What about Arete / Masteries and Dark Heroes?

I just received World of Darkness: Mirrors, and I'm quite interested in house rules describing dark heroes (usually über humans in a fantasy setting).

Problem is: I just don't understand how the Dark Hero trait Masteries concept works (see Wod: Mirrors, p190): The table seems wrong, or as if captions/rows were missing.

Could someone clarify me how Masteries work?

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As a system-specific edition-specific narrow-focus question, personally I'd discourage this site from heading in these directions. (Sorry; good question, but praps wrong place?) – ExTSR Aug 20 '10 at 18:17
@ExTSR - you should post your comment on the meta.rpg (link in the header) to discuss the site itself – shaneknysh Aug 20 '10 at 18:33
@ExTSR: I disagree. The tags are here to filter the questions. I even marked the question by prefixing by the name of the book. Now, looking at the current questions, I see TWO D&D 4th ed questions. Are they out of scope ? In Stack Overflow, questions a question about C++ ADL effect on specialized templates is quite specific, too. Java developers don't give a damn about that. Still, the question is still a valid SO question... – paercebal Aug 21 '10 at 10:06

It is confusing, isn't it? Here's how I read it:

• At Arete 1, you get three Masteries, which you allot to three different skills.
• As you rise in Arete (or as you spend XP, depending on which of the rules in the callout box you end up using), you get more Masteries. You can apply them to skills as per the chart on 190. For example, at Arete 3, you could have as many as eight Masteries, divided over as many as four skills, but only one as high as three and no more than two others at two.
• You can take a Mastery of a level one less than the associated skill. For example, to get "Blood, Sweat & Tears [Melee]" as your first Melee Mastery, you'd need Melee 2. To get "Powerful Success [Melee]" as well, you'd need Melee 3 (and Arete 2, naturally.) Some Masteries have further requirements.
• Masteries do what they say in their descriptions for their associated skill. You can take the same mastery multiple times to apply them to different skills, so long as you have the slots available.

Does that make more sense?

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I guess it's the chart which is very unclear: You say I can have, with Arete 3, as much as 7 masteries ? What I read in the chart is "3, 2, 2, 1", which means, to me (after reading your explanation) that with Arete 3, the maximum Masteries I can have is "3 on one skill, 2 on the second and the third skill, and 1 on the fourth". Which makes 8 Masteries maximum. Am I wrong ? – paercebal Aug 20 '10 at 17:18
No, you're right; I posted without checking my arithmetic. – Jadasc Aug 20 '10 at 19:14

 Arete       Skills
1st    2nd    3rd    4th    5th    6th   (skill)
1          1      1      1
2          2      2      1
3          3      2      2      1
4          4      3      2      1      1


Etc. until level 10.

The missing line is the 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th (skill) line indicating (for example) that at Arete 3, the 1st skill gets at most 3 Masteries, the 2nd skill gets at most 2, etc. etc..

Note that there is a typo on this chart (the Arte level 9 is marked as being a Arete 8)... I guess this table was never verified before printing.

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