learning with an axe in Limsa Lominsa, and cycling back to studying thaumaturgy in Ul'dah. He is, essentially, three different classes. 

 

However, he's absolutely not above average in proficiency. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that he's below average. A lot of people underestimate the amount of time it takes to genuinely master a skill. Were he to fight a reasonably experienced pugilist or pirate or thaumaturge player character, he would lose. His versatility loses when pitted one-on-one against specialisation. 

 

His fist-fighting is scrappy and unrefined, his axe blows focus purely on strength and not technique, and he can cast fire, blizzard, and thunder spells, but his limited time spent studying thaumaturgy (five years) means he'd never be able to cast Thunder III or Flare or Manaward IC. And sometimes his spells will fail due to a lack of focus or concentration.

 

2). What does your character lose as a tradeoff when they multiclass?

 

For me, personally, I always treat this part like assigning attribute points in RPG games. For a character to have a proficiency in something, there must also be an equal deficiency in some other area.

 

To use Nero as an example again, he can't use bows. At all. He hits himself in the face with one every time he tries to shoot. Even though I have Bard levelled to 50 in-game, I do not want him to have that proficiency because using a bow is difficult. Being a good archer requires dedicated training; Nero's only studied thaumaturgy with any amount of dedication, and all of his other fighting skills are from combat experience. This means he can fight reasonably well but lacks any sense of finesse or technique one would gain from practise. He also can't use swords with any degree of proficiency besides "swing the edge at people", he can't use arcanist's grimoires, or conjury. He can stick the pointy end of a lance in people but can't do much elses with them.

 

To bring back up my previous point, about reflecting an aspect of your character: let's say you were using a character who is very dedicated. If they spent their whole life training with every weapon and form of magic, they would be deficient in social skills due to all the time spent just practising instead of interacting with other people or building a social life.

 

Anyway, hopefully my rambling made a bit of sense in all of that. Multi-classing is a tricky thing but is possible without making your character appear as "good at everything".

[ZindelloTarantella]

Another issue I failed to touch on is age. This again has happened in all MMOs that I've played in, where I've seen people in their early 20s (I'll pull from Champions Online this time) be: Master detectives, munitions experts AND know magic enough to blow up buildings. And this is without adding in things like what a comic-book setting and wave away like alternate universes or time travel.

 

I like the idea of the overlap in crafting/gathering for the reasons given and since they rarely enter into mainstream RP (I've yet to see anyone thundering around in, say, the Grindstone proclaiming how amazing their fishing skills are), I forgot they were there.

 

I think that Final Fantasy XI did at least that much right in that you could combine classes but the secondary class could never exceed half of the level of the main class. That is, if you were a levelr 50 White Mage, then your secondary would never be above 25.

 

Pathfinder/D&D etc does it well. By multiclassing you're hurting yourself as much as you help. You will never learn the Level 20 special skill for the class if you take even one level in another class. I think that the main problem is reconciling time. It's easy to say 'I've been doing this for years' in a game that has only been around for a year. No one can say 'No you haven't.' Not saying that the person claiming their character is uber experience if deliberately god-modding or anything, mind you, but that it is just something we take for granted and don't give much thought over.

[Tiergan]

The way Nero handles it is very similar to the way I run things as well.

 

When it came to deciding what 'multiclass' skills Tiergan had, I just went with what made sense for his history. Tiergan was a gladiator for a long time. He was taught how to use multiple types of melee weapons. That said, while he's very skilled at using the blade (his primary weapon for most of his career), and pretty good at hand-to-hand combat (lots of fist-fights in his history) to reflect his two favored modes of combat -- Tiergan's just a novice when it comes to other weapon types. He knows where the dangerous end is supposed to go, but other than that - if he does well in combat with an axe or a lance it's purely because of combat experience and not because he actually knows how to handle the weapon.

 

To compensate for that, Tiergan is absolute rubbish at magic and archery. He just doesn't have the proficiency for casting spells at all and would be more liable to hurt himself than an enemy while attempting to use a bow. Additionally, ranged attackers are his biggest bane in combat. He HATES fighting mages. Archers are only marginally less frustrating, because he carries a shield, but only marginally so.

