Are jobs bound by lore?

Hi there,

The jobs seem to play a big part in the lore and plot. I am Heavensward with the Azure Dragoon, and he is referenced quite often by his class, even mentioning that I bested him in Dragoon combat.

It made me wonder, from a lore perspective.

Are you bound by the jobs in the game, or are there NPC's whom have transcended this?
For example, Alphinaud, I cannot tell if he is a Mage or an Astrologist, or something else entirely?

Could someone like Raubahn, for example, be a Gladiator/Warrior?

Or do they then become something else entirely?

Or is it just simple, Thancred is a Rogue, Yda is a Monk etc?

Thanks,

Scions may change jobs, but not abruptly, and generally at the beginning or ending of an expansion.

Their character development follows the change, but it's subtle rather than glaring.

The twins are Arcanists to begin, and each follows a different path that is not really apparent until the HW expansion.

Only the Warrior of Light appears to be able to perform all jobs at any given time. They are special like that :)

nobody is bound by lore and the jobs do evolve over time. mch wol make their own stuff at level 70+

jobs are specialised fighting styles that are obtained via jobstones. It used to be job lore guided what actions the jobs obtained in game. But the devs discarded that sadly

npcs break the rules constantly, players used to be able to have a main job and take actions from other classes, but they discarded that too

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Originally Posted by Yvresse

Are you bound by the jobs in the game, or are there NPC's whom have transcended this?
For example, Alphinaud, I cannot tell if he is a Mage or an Astrologist, or something else entirely?

Could someone like Raubahn, for example, be a Gladiator/Warrior?

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Absolutely.
Y'shtola, for example, is kind of a Blend of BLM, WHM, but with some extra abilities that don't exist for player use (representing special magics she's mastered during her studies / on her journey).
The closer you look at many of the (fleshed out) NPCs the more you'll realize that few of them are strictly sticking to the jobs as they are codified for player use.

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Originally Posted by DPZ2

Only the Warrior of Light appears to be able to perform all jobs at any given time. They are special like that :)

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To go along with this, the WoL also has by far the most robust kit.
Wether the scions are trust members or wether you're playing as them in a solo instance they have far fewer moves at their disposal as we do.

Jobs are very specific disciplines bound by job stones. You need to have a job stone to be a specific job. Classes like rogue or thaumaturge are much more open and loose.

A lot of NPCs don’t play as available classes either, Y’shtola for example being a “sorceress” and Alphinaud being an “academian”. There are definitely many more disciplines of combat outside the ones that were available to us.

The only main story NPCs currently in possession of a job stone are Estinien (DRG), Alisae (RDM), Urianger (AST), and Thancred (GNB), who all have in-story reasons for being that job. Alphinuad will likely have a sage job stone in Endwalker.

Remember that the Job system only really limits the PC because they're using Soul Crystals to basically cheat their way into skill.

With enough training and/or talent it'd be entirely plausible to transcend the Job system. Without spoiling too much Thancred later changes to a Gunbreaker, but retains some stealth tricks he employs during a climactic confrontation with Shadowbringers' secondary antagonist. Of course, animations limit every Job, and given Jobs are all animated with a specific weapon in mind...

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Originally Posted by Cilia

Remember that the Job system only really limits the PC because they're using Soul Crystals to basically cheat their way into skill.

With enough training and/or talent it'd be entirely plausible to transcend the Job system. Without spoiling too much Thancred later changes to a Gunbreaker, but retains some stealth tricks he employs during a climactic confrontation with Shadowbringers' secondary antagonist. Of course, animations limit every Job, and given Jobs are all animated with a specific weapon in mind...

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Pre-Stormblood, we had access to abilities from other classes too. A lot of the abilities some jobs have are more from the class than the job itself and that some of the ancient jobs would have been radically different in their day. Remember that for the original jobs in the game, you need to play as a class for 30 levels and those abilities don't go away as soon as you pick up a job stone.


