New Magientist Questions

[Odoyle]

Good evening everyone!

My friends and I are getting ready to start our first adventure with SoE and I hit a small snag in character creation. I was immediately drawn to the Magientist and began designing a character. When I finished I had my character wielding a Mechanical Saw with a starting attack of 14! I showed one of my fellow players and he immediately pointed out that I must have overlooked something in my build. I've double checked a couple of times and finally decided to bring it to the forum. So the main question is, "Is it possible to have a new magientist character that has such a high attack value starting out through the use of the Magience domain?"

The "Magientist" profession starts with the "Magience" Domain at 5.
The character's way of reason is 5.
Due to his age (26) I picked up the "Artifact Use" Discipline at 6.
Finally, using the "Brilliant" and "Well Read" advantages I picked up +2 and +1 more respectively in the "Magience" domain.
6+5+2+1=14 Right?

More importantly what are some of the advantages or disadvantages of this set up that I might have overlooked? And if this is right, is it TOO unbalanced?

[Pierstoval]

I think it's kinda bad-ass, but not overlooked, and it's totally legit !

It just means that your character spent 60XP on "Brilliant" and 20 more on "Well-read" , which makes 80XP to have a +3 to Magience, it's REALLY a lot !

By the way, if your character breaks or looses his saw, his score of 14 in Magience will not be of any use

[WoeRie]

By the way, if your character breaks or looses his saw, his score of 14 in Magience will not be of any use

Well, not for fights, but he would be still a very, very good Magientist.

[Pierstoval]

It depends of his background. It's the flaw of the high-scored datas in Esteren : having a really high score in such a discipline would be (as you said) unbalanced.

In this case, you can use the advantages as "intelligence" bonuses, and the artifact use as a "practical" bonus. Let me explain :

An "intelligence" bonus may be applied on learning, reacting in a situation of crisis and establishing plans.
"Practical" bonuses may be the ease to repair things, to extract flux or construct a new artifact (after using the "intelligence" bonuses to conceptualize it).

In such a way of playing a character, you can remove the +3 advantages bonuses while the player is using his artifact in combat, as it is only "pushing buttons and wielding the weapon correctly", which is only known by usage, and memorized after reading/writing all the theory about the artifact. This makes things more balanced, I think.

But also, you can interpret such a high bonus in other ways. If your character made something like a Ph.D in "Mechanical Flux Saw", we can think he spent 2 or 3 years in creating only one artifact, but a really very much powerful one, which does not consume very much Flux for an artifact of this power, etc. etc. ; so that makes the player very very clever in his domain, but then you may replace "Artifact Use" discipline with "Mechanical Flux knowledge & use", which is really more relevant in this kind of background.

I think it's dangerous to rely only on "Artifact Use" discipline, and maybe it would be a great point of interest to debate on "Artifact use discipline = for all artifacts ? Or 1 discipline for each artifact ?"

That said, the Book 1 - Universe is clear upon this point :

Magientists and the Artifact Use Discipline

This Discipline, which is exclusive to people fully trained in Magience and is only accessible through the Domain of the same name, gives them a huge advantage. Thanks to it, they can use any artifact they have to deal with, be it a tool, a weapon, etc. However, from a level of 10 (Expert), the Magientist has to choose one single artifact in which he becomes an Expert. Afterwards, he may become an expert in several artifacts if he spends the necessary experience points.

Which means your method is fully legit (as I said) , but can obviously turn into unbalanced situations.

By the way, your character spent 80XP in having +3 bonus in only one domain, so he might have a good defense and attack, but just let him wear his mechanical saw while riding a horse (Feats test) , try to sell it to anyone (Relation tests), or anything else.

This is the rule : if your character has a big great advantage on one point, then this advantage becomes a flaw in some other way, and the player has to know it, so as a GL, you have to make him be fully conscious about that !
Wait until he makes a critical failure on his dice roll, and break his mechanical saw without pity ! He'll know that repairing it may be hard and long, and probably expensive if he has to use flux or rare parts !

[Ahriman42]

A player in my game did the exact same thing. I don't think he jacked his attack bonus quite so much, but he did really push the "Weaponized Circular Saw" thing; he used it to solve all sort of problems, like locked doors.

Such a character is still hideously overspecialized, and should thus expect to be rather useless in scenarios where they can't manage to use "Weaponized Circular Saw" as a solution.

Ways to "control" such a character

*Social Conflicts that can't be solved by violence; dealing with powerful people who employ goons/guards. Can't saw your way through a whole platoon of knights.

*Social Stigma. Openly carrying such an artifact could make normal people dislike you, especially since it marks you as one of those "saw guys;" magientists who don't even do anything useful, they just talk about how cool their saws are and look for excuses to use them.

*Flux Shortages. You could be somewhere where Flux cartriges are hard to come by. Also, Artifacts can still be damaged by environmental effects; falling into a river or other physical setbacks could be an excuse to take away (maybe temporarily), the gear of various characters, forcing them to rely on other skills to deal with challenges.

[Clovis]

*Flux Shortages. You could be somewhere where Flux cartriges are hard to come by. Also, Artifacts can still be damaged by environmental effects; falling into a river or other physical setbacks could be an excuse to take away (maybe temporarily), the gear of various characters, forcing them to rely on other skills to deal with challenges.

Not to mention that feeding and maintaining a Mechanical Saw on a daily basis can quickly get crazy expensive!