Alternate Talent pricing for math heads

[namada]

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[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by Vaevictis Asmadi

DX [20/lv]
>Reflex [5/lv]
>DX! [15/lv]
>>Agility [5/lv]
>>Manual Dexterity [10/lv]

If you're going to go there, then you might as well price DX! at [20] per level.

Originally Posted by Vaevictis Asmadi

IQ
>Per [5/lv]
>Will [5/lv]
>IQ! [20 or 25/lv]
>>Reasoning [5 or 10/lv]
>>Social Intelligence [5 or 10/lv]
>>Wits [5/lv]
>>Memory [5/lv]

Pair this with skills at [2] per +1 and you got a whole new functioning setup.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Xplo

Proposed new Talent cost: number of skills ^ .5 * 2. Keep the 5-point cost floor if players would abuse its absence. This makes Talents with up to five skills cost the same as the alternate costs in Power-Ups 3 and then fall behind. Raise IQ to 25 points/level to better reflect its true value.

Why not a slightly more complex formula, scuh as 4 + (N^0.5), round up, where N is the number of skills? Or something similar, but where you add a linear component to the cost. If tweaked right, it might be a more elegant way to achieve your desired floor.

(Personally, if I was to revise GURPS, I'd raise the minimum cost of Talents to 6, and have four tiers: 6, 9, 12 and 15 CP/lvl. And raise both DX and IQ to 25 CP/lvl. But fortunately, I don't have to do that.)

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Not

Since talents are a way of discounting skills bought in bulk, which runs against the grain of GURPS' general way of doing business, I'm inclined simply not to allow talents other than those listed in the book. The text suggests a sports talent, but to me that's just DX.

Er, sorry to be down on your idea.

The reality is that many GMs desire for players to buy Talents, because the alternative to Talent is to buy up IQ and/or DX, and Talents make for more fpcused, more themed, characters, whereas just high IQ (or high DX, or both) gives the character a non-individualzied generlaist "sense" or theme.

Raise IQ, you optimize your character for half the skills in the entire freakin' game. Or raise DX, to optimize your character for the other half of the skills.

Optimizing isn't wrong, of course. If you believe that, someone ought to confiscate your GMing license. But broad optimization is less interesting than somewhat narrower optimization. Which again is more interesting than very narrow optimization.

GURPS' solution, which I find frighteningly stupid, is "Talents".

My solution is sub-Attributes based on observable understandable functions.

Both empowers players to perform the desired breath - intermediate - of optimization. Sweet spot type optimization. Leading to potentailly interesting (and possibly high-competence) characters. It's just, one of them I can't stomach, while the other one works very well and facilitates roleplaying.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Sunrunners_Fire

Demanding your GM justify its' house-rules isn't necessarily the smartest of things to do.

If the GM is broken, walk away. don't spend hours, or years, on trying to fix something that cannot be fixed.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Xplo

Magic has, what, something like 650 spells? That'd be about 50/level as a Talent.

Why should the setting norm be unLimited Magery anyway?

You know I have a lot of issues with GURPS, but one of them is that One-College Magery is overprised relative to unLimited Magery, and as such fails to sufficiently strongly encourage players to create mages with "themed" Magery instead of mages with generalist potential. When it costs just a little extra, it's very, very tempting to opt for full Magery instead of One-College.

Why not do away with unLimited Magery, and instead offer College Talents?

And - one of my pet peeves - College Category Talents? Ones like Elementalist Magic and Nature Magic, each containing 3-6 Colleges depending on what fits the theme?

[Sunrunners_Fire]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

If the GM is broken, walk away. don't spend hours, or years, on trying to fix something that cannot be fixed.

If a given player wouldn't enjoy playing with a given group/GM, then ... I agree. The player should find a different group/GM that they would enjoy playing with. It is a hobby. We do this in our spare time to entertain ourselves. There is no sense spending your happy-fun time doing something that isn't.