Pre-Endwalker SMN seems like it borrows a lot of its rotation from its origination class, arcanist, as does SCH. Arcanists are a newer profession invented by the lalafell from their homeland in the Southern Isles, so it probably doesn't have a direct connection to Allag, but could still have some connection to Nym. Either way, EW SMN could be a return to form if the Allagan summoners weren't DoT mages like they are now.

Amdapor didn't have the same connection to the elementals like Gridania does, which means WHMs might not have been casting stone and aero in the old times, while a Gridanian-trained conjurer-turned-white mage would.

Jobs exists mostly for gameplay purposes and the lore explains it after the fact. In the lore you could theoretically be every job and do everything at the same time. There's no reason a samurai couldn't also jump like a dragoon and heal like a scholar if they've trained for it. We as players are limited because it would break the game balance if you could use every skill at the same time, but NPCs in scripted fights are under no such limitations.

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Originally Posted by Cilia

Remember that the Job system only really limits the PC because they're using Soul Crystals to basically cheat their way into skill.

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I wouldn't say cheat. A lot of our progress in the jobs is already set in stone (ha!) by the time we get them, via lore reasons. Why does RDM start at 50? Because canonically the WoL has already leveled WHM and BLM (remember, all job quests are assumed done by the storyline when the X.1 patch kicks in), giving them large amounts of experience using both types of magic, and has leveled up multiple dexterous jobs giving them the basics they need to perform the acrobatics of the job well. By the end of the 2nd batch of job questlines, the WoL has already begun creating new moves. While the job stones give us the memories of the basics, we already have enough skill by that point to master them incredibly fast and then improve upon them.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

I wouldn't say cheat. A lot of our progress in the jobs is already set in stone (ha!) by the time we get them, via lore reasons. Why does RDM start at 50? Because canonically the WoL has already leveled WHM and BLM (remember, all job quests are assumed done by the storyline when the X.1 patch kicks in), giving them large amounts of experience using both types of magic, and has leveled up multiple dexterous jobs giving them the basics they need to perform the acrobatics of the job well. By the end of the 2nd batch of job questlines, the WoL has already begun creating new moves. While the job stones give us the memories of the basics, we already have enough skill by that point to master them incredibly fast and then improve upon them.

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Examples of our own moves include: Battle Litany (Dragoon), Living Shadow (Dark Knight), Dreadwyrm Trance (Summoner, we didn't learn this through the usual method, we had to go through a whole process to master it), Automaton Queen (Machinist) and every ability we learn through levelling rather than via job quests.

What's also worth acknowledging is that there are plenty of 'parallel disciplines' that are absolutely not the jobs we get in-game, but largely end up at the same end result in terms of being highly capable with very similar visuals.

There's a lot of good examples of that among the NPCs in the Bozja questline; being conscious of not spoiling it for an OP who's only gotten to Heavensward, but over the course of that you see perfectly capable parallel disciplines to Dark Knight, Monk and Black Mage, just to name a few.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

Jobs are very specific disciplines bound by job stones. You need to have a job stone to be a specific job.

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You do not need a job stone to be a job. Job stones absorb the experiences of their practitioners so that their techniques can be passed on to future practitioners more easily, but you can learn those techniques without a stone. It just takes time (or talent) like learning anything else.

Consider for example the Soul of the Machinist. It's a blank stone, never been used by any machinist before you because you are basically inventing all the techniques on your own. You don't have a Soul of the Machinist so that you can be a machinist; you have a Soul of the Machinist so that it can absorb the machinist techniques you invent and then someone in the future can learn your techniques from the stone much more quickly than if they were to try to learn your techniques unassisted. Jobs having a set list of actions is a gameplay mechanic and not a law of the lore. Of course different people who practice the same job are going to use many of the same techniques, but they might develop their own versions of actions (see: Alisaie's roleplay fight) or learn a few completely different actions.

