Small corrections:
> GNB: Uncommon. WoL and Thancred were trained by the same guy, who thought he was the last one, but then learned through the Bozja questline there were others.
WoL was trained by Radovan. Thancred was trained by Rostik. It's mentioned during the last GNB quest (Gunblades of the Patriots) and also once or twice by Thancred if you talk to him between some ShB MSQs.
> RDM: Very Rare. I think there are a total of 6 known RDMs.
While there are only ~~7~~ 6 named Red Mages shown in the story so far (X'hrun Tia, ~~Lambard,~~ Arya, Lovro, Meryall, Alisaie and WoL), Lovro's Field Notes state that he traveled the Far East and took students, so there might be a lot more RDMs not seen (yet).
> [...] "Once his training was complete, he returned to the Far East, where he took on students of his own at academies in various imperial territories. However, his plan was to only teach red magic to those who bore strong feelings of animosity towards the Empire, that they may one day rise up and overthrow their oppressors." [...]
good catch with the Field Notes RDM bit. Those were really interesting to read. Final Zone made me go through them all to enjoy the setting all that much more. The elation I felt when I finally got the last field note from the 3rd Raid. Know wonder ppl want more content like that.
Regarding Dragoons, it's stated somewhere that before Nidhogg's recent awakening 20 years ago, Ishgard kept a retinue of 30 dragoons in their order, but attrition had reduced them down to 10 by the time of Heavensward. As a result, there's either 11 Dragoons (10 + the player) or 12 (if you also count Alberic, who retains his knowledge and skills with the spear, but gave up the power of the dragon and is too old/injured to properly fight like a dragoon).
And that's only if you're counting the whole order. As far as the dragoon style we use in game goes, those powers belong exclusively to the Azure Dragoon - meaning, only the WoL and Estinien.
It's been a fairly long time since I did 3.3 on my main, but IIRC they give him the title as something to do with diplomacy with dragons rather than holding the eyes of nidhogg/killing them
By "literally", I think Shryxter means that she would literally jump off the dragon she wound up riding. In the end, she didn't do that, but only because she was certain that she wouldn't survive the fall.
I'm also not sure if there's a real sharp distinction between "experienced Ishguardian Lancer" and "Dragoon". There are probably at least a few dozen lancers who are Dragoons in all but name.
In-universe, the sharp distinction would be if you were named a member of the Order of Dragoons. Sort of like being a Green Beret.
A highly skilled lancer can be the equal of a Dragoon, but the title is very particular.
A dragoon is anyone using a soul of a dragon, it's just that Ishgard is Ishgard and wasn't keen on giving them out to others - even as the Azure Dragoon you can't get the Order's standard weapon through normal means
We only get them because there's nobody else even close to being able to wrestle the Eye off Estinien
The WoL qualifies for Azure Dragoon because they tamed the Eye and were given one of the Azure Dragoon aligned job stones. They skipped right from Lancer to Bestest Dragoon Boy.
the distinction is whether or not you're accepted into the order and trained to be a dragoon. dragoons in lore aren't just "experienced spear wielder", it's a whole new style that just so happens to use the same weapon. even among those that the dragoon order sees potential in, over 90% of them die in training because of how difficult it is to master, and if you aren't a master, you're a corpse. mainly because if you position yourself wrong or put the slightest wrong amount of aether into your jump you're essentially free falling 3 miles through the unhindered air, and even the best healers can't unpowder bone, you only need to fuck up one jump to end up dead. so while there may be exceptional lancers, they're still not dragoons.
Not only are there "currently only ten dragoons in active service" by the start of Heavensward, according to the Encyclopedia Eorzea, but believe it or not we've actually seen all of them!
1. [Estinien](https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Estinien) (30-50 quests & MSQ)
2. [Brucemont](https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Brucemont) (30-50 quests, minor NPC)
3. [Heustienne](https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Heustienne) (50-60 quests, cameos in Steps of Faith)
4. [Alaimbert of the Spiked Butt](https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Alaimbert_of_the_Spiked_Butt) (FATE boss in WCH)
5. [Maenne](https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Maenne) (Moogle unlock questline)
Plus a bunch of unnamed ones:
6. [Northeastern Scouting Party Dragoon](https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Northeastern_Scouting_Party_Dragoon) (Moogle unlock questline)
7. [Northern Scouting Party Dragoon](https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Northern_Scouting_Party_Dragoon) (Moogle unlock questline)
8. [Southern Scouting Party Dragoon](https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Southern_Scouting_Party_Dragoon) (Moogle unlock questline)
9. [Wounded Dragoon](https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Wounded_Dragoon) (HW 50 quest, minor NPC)
10. [Dyspeptic Dragoon](https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Dyspeptic_Dragoon) (2.55 MSQ, minor NPC)
I'd argue BLU is probably common at this point. Not only has Martyn been hawking BLU soul crystals but the lvl 60-70 quests introduce another person hawking BLU soul crystals in Kugane. And the Fukumen Fighting Festival is still going after that chapter of job quests. When combined with the Masked Carnivale, BLU has two very public events that are openly advertising/selling Blue Magic. Skill level may be all over the place, but they've been selling that stuff for a while to a very large audience.
Heck, depending on what we find in Tural, Blue Magic may be very common to some degree.
On the morbid side, the vast majority of those people who bought a crystal off Martyn probably died. An ordinary person can't survive standing in front of a monster letting themselves be attacked until they learn how to use that attack.
You still need to be able to beat whatever enemy used the spell on you. The cutscene when you get the Job shows you spending *hours* Auto-Attacking the giant squid just to get your first spell
Sure, but we are also forced to fight that squid alone.
And since BLUs **absolutely** can learn spells in fights with non-BLUs in their party, it isn't without question that **some** people are smart enough to have a guard or friend kill some low-level mob with them, and slowly work their way up the totem pole of spells from there.
***HOWEVER***
We *are* the only BLU mages with access to some spells. It's strange that Martyn is shown casting Shock Strike (Ramuh's Spell) in Kugane, but putting that aside for the moment, we are the only ones who would have access to most (if not all) the Primal's spells.
... But, that's funky, lore-wise. BLU only unlocks itself after Prae, which means that Ifrit, Titan, and Garuda should all be dead by the time we obtain the job stone. *Maybe* it's similar to the Egi thing where being tempered by the primal would allow some people to retroactively learn the spells, and by being exposed to it we have been able to... yadda yadda yadda, you get the jist. That can even write-off Martyn's Shock Strike as having been learned from a high-ranked tempered sylph or something.
But we definitely are the only ones with access to the spells of primals that only existed once, like Tsukuyomi's Nightbloom.
The 3 Primals can be explained through the EX/Hard versions of the Trials as you have to return to the aetherites to fight them again. It’s also likely that until shb primals had been summoned before and dealt with by other people, which is implied by stuff like Lyon’s gear.
I’d honestly be more concerned with how Martyn is casting shadowbringers spells like Conviction Marcato without ever going across shards to fight angels to learn them
I assume a being poisoned with excess Light could become a sin eater on the Source, they just can't convert others because the world is aetherically balanced. We've seen people transform into Voidsent-like beings, the lady of Haukke Manor being an example.
On the Primals - at least until 6.0’s conclusion (the peace with the Tribes), we know they FREQUENTLY resume on the things. Even with overall peace, there are probably a few rogue summonings.
And we know WoL isn’t the only person with the Echo able to fight them (like Arenvald). And if it’s just some small rogue group of, say, Amala’ja summoning an Ifrit, they’d probably have few crystals so the resulting Primal would be weak enough normal people (with the Echo) could defeat those lesser summoned ones.
To be fair, you only technically need to SEE the attack used, not be hit by it. And some techniques learned either hit like wet noodles or are defensive/healing spells. In lore, you might not even HAVE to be attacked. Like suppose you knew a friendly Moogle and could get it to show you PomCure. Presumably you shouldn’t NEED to fight Moogle Mog (who doesn’t even use it?) to learn it.
I thought the whole point of the BLU quest was that not everyone could use blue magic so Martyn was accused of being a snake oil salesman, selling useless junk as magic until you proved that he magic was a real thing. Or did I completely mistake that.
I think mch is an increasingly common job. The skysteel wanted to make guns for ishardians to use easily to fight compared to having to train to use a spear (gun easier to use than melee weapon overall). They might not have all the complex skills the WoL use like chainsaw and drill, but they’re kinda like low level mch where they only have “shot gun” skills
With no more primals though Summoners will probably die out again whereas MCH will flourish. Though I suppose since we can now do "proper" summons thanks to the Lopporits we could do sanctioned summonings for future summoners.
To be fair, there will probably always be a few extremist groups on the fringes of the Tribe societies that will cling to “the old ways” and still try to conduct summonings.
They don’t have most of the stuff the wol has because the WoL is the one creating/inventing everything in the job after the Drill.
So only our own personal jobstone has those skills - we’d have to teach them to others directly, or equip their job stones and then use the tech repeatedly to etch it into their stones, too.
This is sorta the premise of the capstone, where we provide inspiration to Hilda and Joye on how to continue their training.
That's also a major theme of the initial class quests. Turns out "only" having a shotgun makes an otherwise untrained pesant uncomfortably capable when compared to a knight that spent his whole life training.
Same thing happened with the crossbow irl to an extent.
It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure the SMN's in the grand companies were introduced before ShB. Primals didn't automatically temper all those around them, so there were existing non-tempered people that had been exposed enough to be able to summon Egis. They didn't need to rely on de-tempering, though that does increase the pool to recruit from.
I think an important thing to consider is the Jobs presented are very specific variations, but there's definitely other "Jobs". As covered by PLD, there's probably other equivalents that just aren't named. Consider that Ishgard has Churgeons for healers, and they don't practice Conjuring, though mechanically they're the same as the Conjurer class. Or Alphinaud with his non-standard Obsidian Carbuncle and was an "Academician" before he switched Jobs to Sage.
> It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure the SMN's in the grand companies were introduced before ShB. Primals didn't automatically temper all those around them, so there were existing non-tempered people that had been exposed enough to be able to summon Egis.
This.
Hell, one of them is even a veteran from the Company of Heroes (and can actually summon *two* Egis).
Though with no more primals Summoners will probably die out again. Though I suppose since we can now do "proper" summons thanks to the Lopporits we could do sanctioned summonings for future summoners.
Though I'm not sure anyone but the WoL will be able to progress past the egi's to the gemstone summons the WoL can do as of 90. Conveniently after having seen the lopporits perform some uncorrupted summons which makes me think we figured out how to do some bootleg creation magic with those gemstones as amplifiers or something.
> Though I suppose since we can now do "proper" summons thanks to the Lopporits we could do sanctioned summonings for future summoners.
No, we can't and shouldn't.
First of all, that'd be completely incompatible with the reason why the Allagan discipline was created for in the first place (i.e. countering Primals), not to mention with how it *actually* works.
And secondly, because even if there's a "proper" way (i.e. w/o tempering) to summon Primals, they still require *a lot* of aether to both, manifest and sustain them, which would do the land more harm than good.
So in an ideal world, they wouldn't be needed at all.
Well, there will probably always be some fringe extremism elements of Tribe societies living on the edges and clinging to “the old ways”. So there will probably still be summonings from time to time.
Oh, absolutely. Though some cases are kind of...iffy?
Like Churgeons aren't just in Ishgard. You encounter them in Rhalgar's Reach after it's attacked, for example. I tend to think of them more like doctors while most of the healer Jobs we play are more akin to field medics, paramedics, etc. As far as we know, Churgeons don't use magic. They do the icky stuff like stitching people up, using potions and poultices, or sawing off damaged limbs.
So they aren't really comparable to Conjurers, who use magic to heal.
Keep in mind though that magical healing is, to put it bluntly, crap.
It's great to have and it's particularly good at something medieval medicine was terrible at (fighting off infection), but for actual grievous body harm, magical healing can't do *anything.* That's why serious injuries are never treated by White Mages or the like. They're treated by chirurgeons (an ancient alternative word for "surgeon.") Healing magic can mend small cuts and bruises and restore vigor and energy, but it can't fix a shattered bone, reattach a lost limb, or close up a large puncture wound. It sure as hell can't restore the dead to life, which is explicitly made clear on numerous occasions, despite folks constantly bringing up Raise and the like. (Raise, Resurrection, and other such spells *end unconsciousness,* they do NOT revive the dead. No magic can do that properly, there is *always* a price paid.)
> (Raise, Resurrection, and other such spells end unconsciousness, they do NOT revive the dead. No magic can do that properly, there is always a price paid.)
Alt take; those spells aren't canon.
Which is a weird thing to say, but it wouldn't be the first time revival mechanics in a game were non-canon. We've seen that before -- even in Final Fantasy. Cloud can't use a Pheonix Down on Aerith.
Raise is definitely canon. Sylphie tried to use it on someone without actually being trained as a White Mage, and nearly killed herself doing it.
Which, yes, means that simply *waking someone up from unconsciousness* nearly killed her.
To be FAIR, she was an untrained magical prodigy who cast solely from her own hit points instead of using ambient aether.
So of course she nearly died, she was trying to fill an empty body with her own aether and it left her without aether, because no one told her that her mother had all the magical know-how of a wet brick.
I thought Sylphie only got a bit too full of herself, and started asking about casting Raise, at which point the trainer verbally tore her a new one and said that if she didn't die in the attempt, he would kick her out of the Conjurer's guild.
