11-09-2020, 05:30 PM | #11 |
Join Date: Sep 2018
Location: North Texas
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Re: Missile weapons skill for wizards
Yep, that was a core change in the Legacy rules. I didn't care for it either at first, but the math doesn't work if you try to combine the old and new methods for talent acquisition.
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“No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style.” -Vladimir Taltos |
11-09-2020, 11:29 PM | #12 |
Join Date: May 2015
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Re: Missile weapons skill for wizards
Joe, what math doesn't work out, in what way?
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11-10-2020, 07:38 AM | #13 |
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Boston area
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Re: Missile weapons skill for wizards
I don't know what Joe has in mind, but it seems to me that granting a free skill for every IQ advance gives a great path for wizards to advance more quickly than heroes. Spend the first four hundred points on IQ and get three free spells along the way.
Whether this leads to serious imbalance or not isn't totally obvious, but seems likely to me. |
11-10-2020, 07:42 AM | #14 |
Join Date: Sep 2018
Location: North Texas
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Re: Missile weapons skill for wizards
If you allow IQ increases to 'buy' new talents/spells as per the old rules, you are accepting inconsistent variability in the XP costs for those abilities. Under such a system, a 1-point talent would cost 100, 200 or 300 XP depending upon the order that the player decides to add new attribute points... all of which are considerably cheaper than the default 500 XP outlined in RAW. A real bargain would be putting your first two stat increases into IQ in order to pick up a 2-point talent for the low, low price of 200 XP!
Bottom line, if you want character progression to feel natural and balanced, you probably shouldn't try to combine the Legacy rules with classic TFT assumptions.
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“No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style.” -Vladimir Taltos |
11-10-2020, 08:31 AM | #15 |
Join Date: Oct 2020
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Re: Missile weapons skill for wizards
I don't know, almost feels more awkward to not allow increasing IQ to give memory points, as it causes IQ to have two different values based on when you get it. In the old system you could tell the exact amount of XP a character had spent by looking at their sheet, but in this system 2 identical characters could have different XP values. Which would tempt heroes to spend more of their starting points on IQ, and I don't think that is a good thing.
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11-10-2020, 08:53 AM | #16 | |
Join Date: May 2018
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Re: Missile weapons skill for wizards
Quote:
If you're really shooting for consistency, you should remove the link between initial IQ and skill points, giving all starting PCs the same skill point budget -- maybe 10 skill points. Let the characters purchase more skills with XP as they grow. |
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11-10-2020, 09:12 AM | #17 |
Join Date: Sep 2018
Location: North Texas
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Re: Missile weapons skill for wizards
The obvious incentive to maximize starting IQ is indeed another aspect (unintended consequence?) of this particular Legacy rule change. Personally, I don't like it, but Steve has been clear in his intent that talents and spells are now only acquired from the direct expenditure of XP (500 per skill point).
I chose a different solution for my own game, but we're talking about RAW here.
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“No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style.” -Vladimir Taltos Last edited by TippetsTX; 11-10-2020 at 06:33 PM. |
11-10-2020, 09:17 AM | #18 |
Join Date: Sep 2018
Location: North Texas
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Re: Missile weapons skill for wizards
BTW, here's the clarification that Steve Jackson posted on Discord awhile back...
"Increasing IQ, by itself, does not gain a new spell or talent after character creation. Apparently some people are tying to double-dip by taking the old rule and using it with the new book. That would be a hard NO. It's their game, they can do what they want, but it's not what I meant and it's not how I play!"
__________________
“No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style.” -Vladimir Taltos |
11-10-2020, 12:07 PM | #19 | |
Join Date: May 2015
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Re: Missile weapons skill for wizards
Quote:
Of course, that was the original way TFT IQ increases worked. Having played with that system for years and years, I don't see it as broken. Quite the opposite, I see the new system as very broken, as I've mentioned repeatedly, because what's blatantly inconsistent in the new system is this: * Average non-PCs attributes are 10, total 30. * Below the 35th point, attribute increases cost 100 XP. * To add one talent point costs 500 XP. So to me, that breaks the feature of original TFT that the character improvement system made some sort of sense for non-PCs. That is, if it takes 500 XP to improve a talent point, and people other than PCs can spend XP on increasing attributes rather than learning talents, then the costs seem vastly out of proportion, and it makes little sense that people can ever learn a talent but still the average attribute total is only 30. And of course it also applies to PCs, who now find that it would generally be wildly impractical to learn any talents using XP before first improving their attributes to the point that they're notably more capable people than the general population in terms of attributes. And that's just 1-point talents, quite a few of which seem to me like things that should be rather easier to accomplish than even a +1 increase in attributes. Things like learning to use a knife, crossbow or shield, or to swim or ride a horse. |
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11-10-2020, 12:10 PM | #20 | |
Join Date: May 2015
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Re: Missile weapons skill for wizards
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And it also just kind of makes early game character improvement less interesting, because learning new talents is more or less off the table until the characters become quite experienced. |
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