Jobs and Locations...

The More I think about it, the more I feel like each of the Jobs seem to be tied to a City State or region, past or present. DRGs in Ishgard (maybe DRK too), BLMs from Mhach, SCHs from Nym, WHMs from Amdapor, SMNs from Allag, MNKs from Ala Mhigo, ASTs from Sharlayan, PLDs from Ul'Dah, so on and so forth.

Now Im thinking, do each of the jobs reference a Nation of the past or present, and if so, what nation in question?

[TL;DR]
That's more or less why they called the first set the Jobs of Eld. They are specific manifestations of an art (more powerful and focused than the basic classes of combat) made famous in specific times and places throughout the tumultuous periods of history.

Long-form
Most of them rose in fame about 500 years ago and fell out of favor (for one reason or another) by the time of the Calamity, only to be resurrected right beforehand. Of the original jobs that break this convention, Dragoon is older, Black Mage is older with a more recent revival, and White Mage is older with a revival right around the same time as the others were in vogue.

Not all new jobs will conform to that, though.

Warrior - Sixth Astral Era; Roegadyn axemanship honed to suit the Hellsguard tribes of the Farreach
Paladin - Sixth Astral Era; Swordsman knights of honor protecting the Sultan(a) of Ul'dah
Monk - Sixth Astral Era; Pugilist skills honed by religious discipline in Ala Mhigo
Dragoon - Sixth Astral Era; Lancer, dragonslayer knights of honor protecting Ishgard from Nidhogg's horde
Bard - Sixth Astral Era; Morale-boosting Archers of Gridania made famous by the Autumn War
White Mage - Fifth Astral Era; Inherited from Amdapor through communion with the Elementals using modern conjury (linked to Gridania)
Black Mage - Fifth Astral Era; Inherited from Mhach (adopted from Shatotto's studies), revived a century ago by a Thaumaturge

New jobs in A Realm Reborn don't have a real pattern aside from that they ended up rising in post-Calamity Eorzea.

Summoner - Third Astral Era; Inherited from Allag, cobbled back together using modern Arcanism, tomestones, and guesswork.
Scholar - Fifth Astral Era; Inerited from Nym, cobbled back together using modern Arcanism and knowledge found in its ruins.
Ninja - Sixth? Astral Era; Inerited from the Far East, popular in Doma (not originating there); Blended with of the ex-Thieves of Limsa Lominsa.

Note that these explanations are bare bones. Some of the connections run even deeper. For example, modern Ul'dahn Thaumaturgy itself is inherited from the Mhachi by way of surviving mages building Belah'dia.

The new jobs are Ishgardian (with one notable caveat)

Astrologian - Sixth? Astral Era; A Sharlayan art, watered down in Ishgard but making a resurgence (with resistance from both sides)
Machinist - Seventh Astral Era; A new art combining modern Eorzean machinery via the Garlond Ironworks and the Lominsan Musketeer
Dark Knight - Those who embrace the inner darkness to protect the downtrodden from abuses of power even by the pious clergy

That's also not to say that similar skills didn't exist beforehand, just not in that particular style.
Allag had "conjurers", though they weren't much like the Gelmorran/Gridanian ones.



Only after writing all of this do I realize that Limsa has no job to be proud of; it has a lot of classes that branch out and become things prized by other nations. What is this? Limsa deserves a job.

Is Ninja truly a 6th Astral era job, though?

In CT and WoD we see Shinobi guarding the area. Additionally, it seems as if the Ninjutsu was practiced in secret in an island off of Doma (descendants of the Allagan Shinobi?) and became popular due to Sasuke teaching the people in the mainland who used ninjutsu to take down an oppressive government or something like that.

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Originally Posted by myahele

Is Ninja truly a 6th Astral era job, though?

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Unconfirmed (hence the question mark). But, the job description says the arts were honed "through the centuries" rather than "through the millennia", so I decided to start there and work my way back as I find more information. The Ninja we get today is of the Doman variety; ninjutsu was brought to Othard from an island to its east by Sasuke, long before the Garlean advance. In that respect, I assume it's of the Sixth Astral Era (on account of the "centuries" bit). How long was ninjutsu an art before that? Hells if I know.

