Which class fantasies of base classes do you like/miss?

[KooriGraywolf]

Although admittedly one of the reasons I was drawn to FF14 was that I could play as a Black Mage, one of my favorite classes in ALL of RPG's, once I researched the original concept of Thaumaturge I thought it was quite cool. Keepers of life and death who use holy and dark magic. When the new caster for Dawntrail was announced, I was lowkey hoping that it would be something like that rather than the highly speculated Green Mage.

And even earlier than that, what initially drew me to try the Arcanist class was the focus on using mathematical geometries, and one of the arcanist stereotypes being that of a hyper-calculative strategist (in the form of K'lyhia). As a math nerd this was such a cool class fantasy for me, and it even made me consider maining that over THM/BLM. However, when you become Scholar, you turn into a war historian? I hate studying history, dude.

This thread was also inspired by a Zepla video talking about how she missed the Rogue class fantasy, and that she was happy she could realize that fantasy with the new Viper class.

To clarify a bit, I was particularly interested in talking about how the class fantasy of base classes are abandoned when you transition into a job and fulfill a different class fantasy.

What are some old class concepts you guys like, and/or wish they were implemented in a future job?

[Cleretic]

You can and should do better than watching Zepla. But to actually engage with the subject of the thread:

For the most part, I do recognize that the gradual streamlining of job kits is a good thing, that many of the things we lose were minor, or just didn't work, either in terms of game design or just straight-up functionality; Summoner's pet functionality was always way too tenuously-implemented to base a job around, and AST's old cards were a balancing nightmare. But I do think that the job that genuinely lost a lot of good flavor to that streamlining was Scholar.

In the lore, Scholars were literally tacticians, and that still retains in some skill names, like Art of War, Deployment Tactics and Chain Stratagem. But originally it actually held in their gameplay, too, because Scholar was weird as hell. It was crammed full of niche techniques that only worked if you really knew how to use 'em, with the notion that Scholar was a high skill ceiling job that rewarded really being able to read the battle. The Eos/Selene split was probably the best example of that; Eos was pretty much all healing while Selene was focused on more niche stuff like buffs and debuffs, so the notion was just that they were useful for different contexts; it might be that they were useful in different types of duties, or maybe the idea was that you'd actively swap between them in fights based on what you needed.

But then, the developers refined the game; they found the fun, found what worked and didn't work. And Scholar kinda got both barrels; some of its abilities turned out to be literally worthless (i.e. Selene's silence), while others were too powerful (i.e. Selene's esuna; wasn't seen as too powerful by the players but made designing debuff mechanics terrible), and others were so good that they instead became standard features, like Virus (now Addle). In terms of balance this actually turned out too well for Scholar, because they were frequently the best healer thanks to reliable access to buffs, and their 'tactician' role actually suits how FFXIV high-end gameplay goes anyway. But it did mean that, over Stormblood and Shadowbringers, Scholar lost a lot of what made it unique in the effort to make up that gap, with those things either becoming common or getting cut entirely.

Agian, I think the game is better for it. But I miss Scholar's 'swiss army knife of situational tools' design.

[Lyth]

I don't think that Viper represents a 'rogue' class fantasy. The slides talk about Turali hunters and ancestral power. This strikes me as more like playing a monster slayer for hire.

Dark Knight is the best executed job fantasy to date as far as the story is concerned. It's a bit difficult to compete with older jobs simply because they have more than twenty levels worth of job quests. Reaper is conceptually interesting, but the lack of a Venom-styled wisecracking symbiote Avatar was a big miss in the story.

The job that I would be the most interested to see is one that builds off of the Corvsi 'Unyielding Blade' sword style that we've heard so much about. Ivalice's greatsword users were formative to my concept of a 'magical knight', as was Count Cidolfas Orlandeau. I'm aware of the potential overlap with Dark Knight, but most DRK weapons currently use an asymmetrical 'Dark Sword' design that I personally dislike. I want a traditional, symmetric great sword without any nonsense cutlass handles, in the vein of Defender or Save the Queen, to be wielded by a gish 'striking' physical DPS. Whether that's Mystic Knight, or Divine Knight, it doesn't really matter to me.

In the interim, I'll probably aim for Viper, simply because the playstyle looks interesting.

[Yuella]

Paladin is a huge miss. FFXIV's Paladin is like a wandering ronin who help people in need instead of a holy warrior who get power from a divine source.

[Cleretic]

Paladin is a huge miss. FFXIV's Paladin is like a wandering ronin who help people in need instead of a holy warrior who get power from a divine source.