[Bumo]

Just because your character has "maxed all the classes," "gotten all the amazing gear," and learned "all those skills," doesn't necessarily mean you need to reflect that ICly. That's where you start falling into sketchy territory, and why you might be having a hard time trying to justify just how a character can be proficient in all these abilities.

 

If you do want your character to have skills they've learned from leveling different classes, consider limiting just how proficient they would be in those techniques. If your character is a Paladin, it wouldn't be a stretch to say that they're likely fairly good at hand-to-hand combat (something they'd have to know if they lost their weapon!), and learning the spear would not be terribly difficult. You might not bounce around like a Dragoon, impaling enemies with diving strikes, but anyone can reasonably thrust a spear and understand rudimentary techniques with it. It's not even something you'd have to enlist with the Lancer's Guild to learn.

 

As for magic, that one's a bit trickier because there's a lot of discipline involved in learning it, although we have seen evidence that some people can be naturally proficient at magic; Slyphie, for example, from the Conjurer quest line. But again, if you're trying to avoid godmode, perhaps you're just able to pull off minor feats that are unrefined but serve in a pinch, or you're passable at a certain aspect of magic. To use your example, Chester B. Arthur might be able to heal things, explode things, and stick things, but how well can he do any of them? Having enough magic potency to heal a tiny cut is a lot different from being able to mend bone or repair grievous injury. You might be able to make a tiny explosion that can serve as a distraction, but you may not be able to call down a meteor. And again, anyone can swing a sword or parry with a spear at range--but how well can they do it against someone who's devoted more time to it?

 

Regarding player age and how they're able to be experts at anything (or many things) in their 20s, again it all comes down to how much time and talent someone has. It depends on how their character has been written. A "master detective munitions expert with enough magical talent to destroy buildings" might not actually be as far-fetched as it sounds depending on how much training and time this character had devoted to those skills. If you're becoming a 'master' at things in the course of a few weeks or months, that's when it becomes eyebrow-raising.

[ZindelloTarantella]

Regarding player age and how they're able to be experts at anything (or many things) in their 20s, again it all comes down to how much time and talent someone has. It depends on how their character has been written. A "master detective munitions expert with enough magical talent to destroy buildings" might not actually be as far-fetched as it sounds depending on how much training and time this character had devoted to those skills. If you're becoming a 'master' at things in the course of a few weeks or months, that's when it becomes eyebrow-raising.

 

Re-reading what I wrote when presented in the light you gave does make one thing occur to me. While they may be excellent in these skills, how much would their SOCIAL skills suffer? Wizards are notorious for being anti-social to the point where it's almost a trope; spending all your time shut up with books is the high fantasy equivalent of nerdom, which is NOT a trait known for having a particularly high social skill level. Nowadays that isn't the case as much since 'Nerd' or 'Geek' has shifted in its meaning, but you get my point.

 

So if your character is dedicated to learning all of these things before they hit the age of, say, 25, that would leave very little room for social interactions, leaving you at best socially awkward or at worst, crippled. Hmm, this is an interesting angle. Glad you helped me see it! 8D

[Kellach Woods]

The whole point of the system is essentially to reduce the need for alts. Which is cool on a gameplay aspect.

 

If you want to play that you've done all that and are thus a master of everything? I'm not obliged to like it. I'm not obliged to play with you. I'm not obliged to even acknowledge it.

 

For example, I personally plan on having Kellach max out both SCH/SMN in addition to WAR. Mostly because his story has him going to Limsa to become an Arcanist and be distracted by a bunch of Yellowjackets that encouraged him to join up with the Marauders instead. So he took the long way there. Obviously, to be efficient at these three roles, you need skills from outside the scope of the character.

 

I just ignore that for the sake of RP. I have canon classes and fanon classes

[Verranicus]

I think the player needs to know when to limit themselves for the sake of being realistic. I personally RP my guy primarily as an ecologist/author who just happens to have knowledge of thaumaturgy and just enough of an idea how arcanism works to heal scrapes and bruises. I have a bunch of classes at 50, but other than the ones mentioned I ignore them.

