[Skarg]

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

Languages – Hmm. Having anything that costs less than 1 point add complexity. I suppose we might say “For a half-point, you can learn a language well enough to read it if you are Literate, and speak it well, but with an accent. For a full point, you sound like a native.” But that leaves a loose half-point floating around. Kind of GURPSy.

[HOWITZER]
The more I think about characters adding talents, the less I want my own games to use either memory point limits or EP-purchase for them, and languages are a good example. Languages are not something you can learn quickly like swimming or knife-throwing. Maybe for starting characters they can trade things to get another language, but after, how about you actually have to spend years learning it from people who know it, and then eventually you get it? Maybe facility learning languages is the sort of thing you can buy during character creation.

What if PCs started with 36 points or so, but you could choose to spend up to 6 on gifts that can't be learned, such as Charisma, Acute Hearing, Beauty, Toughness, wizardry, gifted fighter/marksman, language-facility... Maybe that's getting GURPSy (?) but it seems like it'd solve some of the problems I keep thinking of with TFT talents.
[/HOWITZER]

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

Monster Followers – I have wondered how much those get used. They definitely have no basis in reality. Should I consider deleting them and using the space for other things, and possibly doing a whole splatbook, or section of a monster book, about it? Discuss, please.

I thought both New Followers & Monster Followers had weird names, a weird concept, not the way I thought they should work, and ignored & never used it. Looking at New Followers now, I'm slightly fascinated to finally actually try to play a character (or run a campaign) that uses it more or less as written, but as a GM, I don't usually really want my NPCs and monsters to be susceptible to 4-die mechanical control attacks... though I've been biased about it and not giving it a chance since I first saw it at age 11 or 12, and I've become vastly less controlling as a GM. Now, I'd just want the mechanic to be more crunchy (the target PC's nature other than race isn't taken into account at all ("Hey Duke, we should be friends! Hi Revoreesh, how about I roll 4/IQ to take you into my stable of characters?"), and no limits are specified as to what you can have them do) or mention more GM discretion as to arbitrary resistance and effects and limits.

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

Reduce IQ prereqs for UC talents – Maybe. They require dedicated training but not genius. Discussion?

Yes.