[Skarg]

Originally Posted by Rick_Smith

I agree. The trick is to do this without twisting TFT into something it is not. I think my superscript rules does this nicely (so I'm confident that there is at least ONE way to do it), but I suspect that Steve Jackson does not want to go so far afield.

I like your superscript system as I remember it, and my impression from the years on the Braniac TFT email list is that it's a common sort of house rule for people to use. But there might be some other ways to refer to it that use more natural language to do the same thing but not seem so technical in appearance, e.g. the "spend EP on Talents without raising IQ" instead of split mIQ/IQ.

Originally Posted by Rick_Smith

I confess to be confused by this. Lots of people seem to say, "don't lower mIQ cost of talents, but make it possible to buy more talents than your IQ." Just lowering the cost of talents would require NO new rules. None. It would require us TFT players who have been playing for 35 years to learn the new costs tho. Another advantage to lowering the mIQ costs is that some talents can stay the same, (say Charisma), while others can have a steeper cost reduction (say Mimic).

The reasons I don't prefer reducing mIQ costs are

1) I dislike the mIQ limit system, so I would like it to change. It doesn't match my ideas about people learning or forgetting things, which is my main reason for wanting rules to be a certain way. I don't believe people learn a few talents and then run out of memory, nor do I believe people get past that by raising their IQ.

2) I want to be able to have characters develop by adding more and better talents, rather than mainly by jacking up their attributes to levels that are way above what most people have.

3) If you don't change the rules but do lower the talent costs, starting characters will be able to buy a bunch more talents, and I don't particularly think the number of talents available to a starting character is too low as written.

Originally Posted by Rick_Smith

The thing I'm uneasy about the above two suggestions, is that pretty much all fighters want to wear armour, so it the armour talent is better than DX, then ALL warriors will take it. Likewise, if the wizard talents were most cost effective than attributes, then ALL wizards will take them.

I would expect those to be typical choices, and so Conan the high-ST Wizard and Bob the ultra-agile warrior but only when not in armor, would be replaced by Magnifico the average-ST wizard who has talents for powering his spells, and Rupert the very skilled warrior who is agile but not ultra-high-dx, but knows how to fight in armor and is very good at fighting. A variety of talents would mean that you can also have Muriel the weaponmaster who doesn't get much armor talent, wears lighter armor, and instead gets talents that let her fight better, for instance getting defensive talents that reduce the chances of her getting hit at all. And wizards who don't the spell-powering talents but instead get more spells, or other interesting talents that allow other things.

i.e. You get more varied and interesting character types, and you avoid the "everyone experienced has high attributes and so are really agile, smart and observant for all purposes" issue.

Of course, as you said, balancing them would want to be done carefully.