Aesthetics of healer

[Kele_Star]

AST = Top notch, elegantly made VFX. If I’m picking a main job purely from aesthetic appeal, AST would’ve won that place.

its funny you say that because thats exactly why i decided to main astro ^-^

[Semirhage]

Tangent: that's too bad. Tarot cards have a fascinating history behind their usage and their eventual evolution into modern playing cards. The metaphorical journey represented in each suit and through the major arcana are also really cool. The art has awesome symbolism in it too.

A basic rundown on tarot history, symbolism, etc.

In the 1400s, Tarot was a card game played in Italy. It had nothing to do with divination at all. It's gone through many revisions since then, especially as the cards spread to Germany and France, mainly changes to the names of the suits (coins/pentacles/discs/bells, cups/flowers, rods/sticks/wands, swords/pikes) and to the content of the trump cards (huge differences between regional versions). Modern tarot has settled on four suits of 14 cards (Ace-10 + four face cards, Knave, Knight, Queen, and King) and 22 trump cards (labeled 0-21), for a total of 78. Modern playing cards are based on this setup: diamonds (coins = money!), clubs (wands and sticks, hitting instruments), spades (swords. Something about a corruption of pikes and spears that looked like shovels to somebody), and hearts (cups and flowers. Love themes.) with the trump panoply being compressed into the number zero card, the Fool, as joker(s).

The cartomancy showed up in the 1800s, when French occultists claimed the cards had ancient ties to Egypt, I ching, Kabbalah, etc. Though there's evidence that the concept of playing cards arrived in Italy from China and the Mid East, modern tarot is so divorced from those origins that it's a major stretch. For looking into the divination symbolism I'd recommend the Rider-Waite card art; a lot of custom and ancient tarot sets have gorgeous art, but RW's art actually has the card's "meaning" symbolized in the image. All details below are therefore some combination of old card game fun folklore with a layer of 19th century French mysticism sprinkled on top. Plus I think knowing what the cards mean in a general sense makes references to them even more enjoyable; when you know that The Fool is supposed to represent beginnings, the Fool card in the Binding of Isaac teleporting you to the starter room...makes sense!

In the divination sense, the suit cards and trump cards are renamed the minor and major arcana. Without detailing individual cards, there are *themes* that go through the deck. Each suit represents a classical element and an aspect of life experience, which goes through a "journey" of ups and downs from Ace to 10. The face cards usually represent people connected to this; the page is an idealistic neophyte, knight is an overexcited crusader, queen is a wise and calm adept, king is a stern and commanding master.

Cups: water and emotions. You start at the ace with "new love! new thing that brings you passion and joy!", go through the honeymoon phase, a breakup of some kind, crying, moving on, and eventually coming out stronger for it.

Coins: Earth and materials. Ace starts as "New job. New house. New pile of money.", takes you through hard work to build things, not appreciating it and losing it all, then patiently rebuilding stronger than ever.

Swords: Air and thoughts. This is the suit people tend to hate because it has a lot of bad/sad cards. Starts you with new ideas, pretty quickly dives into disappointment and self-reflection, ends on existential crises and hitting rock bottom.

Wands: Fire and actions. Starts with taking charge and moving forward with a new (thing), includes exploring, learning new things, fighting battles (real or metaphorical), winning some, losing some, and sometimes carrying a bunch of baggage a long way.

The major arcana do something similar, but in a more generalized sense since they're not tied to a specific aspect of experience. You start fresh, thinking you're hot stuff. You end up good at some things. You fly too high a few times and get spanked back down. Learn something about caution and humility, discover that sometimes bad stuff just *happens*. Become wiser, pick yourself back up again, and eventually declare "yes, I think I've finally learned whatever lesson I was meant to here" in the final card.

