Thread 95840452

Blue Mages in FF are a really neat concept that I'm surprised I haven't run into in Tabletop. Does anyone have any examples of them being implemented? I'd very much like to try and incorporate them into my next game.
For the uninitiated:
>"Blue Mages are a versatile job class in the Final Fantasy series, capable of learning enemy abilities and adapting to various situations"
That is to say, they're magic users that 'steal' abilities from their opponents.

>>95840452 (OP)
Also, I suppose this thread can be for wider JRPG influences in Tabletop. I haven't checked out Fabula Ultima yet but I plan to!

>>95840452 (OP)
Mega Man RPG when?

>>95840490
>missed the Yellow Materia in FF7
Fake fan.

>>95840452 (OP)
The main difficulty is that a lot of applicable enemy abilities are just PC abilities anyway. Sometimes they're not even repackaged, it'll just give the enemy a use of a spell or something that a wizard could already learn. I don't think it would be hard, but the system does need to be configured for this kind of thing with distinct enemy abilities.

>>95840490
Relm/Pictomancer from VI counts as a Blue Mage.

>>95840490
Funny you mention Fabula Ultima, it tries to incorporate the Blue Mage with the Chimerist job

>>95840452 (OP)
I've seen someone run a Blue Mage in GURPS once... and that's it. For a Blue Mage to even work at all, you need a system to convert enemy abilities for player usage. This is easy in generic systems and games where PCs and NPCs operate on mostly the same rules. It would take a bit of homebrew, but you could probably make a Blue Mage work in something like Fate, Savage Worlds, Shadowrun, or older editions of D&D. Game balance may vary. It's straight fucking impossible in nu-D&D, because PCs and monsters operate on completely different rules. I've tried to make it work. It was a total disaster. Never again.

>>95840700
I didn't make it, I was just lazy and found a chart
>>95840743
Yes!
>>95840820
Oh shit, noted! I went ahead and checked out the sharethread copy... definitely helps get inspiration flowing even if I never play the system proper.
>>95840933
That makes total sense on both sides of it. Something like 5e just on its face can't accommodate it, that much is very clear if you think through it at all.

>>95841285
Even 3.5 just can’t without getting fucked completely sideways. Literally the type of thing of which Pun-Pun is made.

>>95840700
>calling Enemy Skill "the Yellow Materia" (all Command Materia are yellow)
Fake fan!

>>95840452 (OP)
>>95840580
it's also the main thing Kirby does.
yeah some sort of implementation of this could be fun for ttrpgs.

>>95841285
For what it's worth, I think the Chimerist shows the big limitations of trying to make a Blue Mage kind of class for these games, but also makes a solid effort into creating one. Namely, the main issue that the DM needs to feature those enemies in the campaign or their main function is useless. That said, the Chimerist still has access to general ritual magic so that even if they end up underpowered by poor luck they'll still find a way to contribute beyond attacking, which is more than other Blue Mage style classes tend to give their characters in jrpgs.

>>95841476
GASP
>>95841530
I tend to agree.
That said, I once saw a thief player lose his mind because the GM absentmindedly just never locked anything or had anything worth stealing.
It'd literally never occurred to the GM that he should either have a chat with the thief player or maybe just throw him a fucking bone once or twice.
My point being that a whole lot of classes can end up really shitty if the GM doesn't play ball a little. Better to have that chat before session 1 if at all possible.

>>95840580
Command Mission, but that's MMX.

>>95840452 (OP)
The Eclipse Caste Solars in Exalted can learn any Charm that has the "Eclipse" tag, regardless of what Spirit or Creature it came from. That's the only example of trpg Blue Mages I can think of.

I am a connoisseur of all things Blue Mage and Blue Mage like, including Rockman. This may be a divisive answer, but the best Blue Mage class I've ever encountered was for Pathfinder. It's called Vorpal Knight, and is in the book Racial Profiles Expanded: Hungry Souls.

The main thing that sets this class apart from all other Blue Mage classes I've found is that the rest all just have a regular list of spells they can learn if they find the right monster. There isn't any open-ended exploration of possibilities; the spell list is defined in the same way a Final Fantasy Blue Mage is. Vorpal Knight instead gives you a set of criteria and rules for what KINDS and how many abilities you can copy, then turns you loose on the Monster Manual and says "go nuts", also letting you steal things like Natural Armor, resistances and immunities, movement speeds and types, etc.

If you just Google the class you'll find a bunch of seething about how overpowered it is, but their specific complaints all reveal they barely even skimmed the text and absolutely never played one. I've played one in several games and the only potential balance issues we've ever noticed is it's easy to get pretty high AC and it's technically possible to get a mechanically inconvenient number of natural attacks at higher levels. This is because you steal the attack as the monster who had it would have used it, so if you steal a Behir's Rake attack, you Rake with 6 claws. And you explicitly gain the anatomy required to use whatever attack you steal, so you gradually become a freak of nature.

https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/3rd-party-classes/d20pfsrd-com-publishing/vorpal-knight/

I strongly recommend at least getting a PDF of the book, since there are a fair number of support options in feats and such you'd want to at least know about.

I guess the big thing to ask about a blue mages ability to copy a magical monsters powers and ability's is do they make a human form of the power they are casting as a spell? Such as the blue mage casts a spell like a normal wizard does that just mimics a red dragon breathing fire and it just follows all the same rules as other magic casters. Or are the blue mages using there magic to transform there own bodies and souls so that they can truly mimic a monsters magics and abilities? Such as giving the blue mage the same ability as the Tarrasque to devour anything the same size as it or smaller alive as a natural ability. Or a spiders ability to produce and weave webs or have a poisonous bite.

>>95844386
So you become like the horned knights mini bosses from elden ring that have spells that mutate there bodies to give them monster powers? Or is it full on permanent body mutation you now have to live with forever?

>>95844509
I strongly prefer the latter thematically. If I just wanted a regular spell that kind of looked like a dragon's fire breath, I'd go find any old line/cone of fire spell and put dragon stylings on it. A lot of caster fluff in a lot of games say that's what a lot of spells are based on anyways. I want to know what it feels like to actually breathe fire from my own chest cavity. That's one of the reasons I like this class ( >>95844386 ) so much.

>>95844533
It's a semi-permanent mutation. At each level you gain a slot (a "reservoir") you can keep a defeated enemy's soul in. You get to pick one of their attacks or other abilities to copy, at which point you physically manifest that trait. You keep that trait indefinitely, but there are several ways you can get rid of it, including just letting it go, at which point you lose the ability and revert to your previous physiology. There's also an optional rule in the back of the book for a ritual you can perform (that includes having to fight a doppelganger of yourself) that will selectively purge you of the physical appearance changes while letting you retain the abilities. It's mostly fluff unless you really want to lean into the "I am becoming a monster" vibes.