Okay, explaining XIV Paladin as a 'Paladin class fantasy' is a goddamn TRIP, because it has a rich history, that just isn't the one we grew up with.

Something we actually have to remember is 'Paladin as holy religious knight' is actually an invention of D&D Second Edition. Before then, including in earlier D&D editions, Paladin was more associated with stuff like the knights of Charlemagne; more chivalrous and pious. There was religion involved in it, and their abilities had that 'holy' flavoring to it, but only as a small part of a greater code of honor, as an assumption that a noble knight would by nature be religious. D&D moved away from that and into a pure religion thing probably because a lot of that code of chivalry was honestly just really annoying restrictions on exactly one person at the table, and paring that back to just a religion of the player's choosing kept the notion of a knight with a code while giving a lot more freedom. (2e Paladin still had some of that, like paladins having to constantly give tithes to local churches, but most of it was gone.)

But, remember that JRPGs as a whole grew out of people playing those earlier editions of D&D primarily as dungeon-crawlers; Japan didn't get 2e, so they didn't get the memo about things like 'we've now decided paladins are just religious knights'. As a result, Japanese approaches to that sort of fantasy borrow from only those earlier versions of D&D, and in this case, that manifests in Final Fantasy's paladins just not being religious. Consider Cecil from IV; not an ounce of religion in his character, he's just got a busload of duty and conviction. Given that, you can look at the base conceptualization of FFXIV Paladin and see that it actually is a solid adaptation of irreligious paladins; they're a 'For Queen Sultana and Country' royal knight, with that whole original story being tied up in tradition, honor and duty in the face of a world that wants to stamp that out.

...And then the HW Paladin story arc still ruins that, because that story is terrible no matter which direction you're coming at it from.

[Vyrerus]

Consider Cecil from IV; not an ounce of religion in his character, he's just got a busload of duty and conviction.

Don't take it so personally
You're not the only one
That time has got it in for, honey
That's where you're wrong

Arctic Monkeys lyrics aside, what I mean to say is:

No religions are ever mentioned in FFIV, but the game has religious allegory surrounding literally everything within its setting, and the Paladin is referred to even in the original Japanese as a, "Sacred" or "Holy" knight, and those words are strictly tied to religion.

Keep in mind that the White Mage Rosa, and by association, the other White Mages within FFIV have the, "Pray" command as an action command (removed due to censorship of religious themes in English).

When used, if the Prayer succeeds, it recovers HP. Later, uncensored remakes have it restore MP as well. When it fails, you get a line, "The Prayer did not reach Heaven."

In Mysidia, Cecil walks into, "The House of Prayers" which was censored to, "House of Wishes." He is put on the path to becoming a Paladin by the elder sage that presides over that house and Mysidia.

Cecil's PLD uses White Magic exclusively.

More than that, The Mountain of the Ordeal has mountain stations in the original text. Mountain stations are commonly used on trail maps on mountains to denote location. But of importance here is that the stations you come across are direct references to the Stations of The Cross from Catholicism. They reference the 3rd and 7th, which are the first two times that Jesus falls while carrying the cross.

Then there's the Four Fiends being, "The Four Heavenly Kings" in JP, which is a common Buddhism reference or whatever, but the choice of their names references Dante's Inferno, which is a story that imagines what Christian Hell is like.

I'm sure there's other references throughout, but I can only recall so much on demand. The last one I can recall being the Mysidian Elder imploring all of the side characters to pray for Cecil and the party when they face off against Zeromus, which is the soul of Zemus. Zemus is the Amharic word for Prayer, making Zeromus a play on words equating to, "No Prayer."

So, while no in game god or religion is ever mentioned, the real world religion of Christianity is tied in explicitly, and there's religious framing around the main antagonist.

Keep in mind, too, that Cecil's character is all about repentance for his past evil ways and finding that not just justice, but mercy and forgiveness(for others and himself), are ways of righteousness, too. Something commonly espoused by Christianity.

Phew. That aside, I am happy that you see HW PLD quests as bad, because they really really are.

[Cleretic]

So, while no in game god or religion is ever mentioned, the real world religion of Christianity is tied in explicitly, and there's religious framing around the main antagonist.

Keep in mind, too, that Cecil's character is all about repentance for his past evil ways and finding that not just justice, but mercy and forgiveness(for others and himself), are ways of righteousness, too. Something commonly espoused by Christianity.