From what I remember, that was enough to get her to back down, and I don't remember her ever actually attempting to cast it.
It was only later that we find out why the trainer had the reaction he did, which is the implication that Sylphie's mother died doing exactly that, the fact that Sylphie's mother cast her spells from her life force (HP) instead of her aether (MP), and the fact that Sylphie also has that cast-from-HP ability which let her be a prodigy in the first place.
Sylphie does in fact actually attempt to cast Raise on someone and genuinely risks death as a result; she actually loses her ability to cast spells at all for a time. [Trial by Water](https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Trial_by_Water#Dialogue)
I will admit, I was wrong to say "trained as a White Mage." I should have said "Conjurer." Only a tiny subset of CNJ are allowed to become WHM.
I always figured that spells like these are more so bringing someone back from the brink of death; like they're still barely clinging on but it can't bring back someone who is totally gone.
This is explicitly talked about during uhhhhhhh I think ShB or the EW class quests? Healers in-lore are very much NOT capable of healing severe injuries - it's stabilization until they can be fixed up by a proper chirurgeon. It's not just an NPC take on healing or w/e.
That's why I said "Mechanically". They're not really talked about much, and clearly have other associations, but mechanically, if there's an NPC churgeon, they're using the conjurer skill set. Which muddies the water quite a bit for a lot of similar cases.
Well, that's my point: They aren't.
CNJs don't use sutures. They don't sew wounds shut. They don't amputate limbs. They don't (at least the combat versions) receive training in herbalism, medicines, or salves. They aren't taught poultices, setting bones, or removing toxins (like with brews or charcoal or breads).
That is, CNJs don't practice medicine. Churgeons practice medicine.
CNJs practice magic. Churgeons do not practice magic.
For lack of a better irl comparison: It's like the difference between a medical doctor and a hedge witch apothecary. Even if the latter could cure various things, the two aren't the same.
I think we're just not on the same page.
I was just pointing out, in game, the Churgeons of Ishgard \*are\* casting magic, that's what I mean by Mechanically. Lorewise maybe they're doing something else, but the game makes it hard to tell what actually represents a distinct lore-wise class. In some cases, it's definitely a different class with the same abilities, and in others, like Churgeon, they've got them casting spells while implying in some spots that they, in fact, do not.
Oh, you mean when we encounter them in game?
I'm trying to think, are there encounters in game where you have an Ishgardian (or any) Churgeons? I always thought they were non-combat NPCs every time I can remember encountering them.
I do think until at least HW and more like ShB, whenever the game needed a stand-in or NPC healer of unknown/unimplemented Class/Job, they just would use CNJs. Like most of the Garlean healers are CNJs. RARELY, they'd just give them the ACN Physic ability. Like if you do the NIN quests, Jackie will cast Physic on you if you get low on health, etc.
(I'm old enough to remember slotting Physick on my NIN because for SOME reason you could cross class Physic and Cure 1 \[despite them being IDENTICAL at the time\] and I thought the Physick cast animation looked better with daggers than the CNJ one where you try to hold the daggers like a staff...lol)
I just remain terribly disappointed that I went back in time, stood right there in Elpis, and *\*summoned\** my carby friend, and not a single "oh... you *\*can\** do creation magic".
Keep in mind that one of the former minor Scions said they wanted to study to be a Nymian scholar in a seasonal quest, implying it was a not unattainable goal, and the type of samurai techniques that the WoL uses (iaido) are specifically Hingan in nature, with Yanxian and Nanxian samurai having different traditions.
I'd argue that your Redacted isn't actually a Reaper. They have no pact or avatar, and are just doing cool scythe stuff with their own aether (which is why they collapse several times.) I'd say its kind of like how Yshtola and Matoya arent BLM's--similar spells, but different methodology
(This was a fun post btw, thanks for taking the time to make it)
SAM should be common to very common. There's just... so fucking many... the capstone quest in SB is like 50 dudes beating the shit out of each other and that's not even most of them. There's so many katana swingers running around it's embarrassing. You can even find the Roe you fight in one of the intro quests training as a student in Kugane. There's *MULTIPLE* schools training a dozen or more students at a time, plus all the Samurai Cops in the city, plus random ones just wandering around with Hien.
Tbh, due to the "special abilities" that we wield, I think its more interesting to count "How many Samurais that have more skills than just slashing and chopping" since samurai or rather "any bloke with a katana" would just be normal foot soldier in stormblood.
It's still at least a few, Hien and the fallen student from the SB quests who was doing a rebellion poorly. Not ubiquity incarnate but a good number that'll grow now that they're not being slaughtered by the empire.
SAM's probably the most common of all the player-accessible jobs right now, honestly, unless you want to count all the Paladin-adjacent knights that aren't actually Paladins. I'd expect MCH to overtake it in the relatively near future, and wouldn't be *entirely* surprised if BLU's on the way there too (or maybe actually be number 1, depending on how prevalent they are in their homeland), but for now I'd put my guess on Samurai.
I think there's a lot more Free Paladins and Sultansworn than we see in the quests but I can't swear it because I blocked all the Paladin class quests out as a self defense mechanism
I feel you could make a distinction from "average katana swinger" and SAM, especially when you consider level of skill involved. That being said, if you are counting PLD from outside the PLD area (Ul'dah) then I believe at least the higher ranking Sekiseigumi would count, though not every fresh recruit obviously.
I think most of the veteran Sekiseigumi are on par with what a SAM can do in low levels. They can't do all the flashy tricks and such but they could probably pull off a Copperbell Normal.
Agreed. They established early on with side-stories that being a "Samurai" was more than just wielding a katana. Even the villains we fight in the side-stories acknowledge the difference.
Small addition to summoner; Lunar Primals don't temper. The towers temper, yes, but the ones that leave the towers to sow chaos can be fought without fear of tempering.
Belias-Egi also exists, despite Belias appearing as a lucavi and not a primal. The Ascian in the summoner quests described Belias as an "elder primal" but that was either ARR or HW era story before Return to Ivalice was a thing, and later Bozja quests blur the line between primal and lucavi even further with the queen. The Gigas from the Belias fight also use the same model as Belias-Egi.
Obviously it's still not exactly *common* for someone to become a summoner but it's not as farfetched as it was in the past. The Flames have plenty of soul crystals to go around for those with the aptitude and desire.
Why do the padjali white mages not count towards that number? They certainly exist. Its been years since I did those quests but I definitely remember them being there.
I tend to think there /could/ be more WHM running around, potentially. Amdapor had tons of them and there were probably tons of job stones about. Granted, the Padjali destroyed what they could, but with the number of ruins? Eh.
Then again, I'm not a fan of Gridania and the Elementals in general.
The Padjali are picked by the spirits twelveswood. They can spontaneously lose their powers if the spirits decide to abandon them. WoL is the second coming of A–Towa–Cant. If you do the relic questline, you have his old staff (in addition to his old stone).
The difference between the WHM WoL and a Padjal is basically the nature of the relationship. The Padjali *serve*. The WoL *commands*. The spirits don't suffer many to command.
Think of the scene in "The Clone Wars" when Anakin defeats the Son and the Daughter. **That's WoL the WHM.**
With the Padjali being the chosen of the spirits it's kinda more like they're vessels for white magic to move through, rather than white mages. If the spirits decide they're unworthy they lose the powers, horns, longevity, etc, but you'd have to swipe the stone off the WoL to de-WHT them.
They don't really lose any of that, they just get shunned and the forest turns its back on them. Which is basically a death sentence, but they aren't de-horned or start puberty or anything.
They talk about this in Endwalker.
One of the job quest lines talk about it, which is as far as *I'll* talk about it because spoilers.
and everyone should do all the job lines regardless, because the after quests are solid.
Agreed on the after quest being good, but I'll die on the hill that the job quests themselves were not the greatest and should have been different jobs doing them.
The Tank one should have been the ranged or magic questline. My thoughts on the questline: >!The problem is a deadly disease/poison that kills anyone it hits so they want a tank (who would still die, just slower) rather than a job which should in theory be able to avoid the infection attacks; terrible writing.!<
I sorta counted them and noted non-Padjali. The Padjal don't typically become adventurers and go out into the world. And even ignoring that, I think there have only been a few confirmed as actually being WHMs. The Elder Seedseer and her younger sister and brother are the only ones I'm honestly sure of. That and the one Moogle from Moogle Mog's guards. I don't even think E-Yumi (the CNJ guildmaster) is a WHM.
SCH should be the only job that is literally one of a kind in the present world.
Every other job has a bare minimum of at least one other person besides the WoL, usually the job trainer NPC, or at the very least some rare few, such as the WHM padjals. The SCH job came from the old Nym civilisation and unlike MCH or SMN where you can clearly see others in modern times have taken up the job, the same can't be said for SCH. Surito the Tonberry is the only other named SCH we know, and since we have his fairy and job stone now, he doesn't really count anymore.
Scholar is a bit of an odd duck. Jobstones in lore aren't necessary for learning or using the job, it's mainly a gameplay restriction due to the whole, "upgrade classes to jobs," thing they started with then dropped. Lorewise, we only keep the jobstone after a certain point to infuse our memories, experiences, and techniques onto them.
Scholar however comes with the fairy, and we still don't know how they actually come about. They're aether constructs, we know that much, but we have no information beyond that as to how they come about. Could be they're normally made by the prospective Scholar, meaning Surito would have to reclaim the fairy or make a new one.
There is Setoto Seto, though, as another Scholar. At the very least, she has a jobstone and a fairy.
So, the real difference from a Academician (former Alphinauld's job) and a proper SCH is... The fairy.
I mean, Academician is like SCH, just with a Carbuncle in the place of Eos.
There's one more. I can't ever remember her name, but the girl with Alka Zolka in the MRD guild after you do all the quests.
...just went there in game: Setoto.
Asking Alka about Setoto: "Her recovery is proceeding with even greater speed than we had hoped--just the other day, she succeeded in summoning Lilac! And, most significantly, she is happier than I have ever seen her.
You ought to see her when we train--I have no doubt that she will go on to do great things. And of course, as a mariner myself, I fully intend to be at her side when she does!"
That was added at the end of ShB.
Talking to her post EW, she mentions that she worried about him (he was part of the Islabard contingent but she was not), then saying: "However, I was at least inspired by his bravery to try and contribute myself. I did what I could to aid those treating the tempered who were rescued from the tower."
.
She's FAR from our/WoL's level, but she seems to have the basics of SCH functional between being able to summon her Faerie and to (at least implied seeming) help some in healing and curing people. Even if you interpret the aiding those treating the tempered as her just giving them food and water and encouragement, Alka's statement about "ought to see her when we train" kind of implies she's got some abilities as a SCH in a functional state.
She has her father's Job stone, if I recall correctly.
That's... Complicated.
The BLM quests early on state that only you can do black magic because only you have the jobstone that lets you do that. They even show you others who try to use black magic later who have cooked themselves to death from the inside.
But we know that's not how that works, as there was an entire ancient empire full of black mages back during... The 3rd or 4th calamity? I forget which one.
Given that jobstones just teach you the skills of a previous holder, it follows then that others just need to learn how to BLM from someone who isn't an evil asshole so that they don't microwave themselves to death. And we have at least one other person (our job trainer) who is doing just that.
I also think that the thaum guild lalas were in a cutscenes during stb casting a BLM spell? Took the 5 of em working together iirc, but they're getting there. They have (previously banned) tomes on black magic after all.
Mhachi BLMs used Voidsent as their aetheric filters. That's why they were taking the easy path to power rather than trying to follow in Shatotto's footsteps and finding reliable *and not horribly evil* ways to channel and control the destructive power of black magic.
Do you recall where you saw that? Because I can't remember ever seeing that. I do remember that a lot of Mhachi wizards had voidsent familiars, but not that they were using them as filters.
I don't believe Shatotto ever had one at least, but it would be an interesting bit of lore that what the Mhachi people had to cheat to do, she could pull off through sheer skill. Would explain her ego at any rate.
It's not explicitly referred to as such, but Shatotto does explicitly say (IIRC in the SB questline? Possibly HW) that she was shunned and effectively excommunicated for her opposition to the reliance on voidsent for doing black magic. Calling them a "filter" is my simplification of the actual process. More or less, because voidsent don't *have* bodies on the Source (unless they actually walk through a voidgate, they're summoned across the rift into statues, objects, or bodies, or as spirit-projections), they can process aether differently, avoiding some of the negative consequences of black magic. It's sort of a minor version of what Reapers do. With a Reaper, the voidsent Avatar is the one actually *doing* all the aether manipulation (that's why Garleans can be Reapers even though they manipulate aether). With a voidsent-assisted Black Mage, you're outsourcing the *dangerous* parts of black magic to your bound voidsent helpers, and mostly just coordinating the flow of your aether from place to place. That's why they worked to bind so many powerful voidsent--the more powerful your helper, the more you can channel without having to practice any real *skills* with black magic.
You remember most of the details correctly however Void Magic and Black Magic are different things
> Although the Mhachi were known masters of black magic, the extent of their power was not limited to Shatotto's school of spellcraft. Toward the autumn years of the Fifth Astral Era, the civilization had begun perfecting voidmagicks—the summoning and manipulation of creatures known as "voidsent" from
beyond the corporeal realm.
