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Skarg · 06-18-2019, 10:52 AM

* Overall, I think this will not be a common issue in practice, because almost no one will ever get to these pinnacles of ability. You're talking about many cooperating high-powered wizards spending years making magic items and giving them to a few other people, which only happens if the GM thinks this is a good thing and wants it to happen. If he says his world is about this happening, then he finds out how that plays out, and if he likes it, great. If he learns it's annoying, then in future his worlds don't have lots of cooperative wizards enchanting items and giving them to a few people to make super-characters.

* The game and setting as written don't really encourage wizards collaborating to make and give powerful magic items to a few people. Only 1 in 300 people is a wizard at all, many of those are not high-powered, nor interested in spending their time making powerful magic items for other people, and it takes a lot to be able to do that and then to actually do that.

* Also the rest of the population and the combat and magic systems aren't like D&D or MMOs where if you are the best character, you can overpower the strongest forces in the world. If there were a ST 16 DX 16 IQ 24 wizard with piles of super-valuable magic items in a world I were GM'ing, I'd be thinking about how many powerful armies/organizations/aristocracies/guilds etc would be very interested in taking those magic items for their own purposes, probably regrettably requiring taking out the wizard... and there are so many ways to do that (which unlike D&D/MMOs, aren't particularly difficult to achieve, and the wizard won't generally just be brought back to life repeatedly).

* That is, TFT isn't really a game about "getting to the end" of character development, and even with the original XP table, it took years of dangerous play to get up very high.

* I was in some 5+ year TFT campaigns back in the day which did get some bloated attribute level characters, but none of them had PCs who could summon a demon or enchant a magic item, and none of the PCs ever got any Wishes or Attribute Adder items or Charms (partly because we all agreed those were cheesy, and started to dislike the effect magic items and power bloat was having on gameplay). We did however get more and more powerful characters with lots of magic items, and that was an issue which did make play much less compelling for us, but the new XP table would have actually delayed that problem. The real problem was the magic item bloat and the way combat gets less interesting when there are characters with very high DX and high armor and normal low-attribute warriors start to be like mere speed bumps and/or XP prizes.

However, I do share some of your concerns, albeit in slightly different ways. In particular:

* Greater Wishes have been made a LOT easier to get in Legacy edition. Demon IQ is now unimpressive, the contest is easier, and the consequence of losing is described as the demon attacking, without making it clear you can't cheese your way out of any danger with a pentagram and/or ready defenses/guards and/or abusing the new death rules to avoid even losing any attributes if you die. But even if you do die, it's so easy now that you could probably replace any lost attribute points easily unless your precautions fail so badly that the demon carries your body away. A GM aware of the issue can of course change things. And it is not the sort of thing players can easily do themselves without first getting a very powerful wizard character.

* The high XP cost of gaining a talent point, the low cost difference between a normal talent like Swimming or Knife versus a master-level talent like Expert Sword, combined with the high costs of higher attributes, the invitation to GMs to award any amount of XP and not have it be related to doing anything in particular in the game, and the common orientation of new players from other games towards "getting to the end" of character development and constant gratification by steady character improvements, does seem like it will tend to end up with some confused players and/or weird situations, which seems unfortunate to me.

* The issues with magic item bloat are as in the original game, and take restraint and/or experienced GMs to avoid. Basically, there are several types of magic items the power of which can easily dwarf the differences between different levels of human ability. If these are at all common and available in a game, they tend to be what determines who can kill whom, more than attribute levels do. And that has some effects that I and my friends didn't like much, because we liked having characters and their differences be important and relevant, not what magic items someone had. And, because of the general way loot works - if some NPC has a magic item, the PCs kill them and take it and use it or sell it and buy other powerful gear with it. If a PC will magic items die, they take their magic gear and use it. This tends to mean ever-increasing amounts of magic gear and/or wealth unless the party gets wiped out or captured and/or all their magic stolen.

* There is one welcome new tool for limiting that in Legacy Edition, though, which is the adjusted rules for lightning destroying magic items.

