Paul
I don't expect many Experts to not have either Casting or heavy Combat focus. There's no reason not to have one or the other. What do they give up for one? Not a lot really for Divine Casting. For Arcane Eldritch or Elder, they will give up a Path and pose real Talents. During Advancemrnt, they devote 1 Talent per tier (plus Prestidigitation) and 1 Skill for Arcanum. This still gives them 1 Skill for a weapon to keep maxed, and the other 3 for other skills.
If the Expert wants to focus on casting and combat, they'll need to generally have to spend both Talents on Cssting and Manuevers, leaving them no other options with that advancement. They won't be as flexible as either the Martial (with more maneuvers or fighting styles) or Casters (with more adaptstions). So that is what they give up.
Theres nothing preventing Martial characters from taking Full casting. They will be one skill point behind each tier, but using a few of their Talents for Sabatical or something similar will get them a boost.

Martial with Initiate of the Gods
Full combat
Full casting
2 ranks / tier for Arcanum (extra with Talents or Paths)
Sacrifices 1 Talent per Tier and 1 Skill per Tier just like an Expert

On the other side of things, it's very frustrating to an Expert to have someone else in the party just as good or better than them at skills they've focused on. other than Artisan Skills or Perception, someone else is just as likely to shine. Arcane for Deceit, Stealth or Lore Skills (which includes Larceny), Divine with Social Skills, and Martial with Physical Skills. So by those standards, all other archetypes can potentially be as good as the expert in their focused area (skills).

John

Michael
How do you build a Holy Champion without casting. It requires Templar or Templar Itinerant. Or do you mean you don't plan on taking the a Divine Casting Talent?

John

In Saskatoon we had (originally) a Martial Templar going straight sword and board. He chose templar for flavour.

Interesting. i wouldn't imagine making that investment in a background that I wouldn't use at all.

John

Templar is sweet enough some people would look at it even without access to spell casting. Evenn people w/o an interest in being a spellcaster ought to look at 1 level of DSC just to get access to devout talents (like smite infidel).

I think we're all onboard with this in principle.

I would also add that I don't know any gamers who've never had an experience where there was some kind of challenge in the game and you sat there feeling useless because your character didn't have the right mechanics to contribute. We want to minimize that. That includes combat...we don't want a few kinds of "bent combos" to so dominate the battlemat that other builds feel overshadowed.


I don't think its a problem that an expert archetype archer is potentially as good as a martial archetype archer at shooting people. There's an excellent chance that if I wanted to use A:RPG to do Robin Hood's band of merry men then the outlaws would contain plenty of different NPCs built using both the martial and expert archetypes. I personally don't think one outshines the other. Still I note that as an "ideal" archer I'd want the martial techniques plus the hawkeye chain plus the Weapon Mastery chain. That's 17, not 12 talents. The martial archetype easily gets the 17 talents with its standard advancement options (with 3 left over for melee). At best the expert gets 10 of these with advancement options...the other 2 (or 7) have to come from creation or paths. 2 is no big deal but the right 7 is probably not doable.


I share that interest and perspective. But I've quoted Tukufu because he's my concrete foundation that serves as a means of getting at what's possible. It's my read (which may or may not be correct) that when people talk about what's mechanically possible in the abstract as opposed to actual builds that they end up leaving out the cost of opportunity. I appreciate that you have a concrete archer build and that you are looking ahead beyond tier 2 (something I concede I have not done a lot of)

Let's say I get possessed tonight by an evil? spirit? (Jack Chick is finally vindicated.) And I decide I want to "make Tukufu MORE powerful!" Hoping no one will catch me, I completely redesign the character to maximize damage in melee...

Mighty Spinning Strikes seems like a good place to start. That requires 3 talents (Two Weapon Fighting, Spinning Strikes and (probably) Balanced Blades). I have to drop three (non skill) talents to get there. I have three elective talents and 4 talents from advancements I can potentially drop. The list is: ASC 1, Adaptation (Delay Strain), Adaptation (Expand Area), Adaptation (Selective Spell), MT: Passing Attack, Quick, & Tomb Raider.