You're not arguing that Cecil is religious. Your argument is that you projected religion onto Cecil. ...and that several other characters are more religious than Cecil. You also have this assertion that white magic is religious as, like, an inherent thing, and it's really not.

(Also, don't assume I'm some oldhead running off a bunk easy-mode version of FFIV; my first finished playthrough was the pixel remaster. You should play that, and you'll see that Cecil also isn't religious there.)

Again: Final Fantasy Paladin's roots come from a version of D&D from back when religion was just a small part of a much greater code of honor, and their 'fancier than just a warrior' magic happened to be holy-flavored to match. Look at Final Fantasy's knights and paladins across the entire series, and you see the same thing; Cecil, Steiner, Beatrix, both XI and XIV's paladins, even the Templar from Bravely Default, they're all tied up exclusively in the 'queen and country' knights, rather than the holy knights that followed after the D&D version they took their inspiration from, even if some of them have white magic (that, yes, does include the spell 'Holy' sometimes). Japan really doesn't care about Christianity except as flavor, and ESPECIALLY doesn't care about it in regards to paladins.

And I mention knights, because...

(Not to mention that the job is just called ナイト -- "Naito", i.e., "Knight" -- in Japanese. "Paladin" was a localization choice, and personally, I don't think it's an entirely unfitting one... Though I'm betting the team just thought it sounded more exciting and evocative than the alternative.)

Yeah, there is a weird thing within the Final Fantasy series where technically 'Knight' and Paladin' are supposedly distinct jobs, they just happen to cross over in skillsets to the point where they usually just get blended together both in gameplay and depiction. Neither are ever religious!

Both are heavily-armored melee fighters, but the supposed notion that you generally see emerge early on is that Knight gets Cover and martial-styled moves, while Paladin gets white magic... but that's broken even in the first FF game. To give a quick lineup of what jobs have what:

1: Knight (with white magic)
3: Knight (with cover)
4: Paladin (with white magic and cover)
5: Knight (with cover)
9: Steiner is a Knight, Beatrix is a Paladin
11: 'Knight' in Japanese, 'Paladin' in English; Cover and white magic
12: Knight in Zodiac Age only, white magic, no cover.
14: Like 11, 'Knight' in Japanese, 'Paladin' in English; Cover and White Magic.

The only game other than IX that technically has both is Tactics; Knight is a base playable job, 'Holy Knight' is Agrias' custom job.

So yeah, the distinction is nonsense, but if you really want to split hairs, XIV's Paladin is actually a Knight according to the original writing.

[Vyrerus]

You're not arguing that Cecil is religious. Your argument is that you projected religion onto Cecil. ...and that several other characters are more religious than Cecil. You also have this assertion that white magic is religious as, like, an inherent thing, and it's really not.

No, my argument is that the creators of FFIV made a deeply allegorical game and surrounded Cecil with religion and religious aspects. It is you who did not notice those allegories or aspects. Your lack of perception, willful or otherwise, doesn't change what's actually there.


In the original Final Fantasy, White Magic is inherently religious as it banishes undead, raises people back to life, and it mends wounds. Before you get access to the Life spell yourself, you resurrect party members in churches (censored in the states to be clinics). It is essentially a flavor of Cleric.

Some part of Japan is Christian, by the way, somewhere around 10 of their Prime Ministers have been Christian. It's just not big over there, having once been illegal under penalty of death. But I mean, you don't need to look very hard to find IPs with deep ties to it that use it for more than flavor. Not everything is Xenogears.

But it doesn't have to be strictly Christian to be religious, those are just really easy references to make.

I am a bigger Final Fantasy fan than you, Cleretic. By a country a mile. I have played every version of FFIV that exists (though I didn't finish After Years due to not liking it, opting to watch its Guren Lagann styled story on Youtube). The pixel remasters are great, but they aren't the original, nor are they definitive, and they even carry over multiple localization and translation errors or choices from earlier editions. See FFVI PR when it first came out changing the weapon, "Epee" to "Broad Sword" but then leaving the description as, "A thin sword designed for piercing."

And your definition of religion is apparently extremely narrow. Religions often don't even involve the invocation of deities or church systems. To be religious is to to follow a strict code, usually spiritual in nature or deeply tied to the perceived forces that uphold life.

And with your comparisons to the older knights in Final Fantasy, you have proved your short sightedness with regards to this.

