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Old 10-09-2018, 10:17 PM   #121
platimus
 
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Default Re: IQ rise and talents

Most of the questions in this thread revolve around spells...which is odd because the thread title is "IQ rise and talents"...
1)Can I forget a spell?
2)How long does it take to learn a spell?
3)Where do I go to learn new spells? Where do the new spells come from?
4)Why can't I get a new talent or spell when I increase my IQ?

(1)You don't need to with the XP-buy system. I certainly wouldn't allow forgetting talents.

(2)Perhaps learning a spell is akin to learning to play a particular song on a musical instrument. You can memorize the notes rather quickly but it will take some practice to play them correctly with the right timing. Perhaps it takes a number of days equal to the IQ level of spell? There should be some guidelines about how soon you can learn a spell from a scroll found while adventuring, etc. You shouldn't be able to learn a spell from a scroll you just found just because you already had the XP required.

(3)ITL does discuss being able to learn spells from Wizard's Guilds, books, and scrolls but it never specifically says that one must visit or obtain one of these things to learn a spell. Maybe it should. Or maybe it's deliberately left open for you to house-rule.

(4)Hmm. This is the most illogical expectation in the world to me. I know it was there in old ITL but it was so weird to me. In fact, I thought maybe my old copy of old ITL was missing some pages or something until someone confirmed that raising your IQ automatically entitled you to a new talent or spell. I can't overstate this: Does Not Make Sense To Me. If you drank a potion that raised your IQ, would you expect to suddenly know a new spell or talent? I think not. Raising your IQ should only make you ready to learn something, not automatically fill your head with knowledge. With the XP-buy system, we have our explanation: You learned it in your "off-time" while adventuring and acquiring the XP to buy it. That seems to work just fine for talents and spells you already had access to. This brings us back to #3. There should definitely be guidelines on where the knowledge of a new talent/spells comes from.

Summary:
If you throw out #4, #1 becomes irrelevant. #2 needs to be answered in the rules for spells. #3 needs to be answered in the rules for spells and talents. My hope is that getting the answers to #2 and #3 would alleviate some of the demands for #4. I think some adjustments to the XP costs of raising stats (and possibly talents/spells) would also be required to quell most complaints about #4. As has been pointed out, a starting character with enough XP (500) to learn a new talent or spell could raise stats 3 times with the same amount of XP (500). Talents and spells are often more valuable than 2 points of stats in this game but 3 points of stats seems to be pushing it. Perhaps XP costs like this would be a solution:
33rd (1st) -- 100XP
34th (2nd) -- 200XP
35th (3rd) -- 300XP
36th (4th) -- 400XP
(the rest could stay the same)

Last edited by platimus; 10-09-2018 at 11:09 PM.
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Old 10-09-2018, 10:18 PM   #122
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Default Re: IQ rise and talents

Quote:
Originally Posted by hcobb View Post
I.e. IQ is of reduced value in the new TFT. However I think it is about balanced now.

Heroes need to roll 8 dice it'll be against IQ, but an 8 die roll for a wizard would usually be against DX.
Ah. Thanks. Makes sense now. Except for the part about 8 dice???

EDIT
Oh, I think I gotcha now. (If) Heroes need to roll 8 dice it'll (usually) be against IQ, but an 8 die roll for a wizard would usually be against DX.

Last edited by platimus; 10-10-2018 at 08:17 AM.
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Old 10-10-2018, 08:38 AM   #123
TippetsTX
 
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Default Re: IQ rise and talents

Quote:
Originally Posted by platimus View Post
(4)Hmm. This is the most illogical expectation in the world to me. I know it was there in old ITL but it was so weird to me. In fact, I thought maybe my old copy of old ITL was missing some pages or something until someone confirmed that raising your IQ automatically entitled you to a new talent or spell. I can't overstate this: Does Not Make Sense To Me. If you drank a potion that raised your IQ, would you expect to suddenly know a new spell or talent? I think not. Raising your IQ should only make you ready to learn something, not automatically fill your head with knowledge. With the XP-buy system, we have our explanation: You learned it in your "off-time" while adventuring and acquiring the XP to buy it. That seems to work just fine for talents and spells you already had access to. This brings us back to #3. There should definitely be guidelines on where the knowledge of a new talent/spells comes from.
Gotta strongly disagree with this. Linking a character's IQ to talents/spells is one of most genius aspects of Steve Jackson's original design. In a rules-lite system like TFT, each stat must cover multiple character attributes and Steve's solution to this challenge was balanced and elegant. To divest talents from IQ risks unbalancing other elements of the system (like XP) which seems to be supported by the debate in several of the threads on this forum.

