Our beloved Pretenders!

[Tifone]

Surely Jim you are right. My was just a, possibly newbish, idea on how the ageless olm would be more competitive. Many people really like it for its flavour, but it surely is a difficult pretender to chose for agartha as it has only the most developed national paths and it is not an ultimate SC. But it wouldn't be really thematic to give it other magic paths than the ones it has (he is a salamander which comes from a subterranean cave - only earth and water come to mind for thigs he has always seen )so no chance to increase national magic diversity, it has not many slots and it would be unthematic also to give him inbuilt one of the traits which are useful for SCs (I don't think it can be really fearful or awe inspiring, and surely he can't petrify or intangle)... So only making it a better mage in what it naturally has came to my mind. This possibly applies to other national pretenders which are good in flavour but the people maybe don't choose because they are -too- thematic.
But surely thanks for your points on balance. Maybe I was just too quick in giving my idea without thinking at the actual cost of a double bless.

[JimMorrison]

Hey you were on the right track. It's just hard to plan the starting paths, because of how dramatically it reduces the cost of the bless. For example, one reason the Cyclops is so well liked, is because it is a fine SC, and also happens to start at 3E giving it a very economical cost for a major Earth bless.

The Agarthan mages tend to get some access to Fire as well, and with the prevalence of lava in the deeps, it sort of makes sense the Olm is familiar with this element as well. I really think that giving him 3E and at least 1 other starting path would make him start to look more attractive, if nothing else than as a bless chassis and high end caster.

If he were reimagined with 4 arms, I think that would be the most interesting way to make him SC capable, he does have a lot of little stubby limbs after all, so it's not too much of a stretch. There are other abilities that could be explored as well, perhaps regeneration (worms regrow!), or even an autocast of Darkness in combat (that might be a bit too powerful, but would be so cool).

[Tifone]

Surely it would be cool, but I think early game Agartha would be everybody's nightmare, we could just forget blessed Jarls XD

[MaxWilson]

JimMorrison said:
You have to be very careful with the paths though. While I think there should be more pretender chassis that start with paths at 3, you must bear in mind that starting at 3 drastically reduces the cost to get a major bless, and starting at 4 would make it nearly a foregone conclusion that you would go to 9 if you used that pretender, because of cost efficiency. Starting with 2 paths at 3+4, would make a very cheap dual bless available.

It's possible to decouple pretender magic from blesses to some extent. For instance, you could make the Olm have E1W1 with a magicboost of +3 to E and +2 to water. In practice he'd be an E4W3 mage, but for bless purposes he's only E1W1. I haven't ever tried this but IIRC it's how dragons work (only in their case the dragon form has a -2 "bonus").

-Max

[JimMorrison]

Hmmmm, strange. I have never actually played a game with a dragon pretender, but I've tested builds with them in the Pretender Creator, and everything seems normal. Where is this -2 calculated? I understand that they are weaker magically in their dragon form, but you buy paths for their "human" form, and it seems that's what determines their bless. I could be wrong, but that's what I always thought I was seeing.

[SlipperyJim]

I think that's Max's point. You'd buy your paths (and therefore your blesses) as if the pretender started with E1W1. However, during game play, the pretender's actual magic skills would be two or three points higher than that. You'd get powerful magic skills on the pretender without a cheap level-nine bless....

[JimMorrison]

Well I think that would cause other problems though. If you got a bonus +3W for casting, and you did go for the W9 blessing for example, then for those points you get a 12W caster, before boosters. Some spells scale incredibly well with magic level, and also you get very nice bonuses to global casting.

But I guess just to clarify, you're suggesting some sort of second shape for them? The same as the first shape, but more magically inclined?

[MaxWilson]

No, you'd give the magicboost to their only shape. The dragon is weird in that is has BOTH a secondshape and negative magicboost in that secondshape.

-Max