[Kellach Woods]

Just the Hand/Land disciplines should take a lifetime to master one, normally.

[Verranicus]

Just the Hand/Land disciplines should take a lifetime to master one, normally.

 

Dunno how it taking longer to master swinging a pickaxe than advanced mathematical spellcasting makes much sense, honestly.

[Rosekitten]

A friend of mine actually plays a character that 'studies' all combat and gathering forms for his research. Granted they also play the character as being fairly weak in most of these classes. IC their main class is a mage but more of a researcher then someone who willingly goes out to seek use of their magic skills.

 

My personal thought on this in and ooc is that you don't have to reflect all of your maxed skills ic. I know I don't. I'm missing three classes to get to 50 still and even once I get them there I will likely never mention them IC.

 

IC Lorraine is a Mrd. Chances are she'll never progress to being a War. Not something she has her heart set on or has the talent for. Her fighting skills are normally only used if she can't avoid a fight or if someone is in need of aid and she can lend her skills without the pair of them getting killed. I mention in her back story she knows basic lancer skills and I sometimes bring them into play if I rp a fight out. Altering how she would use her axe instead of going off of just the skills at hand. But even with training for years with her weapon of choice she isn't what I would say overly skilled or a master of the weapon. 

 

Ic she more or less stays to smithing ( I lump the two together because they are similar). She won't ic go gather the materials. Sure Ooc I do in almost all of my free time but ic I state there is a supplier due to the amount of time and dedication she puts into her work. Being a smithy is something she's trained as nearly all of her life and she can still improve. 

 

Not trying to tell anyone else how to think or handle things but this is just my thoughts/feedback on the topic.

[ZindelloTarantella]

Just the Hand/Land disciplines should take a lifetime to master one, normally.

 

I agree on the hand stuff, for sure. Land is a bit more dubious since yeah, you might need time to learn when, say, a particular fruit is at its prime, or where to mine for a particular ore, but these are things that can be taught. For instance, as a farmer, if you are told when the season to pick apples is, you know when to expect to see them as being at their ripest (I know I may be simplifying things but the fact is, that is more or less how it works).

 

Actually making something FROM said apples, however--knowing how long to cook them to get the taste that is right, or developing a particular kind of stitch that is stronger than another. Learning how to stitch very quickly, or how to effectively cut corners without actually losing quality--these are things that a craftsman must learn more or less on their own.

[Verad]

"Realism" is generally not something with which I concern myself when it comes to choosing how experienced a character is. "Verisimilitude" or "Plausibility," the more-subjective younger-brothers of realism, don't come up as much either, given how widely audience expectations can vary in both counts. Generally, I do one of two things with my characters when I want them to have multiple skillsets:

 

1. Play them as old enough that Western roleplayers would find their knowledge of multiple skillsets to be plausible. A shame given the emphasis on youthful prodigies in these kinds of games, but the game itself isn't my audience.

 

2. Play them as incompetent enough that I can have them learn skillsets over the course of roleplay, rather than presume prior abilities.

 

In both cases, my primary concern is audience expectations. It requires a bit of legwork at first to figure out what the general trends in an RP community are with regards to what is and isn't considered acceptable, but it yields better results for me than hewing to an outside standard of realism that may be challenged the instant I attempt to do something.

[Marisa]

Powerful characters are, in my mind, about as fun to play as a bucket of water. Adversity is the core of a good story, and mankind's strength comes from our unity and bravery. Being a 'prodigy' lessens your need for other people, which is bad. 

 

I take it to the other extreme. My characters always start off terrible at almost everything. Sometimes they gradually get better. Sometimes they don't. Ryoko knows about 3 spells, and she's powerful enough to kill the frogs in Lower La Noscea. Her treasure hunting has, thus far, netted her 50 gil. My last RP character, in GW2, was a terrible swordsman and an opium addict who never had any money because he couldn't gamble to save his life but he'd never say no to a round of cards. 

 

So yeah, you've got every class at 50. Ignore some of them. That's how I do it, anyway.

