As mentioned before, if the character was a bit younger, I'd be more in favor, but the familiar is still probably advantageous.
We can simply get our familiar at an age of 13 or something. It's not like familiars ever become truly absolete. Just look at Aria and Lotte, who are seen fighting on par with AAA rank mages.
If we say yes to a familiar I'm much more comfortable dropping major penalties into just a few categories, since the familiar would then naturally cover those holes. Otherwise, I think we are going to want a more generalist build like the one above.
...How did you get to my notes on the subject? Jokes aside, with the ame that's the exact spread of points I would be going with for a build without a familiar at this point.
As for rare skills... Summoning did not have much appeal to me in the first place; well, at least actually
using it did not. For it to be a truly advantageous extension, we would need to focus on it strongly - combat summons have little use if we cannot summon them fast enough in the midst of combat. This is made even more important by a lack of allies. Going solo, Emma simply won't be given the opportunity to summon by any semi-competent opponent, unless she is springing a surprise attack. Finally, being a summoner will make a familiar outright crippling to our direct combat potential with the combined upkeep - it will be either us fighting or our summons fighting.
Next, illusions. They cost only a single point so they don't cut off as many alternatives. However, the most cumulative effect for Emma's close combat specialization is Parallel Casting, which requires significant investment. In fact, without increasing the build's opportunity cost rather drastically by taking ranks in Parallel Casting, we may severely limit the usefulness of our illusions mid-combat. The only way to mitigate this is, once more, to have an ally covering us. Frankly, if we get a familiar, I might actually try to push for illusions at the cost of another point of Mana Conversion. Two illusionists with strong melee ability who are used to fighting alongside each other... is quite a scary picture, I must say. Just look at the Liese twins once more - one appears out of nowhere to disable an opponent with a sneak attack, then moves on to create a distraction with her presence which allows the other sibling to pull the same trick
again, scarse moments later, even with the enemies on high alert.
Lunarion's spell eater is rather interesting as well. It requires us to specialize in Disruption and Information spells, which are very useful even beyond the scope of the rare skill and fit well with Emma's preferred combat distance (information spells to improve reflexes or find a hidden enemy; disruption to interrupt an opponent's shield/barrier/teleport, and, depending on Bki's definition, disrupting an entrapping forcefield may fall under this as well). Still, it's a two point investment, and what limited magic resistance it offers is negligible. The ability to decipher and learn enemy spells is of limited usefulness, as I see it - the appeal of having a broad repertoire of spells is countered by having a more limited selection of her own spells that she's
good with and knows how to use and combine in combat.
I'm surprised as well, changing the last draft to accommodate this.
I actually have the railgun defined as a shooting spell right there in the device's description primarily for that reason.
Now all that's left is to decide whether I want to name it Brahmastra or Vasavi Shakti. Brahmastra sounds more like a bombardment spell and reserving it for a bombardment spell allows for a Brahmashira Focused Bombardment version of it so I'm leaning towards the latter.
, (and remember, I gave a plot hook to make up for the abuse) I'm tentatively leaning:
