Nethermancer Talent Preview

We’re changing things up a little bit. The full talent and power progression will go up tomorrow. Today I’m going to talk about a couple of the new and revised talents available to high Circle Nethermancers. If you want a different take, you can check out Morgan’s post over at his blog.

To start I want to highlight a couple talents that are available to all magician Disciplines, enhancing the efficiency of their spell casting. Concise Casting allows a magician to take 2 Strain and make a Spellcasting test as a Simple action — allowing them to make two Spellcasting tests in a round. The Concise spell can’t require any Thread Weaving tests (though a 1-thread spell in an Enhanced or Armored Matrix could be), but there are no limits on target. Double your fun!

Spliced Weave allows a magician to make multiple Thread Weaving tests in a round, similar to the way Claw Frenzy works. The caster declares the number of tests they want to make (up to their rank in Spliced Weave), takes the Strain, then makes the tests using their normal Thread Weaving talent. This highlights something we’ve tried to do with these higher Circle talents: rather than create an entirely new talent that replaces an old one–and is therefore less effective until they’ve had the time and earned enough Legend to raise it to an effective rank–the talent provides a new way to use an existing talent, limited by the rank.

Another tweak to the standard magician suite of talents are the “Pattern” talents (like Casting Pattern). All of these have been changed to Simple actions; this saves on the action economy, which has traditionally been loaded with a lot of additional actions that don’t provide a significant enough benefit.

To wrap up, let’s look at the new talents. Blood Insight allows the Nethermancer to learn information about the target by interacting with a bit of their blood. If the blood is recent enough, it grants the Nethermancer a bonus (based on successes rolled) to Spellcasting and Effect tests against the target, and provides a connection that allows the use of abilities that require it.

Astral Domain is an effect that reduces the danger of Raw Magic casting. Each success on the test reduces the effective corruption level of astral space for a limited amount of time. Everyone in the area benefits from the effect.

Finally, Nethersoul is a self-enhancement talent that grants bonus Mystic Armor, along with bonuses to Mystic and Social Defense against fear and intimidation effects, and the same bonus to tests made to resist those effects.

Come back tomorrow for a look at the full Warden and Master progression for the Nethermancer!