Tomb Raider is core to role-playing Tukufu...but the evil spirit is focused on roll-playing. That's the first thing overboard. Probably I dump two adaptations (not delay strain). But I could maybe dump Quick & MT: Passing Attack. Haha! My melee damage is going way up! >;0 ... But also my spell casting has gone way down. =/ Hrrrm. Cost of opportunity. Really to be maxed out at Mighty Spinning Strikes I should be Huge and swing an heirloom great sword in my main hand. Two more talents have to be swapped out (and Tukufu needs to quietly change to Human which complicates my rebuild tremendously...). But now my 2 AR isn't high enough to be tanking in melee so I need 2 more talent slots to buy armor proficiency...

The point I'm getting at is that to get really close as an Expert to an optimized martial character I have to dump my spell casting (which ultimately runs on talents). To optimize spell casting also carries a cost to your fighting abilities. Its true you can't do everything even if Cody is right and we really do want our PCs to be Gods.


Hopefully I'm not taking too many liberties with the above non-quote.

I don't know if this will be true or not. I do believe (strongly) that its not true at Tier 1 or 2. My crusade character Eisener was the Martial archetype and vastly more dangerous than Tukufu in combat.

But I certainly noticed the advantages of building such a character (that could cycle between an advanced manuever and an advanced spell) and Tukufu is definitely headed in that direction. If its nice enough that it stands out to me as a really good option then I'm willing to at least think that it might be too good.

But in other places you've also said that casters can launch their best spell time and again through strain...through eating some damage, or delaying the strain or using fate to wipe their strain. I expect high level casters will be better at this than low level ones. I also expect that high level martial characters will be able to add enough things like stances, murderous precision & the perfect cut to keep up even on their off attacks.

Eric,

Thanks for the thoughtful and humerous response. I have a limited amount of time for a response at the moment, so let me hit just a couple of things.

<snip>

More or less accurate. I would expect that an AoE or status spell or something would land first before following up with a powerful martial attack, such that minions are cleared, the big bad guy is thrown off balance or whatnot. A caster with full ranks invested should have a good chance of landing their initial shot. Follow that with a powerful Martial attack, rinse, repeat. A good Martial Attack doesn't necessarily require a lot of investment. Forward Stance + Mighty Swing is a 1 talent investment. For a -1 to hit the character is doing d<weapon> (d<stat>) +d4+5 +1 for a good or better weapon. An extra +6 damage is nothing to sneeze at and that's not including the Forward Stance. The fact that you've got max ranks makes the forward stance feasible, where it won't be as useful to characters getting only 2 ranks/tier in a melee attack. They'll really need that extra +1 to hit.



I've played with Tukufu. He is absolutely an asset in combat. He may not do as much damage as Eisener, but he's valuable to have there. So he contributes. Now, look at outside of combat.

Tukufu has a bunch of skills and spells that can be used in a wide variety of situations. He's not an Ambassador for nothing, right? Is Eisener likely based on his mechanics to be tapped to do much outside of combat? Does he scout, is he a face, does he have a bunch of lore skills? There are many players such as the two of us that will find ways to keep being involved in a game and story regardless of whether we have the mechanics to back it up. It may simply be roleplaying or brainstorming, but that's who we are. There are other players who are fairly quiet at the table and won't speak up unless it's an area of specialty for them.

Tukufu will certainly make his mark outside of combat and have his time to shine for how he's built. If Eisener and Tukufu were both available for the same combat or participating in the same combat would the table take extra notice of what Eisener contributed over Tukufu? Never having seen either build, that's not a question I can answer.



At mid to high tiers I expect the big spells will likely be speed 5 or 6 with all the adaptations applied. A caster with delay strain and a willingness to spend 1 Fate Point could go through 24 ticks of combat without doing anything more than launching big spell after big spell. When my group playtested high level combats, the combats never got past tick 15. I expect that will change, but being able to go through 2 turns of the clock with virtually no strain management required is big. Or they can intersperse physical attacks, Leadership or similar actions.

I expect Avalanche and similar runes may be used though it's hard to say if they get dropped with the big attack or saved for the follow up. There should be some bonus damage, but not likely significant. Or at least not above and beyond what they would always get through wolf pack and advanced tactics for example.

Murderous precision requires Waylay and doesn't make sense thematically for a lot of builds. It requires surprise or tactical edge against a humanoid target. It's no longer useful against animals and other creatures. There are a number of ways to avoid granting tactical edge, and I expect higher level targets may have that. It's Passive Insight in additional damage if it's not an outright kill usable 1/scene.