>>95840701
Accessing such functions according to enemies encountered instead of scrolls found shifts it into the mind-control or statblock-preserving-Necromancy space, without the issues of extra sets of actions.

>>95840933
Point of order, it's early WotC D&D that has decent monster-player transparency, TSR-era D&D was also clusterfuck of bespoke rules.

>>95841337
That it's hideously abusable just means the DM needs to mind what enemies are aimed their way, which is no different from watching out for scrolls with a Wizard.

>>95841530
You could just give a no-strings-attached practical baseline to make the enemy abilities be fleshing out rather than base load, like the 3.5 Psychic Warrior's psychometabolism suite.

>>95844386
Will consider bubbaing it into my thoughts for a Wild Shape subsystem. And maybe a Totemist ACF stack.

>>95844509
In Final Fantasy 11 Blue Magic is channeling of the monster's powers on a human scale. With spells learned from higher tiered monsters and gods having a weaker effect. Based on implanting monster parts as part of the the initiation to Blue Mage.
The FFXI job quest and storyline deal with that and the struggles the Blue Mages must go through to stay "human" despite the urges and desires caused by assimilating monsters. It doesn't end well for those who give into the beast, becoming monsters themselves. Specifically Soulflayers.
Definitely the best implementation of Blue Mage, mainly because of the actual player suffering required to learn the spells.

>>95840580
https://www.21xxrpg.com/
Its a fanproject and i don't know how good it is, but it exists

>>95840452 (OP)
>That is to say, they're magic users that 'steal' abilities from their opponents.
Wizards learn magic from tomes, reasearch or tutors, it's not that difficult to adapt a wizard who learns abilities from enemies. We do learn to do better technology from observing nature and messing with it.

>>95844658
Wasn't expecting a proper MMX rpg but this is a nice find. Thanks anon!

>>95844563
>Point of order, it's early WotC D&D
point of order
>D&D5e
nu-D&D
>D&D4e
Not-D&D
>D&D3e
D&D
>AD&D2e
Old D&D
>AD&D1e and B/E, BECMI, etc
Ancient D&D
>OD&D
Prehistoric D&D. Belongs in a museum.

>>95840452 (OP)
Blue magic is too much work for everyone involved.

>>95841285
>is novidya on top of nogames
lel

>>95847204
Explain yourself shitlcker, Fabula Ultima is a game humans playin the real world.

>>95840933
Harrow in both the original and Ssvage World Deadlands/Everyone in Hell on Earth can “Count Coup” to steal a predetermined power boost for monsters they kill.

>>95847438
Nta but Fabula Ultima is dogshit.

>>95847204
*jerk-off motions*

>>95850249
*jerks you off*

>>95848415
That is a very bad opinion

>>95850473
NO WAIT
>>95848415
It sure fuckin' is bud

>>95850642
Explain how anon

>>95850734
I think it's a good game, but I do have some complaints. And he's gonna parrot those complaints but pretend like they're the end of the world.
They're all comparisons to Ryuutama, which is my all time most favorite game short of hide hte pickle with >>95850642's mom..
1. The removal of rows via the combat egg reduces strategy in combat.
2. Numbers bloat makes combat less deadly, and in turn more of a focus on the game.
3. Inventory Points are too much of an anti-fun metacurrency.
4. It completely lost its exploration metagame.

>>95846111
That's just you telling everyone how old you are.

>>95840452 (OP)
ffd6 has a fun take. Blue magic is of course its own school, you can learn anything you're hit with (or see if you buy the ability), things you learn turn you into a pokedex. The abilities let you slowly become more monstrous.

>>95843631
And it was pretty dang good for what it was.

>>95840452 (OP)
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/3rd-party-classes/rite-publishing/taskshaper/
Pretty close

In my games, there's a magic item that can only be used by sorcerers, that lets them make a meal out of a creature that has a spell-like ability, and add the corresponding spell to their list (if the creature has multiple spell-like abilities, the sorcerer gets one but can meditate to choose which it will be, and can collect the rest by making meals of additional creatures)

>>95852852
I like rows. I wish they were used in more things.
>>95853770
That 'pokedex' element I think is a smart approach. Basically using enemies to unlock spells the same way Wizards use scrolls and spellbooks.
Runs the same risk of faggot GMs not giving access to those enemies the same way they often never have spellbooks or scrolls a Wizard can learn from, but that's a GM issue not a mechanical one.
>>95855273
Neat idea anon
>>95852921
Third edition purists are so weird. Like Juggalos or Kiss fanboys.

>>95855485
You can port rows back into Fabula Ultima without breaking anything.
You need to be in the front row to be the target of or to target enemies in Melee, and if the front row is emptied everyone in the backrow is forcibly moved into the front row. Willingly moving between rows takes your action.
Also include environmental objects like in Ryuutama where the PCs can mark them off to get a bonus on an attack or defense.

>>95840452 (OP) (1/4)
I wrote an essay on the design issues of Blue Mages in tabletop games after playing one for a couple years and I'm pissed I can't find it again. Most of the big points already got mentioned in this thread, but:

>Blue Mages tend to lack utility
This seems weird first glance, because you'd think a class that copies abilities would end up with the largest toolbox in the game. But you're playing a class that copies its abilities from NPCs, and NPCs have different design priorities than PCs: they need to be simple enough that the GM can mentally juggle multiple at once in combat, they need to cut down on obscure moving parts and passive abilities to save the GM from "can we rewind, I forgot he has a +5 to resist being pushed off of cliffs during the winter solstice" type scenarios, and they need to only have a few powerful flavorful abilities so that they can make a good impression in the few turns that they show up. You only have so much time and energy to write and balance your bestiary, and generally you want to avoid overdesigning anything you don't need to. I think it's a safe assumption that all players (ESPECIALLY Blue Mages) want to encounter a wide range of enemy types instead of a handful of densely-designed recurring ones.

This ends up with a situation where the menu that Blue Mages are pulling their abilities from are almost always designed for combat, and usually just different flavors of damaging or status-inflicting options, instead of an array of problem-solving tools. This applies doubly so if it's a traditional FF-type Blue Mage that needs to see or get hit with a spell in order to learn it, though that's an overly specific case and your game's version of a Blue Mage will probably (hopefully) not need that. This can be designed around, maybe learning an ice golem's frost breath also unlocks the ability to freeze solid bridges of ice into the air, but that's going to be a task for designing around the class.