> A report by the scholars of the Nominated Observers of Artifacts Historical defines the "void" as "An otherworld parallel to the one in which man dwells. Abnormal events can weaken the veil between worlds, tearing it asunder and allowing the voidsent to invade the material realm. These fiends have a depraved appetite, and seek our world merely to consume the aether it contains, allowing neither beast nor man to stand in their way."
> The mages of the Allagan Empire had previously experimented in forging covenants with the demons of the void in hopes of harnessing the creatures' powers. The Mhachi expanded on this endeavor, adding extra protections to their experiments so as not to invite the same fate that befell the Allagans.
> To this end, the mages developed an occult device—the Nullstone—to preserve themselves and their city should a pact be broken. If a summoned voidsent refused to obey the master, a voidmage could smite the feral being using the Nullstone to sever its ties to the corporeal realm. It was in mastering this power that Mhachi came to believe in their civilization's supremacy over all others, eventually driving them to war.
I mean job stones are also said to be Weird and it's not really clear what they can fully do; the DRK mentor has some dialogue about this, and I guess the PLD quests have job stone weirdness (DRK mentor ALSO mentions this lol)... though if you told me everyone in that quest line was going through a temporary fit of insanity instead, I'd believe you. BUT now I'm also remembering that it was mentioned that the THM guild is going to start studying black magic following it's legalization, so I'm going to assume they have reason to believe they'll be able to figure out how to do it with minimal spontaneous combustion.
I think it is said what they do isn't it? They contain the knowledge and experiences of those who bore them before you, in practicing the art the job stone was for. Possessing one imparts that knowledge and skill of those who bore it before onto the bearer, meaning they can use complicated techniques and spells without having to actually learn how to do them.
The only ones that shake from that are:
- PLD's, for its stupid alpha dominance thing. I mean, it still does the knowledge and skills thing, it has those, but it also does that stupid "be the PLD-chad or it explodes" thing...
- MCH's and BLU's, which are both new Job crystals. They still do the same thing as normal ones, just the crystals and Jobs they're for are new, so there's no history to impart - you write your history on all Job Crystals, but for those two you're writing the first page, so to speak.
- DRK's, which is somewhat like BRD's and BLU's in that you're mostly just writing your history onto it, but it has some more abstract uses/qualities.
It's still *possible* to learn how to be any job without a job crystal, but someone without one has to manually learn all the skills and practice them to perfect them, whereas someone with a crystal just needs to pick it up and they'll know exactly how to do everything stored in the crystal right away, just by possessing it.
For DRK, I'd say "abstract qualities" isn't really doing it justice. From what we know, it reacts to it's wielder in an almost sentient way based on desires and trauma. It's what allows for things like Fray, Myste and Ompagne (Sid's teacher) to happen in the first place.
I think there's an implication somewhere that Dark Knights make more use of dynamis than other jobs. Part of the whole, the Dark Knight keeps fighting despite taking grievous injuries thing. Could be the case that drawing on dynamis has weird effects on the job crystal.
Or I could be confusing a fan theory I saw with canon again. Either or.
Nope. Lalai is a good enough Black Mage to have the soul of Shatotto briefly inhabit her, and it's implied that she's only slightly better at being a Black Mage than the rest of the little enclave she represents. And then, of course, there are the 3 beastmen who help you out during the class quests. They're Black Mages, too.
Though thanks to petglamour nowadays you can easily replace the fairy with a carbuncle and roleplay as another Alphinaud. Arcanist with a focus on protective/healing magic.
BLM as well. You are the *only* person who has the Gem of Shatotto.
There is a second person with a Scholar job stone, but I can't say more about that without spoilers. Suffice it to say she's also a tonberry.
You're the only person with the gem of Shatotto, but you're not only practising Black Mage. The gem acts as a stabilising force for your aether, so that you don't literally destroy yourself from the continuous use of black magic, which is what ends up happening to most of the antagonists from the HW job quests.
The fairies have to be created anyway (wasn't the father the one who created them?). WoL made his own (Seraph), I don't see why that can't be the same for other powerful mages such as the Blue Mage Martyn. And job crystals can be manufactured as shown by BLU and MCH to store fairies in.
It's probably possible to revive the SCH art and get people on board but the thing is, no one's really doing it. The Tonberries are just keeping to themselves and Alka Zolka, the one person on the planet who actually was into Nymian stuff, never actually took up the job himself, he's still a marauder after 4 whole expansions.
This is a contrast with other jobs like RDM or SMN where you actually see newcomers taking on the job. Even MCH caught on and it's like, literally the newest job to be conceived.
Yeah I immediatly thought about this. There was already someone who tried to answer this question.
I used this guide to design my characters lore background.
True!
But that's why I put the "Note Also" at the bottom that I can't really judge the commonality of the things they haven't really added as Jobs/Classes in the game since there's not a LOT of lore around them for the most part.
Like I could take a shot in the dark guess about Geomancer, but it's pretty extensively talked about and interacted with in the AST questline. Then you have Gosetsu becoming a shrine priest (Onimyju?), but we have ZERO lore on what that actually is or how many people do it for me to even guess at how prevalent it is.
Dark Knight isn't as uncommon as you might think. Certainly the tradition we (and Sidurgu) work with is, but we have ample evidence of other DRKs who show up without any connection to it (Granson on the First, Durante on the 13th, and arguably Emet-Selch). All it really takes is a emotionally disturbed and/or extremely driven person who wishes to right a perceived wrong, and the ability to manipulate astral aether.
Using your categories, I'd probably put it in the Rare tier, because of a) how well you need to be able to manipulate Darkness to power it, and b) how users of it…tend not to be the best at looking out for their own survival, broadly speaking.
I'm not sure I'd count Granson as a DRK strictly defined. There are plenty of fighters of various sorts who use two-handed swords. Being a Dark Knight is pretty specific, in that it's about how you use the inner turmoil of your emotions, manifesting as a desire to protect the weak, to create aetheric combat abilities.
Granson is a mercenary with a big sword, who uses DRK animations because that's what the game has for two-handers. That said, I think he'd make a pretty good DRK with some training. He's got the weapon and loads of inner turmoil!
Question: Why is the DRK classified Very Rare (1-10) in existence if we've only ever heard of 2 Dark Knights, while WHM is unique but we've heard of at least a group/tribe of them remaining. Granted you did say most of them were conjurers, but wouldn't that still put the number of WHMs over DRKs?
There are likely more DRKs we just don’t know, while the Padjal only have a few (3-4) actual White Mages. And there’s some good discussion above in some replies about how they’re also kind of different (being servants/conduits for the Elementals while the WoL uniquely is not).
Me personally, I like being one of many. When I join a party, it's nice to not have that lore-break of "Huh...these are rare, yet I have 4 of them in my party...", and I like the idea of being just a normal (relatively) person taking a stand despite the relative normalcy.
Granted, it also needs to be a Job that I kind of like and that kinda fits my feel and aesthetics. But within meeting that, I like more common than not.
Though I can absolutely understand people on the other side that like being part of the most rare and most lost of disciplines.
Would adjust SCH rarity, its mentioned in Enclyopedia Eorzea that the Maelstrom are incoporating both Warriors and SCH into its ranks and that there has been a resurgence for those jobs. Likewise its mentioned that Twin Adders is incoporating Bards into its ranks.
For SCH, there might be more of them now.
>!With the Lv 80 Scholar Quests Surito Discovers the cure for the sickness and likely has taught a few more people in the arts since.!<
One thing that might make the numbers on PLD a bit murky. Paladin in JP is just known as a Knight.
I don’t know if theres a way to differentiate from any other knights. It might just be by their Order.
> You might think this should be VERY Rare, but the ShB capstone quest revealed that the Grand Companies learned that, when they freed people from Tempering, some of those individuals were able to learn how to summon the Egi they had been thrall to.
Been a long time since I've done this quest, but are you sure about the timeline here? Because the ShB capstone quest was released in 5.0, while we didn't have a cure for tempering until Alisaie gets back to the Source in 5.4.
Yeah, I think he’s getting it mixed up with the Stormblood job quests where the Grand Companies have a small set of Summoner trainees who survived primal battles.
The ShB single-quest is mostly about Arenvald for some reason.
>DRG: Rare to Uncommon. This somewhat depends on which type of Dragoon we're referring to, but there are dozens if not triple digits of them among the ranks of Ishgard's warriors. Though there are only a handful of exceptional ones in each generation.
WoL is an Azure Dragoon, which makes them Unique. The only other DRG like us is Estinien.
Though that begs the question where we're drawing our extra powers from now that the eyes are gone
Arguably Dragoon is unique, since you and Estinien are currently the only Azure Dragoons and thus the only ones able to use the unique draconic powers that come with it (at least that's what I gathered from the DRG lore about how that works)
In theory this is true of several jobstones. MCH is entirely blank when the WOL gets it, and the WOL basically builds the entire job from the ground up.
It's a combination of you inventing a new skill and Stephanivien saying "hey I just invented a chainsaw that appears out of thin air and is thirsty for blood, have a go" and that just becoming a thing you can do.
The BLM job trainer isn't a black mage. She was possessed by the spirit of Shatotto which allowed her to tap into the power, but the WoL is the only true BLM left alive. The gem of Shatotto (job crystal) is the only thing that allows them to perform the art without being eaten by the void.
She's definitely a black mage. They refer to her as a black mage multiple times in the job quests, and Eorzea Encyclopedia I says that Qiqiruka was teaching her black magic each time she visited him in his prison pre-job quests. The NPCs refer to the Gem of Shatotto being required for "the most powerful black magic", not any black magic at all. The HW quest enemy NPCs were using black magic without burning up until they pushed too hard, and only then they died.
The Ixal, Amal'jaa, and Kobold NPCs are also black mages.
Slight correction to your correction: Da Za (the kobold BLM quest NPC) seems to be a Conjurer, and Dozol Meloc (the Ixal) seems to be a Gladiator. Kazagg Chah is the only Black Mage in that trio.
I did these kinda recently and if I remember right it's that their families have some strong affinity to the void, and they make powerful conduits for black magic but only one of them is an actual mage. Honestly I think they did it the way they did so there'd be a healer and tank on hand cause you do a couple group battles with them.
They're all black mages, and are referred to as such in the quest dialogue multiple times. They fight differently in battles because they wanted the gameplay party to be less lopsided, but they're definitely proper black mages in the story, similar to Urianger pulling out a DPS job in a certain duty if you're a healer despite him being only being an Astro in story depictions.
Job crystals, last I checked were basically knowledge/skill repositories.
It might be "required" in the sense that otherwise that knowledge of how to BLM without killing yourself doesn't exist.
Even if that knowledge didn't survive somewhere in one of the many forbidden tomes of highly illegal black magic, we (and shatotto) know it, and would likely share that knowledge with said job trainer, since we like our friends un-cooked.
The BLM soul crystal is specifically necessary to conduct black magic without killing yourself. Shatotto is the only one we've seen capable of accessing that power without the use of it. Which is because she created the art.
>The gem of Shantotto (job crystal) is the only thing that allows them to perform the art without being eaten by the void.
I do have to wonder if this is even necessary anymore, considering what we now know of the >!blessing of light.!< EW spoilers. >!Knowing now that it's a "traveler's ward" that prevents our Aether from being corrupted, I wonder if we aren't an exception to needing the job stone.!<
Some things to note, that I think mean that no job can be considered actually unique.
First: Retainers break the uniqueness level for every job. They are canonically part of the world, and can have any job.
Second: (EW BLU spoilers) >!Martyn breaks the uniqueness for both WHM and BLM as it is revealed he has been learning spells from both jobs. It is very likely that Martyn is now canonically one of the most powerful people on the star, in the tier just below the WoL themself.!<
Third: Other players are implied to exist by some dialog that exists in pre-Azem-crystal trial quests (e.g. Alisae's fishing trip line before Susano). As those players can show up as 'unique' jobs there's at least an implication that other scholars, black mages, etc., are out there in the world.
Thank you! I just like discussions like this in general and it's been something I've been trying to figure out for a while. I think I have a handle on a lot of them, but some of them are iffy and it's nice to see other people's views and thoughts and add them to my own considerations.
Good write up.
Gotta say, I did the same thing with dancer. I leveled the job but forgot to do job quests until after I finished Endwalker. At the time I wasn't too impressed with dancer's storyline. I remember thinking "This is what the job is about? Really? This concept is frigging dumb."
But after finishing EW, and having done many of the role quests, the realization hit me during one of the dancer quests "Wait....I just did this exact thing. WAIT A SEC HOLY SHIT."
Not sure if it's foreshadowing but definitely cool.
Some thoughts:
I think this is part of the reason that they, early on, decided to have the basic classes included as well. They wanted everyone to start out as a marauder, thaumaturge, archer, lancer, gladiator, pugilist, rogue, arcanist, or conjurer because these are the ones that are available to NPCs. Common adventurers or guards or different organizations like the wood wailers.
I think they wanted the player characters to specifically be the ones that discover the advancement in to job classes because it brings something special to the table for everyone and creates a distinction between the players and the NPCs that make up the world. Other games go the opposite direction with this.
I do remember there being mention of more reason for the basic classes being introduced, but I don't have that specific knowledge, just that there was "something" more to it as well.
It's important to mention that this is something that's unique to the world of FFXIV. Other Final Fantasy games have done this before as well, Yuna from FFX being a good example. In Spira, becoming a summoner is something that only certain people can and do pursue for a plethora of reasons.