A corollary to this is that being a job does not mean you can only use the techniques that belong to that job. Y'shtola didn't suddenly forget all her healing magic the moment she chose to take up black magic, nor did Thancred forget how to be a rogue. But Y'shtola's perception of what she needs to be doing in a combat situation has changed, and stopping to cast Cure would mean she has time for one less death spell. Likewise Thancred taking the role of protector means that many of his rogue techniques and tactics no longer benefit his function on the front line. In fact there is a moment in one of the ShB dungeons where, in a position that his gunbreaker skills don't benefit him right then, he pulls out a Shukuchi. In the same situation, Uranger performs an Aetherial Manipulation, which is not a technique that the game system has assigned to arcanists or astrologians. The lore is okay with all this, and the WoX being locked out of actions from other jobs whenever they switch is just a gameplay mechanic.

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Originally Posted by Rongway

You do not need a job stone to be a job. Job stones absorb the experiences of their practitioners so that their techniques can be passed on to future practitioners more easily, but you can learn those techniques without a stone. It just takes time (or talent) like learning anything else.

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That’s not entirely accurate.

You use machinist as an example, but the man who gives you the stone himself says that the job stone is required to transfer your aether to the aetherotransformer(the lunchbox). Without that, you would just be a Lominsan musketeer. Similarly, black magic cannot be controlled at all without the use of the stone. Scholar faeries are also bound to the stone and an NPC says only those who have a stone and were bathed in a primal’s aether can become summoners.

It may be possible to learn other job abilities without a job stone, but who would teach you? In a world where regular training + experience = magical stone imparting memories of techniques upon you, I think you’d be hard pressed to find a traditional teacher, and it would definitely be the long path.

Even the world’s center of learning, Sharlayan, doesn’t have such teachers. Levava’s grandfather loses all of his astrologian powers as soon as he gives up his stone to you. The monks of Ala Mhigo also historically depended on job stones. And now they’re even more crucial for monks and other professions that have been endangered

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

You use machinist as an example, but the man who gives you the stone himself says that the job stone is required to transfer your aether to the aetheroconverter (the lunchbox). Without that, you would just be a Lominsan musketeer.

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That may be one of its functions, but you could have programmed any crystal with the right aspects to perform that function. That the crystal Stephanivien picked up and programmed to perform that function also happened to be appropriate for use as a job stone is an aside. If WoX had a non-job crystal that could interface with the lunchbox, they would still have the talent and martial skill to invent machinist techniques from scratch; they just wouldn't be easily transferable to posterity.

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Originally Posted by Rongway

That may be one of its functions, but you could have programmed any crystal with the right aspects to perform that function. That the crystal Stephanivien picked up and programmed to perform that function also happened to be appropriate for use as a job stone is an aside. If WoX had a non-job crystal that could interface with the lunchbox, they would still have the talent and martial skill to invent machinist techniques from scratch; they just wouldn't be easily transferable to posterity.

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Then the only thing that makes machinist a job and not a class is the fact that it holds a soul crystal and it's just a terminology thing.

It still doesn't change the fact that for certain disciplines a soul crystal is 100% required and for others no teachers exist. Even blue mage requires a job stone for blue magic to work despite the fact that it's also blank, like machinist's. Enemy abilities that you learn are stored in the soul crystal. That may be a piece of lore written by game mechanics, but it's still in the story of how things go and it's impossible to be a blue mage without one. Then there's the other jobs I also mentioned where it's also completely impossible to be one without holding the stone, regardless of any training.

I'm sure it's probably mentioned why we can only have one at a time, so you can't be a paladin/white mage. But if you want to be a paladin/white mage with just a paladin soul crystal, you have an extremely uphill battle to face since you have no one to teach you, and would need to come up with the magic yourself. And at that point, could you even call yourself a white mage? Healing magic has existed since the eras before the Allagan Empire but white mages are one specific discipline from one specific geographic location from one specific moment of time. Similarly, it's why Y'shtola is a "sorceress" and not a "thaumaturge" since she never trained with the guild in Ul'dah. Alphinaud learned how to summon carbuncles and magical geometries in Sharlayan and not Limsa Lominsa so he's an "academian" and not an "arcanist". The thing that makes each of the jobs their own thing are the techniques learned from the crystal. Otherwise you're just "some guy with a sword who took some classes in healing magic".

