In Neuroglyph's praise of Amethyst, he did voice some criticisms I would like to address.

The first, and I placed it there for a reason (thanks Justified) deals with the character roles we assigned our techan classes. We eventually decided to double title our classes (Defender/Controller, Defender/Leader, etc). Now, Mike stated that the Grounder is a strange Defender because he doesn't have an at-will ability to mark targets. Now, he DOES have some marking abilities (about three or four if I recall through the class) but the reason we assigned the Defender position (beyond the fact that marking is not specifically mentioned as being a requirement) was the fact that the Grounder has the capacity to defend his position and prevent enemy advancement. Area Denial allows you to shoot enemies that get too close. Meat Shield allows you to hold up in a defense position as well. He is also a controller as he can lay down area affects to multiple enemies.

The Marshall is a Defender/Leader and he totally fills that as he DOES have an at-will which marks and he does alter the combat field by moving both allies and enemies around the combat field. He does have some healing but it is insignificant to the Warlord equivalent. The Operator is labeled Leader/Striker. Massive healing means leader but Striker? Strikers inflict heavy damage to single targets. Well, the Operator has one of the most powerful at-will's you will ever find, Weapon Savant. He also has other powerful single target abilities like Pattern Recognition, Weak Spot, Disruption Blast--in fact most of this attack powers involve single target attacks with some inflicting condition. Now that being said, the Stalker is listed as being a Defender/Striker....yup, that's wrong. He's a Controller/Striker. Oh well. Mistakes do occasionally occur.

Now, as for the Non-AC bonuses, if you take a real close look at the techan classes, you'll notice their Will Saves don't get much better with time compared to fantasy characters. Other than drugs and a few implants, it was hard to create items which can boost these. So we wrote in a fluff piece indicating that techans were especially resistant to enchantment and offered them all a +2 bonus to Will Defense. That was basically it.

Additionally, Mike brings up the common issue people have--the removal of divine classes. Firstly, from a crunch point of view, the alteration of these classes to confine into Amethyst's view of "non-gods" may be interpreted as redefining--something the GSL states clearly we cannot do. Second, canon Amethyst has wizards and magical items (both natural and forged). It even has alchemy and although a few people exhibit some natural powers, there is nothing in the setting which allows someone to bond with a gate.

The mentality being that I don't see clerics in Middle Earth. I don't see clerics in Harry Potter. Do I sacrifice setting integrity for crunch or do I follow the canon and simply say, no clerics? I just felt spinning the rules around to find an excuse for Warlocks and Clerics was just that...an excuse. Amethyst is intended to be a medium to low magic setting, and if there are all these power casters walking around, the entire setting falls into the absurd...in my opinion. Spellcasters in Amethyst are intended to be rare. Many people try, but not a lot of them succeed. As one character says in the novel...

"If everyone could wave a wand, there'd be anarchy."