RDM thing that never made sense to me.

Just recently leveled RDM up to current content, and it's probably my 2nd favorite job thus far. However, one small thing never really made sense to me.

The weapon is assembled to form a staff when spellcasting, and is split into a magical focus and a rapier for melee. This is fine, and is a very neat concept for a spellsword.

However, the bulk of the RDM rotation is spellcasting, with the rapier tricks only coming into play once one builds up enough White & Black Mana. Why is it that we make it a point to separate our weapon into the focus/rapier between every spellcast, when it would probably just be easier to keep it as a staff?

Yes, I know, small indie company etc, it doesn't really matter etc, the rapier stance looks cool and we already have two other jobs who hold a staff etc. Just, if I were a Red Mage in real life, I'd probably just carry the staff around.

Also, that click sound every time you hard cast a spell (the focus and the rapier being combined) is pretty much burned into my brain at this point.

Auto-attacks.

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Originally Posted by NegativeS

Why is it that we make it a point to separate our weapon into the focus/rapier between every spellcast, when it would probably just be easier to keep it as a staff?

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You kinda already answered it yourself, honestly.

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Originally Posted by NegativeS

[...]the rapier stance looks cool[..]

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Red Mage's aesthetic is the combination of melee and magic, and if they kept it as a staff as the default, a Red Mage wouldn't look nearly as much like they are a magic sword wielder.

From a practical standpoint, it might be less efficient for sure... but it's one of those things where it's just kind of something that the game expects you to be willing to overlook, the same way that lots of things are more "fantasy fiction fun" than practical in regards to things like armor design, weapon design, and so on.

Hot take because I know it would be a pain for savages.

But I wish RDM had more melee in general, I really like the idea of a spell caster with melee, but the "melee combo" is 3 attacks with 3 finishers that are at range, I kind of feel like that defeats the aesthetic of red mage in general, it barely feels like you even use melee for me.

I do get RDM has to be balanced around Savage/ultimate fights but if there was a way to work in more melee into it's gameplay loop I'd enjoy it more then current RDM. (Which is still decently fun)

I think the reality is twofold. One, that there are already two classes that use staves, And two, and probably most importantly, is RDM is typically associated with a rapier traditionally.

If you're looking for an in game explanation, what it boils down to is this: Red Mages only use personal aether for their spells. But personal aether sucks, so they needed a way to get more out of their aether.

One of the ways was to improve the quality of aether, and red mages do this by instilling activity into their person aether. Quick, rapid movement, that puts their body in an active state. The crystal medium that serves as a catalyst for the spellcasting also moves, and when you use your most powerful spells, you are first moving your blade with rapid movements that are also drawing sorcerous shapes. The shapes empower spells, similar to Sage, Summoner, and Scholar, while the movement makes the mage's aether and focus both in a highly active state, to make casting Verflare or Verholy more "aether economical".

It's honestly very similar I feel, to the physics of Sage Nouliths, and in a *weird* way, similar to the effect Zodiark had on the star, just on a waaaaaay, way smaller scale.

Yeah, I suppose it would make sense not to disassemble the staff in between casts. I've never really thought about that. If you're in an actual fight, you want to keep your guard up and keep your weapon at the ready. I'd probably take it a step further and hold the staff upside down so the pointy end was still facing the opponent.

Yeah i think its mostly aesthetic reasons and class fantasy reasons and the staff as base form would dissrupt that.
But i have to confess that the Idea of a Red Mage with a swordcane as weapon has class and charm.

I always assumed a red mages movements were part of the spellcast, like they have to do all the flashy stuff and always have to disconnect the blade and focus to boost how the art of red magic works,

summoner does it by writing in those spooky books,

black mage does it by loading up on mana before lighting some poor sap on fire,

Lore-wise, the first Red Mages were survivors of the War of the Magi who needed to keep their identities as former Mhachi and Amdapori mages secret. As such, they could not openly carry their spellcasting foci for fear of persecution and so devised the modified rapier and lantern setup for their focus. This gave the first Red Mages a non-magical means of fighting while still allowing them to rapidly assemble a mage's staff when spellcasting was unavoidable. In this way they could hide the fact that they were spellcasters during a time when mages carried the blame for the calamity (of water) that had just recently struck the world.

As generations passed and the stigma of spellcasting faded, it would be acceptable for a Red Mage to enchant their focus to float nearby (likely the same cantrip used for Astrologian globes and Sage nouliths) to free up their off-hand, but the habit of hiding their true abilities under the guise of a fencer had become part of the Red Mage tradition by then.

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Originally Posted by Random0

Lore-wise...

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Where are you getting this "lore" from? It's not what is in the lorebook and it's not what I recall from the quests (which match the lorebook), which is that red magic was quite openly developed to use black and white magicks but relying on the caster's own aether instead of drawing from the world around them.

The lorebook additionally indicates that they were "experimenting with mundane fighting styles to supplement their sparing use of aether" and settled on Coerthan Elezen-style rapiers.

Might be a case of plausible sounding headcanon or something from a Roleplay Circle.
I mean its not a bad story but not what we got in the game. :)