[FreelanceWizard]

I generally don't have an issue with powerful characters, but then again, I spent a lot of time RPing in CoH where those were the norm ("You're a super-soldier from another dimension with a bow that shoots archers, who have bows that shoot witches? Cool. I rewrite minds with a thought for a living. Wanna get pancakes?"). The trick is to make sure that the power isn't a Solution for Everything and that you have appropriate weaknesses and flaws. After all -- and at the risk of invoking Comic Book Fan Ire -- even Superman is interesting when the stories focus on his flaws, and Marvel's made a business out of showing really powerful people laid low by sidethinking and their own problems.

 

With that in mind, I personally try to write any character that's powerful in one area as having significant weaknesses in other areas. If they have ways to circumvent those weaknesses, those workarounds have their own problems -- they're fragile, difficult to employ, and most importantly don't bring the character up to the skill of someone who learned it and practices it "the hard way." The more powerful a character is, the more and more severe the weaknesses I apply to them are.

 

Another approach that works, especially in conjunction with the "balancing weaknesses" approach, is to "turn down" the "RP power" of things your character does but isn't specialized in. Just because you have the class at 50 doesn't mean you have to RP it with that level of power. You could call yourself a "dabbler" who has some training, but not a high level (or even largely competent level) of expertise.

 

What informs both of these approaches is viewing character skill from a different tabletop RPG standpoint -- your "class" is just points in a skill, and you have a finite number of points. To me, it's not like D&D-style multi-classing, but instead just sticking a couple of points here and there to reflect limited expertise (a "White Wolf" approach, for those familiar with the system). You put a lot of points into your specialty, but you don't have enough points to specialize in a lot of fields.

 

As a side note, it may just be me, but I largely don't care about the age of characters. Final Fantasy heroes are typically quite young compared to Western fantasy heroes with rare exception. As long as there's a narrative explanation for the skill displayed and the character fits into normal FF age ranges (16+, typically) I accept it as a trope of the setting.

[Erik Mynhier]

I dabble in all the crafts, am a lv50 miner, goldsmith, pld, with whm unlocked and war if i bothered to. So im pretty spread with ooc skills, but IC, Erik is a PLD, who's mother taught at Stillglade. So he is a boss at sword and board, with a very, very limited knowledge of conjury. Now he does have non-game skills. A 20 military vet gives him a tactical mind, also he was highly educated so he is book smart over all. And he's just cleaver in general. Instead of giving him all thesed game skills i opted to keep it simple with the skills, and just give him a strong mind. Knowledge is power.

[Aya]

Aya's multi-classed: Dancer/Barmaid.  I find this difficult to work into RP, but generally most people are accepting :-]

 

There! I contributed

[Berrod Armstrong]

Hmm. 

 

I believe that sort of thing is at a player's discretion. As long as the player remembers to keep things in moderation and avoid having their character become some all encompassing omni-classed god-man it's fine. 

 

It's fine for someone to have been training to become a little of everything, a jack of all trades yet a master of none. Versatility is wonderful, and I'm pretty sure some adventurers would actively seek to diversify their own skill sets to become useful in more situations and get more work. From a player perspective, a bit of caution is always advised. While being able to fit almost every role may make for abundant roleplaying opportunities, one must remember not to be too pushy about it. It may deny others the opportunity to join in! 

 

For example, Connie Conjurer and Larry the Lancer are walking down the street when suddenly, BAM! Larry suffers from sudden, story related injury ("Ouch, my feels, they hurt!"). Connie is a Conjurer, but suddenly Evan Everything shows up ("HARK, I CAN HEAL THIS MAN'S FEELS.") and tries to heal Larry, then carry him to safety because he's also a strong gladiator -- and also fend off enemies with his bare fists because he's a pugilist, too. That, in my opinion, is an unwise way to go about doing it. While Evan could have lifted and protected the pair, there was no need for him to invalidate Connie's role by also healing.