However, I don't know if we can fully trust what we see from Allag. For starters, Shinobi and Kunoichi are namesakes inherited from Final Fantasy III. We also see Allagan clones and manikins wielding "thaumaturgy", "conjury", "pugilism", and "marauder...y" ... "maraud...ing?" ... ... anyroad, those words might have had different connotations back then, or we're seeing arts that had different names, but were quite similar, and ascribing those names to them. They might have had daggers, they might have fought from shadows, but were they Far Eastern ninjutsu practitioners? ... Hells if know.

On the flip side, you have that the Saskuke's Blades are considered Zodiac weapons, as in worthy of being wielded during a time of Calamity and passed down through legend in extremely old books. If Sasuke's Blades are that ancient, how old was Sasuke? Could be far more than "centuries" under that belt, after all.

It's anybody's guess until we have more info.

Also BRD is an odd case, is technically there are two separate manifestations of it - straight out singers and performers who stick to singing in taverns, and the more combat-focused kind, which is the actual Job the player learns (also, back in 1.0 Thancred was actually frequently called one, despite definitely not using anything remotely like BRD abilities in combat).

As for the Allag clones wielding... modern Disciplines, that was something I found odd too, especially given the fact that the Disciplines as we know them now are only meant to have come into use in comparatively recent times and would not have existed in that form at Allag's height, so I'm just going to put it down to a handwave again and that it was just easier for the development team to give them existing classes and abilities rather than created 'Allag classes' simply to fit the lore.... but I guess it could also logically raise the interesting question, that the modern disciplines... aren't so modern after all, and rather than developing them in the Sixth Astral Era, all that happened is that they were restored, much like how Jobs like SCH and WHM were.

But I'm droning on here like a dysfunctional node so I'll shutup now.. bzzzzzpppp.... :p

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

Also BRD is an odd case, is technically there are two separate manifestations of it - straight out singers and performers who stick to singing in taverns, and the more combat-focused kind, which is the actual Job the player learns (also, back in 1.0 Thancred was actually frequently called one, despite definitely not using anything remotely like BRD abilities in combat).

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Agreed; though I suppose that's one of the minor pitfalls of having a franchise that needs to distill combat roles down to cool names, but where each installment demands unique lore for those common words: overlap. In the end, Thancred is as much a BRD as Louisoix is a SCH, or the lancers and pugilists on the Bloodsands of the Coliseum are GLAs. Bards, scholars, gladiators ... dancers, thieves, and engineers, these are all still things in every era. When a job gets the same name, we just have to remember where the lines are.

TL;DR Homonyms, how do they work?

Historically in game the Bardic traditions founded in Gridania required the BRDs to be experienced soldiers. The reason being is the power in the songs that effects the people around them is drawn from their own emotional experiences. When BRDs first started to be recognised as a boon on the battlefield, there was an attempt to use more traditionally trained (tavern/musician) bards however it was discovered their songs didn't share the same effect. The Gridanian Archer bard also shares links to the Moogle musical traditions.

I personally am convinced that Bardic songs are practised by players in FF14 aren't simply morale boosting because of the sound but are actually a form of magic. The level 60 BRD quest where you face off against a siren shows that music in FF14 can have magical effects, in the case of Siren's even enslaving the souls of the dead.

As for Limsa, althought it doesn't have any Job traditions like PLDs with Uldah, the city state does have Maelstrom forces being trained in Warrior traditions and being introduced to Nymian Marine tactics. That's a terrifying combination.

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Originally Posted by Belhi

I personally am convinced that Bardic songs are practised by players in FF14 aren't simply morale boosting because of the sound but are actually a form of magic.

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Well, BRD songs are tagged with "Spell" in their skill descriptions, and they take MP. Sounds like magic to me.

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Originally Posted by myahele

Is Ninja truly a 6th Astral era job, though?

In CT and WoD we see Shinobi guarding the area. Additionally, it seems as if the Ninjutsu was practiced in secret in an island off of Doma (descendants of the Allagan Shinobi?) and became popular due to Sasuke teaching the people in the mainland who used ninjutsu to take down an oppressive government or something like that.

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I figured they only did that because those were pretty much the enemies you encountered in FFIII in that game's crystal tower. So I just handwaved it off as a throwaway reference and never questioned it. However despite being a homage this is still XIV's version of that tower so I guess it does need an explanation.

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

Only after writing all of this do I realize that Limsa has no job to be proud of; it has a lot of classes that branch out and become things prized by other nations. What is this? Limsa deserves a job.

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MUSKETEER WHEN SE?!?