(IKRPG) Archetypes

[Birdwood]

Reading about the Archetypes and Carreers, I saw that one needs the Gifted archetype to have any kind of casting carreer.
Thats all good and fine, but what about, say, a Gifted character that doesnt take a casting class? Could something like a Gifted Man-At-Arms/Highwayman, for instance, learn spells in a limited fashion? Or would such a setup be simply useless?

[Telwar]

Hrm, it could work. Not *well* by any stretch of the imagination, but it's not impossible.


You could learn spells once you get an opportunity to add a career, like at 30 xp.

However, there are two caveats:

1) Selecting a career means you get the opportunity to take elements of that career as advances afterward, you do not gain the starting package

and

2) Spells are bought on the same choices as +1 military skills, abilities, or connections. You have two of those between 30 and 45 xp.


So, starting as a Gifted character who has never gained any sort of control over their powers and coming into them later is possible, but you'll be far behind in spells known and any supporting abilities.

Now, there's nothing stopping you! It's kind of on the low end of suboptimal, especially as you won't get much use out of your Archetype abilities. In particular, Occult Secrets (choose one spell known from your career list) likely won't work because at the time you take it, you won't have any career spell lists to pull from (though, as always, ask your GM). But you won't be completely useless, either.

[Birdwood]

Far from me to be a Powergamer; in my tables, im known to have highly unorthodox builds just for the fluff

Im asking because im interested in the system, but never played it; to better grasp where im getting into, ive thought about converting my DnD character (Human/Werewolf Barbarian who learned a small number of Druid spells) to Iron Kingdoms (a Tharn, with a few options for Carreers)

this got me thinking, because my character isnt a full caster in any way, so i needed to know if its possible by other means than picking a Caster Carreer (officially, rather than by houseruling)

as you said, though, it is possible to add a "blank" (as in, no features) new class for experience, so i could use that as an explanation to "new powers, but not trained nor specialized"

[Telwar]

TECHNICALLY you can't be a druid as a Tharn, since the setting's druids are the Blackclads, and those are human-only.

However, Ravager/Shaman (Devourer Wyrm) at start should work, especially since, if you get the same skill (military or occupational) from both starting careers, they stack up to 2 at start. So, this would let you get Great Weapon 2 to start and swing your mighty better transformed. Devourer Shaman also has Flesh of Steel has an ability to pick, and while you get that when transformed, you're not going to be transformed all the time. (...or maybe you are, at least when it counts!)

Also, most casters don't have that many spells anyway. Max known is 2*Int, unless you take one of the Gifted abilities that gets you 3*Int, and depending on the Devourer Shaman spell list, you may not want any more, which would certainly liberate you from having to jack up your Arcana stat and instead take more abilities or connections.

[Birdwood]

I only take Druid in DnD because thats the 5e equivalent (or closest) to a shaman :p

So I was planning on taking something like Ravager/Warrior or Ravager/Ranger, and then eventually progress to take Devourer Shaman just for a few spells to support me and other frontliners a bit

[Birdwood]

Different matter entirely, i read that corrosion damage applies d3 per round on the target
Dos this go through ARM completely? Or does it reduce the targets ARM value for the round for the purposes of calculating damage from incoming attacks?