Experience born of character history, I feel, should be the deciding factor in how much your characters knows and is capable of. That's been a recurring theme throughout many of the responses in this thread: "Would X character have had time to dedicate to this, and did they? Do they still practice?"
I play Osric as a thief-turned-assassin-turned-fighter. He's spent over a decade working with small arms (and by small, I mean cloak-and-dagger small), and approximately half that time training as a pugilist. He is a very recent and very fresh monk. Every now and then I throw a scene out into the public space so that his practicing is visible: maybe he's pummeling a dummy, or sitting around with a whetstone sharpening his blades, etc. He also has a few scant months' worth of experience with an axe, and it shows in how badly he handles one. It's flashy, sure, but it's atrocious in how not-practical and inefficient he is with such a weapon.
With everything else, this character falls flat on his face. Can't handle a sword beyond pick-up-and-swing. Absolute garbage with a bow: he's liable to shoot himself in the foot. The intricacies of a lance are so far beyond him that the basics are a good mile out of view. And don't get me started on magic: he doesn't understand it, he doesn't want to, it's some "unknowable" thing to him and beyond the vague similarities in aetheric manipulation between monks and thaumaturges he'll never so much as know what it feels like to handle magic.
That's just the War and Magic disciplines. ICly, he's not well-versed in any Hand or Land applications (I will eventually get fishing and culinarian leveled to reflect what meager background he has there). He's a complete mess who wouldn't be able to support himself, let alone others, were it not for the demand for able-bodied fighters that landed him with the Flames.
Even if I wanted to get more disciplines worked into his skillset ICly - which I don't - I wouldn't be able to justify them. Practice, practice, practice: you have to practice to stay on-form. There's simply not enough time in a day for a character to maintain that level of skill for that many disciplines.
I play Osric as a thief-turned-assassin-turned-fighter. He's spent over a decade working with small arms (and by small, I mean cloak-and-dagger small), and approximately half that time training as a pugilist. He is a very recent and very fresh monk. Every now and then I throw a scene out into the public space so that his practicing is visible: maybe he's pummeling a dummy, or sitting around with a whetstone sharpening his blades, etc. He also has a few scant months' worth of experience with an axe, and it shows in how badly he handles one. It's flashy, sure, but it's atrocious in how not-practical and inefficient he is with such a weapon.
With everything else, this character falls flat on his face. Can't handle a sword beyond pick-up-and-swing. Absolute garbage with a bow: he's liable to shoot himself in the foot. The intricacies of a lance are so far beyond him that the basics are a good mile out of view. And don't get me started on magic: he doesn't understand it, he doesn't want to, it's some "unknowable" thing to him and beyond the vague similarities in aetheric manipulation between monks and thaumaturges he'll never so much as know what it feels like to handle magic.
That's just the War and Magic disciplines. ICly, he's not well-versed in any Hand or Land applications (I will eventually get fishing and culinarian leveled to reflect what meager background he has there). He's a complete mess who wouldn't be able to support himself, let alone others, were it not for the demand for able-bodied fighters that landed him with the Flames.
Even if I wanted to get more disciplines worked into his skillset ICly - which I don't - I wouldn't be able to justify them. Practice, practice, practice: you have to practice to stay on-form. There's simply not enough time in a day for a character to maintain that level of skill for that many disciplines.
![[Image: 1qVSsTp.png]](http://i.imgur.com/1qVSsTp.png)