 

The decision of taking a toon's gameplay classes and making them IC is ultimately a player decision. Again, once it is taken with discretion! That's the only 'should' I would insert there. Always consider that as a roleplayer, one shares the stage with many others and must at times make compromises to make sure everyone enjoys their slice of the pie.

 

As for age? I'm always tempted to eye roll at the 16 year old master monks and 15 year old battle hardened veterans, but you know what? If a 9 year old six/seven chakra monk comes to kick Berrod's ass I'd probably roleplay with 'em instead of fussing to myself about it -- but that's just me. I have this internal 'do I gripe, or do I get some roleplay from this' scale. Afterward, I can have Berrod either go around telling an unbelievable tale (generating MORE RP ("What? You're crazy, you damn thug!")) or keeping a SHAMEFUL SECRET (character development!).

 

I play Berrod as a very young man who was once a very skilled monk at a reasonably young age. His level of skill was from a combination of one on one training, and the aid of a soul crystal. He can't remember most of what he learned, so he has to rediscover everything -- and that's going to take time. In the meantime, he's dabbled in several other areas, including the gladiator arena, the marauder's guild, archery and lancing. His skills in some are decent (marauder) and he just SUCKS at others (gladiator, archery, lancing). I have plans to develop him in other 'jobs', but of course, it will take time.

 

So in the end, play it however you like! Just have consideration for when you must interact with your fellow roleplayers. It's all about fun in the end!

 

ffffff...so much typing *wheeze*

[Stormwind]

To me, it really matters on how the person plays the character and how their back story is set-up. I have two young characters that I play, one a monk and the other a Paladin, both are in their early to mid twenties and both are still very new at their professions (despite the monk being level 50).

 

Alexander on the other hand is in his mid to late 50's approaching 60. He has spent his entire life studying magic and the aether so his mastery of black magic (thaumatergy), has branched into other areas of study, namely conjuring and more recently the aetherial manipulation that arcanists use. These came fluidly, in my opinion, as he branched out, studied and gained more knowledge about magic, the aether and its uses thus why I consider him an archmage. Again, this is a lifetime of study and research he has put into these things. Now Alexander is in no way a physical fighter, he has no real martial skills to speak of, so I consider that the counter-balance.

[Norna]

Sometimes one can look at the real world to get some form of idea of how much a person would be able to do (even if it is without the aid of aether and echo). Take knights for example.

 

By around 20-23 years old, they were knighted and had learned swordplay, jousting (lances), horseback riding, archery, courtly manners (whether they'd follow them is another matter), hawking (this was a common hobby among pages, I'm told by history books), hunting and a couple of other things.

 

Of course, they started as pages around age 7, but it should give some idea.

 

Some Shaolin monks start training at age 3 and are considered good enough by 11 to demonstrate their style for the public as an example.

 

Disciplines of Magic is a bit harder to find an equivalent for, but arcanists could be considered magical mathematicians, and if they immersed themselves like monks and knights in their education, it would probably take about 4-5 years to master, if not less (remember, today our education is spread all over our teachers' schedules of many students, if there was only one class to concentrate on, and every sunlit hour of every day was math hour, lots of ground would be covered much more quickly).

 

Thaumaturgy and Conjury seems to be about the same but opposite ends of the same education (Conjury teaches to mend and heal with external power, while Thaumaturgy teaches destructive power from within oneself), they both also seem to have some ecclesiastical purpose. I'm thinking around 5-6 years for that (again, could be less), considering that they need to learn application of their powers as well (assess injuries/corruption, control of destructive power) on top of the ecclesiastical duties.

 

Now, if we were to add all this up, we'd get around 30 years of education to have mastered all the classes to a point, and that only if there is no cross-class perks (conditioned body from knight, balance from monk, reasoning and logic from arcanist, elemental knowledge, tuned to aether from magic and so on. Do we even know if echo works on math? Because that could help with arcanima).

 

The problem isn't really a character that is trained in a lot of disciplines. It is a character that's mastered all the disciplines, have a developed social network outside the disciples, an rich adventuring history and other time consuming things that would get in the way of learning those disciplines.

