Wanted to post this just to get it out there. Was doing some thinking about magiengineers and Tech Skills since Silently corrected my assumptions on just how interconnected they are if you want something useful. Their statement reveals you would need three skills to cover all the possible handheld weapons manatech has available (Mass + Energy Weapons and Supplemental Capacitance) which for spell slots is half of a D-rank, a third of a C-rank, and a quarter of a B-rank. Significant investment indeed.
Mechanical Intuition and the Maintenance categories are the Tech skills best suited to be bought individually, and that is only if the mage is paired with an actual Tinker or relies on a large variety of varying magitech tools/weapons.
Until a new magiengineer is trained up, Tim is the major bottleneck for gaining new equipment, undertaking major projects like Devices or larger weapons, and giving allies either superpowers, magic, or both. Since death is a possibility due to our choices or the events that would always have occurred, there is a chance of losing him and all the knowledge/skills he has acquired. Dragon is extremely busy and works differently than Tim with her magiengineering, so we would be restricted in what we could gain from her. All the current mages personalities and capabilities are unsuitable to fulfill the role of a new magiengineer. At most, Kayleigh could get Maintenance I to maintain all of the team's equipment (her guns, Samantha's sword, Missy's lightsaber), but we would get nothing new from her. For potential Gears we could get a non-random Gear from Kayleigh (that can't maintain the lightsaber but the other weapons are valid) and two possible randomized Gears from Laura and Missy (with more capabilities such as Device building and other things). For new magiengineers other than D-ranks, we'll have to find the balance between the number of required skills to reach the higher levels and what to specialize in once we reach the Advanced Tier.
This also had me thinking about how Tech skills and Masteries might interact. I see a Mastery as the Device using it's telepathic connection with its mage to tweak their brain into better understanding the concept the mastery entails, which improves spell casting efficiency allowing for greater power and control. Under that logic, could Infusion Mastery serve to improve a magiengineer's skills with (probably represented by lowering the XP cost) Supplementary Capacitance, Internal Reactor, and Off-Site Power; given that these three Tech skills involve the creation, movement, and storage of mana? Would Teleport Mastery or Movement Mastery affect the Tech Skills of Spatial Teleporter/Dimensional Teleporter and Mobility respectively? Similarly, if we manage to find a Tinker who has a Linker Core, and they don't want to lose their powers, would this deviceless Tinker mage get a bonus towards Mechanical Intuition, Digital Blueprints, and maybe Exotic Physics?
While I'm at it, ideas for things that Tim can build.
Is it possible to construct a Hardlight Weapon that behaves in a similar manner to Flash Forge constructs? Where they can cut and pierce non-living manner, but living flesh gets "simulated" pain and brain attacks cause unconsciousness with no obvious after-effects.
Can Tim build an invisibility device currently, or would he need another Exotic Physics class or to study the effects of the Cover spell?