Final Fantasy: Knight. The promotion of Fighter. Granted by Bahamut. Who in DND terms is a draconic deity. And we both know Final Fantasy is a DND rip off. Right down to the creature manual with only a few exceptions. Gives the Fighter the ability to use white magic, already established to be religious by its very nature. Religiosity confirmed!

Final Fantasy III: Knight. Unique class that's considered a direct upgrade of the Fighter again. Uses Holy Swords, its strongest sword being the Holy Sword Ragnarok from Eureka. This would be a case of projection when I say, it could be considered religious, since it is a power granted by the forces that uphold life, i.e. one of The Crystals of Light.

Final Fantasy IV: Paladin. The first time this specific class is used. Of deep religious significance to the Mysidian people and the Phantom Beasts. Surrounded with religious allegory, later revealed to be psychic transference of consciousness from a literal space alien in the 11th hour of the game (a father passing himself down to his son, that can only really be explained as a miracle). However, this transference was of said alien's soul, and is seen as The Power of Light, a sacred, revered, absolute power. Wields holy swords. Best weapon is the Ragnarok holy sword. Carries the theme of redemption and atonement.

Final Fantasy V: Same deal as Final Fantasy III. The Crystals are forces above nature that hold the worlds together or apart and seal great evil. The Water Crystal fragments bestow the ability to use this job. A Knight of the Crystal, as it were.

Final Fantasy VI: Magitek Knight. Celes Chere. Neither Holy nor Base. Learns Ultima "naturally" as a result of her Magitek infusion in infancy. Can absorb magic into her sword with her Runic ability. However, magic in this world is a literal gift from the gods, and the Esper Celes was granted her powers from was made by those gods. And so Celes, and every other instance of magic within FFVI is the wielding of the powers of the gods. But the closer approximations for knights as we think of them are Cyan Garamonde and General Leo, one of which is a Samurai, the other of which is just a talented warrior who sports the unique skill Shock. Celes has no code she follows and worships nothing, so is not religious. There is only mention of Prayer from Banon of the Returners (who is a priest. His skill Prayer was censored to Health).

Final Fantasy IX: Is your king and country claim.

Final Fantasy XI: Yes. In Japanese the job is Knight. However, its literal best magic skill is, "Divine Magic." This is the line of White Magic that deals in the Banish, Holy, Flash, and other such similar offensive white magics intended for eradicating undead. It can also heal and raise dying/dead allies. It also sports the Undead Killer trait and Holy Circle, which buffs all party members against undead, granting attack/defense/intimidate checks to the whole group. It is also unlocked in San d'Oria, a kingdom of Elvaans that are strictly religious towards the Goddess Altana and have an Archbishop. Its artifact armor is starkly white and crafted by San d'Orians as well. This makes it literally Paladin in all but name.

But then we get to the rub where Knight as a concept is foreign to the Japanese. They don't need to jazz it up. It carries the religious aspect in it on its own for them, seemingly. Not always. Just, usually.

[SannaR]

Not sure why this wasn't posted somewhere more suitable and would gain more attention but it's here now.

I really liked Dancer as we all knew there were dance troops and dancers that didn't use their skills for fighting. It's one of the classes that made me disappointed in the overall story of Endwalker. Here is a class that goes around putting on performances to in a way help heal people minds of not souls by fighting the negative energies left over from tragedies and yet they get no mention. You don't even know that the troupe that does this was kept busy during Endwalker's story unless you go and talk with the trainer. Or pay attention to characters in the background.

[Turnintino]

Not sure why this wasn't posted somewhere more suitable and would gain more attention but it's here now.

I really liked Dancer as we all knew there were dance troops and dancers that didn't use their skills for fighting. It's one of the classes that made me disappointed in the overall story of Endwalker. Here is a class that goes around putting on performances to in a way help heal people minds of not souls by fighting the negative energies left over from tragedies and yet they get no mention. You don't even know that the troupe that does this was kept busy during Endwalker's story unless you go and talk with the trainer. Or pay attention to characters in the background.

Especially disappointing given what takes place in Thavnair -- Dancer's home -- where they are both uniquely suited to assist in the relief effort, and presumably available in numbers (few or not, who can say, because we only see the two at the Meyhane, and one in Radz's intro cinematic, iirc, but one can imagine). But the most we get is some dialogue from Ranaa if you speak to her in Kugane, and that's just an expression of relief to hear that you were there to assist her homeland in its time of need. Touching, but not exactly substantial lol. Hell, I would've been happy just to see a Dancer NPC around to acknowledge the bare minimum, let alone a yellow quest. But c'est la vie!