What I was trying to say was that, given how many things the ideal warden ought to be able to do, there's no point in worrying about less-than-excellent swordsmanship, since there's no way they can be good at everything. I feel like this didn't come across, though.
Nobody's going to be an "ideal" Warden. They're going to be great at some things, good at others, and passable at the rest. There's no reason to expect them to be experts at everything they need to be good at.
About the battle: the impression I got when reading about it was that A) Morgan was mostly, if not entirely, responsible for getting as close as he did, which is one of the things that made it so impressive; and B) that this battle demonstrated that Morgan was better than 99% of wardens. This is what I have based my assumptions on. Other people, naturally, are free to read it differently.
I think both those assumptions are unfounded. It's a battle -- dozens, if not hundreds of guys to a side. Morgan might have been leading the charge and he might have been one of the best fighters on the field, but that doesn't mean that he's got some hitherto unknown power that puts him leaps and bounds above Shiro.
And yes, Morgan's character write-up already includes his sword skills. I brought up substituting this power for that because other people have said that his build is not optimized--not because it doesn't do what it's supposed to.
Who's said that? And why does he need to be "optimized"?
My assertions about Shiro being under-statted are based on character write-ups that we see in Paranet Papers. Specifically, I believe that if Shiro is, as he is described, "Mozart with a sword" then A) he should have his highest skills equal to the highest skills of Senior Council members (since they're the best at what they do) and he doesn't; and B) that he should have combat stunts at least equal to Murphy (since she is very good, but isn't supposed to be better than him) and from what I remember, he doesn't.
Magic and swordfighting are different things. The Senior Council members are each
at least a couple hundred years old, and have used a lot of that time to get better at magic. Shiro did not have the benefit of hundreds of years, and is limited by his human body in a way that magic isn't, because Weapons is a physical skill.
Shiro's got a base Weapons of 6, and the Sword gives him a +1 on top of that. Neither Murphy's guns nor fists scores are up to that, and how many stunts one has is not a measure of how good they are.
Yeah, I'm just going to represent this with an upgrade of the easy evocations power (written up on another thread). That makes more sense.
I still don't see how it makes any sense, when there are several ways to do it by the RAW.
I'm trying to use the RPG character progression system to keep track of my fan fiction character's growth while controlling the rate at which she improves so that she doesn't end up a Mary Sue. Aspects are significantly less useful for this than they are in actual games.
You think giving her a power that amounts to, "Make her far better with a sword than the canon character who's universally known as the best with swords" is going to
prevent her from being a Mary Sue?
I'm pretty sure "Better than the canon character at the canon character's specialty" is one of the top 5 Mary Sue traits.
Edit: Combined with the other threads for (I'm presuming) this same character, it looks like you're aiming for someone who:
A. Is better at swording than the undisputed master of swording (Shiro)
B. Can shrug off and ignore most damage better than the undisputed master of getting his face kicked in (Harry)
C. Can take more damage than anyone else in a single blow and keep fighting
and D. Is a lawbreaker, but with more and better bonuses to the powers than Lawbreaker has in canon.
You say you want to avoid being a Mary Sue, but from those threads it's starting to look like a Mary Sue checklist.
Limits and
believability are what make a great character -- not ratcheting up all their stats to the point of making them unbeatable.