The lore is obviously OK with having abilities outside the confines of your job stone and I mentioned that before as well. But all of those abilities were learned while we were training in specific classes, which are outside of the job stone world.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

Then the only thing that makes machinist a job and not a class is the fact that it holds a soul crystal and it's just a terminology thing.

It still doesn't change the fact that for certain disciplines a soul crystal is 100% required and for others no teachers exist. Even blue mage requires a job stone for blue magic to work despite the fact that it's also blank, like machinist's. Enemy abilities that you learn are stored in the soul crystal. That may be a piece of lore written by game mechanics, but it's still in the story of how things go and it's impossible to be a blue mage without one. Then there's the other jobs I also mentioned where it's also completely impossible to be one without holding the stone, regardless of any training.

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You have some good points but I think what we've come to is a set of slightly different questions.

Norvrandt has a few jobs that are very much like Eorzea's White Mage, Black Mage, and Paladin, which they call Devout, Magus, and Knight, developed independently but with many overlapping techniques. Suppose, somehow, an Eorzean Black Mage happened to encounter a Norvrandtan Magus.

• Would the Black Mage recognize the Magus as a Black Mage?
• Would the Magus recognize the Black Mage as a Magus?
• If the Magus learned how to cast black magic without blowing themselves up not through a job stone but through a combination of talent and practice, and incidentally developed a set of techniques that matched the Black Mage's technique set 1:1, would it matter that the Magus didn't have a stone or that they styled themself Magus instead of Black Mage?
• Is only one of them a job because only one of them has a stone?
• Are they both jobs, but different jobs?
• Are they the same job?

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Originally Posted by Rongway

You have some good points but I think what we've come to is a set of slightly different questions.

Norvrandt has a few jobs that are very much like Eorzea's White Mage, Black Mage, and Paladin, which they call Devout, Magus, and Knight, developed independently but with many overlapping techniques. Suppose, somehow, an Eorzean Black Mage happened to encounter a Norvrandtan Magus.

• Would the Black Mage recognize the Magus as a Black Mage?
• Would the Magus recognize the Black Mage as a Magus?
• If the Magus learned how to cast black magic without blowing themselves up not through a job stone but through a combination of talent and practice, and incidentally developed a set of techniques that matched the Black Mage's technique set 1:1, would it matter that the Magus didn't have a stone or that they styled themself Magus instead of Black Mage?
• Is only one of them a job because only one of them has a stone?
• Are they both jobs, but different jobs?
• Are they the same job?

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What makes a black mage a black mage is the fact that they cast spells using large amounts of ambient aether to cause pure destruction. The black mage storyline makes it clear that it is impossible to control that much aether without a soul crystal, period. According to the questline, without the stone you will burn yourself inside out trying to control magic outside yourself if you're overstepping your bounds.

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Without the Gem of Shatotto, impossible to control, the most powerful black magic is! Squaaawk! Lost control, these mages did. Aether within their own bodies ignited! Burned alive from the inside. Painful way to die, it is.”

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I can't remember if Shatotto herself was able to cast full-on black magic without using a soul crystal, but even if she was, she was a prodigy who devoted her life to that one specific goal of wielding that much aether from outside the body. Expecting every magus we meet to be someone of her caliber would be a bit much, let alone someone at her level who also happened to dabble in other disciplines, all without the benefit of a soul crystal.

The destructive, offensive magic that Y'shtola uses in Shadowbringers, and red mages and thaumaturges use, and even that of beastmen, all comes from within themselves using their own aether. In regards to anyone we meet in Norvrandt or the other summoned warriors of light, we never ask, so we don't know if they're using soul crystal analogues or not in order to control their magic if they're casting magic specifically like black mages or if they're casting like every other sorcerer/magi that exists in the game.

