Are jobs bound by lore?

[Cleretic]

What's also worth acknowledging is that there are plenty of 'parallel disciplines' that are absolutely not the jobs we get in-game, but largely end up at the same end result in terms of being highly capable with very similar visuals.

There's a lot of good examples of that among the NPCs in the Bozja questline; being conscious of not spoiling it for an OP who's only gotten to Heavensward, but over the course of that you see perfectly capable parallel disciplines to Dark Knight, Monk and Black Mage, just to name a few.

[Rongway]

Jobs are very specific disciplines bound by job stones. You need to have a job stone to be a specific job.

You do not need a job stone to be a job. Job stones absorb the experiences of their practitioners so that their techniques can be passed on to future practitioners more easily, but you can learn those techniques without a stone. It just takes time (or talent) like learning anything else.

Consider for example the Soul of the Machinist. It's a blank stone, never been used by any machinist before you because you are basically inventing all the techniques on your own. You don't have a Soul of the Machinist so that you can be a machinist; you have a Soul of the Machinist so that it can absorb the machinist techniques you invent and then someone in the future can learn your techniques from the stone much more quickly than if they were to try to learn your techniques unassisted. Jobs having a set list of actions is a gameplay mechanic and not a law of the lore. Of course different people who practice the same job are going to use many of the same techniques, but they might develop their own versions of actions (see: Alisaie's roleplay fight) or learn a few completely different actions.

A corollary to this is that being a job does not mean you can only use the techniques that belong to that job. Y'shtola didn't suddenly forget all her healing magic the moment she chose to take up black magic, nor did Thancred forget how to be a rogue. But Y'shtola's perception of what she needs to be doing in a combat situation has changed, and stopping to cast Cure would mean she has time for one less death spell. Likewise Thancred taking the role of protector means that many of his rogue techniques and tactics no longer benefit his function on the front line. In fact there is a moment in one of the ShB dungeons where, in a position that his gunbreaker skills don't benefit him right then, he pulls out a Shukuchi. In the same situation, Uranger performs an Aetherial Manipulation, which is not a technique that the game system has assigned to arcanists or astrologians. The lore is okay with all this, and the WoX being locked out of actions from other jobs whenever they switch is just a gameplay mechanic.

[MikkoAkure]

You do not need a job stone to be a job. Job stones absorb the experiences of their practitioners so that their techniques can be passed on to future practitioners more easily, but you can learn those techniques without a stone. It just takes time (or talent) like learning anything else.

That’s not entirely accurate.

You use machinist as an example, but the man who gives you the stone himself says that the job stone is required to transfer your aether to the aetherotransformer(the lunchbox). Without that, you would just be a Lominsan musketeer. Similarly, black magic cannot be controlled at all without the use of the stone. Scholar faeries are also bound to the stone and an NPC says only those who have a stone and were bathed in a primal’s aether can become summoners.

It may be possible to learn other job abilities without a job stone, but who would teach you? In a world where regular training + experience = magical stone imparting memories of techniques upon you, I think you’d be hard pressed to find a traditional teacher, and it would definitely be the long path.

Even the world’s center of learning, Sharlayan, doesn’t have such teachers. Levava’s grandfather loses all of his astrologian powers as soon as he gives up his stone to you. The monks of Ala Mhigo also historically depended on job stones. And now they’re even more crucial for monks and other professions that have been endangered

[Rongway]

You use machinist as an example, but the man who gives you the stone himself says that the job stone is required to transfer your aether to the aetheroconverter (the lunchbox). Without that, you would just be a Lominsan musketeer.

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.

[MikkoAkure]

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.

[Rongway]

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.

You have some good points but I think what we've come to is a set of slightly different questions.

Norvrandt has a few jobs that are very much like Eorzea's White Mage, Black Mage, and Paladin, which they call Devout, Magus, and Knight, developed independently but with many overlapping techniques. Suppose, somehow, an Eorzean Black Mage happened to encounter a Norvrandtan Magus.

• Would the Black Mage recognize the Magus as a Black Mage?
• Would the Magus recognize the Black Mage as a Magus?
• If the Magus learned how to cast black magic without blowing themselves up not through a job stone but through a combination of talent and practice, and incidentally developed a set of techniques that matched the Black Mage's technique set 1:1, would it matter that the Magus didn't have a stone or that they styled themself Magus instead of Black Mage?
• Is only one of them a job because only one of them has a stone?
• Are they both jobs, but different jobs?
• Are they the same job?

[MikkoAkure]

You have some good points but I think what we've come to is a set of slightly different questions.

Norvrandt has a few jobs that are very much like Eorzea's White Mage, Black Mage, and Paladin, which they call Devout, Magus, and Knight, developed independently but with many overlapping techniques. Suppose, somehow, an Eorzean Black Mage happened to encounter a Norvrandtan Magus.

