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Old 11-09-2020, 05:30 PM   #11
TippetsTX
 
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Default Re: Missile weapons skill for wizards

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Originally Posted by Kieddicus View Post
Wait?! Adding IQ after character creation doesn't give more memory-points? That is really weird (and a little stupid) though after reading the rules it does seem to imply that...
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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Old 11-09-2020, 11:29 PM   #12
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Default Re: Missile weapons skill for wizards

Joe, what math doesn't work out, in what way?
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Old 11-10-2020, 07:38 AM   #13
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Default Re: Missile weapons skill for wizards

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Joe, what math doesn't work out, in what way?
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.
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Old 11-10-2020, 07:42 AM   #14
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Default Re: Missile weapons skill for wizards

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Joe, what math doesn't work out, in what way?
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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Old 11-10-2020, 08:31 AM   #15
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Default Re: Missile weapons skill for wizards

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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.
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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Old 11-10-2020, 08:53 AM   #16
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Default Re: Missile weapons skill for wizards

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Originally Posted by TippetsTX View Post
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.
It's not just buying new talents/spells -- linking initial IQ to skills also has an imbalance. PCs start with different numbers of "skill points", depending on their IQ but changing IQ later doesn't affect skill points. It doesn't make sense.

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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Old 11-10-2020, 09:12 AM   #17
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Default 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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Old 11-10-2020, 09:17 AM   #18
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Default 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!"
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Old 11-10-2020, 12:07 PM   #19
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Default Re: Missile weapons skill for wizards

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Originally Posted by TippetsTX View Post
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.
Ah.

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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Old 11-10-2020, 12:10 PM   #20
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Default Re: Missile weapons skill for wizards

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Originally Posted by Kieddicus View Post
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.
Yes, and this too. It means there's a MASSIVE incentive in Legacy, in terms of XP savings, to start with as high an IQ as you can stand, because every point of IQ "saves" you about 500 XP compared to a character who would try to learn the same talents or spells during play.

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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