06-18-2019, 10:52 AM	#11
Skarg Join Date: May 2015	Re: The (Unintentional?) MMO End Game of TFT * Overall, I think this will not be a common issue in practice, because almost no one will ever get to these pinnacles of ability. You're talking about many cooperating high-powered wizards spending years making magic items and giving them to a few other people, which only happens if the GM thinks this is a good thing and wants it to happen. If he says his world is about this happening, then he finds out how that plays out, and if he likes it, great. If he learns it's annoying, then in future his worlds don't have lots of cooperative wizards enchanting items and giving them to a few people to make super-characters. * The game and setting as written don't really encourage wizards collaborating to make and give powerful magic items to a few people. Only 1 in 300 people is a wizard at all, many of those are not high-powered, nor interested in spending their time making powerful magic items for other people, and it takes a lot to be able to do that and then to actually do that. * Also the rest of the population and the combat and magic systems aren't like D&D or MMOs where if you are the best character, you can overpower the strongest forces in the world. If there were a ST 16 DX 16 IQ 24 wizard with piles of super-valuable magic items in a world I were GM'ing, I'd be thinking about how many powerful armies/organizations/aristocracies/guilds etc would be very interested in taking those magic items for their own purposes, probably regrettably requiring taking out the wizard... and there are so many ways to do that (which unlike D&D/MMOs, aren't particularly difficult to achieve, and the wizard won't generally just be brought back to life repeatedly). * That is, TFT isn't really a game about "getting to the end" of character development, and even with the original XP table, it took years of dangerous play to get up very high. * I was in some 5+ year TFT campaigns back in the day which did get some bloated attribute level characters, but none of them had PCs who could summon a demon or enchant a magic item, and none of the PCs ever got any Wishes or Attribute Adder items or Charms (partly because we all agreed those were cheesy, and started to dislike the effect magic items and power bloat was having on gameplay). We did however get more and more powerful characters with lots of magic items, and that was an issue which did make play much less compelling for us, but the new XP table would have actually delayed that problem. The real problem was the magic item bloat and the way combat gets less interesting when there are characters with very high DX and high armor and normal low-attribute warriors start to be like mere speed bumps and/or XP prizes. However, I do share some of your concerns, albeit in slightly different ways. In particular: * Greater Wishes have been made a LOT easier to get in Legacy edition. Demon IQ is now unimpressive, the contest is easier, and the consequence of losing is described as the demon attacking, without making it clear you can't cheese your way out of any danger with a pentagram and/or ready defenses/guards and/or abusing the new death rules to avoid even losing any attributes if you die. But even if you do die, it's so easy now that you could probably replace any lost attribute points easily unless your precautions fail so badly that the demon carries your body away. A GM aware of the issue can of course change things. And it is not the sort of thing players can easily do themselves without first getting a very powerful wizard character. * The high XP cost of gaining a talent point, the low cost difference between a normal talent like Swimming or Knife versus a master-level talent like Expert Sword, combined with the high costs of higher attributes, the invitation to GMs to award any amount of XP and not have it be related to doing anything in particular in the game, and the common orientation of new players from other games towards "getting to the end" of character development and constant gratification by steady character improvements, does seem like it will tend to end up with some confused players and/or weird situations, which seems unfortunate to me. * The issues with magic item bloat are as in the original game, and take restraint and/or experienced GMs to avoid. Basically, there are several types of magic items the power of which can easily dwarf the differences between different levels of human ability. If these are at all common and available in a game, they tend to be what determines who can kill whom, more than attribute levels do. And that has some effects that I and my friends didn't like much, because we liked having characters and their differences be important and relevant, not what magic items someone had. And, because of the general way loot works - if some NPC has a magic item, the PCs kill them and take it and use it or sell it and buy other powerful gear with it. If a PC will magic items die, they take their magic gear and use it. This tends to mean ever-increasing amounts of magic gear and/or wealth unless the party gets wiped out or captured and/or all their magic stolen. * There is one welcome new tool for limiting that in Legacy Edition, though, which is the adjusted rules for lightning destroying magic items.