 

And even if they're trained in all the disciplines until mastery? There is knowledge, and then there's experience. A career student of a monk will have a harder time making their punches land in the optimal area even if they know where they should punch, than a monk who have fought many enemies and know how to compensate for enemy movement in life-or-death situations.

 

So for me, it isn't unrealistic that a multiclass character would exist. It would only be unrealistic if they know what to do in every situation, never make a mistake and just generally be perfect before age 50 (we must allow for them to learn how to walk, talk and eat first, right? And then they study, and then they experience the real world). Also, in-universe, you'd likely not be considered an expert without a lifetime's study in the relevant areas.

 

Of course, this is all assuming a character who was in the position of being a full time student.

 

As and aside: DoL and DoH would take a lot longer to learn and master than DoW and DoM, judging by the real world equivalents.

[Flickering Ember]

I admittedly glazed over a lot of what was said so my response here is based heavily on previous discussions. It's less of a post directed at this thread and more of my thoughts that were helped formed by previous discussions.

 

 

I try to ignore things like power play and just think about what kinds of skills my character has. I don't consider their power level. I don't go out of my way to bring my character down to counterbalance any RPers who go a little too overboard with their character's skills. I think about how exactly they fight, what techniques do they prefer, etc. I don't truly believe that mastering more than one thing is an impossibility but I also don't believe that just because you can in game doesn't mean you should. 

 

Additionally, MMO classes have a very cookie cutter way of fighting. Not all adventurers who use the same weapon are going to fight the same way. Ember for example uses her fists as weapons. But she isn't practiced in forms, carries a weapon for when her fists aren't good enough, and is willing to apply poisons. So I tend to divert my characters' abilities from their in game class quite a bit because I'd rather view my characters as people than X class. 

 

 

Disclaimer: And by "you" I mostly actually just mean "me". >.> Pre-work post, cough, cough.

[LiveVoltage]

OOC wise, I would have to say Inessa can pretty much do anything and everything, as she is the only character I work on and RP with.

 

ICly, she is a semi-Dragoon, with mixed skills and incomplete training as a Dragoon, but has access to most of their basic techniques, such as Jump, Elusive Jump, etc. She also dabbles in swordsmanship (Gladiator) and has a minor skill set for cooking.

 

 

I think it really depends on the type of character and what their role as a character is. For combat characters, its alot more of a challenge to not make them a battle sue, but generally, combat characters are powered up by nature. Story's center around conflict and both opponents need to be strong to attempt to trump the other.

 

As for craft and land disciples, wasn't Cid (Character from the main story) like a master craftsman in all the disciple's of the hand classes? If so then it is certainly possible to have a character that is purely craft based, but they most likely sacrifice any ability to fight combat wised, and they probably don't have a social life, since they most likely have given every waking moment to their craft's.

[111]

I'll echo what other people said about not letting game mechanics overly drive RP.

 

I think just because your character can do certain things, it doesn't mean they're multiclassing. For example, my character is shown to be no slouch with her fists, but that doesn't mean she's a pugilist or a monk. She's just pretty good at throwing a punch or a knee. Paladins can't do that in game terms, but it's pretty reasonable thing for every fighter to know.

 

Same thing with magick, Nat can cast the equivalent of cure I. She's not a conjurer, or a whm. All Paladins theoretically know a little healing though, so she can heal small wounds.

 

I'm of the opinion that no one should have multiple Jobs though. It really cheapens the idea of them if people can pick them up just like that. However, everyone can obviously RP what works for them.

[LiadansWhisper]

Same thing with magick, Nat can cast the equivalent of cure I. She's not a conjurer, or a whm. All Paladins theoretically know a little healing though, so she can heal small wounds.

 

Conjury is portrayed as possibly the easiest discipline of magic for most people to grasp.  Most people, unless they're completely unable to feel/interact with aether, are able to pick up Conjury even if they cannot, say, grasp Thaumaturgy because of issues with their own internal aether.  That doesn't mean they can do serious healing, but it does mean that Cure I, a weak Protect, maybe a little Stoneskin (to portray the elemental aspect of conjury) are well within reach of most characters as long as they are willing to learn.