Difference between Scholar and Bard (personality)

[AspectOfWinter]

It's heavily implied in the Scholar storyline that in addition to providing support, they often had the job of giving orders and personally directing Nym's marauder units in battle.

For example, it's difficult to tell whether the Galvanize effect is a play on galvanized steel (referring to the absorb shield) or whether the player is galvanizing the person they are casting it on into action (Adloquium is the Latin word for encouragement), or maybe both.

I've never done the Bard storyline, but from the sound of things they are much the same, just with music instead of magic and less of an emphasis on tactics.

So it's difficult to tell since it is muddy in lore and the class has been mostly lost to the ages, but right now I'm seeing SCH as a combination of ARC and BRD. In present day Limsa Lominsa, the bulk of the Maelstrom's military leadership is in the hands of the Marauders (and presumably the Musketeers), but yet the Arcanists have similar duties of being tacticians in the story.

[Nayto]

From a quick memory recall (so take this with a grain of salt, the Job master spoke in "riddles" to me so a lot of details went out in one ear). Bards are generally just motivators, singing in the midst of battle to invoke confidence in the party. The reason why Bard's derive from Archers is from a famous archer that would sing phrases while strumming his bowstring (thancred is a Bard, yet he prefers daggers), and the Bard you learn from happens to just be a former master bowmen as well. So in essence, you are discovering how to become a better archer and through the songs you learn, you meditate on being a more confident and decisive archer (or trying to make a certain 'someone' recover from his emotional scars of a previous battle by being a better archer, either or.).

Although, before becoming the Bard, you do learn a lot of tactical and espionage knowledge from your guildmaster and peers. So basically the tactitional 'support' of the Bard really just comes from being an Archer.

I guess Scholar resides in enlightening the mind while Bard resolves the soul. One is in the heart and one is in the mind.

[Skies]

Okay, this is from someone who has done both:
The most clear difference is that the Scholar's style is tactical, the Bard's style is emotional.

Scholars were the tacticians and commanders of Nym, coupling their duties with learning and developing healing arts to support while they led their biggest boon to the nymian forces was definitely their skill as tactician. If you must think of a more realistic example, think an army major with a degree in medicine, that is roughly a good interpretation of their duty and art. (random note: Sacred Soil in JP is actually called 'Circle Formation')


Bards, however, are very different. First bards were in fact, simply archers from the God's Quiver during the Autumn War, being on the back of the battlefield, watching their allies fall from a distance, the archers took to singing to ease their own hearts and focus their minds, and it turned out that such deeply powerful and inspired songs could drive their own allies to greater powers. I am... Uncertain... Whether the moogles had much influence with those men becase I know they are involved, but... Either way, a more real-life interpretation of bardsong would be... Marching song. For anyone who's had to march a forest at night, raining, mud up to your ankles, you'd know that for whatever reason, keeping up a marching song will help you keep going.

They are vastly different as you can see

[AspectOfWinter]

Using football as an analogy, I thought it was more like:

SCH = the coach
BRD = the cheerleaders

Granted, one of the coach's main duties is to plan out strategies & plays and act as an advisor as such, but otherwise, during a game, for the most part they do pretty much the exact same thing: motivate the players.

[Skies]

Yeah, a scholar is then definitely unlike a coach (although the duties of a nymian scholar and one with the skills of such in an adventuring party would certainly vary due to different environments), because as a field commander they don't motivate, they organize and control.

[AspectOfWinter]

I was trying to find out which class(es) I should RP as, which is why Ive been posting all these threads LOL. So do you think that a Scholar would be less "warlike" as well as less likely to take on the role of "motivational" field commander, than say a Dragoon? (Of course it isn't very clear how much Nym had in common with Coerthas)

[Skies]

Well, Scholars were both very and not warlike at the same time.
Commanders in times of war, doctors in time of peace. During the war against... Amdapor if memory serves me well... Nym would have various victories despite being greatly overwhelmed in numbers due to their tactics and the synergy between their skills and that of their marauders. However, when it came down to treating the disease from the sea, they were the second ones to fall it to, first the sea traders, and them the ones who treated them.

I would say that scholar and dragoon both are very warlike, but in different fields. One is the commander, the other the knight.

[AspectOfWinter]

I would say that scholar and dragoon both are very warlike, but in different fields. One is the commander, the other the knight.

Simply put then neither one is ideal for my character.

I would say she is very similar to Terra or Rydia personality wise, though perhaps with more of a bitter streak towards the townsfolk that have mistreated her, and thus more on the Scions' side than the City States.

[TinyRedLeaf]

I don't know which part of the world you're from, so forgive me for being presumptuous in thinking you're probably from the West, because you seem to take a very narrow view of the role of military strategy in warfare.

The military strategist or tactician has long had a special place in East Asian lore and history, primarily because of the influence of Chinese culture and literature. The Chinese valued martial valour, but learned men who understood the theory and practice of statecraft were even more highly esteemed, because leaders knew how important such men were for harnessing the potential of an entire nation for war.

I believe the scholar job — and to a lesser extent the arcanist class — was conceptualised in that light. I'm told that some aspects of the lore are lost in translation, and the original Japanese names for the some of the job/class abilities and traits impart a more "strategic" flavour compared to the English equivalents.

A lot of Westerners like to quote from Sun Tzu's Art Of War, but I often feel that many of them don't quite grasp the philosophy behind the treatise. Unlike Clausewitz, who saw war as merely a continuation of politics, for the Chinese of the Warring States era, war, politics and survival are one and the same.

Meaning to say, one can profess to love peace and harmony above all else, but it was nevertheless innately understood that, without military strength to begin with, a nation will never know peace.

For the Chinese military scholar, the crafting and application of strategy wasn't a "support" or "motivational" role. It was THE central function — it was a matter of life or death.

One of the key concerns of tacticians of the time was to win battles with the most prudent application of force, so as to preserve sufficient men and materiel for a long-drawn war of attrition. I imagine that the ancient Nymian scholars operated under similar priorities, hence the job's greater emphasis on healing and protection.

[AspectOfWinter]

Well, yes, I am from the US, even though I consider myself more of a Canadian "at heart". But I'm not going to go into politics here...

Honestly, I think the biggest reason why I have such a cynical view of military orders in fantasy is because of my time playing World of Warcraft (and to a lesser extent Aion). In WoW's universe, it is very much a stereotype, if not a requirement, for members of the factions' military to be chauvinistic warmongers. It wasn't until the recent Mists of Pandaria expansion that the Alliance and Horde started to learn that as long as they let their pride get in the way of their compassion and judgment, they were doing more harm than good.

And it isn't just WoW that's guilty of this either...there's also EVE Online and Team Fortress 2. Hell, even in FFXIV the city states themselves are often little better than the Garleans/Ascians.

That, and the fact that I lack the personality in real life to get through boot camp.