Final tweaks on talents

[zot]

Originally Posted by Rick_Smith

Hi Skarg,
I did say "In my campaign" so I felt it was clear that this was a house rule.

As for the question, "Is non-lethal damage different from lethal damage?" I always assumed they were different. The rules don't spell this out. (And they likely won't in the new TFT. SJ dislikes writing rules that tightly.. it takes up too much space and reads like a law book.)

As for exhaustion not killing you, I did mention that I've seen it played both ways. As well as exhaustion not killing you being more logical, it is also, by far, more often played that way that exhaustion + damage kills you. (And I've seen a lot of TFT campaigns over the years.)

But anyway, that was part of a discussion saying that there are two common ways to play it. But that was outside the 4 types of damage in old TFT.

Warm regards, Rick.

To my reading, there are only 3 types of damage in old TFT that need to be tracked separately: wounds, fatigue, and exposure (and exposure damage becomes normal wounds once you are out of the wilderness). The damage inflicted using the "Taking Prisoners" rules appears to be normal wounds -- I don't see any indication that the damage recovers differently from normal wounds.

[larsdangly]

In an effort to nudge this thread back on track, I offer another case where I think some tidying up is called for: Alertness.

The Alertness talent has a simple description and function - it sounds like you get a 1 die advantage for pretty much all attempts to notice things. Yet the Detect Traps talent specifies that Alertness does not 'stack' with it - rather, Detect Traps is a kind of focused version of Alertness, specifically for traps. In my mind, this raises the question of whether Alertness stacks with other things, like the Naturalists' roll to notice ambushes or the Acute Hearing roll to detect things that are not seen. So, setting aside the question of how you might recommend these things work together, I think the talent should be re-written so it is concretely clear how it interacts with all other talents of the same general type.

[Skarg]

I know many people play such that it takes wounds (not fatigue + wounds) greater than or equal to ST to kill someone.

I think that's a logical and good thing, and would love to see it explained as such in the new rules. However I also think it's very clear that is not what the rules say. I'd be happy if they did, but now would be the time to have several people suggest that to SJ on the main thread, or else I expect it may be just as it always has been. (That's why I'm taking the time to point this out.)

e.g.

Wizard page 2 says that while spell fatigue represents something other than injury, it has exactly the same effect as injury.

The combat example says Krait (ST 8) dies from a 3-point wound on top of 6 fatigue.

Advanced Melee page 22 says "A figure dies when its ST is reduced to 0 or less, by wounds or by any other means."

(A couple of places make an odd point about how you'd probably want to distinguish fatigue from injury when you note it during combat. Probably? That always seemed like a strange thing to have to suggest (since clearly they're different, and recover very differently), but it would be especially weird if it made a huge difference to whether someone was dead or just wounded.)

Does anyone see any published rule suggesting that fatigue doesn't contribute to death?

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by Jim Kane

As a figure is *immediately* rendered unconscious at ST 1, a figure which goes unconscious can no loner incur fatigue which would theoretically push them to ST 0; and death. Fatigue hits which would push a figure beyond ST 1 are simply ignored, as the state of unconscious has already been reached.

Therefore, logically, it should be impossible to literally "work yourself to death", or, "drop dead from exhaustion" in TFT.

Looks to me like you could die in TFT when you lose 2 ST upon snapping out of a berserk state... if you had been at exactly 2 ST before that.

Originally Posted by JLV

And, the rules in Melee and Wizard are explicitly supposed to be Arena combat and (as Steve stated elsewhere) the difference between death and unconsciousness is irrelevant since the fight is over one way or the other...whereas in ITL, the difference is much more important and dictates whether your party leaves your cold meat on the floor (after presumably looting you body, of course), or struggles to get you someplace safe where you can heal.

It is more important in ITL.

But the distinction between death & unconsciousness is quite important in basic Melee & Wizard, unless you are only playing "one-off" arena combats. Surviving to continue to later combats and gain experience adds an interesting and compelling layer of play to those games. Only the "to the death" arena matches allow killing unconscious opponents (unless they knocked themselves out by casting a spell), and if there are multiple figures on a side, the defeated side likely wouldn't even have that opportunity.

[larsdangly]

This is all very interesting, but could you please bring it somewhere else? The discussion of wound and recovery rules is totally orthogonal to the purpose and other posts in this thread, and its hard to see us having a useful discussion if everyone who comes here finds a different conversation going on.

