We don't need no stinkin' Heros and Wizards

[Chris Rice]

Originally Posted by Jim Kane

I guess I am the odd-man-out on this one.

I have no issues with the character rules for Fighters and Wizards the way they are. In fact, I am very comfortable with the rules as written.

JK

I'm sure there are plenty of folks who feel the way you do Jim and I certainly don't mind the rules as they are. It just seemed simpler and more logical to me to do away with the division between Heroes and Wizards. That always seemed like a remnant from other games. To me, characters in TFT are defined by Attributes and Talents not artificial "classes."

[tbeard1999]

Originally Posted by meteoricshipyards

While playing with some TFT characters, I was fooling around with a Druid. I made him a Wizard gave him some animal control and summoning spells, and was going to give him Animal Handling (2), and Naturalist (2). However, due to talents being twice as expensive as spells to a Wizard, he couldn't afford them. The same with a thief getting the Lock/Knock spell.

So, I was wondering, does anyone have any experience with just doing away with the distinction between Wizards and Heroes?

Gurps did it, although spells were all Difficult (at least) and there was the Magery advantage. I'm not trying to recreate Gurps, but wondering if people tried this and how did it work?

Thanks!

I think that this is best handled as a modification of the standard rules.

But because TFT is so straighforward, a GM could easily create special rules to allow druids.

The easiest way would be to rule that a hero who has certain talents (see below) to take certain druid type spells for 1 talent point and to avoid the -3 DX penalty for heroes casting spells (which I long ago deleted from my campaigns).

Required talents: Naturalist (2), Priest (2), Woodsman (1), Tracking (1)
Allowed spells: Light, Fire, Trailtwister, etc. Staff?
(You could also require Expert Naturalist for spells over a certain IQ level, say IQ 14+. I wouldn't though.)

All other spells cost 3 talent points and talents cost their standard costs.

I don't think that this would unbalance the game. A druid would have to make a considerable investment in talents (6 talent points), before he can cast any spells. If you assume he learns sword and shield, he's spent 9 talent points before he can learn a single spell.

[tbeard1999]

Originally Posted by Jim Kane

I guess I am the odd-man-out on this one.

I have no issues with the character rules for Fighters and Wizards the way they are. In fact, I am very comfortable with the rules as written.

JK

Nope. I am perfectly content with the hero-wizard distinction and see no compelling reason to change it.

Of course, individual GMs can tweak the rules as they see fit.

I would lobby to remove the -4 DX penalty for heroes who cast spells. Paying 3 points for a spell is a high enough cost. (Now, an interesting notion would be to allow heroes to take spells for one talent point each, but be at a -4 DX when casting them. If they take the spell for 3 points, no penalty). Even then, I think the -4DX is too high a penalty, particularly with the 8 point limit on additional attributes.

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by Jim Kane

I guess I am the odd-man-out on this one.

I have no issues with the character rules for Fighters and Wizards the way they are. In fact, I am very comfortable with the rules as written.

I'm comfortable with them too.

Though I don't mind wizards with swords (my first ITL character was one, and I chafed at the IQ cost).

What I'm most concerned about is that with the new EP system proposed by SJ, is that as heroes get powerful and attributes start costing a lot and they run low on talents they want and/or hit the 40-point limit, they'll start taking a bunch of spells. I liked that there was a large impact or limit on heroes having a bunch of spells, and I think there may come a point in the new system where that goes away and we get lots of warriors with Aid, Blur, Illusion, Drop/Break Weapon, Sleep, etc etc, which is a situation change from how TFT played, as would letting heroes take spells for 1 point. As Rick points out with some frequency, 1 point isn't much for a spell, considering what talents cost.

For those thinking maybe to drop the wizard/hero distinction, what are you thinking of charging everyone for spells compared to talents?

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

Nope. I am perfectly content with the hero-wizard distinction and see no compelling reason to change it.

Of course, individual GMs can tweak the rules as they see fit.

Yes.

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

I would lobby to remove the -3 DX penalty for heroes who cast spells. Paying 3 points for a spell is a high enough cost. (Now, an interesting notion would be to allow heroes to take spells for one talent point each, but be at a -3 or -4 DX when casting them. If they take the spell for 3 points, no penalty).

It's -4, and personally I like it because it makes a distinction and somewhat nerfs the still-very-powerful ability of fighters to cast spells. Fighters tend to have good DX anyway, and are often at range 1 to their foes, so being able to win a fight by casting Sleep or Freeze or Break Weapon or Hammertouch is a major coup for a fighter over other things they can do to improve their ability without spells.

[Chris Rice]

"For those thinking maybe to drop the wizard/hero distinction, what are you thinking of charging everyone for spells compared to talents?"

Generally speaking, I don't let characters learn spells unless they have the requisite talent. There are racial differences to this but I don't see why someone would know a random spell. How would they have learned it? If someone really wanted a character that knew a couple of spells and could make a compelling backstory I'd allow it but I'd double the cost.

[JLV]

Originally Posted by Jim Kane

I guess I am the odd-man-out on this one.

