User blog comment:Mike Kivail/Recent Questions regarding 42/@comment-4536066-20130226224943

3) I don't see why not. However, try to use your best judgment with these sorts of things. The only kind of character who's going to have a skill-mastery cape (and by relation has been recognized by a group of NPC masters who are also the absolute primiers of the craft) is a character who's climbed to the absolute peak of known ability. Think: who is probably going to be considered a master? A 23-year-old prodigy who has proven himself to be remarkably good at his skills, or a 57-year-old instructor who grew up a prodigy, saw three decades of besting the field of competition in active practice, and finally retiring to a calm life of creative experimentation in his skill and instruction of a few apprentices. If a character is the former, he probably wouldn't be considered a master; he might be talented, but there are plenty of people who were also that talented in their youth and presently are thirty years of experience ahead of him. It would also probably be difficult to be a renaissance man as well as a master. Who's probably better: the 40-year-old man who is a profoundly good blacksmith and also regularly practices in glassmaking, ceramics, arrow-fletching, and sculpture, or the 40-year-old man who was a profoundly good blacksmith at age 30 and has been specializing in advanced ways of treating and handling metal every year since? If a character is the former, he's plenty good at what he does, but he's probably not a master.

4) Similar answer; I don't see any reason to ban them, but use your better judgment. Is a young farm boy likely to have an advanced magical bow, and if he does how likely is it that he would know how to use it without previous experience with both magic and archery? The chargebow is basically just a bow shaft that has been imbued with runic missile energy such that it can launch weak concussive "arrows" that behave cause range/melee damage. Much like custom races, this is the sort of thing where it's fine so long as you have a fair explanation about the how/why/where. For example, a character might get a chargebow from the wizard's tower (where) by asking the wizard he's apprenticed to to put the enchantment on it (how) because he's interested in learning basic archery but doesn't have the money to buy arrows (why).