And to be clear, the original rules never allowed you to suddenly learn a new talents when IQ increased. Talents had to 'studied' ahead of time, planned for by the player in advance of their aquisition.
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Old 10-10-2018, 11:13 AM   #124
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Default Re: IQ rise and talents

What if Talents always cost a certain fraction of what an attribute point cost? Like, I dunno, an IQ point worth of talents or spells always cost 1/2 of what an attribute point would cost.

That creates a tension between wanting to increase your attributes and increase your talents. I want this IQ point so I can buy that more-advanced talent, but then all my talents will be more expensive! What do?!

It might work better if attribute points didn't scale upwards in cost quite so rapidly, but I'm just spitballing.
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Old 10-10-2018, 11:27 AM   #125
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Default Re: IQ rise and talents

Quote:
Originally Posted by platimus View Post
In fact, I thought maybe my old copy of old ITL was missing some pages or something until someone confirmed that raising your IQ automatically entitled you to a new talent or spell. I can't overstate this: Does Not Make Sense To Me. If you drank a potion that raised your IQ, would you expect to suddenly know a new spell or talent? I think not. Raising your IQ should only make you ready to learn something, not automatically fill your head with knowledge.
Your (and "someone's") readings indeed didn't make sense. You needed to find (or give more thought to) the parts about taking time in play to actually learn things:

There are five paragraphs on Advanced Wizard page 10 (which were dropped in the new ITL) under Learning Spells, which detail the time in study, and the sources required, to learn new spells.

In old ITL too there are the (imperfect) rules on talents being studied, which needs to be in place for a certain amount of time, and which the GM can either not care much about, or actually enforce appropriate spending of time/effort/situation in-game, to learn talents.


Quote:
Originally Posted by platimus View Post
With the XP-buy system, we have our explanation: You learned it in your "off-time" while adventuring and acquiring the XP to buy it. That seems to work just fine for talents and spells you already had access to. This brings us back to #3. There should definitely be guidelines on where the knowledge of a new talent/spells comes from.
It seems to me that that explanation is just as magical and flawed in the same way that you just objected to in the old rules, but lacking even having listed it as "being studied" in advance. The PCs get some XP from wherever and then can choose what to do with it and suddenly have a talent or spell (OR increase an attribute (or several, if below 36 points)) of their choice and pretend whatever they choose at the moment is something they had been studying before.

And the fixed cost at 500 XP is appropriate for someone who is 36-37 points and has many talents trying to add more and more talents, but it's out of proportion with the 100 XP starting cost of most non-experienced people (not to mention the original zero XP cost in the old system for people to learn things up to the limit of IQ).
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Old 10-10-2018, 11:39 AM   #126
Skarg
 
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Default Re: IQ rise and talents

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Originally Posted by The Wyzard View Post
What if Talents always cost a certain fraction of what an attribute point cost? Like, I dunno, an IQ point worth of talents or spells always cost 1/2 of what an attribute point would cost.

That creates a tension between wanting to increase your attributes and increase your talents. I want this IQ point so I can buy that more-advanced talent, but then all my talents will be more expensive! What do?!

It might work better if attribute points didn't scale upwards in cost quite so rapidly, but I'm just spitballing.
That would help at the low-end of the curve.

However, it would give a huge incentive in XP costs to delay raising attributes and learn lots of spells and talents when they're much cheaper.

i.e. take as much IQ as you can stand, then learn as many spells/talents for 50XP per talent point as you can, because it seems like a relative waste to learn talents as a higher-point character.

Also, learning a 2-point talent would then cost the same as an attribute, and a 3-point talent would cost 1.5 times what attributes cost, so it would remove the ability to have vanishing improvement past 40 points but still enable learning things.