Conjurers and geomancers also cast using ambient aether, but apparently not on the same scale as a black mage. Conjury itself descended from magi of the old era passing down "modest magicks, low in risk and easy to wield" combined with teachings from the elementals.


"Job" is a terminology only encountered outside of the game for our own player benefit to separate the "job system" from the "class system". The lore book describes these instead as "specialized disciplines". That terminology is extremely vague, but all that matters to us is that in our own world's history for thousands of years, exceptional people doing exceptional things have carried soul crystals to learn from past holders of the stone, as well as to pass down the techniques to new generations. But the first techniques had to come from somewhere. So of course anyone with sufficient drive would be able to learn without a stone with enough training and study, but it is infinitely easier with a soul crystal, and as I mentioned before, sometimes impossible without.

The job quests have told us outright that the job crystals for black mage, machinist, summoner, scholar, and blue mage are essential to those jobs for reasons beyond their function as learning tools. White mage and astrologian questlines suggest that having the crystal taken away would completely depower you and remove the ability to cast magic from those schools. And the questlines for warrior, dark knight, and dragoon mention that their stones specifically choose and grant powers to the wielder. But to your point, sometimes the distinction doesn't matter. We've seen that with the au ra tribe with a discipline that is similar to warrior. It's when you start getting into magic that things seem more dependent on having a job stone. Or in the case of machinist, which is a brand new "job" in the world's history and the game's writers needed a lore reason for you to be requiredto equip it. Without that lore requirement, machinist could just decide not to put it on if they didn't want to pass anything on.

Though this raises a question: If an Astrologian requires a soul crystal for their spells, how is Urianger one in Norvrant?

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Originally Posted by Layte_Aeon

Though this raises a question: If an Astrologian requires a soul crystal for their spells, how is Urianger one in Norvrant?

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Maybe there was an Astrologian-like discipline on the First and Urianger happened to get his hands on a soul crystal during his three years of being there. Then again, he's also an Astrologian on the Source post-return, and the Scions explicitly didn't take their gear with them on either trip—their souls arrived on the First naked, and Tataru had to make their personal effects from scratch for their return.

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Originally Posted by Rosenstrauch

Maybe there was an Astrologian-like discipline on the First and Urianger happened to get his hands on a soul crystal during his three years of being there. Then again, he's also an Astrologian on the Source post-return, and the Scions explicitly didn't take their gear with them on either trip—their souls arrived on the First naked, and Tataru had to make their personal effects from scratch for their return.

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The same way Jannequinard does I assume. Also Leveva post level 60 has let anyone who wants to learn Sharlyean Astrology to do so. Which is similar to Geomancy and last I checked the Hingan we meet in the SB questline doesn't have a stone. That and anyone who won a riddle contest that lasted for seven days against pixies probably can find a way to switch from a 1.0 arcanist to Astrologian.

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Originally Posted by Layte_Aeon

Though this raises a question: If an Astrologian requires a soul crystal for their spells, how is Urianger one in Norvrant?

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Didn't think of that. Probably an oversight. Or maybe because his body itself is present with the soul stone? Anyone's guess at this point, but the game system describes him as a full-on Astrologian and it's a pretty important plot point in the AST quests that Levava's grandfather needed that stone in order to cast AST spells.

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Originally Posted by SannaR

The same way Jannequinard does I assume. Also Leveva post level 60 has let anyone who wants to learn Sharlyean Astrology to do so. Which is similar to Geomancy and last I checked the Hingan we meet in the SB questline doesn't have a stone. That and anyone who won a riddle contest that lasted for seven days against pixies probably can find a way to switch from a 1.0 arcanist to Astrologian.