I have no issues with the character rules for Fighters and Wizards the way they are. In fact, I am very comfortable with the rules as written.

JK

Umm...not so much. In fact, I'm right there with you on this one, Jim. I think the distinction is just fine; among other things it supports better role-playing in my experience (Wizards have to do things differently from Warriors, and that's just the way it ought to be. Computer programmers do things differently from Green Berets, too.)

[tbeard1999]

Originally Posted by Skarg

Yes.



It's -4, and personally I like it because it makes a distinction and somewhat nerfs the still-very-powerful ability of fighters to cast spells. Fighters tend to have good DX anyway, and are often at range 1 to their foes, so being able to win a fight by casting Sleep or Freeze or Break Weapon or Hammertouch is a major coup for a fighter over other things they can do to improve their ability without spells.

I disagree (about the desirability of retaining the -4 DX adjustment). With the new character generation rules, I think that fighters with adjDX of 13+ will be uncommon. Imposing the -4 DX modifier on a fighter with adjDX 12 will drop his chance of success from 74% to 26%.

Imposing it on a fighter with adjDX14 would drop his success rate from 91% to 50%.

A fighter with adjDX of 10 will drop his success rate from 50% to 9%.

That seems overly punitive, particularly for a spell that costs 3 talent points.

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

I disagree (about the desirability of retaining the -4 DX adjustment). With the new character generation rules, I think that fighters with adjDX of 13+ will be uncommon. Imposing the -4 DX modifier on a fighter with adjDX 12 will drop his chance of success from 74% to 26%.

Imposing it on a fighter with adjDX14 would drop his success rate from 91% to 50%.

A fighter with adjDX of 10 will drop from 50% to 9% chance of success.

Ok, but are you considering what the effects of spells are like compared to non-magical abilities?

e.g.:

Blur (IQ 8) - give your foes -4DX to hit you

Light (IQ 8) - lasts 1 day, practically removes lighting issues

Clumsiness (IQ 9) - gives foe -2DX per 1 point spent, for 3 turns

Aid (IQ 9) - increase your DX by 1 per 1 spent for 2 turns, or lend ST to a wizard who will heal you or your friends up if the new heal spell exists, so you can multiply your party's healing/resting rate

Reveal Magic (IQ 9) - learn the spells/items being used by a foe within 5MH

Fire (IQ 9) - make someone with gunpowder or other flammable positions have a bad day

Darkness (IQ 9) - extinguishes all lights within 1 or more MH for 3 turns

Dark Vision (IQ 9) - dominate in darkness situations

Trip (IQ 10)

Speed Movement (IQ 10) - doubles MA for you or a friend for 4 turns... rather useful

Sleep (IQ 11) - win a fight against any single foe with ST under 20

Illusion (IQ 11)

Reverse Missiles (IQ 11)

Freeze (IQ 12) - win a fight with any single foe under ST 30

Fireball (IQ 12)

Invisibility (IQ 12)

Break Weapon (IQ 12)

Many of these are fight-winners and give an amazing ability over other things a fighter can do with a similar investment in a Talent. They aren't resisted so the chance they work is the casting chance. So yeah I much rather chances more like 26% or 50% rather than 76% or 90%, because that's the chance they overpower having fighters actually fight each other, and replace it with zapping each other with spells.

Let's see, I could take Fencing for 3 learning points, for a somewhat increased chance of sometimes doing double or triple damage, which would make sense for me as a fighter, or for the same 3 learning points (and now, no limit on how many I can take and no long-term reduction in what talents I can get) I could take Freeze and be able to win any single-foe fight if I get my spell off first and they don't have Spell Shield up.

[Rick_Smith]

Originally Posted by meteoricshipyards

... So, I was wondering, does anyone have any experience with just doing away with the distinction between Wizards and Heroes? ...

Hi MeteoricShipyards,
The idea of making it easier to take spells for heroes has come up a fair number of times in this forum.

I like Chris' suggestion of taking a 5 point talent, and then letting people learn spells. (I think that experienced wizards are more powerful than experienced heroes, so wizards having to pay for the privilege of learning spells does not trouble me.)

However, what I would do would be to ask, "do I want to allow non-wizards to pick up an occasional spell?", or "do I just want to make the druid class work?"

If all you want to do is make druids work, house rule a druid class. Some spells are cheaper, some spells can't be learned, these talents cost normal, but talents for the city cost more. What ever you like. It can be balanced, or unbalanced, what ever you want to make druids fun.

If you want to allow people in general to be able to pick up a spell or two, I suggest a variation on Chris' suggestion. People can sacrifice an attribute or two at character write up to gain the ability to user magic.

No sacrifice: normal rules for heroes. spells take triple experience to learn, and spells are cast at -4 DX.

Small sacrifice: Spells take double experience to learn, and spells are cast at -2 DX.

Full sacrifice: You are a wizard and use magic at full power. (but since you sacrificed attributes, you can also learn talents normally.

(I'm being a bit vague here because I'm trying to make these suggestions so that they work with the new TFT, but I don't know the details of how that works.)

Anyway, it is your game. Don't be shy about tweaking some rules to make druids shine.

Warm regards, Rick