>>95856055 (2/4)
>Blue mages tend to lack a "wow" factor
It's already a challenge to design a class that brings something new and interesting to the table, but "copies spells/abilities from enemies" classes introduce a new hurdle in that you're by definition never going to use an ability the party hasn't seen before. It's not a dealbreaker by any means and there can be ways to design a class that still surprises the party and GM, but if you're using any system where PCs get new abilities as they advance and you're playing a class that doesn't, you're not going to get to impress your friends with your new toys the same way the rest of the party will. This is more of a problem for some people than others, but I think is worth discussing.

>The "Mother May I" problem
Because Blue Mages are more reliant on anybody else to find specific things in-game in order to advance, and this isn't a videogame where you always have access to monsters that the designers sprinkled into preset areas knowing you'd find them, you run into the issue where your GM essentially picks your spells for you. I'm not going to make the case that this is bad because an antagonistic GM can invalidate your character by just not introducing monsters with abilities you want, since an antagonistic GM can do whatever they want to invalidate any character. But it does introduce a new factor the GM has to keep in mind when building his game and deciding which enemies you're going to face, and even ones with the best of intentions aren't going to be able to intuit what you'd want. Even the best-case scenarios where you communicate what spells you'd like to learn and the GM agrees to facilitate that, you run into new issues of knowing what you're going to find beforehand, and it puts an awkward constraint on the GM to include monsters where they wouldn't otherwise be so the party's Blue Mage has access to an ice spell before the surprise lava dungeon he had in mind.

>>95856061(3/4)
>Hearthstone's "Totemic Call" problem
This last one's not so much a problem to the player, as a pitfall for the GM and game designers. When you introduce a player class that pulls its power from the bestiary, writing new entries for your bestiary becomes a double-duty in writing a balanced spell list.
In Hearthstone, there's an ability that was introduced called "Totemic Call", which does a very basic effect of summoning one of any random totem-type card in the game. This had a troubling side effect, as it was now one of the only abilities in the game that now directly changes in strength just depending on what totem-type cards get introduced. Future card designers now need to keep this one ability in mind whenever new cards are created, as introducing too many minor totems or too many strong ones, regardless of how useful they actually are, now retroactively makes Totemic Call weaker or stronger just as a side-effect of the pool of possible totems getting weighted in one direction or the other as time goes on.

In the same way, every post-Blue Mage monster statblock now needs to keep the Blue Mage in mind. Not just to avoid adding something too powerful at the wrong level of play (though that's also its own concern) but just because adding too many monsters without something the Blue Mage can pick up increases the chance that a campaign will drag on with nothing for them to learn. As a game designer you can't force a GM to use specific monsters to keep pace with what you think the Blue Mage should learn from, and as a GM you want to be thinking more about what monsters fit your campaign rather than which ones cater the perfect progression for your one Blue Mage PC, so there's an extra heavy importance on making sure the bestiary is well-stocked with options that facilitate this one class at all levels of play.

>>95856069 (4/4)
>One step behind the power scale
This is a very minor issue that isn't hard to fix by just putting some thought into the class design, but I'll bring it up because I've run into it in both of the different systems I've played a Blue Mage in: if you're always casting spells that you learned in a past encounter, by design you're going to be casting spells that aren't as powerful as the ones being cast in the current encounter. This can be worked around by allowing a Blue Mage's spells to just scale in strength with them, and a popular concept is a Blue Mage learning and immediately using a new ability in the same fight Kirby-style, but in general your toolbox is going to be filled with options that were mainly useful in the past-tense.

>General design problems
That's not even mentioning the can of worms that inevitably gets opened up when GMs homebrew their own enemies instead of pulling from the bestiary, or how trying to write a guide on building monsters for your system also needs to include how often to give them Blue Mage-compatible spells, or the weird FOMO that comes from fighting enemies that you want to defeat quickly but not too quickly if they potentially have spells for you to learn that you can potentially miss forever, or the general issues that come from balancing a class that will likely only see a randomized fraction of its own abilities over the course of the game.

Designing a good Blue Mage that's fun to play and doesn't put too much extra pressure on the GM or designers is a uniquely tough challenge, and I haven't seen it done elegantly yet. Throw a book my way if you've read one that pulls it off, though.

>>95840452 (OP)
Blue mages don't work well in TTRPGs because that means the player's entire build has to be based on the GM's fiat. There's more practical ways to thematically do similar things. Like you can just use whatever player options you know will feat the theme of what enemies your fighting like being a necromancer in a campaign about fighting undeads.

>>95840452 (OP)
they're only fun when it's you vs. computer, and they're usually not fun then, either.

>>95856055
Fascinating!
>>95859368
Damn if he isn't based though.

>>95859368
>>95860076
To be fair monoco isn't a blue blue mage, he's clear a homebrew druid class that the gm just lets turn into anything the party has fought before because it's funny.

>>95855485
>Runs the same risk of faggot GMs
It's a very GM-heavy syste as there's not much material besides base classes, spells for normal spellcasters, an example list of blue mage spells, a small list of monsters and monster creation instructions. You have to play with a GM invested in creating interesting monsters and eager to let you steal spells (as monsters can be broken without having actual spells). It's also very unbalanced, though fun. Some other abilities let you use HP to supercharge your magic, add other effects, and there's even some ability-based attacks you can use (so you don't start out completely useless). I also really like the geomancer from that game, you can cast a defensive or offensive spell based on the terrain you're currently in, and you can also buy abilities to always have access to one specific terrain (as if you're permanently attuned to it. It's very planeswalker-y, and the support abilities that let you burrow and walk your normal speed underground are just so fun.

Regurgitating what an anon said in one of these threads before:
"Blue mages are appealing to players that want to be given a new toolset during combat that they optimize on the fly. Deckbuilder roguelite. The enemies you encounter each represent "gain a function" and the player assesses the boardstate to assemble the best sequence of actions over several turns. Multiple lines of play need to be present, and those lines can and should branch, and different non-numeric modifiers should be present that muddy up the EV of different lines. This means that each enemy should have multiple abilities that the blue mage can steal, stolen abilities should have a limited duration, and permanent bonuses to the character should expand rather than limit the number of lines available to them so that they scale in complexity as they level up, same as any other class. That means that saving abilities longterm is retarded because it goes against the basic design and appeal of the class. Character progression needs to be similar to sorcerer metamagic, a function modifier."

>>95863470
Fascinating. I hadn't thought about it that way.
My immediate concern is that this would necessitate a shit ton of bookkeeping from the GM which isn't ideal.
It does make me think how it would work in a tainted grail / tales of arabian knights sort of game where you collect enemy spells and a abilities over time.

>>95840452 (OP)
Dragon Magazine had a blue mage for DnD 3.5 like 20 years ago. There was also the Spellthief.

>>95847438
Fagula Ultima is gay

>>95863942
why?

>>95864236
In all fairness I like it but it's at least a liiiiiiiitle gay

>>95863942
why?
>>95864397
why does that matter?