Aside from that, I just love the symbolism and multiple meanings on a lot of the cards. The four of cups, for example:
Thanks for not working, image tags

it's the card that means "dissatisfaction, boredom, daydreaming". It depicts a man sitting by a tree, with a cloud next to him forming a hand holding out a golden cup that he's contemplating. But the card is the *four* of cups; there are three perfectly good cups sitting right in front of him. In the art you have both "He's bored and using his imagination to help alleviate it!" alongside "he's bored but you can see it's actually ingratitude".

Eight of swords is another good one.

Guess these don't work inside hide blocks.

It means "feeling trapped, limited, forced into your lot". It depicts a woman tied up in bandages, blindfolded, barefoot with swords in the ground around her. But the card also means "victim mentality and excuses"; the bandages are actually tied pretty loosely, and the swords haphazardly arranged in a way that doesn't actually cage her in. She could pretty easily shake the bonds off, take the blindfold off, and walk away. The elements of multiple interpretations are really neat there.

[Kele_Star]

A basic rundown on tarot history, symbolism, etc.

Its kind of a shame that popular culture in general tends to focus so much on the Face cards. I had no idea the numbered cards had so much meaning to them, and id bet not to many people even know the cups, wands, swords, and coin cards even exist. Thank you for the history lesson^_^!

[GrimGale]

I love SCH's Tactical War-Sage aesthetics. The mortarboard, the glasses, the grimmoire, the quill- I love the concept of Arcanima, the use of written glyphs to "program" aether into living facsimiles, both to create aetherial constructs like the Faeries or dangerous substances.

Scholar exhudes that sense of control, given by deep mastery of both magic and war.

I really wish its aesthetics leaned further into the written word. I love the whole "magic writting" theme it has as a job- The names of the spells in English are a bit lackluster. In french, the skills and spells are all themed around treatises and laws.
FFXI's Scholar really felt like a savant with its use of the two grimmoires that allowed you to "augment" certain aspects of their kit by leaning into damage/debuffing or healing/buffing.

I honestly don't really care about the "fey" aesthetic of the class in FFXIV. I've always felt it was tacked on to mold it into the Summoner/Arcanist side of things. WHM is the job that has a connection with spirits of nature, that is all about the fluttery winds and leaves and flowers. Honestly WHM should have been the one with the access to a summon.

[Renathras]

A basic rundown on tarot history, symbolism, etc.

Poking in to say - this is actually pretty interesting. Reading the first part had me thinking "Huh, wonder if regular playing cards derived from...oh look, they did!"

History and meaning behind things is always interesting to see and learn about.

I appreciate that post, Semirhage.

[Kele_Star]

Honestly WHM should have been the one with the access to a summon.

Given the history of the FF series and its past white mages i 100% agree

[Renathras]

Given the history of the FF series and its past white mages i 100% agree

Hm?

Just curious, which White Mages were summoners?

I know it happens here and their (Eiko in FF9 was a White Mage [Garnet was a Summoner though, she didn't have high levels of White Magic] or White Caller), and FFX's Yuna are the only two examples I can think of offhand. FF4's Rydia was a Black Caller (Black Mage / Summoner), and I guess Terra from FF6 can be brought up here, but she's more a Summon HERSELF (Esper) and the magic she naturally learns are some White Magic spells and Black Magic, making her a more Red Mage.

I'm trying to think of the White Mages in other games for examples. Rosa and Porom from FF4 are White Mages and not summoners. Aerith from FF7 is a White Mage and not really a summoner (no more than anyone else, anyway). Most of the other games either use the Job system (where White Mage and Summoner are distinct, though there are sometimes upgraded versions like Sage that combine them, though usually along with Black Mage making a sort of Omni-Mage)

It's also kind of confusing because a lot of the games allow a lot of character customization such that the ones that do have characters kind of locked to Jobs (as opposed to allowing them to switch like FF3, FF5, or FFTactics) allow free creation via equipment - FF6 with Magicite, FF7 with Materia, FF10 with the License Board, FF12 with it's License Board - such that it's hard to say those are White Mage traits as opposed to just the natural allowed abilities of all Jobs. Like FF7 Cid is clearly a Dragoon but can use Summon Materia.

