Originally Posted by Rick_Smith
Hi Steve.
Most adventurers want to have a few fighting skills, (say Sword, Shield, & Running), and if they take some other talents (Thief, Detect Traps, Climbing, & Silent MA), then they are DONE. That is it. Many characters in fiction and in real life are not so limited, which explains the wide spread house rules that allow them more memory. ("All of my Elves just start with Naturalist, Woodsman and Bow. Makes sense!").
In old TFT, you could keep increasing IQ to get the memory (mIQ) to give your thief Boating, Seamanship & Swimming (a thief / pirate or some other equally exotic character class). Sure an IQ of 14 was really high for your character concept of a hard fighting, hard drinking, dimwitted, (but friendly) pirate. But you REALLY wanted your guy on a tall ship. However, in new TFT, with people limited to 40 attributes, memory is going to be even more short than in old TFT. Give up on the idea of him every buying Charisma or Sex Appeal. Your pirate would like to get Guns and Missile Weapons (assuming that works with Guns), but forget-about-it in the new TFT.
Let's say that I want to play a Arabian Nights type master merchant adventurer. What talents are appropriate? Say... Sword, Fencing, Shield, Tactics, Literacy, Business Sense, Extra language, Detection of Lies, Courtly Graces, Charisma, New Followers, Diplomacy, Riding (camel), Driver (camel), Recognize Value, Assess Value, Survival (Desert) (say the same cost as woodsman?). Several other talents would be nice, but my master merchant right now needs an IQ of 22. In real life, and in fiction, these people exist, but try to build a competent Merchant / Adventurer in the new TFT.
It wouldn't hurt my feelings if most of the TFT talents were reduced in price to 1/2 to 3/4 of their current mIQ cost.
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I think some talents should cost 1/2 a memory. In GURPS 4th edition you sensibly got rid of 1/2 character point talents. But that is easy to do when your characters are 100 or 150 points. In TFT when players have, say, 10 mIQ to work with, 1/2 point skills make more sense.
An IQ 12 figure might be able to get 7 or 8 talents but an IQ 12 wizard could easily take 14 spells (since 3 hex fire includes 1 hex fire). So if I take Master Thief, I have to pay for Thief with separate memory (mIQ). However, if Master Thief cost 3 mIQ and included Thief, there would be a 1 mIQ net saving compared to how TFT works now.
Likewise, if you add a First Aid talent (as several people have asked for), IQ 11 Physicker (2) could include it.
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However, you asked me if there are any particular talents which I thought were over priced. See next post.
Warm regards, Rick.
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