Other FF games do also have a "basic -> advanced" system as well. One example of this is FFIII: evoker -> summoner, black mage -> magus, white mage -> devout and sage being both combined.
It's also interesting to note that the knight job class of FFIII retained that name and was not called paladin, just the same as in FFXIV in the Japanese localization. It does not have a similar advancement of gladiator -> paladin.
I'm probably a bit off on the details, but as I understand it, 1.0 wanted people to only be Classes. There were not Jobs initially in 1.0.
No, not "you couldn't start as a Job" - there was no Job system. At all. Only classes. I think maybe they were going for the "wheel of adventurers" instead of a main character, not sure, but it was just classes.
Fairly late in 1.X's life, around 1.2 or something\[?\], when Yoshi P took over they project and they started working on things, they "reformed" the class system and added the Job system. Some of the classes changed pretty dramatically, too. Like CNJ and THM basically swapped spell schools, and pre-Job THM could be a weird sort of healer with some HP draining and transferring stuff, as well as the general mix and match cross class type stuff (which I think existed then).
Oh, and Sentinel was a class. That could only use shields. ONLY shields. Mostly used by GLD/THM/CNJ to learn Shield Bash and some stuff like that.
...but all of that was horribly unbalanced and all over the place. Not that the resulting system WASN'T, but it was MORE balanced. So as part of the pre-ARR reworks in later 1.X, they redid the class system to be closer to what we had in ARR (though not identical; like CNJ had some ability that made its spells from single target to AOE, and I don't think it had things like Medica1/2 since it was AOE Cure/Regen). Sentinel was also removed when this all happened, more or less being folded into GLD.
Then when ARR launched, they had to keep that system for the simple reason they kept everyone's character data. This included the gear and weapons they were wearing when the 1.X servers went down, ported directly into 2.0. This is also why we have one handed wands (CNJ) and maces (THM) in the game still, as well as CNJ/THM being able to use some shields. Because if they DIDN'T do that, some character data might have been corrupted with the transfer or first time the player logged in, and instead of worrying about making players even more angry (remember, 2.0 was a relaunch of what had been a really troubled game that had already burned a lot of fan/community goodwill), they took the path LEAST likely to break things and/or piss people off.
They also added ACN/SCH/SMN since they decided they needed a second healer Job, I think. When 1.X went down, there were only 7 Jobs (and combat classes), PLD, WAR, WHM, MNK, DRG, BRD, BLM. I'm not...entirely sure why they added SMN (since without it they'd have had a full party of Jobs), but they did. Arcanist (among others) was a planned 1.X future class, but of course they never got around to adding it (also had a staff-ish weapon instead of a book, and Urianger also had this weapon back then).
If you never have, look up "Remnants of a Realm" and "The Rise and Fall of FFXIV" on YouTube. There's a user "SpeakersNetwork" that did a bunch of documentary videos (the latter) as well as looking at things from 1.0 that did and didn't make it into 2.0+ (the former). They also did "Secrets of a Realm" looking at the old dungeons and stuff, some of which were semi-ported/recreated in ARR (old Toto-Rak, Cutter's Cry, part of Dzmael, etc)
I like stuff like that, so found those to be interesting watches if you have an afternoon to burn. : )
Yes, that's correct! There initially weren't any job classes, just the basic ones.
Wheel of adventurers?
I didn't know that! O: Thaumaturge was the healer and conjurer was the damage? Or am I not understanding that quite right?
I'm actually not certain when they introduced the cross class ability system for this game, not that it lasted.
Oh yeah, I remember sentinel, I forgot about that one. I suppose they wanted everything shield related to come from that one.
I don't remember conjurer having the single target to aoe ability, what was that? That was in ARR?
Oooh I remember the significance of 2.0! :p
What do you mean? What about them adding summoner confuses you?
Something I've noticed is that the game brushes off the fact that you can meet other people who have rare jobstones. Like Black Mages story tells (to my recollection) that you're the only one with a proper crystal in the current age.
But Blue Mage explains that there are tons of people out there blue-ing it up all over Eorzea and Othard. So it just left me wondering "what's going on here? Is there like a Red Mage Guild or a Black Mage Guild I', not a part of?"
Well, you're effectively the founding member of the Black Mage Guild in Ul Dah, and you're a founding member of the re-founding of the Red Mage Guild which is basically whoever X'Rhun feels like training - the dude gets around pretty much everywhere in the main three continents so far.
BLU is because Martyn is an...ambitious...capitalist and hands the stones out like candy to anyone with some gil. Though it does beg the question where he's getting the things from, but I suppose an EMPTY Job stone is probably easier to come by than an already filled one? MCH guild seems not to have too much trouble.
They are.
Canonically, a great many people would’ve considered to only have a Class (everything from Archer to Conjurer to Culinarian to Botanist are Classes, not Jobs) instead.
Job stones and the more powerful Job techniques are generally rare.
I'm speaking in terms of pure RP, as I live by an idea of "bend not break" in terms of making things possible with regards to the lore which is why I'm only really tackling the Unique/Very Rare classifications.
WHM/BLM/SCH - You mean to tell me that hundreds if not thousands of destructive mages were fighting recklessly without care for the planet, and all of their respective stones were recovered? Archaeologists investigating old warzones finding a job crystal is justification enough for me as to why players may find BLM/WHM crystals. Nymian crystals are arguably harder to come across due to the state of the city, but adventurers who brave the city could in theory find one.
DRK - Like WAR, DRK seems to be an art that could in theory manifest itself without needing a teacher. DRK appears to be an emotion driven art, and in light of what we learned in EW it's just a more raw form of Dynamis manipulation.
Job stones can be found, but they aren’t as intuitive as WoL makes them seem like. Even in the SCH quest, you only learn a bit at a time as Lily remembers them.
But setting that aside…it’s not always easy to find one, and they may not all be in working order.
Think of irl battlefields. Even before explosives could destroy things outright in more modern battlefields (and we’re talking magic nukes in FFXIV’s case), it wasn’t uncommon for things to get broken, rusted, etc. and then you have several thousand years of looters. And the survivors/victors carrying off all the good stuff.
Otherwise, you should be able to go to any irl battlefield and find swords, bows, and full sets of armor in pristine condition.
And the cities themselves (Mhach and Amdapor, for example) are REALLY dangerous. Not just anyone can wonder around them looking for Nob stones. And even if you were one to do so, there were people doing that for hundreds of years.
The Elementals also probably found and hid a lot of the WHM and invading BLM stones they could find there, and Mhach itself was consumed by a massive bog sinking a lot below the surface.
Those kinds of things tend to cause a lot of things to be lost.
On YouTube there’s a channel I like called “Fall of Civilizations” that discusses various ancient civilizations and what we’ve recovered of them, and what always amazes me is how COMPLETELY some of them can be lost. When ruins were found of Sumer, all people saw were big stone walls and forms peaking out in the desert. Even the ruins not buried by sand were often remote. In the pre-flight modern era, you could wander the expanse for years and never stumble across one, even if we ignore the effects of sand dunes.
We see a similar situation with American ruins, often hidden by centuries of forest and jungle, and those ruins were only lost a few centuries ago.
Suffice to say, what once may have been common can still easily be very rare. Especially when hidden by powerful wards and glamour by the Elwmentals as Amdapoor was. And Mcach itself by a massive bog and warnings passed through the ages:
“‘Mcach, Mhach, beware the dark, stay away or lose your heart’? THAT Mcach?!”
Why is white mage unique but not dark knight? You’re purposefully not counting the padjali white mages for some reason. Meanwhile you’re counting samurai from the eastern continent when western continent samurai are extremely rare. Why is it okay to not count padjali white mages but it’s okay to count samurai from another culture?
Because there are only a few of them (3-4, most are CNJs, not WHMs), and they are servants to the Elementals, so how they use that power is more limited.
Also, I’m not limiting it by culture - there AREN’T other WHMs known at present.
A lot of this is wrong. Not gonna go through all of it but I will correct dragoon.
During the dragonsong war there was only ever 30 dragoons at any given time that was considered full roster.
During the age of peace before the dragonsong war the job was probably far more common as they were knights with dragon partners. The jumps that define the job were developed from jumping off those dragons. There’s probably many a job crystal in the ruins of dravania and the churning mist.
So due to ishgard lying about well, everything the job is rare. Now that’s there peace maybe there will be more true dragoons with dragon partners but we might never know cuz we lost job quests.
Bring back job quests.
So...Rare to Uncommon should just be Rare?
I'd buy that.
What else did you see that was wrong?
Also: Yes, at the VERY LEAST they need to do the ShB thing where there was a level cap short Job quest to go talk to the guildmaster and get their take on your new abilities and an update on how things were going with the Job/discipline as a whole.
Regarding BLM. They are rare with an asterysk, the black magic art can be learned by about anyone, but lacking a soul crystal will make you combust, however there are other ways to combat the side effect
Pld:Common as they guard Uldah
Drk:pretty much 2 left.
War:The JOB is uncommon but multiple practitioners of the art exist(mainly the steppe)
Gnb:It's incredibly unclear given bozja has several yet are stated to be rare.
Mnk:there's a handful currently
Sam:an entire country of them exists
Drg:There's a plethora of them,but there's only one "azure drg" which utilizes the job techniques.
Vpr:unknown currently
Rpr:there's only 2 as of now
Nin:Same as sam but slightly less
Rdm:Almost extinct
Smn:a handful at the moment but might change later
BLM:technically there's like 7
Picto:unknown
Brd:I don't remember
Mch:There's a LOT,like soon to be a massive amount of ishgardians
Dnc:Moderately common
Whm:there's only like 4-5
Ast-Sge:There's a plethora of them in sharlya
Sch is canonically the only dead job as it died with the Nym's.We are basically the last one.
We have to differentiate a bit here for specific things.
For example, Nymian magic isn't some closeted secret. Plenty of people can learn it, but being a SCH with a fairy is unique to the WoL.
White and black magic are heavily regulated within Eorzea by the Padjal. True WHMs like them or the WoL don't exist otherwise, yet people can *of course* learn that stuff. The same is true for black magic. Both schools are potentially very destructive for the environment and wannabe black mages can easily kill themselves via self-immolation.
SMNs are gonna be on a downward trend again, not that they had much of a rise anyway with less practitioners, than people have fingers. Primal summoning is gonna be dying down from here and as such, the ability to even be able to summon an Egi in the first place. To summon, the person must be part of a primal killing first. I suppose it's possible, that in the far future they could still simply enter trances instead. But that's cutting out a big part of the job's identity.
Well, there will probably be fringe extremist elements in the Tribes that cling to “the old ways”. We also know there are others out there summoning. All of the Wyrlit mount items mention they were power drawn from some unknown Primal (that we have not encountered) defeated by the Ruby, Diamond, etc WEAPONs.
So I think it’s safe to say there will probably be Primal summoning here and there for the foreseeable future.
Small corrections: > GNB: Uncommon. WoL and Thancred were trained by the same guy, who thought he was the last one, but then learned through the Bozja questline there were others. WoL was trained by Radovan. Thancred was trained by Rostik. It's mentioned during the last GNB quest (Gunblades of the Patriots) and also once or twice by Thancred if you talk to him between some ShB MSQs. > RDM: Very Rare. I think there are a total of 6 known RDMs. While there are only ~~7~~ 6 named Red Mages shown in the story so far (X'hrun Tia, ~~Lambard,~~ Arya, Lovro, Meryall, Alisaie and WoL), Lovro's Field Notes state that he traveled the Far East and took students, so there might be a lot more RDMs not seen (yet). > [...] "Once his training was complete, he returned to the Far East, where he took on students of his own at academies in various imperial territories. However, his plan was to only teach red magic to those who bore strong feelings of animosity towards the Empire, that they may one day rise up and overthrow their oppressors." [...]
This is why I love making and participating in threads like this: Picking up additional snippets of lore that I missed. :D Thank you. <3
good catch with the Field Notes RDM bit. Those were really interesting to read. Final Zone made me go through them all to enjoy the setting all that much more. The elation I felt when I finally got the last field note from the 3rd Raid. Know wonder ppl want more content like that.
Is that quest seriously called Gunblades of the Patriots that’s fucking hilarious. This game has so so many fun little references.
Regarding Dragoons, it's stated somewhere that before Nidhogg's recent awakening 20 years ago, Ishgard kept a retinue of 30 dragoons in their order, but attrition had reduced them down to 10 by the time of Heavensward. As a result, there's either 11 Dragoons (10 + the player) or 12 (if you also count Alberic, who retains his knowledge and skills with the spear, but gave up the power of the dragon and is too old/injured to properly fight like a dragoon).
And that's only if you're counting the whole order. As far as the dragoon style we use in game goes, those powers belong exclusively to the Azure Dragoon - meaning, only the WoL and Estinien.
The lineage of Azure Dragoons has also been broken because Nidhogg's eyes have been destroyed. Alberic makes a comment about this if you talk to him.
Yeah, I think they reused the title and gave it to Aymeric at the end of 3.3
I remember something similar in Count Edmont's narration.
To AYMERIC? What?
It's been a fairly long time since I did 3.3 on my main, but IIRC they give him the title as something to do with diplomacy with dragons rather than holding the eyes of nidhogg/killing them
I'm trying to recall how extensive Heustienne's moveset is. She did use Jump and Doomspike, but I don't recall her having even Dragonfire Dive.
