Is it backwards compatible?

I went back and looked at the Talents I’d already chosen, and sure enough, there was some actual, honest-to-goodness information in there that told me how they worked.

Adaptable

Prerequisite: Human

You learn quickly when the rules change.

Effect:

• +10% experience gained from all basic skills.
• +20% experience gained from all focus skills.
• +30% experience gained from all specialization skills.

Arcane Intuition

Prerequisite: Reasoning 5, Magic Theory 1, Arcane Resonance

Sometimes you understand magic before you understand why.

Effect:

• +10% experience gained in all magical skills.
• Allows you to identify magical items, revealing their name and basic function.
• Allows you to recognize the general school or type of unfamiliar magical effects.
• Occasionally reveals information about magic that you have no obvious reason to understand.

Arcane Resonance

Prerequisite: Starting skill: Magic Theory

Magic seems to reveal its deeper patterns to you.

Effect:

• +20% to all magical skill experience.
• New spells are easier to learn and create.

Captivating Presence

Prerequisite: Starting skill: Influence

Others find it unusually difficult to ignore you.

Effect:

• Gain +15% effectiveness on Influence, Persuasion, and Seduction attempts.
• People are more likely to notice you and remain engaged when you speak, even when they have little reason to be interested in you.

Fey Grace

Prerequisite: Half-Elf

You move through the world with an uncanny ease.

Effect:

• Gain +10% effectiveness in Agility, Coordination, Dodging, and Stealth-related actions.
• Minor environmental obstacles—uneven ground, tight spaces, darkness, etc.—are slightly easier for you to navigate.

Intimate Resonance

Prerequisite: Starting skill: Magic Theory

Closeness awakens something within you - and in those around you.

Effect: Physical and emotional intimacy with a willing partner creates a temporary magical resonance. While the resonance is active:

• Magical synchronization between the partners is improved.
• Cooperative spells receive +10% effectiveness.
• You gain increased sensitivity to a partner’s magical state.
• Prolonged intimacy can strengthen the resonance.

Quick Learner

Prerequisite: Reasoning 5

You learn more quickly than others.

Effect: +10% experience gained from all skills, abilities, and quests.

Rapid Comprehension

Prerequisite: Reasoning 5, Quick Learner

Complex ideas seem to fall into place before you know how you understand them.

Effect: +10% experience gained from all skills, abilities, and quests. Additionally, complex concepts, techniques, and magical principles require less practice to reach basic competence.

Resonant Mind

Prerequisites: Reasoning 10, Will 10, Arcane Resonance.

Your mind and magic move together with an uncommon harmony.

Effect:

• +10% magical effectiveness.
• -10% mana cost for spells.
• Reduced chance of spell interruption while concentrating.
• Improved control when modifying or shaping a spell.

Second Nature

Prerequisite: Starting skill: Melee Weapons

Your body remembers what your mind has learned.

Effect: Gain +10% effectiveness with Melee Weapons and reduced penalties when fighting while distracted, frightened, injured, or otherwise unable to consciously focus completely on technique.

Unnoticed

Prerequisite: Starting skill: Stealth

Eyes pass over you without realizing what they have seen.

Effect: +15% effectiveness to Stealth and Sneaking. Additionally, casual observers are less likely to notice you when you are not actively drawing attention to yourself.

Unyielding

Prerequisite: Will 5

Effect:

• +25% resistance to magical and supernatural attempts to influence your decisions.
• Resistance to fear, intimidation, compulsion, and similar effects is increased.
• Once you have consciously committed to a course of action, attempts to force you to abandon it suffer an additional penalty.
• When resisting a mental effect, you receive a clear System notification.

Clearly, Unyielding had been carrying the weight in my interaction with the master vampire. That and the ten points I had in Will.

But there was a lot of crazy information in here.

If I added up all the bonuses, I got something like eighty percent bonus experience for Magic Theory and ninety percent bonus experience to the actual subskills.

And now that I finally had a magical specialization, I was going to get double experience with Charm?

That was crazy. No wonder I was learning magic faster than anything else.

I needed to talk to Valentia about that and see how we could maximize my potential there.

Now that I knew what I had access to, I went back to the Talents I’d passed over to see if there was anything good in there.

Deep Focus

Prerequisite: Reasoning 5

Your mind can shut out the world when something demands your attention.

Effect:

• Gain +20% skill experience while performing a focused, uninterrupted activity.
• Distractions, noise, and environmental disturbances have a reduced effect on your concentration.
• While deeply focused, you are less likely to lose progress when interrupted.

Mental Fortitude

Prerequisite: Will 5

Your thoughts remain your own when the world pushes back.

Effect:

• Gain +25% resistance to mental influence.
• Reduces the duration and severity of fear, confusion, compulsion, and similar effects.
• You receive a warning when an effect attempts to alter your thoughts or emotions.

Iron Resolve

Prerequisite: Will 5, Unyielding

Once you have chosen a course, little can force you to abandon it.

Effect:

• *G*ain +20% resistance to effects that force you to change an established intention or action.
• Once you have consciously committed to an action, mental effects cannot force you to abandon it unless they overcome your Will by a significant margin.
• **Pain, fear, intimidati**on, and coercion have a reduced effect on your ability to act.

Emotional Insight

Prerequisite: Empathy 1, Influence 1, Captivating Presence

The smallest changes in expression can tell you more than words.

Effect:

• Gain +25% effectiveness when attempting to read another person’s emotional state.
• Allows you to identify a person’s dominant emotion and general attitude toward you.
• Can detect obvious attempts to conceal strong emotions.
• With sufficient observation, can identify changes in emotion even when the person is attempting to remain composed.

Intimate Attunement

Prerequisites: Empathy 1, Influence 1, Intimate Resonance

You are unusually sensitive to the subtle language of attraction and intimacy.

Effect:

• Gain +10% effectiveness in Seduction and Foreplay when interacting with a willing partner.
• Gain improved awareness of a partner’s emotional and physical responses during intimacy.
• You can recognize subtle indications of comfort, arousal, hesitation, uncertainty, or desire that another person might miss.
• Gain +10% magical synchronization with an intimate partner.

Unbreakable Will

Prerequisites: Will 10, Unyielding

Your determination has become something more than stubbornness. It is a force of its own.

Effect:

• +50% resistance to mental domination, compulsion, and magical coercion.
• Effects that would force you to violate a firmly established intention must overcome your Will twice.
• You cannot be compelled to surrender, flee, or abandon a chosen objective unless the effect substantially exceeds your resistance.

Mental Clarity

Prerequisites: Reasoning 10

Your thoughts remain clear even when the world around you becomes chaos.

Effect:

• +50% resistance to distraction and confusion.
• You can maintain concentration while under physical or environmental stress.
• Reduces penalties from pain, exhaustion, sensory overload, and chaotic surroundings.
• Allows you to maintain concentration on a spell while moving or defending.
• Greatly reduces the chance of losing a spell due to interruption.

All of a sudden, Deep Focus seemed a hell of a lot better.

And if I was going to come face-to-face with another master vampire, Unbreakable Will looked really good.

And if I was learning magic by having sex? All of a sudden, Intimate Attunement looked a lot better than I’d thought.

I had four Talent Points now, a whole bunch of options, and, for the first time, the ability to actually make informed decisions.

That felt almost as valuable as the points themselves.