Let's analyse our options for an informed opinion:
Merits
[] Weight
Not spectacular, mostly for the reason that compared to OG Merchants, it doesn't affect combat to nearly the same degree. We'd need 5 Weight before getting an extra AP, and 10 to improve our skill rolls by 17%, but other merits give more effective AP to get skills/progress crafts. Mind you, the Weight
does increase our HP significantly, but the point is that as a starting option, 2 Weight doesn't give us anything which truly accelerates us.
[] Talent/Prodigy
Now
this is a merit. Training skills takes a lot of time, especially high level skills, and with this we'll be halving the time to become proficient at a core skill. Very much worthwhile, as this multiplier will keep paying dividends the entire quest. We won't train Science literally
every turn, but it's not unreasonable to think that we'd spend at least half our training time on science to get level 4 (maybe even 5) and new specialties for varying crafts.
I'd also like to note that the side benefit of getting an additional level 3 starting skill/specialty is also quite a bit of time savings- at base getting a level 3 skill and specialty would cost 215 exp, or 24 TAP at the start, though that measure drops significantly with additional Weight.
[] Money
A bit hard to evaluate without knowing what we'd actually need money
for, or how much time 5 high dots would save us. But I don't think it's better than talent. However, having 5 high dots
would mean that we could ignore our job safely for 30-50 turns (that's a lot AP saved!), depending on how much we need to invest in gods/crafting, though it's unlikely we'll remain poor for that long.
[] Allies/Friends
Seems like it would give us avenues for both money and Weight generation, and potentially even a god contact. Hard to evaluate at face value, but the customisability of it is quite nice. But a contact is most valuable when we have something to offer, making this a bit more of a long term merit.
Detriments
[] Debt
How troublesome this is depends much on how the repayment is structured, because obviously we can't pay this off early on. I'd imagine it's going to be at the very least 1-3 AP drain every turn, if you think of it as being forced to take a second job. Arguably worse than its flipside, as being forced to spend AP on debt management is likely less efficient than spending the same AP on generating wealth freely.
[] Poor
Very painful. At base we already need to spend 3 AP every turn to live, so this will not only mean we can't really craft anything at all to begin with, but we'll also be taxed additional AP to get a job, potentially one worse than the base job. We can overcome it with time, but the cost is still high and will hamper our start. ...Still likely to cost less overall than the debt, however.
[] Alone
Mostly I don't like this one because I think Leviathan needs at least
some family in order to humanise her, but mechanically the biggest impact would likely be a lack of free trainers for early on. How important a trainer is varies, but having a trainer can easily mean training 30-60% faster, and friends/family can help with mitigating early resource issues as well. If not for the flavour, I'd say that it's a net gain compared to another pop of talent, though.
[] Untalented
I would never dare say this is
free, but it's certainly the least painful of the bunch. This is because there will naturally be skills which we don't want to spend very much time training regardless of talent, so losing a bit of time on getting a skill to 2/2 (and small skills are
cheap) if we really need the skill isn't the worst. Notably, Tom is a place full of random skill checks to get around, but that's still not enough to dissuade me from recommending taking this twice.
Naturalism and Teaching are natural choices here, as we're living in an advanced city with a likely stable food supply, and Teaching takes significant amounts of time, so it would be an unlikely focus for us. But, really, there's a lot of decent options for untalented skills as it is always possible to cover weaknesses. Specialisation is key, after all. But I will note that some parts of Tom will likely demand a bit of Naturalism in the form of Survival, but that's a problem for later, and hopefully one managed with technology.
[] An enemy
No clue how bad this would be, but it's good flavour, that's for sure.
Overall my own opinion would be going Prodigy, Talented, Well-off, Useless 2x, and Grudge. Essentially the same as
@MrRageQuit, but swapping the Weight for another Talented. I'll be posting my own plan after this post (this one is long enough as it is) but my current favourite plan is
No Mere Plebian, so I'll approval vote it later if need be.
