I seriously suggest you try to make a full character like that, and compare it to a single-profession character of the same level. You will be surprised.
I don't need to. It's simple math and I have a pretty darn good understanding of the system.
Is he as good at Combat as a 10th level pure arms user or at Casting as a 10th level pure caster? Nope, but he's nowhere near 'half' the character and incredibly more versatile.[/size]
Compare him to a pure Bard, and you'll see the problem with your reasoning.
In general, a character is a sum of it's parts and one single aspect of that character rarely causes it to be more powerful than another character. Versatility plays a significant role and this is demonstrated over the course of a game (i.e. you can't cherry pick specific situations to demonstrate it). Having cheap access to both combat related skills and a wide variety of spell related skills will create a superior character.
At low levels Pure Arms users tend to shine because they can focus on one thing more easily. At mid levels Pure Casters tend to shine because they start to have a boarder selection of spells that the they now have more power points to utilize. At high levels Semi's tend to shine because they have caught up to both the Pure's, they aren't quite as good at weapons as the Pure Arms user and they don't quite have the spell selection of a Pure Caster, but due the combination they are more versatile. Eventually they will all be powerful enough that it just won't matter, but you're talking very high levels at that point.
What you are doing is allowing a character to pick and chose from all of those things. If at level 1 we build a Fighter and select arms focused skills, then at level 2 we decide we want to be a caster and pick spell focused skills, we've just paid far less than a semi would to do the same. In addition if players can change their characters profession they could also simply start picking up base spell lists from multiple professions. You're allowing a process with a clear and obvious benefit. If you don't (and won't) see that there's no real point in discussing it.
You can't simply 'change' your natural ability to learn.
Please remember we are talking about magic. Which supposedly is anything but simple. We are not in the "allow multiclassing already!" discussions you may have had to suffer in the past, but in one about a new metalism spell list, and trying to figure out what the power level of such spells should be compared to other spells in the game.
No, we're not talking about multi-classing... we're talking about you making it even
easier than that.
To illustrate this, let me ask a different question: Suppose one of the spells on this list would be: The caster determines a profession that he wants to use for his spell, and then, the target changes its learning costs for each skill category to the worse of his profession or the one used for the spell, until the magic is somehow countered. This would obviously be a powerful curse, but 50th level? No way.
I don't see a point to that discussion. We don't need to speculate how the spell could be used offensively if it's beneficial use to friendly characters is unbalancing.
Besides, in this case, why not just make a spell that causes a characters learning to slow (skill costs to increase) and just forget about the whole 'profession' part of it.
Although I'd suggest you not do this as you players won't exactly find your game as fun as they did before.
If we look at it from a game system balance perspective the only reason to change profession is to get lower skill costs.[...]
Please accept that the reasons for why one would want to have such a spell list in one's game may be unrelated to game balance.
I am not going to 'accept' ignoring game balance regardless of your reasoning. What you are doing will screw up game balance. Period. No real discussion needed.
If you don't care about that do whatever you want. No need to ask people here how to do it. It's your game. Do whatever you want. Make it 1st level, make it 50th.
But if you're asking us you've got your answer.
I strongly disagree. The fighter-magician will be a much more powerful character than the semi. At best you are making an argument that pure casters are much more powerful than semis (indeed that they are better than all other professions), and the general trend in RM is that this is incorrect especially at high levels.
I find your remark interesting: How do you figure that a Magician of 20th level is not more powerful than two characters of tenth level, one being a Magician, and the other being a Fighter?
Two thoughts.
First: I strongly suspect having two foes of 10th level vs a single for of 20th level is more dangerous than you seem to think, but it's not really relevant. Because...
Second: You're talking about a single character with the skills and options of both combined battling that single 20th level character.
There is a difference.
I really believe you also should make a character who uses such a spell, and is designed to do so, to see that your concerns are not all that warranted.
jdale is one of the developers of RMU. I'll eat my shorts if he doesn't understand what he's talking about better than you do.
The end point here, IMO, is what you're doing will be outbalancing. You're asking us to ignore that. If we do ignore that, then anything goes. Do whatever the heck you want.