All on one, or more than one?

I'm speaking of Alts.

Is there a benefit to having only one character for all classes and professions?

Or would it be better to run different classes over multiple characters?


Pros, Cons?

The game is really designed so that you want multiple classes on each character, even if you only have one job/profession on it.

Each Job is unlocked at level 30 of one class, and level 15 of another, and allows for cross class skills from yet a third.

So each character you want to level at a minimum, 3 classes. Currently you show a THM at 16, so if that is your main you are heading towards Black Mage. Black Mage requires THM at level 30, and Archer at level 15, and lets you cross class Arcanist skills like Physik (cure spell), which you probably want anyway. So at a minimum, your current class would want to level THM, ARC, and ACN.

If you also level crafting/gathering you can cut down on costs of equipment and repairs during leveling, so that helps.

Beyond that first job it becomes a bit more of a personal choice. Leveling secondary classes takes a lot longer without the experience from main quests, so that might lead some to prefer to have each job on a different character. But it is nice to be able to switch to a different job based on the needs of a group, if say your FC needs a healer for a dungeon, and you are currently a dps. If you do different jobs on different characters you would have to log out and log back in on your other character in that situation.

That said, I do think I heard that in future expansions they will be adding higher level jobs, which require two other jobs to unlock. At which point you are looking at 6 classes. So if that is the case in the long run the "best" choice may just be to level everything on a single character and be ready for the future.

This is not to discourage multiple characters if that is your thing. I certainly have a lot of characters myself, and have leveled the same classes multiple times as a result. But I like the unique characterizations, and immersion fun.

Pros to single character:
-No need to transfer goods back and forth (which requires either access to the same FC bank or friends you can trust, since you can't mail your own alts)
-All progress is kept; no need to get your chocobo, airship, aetheryte attunements, dye quest, materia quests, etc. over again
-Don't have to see the same story over again

Pros to multiple characters:
-Different looks
-Different starting story (after 15ish, they all merge)
-Separate caps/lockouts for endgame tokens/raids, more allowances for leves
-Sidequest availability (use them all up on your first character and you might find other classes a bit harder to level)

Fantastic reply, tyvm for the information! :)