>>95863470
>>95863811
I'm a Blue Mage autist and that entire paragraph is exactly the opposite of why I play them.

>>95864432
It doesn't. I am just acknowledging the existing gay.
>>95864442
Can you expand on why you like blue mages? I'm trying to get at the Timmy / Johnny / Spike of it and different perspectives help.

>>95864504
why is spike so gay

>>95864624
Spike is modelled after a girl who won a tournament. I'm guessing she likes girls, not that she's wrong to. Girls are great.

>>95864633
>Spike is modelled after a girl
Oof
poor girl

>>95864672
Many such cases -_-

>>95864672
all of the player archetype cards are based on tournament winners

>>95864504
I alluded to it a bit in >>95844386 and >>95844549, but I'll try to expand. There are a values that are make or break for me with a Blue Mage type character, so I guess I'll try to explain each.

1) Fundamentally altering what the character is over time. The idea of being able to copy a disposable sundry version of an ability is unrewarding. A magic spell that copies the effect of a monster's ability is not that ability, it's a spell. A good BM's entire skillset is a chronicle of where they've been and what they've done; it's part of them. Tons of attempts have been made at "this class steals one use of an ability" and it's always terrible. (Looking at you, Final Fantasy 8) You end up in "but I might need it later" hell where you aren't willing to use your abilities because each one is irreplaceable, and it solidifies the feeling that you aren't actually using the ability, just a cheap knockoff. That's one of the reasons I like Vorpal Knight: you gain the anatomy required to use the attack. Stealing a dragon's breath weapon means you grow an additional internal organ where it's generated. You get to experience what it means to have an elemental reactor in your chest cavity. Or to steal the eyes of an animal with 12 color receptors. Or develop a second pair of pectoral muscles so you can drive the beats of the wings you just grew. There's an element of metamorphosis. This goes directly against the "frequently changing limited-duration abilities" thing in the paragraph I disagree with.

2) Crossing the line. There's an element of chasing the horizon in incorporating monster abilities. Every spell a wizard can learn is already in ten thousand spellbooks. Monsters tend to have unique, bizarre, and flavorful abilities that magic can't (or doesn't bother to) replicate. Out of universe this is probably because monsters themselves are supposed to be sundry in most cases, making the writers a little less uptight than when designing player options. The above paragraph was right in that there's a sense of randomness to what you get, but it should be more like there's a sense of discovery. Like I've gone out and found something nobody else has before. Obviously this is all a game and was all written by somebody ahead of time, but the pseudo-randomness of not knowing what I'll find out there does a lot better job of maintaining the illusion than "and then the Wizard bought a scroll from Magic-Mart and scribed it permanently." This part may ruffle feathers, but the fact that some monster abilities CAN be imbalanced is part of the reward; Blue Mages are the only class that by leveling up gain the opportunity to earn an ability through hunting and then combat rather than just gaining new abilities for free. It feels higher demand, but you might get a better or at least stranger reward out of it. The monsters themselves are loot. And if you do know of an ability you really really want, then you can just tell your DM in the same way some people will wishlist a particular item, and it's up to them if they want to find a way to incorporate it.

3) Open-endedness. The other big failing I see in attempts at Blue Mage classes is attempting to provide a specific list of abilities that can be stolen. This is how Final Fantasy does it, but it doesn't really have a choice because it's a videogame. This point kind of overlaps with number 2, but the consequences are different. If a Blue Mage can look up what they can get, then not only is there no mystery to the adventure, but it also outright precludes a whole swath of character concepts. If the only thing you can steal from a dragon is that breath weapon, because the breath weapon is specifically marked as stealable but nothing else is, then you cannot create a character whose goal is to become as dragon-like as possible by hunting dragons near-exclusively. I've never done this personally, but there's nothing stopping a Vorpal Knight from taking the claws from one dragon, the wings from another, the breath weapon from a third, a fourth for the tail slap, then the natural armor, so on and so forth. They would pay dearly in opportunity cost to do it, because each of those dragons could have been something else, but they COULD do it. There's a sort of mix-your-own element to a good Blue Mage system that almost drops a miniature classless system inside any other system.

4) Remaining true to the origin. Media is absolutely dripping in Aesops about characters that steal their powers being somehow inferior to people who didn't. There's some good-intentioned messaging in there about not taking shortcuts, but they seem to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I'd like my character to use the ability to incorporate things that previously would have been incomprehensible to themselves to develop greater perspective and understanding. What does it feel like to flip a switch and suddenly be psionic? Or instantaneously develop a connection to the divine because I stole some Outsider's spell-like ability? Do I regret stealing the Scent ability? All of that stuff in point 1 applies as well. Lots of times in gameplay this crops up in the form of being given a neutered child-safe version of what the ability was before I took it, which feels like shit thematically and is almost insulting mechanically. I want it the way it is, without the serial numbers filed off, and to perceive something I couldn't have imagined before because of it.


Anyways. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

>>95865089
good talk anon

Why are they blue though?

>>95840580
>>95841513
I also like the concept of Taskmaster from Marvel Comics, who isn't a blue mage but a blue *fighter*. Any physical feat he observes he can mimic. He can even temporarily duplicate feats of super-strength or super-speed, but risks damaging his body in the process since he doesn't "naturally" have those powers.

Something that needs to be said about Blue Mages in their respective games: They aren't there to be 'flashy' by just copying moves. They exist to fill niches that other jobs/classes simply cannot.
In FF5, you have the Level X Magic line, which on the surface isn't that great due to requireing a lot of trial and error, but its uses in conjunction with other spells like Dark Spark (Halving level) on the right mobs can provide out of the box ways to eliminate foes, almost like finding a secret path or shortcut in another game.

In 11 the list is *bloated* as hell and most of the spells fall off of usage save for a few of them.
>Feather Tickle/Reaving Wind reducing the resource on enemies that enables them to use special moves, very useful for when you want something to NOT use ANY move at all
>Osmosis stealing a buff from an enemy that other lines of magic of a similar effect cannot
>Subduction being an AoE damage spell that severely reduces the movement of an entire group of enemies
>Mighty Guard providing its unique version of Hatse/Protect/Shell/Regen on top of stacking with the former
>Cruel Joke inflicting Doom on enemies that wouldn't otherwise been able though this has been nerfed because SE is no fun
>Jettatura/Absolute Terror stunning certain enemies that otherwise cannot be stunned by normal means

And that's just the tip of it. Point is, Blue Magic isn't just for the cosmetic of using monster abilities, but for doing something other classes literally cannot do because they come from monsters.

