Believe it or not, I got the impression that Vlad was, well ... barely tolerable as a sorcerer, passingly competent as a witch, and pretty good as a fencer -- but he clearly wasn't anywhere near the level of skill with the latter two as his grandfather. I also got the impression that Vlad was too, well, spread out; Noish-Pa did his witchcraft (or ran his witchcraft shop, really the same thing) and fenced and cooked; Vlad ran his area, and got involved in Dragaeran politics, and went to war and the Land of the Dead, and dabbled in sorcery, and threw knives and darts, and assassinated people, and worked on witchcraft now and then, and got romantically involved with a whole -string- of people (losing his lunch to far too many teleports, IIRC), and learned three or four different styles of swordfighting, and traded banter with Loiosh and Cawti and Kragar and Morrolan, and ... well, you get the idea. Vlad is good against Dragaerans because their full-frontal nudi -- err, full-frontal gosh-I've-got-a-big-sword-here style is comparatively slow. His sword style is, pretty clearly, a bastardization; he fights the way he fights because all of these different styles are muddled together so he uses what his instincts are at the moment, combined with what he's trying to do, and generally trying to survive. Vlad ISN'T ... dammit, I forget Noish-Pa's actual name; Kelly says it at one point. Anyhow, the point (ha!) is that Vlad isn't his grandfather, Vlad would not (and probably could not) take on four Phoenix Guards at one time and emerge unscathed. Noish-Pa, on the other hand, left four puncture holes over four elf hearts ... wasn't he drinking tea in the kitchen? So. Steve, whilst he may have everything figured out, etc. etc., still has a durn good excuse to fall back on in the meantime. ;) Vlad likes to think he's a fencer, and that's the primary 'style' he uses, but he's got too much of everything else to be a really good point man the way his grandfather is. Knightmarshall Felix Surnamed Eisen, or "Iron Felix" Hand of Morr, The Order of Bones