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Old 09-30-2018, 09:35 AM   #41
RobW
 
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Default Re: IQ rise and talents

Quote:
Originally Posted by larsdangly View Post
I guess I'm glad I raised the topic because there is a lot of uncertainty in people's minds. But the correct approach using the new edition seems very clear to me: After character creation your IQ score has no bearing on how many points worth of talents or spells you know.
Yes, before reading this thread I had assumed unspent IQ points could be spent after character creation (or after raising IQ attribute). But after reading this thread, I agree the RAW don't allow this.

Quote:
Originally Posted by TippetsTX
back in the day it was not uncommon to have 1 or 2 IQ left over after initial character creation that the player was saving for a more 'expensive' talent to be earned after some adventuring... like Fencing. Now you are telling me that those points are lost? No thank you.
My reaction is the same!

My memory is that SJ proposed these changes in the context of the pain of limited talents due to IQ and the difficulties of "forgetting" talents to free up brain space. And in this respect the changes are a BIG improvement, one of my favorites in the new edition.

But it seems to me that allowing figures to "fill up" their IQ, not just at character creation, but at any time, is not problematic. (A) I don't see any great potential for abuse. (B) Since there are no forgetting rules, you don't have to worry about PCs swapping their talents around. (C) It allows some limited funneling and makes it easier for players to plans for their character's future development. Basically, what's the harm???
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Old 09-30-2018, 10:01 AM   #42
Skarg
 
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Default Re: IQ rise and talents

My original TFT players were eagerly planning what their characters would learn, a long time in advance, and where to get abilities was an entertaining part of that.

If you can't even learn one talent point during play without spending as much XP as will bring you from 32 to 35 points (and that's an either/or choice), that seems like a rather weird and unappealing shift, to me.
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Old 09-30-2018, 10:14 AM   #43
larsdangly
 
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Default Re: IQ rise and talents

I don't think there would be any harm in permitting people to spend unspent points after character creation; I'm just saying that isn't a Legacy edition rule. But if you wanted to 'house rule' it you could. The new rule system is indistinguishable from one in which you have a 'talent/spell point' pool that starts equal to your IQ, grows at a rate of 500 XP per point, and can be doled out to buy spells and talents at the same rates as applied during character creation. If you just said that then the issue would be fully addressed.
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Old 09-30-2018, 10:16 AM   #44
larsdangly
 
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Default Re: IQ rise and talents

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Originally Posted by Skarg View Post
My original TFT players were eagerly planning what their characters would learn, a long time in advance, and where to get abilities was an entertaining part of that.

If you can't even learn one talent point during play without spending as much XP as will bring you from 32 to 35 points (and that's an either/or choice), that seems like a rather weird and unappealing shift, to me.
To be fair, I would guess that the number of PC's spending their first few hundred XP on IQ so that they could learn new talents was always pretty low. The new rules lead to characters who experience an initial blossoming of native abilities (stats), which then settle in at whatever they are like around 38-40, and then the long game of shaping the spells and skills they know sets in.
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Old 09-30-2018, 10:41 AM   #45
Skarg
 
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Default Re: IQ rise and talents

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Originally Posted by larsdangly View Post
To be fair, I would guess that the number of PC's spending their first few hundred XP on IQ so that they could learn new talents was always pretty low. The new rules lead to characters who experience an initial blossoming of native abilities (stats), which then settle in at whatever they are like around 38-40, and then the long game of shaping the spells and skills they know sets in.
It was more like the fighters, who would generally start with IQ 8 or 9 so they could have an edge as fighters, were actually in a fair hurry to not be IQ 8-9, and to have some interesting ability other than killing things. And they may not have spent all their IQ/talent points to start. Often our fighters were interested in adding some non-combat talents during play, often in reaction to getting into their character and the game world situation and seeing a desire (or even serious game-situation need) to have some talents they didn't start out with. Such as horsemanship, swimming, detect traps, animal handling, woodsman, training that the military they joined required them to learn, new spells, even carpentry.

My memory is this interest started out quite early in play, and was a concern in the period when PCs were in the 32-35 point range, which was a fun time and as far as many PCs made it. So if it's 400 XP to 35 attributes, or 500 XP to add even one talent point after play starts, it just seems really weird, also because it seems like getting to 35-36 points makes someone rather more capable than most people in the world, yet the effort to get there is comparable to learning a talent or spell, and in competition with it for how XP is spent.

So although it wouldn't be my ideal system, keeping the old ability to learn talents and spells by (playing out the training time/circumstances at least in a token way and) allocating new or old unused IQ/talent points, would address that issue in the steep shift in the XP curve to add talents versus the fixed XP cost to add talents.
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Old 09-30-2018, 10:44 AM   #46
TippetsTX
 
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Default Re: IQ rise and talents

Quote:
Originally Posted by larsdangly View Post
To be fair, I would guess that the number of PC's spending their first few hundred XP on IQ so that they could learn new talents was always pretty low. The new rules lead to characters who experience an initial blossoming of native abilities (stats), which then settle in at whatever they are like around 38-40, and then the long game of shaping the spells and skills they know sets in.
Except now with the addition of advanced weapons talents beyond Fencing, I can absolutely see more emphasis on building up a character's IQ on pace with the necessary physical stats to earn them.
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Old 09-30-2018, 11:28 AM   #47
platimus
 
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Default Re: IQ rise and talents

There are 3 things I seem to be hearing.

1)I want to use the old IQ-point buy system for talents and spells.
Answer: OK. Do it. I think you'll want to adjust the new XP costs for raising stats to do it though.

