| Warrior |
Specializes in
physical attacks, adept in hand-to-hand combat with a wide variety of
weapons. Warriors are tough, strong, can use most of the game's more powerful
weapons, and develop special abilities geared towards enhancing their
attacks and those of others. |
| Monk |
A martial artist
(remember the Black Belt from the first game?) with powerful unarmed combat
abilities. Monks, like their forebears, are relatively weak in the early
going, but develop into strong fighters once they gain their powerful
multiple attack abilities. |
| White Mage |
White Mages, the
ones in the nice white robes with the cute red triangle accents, are skilled
in healing and support magics. They only learn one special ability, but
they also develop a wide library of white magic spells. |
| Black Mage |
Black Mages get
things cooking with powerful attack spells and curses, and look plenty
snappy in their dark robes and cool pointy hats (if you look around, you
may find some shots of Tarutaru mages dressed up just like Vivi from FFIX).
Like white mages, they get just one special ability to complement their
grimoires. |
| Red Mage |
Red Mages haven't
been seen in the FF series for a dog's age, but fans might remember them
as the all-purpose spellcasters from the first game. They can cast both
white and black magic spells, and have better combat abilities than their
fellows, but the highest level spells are denied to them, and they're
a little slower to cast than specialist mages. |
| Thief |
Thieves are stealthy,
quick, and agile, compensating for their lesser physical strength with
superior evasive maneuvers and sneaky tactics. And what would a thief
be without the ability to steal stuff? It's not certain whether you can
steal from other players, but don't count on it. |
| Bard |
On the count of
three, everyone make a "spoony bard" joke. One...two...three!
Got it out of your system now? Good. Bards are a blend of magician and
musician, using instruments and songs to create magical effects. They
can learn different songs to cast different "spells," which
also vary according to the musical instruments they equip (flutes, harps,
and so on). |
| Beastmaster |
A job with a touch
less precedent in the series, the Beastmaster adopts certain monsters,
training them to help out in battle. The skill is called "ayatsuru"
in Japanese, which translates to something like "manipulate,"
as with a marionette or puppet. The Beastmaster uses the skill on a target
creature, and if it succeeds, they fall under the player's control. |
| Dark Knight |
The Dark Knight
is a warrior allied with the powers of, well, darkness. They possess certain
supernatural skills in addtion to some of the special fighting abilities
also used by the warrior class, including the ability to absorb damage. |
| Paladin |
The Paladin is the
flip side of the Dark Knight, a warrior allied with the powers of good
and right and all that other nice stuff. While the Dark Knight is a little
more offensively inclined, the Paladin's strengths are more defensive
in nature -- in particular, they excel at the handling of a shield. |
| Ranger |
Rangers are skilled
in woodcraft and such, but their most useful ability in FFXI is their
ranged attack skills -- they're experts at kyuujutsu, or archery
in English. They have an unusually high hit rate, and can cause status
effects with special shots. |