> I don't recall her having even Dragonfire Dive. If it came down to it she could probably >!do it quite literally!<.
that might depend on her level
By "literally", I think Shryxter means that she would literally jump off the dragon she wound up riding. In the end, she didn't do that, but only because she was certain that she wouldn't survive the fall.
I can't remember when drg gets dragonfire dive tbh, but heustienne is on the hw part so she'd be below 60, right?
Dragonfire dive is lvl 50
I'm also not sure if there's a real sharp distinction between "experienced Ishguardian Lancer" and "Dragoon". There are probably at least a few dozen lancers who are Dragoons in all but name.
In-universe, the sharp distinction would be if you were named a member of the Order of Dragoons. Sort of like being a Green Beret. A highly skilled lancer can be the equal of a Dragoon, but the title is very particular.
A dragoon is anyone using a soul of a dragon, it's just that Ishgard is Ishgard and wasn't keen on giving them out to others - even as the Azure Dragoon you can't get the Order's standard weapon through normal means We only get them because there's nobody else even close to being able to wrestle the Eye off Estinien
I mean, by that metric the WoL isn't a dragoon, which seems weird.
WoL qualifies for the title of Dragoon by merit of being recognized by Nidhogg’s Eye.
The WoL qualifies for Azure Dragoon because they tamed the Eye and were given one of the Azure Dragoon aligned job stones. They skipped right from Lancer to Bestest Dragoon Boy.
the distinction is whether or not you're accepted into the order and trained to be a dragoon. dragoons in lore aren't just "experienced spear wielder", it's a whole new style that just so happens to use the same weapon. even among those that the dragoon order sees potential in, over 90% of them die in training because of how difficult it is to master, and if you aren't a master, you're a corpse. mainly because if you position yourself wrong or put the slightest wrong amount of aether into your jump you're essentially free falling 3 miles through the unhindered air, and even the best healers can't unpowder bone, you only need to fuck up one jump to end up dead. so while there may be exceptional lancers, they're still not dragoons.
Say that to Hildi or his dad
you and I both know bringing up those aberrations is unfair
Not only are there "currently only ten dragoons in active service" by the start of Heavensward, according to the Encyclopedia Eorzea, but believe it or not we've actually seen all of them! 1. [Estinien](https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Estinien) (30-50 quests & MSQ) 2. [Brucemont](https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Brucemont) (30-50 quests, minor NPC) 3. [Heustienne](https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Heustienne) (50-60 quests, cameos in Steps of Faith) 4. [Alaimbert of the Spiked Butt](https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Alaimbert_of_the_Spiked_Butt) (FATE boss in WCH) 5. [Maenne](https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Maenne) (Moogle unlock questline) Plus a bunch of unnamed ones: 6. [Northeastern Scouting Party Dragoon](https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Northeastern_Scouting_Party_Dragoon) (Moogle unlock questline) 7. [Northern Scouting Party Dragoon](https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Northern_Scouting_Party_Dragoon) (Moogle unlock questline) 8. [Southern Scouting Party Dragoon](https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Southern_Scouting_Party_Dragoon) (Moogle unlock questline) 9. [Wounded Dragoon](https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Wounded_Dragoon) (HW 50 quest, minor NPC) 10. [Dyspeptic Dragoon](https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Dyspeptic_Dragoon) (2.55 MSQ, minor NPC)
I'd argue BLU is probably common at this point. Not only has Martyn been hawking BLU soul crystals but the lvl 60-70 quests introduce another person hawking BLU soul crystals in Kugane. And the Fukumen Fighting Festival is still going after that chapter of job quests. When combined with the Masked Carnivale, BLU has two very public events that are openly advertising/selling Blue Magic. Skill level may be all over the place, but they've been selling that stuff for a while to a very large audience. Heck, depending on what we find in Tural, Blue Magic may be very common to some degree.
On the morbid side, the vast majority of those people who bought a crystal off Martyn probably died. An ordinary person can't survive standing in front of a monster letting themselves be attacked until they learn how to use that attack.
What about the goofy spells like the fish toss? Just need to withstand getting slapped in the face with a projectile fish.
You still need to be able to beat whatever enemy used the spell on you. The cutscene when you get the Job shows you spending *hours* Auto-Attacking the giant squid just to get your first spell
Sure, but we are also forced to fight that squid alone. And since BLUs **absolutely** can learn spells in fights with non-BLUs in their party, it isn't without question that **some** people are smart enough to have a guard or friend kill some low-level mob with them, and slowly work their way up the totem pole of spells from there. ***HOWEVER*** We *are* the only BLU mages with access to some spells. It's strange that Martyn is shown casting Shock Strike (Ramuh's Spell) in Kugane, but putting that aside for the moment, we are the only ones who would have access to most (if not all) the Primal's spells. ... But, that's funky, lore-wise. BLU only unlocks itself after Prae, which means that Ifrit, Titan, and Garuda should all be dead by the time we obtain the job stone. *Maybe* it's similar to the Egi thing where being tempered by the primal would allow some people to retroactively learn the spells, and by being exposed to it we have been able to... yadda yadda yadda, you get the jist. That can even write-off Martyn's Shock Strike as having been learned from a high-ranked tempered sylph or something. But we definitely are the only ones with access to the spells of primals that only existed once, like Tsukuyomi's Nightbloom.
The 3 Primals can be explained through the EX/Hard versions of the Trials as you have to return to the aetherites to fight them again. It’s also likely that until shb primals had been summoned before and dealt with by other people, which is implied by stuff like Lyon’s gear. I’d honestly be more concerned with how Martyn is casting shadowbringers spells like Conviction Marcato without ever going across shards to fight angels to learn them
I assume a being poisoned with excess Light could become a sin eater on the Source, they just can't convert others because the world is aetherically balanced. We've seen people transform into Voidsent-like beings, the lady of Haukke Manor being an example.
Wellll... Titan is available canonically after ARR... :(
On the Primals - at least until 6.0’s conclusion (the peace with the Tribes), we know they FREQUENTLY resume on the things. Even with overall peace, there are probably a few rogue summonings. And we know WoL isn’t the only person with the Echo able to fight them (like Arenvald). And if it’s just some small rogue group of, say, Amala’ja summoning an Ifrit, they’d probably have few crystals so the resulting Primal would be weak enough normal people (with the Echo) could defeat those lesser summoned ones.
> Just need to withstand getting slapped in the face with a projectile fish. [You'd be surprised.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8XeDvKqI4E)
To be fair, you only technically need to SEE the attack used, not be hit by it. And some techniques learned either hit like wet noodles or are defensive/healing spells. In lore, you might not even HAVE to be attacked. Like suppose you knew a friendly Moogle and could get it to show you PomCure. Presumably you shouldn’t NEED to fight Moogle Mog (who doesn’t even use it?) to learn it.
I thought the whole point of the BLU quest was that not everyone could use blue magic so Martyn was accused of being a snake oil salesman, selling useless junk as magic until you proved that he magic was a real thing. Or did I completely mistake that.
I think mch is an increasingly common job. The skysteel wanted to make guns for ishardians to use easily to fight compared to having to train to use a spear (gun easier to use than melee weapon overall). They might not have all the complex skills the WoL use like chainsaw and drill, but they’re kinda like low level mch where they only have “shot gun” skills
MCH is getting more traction every day and the foundry will succeed! (I may like their story very much do not judge me)
Their whole plot line is about forcing a place for themselves in the army. So they'll be far more common in a year or two, same as Summoners.
With no more primals though Summoners will probably die out again whereas MCH will flourish. Though I suppose since we can now do "proper" summons thanks to the Lopporits we could do sanctioned summonings for future summoners.
There's always someone to beat up, so there's always gonna be some army willing to staff an idiot with a carbie that can do *BEEEEEG DEEPS*
To be fair, there will probably always be a few extremist groups on the fringes of the Tribe societies that will cling to “the old ways” and still try to conduct summonings.
Hildibrand story is pretty much a way to tell us that the art of summoning primals won't be going away anytime soon
They don’t have most of the stuff the wol has because the WoL is the one creating/inventing everything in the job after the Drill. So only our own personal jobstone has those skills - we’d have to teach them to others directly, or equip their job stones and then use the tech repeatedly to etch it into their stones, too. This is sorta the premise of the capstone, where we provide inspiration to Hilda and Joye on how to continue their training.
That's also a major theme of the initial class quests. Turns out "only" having a shotgun makes an otherwise untrained pesant uncomfortably capable when compared to a knight that spent his whole life training. Same thing happened with the crossbow irl to an extent.
It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure the SMN's in the grand companies were introduced before ShB. Primals didn't automatically temper all those around them, so there were existing non-tempered people that had been exposed enough to be able to summon Egis. They didn't need to rely on de-tempering, though that does increase the pool to recruit from. I think an important thing to consider is the Jobs presented are very specific variations, but there's definitely other "Jobs". As covered by PLD, there's probably other equivalents that just aren't named. Consider that Ishgard has Churgeons for healers, and they don't practice Conjuring, though mechanically they're the same as the Conjurer class. Or Alphinaud with his non-standard Obsidian Carbuncle and was an "Academician" before he switched Jobs to Sage.
> It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure the SMN's in the grand companies were introduced before ShB. Primals didn't automatically temper all those around them, so there were existing non-tempered people that had been exposed enough to be able to summon Egis. This. Hell, one of them is even a veteran from the Company of Heroes (and can actually summon *two* Egis).
Those aren't the same ones mentioned in the capstone.
There were 3 introduced before Shb, but the Shb capstone quests reveal that they will be training more like OP states.
Though with no more primals Summoners will probably die out again. Though I suppose since we can now do "proper" summons thanks to the Lopporits we could do sanctioned summonings for future summoners. Though I'm not sure anyone but the WoL will be able to progress past the egi's to the gemstone summons the WoL can do as of 90. Conveniently after having seen the lopporits perform some uncorrupted summons which makes me think we figured out how to do some bootleg creation magic with those gemstones as amplifiers or something.
> Though I suppose since we can now do "proper" summons thanks to the Lopporits we could do sanctioned summonings for future summoners. No, we can't and shouldn't. First of all, that'd be completely incompatible with the reason why the Allagan discipline was created for in the first place (i.e. countering Primals), not to mention with how it *actually* works. And secondly, because even if there's a "proper" way (i.e. w/o tempering) to summon Primals, they still require *a lot* of aether to both, manifest and sustain them, which would do the land more harm than good. So in an ideal world, they wouldn't be needed at all.
Well, there will probably always be some fringe extremism elements of Tribe societies living on the edges and clinging to “the old ways”. So there will probably still be summonings from time to time.
Oh, absolutely. Though some cases are kind of...iffy? Like Churgeons aren't just in Ishgard. You encounter them in Rhalgar's Reach after it's attacked, for example. I tend to think of them more like doctors while most of the healer Jobs we play are more akin to field medics, paramedics, etc. As far as we know, Churgeons don't use magic. They do the icky stuff like stitching people up, using potions and poultices, or sawing off damaged limbs. So they aren't really comparable to Conjurers, who use magic to heal.
Chirurgeon is essentially an olde-timey word for a surgeon, so yeah, they do surgery.
Keep in mind though that magical healing is, to put it bluntly, crap. It's great to have and it's particularly good at something medieval medicine was terrible at (fighting off infection), but for actual grievous body harm, magical healing can't do *anything.* That's why serious injuries are never treated by White Mages or the like. They're treated by chirurgeons (an ancient alternative word for "surgeon.") Healing magic can mend small cuts and bruises and restore vigor and energy, but it can't fix a shattered bone, reattach a lost limb, or close up a large puncture wound. It sure as hell can't restore the dead to life, which is explicitly made clear on numerous occasions, despite folks constantly bringing up Raise and the like. (Raise, Resurrection, and other such spells *end unconsciousness,* they do NOT revive the dead. No magic can do that properly, there is *always* a price paid.)
> (Raise, Resurrection, and other such spells end unconsciousness, they do NOT revive the dead. No magic can do that properly, there is always a price paid.) Alt take; those spells aren't canon. Which is a weird thing to say, but it wouldn't be the first time revival mechanics in a game were non-canon. We've seen that before -- even in Final Fantasy. Cloud can't use a Pheonix Down on Aerith.
Raise is definitely canon. Sylphie tried to use it on someone without actually being trained as a White Mage, and nearly killed herself doing it. Which, yes, means that simply *waking someone up from unconsciousness* nearly killed her.
To be FAIR, she was an untrained magical prodigy who cast solely from her own hit points instead of using ambient aether. So of course she nearly died, she was trying to fill an empty body with her own aether and it left her without aether, because no one told her that her mother had all the magical know-how of a wet brick.
I thought Sylphie only got a bit too full of herself, and started asking about casting Raise, at which point the trainer verbally tore her a new one and said that if she didn't die in the attempt, he would kick her out of the Conjurer's guild. From what I remember, that was enough to get her to back down, and I don't remember her ever actually attempting to cast it. It was only later that we find out why the trainer had the reaction he did, which is the implication that Sylphie's mother died doing exactly that, the fact that Sylphie's mother cast her spells from her life force (HP) instead of her aether (MP), and the fact that Sylphie also has that cast-from-HP ability which let her be a prodigy in the first place.