>>95872902
idk, just to continue the dragonlance and FF1 trend of colored mages?
it does feel retarded when mages wear very "I'm a mage" clothes, although it's useful and looks cool in vidya

>>95873536
I mean in FF1, White Mage, Black Mage, and Red Mage were just Cleric, Wizard, and Bard respectively. A lot of people still don't know how heavily FF1 was just D&D; it even used a spell slot system instead of MP. Later games dabbled with other color-coordinated mage typings. Green Mages were a thing in a couple games and they were all about buffs and debuffs, and in some games Time Mages were called Purple Mages.

I wonder if the various wizards (White, grey, brown, blue) from Lord of the Rings had influence. Japan was bigger on LotR at the time than the West was.

>>95873449
>almost like finding a secret path or shortcut in another game.
Except the shortcut takes longer than the normal route since dark spark has like a 5% hit rate on anything you actually want to use it on. Its fun to L5 death neo exdeath, but you'd have an easier time just basic attacking him for a couple minutes.

>>95841861
>>95841530
Fabula Ultima has a section telling you "this is what each class wants to see in an adventure" so you can prep to avoid this shit.

GMs should do that in every system but FU in particular spells it out and now I keep a post-it of things to toss in every now and then.

>>95873536
One of the things I like about Blue Mages is there's a sort of crossover between scholar and hunter or at least explorer. Among all mages, their outfits have the most reason to be incredibly practical and down to earth, maybe even kitted out. Think big game hunting on African safari in the early 1900s. Flowing robes and pointy hats are for the mages that aren't expecting to be crawling through inch deep muck under a tangle of brambles to close in on the game they've been tracking overland on foot for a week. They should fit in with the Rangers as much as the Wizards. They're also always a little touched in the head.

>>95873449
This is good too. Having access to the bizarre gives you an opportunity to develop eureka-moment solutions to get out of jams in ways nobody else could.

>>95868218
Y-you too...

Apropos blue mages, is there actually any sort of tabletop rpg system where you can change your class-jobs like in the Final Fantasy MMORPG?
So far, the only method seems to mostly do new character sheets and pretend that this warrior is the black mage who was the thief who was the ninja who was the blue mage and so on.

>>95874065
>GMs should do this in every system
TRUE

>>95840452 (OP)
In 5e I've wanted one since I saw the Arcane trickster's spell steal ability, but it's this far off high level thing, instead of being core to the class. In a game where you fight a lot of mages it would be easier to have a subclass like it where you could steal at the level which you have spell slots for instance. For stealing monster abiltiies however it's going to alternate in power significantly, but perhaps if you did it a 1/long rest thing in those cases itwould be alright, even if you stole the dragon's breath or whatever.

They're a really baller concept though, so I'd like to see them implemented. Also a big fan of Rubick who has the same concept.

>>95840490
BLU in XI and XIV are so cool, despite coming from very different sources, lore wise.
>XI
Military strategists and Assassins in service of the Empire of Aht Urhgan, having to undergo an incredibly deadly process where their essence is turned more into the one of a monster/beastman than man.
>XIV
Hailing from indigenous people in a far away land who learn the ways of the animals and monsters, one broke ass nigga tries to just get rich with those arts, first doing a snake oil salesman routine selling it as "the ultimate magic" that gets him almost ran out of the country and then using it as circus magic to entertain people in the arena.

>>95876062
>Hailing from indigenous people in a far away land
Too bad that faraway land turned out to be completely shit, nothing but a bad parody of mexico led by a furry troon.

>>95840490
>>95840452 (OP)
there's 3 classes from games I never see convert well totabletop/pnp

Final Fantasy Dark Knights, heavily armored wielders of dark arts who's main gimmick is draining their health to increase damage, and draining the health of their enemies while also dealing damage. These attacks are magical, but Dark Knights are not casters. Examples are Cecil from FF4, and Gaffgarion from FFT.

I don't know why this concept never really catches on, its not a Blackguard, or Death Knight. Guess sword magics are too anime.

>>95876062
>BLU in XIV are cool, lorewise
and in absolutely no other way
worst blue mage in the entire series

>>95876148
I think it's more that ever since 3.5 the type of person who wants go make a gish also wants to have a billion spells and / or super complex builds.

>>95876352
FF Dark Knight, and Holy Knight don't seem to convert well to tabletop games

>>95875347
Cloudbreaker Alliance. I haven't played it yet but it looks charming. My brother backed the kickstarter and everything, and it specifically lists Final Fantasy in its inspirations. The setting and even name is like a riff on Crystal Chronicles meets Star Trek soft science-fantasy. You can swap your class out entirely during downtime, and you're actually expected to take a second class at 3rd level or so to make a hybrid build, which can also be swapped out when you change your main.

>>95876148
TTRPGs seem to shy away from health-based mechanics in general in my experience. Even something like a leech healer who drains enemy health to heal allies seems to be too much to ask for.

>>95876987
I will say I played a soulthief vitalist in PF once and it ended up being my favorite 3.5-era character ever.
I wish classes like that were more common.

>>95876148
>Guess sword magics are too anime.
The caster/martial divide and need to neatly pigeonhole everything into one of those two categories has utterly brainrotted western game design in general. FF14's take on magic is perfect explanation for how it should work in a high fantasy setting if you ask me: everyone naturally channels the stuff since it's a natural phenomenon that suffuses all living (and many inanimate) things, and it's how you channel it that determines your fighting style/"class"

>>95873573
>I mean in FF1, White Mage, Black Mage, and Red Mage were just Cleric, Wizard, and Bard respectively.

I always wondered why JRPGs don't have druids. You would think green mages would be the druid equivalent, but they aren't.

>>95877253
>Vitalist
My brother. Vitalist and Vorpal Knight are in a constant duel to be my favorite class in any game ever. Gestalt them and I'd never want to play anything else.

>>95877399
The Final Fantasy equivalent of the Druid class is probably the Geomancer, which doesn't appear in nearly as many games as the rest and has never had a colored mage name.

>>95840452 (OP)
Play more TTRPGs, blue mages exist in the space already.
Hell, to a lesser extent you have the mechanics used as power up systems like Counting Coup in Deadlands, which is only 4 years older than Blue Mages introduction in 1992's FFV.

>>95846111
>D&D 4e is the only edition that requires paladins to be tied to a god out of chargen by the default mechanics.
Damn, is 4e the most based edition?

>>95877428
No, that's retarded, why bother having Outer Planes if the only player-facing mechanics for them may as well be a clubhouse for NPCs you're not allowed to fuck with?

>>95843631
I would think the only way to pull off a Megaman game would be in the X series since the whole mavrick hunter lends well to player characters and there is lots of time gaps between the MMX games to allow for anything to happen without having X or Zero directly involved.

>>95877446
>Having paladins tied to gods is retarded
Sorry you hate fun and joyous smiting, anon.