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Levava's grandfather is presumably a better astrologian than Jannequinard and he required a soul crystal, becoming powerless after giving his to us. It could be that smaller scale spells don't require anything special other than training. Just like how conjurers can pull aether from nature and also cure people on their own with just a little help from the elementals and a teacher. But we never see any of the conjurers casting assize or holy.

Regarding Geomancy, I think it has a lot more in common with conjury than astromancy. Both source their aether from the area and elements around them.

Yet Hingashin Geomancy use divination to tell fortunes and shields that are exactly like that of Astrology. It's why so many "Geomancers" in Kugane weren't practicing the spells side of things and only the divination aspects so that they could get rich off of their clients who met them in hopes their business would profit. Similar to how Ishgardian Astrology didn't evolve into spellcraft, but to help predict dragon movement.

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Originally Posted by SannaR

Yet Hingashin Geomancy use divination to tell fortunes and shields that are exactly like that of Astrology. It's why so many "Geomancers" in Kugane weren't practicing the spells side of things and only the divination aspects so that they could get rich off of their clients who met them in hopes their business would profit. Similar to how Ishgardian Astrology didn't evolve into spellcraft, but to help predict dragon movement.

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I was under the impression that the "diviners" were charlatans without any actual magical abilities and that the "divinations" were no different than modern feng shui, which isn't exactly magic.

The lore book itself makes note of geomancy and conjury being close.

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With regards to the mastery it grants over wind, earth, and water, as well as its affinity for barriers, geomancy is thought to share many similarities with conjury. Scholars have pointed out how certain aspects of the art have a kinship with Sharlayan astrology.

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Astrologians are mentioned, but considering everything we've actually seen of geomancers in action is barrier mending and creation, the longer mention on conjury with astrology being tacked on at the end, the name of the profession itself, as well as that character in question using conjurer spells, I'm more inclined to believe that the nature magic aspect plays more into it than anything else. If you had been around for as long as I have, you would remember a time when it was conjurer who had more unique barrier abilities than any other class: protect, shell, and stoneskin. Shell disappeared in Heavensward. Then in Stormblood, protect was changed from a conjurer ability to a "healer role action" and stoneskin disappeared. And then protect finally disappeared in Shadowbringers.

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Originally Posted by Layte_Aeon

Though this raises a question: If an Astrologian requires a soul crystal for their spells, how is Urianger one in Norvrant?

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I believe it is actually stated at one point that Urianger is actually just using Sharlayan techniques he learned back there, and is just falling back to an already-learned skillset rather than picking up a new one. The Astrologian job we have is Sharlayan astrology, after all.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

If you been around as long as I have...

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Conjurer had Protect and Stoneskin until Heavensward and a job trait called, "Proshell" that gave Protect cast by a Conjurer or WHM Magic Defense as well as physical. So it had a whopping 2. It was rolled into Protect itself in Heavensward, so that SCH and AST could also reapply Protect without requiring a WHM for the best Raid defense. Comparing CNJ to other classes and talking about supportive barriers is kinda silly, since it's the only class that is actually a full on healer, required by every healer for cross class until Stormblood.

Arcanist also had two damage reducing abilities. One was the barrier that inflicted a dmg down debuff, Eye for an Eye, and the other was Virus (with Supervirus perk it lowered all forms of damage via lowering STR DEX INT and MND of the mob).

Once the two became jobs, SCH had more barriers. They pretty much have to default to saying that Geomancy is similar to Conjury/Sharlayan Astro, because it's the baseline healing techniques known to them(Nymian technique are a lost art). The Geomancy barriers they're referencing are on full display in Swallow's Compass as literal barriers to progression.

It's sure gonna get awkward in Endwalkers when AST no longer focuses on barriers either lol.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

Conjurer had Protect and Stoneskin until Heavensward and a job trait called, "Proshell" that gave Protect cast by a Conjurer or WHM Magic Defense as well as physical.

