Alistair’s thoughts on classes and skills

With his consciousness spread through nine bodies, Alistair had started to appreciate just how fortunate it was that classes and skills worked the way they did.

During his walks through taverns as Falsehand, he often heard people complain about only having a single skill. They were not wrong. For most of their progression, one skill had to solve almost everything. Many occupations ended up feeling incomplete because of it. People were left short-handed, forced to work around the limits of their class, and pushed into cooperation simply because no one could do a job alone.

For him, though, that limitation was not really a problem.

Every time he leveled, he gained stats, and every clone benefited from those same gains because they were all copies of his current body. So even if a class kept only one skill, that skill still grew stronger, more flixible, and more useful as his stats improved. He was progressing in many directions at once, and much faster than anyone around him.

Sometimes, in those same tavern conversations, people would wonder aloud how much better things would be if a second skill came every few levels. Five was the number he heard most often.

At first glance, such a system sounded wonderful. If each clone gained a second skill at level five, then his options would immediately expand. He would have more tools, more combinations, and more flexibility. But the moment he followed that thought a little farther, the downside became obvious. More skills would not only mean more possibilities. They would also mean more complexity, and complexity had a cost.

Right now, he could maintain eight clones comfortably because his WIS and INT supported it. WIS let him hold them all at once. While INT helped him think through them, guide them, and manage what each body was doing. If every clone suddenly had two skills instead of one, then each body would become harder to handle properly. It would require more attention, more thought, and more of him inside it. His current INT could not stretch as far.

That would force a change in how he used his class.

One option would be to slow down. He could summon fewer clones than his limit allowed and operate them more closely. If his current limit was eight, he might choose to summon only four and invest more focus into each one, making better use of the increased number of skills. In theory, that was not so bad, and he would still be able to summon more in emergencies.

The other option would be to let go of control. He could allow the clones greater autonomy and trust them to act more on their own. That was not truly dangerous, because they were still him. It was not possible to sever the connection completely. A part of his consciousness always remained in each body. Even so, it would be a different way of experiencing his class. Less direct and precise.

In practice, he doubted the first option would work for long. Two skills per clone might be manageable. But if a third came at level ten, and a fourth at fifteen, the problem would only grow. At that point, no amount of patience would fully solve it. Unless he was willing to operate with very few clones, he would be forced into some kind of hybrid approach. A handful under tight control, and the rest acting more loosely.

And that would change everything. He was only beginning to touch the true limits of Clonemancer. The more of himself he spread into each clone, the more he learned. Not just about their classes, but about how those classes could overlap, reinforce one another, and sometimes achieve things they did not seem meant to do. Carver, for example, reached much further than he expected. Clean Cut had proven useful in cooking, in processing building materials, and in combat. Misgiver had become more than a defensive class once he learned to use it through the shared mind. With the right setup, Flinch could feed real-time warnings to clones in battle without giving anything away to the enemy. Framer and Saboteur had already started working together, each class strengthening the other’s effect. The more he practiced, the more natural it became to shift his focus between bodies, help them coordinate, and fight as if they were parts of one larger self.

That was the real strength of his class. He was not building servants. He was becoming many.

Once he looked at it that way, the supposed advantage of more skills per clone felt smaller. He already had so many classes that he could spend days reviewing them and still fail to remember every useful detail in his head. Some overlapped, others were too narrow to be used often, and a few were so generic that they still surprised him with new applications at every use. Many sat somewhere in between, useful but not yet worth adding into his regular rotation.

The only reason he was not making constant use of every class he possessed was because he was deliberately pacing himself. When he added a class to his routine, he wanted to understand it first. He wanted to see where it fit, how it cooperated with the others, and whether it was worth the mental space it demanded. If he tried to force too many into active use at once, he would only make himself confused.

He was still only scratching the surface of what shared awareness and skill interaction could do, and already the possibilities were almost overwhelming. He could not honestly ask for more. More importantly, he could not honestly say he would be able to handle more.

Even his EXP would likely suffer under that kind of excess. Clonemancer gave him experience from two main sources. The first was the small fraction he absorbed from clone activity. Every class gained EXP when used properly, and a tiny part of that transferred back to him. If it were not limited, he would already be in his hundreds. The second source, and the much more important one, was the proper use of Clonemancer itself. Choosing the right clone for the right task. Deploying them well, and making efficient use of his class in the world.

That second source depended on judgment. If he had too many skills spread across too many bodies, and he could not properly understand or manage them, then he would make bad choices.

In the end, the idea of every clone carrying multiple skills sounded better for ordinary people than for him.

And he could understand why they wanted it. For someone with only one class and one body, a second skill every few levels would be transformative. It would fill gaps, widen options, and make their work far easier. Alistair sympathized with that. But wiser people could still find something valuable in the limitation. A single skill forced attention, practice, and forced people to push deeper into the skill.

In less than a year, he had already proven that a skill was not static. Stats changed everything. The same skill supported by a stat of five was not the same skill when that stat reached ten. It became stronger, more precise, and often more flexible. A person who truly understood their skill could do much more with it at higher stats than they could at the beginning, even if the words in the Guide never changed.

And they were not bound to that first stage forever. At level twenty-five came the second step. That much was widely known, though real knowledge beyond that was thin. If a person reached that point and could access the second trial, they would gain the chance either to unlock a complementary skill or evolve their existing one. But getting there was difficult, and attempting the trial was costly enough that many people never tried. As for what the trial itself demanded, he knew only rumors. The most consistent of them suggested that it tested whether a person had made full use of their class, as if the Five were judging not just growth, but understanding.

He would reach that point eventually. What Clonemancer would offer him there, however, he could not guess. A new skill in his main class? An evolved Clone skill? Something more unique? Would each clone gain something? He did not know. He did not even know whether he would be able to pass such a trial. If it judged understanding, then perhaps Clonemancer’s trial would be even more demanding than most.

And after the second step? He let that thought go.

Was there a third? A fourth? Almost certainly. But no one around him spoke of such things. Emerier was too small for that. On an island like this, there could not be many who had even taken the second step. Perhaps not even a hundred. Maybe only a few dozen.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

It was not something he needed to worry about now. The road ahead was still long, but that did not trouble him. He was just trying to enjoy the ride.

Personal Guide
Class	Clonemancer	Level	6
VIT	3	DEX	5
STR	2	PER	5
STA	3	WIS	18
END	3	INT	10
Skills
Clonemancer	Clone	Allows you to create a copy of your body. All of your STATS are inherited by the clone. Clones cannot inherit your class. You can absorb 1% of clone experience. Skills and classes acquired by the clones are retained. Clones can manifest in reality for a limited time according to your level. The number of clones manifested at the same time is limited mainly by WIS, while INT helps with control, coordination, and the effective management of multiple active clones.
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