>>95877450
The Battle Network series is absolutely begging to be ported to other game formats. The most obvious is an MMO, but some kind of TTRPG would fit hand in glove with a lot of the mechanics. I'm aware of a project to do just that called Netbattlers by Merry Mancer Games, but I haven't looked into it in a long time; no idea what state it's in now.

There's also this. https://www.21xxrpg.com/

>>95877480
See, that's the thing. I grew up with the X series and not the Battle Network series which is funny considering both series explores what happens when one way goes for Dr. Light (X series and beyond) and the other goes to Dr. Wiley (Battle Network).

>>95877484
>one goes to Light and the other Wily
Huh? The Battle Network timeline is what happens if DARPA funds network technology and artificial intelligence instead of physical robots. Light still exists, he just changed his major, got married, had kids (and grandkids), and passed away as a successful revolutionary scientist.

>>95877499
Dr. Wily was the one focused on AI while Light was focused on robotics

>>95877420
I've played and run a shit ton of different TTRPGs without running into a blue mage style class, that's why I made the thread.
If you have more examples why not share them? That's the whole point of this exercise.
Like now I know to look into Counting Coup, because my table did Dogs in the Vineyard and We Deal in Led for westerns, not Deadlands.

so why aren't Dancers in tabletop, they're not really Bards

>>95877505
It's the opposite, though they pursued both in different ways. Wily was objectively the better roboticist but was overshadowed by Light. This shows in their respective magnum opus; Zero could dunk on X all day long on a mechanical level, but Wily couldn't get his AI to work because he wanted incompatible values to coexist. That's why he made and left the "virus" in his capsule, so he could continue to revise and work on him well after his natural lifespan ran out. Meanwhile Light made a physically inferior robot (X) but gave him a powerful moral center and the ability to adapt, which allowed X to grow over time and be gradually cultivated into something that would EVENTUALLY surpass Zero.

Light and Wily's whole narrative relationship is about how they both could have covered eachothers' weakspots if they'd just been able to put their egos aside and cooperate.

>>95877533
Bruh, there is an entire subclass for Bard dedicated to "dancing" You'd think this would have been a part of the Bard identity a long ass time ago but then no one takes the obvious idea of mixing Monk identity with other class identity (where is the druid/monk mix wotc?)

>>95877462
The difference between "will of a god who is Good" and "will of the Upper Planes of Good" is something of enormous significance to literally every official D&D setting with the conventional Alignment mechanics. Highlighting this with a flavor difference on a mechanically intermediate class backing up their more constant flavor restrictions provides depth to the setting, including the important matter of giving grounds to call out dickery from the gods by making it demonstrable that their moral authority is contingent rather than absolute.

>>95877540
>something that would EVENTUALLY surpass Zero.
I hold the position that Zero's INTENDED operational level is beyond X's bounds, but because Wily got bogged down in feature-creep and software problems it was never all working at the same time so Zero never left X's potential-space, save maybe in information warfare with the Maverick Virus precursors ABSOLUTELY antithetical to X's design priorities.

>>95877568
Guess I see it as mostly different from JRPG Dancers

>>95877585
>feature creep
That's kind of accurate. Wily wanted to have his cake and eat it too; Zero was supposed to be his free-will-exhibiting totally obedient psychopathic killing machine loyal son. A good reference point is Omega. Weil had access to Wily's plans for Zero and was a zealot for that ideal, and with the advancements of 200 years of technology actually managed to create that perfectly controlled psychopath, though probably by stripping out any of the familial notions.

People think of Zero as a fast character but forget he was a larger, heavier, more powerful X in the SNES games. He doesn't take over the 00th Shinobi Unit and start leaning into speed until X has overtaken him in his original role. Then by the Zero series he's basically a ninja, with a sleek synthetic-musculature body instead of the stompy gears-and-pistons design of the X era.

>>95877733
He also lost his original body when it was used to create Omega.

>>95877765
Yeah, which there's a lot of confusion over the implications of. It's a frequently missed detail that Weil made the new body. He constantly derides it as inferior, but that's coming from the position of a Philosophy of Rule/original Zero concept supremacist. I suspect it's because the new body is a fusion of Light and Wily tech in a way that's never been done before. The ability to change color to get new abilities is a Light invention called Light Ceramical Alloy, the final iteration of which was Titanium X. It changes color because it's a near-flawless light conductor, and the Variable Weapon System is a hardlight projector that can change its output by altering its physical crystal structure, like a lens, which we perceive as a color change. There are a scant handful of characters in the entire canon that can do that. Rock, Forte, and X. Sometimes they let Blues do it in non-canon sidegames or alternate modes, but he explicitly cannot canonically do that. The fact that Zero's body can change color as of Zero 2 to alter his stats and abilities indicates to me that the new body was made with Titanium X instead of Z, which Weil thinks poorly of, but even the Perfect Memories book says the new body has more potential than his previous one.

>>95877399
Because they don't really make a separation between nature and magic/spiritual would be my assumption. Instead different elements are associated with healing or destruction. There's occasionally a shamanist type class, but it's usually associated more with summoning and communing with spirits rather than "I cast tree"

>>95877533
Dancers are completely different just in every FF iteration, so you'd have to clarify what you mean. 11 had them as front line healers whereas in 14 they're backline ranged DPS focusing on stacking buffs, for example.

That said, you can essentially play one in Sword World if you mix Battle-Dancer with either Bard or Enhancer. They even have the perfect race for it, since they have a unique dance-language and believe motion is the meaning to life excuse the picture for ants, it's all that's available online for Soleils

>>95877928
An FFT Dancer in tabletop would be incredibly funny.

>>95877874
There really isn't a concept of a druid that exists within any of the FF classes. More importantly, I suppose it matters what aspect of the D&D druid (because let's be real, it doesn't exist elsewhere) you are trying to emulate; Summons? Elemental magic? Turning into a creatures? using plants?

>>95877985
The overall skillset of the Druid was kind of split between multiple classes in FF. Geomancer has already been mentioned for the "power of the land" aspect; earthquakes and storms and swamps. But there's also the Beastmaster for the animal handling, and the Mystic/Oracle from FFT for the dealing with minor local spirits aspect.

>>95877985
>There really isn't a concept of a druid that exists within any of the FF classes.
I literally just told you why. FF14 beats you over the head with it by having White Mages as the stewards of nature who commune with nature spirits.
>Summons?
The Summoner class, which always has a strong animism theme to it as I just said
>Elemental magic?
Split between Black and White magic as I've said multiple times now. Black got Fire, Lightning and Ice while White got Wind, Water and Earth.
>Turning into a creatures?
Blue Mage covers that
>using plants?
Literally all that's left, and it's pretty weak for theming.

>>95875347
Through the Breach encourages a narrative structure of the party doing odd jobs and taking on new roles as they move from adventure to adventure, although mechanically it's basically just D&D style multiclassing and nothing actually forces you to change what you're doing from adventure to adventure. But if you buy into what it wants you to do, then you might be changing your job pretty drastically over time.

The Battlezoo Beastiary has Blue Mage feats for both 5E and Pathfinder

>>95876062
>wanted to play XIV for the blue mage
>it's some weird special class that can only be played in a randomized challenge dungeon event
cool, cool

>>95840490
>>95840700
>>95840820
>>95876062
>>95876062
>>95876148
Which Final Fantasy has the most fun and potent blue mages where stealing abilities is actually useful ? Stealing abilities in FFVII remake did jack shit and they all sucked, can't believe I spent all the time looking for them. I love the concept.

>>95882211
Quina in IX was fun

>>95876148
It has something to do with the health economy. In games where you are expected to have a fight or maybe two a day, on top of potential hazards and traps draining health, it would lead to players being extremely cautious with these types of mechanics.
Furthermore, JRPGs tend to have way more rounds of combat, which in actual game time is also a lot quicker. You are expected to take damage constantly and spend many rounds hitting enemies, especially in boss fights. That also means you get dedicated healer characters to heal a lot, or use items to heal. Meanwhile, in an actual ttrpg, healing during combat doesn't happen constantly, and it's often at times when things went horribly wrong. And you usually get a lot less healing (less items, less healings spells to cast).
To make this actually worthwhile, you will probably need to make the buff from sacrificing health really good, but this could mean that the dark knight just one-shots encounters. Afterwards, he replenishes all his health during the rest, because what's stopping him?
I really want to make dark knights like this work in a weeby rpg, but writing all this...

>>95882278
Wtf is that character design. Fat chef with tongue hanging out? I wanna be a cool character.

>>95840452 (OP)
From a video game RPG POV, it's just coding enemy attacks to be used by the player. It's doable enough that balance is the greater difficulty but it's not like the Enemy Skill Materia was weak.

Blue mages in FF imply that wizards are retarded if they can’t improvise another beings’ magic.

What’s even the point of academies? Do they must study magical creatures or how to work/deal with them?

Then again. FF magic is so un-magical I am surprised people keep calling it magic to begin with. Everyone is using it.

>>95844386
this sounds pretty bonkers , but in a cool way that only tabletop could allow but so rarely does

>>95882746
>asking for internally consistent shit in a game where people sell phoenix downs in shops for a penny
jrpgs always had terrible worldbuilding and consistensy, it really just is stupid anime shit that people accuse it of, and they're rigt.

>>95882796
Unlike WRPGs, where you hork down 8 cheese wheels in the middle of M1'ing a dragon to death, the bandits casually have ancient deminic armor on because you learned too much alchemy, and you can become the grandmaster of wizardry without learning a single spell.

>>95882746
>Blue mages in FF imply that wizards are retarded if they can’t improvise another beings’ magic.
Given how many of the reasons biomimicry in engineering is so limited apply perfectly well, not really.

>What’s even the point of academies? Do they must study magical creatures or how to work/deal with them?
To develop magic according to approaches that work in the ivory tower, instead of relying on sprawling logistical trails of exotic creatures.

>Then again. FF magic is so un-magical I am surprised people keep calling it magic to begin with. Everyone is using it.
There are many definitions of magic that are objective bearing no such issue.

>>95882746
The big limitation on blue mages is that they have to actually survive being directly hit with what they're trying to learn. They can't learn by watching or from a book, they have to take it on the chin.

>>95881981
Bro you can't just show up and make a case for me to play 5e like that. It's inconsiderate. (thanks)

>>95844386
>>95865062
Your ideal blue mage is less of a blue mage and more of a partial shapeshifter.

>>95876148
>there's 3 classes from games I never see convert well totabletop/pnp
>FF blue mage
>FF dark knight
>???
Who's the mysterious third class??

>>95887042
Kinda yeah, but even vanilla FF Blue Mages are implied to be copying monster anatomy to some degree. 1000 Needles is a Cactaur firing its cactus needles, Goblin Punch is just a goblin-specific martial strike, Bombs destabilize at low health and Self-Destruct, and Matra Magic has been a literal physical missile barrage. The sprites/animations were vague enough back then to not know if we're actually shapeshifting those features or just kind of summoning copies, outside of a handful of examples. But FFXI Blue Mages physically mutate into mindflayers if they fuck up too bad, so physical mutation is definitely at least sometimes on the table.

Pic related, the R.550 Magic, produced by Italian arms manufacturer Matra. I have no idea why Square named an attack after it, but there it is.

>>95887062
I'll guess Dragoon for the highly mobile jumpy fighter. But it could also be geomancer (caring mostly about what kind of terrain is around and manipulating or drawing energy from it) or green mage (solely focused on buffs and debuffs with very little direct damage). Or maybe Chemist. Utilizing single use potions and bombs and such is usually a pretty weak gimmick in tabletop RPGs and there isn't very much class support for doing it full time as your main combat role.

>>95876148
>I've never seen this incredibly common thing supported by GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, BESM Dungeon, and Fantasy HERO
Play more games. D&D isn't everything.

>>95887088
like everything else about the setting, XIV has an explanation involving the ambient magic dubbed "aether" where blue mages just use that to copy any appendages or secretions they need
>any "breath" attacks are conjured right in front of the mouth and expelled
>projectiles and other weapons are shaped out of aether
>self-destruct detonates the aether inches from your body so enemies die but you're just KOd
>final sting, the bee's suicide attack is copied by just putting all your aether (and health) into a single poke
>a "spell" that mimics biting flesh turns into magic jaws tearing off a chunk of "aether"

>>95887612
It's technically consistent with XIV's setting (as little as I know about it), but that kind of thing always feels like a copout to me. Blue Magic has a completely different explanation in pretty much every appearance it makes though. Relm would literally paint monsters that would come to life and use their attacks, the Enemy Skill materia plugged you into a planetary scale gestalt egregore that included the monsters' knowledge, Bravely Default called the class Vampire and the abilities you stole were called Genomes IIRC, etc

>>95887633
Relm is not a blue mage, she's something different. Something blue mage adjacent, but not blue mage. Of any FFV job she's most like it's the Beast Master. Strago is the Blue Mage.
FF11, FF14, and FFTA are the only games with Blue Mages that have any actual lore explaining how they work and in all three they're mages who use exotic magic to mimic the biology needed to use monster skills. The minutiae may not line up, but that's fine. It doesn't need to, none of them are in the same worlds.
Also, Bravely Default is a spiritual successor to classic Final Fantasy but is not a Final Fantasy game.

What was your honest reaction to pic related being 'the blue mage'?

>>95876148
Honestly you could prob do this pretty easily in Exalted.

