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Eva · **05-18-2012, 12:15 PM**

Quote:Also, just because you're rank 50, doesn't mean you're a master. It simply means you have nothing else they can teach you at the moment. You're not good enough to learn the next, more complicated step... This prepares us for the inevitable raise of the level cap.

^ This! A hundred thousand times over!

With it becoming increasingly easier to level several jobs to 50 I've been noticing a growing number of RPers that seem to feel compelled to link that mastery to their character's story. This often comes across as being somewhat Mary Sue and can be construed as somewhat off-putting when a character is more or less a prodigy at everything. I dare say it hedges a bit on godmode even. While some may argue that it may fall within the constraints of the game's mechanics, I personally feel it makes for shoddy RP. It makes a good deal more sense for a character to specialize in one or two fields and perhaps dabble in the rest.

Aysun's example above was great! And I think the most "real" characters have this kind of combination of specialized jobs, areas of mediocrity, and things they're just bad at.

I can explain a little about Eva to kind of paint a clearer picture of what I'm describing here. I apologize if this is somewhat longwinded and strays from the point but I thought it might help. I'm going to put it under a spoiler tag though, just since it is rather lengthy:

Spoiler: show

Eva was 30 when the game was launched (she's 32 now) and had spent the 13 years prior working front desk as assistant manager of a book shop in Gridania. She spent a lot of time reading and is well-versed in geography/history but is much more sheltered and not nearly as "streety savvy" as most her age would be. As a little girl she had an extremely strong affinity to white magic but there was an incident that caused her to give up its use entirely. She had dabbled with knitting and weaving throughout her twenties as a hobby. She is a skilled harper from lessons she took as a young girl, but has no singing voice nor any aspirations of becoming a 'bard' in the sense. That is - and likely will remain - simply a hobby she practices in the privacy of her own home. Her father was a skilled lancer and tried to get her to train when she was younger but she never really had any interest in that during that stage of her life. She also discovered a natural talent for ballroom dance when she and her fiancÃƒÂ© took lessons prior to what would have been their wedding.

So after the game's launch she moved to Ul'dah and worked for Sunsilks Tapestries. If asked she would have declared herself a seamstress by profession - and probably still would to this day. Combat training didn't really come until much later. When Eva joined the Eorzean Guard it became necessary to take up some sort of weapons training and she began to discover some talent with polearms. She lacks the strength to be "top notch" but she is quick, agile, and graceful - maybe from ballroom dancing? She has no affiliation with the Wood Wailers nor the Dragoons of Ishgard (not directly anyway).

Somewhere along the lines it became necessary to use white magic again, though the potency she once possessed as a child had atrophied with disuse and that has been a point of frustration for her. She took up training as a nurse (not an official job of course) in order to try and compensate for her shortcomings with aetherial healing techniques. So she can set a broken bone, make a splint, change a bandage, and make/administer certain types of medicine. I have known RPers that played doctors and she doesn't have this degree of competency with it. She is more of a caretaker than a skilled healer.

Sunsilks has wanted her to gain some skill with leathercutting to help support her garment making, and while the trade has always frustrated her, she gave in and took some lessons. While she is rank 50 with leatherworking, I will never RP her as being an expert at it. When the level caps go up I may not even take it any further.

I have also leveled other jobs up - perhaps not to 50 - but I've made no mention of any of it from any sort of in-character perspective. I don't RP her as having had any experience with hand-to-hand combat in spite of having leveled it. She has NO experience with an axe, even though the job is leveled beyond rank 1.

TLDR: I am rank 50 Lancer/Dragoon, Conjurer/WhiteMage, Weaver, and Leatherworker. But of these the only one I would really RP her as being something of an expert at would be Weaver. I think she has the capacity to be a skilled White Mage as well, but... well... life's about the journey, not the destination.

Sorry if this comes across as rambling... it's a slow day at work. Undecided

I also think this post should be moved over to the RP discussion forum but do not seem to have the mod rights to perform that so maybe Kylin will~

Liddell's Questions!

RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes