Thread: Talent System
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Old 05-01-2018, 01:16 AM   #31
Skarg
 
Join Date: May 2015
Default Re: Unarmed Combat talents - thoughts on balancing.

Yes everyone would like to have the Unarmed Combat talents, especially UC V, and yes they should be hard to get, so that only few really masterful people get them, and the existing system does provide that, at least. Of the thousands of NPCs in my TFT games, all the UC talents were rare, moreso the higher levels, and I don't even remember if anyone had UC V. I only made a very rare handful of martial arts masters, mainly because it was so hard to achieve them, and it also seemed like a fairly bad choice for someone of high experience to actually put that much into UC talents, but also a character who has 10 IQ points in UC V, the required DX 16 IQ 14, and presumably not an awful ST, is at the top of the experience curve AND either needs to put even more points in IQ as a fighter, or is not going to have many talents other than IQ at all. It's a very confining use of points compared to other characters that can be made with over 40 points.

So it successfully made almost no one get UC V, but it also made the 1-5 characters I may have made with UC IV or V really confined in their talents and reasons for existing. And it just feels awkwardly wrong to me.

And I agree with you that it would be desirable to have more fun talents for non-wizards, such as improved combat talents of various types, because the other thing I notice in looking at and remembering making my piles of NPCs, was that the system was starting to feel dry in terms of what it offered to put on fighters to make them interesting and not interchangeable in terms of their fighting abilities/style.

Like David I would rather not have high attribute requirements for advanced talents because I think it
contributes to sameness and attribute bloat. In fact, I would rather replace attribute bloat, to some degree at least, with advanced talents, so that even very experienced characters don't necessarily dwarf ordinary characters in attributes (and so seem super-human and less relatable) and aren't expected to make almost all their 3-die rolls, etc.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rick_Smith View Post
So my question to you is, if you lower the minimum required IQ, and the total mIQ cost, (and perhaps the minimum required DX), how do you make super awesome talents, hard to get? Unless you can find a good answer to this question, SJ is unlikely to adjust the rules on the Unarmed Combat talents.
I think I've suggested it before elsewhere, but what I would do would be something like:

* I wouldn't lower the mIQ cost. But I would make it possible and normal for experienced characters to acquire more talents than they have IQ. (Whether this is called mIQ or just "using EP to aquire more talents without raising IQ" is just choice of terms to me, though I think the latter seems less crunchy to some people.)

* I would add a variety of talents and levels for talents that provide a variety of ways to describe an experienced fighter, and make them cost less EP than raising attributes for their effect, but their effect would only apply to that task. For example, an "Armor Wearing" Talent could be bought up to maybe 6 points, and would reduce the DX penalty for wearing armor by one per point, and be more efficient for EP used than raising DX that amount. So instead of experts with DX 18 (14 adj), you'd have more with something like Armor Wearing 4, DX 13 (adj 13) and Ax/Mace 4 (adj 16 with ax/mace only). I'd have Talents for various types of weapon mastery (some increase crit hits, some give defensive bonuses, allow/aid various actions, or other effects).

* There could also be non-spell Talents for Wizards, designed to avoid issues like Conan the Wizard, that increase your effective attributes but only for certain things Wizards do, so some Wizards will buy those instead of just getting very high attributes for all purposes. There could also be Talents for some other nice perks to individualize Wizard abilities.

* Depending on what Talents were added, I imagine there would want to be some limits on which ones new characters can start with and/or just minimum attribute totals, so it wouldn't hit new players with too many choices to make a character, and so there would not be annoying munchkin starting characters with minimum attributes and annoying advanced Talent levels.

* I'd also probably suggest that many of those Talents be marked optional.

* Using EP to get talents without raising IQ should affect the curve for improving your character at the same rate as using EP to raise attributes, so there is no weird gamey incentive that creates a more efficient way to use EP.

* Some Talents should also probably be something you can take during creation but not just add via EP and study, in particular the ones that are more like innate advantages, such as Acute Hearing. And some Talents should probably have exceptional time to study. e.g. Knife and Literacy are both 1 point, but Literacy probably should take longer to learn than Knife.

Last edited by Skarg; 05-01-2018 at 01:20 AM. Reason: made "Armor Wearing" clearer
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