>>95840452 (OP)
in d&d terms, this would end up like a wizard who can only learn spells from finding scrolls while adventuring, as opposed to being able to pick spells at level up or being able to buy scrolls or tomes in settlements.

>>95888441
Immense cringe

>>95888441
awful
nekomancer was right there
they could even have gone fancy and used ailuromancy

>>95840452 (OP)
A Factotum with an Ur-priest ability slapped on top of it.

>>95889069
If you're working with 3.5, Necrocarnum Totemist would be a much cleaner fit.

>>95888575
Do not kill the cringe within you, kill the part of you that cringes.

>>95888441
The original japanese name is Nekotsukai, tsukai being used as a mart of the Japanese word for magic-user Mahotsukai. To that end, it should have been named Nekomancer or Meowgician. Otherwise, no complaints.

>>95877428
Absolutely, yes.

>>95840452 (OP)
https://www.finalfantasyd20.com/classes/base-classes/blue-mage/

This one's just straight up the Blue Mage in a FF pathfinder system. It might work under the assumption of a lot of creature abilities to use though.

>>95865062
>>95865070
>>95865076
>>95865089
Did you read that webtoon "i get stronger the more i eat"? It's ridiculously bad an overall unsalvageable, but it ight just appeal to that blue mage autist side of yours. Dude can replicate and control the celular structure of whatever animal he eats, and gets isekai'd. It's the lowest form of power fantasy, but the autism behind explaining how to use this guy's cells for scales and that guy's cells for muscle power, and that guy's lungs for the capacity to support large animals, looks very much like what you describe.

>>95896455
Never heard of it; I generally avoid isekai on principle. But it sounds like you describe it: a lowbrow power fantasy that nevertheless tickles my exact crossroads of autism. I may have to give it a look. Thanks.

>>95841285
Take note that you can expand Chimerist's list of enemy types you can learn spells from by using a heroic. The primary flavor intent of the class is beastly nature magic more along the lines of a druid.

If you wanted to build a wildshaping druid, you could use the Mutant class from the TF book, and if you wanted to do plant magic, you could use the Floralist class from the NF book.

>>95895084
>the Mystic Savant archetype is a 1:1 copy of the Mystic Savant class from the same book as Vorpal Knight
I wonder who copied who.

>>95863919
link to the dragon mag one?

>>95902058
Seconding this

>>95840452 (OP)
D&D 3.5
Changeling base race.
Racial Emulation feat.
Illithid Savant Prestige Class.

Kill your targets, eat their brains, gain their feats, spellcasting, abilities, skills, etc.

>>95908461
Ithilid Savant is so fucking good. It's weirdly limited in how often you can copy things, but you can rip entire chunks out of classes.

>>95888237
fwiw they added "pictomancer" in the most recent xiv xpac which was based on relm (the creator of the form of magic in the xiv lore is stated to be named relm).
I don't necessarily think beastmaster is a bad comparison but in the context of xiv at least I think summoner is the better touchstone comparison. The "trouble with mages" in a lore/mechanical sense is "how can you effectively channel enough aether without running out or risking harm to yourself".
Mana in that game is simply aether but aether is also what makes up your soul, so when you're casting a spell it's almost like you're spending a little part of yourself in order to do so and much how like bodies take in and process ambient matter and repattern it into the image of the body in order to sustain themselves the soul does the same thing. But if you're spending vast quantities of aether casting huge fireballs you're going to run out, and generally there's a limit to how fast you can safely take in and process new aether.
Mechanically the four mages all represent different philosophies to approaching this problem. Black mage cycles through a highly specialized aether intake stage and aether spending stage and cannot effectively do the other while it's doing one. Lore wise, widespread use of this caused a calamity and technically it's illegal to be a black mage now. Red mage was the response to the black and white magic calamity and seeks to only use the body's aether without taking in ambient aether at accelerated rates using weaker but specialized spells in order to do so and supplementing it with swordplay. Summoner creates an external loci in the form of the summon which can "safely" (it still has environmental effects) take in and expend large amounts of aether at once without harming the summoner by virtue of being a separate entity from the summoner but controlled by the summoner and created entirely for for this kind of mana intake and expenditure

>>95888237
>>95908554
Pictomancer in this context is largely thought to be a sort of parallel evolution to summoning. Summoning itself is based off of ancient creation magics and was reintroduced to by a secretive cabal who sabotaged them even as they did so in order to forment chaos. Thus the actual summoning spells used by summoners within the game are actually even more gimped because the summons are actively hostile to the summoner and the summoner needs keep them in line with sheer force of will and magic and generally they can only summon extremely weak versions of the full, very malevolent summons. Pictomancy thus instead seems to be a sort of parallel evolution that discards the original basis of the ancient creation magics and instead of using the summons as a loci, it uses the paintings and paint as a loci and the paint itself is what gathers and patterns the aether in the form of the spell guided by the caster itself.

>>95908554
>>95908594
I know about XIV. I play XIV, hell I genuinely like XIV. XIV lore isn't relevant to anything but XIV. Please don't go full autard mode over how it does things differently as if it matters.

>>95908709
Yeah this discussion is probably more mechanics focused rather than lore focused on further reflection

>>95908725
you can justify any lore you can get your players on board for in your individual games. Mechanics, however, need to make sense for the base ruleset, and to a variety of different kinds of people.
I've found explaining a rule to my wife, who only plays puzzle games and pokemon, is the best way to see if my rules will make sense for anyone else.

>>95908772
That method is based and hilarious.
Good work sir

>>95840452 (OP)
>Blue Mages in FF are a really neat concept
What kind of braindead moron would think that "I get to mirror your moves!" is a really neat concept?
It is objectively unimaginative.

>>95909621
>can't imagine enjoying tying the thrill of the hunt to his character progression

>>95910047
Be kind to him, he's retarded and doesn't play games..

>>95909621
Because the moves on their own are not that powerful until you figure out how to use them in proper synergy, at which juncture you do massive damage.
Killing off a parade of the last leg of the toughest dungeon in ARR with a suicide bomb combo was spectacular.

>>95909621
As opposed to what? Mirroring the spell list for your caster's class? What a retarded take.

>>95863919
Anon, pls, the Dragon Magazine issue number...

>>95917186
>>95863919
Seconding this

>>95917186
Thirding the question because DragonDex doesn't have a "Blue Mage" result:
https://aeolia.net/dragondex/articles-subject.html

>>95917557
You looked up Blue Mage instead of Spellthief. Try again, kid.

>>95917582
The supposed "Blue Mage" was specifically in Dragon, with Spellthief mentioned separately and found in the Complete Adventurer supplement. The substitutions in Dragon #353 offer nothing to increase similarity to any Blue Mage interpretation.