Thread: New Skills
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Old 07-09-2018, 01:16 PM   #69
Rick_Smith
 
Join Date: Apr 2014
Location: Coquitlam B.C.
Default Talents all cost 1 memory. Discuss?

Quote:
Originally Posted by zot View Post
After reading the other posts, it seems to me that making IQ limit the flat number of talents (IQ 11 allows 11 talents) would ...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jackson View Post
What I MEANT was your option #2. I had not even thought about #1. Now I am thinking about it. Discuss?
Hi Steve, everyone.
What is being suggested is that all talents cost one memory (mIQ), like spells.
Some thoughts:

-- This makes heroes more balanced vs. wizards which I like.
-- Spells are balanced by minimum IQ, and fatigue ST cost.
-- Talents are currently balanced by minimum IQ and mIQ cost.

So this throws the balance of talents out of whack.

The new TFT is does not like multi class characters (like Thief AND Pirate) or (Merchant AND Adventurer), which is not fun. Let us say that there are 15 or so 'classes' you can take with talents. (e.g. Mechanicians, Healers, Thieves, Rangers, Animal Guy, Fighter / Tank, etc.) If the cost of talents are so high that all you can take is 2 or 3 fighting talents and one of these classes, that means that there are 15 characters (with minor variants) which you can aspire to in TFT.

However, if the price of talents drops to where you can take talents to make you two of these classes, then there are 15 x 14 = 210 possible characters that people could invent. There is a huge increase in the design space for heroes to grow into. In other words, there are far more ways to customize your character and make her different from Joe's character over there. This is clearly good.

Destroying the balance between talents is bad, I think. Some talents get a HUGE boost (Missile Weapons) while a lot of currently underpowered talents (Boating) are not helped at all.

However, the increased customization is worth it. Currently most TFT campaigns allow you to cheat on memory for talents one way or another. This is strong evidence that something needs to be fixed.

In other words, I think it is worth it to break the balance between talents, in order to allow people to gain more talents.

However, I think a BETTER solution would be to allow 1/2 mIQ talents, and halve the cost of most talents (Missile Weapons can still cost 3, so there can be some exceptions). That allows you to make characters who are Thieves AND Pirates and still keep balance between talents.

Warm regards, Rick.

Last edited by Rick_Smith; 07-11-2018 at 06:52 AM.
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