I'm back from board games. Fun was had. Back to Torchbearer 2!
@kenada raised a good additional point about character creation. I'll expand that to leveling up. You get two exclusive choices each new level, and you cannot pick a lower-level choice later on. I have always hated that arbitrary kind of limitation in ability selection. At several levels I definitely wanted both picks, particularly magician level three: spell slot vs. familiar. I mean, come on. Grr.
This leads into the magic system. It is, like the game at large, restrictive and claustrophobic, mostly in a good way. Beginning wizards have a random set of three spells they know, tied thematically to a school. They can have exactly one spell memorized, and if they want more versatility they can chew up two inventory slots to carry their spellbook, or scribe some scrolls (after their first adventure, if they can spare the lifestyle cost). I
really don't like randomly rolling up my spells, as those determine the sort of magician you're playing and I think that should be up to the player. Having only one spell is fine, as is needing/being able to cast from your spell book (better than AD&D Magic Users got!). Unfortunately, magicians in TB2 are fixed at Scholar 2 with maybe one option for bumping that—tied to your hometown—and so casting from your spell book means you have to make a very difficult test to copy back from your master library, which you must do in your hometown and possibly incur lifestyle cost. On the one hand, I feel that yes, this captures what a fantasy wizard should be, and on the other hand, it's a lot of bookkeeping hassle. And considering the hard choices you have to make just to get a mere handful of spell slots (see above about leveling up), well, I sometimes wonder why I decided to play a magician, if I can't do more magic! But being the knowledge guy has its perks.
(I'll add that you get saddled with Alchemist as a magician, whether you want it or not, and while the skill doesn't look useful at first, it could be a nice supplementing to making camp if folks have certain conditions that need clearing. It also might come up in further play, but frankly I'd rather my Jasper had ranks in Theologian since he was a lore-hound and geek.)
My character's randomly rolled spells were divination: Aetherial Premonition (Alarm), Supernal Vision (Detect Magic), and Wayfarer's Friend (sub Arcanist for Pathfinder). At first I wasn't thrilled to get them, but they all turned out to be very handy. So much so that I did cast them out of my spell book and had to re-scribe them later. Now I'm creating a new magician—I don't feel our party will do well without one—and facing that random roll again, and not liking it one bit. My one consolation is that we have Jasper's spell book and gear to rob so my new character can do the tests to learn those spells (at some lifestyle cost). We'll see how that pans out.
I read the chapter on Invocations once, and decided I want nothing to do with that system. It definitely overflowed my buffer for rules complexity, both in being yet another distinct subsystem, and in being hard to understand on its own. It also looks like no fun to keep track of. And yet theurges get the ability to do manageable spiritual conflicts, whereas magicians have to commit to a kill conflict. Ah well!