Dual casters are pretty rare in Scarterra but who cares if it's rare? Player characters are pretty much always rare individuals in one way or the other.
Rules Mechanics Issues
The First downside of playing a Dual Caster
Theurgists use mana as the fuel for their divine magic, and mages use quintessence to fuel their arcane magic.
Mechanically, mana and quintessence are very similar. One-dot powers take one mana or quintessence, two-dot powers take two mana or quintessence, and so on and so forth.
Although mana and quintessence are very similar they are not interchangeable. You cannot spend mana to cast an arcane spell and you cannot quintessence to cast an divine spell. This means that if you want to play a dual caster, you have to keep track of both pools of power separately. If this sounds like a pain in the butt, than playing a dual caster is probably not for you.
You also have to peruse more rules. And you got a lot of potential spells and spheres to pick from and you can only take a few of them, so you have to prioritize.
The Second Downside of playing a Dual Caster
It costs three freebie points to be a mage and it costs three freebie points to be a theurgist. That's before you even buy your first dot of magic which is four points each. That's fourteen freebie points right out the gate just to be a minimally competent dual caster.
Normally you only start out with 20 freebie points or 40 freebie points, so 14 freebie points is a lot. A lot of the most exciting powers start at the two-dot or three-dot level. And that's before considering any
Arcane Merits or
Divine Merits. It doesn't leave you a lot of freebie points to buy a lot of non-magic dots for your character, especially if you chose a
PC race with a high freebie point cost like a satyr or a kalazotz.
Raising your Willpower will incidentally raise your mana pool
and your quintessence pool but when all is said and done, you might not have as many points to put into Willpower as you would like.
After character creation, you are splitting your experience points between two types of magic, so character advancement will be slow at first. Properly synergized, a dual caster can become very powerful, but it takes time to get that many experience points, so in the early sessions your character will probably be overshadowed by the other PCs for a while. Because dual casters are of the "slow and steady wins the race" type, it's probably not a good idea to play a dual caster for a short-term campaign.
Optimizing the Dual Caster
At character creation, you should consider appropriate Flaws to maximize your freebie points. In the case
Arcane Flaws and
Divine Flaws, you can take some Flaws twice.
"Bardic Arcane Caster" and "Bardic Divine Caster" are two separate flaws. So if you are okay playing a full-time bardic caster, that's 12 freebie points which almost pays for the 14 freebie points you need to be a spell-caster. Or you can take bardic caster once and be able to cast half of your magic without the power of music.
You can also take "No Still Casting" and/or "No Silent Casting" separately or together to get more freebie points (though "No Silent Casting" is not allowable alongside "Bardic Caster".
More flaw points will let you enter the gate with less of a casting disadvantage than you would have otherwise.
The next thing you probably want to do is pick magic that synergizes well with each other.
Avoid redundancy. There's is little benefit in taking
Divine Wrath and Arcane Invocation, if you want to blast people at a distance, you only need one, not both.
Arcane Enchantment spells that boost weapons don't stack with
Divine Crafts, so it's wasteful to take both.
You should have at least a broad plan for what you want to be able to do with your arcane magic and what you want to do with your divine magic.
Narrative Character Issues
If your goal is to just to play a mage who is pious, you do not have to be a dual caster. There are plenty of pious Scarterrans who are not theurgists. There are plenty of Scarterran priests and priestesses who aren't theurgists. But if you got this far into the article, you probably are gung ho on playing a dual caster.
Power did my character become a Dual Caster?
First you have to figure out how and why your character became a dual character.
Option One: Your character was a mage who happened to have the focused piety necessary to unlock theurgy. In most cases, the theurgy is a complete surprise, albeit probably a welcome surprise.
Option Two: Your character was a theurgist who became a mage. In the vast majority of cases, a theurgist opted to study wizardry, probably for utilitarian reasons.
Dual caster sorcerers and warlocks are less common, especially if the divine magic comes first and the arcane magic comes second. in some cases you might have an early blooming theurgist and a late blooming sorcerer. In the rarest cases, a theurgist becomes a warlock. Unless your character is a Greymoria or Nami affiliated warlock, being a warlock and being a theurgist is likely to be a conflict of interest.
Option Three: Your character always wanted to be a dual caster. Which magic came first is not especially important because your character always wanted both.
In Scarterra, most people in this mold are Greymoria-affiliated because
the Children actively espouse that dual casters represent "completed" magic users and are given special reverence. The other major priesthoods are certainly not opposed to having dual casters in their ranks, but they don't usually seek to actively recruit dual casters.
A large percentage of Scarterra's dual casters are bards.
Zarthus' Lanterns actively recruit bards into their ranks, so they end up with more dual casters than the other priesthoods, second only to Greymoria's Children. The Lanterns consider this a happy accident.
As a player, you can make a PC that is a dual caster that is not affiliated with Greymoria or Zarthus. Player characters are often exceptions to the norm. Just know that your character will be so unusual they might be locally famous just for being what they are.
How does my Dual Caster Fit Into Society?
Most wizards are part of an arcane fellowship of sorts, either a guild, a coven, or a feudal court system that includes wizards. Most warlocks are tied into politics or schemes of their Patron. Some sorcerers are part of a wider magic-blooded families and some are lone wolves.
Most theurgists are affiliated heavily with a priesthood of some sort. Some are only lightly affiliated with a priesthood. A few rare theurgists view their relationship with the divine in purely personal terms and avoid contact with organized religio.
If your character is dual caster, she is probably pulled societally in two directions. In most cases, a dual caster is going to lean one way or the other. One side of their magical nature is part of their core identity and the other side of their magical nature is just a useful tool. Is your character a holy man who happens to be able to cast arcane magic or is your character an arcanist that happens to be able to cast theurgy.
It's possible to play a caster that keeps one foot firmly planted in both camps. You can have a dual caster that is part of a holy order
and is part of an arcane magical group of some sort. Characters that can pull this off are probably the sort to have social attributes and they probably have a couple dots in Politics too.
Keeping a foot in both worlds is less difficult for Greymoria affiliated dual casters because they view the acquisition of magical power as a holy act and they sponsor organizations which are both holy orders and arcane orders.
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