In regards to RDM (Red Mage)

[kamikrazy]

That'd bring many problems with it. People who don't want to play the stance the game assigns you to, people who have no clue how to play that role. I'd also much rather have 3 different fleshed out Jobs rather than 1 Job who can do it all. Balancing the job would be hell.

If they don't want to play the role given to them, then they should play a different class. The idea just adds a new gameplay aspect instead of limiting it to what's been done before and repeating that over and over with the classes. If they don't want to play a jack-of-all-trades class, then they shouldn't pick a jack-of-all-trades class. That doesn't make any sense as an argument against it. "Motorcycles shouldn't exist because people may want to drive cars instead."

And balancing it wouldn't really be that difficult, since its exactly the same as using cross-class skills as they exist now. Once again, something that's already in the game and has been proven to work just fine. By having stances that convert their primary stat into what's needed for the role, you can limit the effectiveness of using non-stanced abilities. IE: RDM in tank stance's heals will be weak because the tank stance converts primary stat into vit, which doesn't provide any extra healing. Whereas that same heal would be powerful in healer stance, because in healer stance the primary stat is converted into mind. And on top of that, you could simply make some abilities require that a certain stance be active in order to use said ability.

For example, if you were in DPS stance, you wouldn't be able to use Stoneskin, because Stoneskin requires you to be in tank or healer stance. And if you were in tank stance, you could use Stoneskin I but not Stoneskin II, because Stoneskin II requires healer stance be active.