Alright, cool. I haven't played a soldier in years and I'm glad that changed!
Also.
By and large, I've found the soldier role to be lacking the oomph it should have ever since the perpetual conflict with Tuluk ended. That was the thing that gave it purpose, and without it, it became an endless treadmill of patrolling uneventful streets and hoping for one or maybe two spars per RL day while anyone with more freedom could raise their skills way faster. Templars being so powerful and eager to get involved in everything meant that criminal roleplay struggles to gain a foothold outside of the actual 'rinth, so the soldiers themselves have rarely had enough opportunities to carry out their actual in-city job. I doubt that being this generous with max scan will help in that regard, but it'll certainly be a blow to the stealth meta that many players loathe, even if it doesn't necessarily do a whole lot about the edge case of the highest stealth level that the code allows.
Something else happened in the timeframe where Tuluk closed: magick became a subclass thing only. Previously, mages had a wide array of spells, but they were also unable to craft, hunt, sneak, fight, or survive all that well. Today, a magickal raider is stronger than his mundane counterpart, a magickal stalker is better than his mundane counterpart, a magickal enforcer is better than his mundane counterpart, and so forth. A templar who wants to get a job done has no OOC reason, at all, to prefer the AoD over gemmed: gemmed are stronger, can't rebel in the way soldiers can take off cloaks and go rogue, and cynically, raise even their mundane skills faster than the poor sods stuck to being recruits in a compound with no PCs around.
I don't envy those people. Genuinely.
While I agree with the general feeling I -think- you're trying to portray here. "Gemmed are more valuable now than mundane to Templars."
I would say on a pure power point, yep, specifically if they are a Krathi or Whiran.
However, that's not themely really and I would hope that they didn't do that.
I have seen during RPTs they will gather all their witches for fighting power, and I guess that makes sense. Why risk -real- people when you could risk the folks that don't matter, your gemmed slaves? I've always felt it was sorta unfair to Tuluk not having magick to combat Allanak, but I assume there is shit I have no idea about that might balance that out.
I've never had a chance to play a Templar yet. Hopefully some day soon, but I would look at the AoD as extremely valuable. They are my front line troops. Gemmers can do certain magick things for me, and create me certain items that I would like to have, but they are filthy witches and nobody likes filthy witches, even templars.
Where I view stealth and this move as a positive, because before I felt it was overpowered and there were instances where you literally couldn't find someone (They may still exist, I dunno) no matter what. I look at it through a lens of mundane to mundane.
If you throw magick into the mix, it will always be superior, it's designed to be superior. And don't get me wrong, if they said, Hey Pariah, you can play a full blown elementalist from old, I'd fucking LEAP at the opportunity. But aside from that I do enjoy the change because it's not just, "I cast fireballs", It's I'm a crafter, a merchant, a warrior or a ranger who can cast a fireball when he needs to. So it did it's job of making magick users a person first and not just a simple tool to point at folks and go "Fireball" that they used to be of old.
They can live out lives in secret if they wish, MUCH easier due to the fact they have supporting skills to leverage, be that money from their crafting, be that weapons skills, be that utility like hide and sneak.
So while I don't think you're wrong that codedly magickers will always be stronger and a "better" character when you look at fighting or utility, they also are held back RP wise with the gem, or killed if discovered to be a rogue in some case, or have their whole world turned upsidedown when that Templar goes, "Put this on, or die, your choice."
But that's why they are gated behind Karma. It's no different than say I someday get the Karma for a Mul and play a Mul stalker/whatever, I'm going to be better faster than almost every human, if not every human in the same field of play. Because Muls are superior.
If you're looking for an even playing field, there isn't really one. Even between mundanes, I've had long lived characters that could kill almost every normal critter you could run into in the wild that are killed by one poisoned arrow, or one of those fireballs I talked about earlier. It's just how it goes.
