Interaction between Necromancy, Sorcerer, and Pact Talents

I am the GM for a Conan 2d20 game. I have a player who created a character using the generator that has both the Sorcerer and the Necromancer talents. How have others been dealing with this? I am leaning toward counting the Necromancy talent as his second Pact with his Patron. However, I have a few questions about the description of the necromancy talent.

On page 73 of The Book of Skelos, it reads, “A necromancer is a source that has abandoned or just never learned the practices to contain the corrupting elements of sorcery.” Does that mean a character can not continue on the sorcery talent tree?

It also reads, “They count as if possessing the Sorcerer talent…” Does this mean that they take the x+2[CD] permanent resolve reduction for both the Sorcerer and the Necromancy talents if they have both of them?

In any case, should the character pay a separate demand for both talents during upkeep?

Thank you for any help. My players and I have had a blast playing so far.

Hello! Here is my take, hope it helps!

The character can indeed continue on the Sorcery tree, the only problem being potentially one of story-telling fluff, whereas the Necromancy tree is just a more specialized type of Sorcery. That being the case, while Necromancy can take the place of Sorcery for being a prerequisite for other Talents, there is not a rule that the player needs to take an additional reduction to their Resolve for having both Talents. I believe the intent to be that players would take Sorcery OR Necromancy, so no need to penalize for having both in my mind.

I don’t have the core book right in front of me but whatever the normal Upkeep would be for having one Patron/two Spells seems to apply here, with no additional cost applied.

High level: I think, if one wanted to be a power gamer for just a moment, having both Sorcery AND Necromancy is a bit of a wasted Talent for that player so they would not get any additional penalties if it were my table.

Thanks and hope some of that was useful!

Thank you. I appreciate the feedback. Your take on the talents makes sense to me. I think the player realized exactly what you are saying about the wasted talent and eventually just took Pact for the Raise up the Dead spell. Thank you, again.

My take on it isn’t apples and oranges it is squares and rectangles… that is all necromancers are in fact sorcerers but not all sorcery is necromancy and being a necromancer means you have additional resources but also additional minuses

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