So just curious which ones you were thinking of.

To be fair to Scholar, it's not a often used Job in many FF games.

[Kele_Star]

...

You basically named them all. the point i am making is it makes more sense that whitemages secondary function would be summoning given that its been a core point in many of the games. Its less so with the scholar class given that it appears much less in the series and when it does it does not usually have any relation to summoning (not counting games like ff 3 or 5 where jobs are interchangable.) Its just more of a series tradition than a rule though so dont think about it to hard ^_^ also now that i think about it, baring job based games i dont think a pure summoner exist aside from yuna since if you took her grid away all shed have are summons and cure

[ty_taurus]

FF I & FFII: Exist before the concept of summons was introduced.

FFIII, FFV, and the Tactics series: Utilize job systems where each character can be assigned 1 specific role. In some of these, a character can equip abilities learned on other jobs, but there are no canon combinations for any characters.

FFVI, FFVII, & FFVIII: Some characters share design elements from traditional jobs, but everyone is capable of learning general magic and summoning, and every character can fulfill whatever role you want them to.

FFXII: The original release shares similarities with VI, VII, and VIII where everyone can learn every general license, and the remaster is more like III, V, and the Tactics series where you assign a specific board to each character. In both versions, any party member can be taught to summon.

FXIII: Does not have anything that even resembles the jobs that the series is known for. Characters are defined by a combination of general RPG roles rather than specific, thematic jobs or classes, but every character has a personal summon.

FF Type-0: A more restrictive take on the VI, VII, and VIII system where magic and summoning is available to anyone, but the list of magic and summons is fairly shallow, and the majority of combat skills are defined by a character's personal, canon job.

FFXI: The other MMO where you can combine two jobs similarly to the III, V, and Tactics series example. There is no "canon" combination, but WHM is generally considered the best sub-job for SMN, though there are other options that offer different advantages, including SMN/NIN interestingly.

FFXV & FFXVI: Doesn't feature a job system, and characters don't quite resemble jobs from the series either. Summoning is exclusive to the protagonist.

This leaves only IV, IX, and X where summons have the opportunity to be crossed with another job canonically. Everything else either lets the player choose, doesn't have a summons or a job system, or everyone can summon, and in X's case, predetermined jobs are canonical, but the player can eventually teach each character everything, though this doesn't tend to happen until very late into the story or until postgame.

In these three, IV features a Summoner/Black Mage, IX features two Summoner/White Mages, and X has a Summoner/White Mage as well.

[Renathras]

...

Yeah, basically that. Well, mostly. FFX due to the License Board falls closer into the 12 system

You can either look at it from the 4/9 (arguably/10) version or the Job System versions. With the Job System versions, Summoner is generally its own thing, as you can choose any other Job you want as a Sub-Job. The 4/9/10 versions the female lead is a Summoner + something so that she can do something when not summoning (summons are rather expensive), and in 9 specifically, there's a second one for story purposes. Also for the first good chunk of 9, Garnet can't summon and Eiko isn't in the party, meaning they had to give Garnet something and Vivi already had the Black Magic covered.

I would point out, though, that there are several other things to look at. FF4 has two White Mages, neither of which is a Summoner. FF2 I think one of the characters is a White Mage base archetype, and she can't summon (obviously). FF1 uses the Job system, just a limited version of it.

I also think it's important to note that even some games that don't STRICTLY have a Job system may have Jobs. FF7, for example, the characters fall into Warrior/Fighter (Cloud), Monk (Tifa), Warrior/Archer (Barret), White Mage (Aerith), Red Mage(?) (Nanaki/Red XIII), Rogue/Thief/Ninja (Yuffie), Dragoon (Cid), Gambler/Corsair (Cait Sith), and a weird take on Beastmaster (Vincent). FF6 had a similar situation, though with lots of overlap, using the character's special abilities, like Gau being the Beastmaster take there, Cyan a SAM, Sabin a Monk, etc.