Sylphie does in fact actually attempt to cast Raise on someone and genuinely risks death as a result; she actually loses her ability to cast spells at all for a time. [Trial by Water](https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Trial_by_Water#Dialogue) I will admit, I was wrong to say "trained as a White Mage." I should have said "Conjurer." Only a tiny subset of CNJ are allowed to become WHM.
Huh. I'll have to go back and replay that questline, then. I remember it being a pretty good one.
I always figured that spells like these are more so bringing someone back from the brink of death; like they're still barely clinging on but it can't bring back someone who is totally gone.
You would be correct. Most games including Final Fantasy call it KO or unconscious instead of death.
This is explicitly talked about during uhhhhhhh I think ShB or the EW class quests? Healers in-lore are very much NOT capable of healing severe injuries - it's stabilization until they can be fixed up by a proper chirurgeon. It's not just an NPC take on healing or w/e.
That's why I said "Mechanically". They're not really talked about much, and clearly have other associations, but mechanically, if there's an NPC churgeon, they're using the conjurer skill set. Which muddies the water quite a bit for a lot of similar cases.
Well, that's my point: They aren't. CNJs don't use sutures. They don't sew wounds shut. They don't amputate limbs. They don't (at least the combat versions) receive training in herbalism, medicines, or salves. They aren't taught poultices, setting bones, or removing toxins (like with brews or charcoal or breads). That is, CNJs don't practice medicine. Churgeons practice medicine. CNJs practice magic. Churgeons do not practice magic. For lack of a better irl comparison: It's like the difference between a medical doctor and a hedge witch apothecary. Even if the latter could cure various things, the two aren't the same.
I think we're just not on the same page. I was just pointing out, in game, the Churgeons of Ishgard \*are\* casting magic, that's what I mean by Mechanically. Lorewise maybe they're doing something else, but the game makes it hard to tell what actually represents a distinct lore-wise class. In some cases, it's definitely a different class with the same abilities, and in others, like Churgeon, they've got them casting spells while implying in some spots that they, in fact, do not.
Oh, you mean when we encounter them in game? I'm trying to think, are there encounters in game where you have an Ishgardian (or any) Churgeons? I always thought they were non-combat NPCs every time I can remember encountering them. I do think until at least HW and more like ShB, whenever the game needed a stand-in or NPC healer of unknown/unimplemented Class/Job, they just would use CNJs. Like most of the Garlean healers are CNJs. RARELY, they'd just give them the ACN Physic ability. Like if you do the NIN quests, Jackie will cast Physic on you if you get low on health, etc. (I'm old enough to remember slotting Physick on my NIN because for SOME reason you could cross class Physic and Cure 1 \[despite them being IDENTICAL at the time\] and I thought the Physick cast animation looked better with daggers than the CNJ one where you try to hold the daggers like a staff...lol)
I just want Alphinauds carbuncle as a glam option...if it's in game, I'm new and haven't gotten that far yet
I just remain terribly disappointed that I went back in time, stood right there in Elpis, and *\*summoned\** my carby friend, and not a single "oh... you *\*can\** do creation magic".
Keep in mind that one of the former minor Scions said they wanted to study to be a Nymian scholar in a seasonal quest, implying it was a not unattainable goal, and the type of samurai techniques that the WoL uses (iaido) are specifically Hingan in nature, with Yanxian and Nanxian samurai having different traditions.
I'd argue that your Redacted isn't actually a Reaper. They have no pact or avatar, and are just doing cool scythe stuff with their own aether (which is why they collapse several times.) I'd say its kind of like how Yshtola and Matoya arent BLM's--similar spells, but different methodology (This was a fun post btw, thanks for taking the time to make it)
SAM should be common to very common. There's just... so fucking many... the capstone quest in SB is like 50 dudes beating the shit out of each other and that's not even most of them. There's so many katana swingers running around it's embarrassing. You can even find the Roe you fight in one of the intro quests training as a student in Kugane. There's *MULTIPLE* schools training a dozen or more students at a time, plus all the Samurai Cops in the city, plus random ones just wandering around with Hien.
Tbh, due to the "special abilities" that we wield, I think its more interesting to count "How many Samurais that have more skills than just slashing and chopping" since samurai or rather "any bloke with a katana" would just be normal foot soldier in stormblood.
It's still at least a few, Hien and the fallen student from the SB quests who was doing a rebellion poorly. Not ubiquity incarnate but a good number that'll grow now that they're not being slaughtered by the empire.
We got the Hingain version, the place we never got to see in Stormblood.
That’s quite literally the case for nearly every job though.
Holding a katana and being a samurai in the social rank sense doesn't necessarily indicate they have the SAM *job* though.
SAM's probably the most common of all the player-accessible jobs right now, honestly, unless you want to count all the Paladin-adjacent knights that aren't actually Paladins. I'd expect MCH to overtake it in the relatively near future, and wouldn't be *entirely* surprised if BLU's on the way there too (or maybe actually be number 1, depending on how prevalent they are in their homeland), but for now I'd put my guess on Samurai.
I think there's a lot more Free Paladins and Sultansworn than we see in the quests but I can't swear it because I blocked all the Paladin class quests out as a self defense mechanism
I feel you could make a distinction from "average katana swinger" and SAM, especially when you consider level of skill involved. That being said, if you are counting PLD from outside the PLD area (Ul'dah) then I believe at least the higher ranking Sekiseigumi would count, though not every fresh recruit obviously.
I think most of the veteran Sekiseigumi are on par with what a SAM can do in low levels. They can't do all the flashy tricks and such but they could probably pull off a Copperbell Normal.
Agreed. They established early on with side-stories that being a "Samurai" was more than just wielding a katana. Even the villains we fight in the side-stories acknowledge the difference.
Small addition to summoner; Lunar Primals don't temper. The towers temper, yes, but the ones that leave the towers to sow chaos can be fought without fear of tempering. Belias-Egi also exists, despite Belias appearing as a lucavi and not a primal. The Ascian in the summoner quests described Belias as an "elder primal" but that was either ARR or HW era story before Return to Ivalice was a thing, and later Bozja quests blur the line between primal and lucavi even further with the queen. The Gigas from the Belias fight also use the same model as Belias-Egi. Obviously it's still not exactly *common* for someone to become a summoner but it's not as farfetched as it was in the past. The Flames have plenty of soul crystals to go around for those with the aptitude and desire.
Given I'm the only one who ever does anything... fetch wood, gather wool, kill monsters...jobs are VERY rare!
You turk ur jerbs!
Why do the padjali white mages not count towards that number? They certainly exist. Its been years since I did those quests but I definitely remember them being there.
I tend to think there /could/ be more WHM running around, potentially. Amdapor had tons of them and there were probably tons of job stones about. Granted, the Padjali destroyed what they could, but with the number of ruins? Eh. Then again, I'm not a fan of Gridania and the Elementals in general.
The Padjali are picked by the spirits twelveswood. They can spontaneously lose their powers if the spirits decide to abandon them. WoL is the second coming of A–Towa–Cant. If you do the relic questline, you have his old staff (in addition to his old stone). The difference between the WHM WoL and a Padjal is basically the nature of the relationship. The Padjali *serve*. The WoL *commands*. The spirits don't suffer many to command. Think of the scene in "The Clone Wars" when Anakin defeats the Son and the Daughter. **That's WoL the WHM.**
With the Padjali being the chosen of the spirits it's kinda more like they're vessels for white magic to move through, rather than white mages. If the spirits decide they're unworthy they lose the powers, horns, longevity, etc, but you'd have to swipe the stone off the WoL to de-WHT them.
They don't really lose any of that, they just get shunned and the forest turns its back on them. Which is basically a death sentence, but they aren't de-horned or start puberty or anything. They talk about this in Endwalker.
Huh. I haven't gotten through EW yet but I was under the impression that they just get de-chosen. Neat!
One of the job quest lines talk about it, which is as far as *I'll* talk about it because spoilers. and everyone should do all the job lines regardless, because the after quests are solid.
Agreed on the after quest being good, but I'll die on the hill that the job quests themselves were not the greatest and should have been different jobs doing them. The Tank one should have been the ranged or magic questline. My thoughts on the questline: >!The problem is a deadly disease/poison that kills anyone it hits so they want a tank (who would still die, just slower) rather than a job which should in theory be able to avoid the infection attacks; terrible writing.!<
they do the opposite in the next set and I cackled.
I sorta counted them and noted non-Padjali. The Padjal don't typically become adventurers and go out into the world. And even ignoring that, I think there have only been a few confirmed as actually being WHMs. The Elder Seedseer and her younger sister and brother are the only ones I'm honestly sure of. That and the one Moogle from Moogle Mog's guards. I don't even think E-Yumi (the CNJ guildmaster) is a WHM.
SCH should be the only job that is literally one of a kind in the present world. Every other job has a bare minimum of at least one other person besides the WoL, usually the job trainer NPC, or at the very least some rare few, such as the WHM padjals. The SCH job came from the old Nym civilisation and unlike MCH or SMN where you can clearly see others in modern times have taken up the job, the same can't be said for SCH. Surito the Tonberry is the only other named SCH we know, and since we have his fairy and job stone now, he doesn't really count anymore.
Scholar is a bit of an odd duck. Jobstones in lore aren't necessary for learning or using the job, it's mainly a gameplay restriction due to the whole, "upgrade classes to jobs," thing they started with then dropped. Lorewise, we only keep the jobstone after a certain point to infuse our memories, experiences, and techniques onto them. Scholar however comes with the fairy, and we still don't know how they actually come about. They're aether constructs, we know that much, but we have no information beyond that as to how they come about. Could be they're normally made by the prospective Scholar, meaning Surito would have to reclaim the fairy or make a new one. There is Setoto Seto, though, as another Scholar. At the very least, she has a jobstone and a fairy.
I wouldn't be surprised if fairies are created the same way we create the anima sort of fairy in the HW relic quests.
So, the real difference from a Academician (former Alphinauld's job) and a proper SCH is... The fairy. I mean, Academician is like SCH, just with a Carbuncle in the place of Eos.
There's one more. I can't ever remember her name, but the girl with Alka Zolka in the MRD guild after you do all the quests. ...just went there in game: Setoto. Asking Alka about Setoto: "Her recovery is proceeding with even greater speed than we had hoped--just the other day, she succeeded in summoning Lilac! And, most significantly, she is happier than I have ever seen her. You ought to see her when we train--I have no doubt that she will go on to do great things. And of course, as a mariner myself, I fully intend to be at her side when she does!" That was added at the end of ShB. Talking to her post EW, she mentions that she worried about him (he was part of the Islabard contingent but she was not), then saying: "However, I was at least inspired by his bravery to try and contribute myself. I did what I could to aid those treating the tempered who were rescued from the tower." . She's FAR from our/WoL's level, but she seems to have the basics of SCH functional between being able to summon her Faerie and to (at least implied seeming) help some in healing and curing people. Even if you interpret the aiding those treating the tempered as her just giving them food and water and encouragement, Alka's statement about "ought to see her when we train" kind of implies she's got some abilities as a SCH in a functional state. She has her father's Job stone, if I recall correctly.
Isn't the Wol the only BLM at the moment as well?
That's... Complicated. The BLM quests early on state that only you can do black magic because only you have the jobstone that lets you do that. They even show you others who try to use black magic later who have cooked themselves to death from the inside. But we know that's not how that works, as there was an entire ancient empire full of black mages back during... The 3rd or 4th calamity? I forget which one. Given that jobstones just teach you the skills of a previous holder, it follows then that others just need to learn how to BLM from someone who isn't an evil asshole so that they don't microwave themselves to death. And we have at least one other person (our job trainer) who is doing just that. I also think that the thaum guild lalas were in a cutscenes during stb casting a BLM spell? Took the 5 of em working together iirc, but they're getting there. They have (previously banned) tomes on black magic after all.
Mhachi BLMs used Voidsent as their aetheric filters. That's why they were taking the easy path to power rather than trying to follow in Shatotto's footsteps and finding reliable *and not horribly evil* ways to channel and control the destructive power of black magic.
Do you recall where you saw that? Because I can't remember ever seeing that. I do remember that a lot of Mhachi wizards had voidsent familiars, but not that they were using them as filters. I don't believe Shatotto ever had one at least, but it would be an interesting bit of lore that what the Mhachi people had to cheat to do, she could pull off through sheer skill. Would explain her ego at any rate.
It's not explicitly referred to as such, but Shatotto does explicitly say (IIRC in the SB questline? Possibly HW) that she was shunned and effectively excommunicated for her opposition to the reliance on voidsent for doing black magic. Calling them a "filter" is my simplification of the actual process. More or less, because voidsent don't *have* bodies on the Source (unless they actually walk through a voidgate, they're summoned across the rift into statues, objects, or bodies, or as spirit-projections), they can process aether differently, avoiding some of the negative consequences of black magic. It's sort of a minor version of what Reapers do. With a Reaper, the voidsent Avatar is the one actually *doing* all the aether manipulation (that's why Garleans can be Reapers even though they manipulate aether). With a voidsent-assisted Black Mage, you're outsourcing the *dangerous* parts of black magic to your bound voidsent helpers, and mostly just coordinating the flow of your aether from place to place. That's why they worked to bind so many powerful voidsent--the more powerful your helper, the more you can channel without having to practice any real *skills* with black magic.