2)I want to use the old system AND the new system.
Answer: That seems like cheating to me unless you adjust the new XP costs for raising stats to be somewhat equal to the XP costs of learning talents/spells.

3)I want my players to declare what talents/spells they are planning to buy in advance of actually getting them. And I want them to have to find sources to learn these things. Sources like teachers, books, scrolls, etc.
Answer: OK. Do it. No problems there.

#1 and #2 seem to have the same solution or require the same adjustments so I present the following:

Added attribute point / XP cost
33 / 200
34 / 400
35 / 600
36 / 800
37 / 1200
38 / 2000
39 / 3000
40 / 5000
41st and later doubles

Talent(1) costs 400XP
Talent(2) costs 800XP
Talent(3) costs 1200XP

If I were taking path #1 or #2 above, these costs adjustments seem acceptable. You may notice that the cost of going from a 32-point character to a 35-point character (3-point increase) is the same as the cost of a 3-point Talent. I wonder if these cost adjustments would appease anyone that is upset about the new system where IQ-points (IQ slots as I like to call them) are not used after character creation?

Last edited by platimus; 09-30-2018 at 11:46 AM.
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Old 09-30-2018, 11:50 AM   #48
Skarg
 
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Default Re: IQ rise and talents

Thanks Platimus. Good proposal.

Comments:

* What I'll actually do will probably be a house rule. I'm mainly posting comments on this out of concern for new players getting something weirdly not what the old TFT offered. I'm trying to express what I think is amiss mainly for their sake, and also because ideally I'd like TFT's official new version to be as good as possible.

* On point 2), I prefer using both to only using 400-500XP talent points, and I don't see it as cheating, but as the 500 XP being something that represents how great amounts of experience can push the normal limits of what most people learn. So it seems ok to me at 500 XP, but not as a replacement of the normal way people learn talents, by just studying them, because probably a lot of people don't max out their IQ, or they only need to spend 100 XP to get a little more IQ-as-life-experience.

* I much prefer your XP curve to the one in the current PDF. But I prefer even more something like the last XP curve SJ posted to the Experience thread, which was:

33 & below: 100
34: 300
35: 700
36: 1500
37: 2700
38: 4300
39: 6300
40: 9300

(I would also allow 41+ at an increasing cost, but I don't think it needs to double each point to be prohibitive-enough, and think it probably shouldn't double each point because that leads to ridiculous numbers and making the GM look fishy if he makes an NPC like even the newly-reduced Tollenkar.)

This lets 32-point or lower characters get up to a reasonable/normal 33 with 100 XP/point.

It also achieves what I would really want, which is having most campaigns have lots of characters in the 32-36 point range for a good long time, and 37-40 being the most experienced people. (I think the new system is fast-track to 36, and 37-38 not so hard, which doesn't leave much time in the sweet spot, nor much differentiation between the longer-surviving characters.)
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Old 09-30-2018, 12:11 PM   #49
JLV
 
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Default Re: IQ rise and talents

In the past, I've proposed a "talent cost" of something like (35XP x IQ Level x Talent "difficulty number") as a possible solution to this "pricing" problem. Simultaneously it does a couple of things; it makes simpler and lower IQ talents cheaper to acquire (an IQ 7 talent with a (1) after it totals 245 XP), and the more complex, higher IQ talents more expensive (an IQ 16 talent with a (3) after it totals 1680 XP) -- which seems a lot more reasonable in that the costs probably SHOULD scale with the difficulty and intellectual requirements of the talent. That way, Talents that beginning characters can learn become just about as appealing as the Attribute add -- especially if we use Platimus' Attribute XP requirements instead of the ones listed in the book. Thus, it would cost a Wizard 490 XP to learn Sword, but if we agree with the game world rationale that Wizards find it harder to master physical skills, that's not an insurmountable total, and is far better than the 1000 it would cost them in the RAW.

Spells would work the same way, except that the XP cost would be, say, (50XP x IQ level of the Spell), so a Level 8 spell would cost a wizard 400 XP and a non-wizard 1200 XP -- which seems about right to me given the general conviction that learning a spell is not a trivial exercise. An IQ 16 spell would cost the Wizard 800 XP and the non-Wizard 2400 XP to learn.

Obviously you could vary the baseline XP costs in these formulas to give you the exact "feel" you want for acquiring talents and spells in terms of XP. Additionally, if you as the GM, want to put some other constraints on the learning process (you need to "study" the talent or spell for a number of weeks equal to the IQ level of the talent/spell x the "difficulty" of the talent/spell (though spells are always difficulty (1) in the RAW) in order to be allowed to expend your XP on it; and you can "study" up to three things at one time), then, hey, it's your game and you can do it however you want to. In fact, if you think the XP cost to learn a spell is too low, but don't want to fiddle with the baseline XP number, just increase the "difficulty" of learning a spell from (1) to (2) or (3) and hey presto, magic spells are way tougher (and potentially more time consuming) to learn than they were before.

In short, it's easy to fiddle with the numbers if you don't like the ones in the books, and create exactly the level of complexity and constraint that you feel is right for your campaign. At the end of the day, that's what all of us do anyway...
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Old 09-30-2018, 12:14 PM   #50
platimus
 
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Default Re: IQ rise and talents

Thanks, Skarg. You're a gentleman and a scholar!

I really don't have opinions on your house-rules...yet. :) If and when I do form some, I'll keep them to myself unless they are flattering :)

I already agree with you on the "41st and later" costs (I felt that way before any convos took place). Using my XP costs above, it would seem sufficient to make every point after 40 cost 5000XP - especially if you MUST spend XP to learn new talents/spells (no entitlements due to IQ increase). What do you think about this little home-rule of mine?
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