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I refreshed my memory and shell was a conjurer spell in early 1.0. For some reason I thought it lasted until HW. Probably mixed with my memories of being a WHM main for years in FFXI. Regardless, the lore book itself relates barriers to conjurer rather than astrologian.

I feel like the only reason geomancy is associated with astrology at all is that the writers introduced it through the AST storyline and needed a reason for AST to go to the new SB zones. Otherwise, a foreign class where they protect, heal, and cast earth, wind, and water spells is much closer to conjurer than anything else.

Jobs are not bound by lore. Jobs can, and will, change as needed overtime and their lore (including their specific quests) will be edited to reflect this. This has already happened a few times, most notably with Summoner being the most recent subjected to this.

For example: Arcanist, Scholar & Summoner didn't exist until 2014 with the release of A Realm Reborn. Prior to that Thaumaturge was the "poison mage" class and very much is not anymore. Conjurer was closer to the ARR+ Thaumaturge back then. In fact, many of the abilities and spells that we had back during those times are still present in the game and still utilized by enemies we face.

Thancred, prior to Rogue & Ninja's release in ARR, was actually a Gladiator. He didn't make that shift until it was available.

I think in most cases they do at least try to tie character to job to lore, but in some cases it's basically just a convenient source for combat animations. There are definitely some cases, though, like with Urianger as AST that do raise an eyebrow.

In regards to Urianger picking up AST... it's a Sharlayan art, so it's entirely reasonable he'd be trained in it to some degree and have filled in the gaps while waiting for us to appear on Norvrandt. (Incidentally it's an excuse to have Urianger play with cards, referencing how his JP voice actor got his big break as the lead in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX.)

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Originally Posted by Cilia

In regards to Urianger picking up AST... it's a Sharlayan art, so it's entirely reasonable he'd be trained in it to some degree and have filled in the gaps while waiting for us to appear on Norvrandt. (Incidentally it's an excuse to have Urianger play with cards, referencing how his JP voice actor got his big break as the lead in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX.)

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So that's why Ifrit and Garuda fused into Elemental Hero Flame Wingman...

Basically.... job stones are a fucking pain in the ass. The jobs changed so much since the beginning and, as someone already said, they will continue to change as much as it's needed through the next expansions.

Aside from the blackmage where it's crystal clear it's impossible without a job stone, the rest of the jobs, or more precisely specialized disciplines, job stones are not really necessary. They are just here to make someone learn the discipline faster, or to pass on the techniques to the next generation, but in no way jobs are bounded by their job stones nor a job is a job just because it has a job stone. If we go like this, we could simply take a soul crystal and infuse the techniques of a gladiator into that stone.

Concerning the dragoon, if I'm not mistaken, the drg soul crystals take their share of power from Nidhogg's eyes, only the Azure Dragon is given the eye to benefit from its full power. Moreover, even if a newbie gets his hands on a drg soul stone, it does not mean he has what it takes for the crystal to awake and let him learn the techniques inside it. But it absolutely does not mean either he can't learn the job without the stone, with training and perseverance all is possible, and either not going to the length of Shattotto spending one's life on the same thing for black magic.

Again, Samourai's soul stone is completely useless aside learning the job faster. There are martial arts teachers everywhere in the East (you see them a lot in Bozja, and have some details in the Field Records).

Job stones seem to bind the job to them only from an Eorzean view point, it's much less of a handicap in the East and in the First. From a RP viewpoint, it does not prevent you from learning a similar discipline and having the same power as a "job with a job stone".

But as I said in the beginning, soul stones are a pain in the ass to deal with, so it might be better to ignore them or just stick to the "learning faster or pass on to the next generation" for most of the actual specialized disciplines whether it be for lore or RP purpose.

I think SCH is bound to the Soul Stone because Lily is, but this is old memory and I may be misremembering the exact details.

I believe you're right. Like, 95% sure. Every fairy is bound to the stone as a unique personality. Lily is bound to the WoL's soul stone, originally used by Surito Carito, while Lilac is bound to Setoto's father's stone.