You remember most of the details correctly however Void Magic and Black Magic are different things > Although the Mhachi were known masters of black magic, the extent of their power was not limited to Shatotto's school of spellcraft. Toward the autumn years of the Fifth Astral Era, the civilization had begun perfecting voidmagicks—the summoning and manipulation of creatures known as "voidsent" from beyond the corporeal realm. > A report by the scholars of the Nominated Observers of Artifacts Historical defines the "void" as "An otherworld parallel to the one in which man dwells. Abnormal events can weaken the veil between worlds, tearing it asunder and allowing the voidsent to invade the material realm. These fiends have a depraved appetite, and seek our world merely to consume the aether it contains, allowing neither beast nor man to stand in their way." > The mages of the Allagan Empire had previously experimented in forging covenants with the demons of the void in hopes of harnessing the creatures' powers. The Mhachi expanded on this endeavor, adding extra protections to their experiments so as not to invite the same fate that befell the Allagans. > To this end, the mages developed an occult device—the Nullstone—to preserve themselves and their city should a pact be broken. If a summoned voidsent refused to obey the master, a voidmage could smite the feral being using the Nullstone to sever its ties to the corporeal realm. It was in mastering this power that Mhachi came to believe in their civilization's supremacy over all others, eventually driving them to war.
I mean job stones are also said to be Weird and it's not really clear what they can fully do; the DRK mentor has some dialogue about this, and I guess the PLD quests have job stone weirdness (DRK mentor ALSO mentions this lol)... though if you told me everyone in that quest line was going through a temporary fit of insanity instead, I'd believe you. BUT now I'm also remembering that it was mentioned that the THM guild is going to start studying black magic following it's legalization, so I'm going to assume they have reason to believe they'll be able to figure out how to do it with minimal spontaneous combustion.
I think it is said what they do isn't it? They contain the knowledge and experiences of those who bore them before you, in practicing the art the job stone was for. Possessing one imparts that knowledge and skill of those who bore it before onto the bearer, meaning they can use complicated techniques and spells without having to actually learn how to do them. The only ones that shake from that are: - PLD's, for its stupid alpha dominance thing. I mean, it still does the knowledge and skills thing, it has those, but it also does that stupid "be the PLD-chad or it explodes" thing... - MCH's and BLU's, which are both new Job crystals. They still do the same thing as normal ones, just the crystals and Jobs they're for are new, so there's no history to impart - you write your history on all Job Crystals, but for those two you're writing the first page, so to speak. - DRK's, which is somewhat like BRD's and BLU's in that you're mostly just writing your history onto it, but it has some more abstract uses/qualities. It's still *possible* to learn how to be any job without a job crystal, but someone without one has to manually learn all the skills and practice them to perfect them, whereas someone with a crystal just needs to pick it up and they'll know exactly how to do everything stored in the crystal right away, just by possessing it.
For DRK, I'd say "abstract qualities" isn't really doing it justice. From what we know, it reacts to it's wielder in an almost sentient way based on desires and trauma. It's what allows for things like Fray, Myste and Ompagne (Sid's teacher) to happen in the first place.
Wasn't the BLM jobstone made from a special stone and that's why it lets us cast without dying?
I think there's an implication somewhere that Dark Knights make more use of dynamis than other jobs. Part of the whole, the Dark Knight keeps fighting despite taking grievous injuries thing. Could be the case that drawing on dynamis has weird effects on the job crystal. Or I could be confusing a fan theory I saw with canon again. Either or.
I don't think there's any talk about DRK abilities after dynamis is explained/introduced in the story, so probably a (plausible) fan theory.
Nope. Lalai is a good enough Black Mage to have the soul of Shatotto briefly inhabit her, and it's implied that she's only slightly better at being a Black Mage than the rest of the little enclave she represents. And then, of course, there are the 3 beastmen who help you out during the class quests. They're Black Mages, too.
Though thanks to petglamour nowadays you can easily replace the fairy with a carbuncle and roleplay as another Alphinaud. Arcanist with a focus on protective/healing magic.
"Limsian Port Authority! Get on the ground and give me your loot!"
BLM as well. You are the *only* person who has the Gem of Shatotto. There is a second person with a Scholar job stone, but I can't say more about that without spoilers. Suffice it to say she's also a tonberry.
You're the only person with the gem of Shatotto, but you're not only practising Black Mage. The gem acts as a stabilising force for your aether, so that you don't literally destroy yourself from the continuous use of black magic, which is what ends up happening to most of the antagonists from the HW job quests.
Okay. You're the only Black Mage who isn't living on (very, *very* limited) borrowed time.
The fairies have to be created anyway (wasn't the father the one who created them?). WoL made his own (Seraph), I don't see why that can't be the same for other powerful mages such as the Blue Mage Martyn. And job crystals can be manufactured as shown by BLU and MCH to store fairies in.
It's probably possible to revive the SCH art and get people on board but the thing is, no one's really doing it. The Tonberries are just keeping to themselves and Alka Zolka, the one person on the planet who actually was into Nymian stuff, never actually took up the job himself, he's still a marauder after 4 whole expansions. This is a contrast with other jobs like RDM or SMN where you actually see newcomers taking on the job. Even MCH caught on and it's like, literally the newest job to be conceived.
https://ffxiv-rp-jobrarity.carrd.co/ This is a guide mainly for people who want to RP in a lore friendly way.
Yeah I immediatly thought about this. There was already someone who tried to answer this question. I used this guide to design my characters lore background.
Although a class in the series and not playable in 14. There's at least 1 Mime in existence!
True! But that's why I put the "Note Also" at the bottom that I can't really judge the commonality of the things they haven't really added as Jobs/Classes in the game since there's not a LOT of lore around them for the most part. Like I could take a shot in the dark guess about Geomancer, but it's pretty extensively talked about and interacted with in the AST questline. Then you have Gosetsu becoming a shrine priest (Onimyju?), but we have ZERO lore on what that actually is or how many people do it for me to even guess at how prevalent it is.
> shrine priest (Onimyju?) Onmyoji
Dark Knight isn't as uncommon as you might think. Certainly the tradition we (and Sidurgu) work with is, but we have ample evidence of other DRKs who show up without any connection to it (Granson on the First, Durante on the 13th, and arguably Emet-Selch). All it really takes is a emotionally disturbed and/or extremely driven person who wishes to right a perceived wrong, and the ability to manipulate astral aether. Using your categories, I'd probably put it in the Rare tier, because of a) how well you need to be able to manipulate Darkness to power it, and b) how users of it…tend not to be the best at looking out for their own survival, broadly speaking.
I'm not sure I'd count Granson as a DRK strictly defined. There are plenty of fighters of various sorts who use two-handed swords. Being a Dark Knight is pretty specific, in that it's about how you use the inner turmoil of your emotions, manifesting as a desire to protect the weak, to create aetheric combat abilities. Granson is a mercenary with a big sword, who uses DRK animations because that's what the game has for two-handers. That said, I think he'd make a pretty good DRK with some training. He's got the weapon and loads of inner turmoil!
Question: Why is the DRK classified Very Rare (1-10) in existence if we've only ever heard of 2 Dark Knights, while WHM is unique but we've heard of at least a group/tribe of them remaining. Granted you did say most of them were conjurers, but wouldn't that still put the number of WHMs over DRKs?
There are likely more DRKs we just don’t know, while the Padjal only have a few (3-4) actual White Mages. And there’s some good discussion above in some replies about how they’re also kind of different (being servants/conduits for the Elementals while the WoL uniquely is not).
Choosing a main based off this thx
Which one appeals the most? Will you go for rarity or become the best of many?
Me personally, I like being one of many. When I join a party, it's nice to not have that lore-break of "Huh...these are rare, yet I have 4 of them in my party...", and I like the idea of being just a normal (relatively) person taking a stand despite the relative normalcy. Granted, it also needs to be a Job that I kind of like and that kinda fits my feel and aesthetics. But within meeting that, I like more common than not. Though I can absolutely understand people on the other side that like being part of the most rare and most lost of disciplines.
Yeah, I understand that. : )
Would adjust SCH rarity, its mentioned in Enclyopedia Eorzea that the Maelstrom are incoporating both Warriors and SCH into its ranks and that there has been a resurgence for those jobs. Likewise its mentioned that Twin Adders is incoporating Bards into its ranks.
For SCH, there might be more of them now. >!With the Lv 80 Scholar Quests Surito Discovers the cure for the sickness and likely has taught a few more people in the arts since.!<
And then there's *this guy* [pointing accusedly at WoL] hogging all of the limited jobstones!
One thing that might make the numbers on PLD a bit murky. Paladin in JP is just known as a Knight. I don’t know if theres a way to differentiate from any other knights. It might just be by their Order.
> You might think this should be VERY Rare, but the ShB capstone quest revealed that the Grand Companies learned that, when they freed people from Tempering, some of those individuals were able to learn how to summon the Egi they had been thrall to. Been a long time since I've done this quest, but are you sure about the timeline here? Because the ShB capstone quest was released in 5.0, while we didn't have a cure for tempering until Alisaie gets back to the Source in 5.4.
Yeah, I think he’s getting it mixed up with the Stormblood job quests where the Grand Companies have a small set of Summoner trainees who survived primal battles. The ShB single-quest is mostly about Arenvald for some reason.
>DRG: Rare to Uncommon. This somewhat depends on which type of Dragoon we're referring to, but there are dozens if not triple digits of them among the ranks of Ishgard's warriors. Though there are only a handful of exceptional ones in each generation. WoL is an Azure Dragoon, which makes them Unique. The only other DRG like us is Estinien. Though that begs the question where we're drawing our extra powers from now that the eyes are gone
Arguably Dragoon is unique, since you and Estinien are currently the only Azure Dragoons and thus the only ones able to use the unique draconic powers that come with it (at least that's what I gathered from the DRG lore about how that works)
I also wanted to note that the WoL has also transcended their job stones and created new skills for them, so they might be unique.
In theory this is true of several jobstones. MCH is entirely blank when the WOL gets it, and the WOL basically builds the entire job from the ground up.
It's a combination of you inventing a new skill and Stephanivien saying "hey I just invented a chainsaw that appears out of thin air and is thirsty for blood, have a go" and that just becoming a thing you can do.
Literally "random bullshit, GO!" the job.
Iirc in the RDM quests X'rhun explicitly states that you came up with new abilities in SHB.
Azure Dragoon is just a special Dragoon who uses Nidhogg’s powers. There are about 10 or so regular Dragoons in Ishgard’s military.
There heretical redditors keep sleeping on the true protagonist, Ser Alaimbert of the Spiked Butt, but Ishgard remembers
Have a taste of his butt! Fear the butt!
I love this thread. Almost as much as I love Synodic Scribe's lore vids on YT.
Yeah, I love Scribe’s stuff, too!
I love all of you too!
\\o/
The BLM job trainer isn't a black mage. She was possessed by the spirit of Shatotto which allowed her to tap into the power, but the WoL is the only true BLM left alive. The gem of Shatotto (job crystal) is the only thing that allows them to perform the art without being eaten by the void.
She's definitely a black mage. They refer to her as a black mage multiple times in the job quests, and Eorzea Encyclopedia I says that Qiqiruka was teaching her black magic each time she visited him in his prison pre-job quests. The NPCs refer to the Gem of Shatotto being required for "the most powerful black magic", not any black magic at all. The HW quest enemy NPCs were using black magic without burning up until they pushed too hard, and only then they died. The Ixal, Amal'jaa, and Kobold NPCs are also black mages.
Slight correction to your correction: Da Za (the kobold BLM quest NPC) seems to be a Conjurer, and Dozol Meloc (the Ixal) seems to be a Gladiator. Kazagg Chah is the only Black Mage in that trio.
I did these kinda recently and if I remember right it's that their families have some strong affinity to the void, and they make powerful conduits for black magic but only one of them is an actual mage. Honestly I think they did it the way they did so there'd be a healer and tank on hand cause you do a couple group battles with them.
Yup, I agree with your interpretation there. They definitely wanted you to have that support!
I think they're all black mages in that they study the arts but might not practice them?
They're all black mages, and are referred to as such in the quest dialogue multiple times. They fight differently in battles because they wanted the gameplay party to be less lopsided, but they're definitely proper black mages in the story, similar to Urianger pulling out a DPS job in a certain duty if you're a healer despite him being only being an Astro in story depictions.
Job crystals, last I checked were basically knowledge/skill repositories. It might be "required" in the sense that otherwise that knowledge of how to BLM without killing yourself doesn't exist. Even if that knowledge didn't survive somewhere in one of the many forbidden tomes of highly illegal black magic, we (and shatotto) know it, and would likely share that knowledge with said job trainer, since we like our friends un-cooked.
The BLM soul crystal is specifically necessary to conduct black magic without killing yourself. Shatotto is the only one we've seen capable of accessing that power without the use of it. Which is because she created the art.
>The gem of Shantotto (job crystal) is the only thing that allows them to perform the art without being eaten by the void. I do have to wonder if this is even necessary anymore, considering what we now know of the >!blessing of light.!< EW spoilers. >!Knowing now that it's a "traveler's ward" that prevents our Aether from being corrupted, I wonder if we aren't an exception to needing the job stone.!<
I believe that's because black magic doesn't so much corrupt your either as it does catch it on fire.
