02-19-2018, 06:31 PM | #511 | |
Join Date: Apr 2014
Location: Coquitlam B.C.
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Talents are too expensive.
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The question of ways to fix attribute bloat is another issue. Rick |
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02-19-2018, 06:44 PM | #512 |
Join Date: Apr 2014
Location: Coquitlam B.C.
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A way I have seen to fix talent problem.
Hi Everyone,
Years ago, I was visiting in Brandon Manitoba and met a young man who was a big fan of TFT. He was fed up with the high price of talents so he had added a new attribute called Education, which started at 1 for all races. To find the amount of memory that you could spend on talents and spells you MULTIPLIED the Education attribute to the IQ. (So a fighter with an IQ of 10 and 4 Education, could learn 40 memory points worth of talents. A wizard with a 12 IQ and a 6 Education, could learn 72 points of spells and talents.) I was appalled by this design decision. I didn't want to be too negative so I gently suggested that this might make it too easy to get talents. He primly told me that "his players LIKED Education." All PC's in his campaign played wizards. To repeat, I do NOT like this idea, nor do I suggest it for consideration. I just thought it might amuse people. Warm regards, Rick. |
02-19-2018, 06:57 PM | #513 |
Join Date: Apr 2014
Location: Coquitlam B.C.
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Terminology: Coreq.s and Prereq.s
Hi Skarg, everyone.
Yes, this is my terminology, but I introduced it at the top of this thread. Both talents and spells are called prerequisites of each other, but they behaved in different ways. So I made new terminology so I could write rules more precisely. Warm regards, Rick. |
02-19-2018, 07:06 PM | #514 | |
Join Date: Apr 2014
Location: Coquitlam B.C.
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Hard for Heroes to learn spells.
Quote:
Above I made two arguments. One that talents cost too much, and two, that wizards got many advantages over heroes (and that I would prefer for things to be fairer). I replied previously to your point above and said that as the TFT rules are written, that the alien, difficult-to-learn, reality-tearing spells that shatter the laws of physics, are actually easier to learn than talents. However, let me backtrack a bit and say if most of my other suggestions were implemented, I don't have a big problem with wizards learning talents at x2 and heroes learning spells at x3 mIQ cost. Warm regards, Rick. Last edited by Rick_Smith; 02-19-2018 at 08:23 PM. Reason: fixed grammar. |
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02-19-2018, 09:51 PM | #515 | |
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Arizona
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Re: A way I have seen to fix talent problem.
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(And I rather imagine his players DID like it! ;-) ) |
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02-19-2018, 09:59 PM | #516 | |
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Arizona
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Re: Hard for Heroes to learn spells.
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However, I will continue to disagree that Wizards have it too easy. I look at the meta-picture; there are only a few wizards (according to the rules), Wizards are few and far between -- because it's a rare phenomenon to have the ability to handle magic -- which is why non-Wizards have it so much harder (again, according to the rules) learning to manipulate the forces of magic. Given that (again, according to the rules) talents are already very hard to learn (lots of "slots" required), much more so than spells (which only require a single "slot" per spell); doubling the costs for wizards makes sense, and tripling the cost of spells for non-Wizards also makes sense. It's all right there in the rules. If we did away with the slots entirely, I could see changing the cost for Wizards to learn non-Spells to 3x normal cost, but without that, the reasons for the difference are patently obvious in terms of the RAW. |
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02-20-2018, 12:37 AM | #517 | |
Join Date: Jan 2018
Location: Sydney, Australia
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Re: Forgetting Talents --> Very gamey.
Quote:
You could also take your model to extremes. Delete all the attributes and replace them by talents. Fighters hit more often because they've bought higher levels of the fighting talents; they dodge falling boulders if they've bought the agile talent; etc. This has pluses and minuses, but it isn't TFT. Keep going this way you might end up with something vaguely similar to Fate, or not. |
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02-20-2018, 12:57 AM | #518 |
Join Date: Jan 2018
Location: Sydney, Australia
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Re: Hard for Heroes to learn spells.
I ran a game briefly using a third type of character alongside hero and wizard. This was intended to represent:
These characters could buy spells or talents at 125% of list price and cast spells at -1DX. That might seem a pretty good deal but it's about what you need for them to have a decent niche between heroes and wizards. I think there's a few other places in the rules where "wizard" is mentioned explicitly and they had some of those capabilities but not all. |
02-20-2018, 04:49 AM | #519 | |
Join Date: Apr 2014
Location: Coquitlam B.C.
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Generalists are between Heroes and Wizards.
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David your generalist class seems pretty cool. I assume the price of spells (125% fST cost) is rounded UP? Warm regards, Rick. |
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02-20-2018, 09:00 AM | #520 |
Join Date: Dec 2017
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Re: The Fantasy Trip
I view this purely as a purely utilitarian, game-balance issue: In the RAW, ST, DX and IQ exist in a kind of equilibrium - each provides you things you want but can't have unless you invest in raising their scores. Raising each of them by 1 point loosely translates to a similar value in terms of the benefits you gain during combat (although their benefits out of combat differ from each other and are harder to rank order). Each feels quite limiting when less than 10, pretty competent at 15, and increasingly superfluous above 20. Except in special circumstances, none is a 'dump stat', and it is hard to say what distribution of points across the three is ideal.
If you change this balance by increasing or decreasing the value of one attribute without changing the value of the others, I think the game basically breaks straight away. There are just too few degrees of freedom to permit a rule that makes one of the stats obviously and quantitatively the best choice for increases. I can turn a few talent points into a situational +3 DX adjustment (Missile Weapons), a damage bonus (Fencing or Unarmed Combat), armor (Veteran and Warrior), and any number of more subtle benefits. If everyone is allowed to have all of these for a modest investment in IQ, they will obviously take them. That kind of 'grade inflation' seems like a bad move to me. If I were the game designer I wouldn't touch it. |
Tags |
in the labyrinth, melee, roleplaying, the fantasy trip, wizard |
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