Sometimes this means the group dissolves. Sometimes this mean the player never gets to play. Such is life.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Vaevictis Asmadi

I like the idea of greater/broader "aptitude" talents to represent subsets of IQ and DX. I was thinking the other day about just what those two attributes represent, and how they could be broken down into secondary attributes. It would certainly be nice to be able to buy them up or down independently.

IQ: Perception, Will, Reasoning (problem-solving), Social (social intelligence), Memory, Cunning, Wits (quick-thinking), Spatial (spatial reasoning), Experience (breadth and depth of life experience, education)

DX: Agility (gross motor skills, whole-body dexterity), Reflex (raw speed, not endurance speed), Dexterity (manual dexterity, fine motor skills), Flexibility

In Sagatafl, my attempt at "GURPS done right", in much the same way as Multiclass RPG is my attempt at "AD&D done right", and Modern Action RPG started as an attempt at "Feng Shui done right" (but eventually got aborted, with most of the nifty concepts folded into Sagatafl - Flaws, Veteran Traits, Action Points), I've opted for a large number of Primary Attributes, with sub-Attributes as needed (and also some Secondary Attributes, of which only a few are relevant here).

GURPS' DX has been split into Agility and Dexterity.

The Dexterity Attribute has further been split into Combat Dexterity and Manual Dexterity: Combat and everything that isn't combat.

I also have a Balance derived stat, and a Reflexes derives stat.

And a Fleetness stat, which starts as the ratio between Leg Strength and Frame, and is then modified by encumbrance. A sort of effective Agility. If you want to use highly Agility-dependent Skills such as Jumping, Acrobatics, Karate, Dodge or Stealth, you're better off not encumbering yourself with fat, or armour or other heavy gear.

GURPS' IQ has been split into Will, Intelligence, Perception, Charisma, Psyche and Faith.

Psyche is the aptitude for "arcane" magic. Faith is the aptitude for "divine" magic and also affects Luck (if you buy Luck, you get a number of Luck Points based off Faith).

Those two, and Charisma, have no sub-Attributes (Appearance is a separate Secondary Attribute).

Will has sub-Attributes of Resist Pain, Resist Control (i.e. for mind control spells), Resist Manipulation (for resisting social skills) and Resist Fear.

Resist Pain will probably be split out into its own more coarse-grained "tiered" train, tiers such as Low Pain Threshold, Normal Pain Threshold, High Pain Threshold and Very High Pain Threshold, with cost based on Will, but that hasn't happened yet (the idea is that it then simply defines a degree of pain that you can ignore, e.g. you might be able to ignore +1 RD worth of Pain, but anything above that affects you fully, or you might be able to ignore +4 RD worth of pain, but +5 or worse affects you fully - simpler and more elegant than having to make a crapton of Resist Pain rolls to see how much the ongoing pain impairs you right now).

Resist Fear can have sub-sub-Attributes pertaining to resisting specific kinds of fear-inducers, such as Dragons or Undead. Those are acquired traits, however, meant to be the result of previous exposure, rather than something biological that you were fortunate enough to be born with.

(Constitution also splits up into the main sub-Attributes of Resist Disease and Resist Poison, and these too can have sub-sub-Attributes when necessary, e.g. if your character has become almost completely immune to one or more major (or trivial) diseases due to past infection, or if he has built up resistance over time to a particular substance, such as alcohol or a common assassin's poison. There's also a Recovery sub-Attribute, representing healing speed, which does not have any "sub-subs" (although it's theoretically possible to add them, e.g. if one species recovers particularly quickly from bone fracture type Wounds, or if another species recovers particularly slowly from burn damage). Strength, a Secondary Attribute (since it's trainable) naturally splits up into Arm Strength and Leg Strength.)

Perception has some fairly predictable sub-Attributes, one for each Sense that the character has (Touch is one sense, but has 3 sub-Senses of Temperature, Pressure and Pain, since some types of beings may lack any one or two of those, and also in order to make it more difficult for Illusion Spells to create Touch Sense illusions, and Colour Vision is its own sense - and Night Vision too although that's a bit wonky so I'm not sure what to do with that).