• Would the Black Mage recognize the Magus as a Black Mage?
• Would the Magus recognize the Black Mage as a Magus?
• If the Magus learned how to cast black magic without blowing themselves up not through a job stone but through a combination of talent and practice, and incidentally developed a set of techniques that matched the Black Mage's technique set 1:1, would it matter that the Magus didn't have a stone or that they styled themself Magus instead of Black Mage?
• Is only one of them a job because only one of them has a stone?
• Are they both jobs, but different jobs?
• Are they the same job?

What makes a black mage a black mage is the fact that they cast spells using large amounts of ambient aether to cause pure destruction. The black mage storyline makes it clear that it is impossible to control that much aether without a soul crystal, period. According to the questline, without the stone you will burn yourself inside out trying to control magic outside yourself if you're overstepping your bounds.

Without the Gem of Shatotto, impossible to control, the most powerful black magic is! Squaaawk! Lost control, these mages did. Aether within their own bodies ignited! Burned alive from the inside. Painful way to die, it is.”

I can't remember if Shatotto herself was able to cast full-on black magic without using a soul crystal, but even if she was, she was a prodigy who devoted her life to that one specific goal of wielding that much aether from outside the body. Expecting every magus we meet to be someone of her caliber would be a bit much, let alone someone at her level who also happened to dabble in other disciplines, all without the benefit of a soul crystal.

The destructive, offensive magic that Y'shtola uses in Shadowbringers, and red mages and thaumaturges use, and even that of beastmen, all comes from within themselves using their own aether. In regards to anyone we meet in Norvrandt or the other summoned warriors of light, we never ask, so we don't know if they're using soul crystal analogues or not in order to control their magic if they're casting magic specifically like black mages or if they're casting like every other sorcerer/magi that exists in the game.

Conjurers and geomancers also cast using ambient aether, but apparently not on the same scale as a black mage. Conjury itself descended from magi of the old era passing down "modest magicks, low in risk and easy to wield" combined with teachings from the elementals.


"Job" is a terminology only encountered outside of the game for our own player benefit to separate the "job system" from the "class system". The lore book describes these instead as "specialized disciplines". That terminology is extremely vague, but all that matters to us is that in our own world's history for thousands of years, exceptional people doing exceptional things have carried soul crystals to learn from past holders of the stone, as well as to pass down the techniques to new generations. But the first techniques had to come from somewhere. So of course anyone with sufficient drive would be able to learn without a stone with enough training and study, but it is infinitely easier with a soul crystal, and as I mentioned before, sometimes impossible without.

The job quests have told us outright that the job crystals for black mage, machinist, summoner, scholar, and blue mage are essential to those jobs for reasons beyond their function as learning tools. White mage and astrologian questlines suggest that having the crystal taken away would completely depower you and remove the ability to cast magic from those schools. And the questlines for warrior, dark knight, and dragoon mention that their stones specifically choose and grant powers to the wielder. But to your point, sometimes the distinction doesn't matter. We've seen that with the au ra tribe with a discipline that is similar to warrior. It's when you start getting into magic that things seem more dependent on having a job stone. Or in the case of machinist, which is a brand new "job" in the world's history and the game's writers needed a lore reason for you to be requiredto equip it. Without that lore requirement, machinist could just decide not to put it on if they didn't want to pass anything on.

[Layte_Aeon]

Though this raises a question: If an Astrologian requires a soul crystal for their spells, how is Urianger one in Norvrant?

[Rosenstrauch]

Though this raises a question: If an Astrologian requires a soul crystal for their spells, how is Urianger one in Norvrant?

Maybe there was an Astrologian-like discipline on the First and Urianger happened to get his hands on a soul crystal during his three years of being there. Then again, he's also an Astrologian on the Source post-return, and the Scions explicitly didn't take their gear with them on either trip—their souls arrived on the First naked, and Tataru had to make their personal effects from scratch for their return.

[SannaR]

Maybe there was an Astrologian-like discipline on the First and Urianger happened to get his hands on a soul crystal during his three years of being there. Then again, he's also an Astrologian on the Source post-return, and the Scions explicitly didn't take their gear with them on either trip—their souls arrived on the First naked, and Tataru had to make their personal effects from scratch for their return.

The same way Jannequinard does I assume. Also Leveva post level 60 has let anyone who wants to learn Sharlyean Astrology to do so. Which is similar to Geomancy and last I checked the Hingan we meet in the SB questline doesn't have a stone. That and anyone who won a riddle contest that lasted for seven days against pixies probably can find a way to switch from a 1.0 arcanist to Astrologian.