character help - versatility, spells, and non-magicians

[Slimcreeper]

Yeah, matrices are the red-headed stepchildren of the talent family. And versatility is the racist uncle that everyone hopes won't show up for Thanksgiving.

[Mataxes]

Looking at the Player's Guide and the released material from the Companion, I think that you can probably buy more than one Matrix. "Each <MATRIX NAME> represents a separate talent with its own Rank, and is improved independently." This language is maintained for every Matrix type. Given that, I would say that a Spellcaster could buy Standard Matrix as their Talent Option on each circle up to Fourth if they want to, then Enhanced every circle through 8th, Armored through 12th and Shared through 15th should they want. Personally, I wouldn't go that way; there are so many useful Talents out there. I think it's possible though.

Edited to add:
And... somehow I missed that I hadn't read through the whole thread. Oops. I still think the language used supports my theory, but given that Mataxes has said a standard magician ends up with two Standard and two Enhanced, I would say my interpretation is wrong. Move along, nothing to see here...

If I squint I can see where you're coming from.

The Player's Guide relied a bit too much on recycling previous rules text, and often things are only "clear" with knowledge of the game's development history.

In ED1, there were no "optional" talents. At each circle, you had a couple of choices. The total number of matrices a magician could learn was determined by how many were in their progression. For example, Wizards only got 3 standard matrices (just called Spell Matrix in that edition), while the others got 4. Wizards made up for it by having an extra... higher one. (Armored, I think? But I don't recall offhand and don't want to go down the rabbit hole of figuring it out.)

When ED3 came along, and officially introduced the idea of optional talents, nearly all matrices were "optional" -- and the option list had a number of entries for the maximum number of matrices the magician could learn. For example, Wizard had one Standard Matrix as part of their C1 "Discipline" talents, and one Standard Matrix as a Novice (C1) talent option.

(If you didn't know, ED3 had two batches of "options" for C1-4; one "Initiate" batch you could pick from as your additional C1 talent, and a few more "Novice" options that became available starting at C2.)

In the Novice options it lists Standard Matrix twice. The idea being that you can take (up to) two additional matrices as options if you want.

Long story short, when we gave magicians two free matrices, we dropped to only one additional as an option. It could, perhaps, be clearer. Hindsight of realizing not everybody picking up the game would have the history and familiarity with it that I do.