Personally, I would just use the Advanced Wizard learning times, extend them a bit to have learning times for the talents, and let people learn total points up to IQ as before, as well as let them learn via XP (but keep the requirement to actually study things by spending time and studying something that makes sense).

I'd probably also (or maybe even instead) add a rate at which you can gain XP by seriously/appropriately studying things (that can only be used for gaining that ability). By spending X hours with a teacher and/or books, (and a horse for riding, water for swimming, etc) studying subject Y, you gain Y experience in subject Y, which can only be used for subject Y. (The rate could be influenced by how good your teacher & situation is, and the student's IQ relative to the subject, etc.)

Last edited by Skarg; 10-10-2018 at 11:46 AM.
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Old 10-10-2018, 11:40 AM   #127
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Default Re: IQ rise and talents

What about an alternative system that works like this:

Your first added attribute point is 100 XP. Each additional added attribute is 50 XP more than the previous. (150 XP for the second, 200 XP for the third and so on.)

Each added point of KN that's less than or equal to your IQ is 250 XP, beyond that is 500 XP each.

So a wizard with IQ 12, native language, Literacy and 10 spells who wanted to learn Quarterstaff would pay 250 XP to raise KN to IQ plus 500 XP to raise KN to 13. (KN 13 = 1 for literacy, 2 for quarterstaff, and 10 for 10 spells.)
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Last edited by hcobb; 10-10-2018 at 11:50 AM.
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Old 10-10-2018, 11:49 AM   #128
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Default Re: IQ rise and talents

Quote:
Originally Posted by Skarg View Post
However, it would give a huge incentive in XP costs to delay raising attributes and learn lots of spells and talents when they're much cheaper.

i.e. take as much IQ as you can stand, then learn as many spells/talents for 50XP per talent point as you can, because it seems like a relative waste to learn talents as a higher-point character.
Yeah. I'm trying to decide if that's *bad.*

My bias is that tension and tough choices are good game design. But having a player choose between "cheaper talents now" and "another point of DX that makes it more likely I'll live through the next adventure" feels a little mean.

Also, my counter-bias is against creation/XP mechanics that cause it to matter what order you buy things in.

That is, if you have to naturally level up a character over the course of a campaign that totals out, say, 5kXP, I don't think that character should be forced to be less efficient than a character who is built with 5kXP off the start, and can advance in a sort of "white room."
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Old 10-10-2018, 01:05 PM   #129
platimus
 
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Default Re: IQ rise and talents

Quote:
Originally Posted by Skarg View Post
Your (and "someone's") readings indeed didn't make sense. You needed to find (or give more thought to) the parts about taking time in play to actually learn things:

There are five paragraphs on Advanced Wizard page 10 (which were dropped in the new ITL) under Learning Spells, which detail the time in study, and the sources required, to learn new spells.

In old ITL too there are the (imperfect) rules on talents being studied, which needs to be in place for a certain amount of time, and which the GM can either not care much about, or actually enforce appropriate spending of time/effort/situation in-game, to learn talents.


It seems to me that that explanation is just as magical and flawed in the same way that you just objected to in the old rules, but lacking even having listed it as "being studied" in advance. The PCs get some XP from wherever and then can choose what to do with it and suddenly have a talent or spell (OR increase an attribute (or several, if below 36 points)) of their choice and pretend whatever they choose at the moment is something they had been studying before.

And the fixed cost at 500 XP is appropriate for someone who is 36-37 points and has many talents trying to add more and more talents, but it's out of proportion with the 100 XP starting cost of most non-experienced people (not to mention the original zero XP cost in the old system for people to learn things up to the limit of IQ).
Maybe so but TFT was the first and only system I've encountered that worked this way regarding IQ and skills/spells. Every other system I've used or read used XP to buy skills/spells. I suppose that's why it seemed so strange to me. Still does.
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Old 10-10-2018, 01:10 PM   #130
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Default Re: IQ rise and talents

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Maybe so but TFT was the first and only system I've encountered that worked this way regarding IQ and skills/spells. Every other system I've used or read used XP to buy skills/spells. I suppose that's why it seemed so strange to me. Still does.
It is unique, I'll give you that. An inspired bit of game design IMO.

Last edited by TippetsTX; 10-10-2018 at 08:12 PM.
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