Quote Originally Posted by Aquillion View Post
Most of those casters are Carnymancers, and my guess is that overlords generally don't know much about how to use them (and often don't trust them.)

Carnymancy seems powerful to us because we associate it with Charlie and Jojo, who are both masters of the discipline, incredibly powerful and well-placed, with the Arkendish backing it up. But in the real world, that touch limitation is absolutely brutal, and without access to links the stuff your carnymancers can do is probably fairly narrow - mostly just limited to buffs, which they have to actually be in the field to apply. On top of this, Carnymancy clearly has a significant risk of going horribly wrong and causing a backlash, and that's probably one of the few things people know about it - every so often you get a smart overlord with a strong carnymancer who drops powerful buffs on key troops, and it works well until suddenly it doesn't.
I think the Carnymancers are an unbalanced class, probably for story reasons. A core concept of them is the "con". They manipulate others and can screw with contracts, all by touch. Which is completely useless since no sane ruler would allow another sides caster in their court. Only in combination with a link carnymancy becomes extremely powerful, but links are (supposedly) inherently dangerous, and all links are powerful.
Their other core competence is the ability to cheat or delay fate. Interesting in a philosophical way, but useless in practical terms as we have seen from the backer story with Digdoug.
They are not useless, they can help at the front with buffs and a variety of tricks. They also can help making other disciplines more powerful.
Their most useful aspect is probably their ability to think out of the box and inherent affinity for rule breaking. They could be good advisers to rulers and chief warlords and provide an unique point of view. In a way they are Erfworld's resident Parsons.
But as a caster class they are all over the place. They offer a number of abilities for the battlefield, but nothing really powerful until combined with a very smart warlord and other casters. In the capital they are basically overpriced courtiers.
In a way their uselessness is their biggest use. You can send them out for battle and give them the items and scrolls the more valuable casters produce. There they can either use them as intended or do something creative with them. And if the caster croaks you can cheaply hire a new one from the MK.