Sagatafl happens to have a mechanic that allows for the simulative distiction between sensory acuity and perceptiveness, but I won't go into that here.

Intelligence, Charisma and Perception each have a special sub-Attribute, called Casual Attribute.

Casual Intelligence and Casual Perception are what's rolled for when the character isn't alert and hasn't got reason to be suspicious. When the character feels safe and doesn't know that he's adventuring.

Casual Charisma is what you use when you first meet someone and an Impression Roll is made, but where you don't want to be seen to be too friendly, e.g. because it could cause an unfavourable Reputation if you are seen treating slaves as Human beings. Or as being nice to pagans or Orcs, or whatever. When making an Impression on people whom you are not afraid to smile to and so forth, you use full Charisma.

Normally Casual Attributes are 2 lower than the "base/parent" Attribute (the equivalent of 5 lower in GURPS, or maybe 4), but each of them can be 1 higher if the character is born with the relevant Genius Trait, and can also be 1 higher if the character has had the relevant binary training skill.

So ignoring sub-Attributes of Intelligence, which I'll get to shortly, you can have one character who has Intelligence 6 but Casual Intelligence 4, and another who has Intelligence 5 and Casual Intelligence 5. The first will seem smarter when he applies himself, but the second is a bit harder to fool by con artists and other tricksters.

There's also two less important Secondary Attributes, Face Control and Vocal Control, representing fine control over the facial musculature (avoiding to show "tells", and actively projecting the mood that one wants to fake), and the ability to produce precise sounds and noises.

Intelligence has a lot of sub-Attributes, and like all the ones above, they always pertain to a function, to the potential for a function (doing general thing X, or understanding objective phenoemon Y), rather than to some more or less arbitrary category (Plants):

Interpersonal-, Linguistic-, Logical-, Mnemonic-, Musical-, Mystical-, Spatial Intelligence, and also Thinking Speed.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

Intelligence has a lot of sub-Attributes, and like all the ones above, they always pertain to a function, to the potential for a function (doing general thing X, or understanding objective phenoemon Y), rather than to some more or less arbitrary category (Plants):

Interpersonal-, Linguistic-, Logical-, Mnemonic-, Musical-, Mystical-, Spatial Intelligence, and also Thinking Speed.

The last can be useful in differentiating characters:

Imagine a genius scientist. Intelligence 6 (that's typical of university professors). But he's not very perceptive, at Perception 4 (merely above aveage), and he's "quite Casual" (Casual Intelligence 4, Casual Perception 2).

Since the player creating him wanted to save a few points, and didn't have adventuring in mind, he opted to dump Lingustic Intelligence by 3, and also Thinking Speed by 3 (since TS doesn't affect how fast you do science, but only how quickly you "think on your feet").

This guy isn't particularly resistant against cons and swindlers (e.g. someone trying to get him to say certain specific words, so they can be recorded to fool a voice ID machine, as in the movie "Sneakers") and his Casual Perception is only slightly better than that of an average Human (who has Perception 3, Casual 1). His linguistic Intelligence of 3 matches that of an average person, but motivationally he's very unlikely to bother to learn foreign Langauges since it's much faster for him to learn skills not dependent on Linguistic Intelligence (such as science skills), and this character motivation is matched 1:1 by player motivation due to Skill Point costs (science skills cost less than Language skills).

His merely average Thinking Speed also impacts his Reflexes derived stat, and his ability to use skills such as Bluff (social) and Feint (combat).

Now imagine a bright spy. He's not as bright as the scientist, at a mere Intelligence 5 (he can only barely qualify for Mensa), but he's perceptive too at 5, and he's natively bright and perceptive, increasing both Casual Intelligence and Perception by 1. Furthermore spy training school has made him more perceptive still, but hasn't trained his mind much (it probably would have, if his Intelligence has been lower), so his Casual Perception is 5 and his Casual Intelligence is 4.

