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Scholar

"Identify the weakness. Exploit the weakness. Bill them for the lesson."

Role: Knowledge specialist. Your damage comes from knowing - the Scholar trades raw combat power for utility, identification, and specific-target exploitation. Plays like a debuffer with side income from appraisal.

At a glance
Stat bonuses Intelligence +5, Spirit +3, Wits +2
Allowed weapons Staff, Dagger
Starting skills Staves (5), Herbalism (4), Streetwise (4), Identify (2), Appraise (3), Subterfuge (3)
Starting kit Wooden Staff, Apprentice Robes, Scholar's Bestiary (lookup tool!), 2× Health Potion, 3× Herb, 2× Torch
Best faction Arcane Collegium or Merchants Guild - your two faces
Best merc team Old Guard - healer covers your fragility, caster doubles your magic

First 30 minutes

You start with the Scholar's Bestiary - use it on every creature you fight. The book is your superpower.

  1. Read the bestiary.

    read bestiary

    It gives weaknesses, behavior, and loot hints for every creature you've encountered.

  2. Talk to the Collegium librarian. Your trainer access starts here. Knowledge has a price; the Collegium sells it.

  3. Try analyze on a target. Scholar's signature verb - debuffs the target by revealing their weakness to your party.

    analyze rat

  4. Hit the market for ink + paper. You'll be writing notes. Some classes literally craft (smithing, alchemy); Scholar scribes - written knowledge sells for real coin.

Skills to focus first

  1. Identify (2 → 5) - recognize items, creatures, materials. Sells appraisals back to merchants.
  2. Streetwise (already 4) - picks up rumors and lore in town. Drives quest discovery.
  3. Staff Strike (4 → 6) - yes, you fight. With a stick. You're not a powerhouse but a 5-rank staff hit is plenty.

After Identify rank 3, you unlock Appraise at vendor sites - buy low, sell high. This is real money.

Suggested merc team

Old Guard - Hendrik keeps you upright, Maelis brings the burst damage you can't. Your role is set up the kill, theirs is land it.

Quest or grind?

Quests for lore, grinding for SP. Scholars get the most XP from encountering new things - first time fighting a creature you've never seen, first time identifying a rare herb. The Bestiary literally fills in as you play.

Library quests (Temple of the Dawn library wing, Arcane Collegium archive) are tailor-made. Avoid pure-combat board jobs.

Mid-game arc

  • Fill 30 bestiary entries. Unlocks the Scholar specialty: Naturalist (creature focus), Lorekeeper (artifact focus), or Inquisitor (people focus).
  • Reach Collegium friendly rep. Library + archive access; some rare books unlock magic.
  • Pick a sub-class. Identify branches into forensic appraisal (Inquisitor) or alchemical analysis (Naturalist).

Training & Practice

Where the work happens between adventures.

Head to the Hall of Scrolls - Research Desk (library_research_desk, in the Collegium library wing). Talk to Senior Scribe Morwenna - she runs the desk, signs the ledger, and decides which tier of work you're ready for.

How it works:

  1. /shift start at the desk to take a 4-hour research shift. Morwenna posts a queue of source work scaled to your rank - loose folios, half-translated marginalia, a sealed crate from the last expedition.
  2. Resolve tasks with the desk's verbs: study <source> for slow credit on Lore, analyze <source> to extract a usable finding (Identify), transcribe <source> to mint a clean copy you can sell downstream (Literacy). Each resolution credits SP to the matching sub-skill plus a small stipend per task.
  3. /shift end to close early (or let the timer expire).

Tier ladder (Morwenna decides which you're ready for based on rank): easy → standard → challenging → esoteric. Higher tiers pay more and unlock harder source-work; new scribes start with marginalia and earn the sealed-crate tickets by handling the easy stack clean.

Why bother:

  • Steady SP without combat risk - perfect for a class that's fragile in a fight.
  • Small stipend per resolved task (the desk's purse, not adventure pay).
  • Twenty clean shifts typically earn a referral letter the other towns honor - opens doors at sibling libraries and collegium branches.
  • Morwenna teaches up to rank 70 in Lore, Literacy, and Identify.

Capstone - True Sight

Unlocked at rank 30 in identify. Reveal the most-recently-examined target's full stat block, derived weakness, and one hidden tag for the rest of the encounter.

You read the target as you read a page. The truth is no longer hidden.

Once per day. Pre-fight examine + capstone reveals the target's hidden weakness. Pair with a Mage or Ranger party member who can exploit it; the Scholar's capstone is a force-multiplier, not a damage cap.

See also