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You know, I just remembered that the weight for blood charms always bugged me in 3rd Edition. Basically most blood charms are listed to weigh one pound, when the description suggests that in truth their weight should be negligible, or at most a few ounces. Take Bone Charms, they're knuckle sized pieces of bone set into the user's skin with a metal pin, that's not going to weight much at all. Or Horn Needles, which are exactly what it says: long needles made of horn or ivory, their weight should be negligible. Disturbing Apperearance is a piece of black crystal no bigger than a copper piece, again no way that's a full pound. Really, about the only blood charm in there that should have a non-negligeble weight is the Crystal Arm, for which 10 pounds sounds about right if you're grafting an extra limb unto you. The Wings of Fire are also sort of reasonable, since they're involve multiple fire opals I could see them weighing a full pound, but then the book has them as three pounds which seems a bit much. It's a minor thing, but it always seemed just kind of out of place when most everything else was pretty reasonably weighted. There's a couple other niggles like Light Crystals are too heavy for their stated size given they're magically infused quartz, and a few weapons have an extra pound over their real counterparts, but overall it's pretty good.

another question. the free talents some discipline gets and most dont.

i remember the complain that a "magic discipline" had before, having 6 talents to improve from circle 1 instead of the usual 5.
now they gets 2 free matrices, and that can be good for me

but why there are other disciplines (archer, air sailor, rogue, scout) that gets 1 free talent and other dont ?

why troubadour and weaponsmith get a skill that can have karma spent on it ? and why isnt that "skill" a talent ?
that free skill cant be already included in the half magic ?

also, why most discipline (the combat using mostly) dont get the free talent / skill, even a "less combat oriented" one ?
or, why they dont get the karma use at first rank that many others get ?

for example, the air sailor gets the "spend karma once per round on any action taken while on board of an airship"
he can use it on any action, so even on melee combats ?
Archers get the same karma at 1st circle on perception/sight tests
Scouts get karma on "searching things"
Thief gets on CHA tests used for deceiving
Troubadour gets karma on interaction tests
Weaponsmith gets karma on repair/craft tests

so the pattern is
- Melee combat disciplines (beastmaster, cavalryman, swordmaster, warrior and sky raider) dont get karma at 1st, dont get free talent at first and get 7 durability
- Casters disciplines get 2 free talents at first (matrices) and no karma use at first and get 3 durability
- Support / ranged disciplines (archer, scout, thief, air sailor, troubadour and weaponsmith) get 1 free talent at first and karma "limited" on scope/use at first and get 5 durability

by this rationality, the travelled scholar will get
- free talent at first, karma use at first, have 5 durability
while a shaman will get
- 2 free "fetish" (matrices) but not a free karma use and durability 3
and finally, the horror stalker will get nothing but durability 7
i am more or less right ?


sorry for the barrage of questions, just trying to figure out the rationality behind the choices so i can convert the old "racial/extra" discipline without a year or more long wait.
thanks again

The number of extra threads which can be woven is equal to their tier (Novice = 1, Journeyman = 2, etc.). Without a Circle, there is no tier.

That should probably be clearer in the "Additional Threads" paragraph -- "based on his Circle in that Discipline, as indicated..." And then at the end, "Note that a Human who has learned Threadweaving through Versatility has no Circle in that Discipline, and therefor cannot weave additional Threads."

...because you do *have* a Circle. A Fifth Circle Nethermancer who has Elementalism at Rank 4 is Fifth Circle, and might easily expect to be able to weave two additional Threads -- or at least 1, as that "Rank 4 Elementalism" stands in for your Circle when determining, for instance, what spells you can cast without raw magic or a grimoire.

I don't know -- to me, the whole "Versatility Threadweaving" thing has never been a problem. I know it looks totally OP and you start thinking, "Awesome! I'll be able to cast Bedazzling Display, Best Face, and Billowing Cloak and roll, like, I don't know, Step 80 or something!" But in practice... that's not where ED spellcasters are limited. They're constricted by their Matrices. Having fifty spells in your Grimoire from all four Disciplines just means you're that much less likely to have the one you want when you need it. So I see that as another non-problem.

...The wording Sundahk put up about weaving extra Threads in a test is confusing me, too. It used to make sense; you couldn't get more than two Threads just by getting an extra success, so if you needed to do a 3-Thread spell fast, you had to triple the difficulty and hope. (And probably spend Karma.) If you needed a 2-thread spell fast, it was usually just slightly more likely if you meant to do it, but you were usually better off just rolling and at least getting the one, because you'd still get the second if you rolled awesomely.

If you just get a Thread per Success anyway, I can't see any reason to declare ahead of time that you want to get three of them and risk not succeeding at all.

If somebody is kind and generous, would it be possible to go through this thread and send me a summary of the issues raised? I think I've hit most of them in my notes, but I want to make sure I didn't miss anything in the course of thread drift.

Thanks in advance!