Quote:
Originally Posted by Rick_Smith
In the new TFT why would anyone take a fighter? Heroes pay 3:1 for spells, and Wizards pay 2:1 for talents (except a lot of useful talents are 1:1).
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Well, because initial stat choice now commits you to what your character's going to be like, and the low-experience stage of the game depends on your initial design, and if either you die or the GM is stingy enough with his EP rewards, you won't ever get to the long end game.
Even if you do survive and get piles of EP so you reach 40 points, there's still a choice of being a fighter or a wizard to consider. Fighters are needed because they don't exhaust themselves when fighting, for one thing, though I guess you could all try to be wizards and hire/befriend fighters to join you.
The starting character designs will probably be about like they were in original TFT. Fighters usually starting with IQ 8-9 to be competitive fighters with ST & DX. So if I follow you, you're saying I might be wise to be a wizard even if I want to fight, so say I'm a survivable fighter-style character who's actually a wizard:
ST 11
DX 12
IQ 9
Sword (2x2) Shield (1x2) Literacy (1) Horsemanship (1x2)
That works to begin with. I could either put my advancement points into actually being a wizard, and eventually get up to IQ 17 at most, which isn't bad. Or I could actually mainly be a fighter... my talents would cost double EP, but how many am I actually going to need? Depends on whether any cool new ones are being added, but let's just make a cool fighter from here assuming only ITL talents, so say:
ST 14
DX 17
IQ 9
So what ITL talents would I really like at this point? Let's see, probably crossbow (1x2), missile weapons (3x2), and warrior (2x2). That's only 600 "penalty" EP. Though there are a bunch of other talents there too that would be useful, easily another 600 "penalty" EP. Oh, well the problem with this example I chose was I stuck to IQ 9 to be an ace fighter. Oh well, I'll stick with it. So what spells would I want? If they're like candy at 100 EP each, probably Staff (the new free ST battery), Blur, Drop Weapon, Image, Detect Magic, Clumsiness, Aid, Summon Wolf, Fire, and Dark Vision. 10, for 1000 EP.
And, I notice I'm also nearly out of things I want to buy with EP at IQ 9, for 3400 total EP.
So let's see, if I were a hero with the same attributes, I'd get to start with 4 more talents. Then to get the rest would be 800 for talents, and if I got all those 10 spells at 300 each, would be a total of 3800 EP. Not a lot different, and again we see a tradeoff where I take longer to reach my "final form" (LOL) but I got to start out with more talents, which seems fine to me.
If spells cost 25 x IQ-level, then it would cost...
Wizard: 2400 + 5 x 25 x 8 + 5 x 25 x 9 = 4525
Hero: 2000 + (5 x 25 x 8 + 5 x 25 x 9) x 3 = 8375
So it looks like the higher IQ-based costs would slow down hero-learning of spells... though this guy will still eventually do it given enough GM EP awards, because there's nothing else for him to do with EP. But it also makes even this guy with only 10 spells he'd like better off (in the end-game, anyway) as a wizard than a fighter, even though really he's a fighter design. The incentive to be a fighter is still there but is really mainly in terms of learning talents in the early game.
I'm sure it's rather different and more work to compute for higher-IQ characters. But I think that in the long run, the more IQ, the more clearly you'll want to be a wizard, as there are tons of spells to want, and as you pointed out, the exchange rate is better overall as a wizard. And if higher-IQ spells cost more EP to learn, that just increases the savings in the long run to learn them.
I think I/we need to test and stew on this further.