Chapter 5-124: Those Terrible Threes (2/2)
But at Five... at Five I’d be going straight to Ten!
You could never add more than four Theurgic bonus Caster Levels to any Class. Normally that occurred at Nine or Ten, and the Theurgy/5 kicked over the last Level, giving you access to those sweet 5’s in the Secondary Class, and maximum amount of spells by level, even if you didn’t get all the skill points and Class Levels and such.
But... there was nothing explicitly forbidding you from taking multiple Theurgies early, and applying the bonuses early, too.
You could not raise a Theurgic Class Bonus Level above the Primary Class; that was an absolute fact. It could easily trip up someone who didn’t know about it, say, by applying a Racial Bonus early, and suddenly being unable to increase your Level, ahem!...
In the long term, everything evened out. As long as your Primary Class kept going up, everything ended up in the same place.
But in a place where the force of the Shroud was leaning on the souls of everyone, and making it nigh impossible to get past Six without shenanigans? Fah to that, it was time to cheat, and cheat as hard as was needed to gain the advantage.
The hard thing was getting the Stats for what you needed to do. Nogging helped with that... but there were only so many Spell Slots to go around, and if your mentals were bad, you could have a REAL hard time.
I had no problem at all with Stats, now. I’d had the base to start the ball rolling, which was really all that was important. Once you could Nog en masse, Stats were not an issue.
The key to the early power cheat was simple enough. For me, it involved keeping Wizard at One, and then heaping four Theurgy Levels on it after I reached Sorcerer/5... and not taking my Racial/2’s until after then.
Once I had +4 Theurgic Levels ladled on top of my Wizard Levels... I would just start taking my Wizard Levels, and then my Racial Levels.
Going from Wizard/1 (5) to Wizard/3 (7), and then applying the three Racial Levels that Halvyr could... meant I’d be a Wizard/3 (10)... and still fundamentally a Fifth Level Character, albeit one that could Cast at Ten, and had the Rank and Mastery limitations of a Ten.
It also meant that I could then Level right to Ten, as I was already a Ten Caster in a secondary Casting Class, and since that wasn’t supposed to be higher than my Primary Caster Class...
It was the exact same trick I’d laid out for Helix, and was laying out for the people I was now advising on Leveling. In his case, he would have to burn his Minstrel Slots for Intellect bonuses. He could get Minstrel to /3, which meant he’d get to Int 11.
Int 11 meant he could take a Wizard Level... and a Magus Level, and maybe a Witch Level, not sure on that last.
He could also burn his Bard Slots eventually, which were irrelevant if he managed to raise his Int to 14 and could advance as a Wizard. Lore Theurgy would allow him to use the superior Wizard Matrix, and stuff it with his Bard spells if he wanted to.
He would probably have to get back to Sorcerer/5 and access the Stat Masteries again to make it work. Bard Slots would get his Intellect to 13, the Intellect Mastery to 14, meaning he could hit Four, getting him to 15, meaning he could reach Five in Wizard... but the Matrix would be there to fill with Bardic spells as long as he kept up with the Theurgy...
It would be ideal if he could double dip into Charisma like I was with Intellect, using Sage Sorcerer to avoid multi-Stat dependency.
Wizard was ideal for him, but if he wanted to work Bard and save himself the effort, he’d just lose out on some higher Valences with a crappier Matrix. As long as he kept raising Stats, eventually he’d get to the same place, it was just going to take longer and lot more Karma and jumping through hoops...
Karma was a thing in this world, where it was hard to find stuff to grind against that wouldn’t kill you, especially since everyone was topping out at Seven to Nine, IF they were lucky.
Helix could reach Ten. The road was in front in him. What he was doing about it was going to decide for him if I took further risks with him...
Which meant it was pretty much time for a phone call...
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“Pellier,” the calm, dry voice answered.
“Sir Pellier! How are you doing?”
“Lady Traveler,” the grim Paladin answered, and I could hear his smile. “I think you need to turn the phone over.”
I did so. “Better?” I asked, it happening so automatically I was immune to even finding it funny anymore.
“Yes,” he said. “I see you’ve been turning the Caster World on its ear. Is it true that you’ve been basically Writing down a new spell every day since you hit Detroit?”
“You know how people like to exaggerate things, Sir Pellier. Some days I Write two or three, and then there’s the stuff buried in the libraries they haven’t discovered which I’m digging out for them...”
He laughed...