Confusion on additional classes

I am bit confused on being able to be other classes. Like right now I am thaumaturge, if I went and trained him as puglist will he be as strong as say if I made a puglist as a new char? Would I still have access to monk?

Yes. You can level all classes and jobs to 50. For every class, you will be able to allocate its own set of attribute points (30 str on pugilist and 30 int on thaumaturge).

You are in fact encouraged to level multiple classes on the same character. You gain a 50% xp boost to level any alternate combat classes (except your highest level one), and you can freely utilize cross-class skills you learn from other classes to create a custom ability list (putting 'cure' from conjurer on your thaum is a good example). Just keep in mind not all abilities can be put on other classes, and some are only allowed for specific jobs/classes. Refer to the ability description's 'affinity' section for the full list of classes able to use that ability.

Awesome thanks for the info. This will be interesting I won't have to have a fleet of alts to play all the classes

2 questions:

I've started levelling my second class:

1. Do I need to strictly follow the guild quests for the second class?

2. If not, and if all I need to do
Is get to lvl 15 - what's the quickest way for experience - FATEs?

Some of the guild quests give you abilities as well as exp so yes I would do them. If you don't have any quests left Fates, hunt logs, Guildheasts post lvl 10 and the challenge log are good ways to get exp.

Also you need to do the class quests all the way to the final one at level 30 if you wish to unlock that class's 'Job' later on (as the Job quests will not become available until you've completed all the quests for that class at it's Guild). As Naria mentioned the level 15 and 30 class quests each give you a unique ability for that class too which you can't otherwise learn so doing the class quests for other classes is well worth it. :)