I'm not sure how much stance dancing characters will do. I expect people build around 1 stance rather than multiple, but I haven't looked at them too much.

Gotta run for now.

With a sweep of his hat,

Paul

I was sending his to Paul in a private post but I felt it articulated my stance without the frustrated sound of my previous post.

I feel it's okay for an expert to be mighty in combat with 1 type of weapon, what this means is I feel an expert should be able to max out 1 weapon skill and take weapon mastery with one weapon and not greatly impact their skill benefits. I also feel that it's okay for an expert to learn one type of magic and keep it maxed and have the normal allotment of spell's eithiut impacting their skill benefits. Either of these options takes 1 Talent and 1 Skill per Tier, completely doable, this leaves 2 Skill Talents, 1 Any Talents, and about 5-6 Skills per Tier to really gone their skills. Now in either case, the expert has the narrow focus (1 weapon or 1 type of casting) maximized like either a Martial or Caster. However, they lose out on the breadth of fighting options (Multiple weapon trainings, fighting styles, and powerful maneuvers) and Cssting options (Arcanum/Devout talents and adaptations). Sure they could get more flexibility but each additional option takes away their skill benefits (To the point where they might give up 2 Skill Talents to take 1 General Talent) and in the case of additional weapons, takes more skill points that could and should be used for no combat skills.

To me, this is also perfectly acceptable, since casting and fighting are the only two ways to contribute in combat. If there were a host of non-fighting or non-magical ways to contribute meaningfully for an entire combat, then I would say that yes, an expert choosing something other than say a new ability called "Skill Attack" should suffer a bit and not be as good as a Martial or Caster. This is exactly how it is with a Martial trying to cast, or a caster trying to Fight. Generally they have exactly the same Talent options (Weapon Training or Casting Talent) as the Expert but suffer by around 1 skill/tier. They still have plenty of talents (3 per Tier minimum) and skills (4-6) to really maximize their chosen archetypes abilities for power and flexibility. Not too bad for being able to do both for a very specialized archetype.

If an expert wants *Both* they are really eroding more of their skill base, and in turn what makes an expert an expert. To learn 1 weapon and full casting, the Expert are giving up 2 Talents and 2 Skills per tier, leaving a total of 2 Talents and 4-5 skills per tier to do so. That doesn't even get them any maneuvers to go with their weapon or adaptstions to go with their spell's. They are still general practitioners unlike the respective archetypes who are masters in terms of their flexibility and power.

I would postulate at this point, that if a Caster was not interested in having a lot of Arcane/Devout Talents and Adaptations or a Martial was not interested in mastering a lot of weapons or fighting styles or wearing heavy armor, they would be better off picking an Expert. I also see nothing wrong with this, as the other archetypes are intended to really focus on their core abilities, and if a character isn't doing that, they are leaving a lot on the table.

John

Interesting take on this. I decided on Martial for Ursula because I knew I would be wearing heavy armor (being the tank as it were I expected to get hit), and thus needed/wanted Advanced Armor Training. I don't intend to master more than the Tralian Hammer, but do intend to be fairly proficient in the broadword, unarmed combat and my pistol. I will also be taking a fair amount of martial techniques. So Martial seems a good choice.

Now the "archaeologist" build (think Arcanis Indiana Jones---Or should that be "Altherian val'Abebi ) I would think works best as an Expert, to get the breadth of skills required. I can still get the side sword I want and use of the pistol if I take say the Shining Patrol background. Never be good as a martial duellist I imagine but I would hope I could hold my own in a fight.

I have responded to John privately. As he has posted his message to me, I will simply comment that I don't agree with his starting point regarding experts.

In order to remain civil and not get too frustrated with this entire line of thought, I'm bowing out of the discussion. I've poured hours and hours into analysis and carefully constructed arguments as neutrally presented as I can make them.

If anyone who supports the position that the Expert casters aren't the power build wants to substantiate their position with character builds, spell/technique comparisons and breakdowns of the advancements I'll be happy to look at what's provided and consider it fairly, then comment as appropriate. I'm willing to be convinced that my stance that Martials are low man on the totem need attention, and Experts especially Expert casters need to be reigned in are wrong. All I ask is that you demonstrate it with analysis not gut feel.

Respectfully,

Paul