Quote Originally Posted by Rongway View Post
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.
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.