Quote:
Originally Posted by CJM
My thoughts on Talents (ITL) are that they should have three levels and that they should originally be bought with IQ points, but after that they should be leveled up with experience points. Each level would have of course prerequisites. This would help some with the bloat on attributes, the forgetting talents rule that makes room for another talent, increasing IQ to be able to gain more talents, and with talents you could address issues like perception (instead of adding a perception attribute). Also I would like to see that the talents not just give a +1, +2, +3 type of progression. But something that gives you something each level. For example you buy sword with your IQ points at the beginning of character generation. At the first level you are proficient in the use of a sword. then at the second level you might have learned to defend yourself better with it so it makes it harder for your opponent to hit you maybe a -3 to their attack roll. At the third level you might be able to disarm your foe with, lets say, a 4d vs DX roll. These are broad base ideas, I'm not a game designer, but this might help organize the system and solve problems that we are discussing on this forum. I believe if done right that it would give a stair stepping approach to improving your character. A lot can be done with talents that could increases mana to cast spells, giving extra hit points to increase the survival rate for characters, so on and so forth...
My thoughts anyway.
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I'm with CJM on most of this (some, I'd have to see how it plays out before I can enthusiastically support, but overall, yes, this is good). I think he's right in the middle on this and therefore probably has a system that a lot of people would be happy with.
My only comment on Talents is that as you read them, you realize some of them are really genetic advantages, more than they are "learned" skills. I think one could usefully separate the "genetic" ones out (perhaps 10 or so total) and let players pick one or two of them when creating a character, and the remaining 90 or so would all become "Skills" which could be learned normally. (This would also allow you to introduce the "Magery" talent to the game, to be taken at character creation, to clearly differentiate between Wizards and non-Wizards.) Personally, I'd let Humans and Orcs pick two each, while the other species only get one; because the other species have sufficient internal advantages (greater speed, toughness, or ability with thrown weapons) that those actually "count" as an extra Talent, but that's just me...
In effect, what GURPS did was this -- it split off "advantages/disadvantages" as something that were generally taken at character creation (though you can change that during the course of play), while skills were stuff that you could learn in school or via practice as you went along. While I have no desire to see the advantages/disadvantages system applied to TFT, using the ten or so Talents that are clearly genetic instead of learned as a way to further customize your character "at birth" makes a lot of sense to me.