His Linguistic Intelligence is unmodified from the parent attribute, so at 5 he finds it fairly easy to learn foreign Languages, even to a high level of proficiency. The Language skills themselves, representing vocabulary size and grammar, are based mainly on Linguistic Intelligence (with a bit of Will - let's assume both guys are Will 4, here), while the tiered binary skills to represent pronounciation are influenced in part by Linguistic Intelligence and in part by Vocal Control. Assuming this spy is slightly gifted in terms of Vocal Control, at 4, he'll find it easy to achieve Fluency in foreign languages, so that he can pass as a native (for added fun, we could make the scientist partially Colour Blind, to muck up his potential for learning the Disguies skill!).

And it it particularly typical of individuals with high Thinking Speed to gravitate towards (field) espionage and other adventurer-like professions, so it's reaonable to make the spy guy Thinking Speed 6 (a +1 relative to the parent Attribute). His Reflexes are likely to be very good, meaning he'll probably get to act first in most combat Rounds, and combined with a good intellect he'll be able to easily learn skills such as Bluff (or Feint).

I know which of those two I'd rather have with me in a lab. And which one I'd rather be adventuring with (or send adventuring without me going along).

And both are 100% understandable and analyzable from an in-character in-world point of view, since they don't have bizarre metagame object-category-based traits such as Green Thumb or Animal Friend.

(If you want to make an expert gardener in Sagatafl, you want to buy up Colour Vision - that's why he's good with plants; other characters can understand that, and if they can deduce that he's good at discerning between colours then they can use that as a basis for further assumptions. And there's no way to optimize for animal skills in particular. Sagatafl actually had Animal Intelligence once upon a time, but I dumped that sub-Attribute exactly because it failed the criteria, because ti was too much like a stupid metagame GURPS Talent. If you want to optimize your character as an animal trainer, you raise Intelligence, Perception and Will, maybe a little bit of Charisma too, and that will optimize you for a wide range of Skills).

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by johndallman

I have seen homebrew RPGs that went this route. It gets too complicated. Part of this is because there's a lot of scope for disagreement over which sub-traits are relevant to an action; there is often scope for using different ones in different ways.

Can you provide some examples of that?



In Sagatafl, most rolls are for Skills, and each Skill is fixedly based on the weighted average of some Attribute and sub-Attributes.

A Language Skill is based on 5 parts Intelligence and 2 parts Will, with the Intelligence being 100% weighted for the Linguistic Intelligence sub-Attribute. This means that if your Linguistic Intelligence sub-Attribute is 7 (far above average) you just use that, without needing to know what your base Intelligence is.

Most Science skills are 4 parts Intelligence (usualy 100% Logical Intelligence), 2 parts Will and 1 part Perception, With the Perception often being 100% or 25% Colour Vision. If it's 25% then you take 25% of the difference between raw Perception and Colour Vision, and apply that.

Social Skills are often some combination of Intelligence (Interpersonal and/or Thinking Speed), Perception and Charisma, with a bit of Will or Vocal Control or Face Control.

Thief Skills are usually some combination of Dexterity (Manual Dexterity) and Intelligence (often Spatial), with a bit of Will, or maybe more Agility-based. Depends on what kind of Thief Skill is it.

Raw Attribute and sub-Attribute rolls are meant to occur during play, but I think the various Attributes and subs are pretty well defined, and if one is still in doubt, one can study the Skill Aptitudes and use inductive logic.

For instance, if you're not sure about how Agility differs from Dexterity, you can look at skills that are heavily Agility-based such as Dodge, Dancing, Acrobatics, Jumping, Stealth, and at ones that are heavily Dexterity-based such as Pickpocket, Lockpicking, Sword and Archery, while ignoring those that use both Attributes (Climbing, Karate, Judo) except in those cases where it's 1/7 of one and 3/7 or more of the other, because then it should still be pretty clear.