Dark Knights: Mages or Dark Mages

[TheAstraWolf]

This is a question that has been bothering me and I need to hear what you guys think. Do Dark Knights count as Mages for their use of Anima magic or Dark Mages for also being from the Dark Mage promotion branch and Fates not having normal Mages but Dark Mages only?

Edited August 10, 2016 by SSL01

[Raguna]

Hmm that's a bit of a tough one since dark mages have been using anima in these games as well. I'll say Dark Knight was of the shaman class in Awakening (going by the GBA games term which sounds better imo) but in Fates they became part of the Mage class unless you consider the Hoshidan variant as the Mage and Nohr as the shaman type in which case the Awakening case still applies.

Edited August 10, 2016 by Raguna

[Byte2222]

The question is wrong. In Fates in particular but Awakening to a lesser extent, there is no distinction between 'Mages' and 'Dark Mages'. There are only magic users and some who can use the special tomes subset. If a dark knight has shadowgift, they can use dark tomes, if they don't, the can't, but this doesn't make the class 'Mages' or 'Dark Mages'.

You could say you mean in lore - are they trained in dark magic or not, or perhaps do they see themselves as a dark mage or a different kind of mage - but even here, there doesn't seem to be any distinction. A simple reclass tears down a lifetime of training - indeed, it seems the outfit means more to whether they can wield dark magic than how they were taught and trained. It's almost as if IS don't consider the characters' lives outside the frame...