In the FFXIV world, lore-wise which job is the strongest if there was a tourney?

[Raqrie_Tohka]

I would imagine the healer wins, because you can't kill it. And amongst healers, my best guess is either Scholar or White Mage. Scholar because of the tricks up their sleeve, and White Mage because their raw magic potential is as powerful as Black Mages, but can also heal.

[Waliel]

No, I mean that it is possible for a longbow archer to kill someone in one shot. The draw weight of an English longbow was at least 80 pounds. That's just based on the physical strength of the archer, not counting whatever magic an FF XIV BRD/ARC may be using to augment their draw, which could easily double it. And 80 pounds is the low end of the estimate.

https://youtu.be/Ej3qjUzUzQg?t=50

Here's what happens when you shoot a 150lb warbow at a breastplate from roughly 20m. The worst you could do against a Paladin would be to interrupt their afternoon tea.

[whiskeybravo]

I'm more curious as to why there seems to have been no history of the crossbow being invented or used in FF XIV, because here on Earth, humans had crossbows in the 6th century BC that could fire with a draw weight of 200 pounds.

It could that crossbows exist but have just never caught on, guns have existed in Eorzea for a while but because technology only recently is able to keep up with the magic wielded by Eorzeans they went largely ignored outside Limsa Lominsa and now Ishgard.

FF lore wise, crossbows are usually regarded as weaker than bows/guns. There are some other minor considerations as well, such as status effecting bolts that really don't have a place in 14 (although guns and bows have had various ammo options at times too, maybe it's nothing). So I'd lean more towards lycro's opinion, they could very well exist but just be inferior weapons for the vaunted WoL. This angle does seem to leave it open for future job considerations, though, as tech is always advancing.

As for the OP, I'd lean more towards either healers or tanks being dominate, simply from their superior ability to survive and recover. But yea, there's a lot of criteria that needs to be established before we could really find out who's the strongest.

[CaesarCV]

On the point of crossbows, there are a few places whee they can be assumed to exist. Ballistas are directly mentioned as part of the Ishgardian arsenal, even being commanded by Emmanelain at one point. Additionally, the limit break for ranged characters features them wielding aetherial crossbows. From these points it can be pretty clearly inferred that crossbows do exist. That being siad, I could definitely see them not gaining the same traction as bows and firearms in Eorzea. Namely, since one of the primary advantages of crossbows over bows was their easier training, and the magic of Eorzean archers mean they would be capable of far more than the mundane archers of our world. Similarly, they may be able to support greater draw strengths, something normally afforded to crossbows. We're not sure about when exactly firearms developed, but they were developed partially as a cheaper alternative to crossbows, so it's quite possible there was a 'crossbow' age that Eorzea has already come out of. While bows have an illustrious, magical tradition to fall back on for utility, crossbows were probably closer to peasant weapons and weren't utilized as heavily.

On a more Doylist/out of character note, it's possible they're saving crossbows for a future class. They could be chemists, snipers, or something far different than either of those. Although status affecting bolts could certainly be utilized, they'd just be class abilities rather than inventory items. I can understand why the developers might come to the belief that bows and guns are 'cooler' weapons than crossbows. Hm...now that I think about it, I'm not sure if Japan ever saw crossbow use on the same level as European and other civilizations. They utilized guns quite heavily when they got them (having some of the highest guns per capita of any nation and coming up with advanced firearms tactics fairly quickly). Maybe that's part of it?

[whiskeybravo]

Actually the Chinese (I know, not Japanese) were likely the first to develop crossbows. So it's possible that, being in the same geographic area, they could've been fairly common at one point or another in Japan. History buffs are welcome to interject, it's too much for me to study atm lol

On the topic of magically-augmented archers, is the power drawn from the bow or from the being himself/herself? In either case, could the same logic not be applied to crossbows? (IE, magic bows = magic crossbows, or magic archers = magic crossbow archers). And if anything, I'd think bows in general are more simple to manufacturer than crossbows, and hence cheaper, which would likely result in peasants having the bows instead.

This is a more interesting conversation than I originally thought lol, though it veers a bit off topic for this particular thread

[Wyssahtyn]

They don't appear to have been particularly common. Traditional bows were far more prevalent, though some might have imported the Chinese repeating crossbow.

[CaesarCV]

I actually did some research on the lack of Japanese crossbows since this thread made me rather curious. It is very true that China had a great many types of crossbows. They were the first nation to create repeating crossbows, and there are historical records of utilizing them deep in Chinese history. Accordingly, there are actually some very early mentions of crossbows being utilized by Japanese sources, apparently titled the Oyumi. However, crossbows would have been very difficult to construct for the Japanese. They required a variety of materials not often found, from bone and animal parts usually found in the Steppe regions (which would be easily available for China but not Japan) to various types of woods that would be hard to find in the mountainous islands of Japan. The type of wood and bamboo they had available instead lent itself well to longbows like the Yumi.

Additionally, early Japanese military tactics were based far more around horse archery. Crossbows are very difficult to use mounted, making them inefficient for that style of combat. While western knights used crossbows (very famously in Richard the Lionheart's Crusade) they always had to dismount to utilize them. Crossbows are far more effective in terms of massed infantry combat, which became prevalent only far later in Japanese history. On a comparative note, China had a very long history of massed infantry battles, making crossbows (even repeating ones) far more appealing. It was not for lack of machining or engineering knowledge, they were able to adopt firearms very, very quickly once they received them.

As a side note, while bows and crossbows would always be seen as 'Peasant weapons' until their obsolescence, the main cost that I'm talking about is not manufacturing, but training. It was said in England that the best way to train a longbowman was to 'start with the grandfather.' Training to properly utilize a longbow required a great, great deal of time and effort. With the magical arts available, I'm saying moreso that the archer might be capable of higher draws, allowing for larger and more powerful bows than in our world. While a crafter might know more, as far as I can tell the inborn aetherial manipulation used by Eorzeans is the main source of power rather than weapons or armor being directly magical.

I'm not sure how much of this discussion applies to Eorzea/Doma of course. Especially given that Doma itself seems more based around China than Japan. I was originally talking in the regard that the developers might not have had the same associations about the crossbow that westerners do. Although that is rather silly given their prevalence in pop culture...

[Wyssahtyn]

Doma is Nara era Japan, not China.