[JLV]

Another Talent that I find ambiguous is Literacy. It's either too much or too little. As it currently stands, it seems more an IQ point waster than anything else and the Talent as written makes no sense whatsoever.

In real life, Literacy is based on two different issues -- one is knowing the words of the language, and the other is knowing the alphabet (or other symbology) of the language. At a minimum, Literacy should be required for EACH language separately. As it is currently written, it can be read either way, but most people seem to think that learning Literacy gives them Literacy in ALL languages.

If we presume that every language, everywhere on Cidri, all use the same alphabet or symbology system, that would be a good ruling. However, if any language has it's own symbol system (say Mandarin, or Arabic, or Runes), then Literacy would then have to be taken for each symbol system separately.

So really, what I'm saying is that half the language system (the symbol system used by a particular language) is left out of the game, and Literacy should be required for EACH symbol system, not each Language.

Then, in order to actually be "literate" in a language, the character must know both the language itself, AND be Literate in the symbol system used by that language.

Of course, that may be much more detail than Steve wants to get into, but perhaps there is some elegant way to make it work that escapes me at this point. Or maybe he just needs to clarify that to be Literate in a language, the character must first learn the language and then learn Literacy for that language (it's technically wrong, but it's more correct than learning Literacy makes you literate in every language).

[larsdangly]

I agree with that. I think literacy should provide you with the ability to read and write any language you KNOW, and that there should be some additional mechanism for spending talent points to learn languages, perhaps with one or more provided for free when your character is created.

[Jim Kane]

JLV - From the talent description: "LITERACY (1): Ability to *read and write* all the languages *that you know*. An illiterate figure can't read or draw any but the simplest maps, and an illiterate wizard can't use scrolls or magic books! This talent costs only 1 IQ point for either a hero or a wizard." - TFT:ITL, page 12; under IQ 8 Talents.

I interprete the phrase: [I]*Read and Write*[I] to mean spoken and symbolic. Also the phrase: *that you know* to mean a character must take the Literacy Talent one time for each language they wish to be fluent with; with each specific language listed on their character sheet.

Therefore, by my long-held interpretation, a Character who wishes to be Literate in 3 specific languages (both spoken and written), such as: 1. Common Human Tongue, 2. Orcish, and 3. Dwarvish, would pay a total of: 3 x (1) = 3 IQ to have these three languages at their disposal, both in the spoken word and with symbolic writing of those languages.

Perhaps I am just so used to that methodology from so many other games of the day, so perhaps that is why I am not seeing the ambiguity in the text which you are seeing, or the improperly-scaled benefit, or, have I missed your point completely?

JK

[Nils_Lindeberg]

Originally Posted by JLV

In real life, Literacy is based on two different issues -- one is knowing the words of the language, and the other is knowing the alphabet (or other symbology) of the language. At a minimum, Literacy should be required for EACH language separately. As it is currently written, it can be read either way, but most people seem to think that learning Literacy gives them Literacy in ALL languages.

I 100% disagree. :-) Learning to speak a language is huge compared to learning how to write it. I can't even imagine trying to learn a language without learning letters, symbols, etc, if I already know how to read that is.

The more alien the language the harder it is and that includes the written version of it. Sure you could divide it into several groups, but why? This is TFT. You basically know 5 things when you start a career and you want more than one to be literacy? Do you know anyone that can read their own language well, and knows how to speak another language and don't know that literacy system?

I would rather go the other way and include more in the language bit. Like language, common native current culture knowledge, literacy and maybe cultural history thrown in for 1 talent point. Enhanced if you are a scholar of course. :-)

Nah, leave different alphabets and symbols for systems that have a higher granularity. If a new dialect cost 1, a new sibling language cost 3 a strange language cost 6 and an alien language cost 10 points. Then it might be worth it to add 1 for a new alphabet, and 2 for a new symbol system and maybe 3 for a symbol systems that is completely alien to us. KISS.

[Rick_Smith]

Originally Posted by larsdangly

In an effort to nudge this thread back on track, I offer another case where I think some tidying up is called for: Alertness.

The Alertness talent has a simple description and function - it sounds like you get a 1 die advantage for pretty much all attempts to notice things. Yet the Detect Traps talent specifies that Alertness does not 'stack' with it - rather, Detect Traps is a kind of focused version of Alertness, specifically for traps. ...

Hi Larsdangly,
In my campaign, Alertness helps you find traps. If you have Detect Traps, they stack together. It only seemed sensible.

Warm regards, Rick.