Autovivente
(pronounced Ah-toh-vee-ven-teh)
Subtype: automaton
Trained in Arcane/Mind
Dark and Holy spells cost triple
32 life
0 Channeling
Nonliving
Stored Power: +10 starting mana
Exothaumic: This creature's non-spell attacks gain the Mana Transfer +3 trait.
Basic Melee Attack
A race of sentient automatons who long ago abandoned their bodies of flesh for bodies of a mysterious alloy of crystal and harshforge with artificial veins filled with the blood of mana leeches, to anchor their minds and souls to the material world and preserve their existence indefinitely. They do not physically age, but they can still be killed.
This is basically my idea of a rationalist mage.
What do I mean by that?
Epistemic rationality: believing, and updating on evidence, so as to systematically improve the correspondence between your map and the territory. The art of obtaining beliefs that correspond to reality as closely as possible. This correspondence is commonly termed "truth" or "accuracy", and we're happy to call it that.
Instrumental rationality: achieving your values. Not necessarily "your values" in the sense of being selfish values or unshared values: "your values" means anything you care about. The art of choosing actions that steer the future toward outcomes ranked higher in your preferences. On LW we sometimes refer to this as "winning".
http://lesswrong.com/lw/31/what_do_we_mean_by_rationality/The wizard is kinda rational but not as much as he could be because he doesn't have the training to really think critically and overcome his own cognitive biases and fix the flaws in his own thinking, since he's only trained in the arcane school and not the mind school. What he lacks in mind training and intellect he makes up for with common sense and a methodical style. The Autovivente on the other hand is trained in both schools, so doesn't have that problem. On the downside, the autoviventes don't always have as much time to spend on their research as the wizards of sortilege do because the autoviventes prize problem solving just as much as research, and they spend more of their time on magical, technological and civil engineering endeavors than the wizards do.
Naturally since they're nonliving automatons with a great interest in rational thinking and decision making (in fact that's a central part of their culture) they face a lot of stereotypes from the other peoples of Etheria, like "they're cold and unfeeling" or "they have no minds or souls" or "they serve (insert evil or neutral deity here)" or "they're unnatural abominations" etc.
Because of their low channeling, an autovivente has to be smart, flexible, efficient and creative to defeat their foes in the arena.