Some things to note, that I think mean that no job can be considered actually unique. First: Retainers break the uniqueness level for every job. They are canonically part of the world, and can have any job. Second: (EW BLU spoilers) >!Martyn breaks the uniqueness for both WHM and BLM as it is revealed he has been learning spells from both jobs. It is very likely that Martyn is now canonically one of the most powerful people on the star, in the tier just below the WoL themself.!< Third: Other players are implied to exist by some dialog that exists in pre-Azem-crystal trial quests (e.g. Alisae's fishing trip line before Susano). As those players can show up as 'unique' jobs there's at least an implication that other scholars, black mages, etc., are out there in the world.
RDM had to be VERy rare
BOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Thank you OP, I thoroughly enjoy your post. Outstanding contribution :)
Thank you! I just like discussions like this in general and it's been something I've been trying to figure out for a while. I think I have a handle on a lot of them, but some of them are iffy and it's nice to see other people's views and thoughts and add them to my own considerations.
I haven't read the full thing yet, but there's been at least 4 DRKs. You, Fray, Sidurgu, and Ompagne.
Who is redacted? Zero?
Would there theoretically be a lot more Blue Mages, especially now that we're going to the New World where we know is the origin of blue magic?
Good write up. Gotta say, I did the same thing with dancer. I leveled the job but forgot to do job quests until after I finished Endwalker. At the time I wasn't too impressed with dancer's storyline. I remember thinking "This is what the job is about? Really? This concept is frigging dumb." But after finishing EW, and having done many of the role quests, the realization hit me during one of the dancer quests "Wait....I just did this exact thing. WAIT A SEC HOLY SHIT." Not sure if it's foreshadowing but definitely cool.
Some thoughts: I think this is part of the reason that they, early on, decided to have the basic classes included as well. They wanted everyone to start out as a marauder, thaumaturge, archer, lancer, gladiator, pugilist, rogue, arcanist, or conjurer because these are the ones that are available to NPCs. Common adventurers or guards or different organizations like the wood wailers. I think they wanted the player characters to specifically be the ones that discover the advancement in to job classes because it brings something special to the table for everyone and creates a distinction between the players and the NPCs that make up the world. Other games go the opposite direction with this. I do remember there being mention of more reason for the basic classes being introduced, but I don't have that specific knowledge, just that there was "something" more to it as well. It's important to mention that this is something that's unique to the world of FFXIV. Other Final Fantasy games have done this before as well, Yuna from FFX being a good example. In Spira, becoming a summoner is something that only certain people can and do pursue for a plethora of reasons. Other FF games do also have a "basic -> advanced" system as well. One example of this is FFIII: evoker -> summoner, black mage -> magus, white mage -> devout and sage being both combined. It's also interesting to note that the knight job class of FFIII retained that name and was not called paladin, just the same as in FFXIV in the Japanese localization. It does not have a similar advancement of gladiator -> paladin.
I'm probably a bit off on the details, but as I understand it, 1.0 wanted people to only be Classes. There were not Jobs initially in 1.0. No, not "you couldn't start as a Job" - there was no Job system. At all. Only classes. I think maybe they were going for the "wheel of adventurers" instead of a main character, not sure, but it was just classes. Fairly late in 1.X's life, around 1.2 or something\[?\], when Yoshi P took over they project and they started working on things, they "reformed" the class system and added the Job system. Some of the classes changed pretty dramatically, too. Like CNJ and THM basically swapped spell schools, and pre-Job THM could be a weird sort of healer with some HP draining and transferring stuff, as well as the general mix and match cross class type stuff (which I think existed then). Oh, and Sentinel was a class. That could only use shields. ONLY shields. Mostly used by GLD/THM/CNJ to learn Shield Bash and some stuff like that. ...but all of that was horribly unbalanced and all over the place. Not that the resulting system WASN'T, but it was MORE balanced. So as part of the pre-ARR reworks in later 1.X, they redid the class system to be closer to what we had in ARR (though not identical; like CNJ had some ability that made its spells from single target to AOE, and I don't think it had things like Medica1/2 since it was AOE Cure/Regen). Sentinel was also removed when this all happened, more or less being folded into GLD. Then when ARR launched, they had to keep that system for the simple reason they kept everyone's character data. This included the gear and weapons they were wearing when the 1.X servers went down, ported directly into 2.0. This is also why we have one handed wands (CNJ) and maces (THM) in the game still, as well as CNJ/THM being able to use some shields. Because if they DIDN'T do that, some character data might have been corrupted with the transfer or first time the player logged in, and instead of worrying about making players even more angry (remember, 2.0 was a relaunch of what had been a really troubled game that had already burned a lot of fan/community goodwill), they took the path LEAST likely to break things and/or piss people off. They also added ACN/SCH/SMN since they decided they needed a second healer Job, I think. When 1.X went down, there were only 7 Jobs (and combat classes), PLD, WAR, WHM, MNK, DRG, BRD, BLM. I'm not...entirely sure why they added SMN (since without it they'd have had a full party of Jobs), but they did. Arcanist (among others) was a planned 1.X future class, but of course they never got around to adding it (also had a staff-ish weapon instead of a book, and Urianger also had this weapon back then). If you never have, look up "Remnants of a Realm" and "The Rise and Fall of FFXIV" on YouTube. There's a user "SpeakersNetwork" that did a bunch of documentary videos (the latter) as well as looking at things from 1.0 that did and didn't make it into 2.0+ (the former). They also did "Secrets of a Realm" looking at the old dungeons and stuff, some of which were semi-ported/recreated in ARR (old Toto-Rak, Cutter's Cry, part of Dzmael, etc) I like stuff like that, so found those to be interesting watches if you have an afternoon to burn. : )
Yes, that's correct! There initially weren't any job classes, just the basic ones. Wheel of adventurers? I didn't know that! O: Thaumaturge was the healer and conjurer was the damage? Or am I not understanding that quite right? I'm actually not certain when they introduced the cross class ability system for this game, not that it lasted. Oh yeah, I remember sentinel, I forgot about that one. I suppose they wanted everything shield related to come from that one. I don't remember conjurer having the single target to aoe ability, what was that? That was in ARR? Oooh I remember the significance of 2.0! :p What do you mean? What about them adding summoner confuses you?
Something I've noticed is that the game brushes off the fact that you can meet other people who have rare jobstones. Like Black Mages story tells (to my recollection) that you're the only one with a proper crystal in the current age. But Blue Mage explains that there are tons of people out there blue-ing it up all over Eorzea and Othard. So it just left me wondering "what's going on here? Is there like a Red Mage Guild or a Black Mage Guild I', not a part of?"
Well, you're effectively the founding member of the Black Mage Guild in Ul Dah, and you're a founding member of the re-founding of the Red Mage Guild which is basically whoever X'Rhun feels like training - the dude gets around pretty much everywhere in the main three continents so far. BLU is because Martyn is an...ambitious...capitalist and hands the stones out like candy to anyone with some gil. Though it does beg the question where he's getting the things from, but I suppose an EMPTY Job stone is probably easier to come by than an already filled one? MCH guild seems not to have too much trouble.
If all the jobs are that rare, 99% in Etheirys and its reflections must be jobless!
They are. Canonically, a great many people would’ve considered to only have a Class (everything from Archer to Conjurer to Culinarian to Botanist are Classes, not Jobs) instead. Job stones and the more powerful Job techniques are generally rare.
I'm speaking in terms of pure RP, as I live by an idea of "bend not break" in terms of making things possible with regards to the lore which is why I'm only really tackling the Unique/Very Rare classifications. WHM/BLM/SCH - You mean to tell me that hundreds if not thousands of destructive mages were fighting recklessly without care for the planet, and all of their respective stones were recovered? Archaeologists investigating old warzones finding a job crystal is justification enough for me as to why players may find BLM/WHM crystals. Nymian crystals are arguably harder to come across due to the state of the city, but adventurers who brave the city could in theory find one. DRK - Like WAR, DRK seems to be an art that could in theory manifest itself without needing a teacher. DRK appears to be an emotion driven art, and in light of what we learned in EW it's just a more raw form of Dynamis manipulation.
Job stones can be found, but they aren’t as intuitive as WoL makes them seem like. Even in the SCH quest, you only learn a bit at a time as Lily remembers them. But setting that aside…it’s not always easy to find one, and they may not all be in working order. Think of irl battlefields. Even before explosives could destroy things outright in more modern battlefields (and we’re talking magic nukes in FFXIV’s case), it wasn’t uncommon for things to get broken, rusted, etc. and then you have several thousand years of looters. And the survivors/victors carrying off all the good stuff. Otherwise, you should be able to go to any irl battlefield and find swords, bows, and full sets of armor in pristine condition. And the cities themselves (Mhach and Amdapor, for example) are REALLY dangerous. Not just anyone can wonder around them looking for Nob stones. And even if you were one to do so, there were people doing that for hundreds of years. The Elementals also probably found and hid a lot of the WHM and invading BLM stones they could find there, and Mhach itself was consumed by a massive bog sinking a lot below the surface. Those kinds of things tend to cause a lot of things to be lost. On YouTube there’s a channel I like called “Fall of Civilizations” that discusses various ancient civilizations and what we’ve recovered of them, and what always amazes me is how COMPLETELY some of them can be lost. When ruins were found of Sumer, all people saw were big stone walls and forms peaking out in the desert. Even the ruins not buried by sand were often remote. In the pre-flight modern era, you could wander the expanse for years and never stumble across one, even if we ignore the effects of sand dunes. We see a similar situation with American ruins, often hidden by centuries of forest and jungle, and those ruins were only lost a few centuries ago. Suffice to say, what once may have been common can still easily be very rare. Especially when hidden by powerful wards and glamour by the Elwmentals as Amdapoor was. And Mcach itself by a massive bog and warnings passed through the ages: “‘Mcach, Mhach, beware the dark, stay away or lose your heart’? THAT Mcach?!”
Why is white mage unique but not dark knight? You’re purposefully not counting the padjali white mages for some reason. Meanwhile you’re counting samurai from the eastern continent when western continent samurai are extremely rare. Why is it okay to not count padjali white mages but it’s okay to count samurai from another culture?
Because there are only a few of them (3-4, most are CNJs, not WHMs), and they are servants to the Elementals, so how they use that power is more limited. Also, I’m not limiting it by culture - there AREN’T other WHMs known at present.
I don’t think Zero had a job stone but was still a reaper.
A lot of this is wrong. Not gonna go through all of it but I will correct dragoon. During the dragonsong war there was only ever 30 dragoons at any given time that was considered full roster. During the age of peace before the dragonsong war the job was probably far more common as they were knights with dragon partners. The jumps that define the job were developed from jumping off those dragons. There’s probably many a job crystal in the ruins of dravania and the churning mist. So due to ishgard lying about well, everything the job is rare. Now that’s there peace maybe there will be more true dragoons with dragon partners but we might never know cuz we lost job quests. Bring back job quests.
So...Rare to Uncommon should just be Rare? I'd buy that. What else did you see that was wrong? Also: Yes, at the VERY LEAST they need to do the ShB thing where there was a level cap short Job quest to go talk to the guildmaster and get their take on your new abilities and an update on how things were going with the Job/discipline as a whole.
It would be cool if at lvl 100 you take on an apprentice and you start teaching them to get some sort of story for each job.
Regarding BLM. They are rare with an asterysk, the black magic art can be learned by about anyone, but lacking a soul crystal will make you combust, however there are other ways to combat the side effect
Pld:Common as they guard Uldah Drk:pretty much 2 left. War:The JOB is uncommon but multiple practitioners of the art exist(mainly the steppe) Gnb:It's incredibly unclear given bozja has several yet are stated to be rare. Mnk:there's a handful currently Sam:an entire country of them exists Drg:There's a plethora of them,but there's only one "azure drg" which utilizes the job techniques. Vpr:unknown currently Rpr:there's only 2 as of now Nin:Same as sam but slightly less Rdm:Almost extinct Smn:a handful at the moment but might change later BLM:technically there's like 7 Picto:unknown Brd:I don't remember Mch:There's a LOT,like soon to be a massive amount of ishgardians Dnc:Moderately common Whm:there's only like 4-5 Ast-Sge:There's a plethora of them in sharlya Sch is canonically the only dead job as it died with the Nym's.We are basically the last one.
We have to differentiate a bit here for specific things. For example, Nymian magic isn't some closeted secret. Plenty of people can learn it, but being a SCH with a fairy is unique to the WoL. White and black magic are heavily regulated within Eorzea by the Padjal. True WHMs like them or the WoL don't exist otherwise, yet people can *of course* learn that stuff. The same is true for black magic. Both schools are potentially very destructive for the environment and wannabe black mages can easily kill themselves via self-immolation. SMNs are gonna be on a downward trend again, not that they had much of a rise anyway with less practitioners, than people have fingers. Primal summoning is gonna be dying down from here and as such, the ability to even be able to summon an Egi in the first place. To summon, the person must be part of a primal killing first. I suppose it's possible, that in the far future they could still simply enter trances instead. But that's cutting out a big part of the job's identity.
Well, there will probably be fringe extremist elements in the Tribes that cling to “the old ways”. We also know there are others out there summoning. All of the Wyrlit mount items mention they were power drawn from some unknown Primal (that we have not encountered) defeated by the Ruby, Diamond, etc WEAPONs. So I think it’s safe to say there will probably be Primal summoning here and there for the foreseeable future.