Changing classes question

[Soulfien]

When changing a class, I can always go back and level up the original some more after the change, correct?

[Maiandra]

Yes, that is correct. You never lose class levels. The game is designed for people to play multiple classes on the same character.
You can change back by equipping a weapon for that class. As long as you're playing on the same machine, your action bars will be saved, too. And you can choose to save the equipment you're using as a gearset, so you can easily switch around multiple classes.

[Soulfien]

Thank you

P.S. -> The command /sigh should exist...

[Conradus]

When changing a class, I can always go back and level up the original some more after the change, correct?

You can freely change between classes at any time other than actually being in a combat or duty by simply equipping the appropriate main weapon/tool (provided you did the class unlock quest at the guild), and you can always level up your current class. If you switch to a combat class/job while not in a sanctuary, you will get a fairly long initial cooldown on your actions, so it'll be a minute before you can actually do anything other than auto-attack. As far as action bars, not only are they saved, but you can choose to make them class specific or shared, as you like--I believe that the default is 1-4 are set for each class while 5-8 are shared, but this can be changed to fit your preference.

[Niwashi]

Each class has its own level, and whenever you change to that class you'll become the level you've earned on that class. (The character window has a "Classes" tab that shows your current level in each class in the game.) Apart from the class you begin the game with, any other classes have to be unlocked by doing a simple quest at that class's guildhall. (Ones not yet unlocked are level 0.) After that, you level each class independently of the others, with whatever Experience you earn going towards leveling whichever class you're on at the time. (There are a few exceptions to this if you get into crafting and gathering. For instance, Supply and Provisioning missions always give their XP to the class they're designed for, regardless of which you are when you turn them in.)

Once unlocked, you can alternate between classes by just changing your main hand weapon or tool, but more commonly you'll want to change all your gear at once to whatever you have that's best suited to a given class at its current level. For this, you assign gear into Gear Sets. In the character window, just above your character portrait and equipped gear, there's a button with a page icon for bringing up your gear set list. You can create new gear sets or switch between gear sets from there.

Once you get to the point of unlocking jobs, those work a little different than classes. Each job is considered a special type of their base class. So a summoner, for instance, is a special type of arcanist and will be whatever level you are as arcanist. Experience points earned as either an arcanist, summoner, or scholar are all arcanist experience. It's always the class that levels up and the job(s) that go with that class share its level. (At least this is how all the jobs currently in the game work. The new ones coming with the Heavensward expansion are a bit different because they don't have base classes. I'm not sure on the details yet for those.)