Talent System

[Jim Kane]

Originally Posted by larsdangly

The talent is basically an 'on/off' switch for some functional ability. If there are a couple dozen such abilities, and each character has a half dozen, that is plenty of variation among characters.

THIS is perfectly stated, and shows a rare and deep understanding to the key "feel, form, and flow" which is unique to TFT.

So many interesting "rules offerings" violate this key-TFT principle in their root construction, time and time again. Are they good systems and rules in play? I don't know I would not play-test most of these ideas, for there is no need; as one can easily can tell by their design and construction - and the design philosophy expressed by the author - that they are nearly universally not TFT - regardless of how well they may satisfy the originator of the house-rules-scheme in his personal game at-home.; as they violate the "Feel, Form, and Flow" root-structure with has been with us since 1977.

It is this design "On/Off", "Binary", and "Two-Tier" concept - and the strict adherence thereto - which Larsdangly has stated so perfectly that makes TFT, TFT; and that is, when specifically speaking to "Talents": TFT Talents gives the possessor a specific advantage or ability; which, is defined in game-terms and by it's application and effect in-game - or you simply do not have it - and often there is a contingency rule/penalty/prohibition for those characters who wish to attempt a thing they do not have the talent for.

Simple, Clean, and Elegant... TFT.

Thanks for summing it so perfectly!

JK

[Kirk]

Originally Posted by Jim Kane

THIS is perfectly stated, and shows a rare and deep understanding to the key "feel, form, and flow" which is unique to TFT.

So many interesting "rules offerings" violate this key-TFT principle in their root construction, time and time again. Are they good systems and rules in play? I don't know I would not play-test most of these ideas, for there is no need; as one can easily can tell by their design and construction - and the design philosophy expressed by the author - that they are nearly universally not TFT - regardless of how well they may satisfy the originator of the house-rules-scheme in his personal game at-home.; as they violate the "Feel, Form, and Flow" root-structure with has been with us since 1977.

It is this design "On/Off", "Binary", and "Two-Tier" concept - and the strict adherence thereto - which Larsdangly has stated so perfectly that makes TFT, TFT; and that is, when specifically speaking to "Talents": TFT Talents gives the possessor a specific advantage or ability; which, is defined in game-terms and by it's application and effect in-game - or you simply do not have it - and often there is a contingency rule/penalty/prohibition for those characters who wish to attempt a thing they do not have the talent for.

Simple, Clean, and Elegant... TFT.

Thanks for summing it so perfectly!

JK

Yes, this is great! TFT works the way it does, by design or accident, because of the way it is. Being able to see this based on understanding how it DOES work makes for a simpler job of understanding what is a tweak, and what will fundamentally interrupt what makes TFT, TFT.

[JLV]

Originally Posted by Jim Kane

THIS is perfectly stated, and shows a rare and deep understanding to the key "feel, form, and flow" which is unique to TFT.

So many interesting "rules offerings" violate this key-TFT principle in their root construction, time and time again. Are they good systems and rules in play? I don't know I would not play-test most of these ideas, for there is no need; as one can easily can tell by their design and construction - and the design philosophy expressed by the author - that they are nearly universally not TFT - regardless of how well they may satisfy the originator of the house-rules-scheme in his personal game at-home.; as they violate the "Feel, Form, and Flow" root-structure with has been with us since 1977.

It is this design "On/Off", "Binary", and "Two-Tier" concept - and the strict adherence thereto - which Larsdangly has stated so perfectly that makes TFT, TFT; and that is, when specifically speaking to "Talents": TFT Talents gives the possessor a specific advantage or ability; which, is defined in game-terms and by it's application and effect in-game - or you simply do not have it - and often there is a contingency rule/penalty/prohibition for those characters who wish to attempt a thing they do not have the talent for.

Simple, Clean, and Elegant... TFT.

Thanks for summing it so perfectly!

JK

Amen. Lars hits a key point.

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by Skarg

Yes. And, encumbrance from weight and lowered MA are significant effects even if the full DX penalty were negated by armor talent.

My core idea is you could have effectively the same combat ability as you get with a character who jacks up their DX with EP to overcome armor DX penalties, except they'd just have about the same adjDX in armor for fighting as before thanks to armor-wearing and weapon-expertise levels, with the difference that they aren't DX 18 or whatever for other purposes, and getting an actual DX 18 for all purposes would require a lot more EP. i.e. a very experienced warrior is agile and can fight effectively in armor and is good at fighting with his weapon, but if he picks up the Dancing talent he's not going to be Fred Astaire, etc.

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

I'm trying to parse that. Was that exactly what you intended to type?

The first sentence was agreeing with David that if there were an Armor Wearing talent that reduced (and at high enough levels, removed) the DX modifier for wearing armor, that there would still be disadvantages to wearing armor. I was saying that in addition to the things he listed, there would still be the effects of the weight of the armor on encumbrance, and the MA reduction, both of which are already in the rules.

The second part I see was probably clear only to me or someone who already knew what I meant, which was:

In my experience, fighters tend to raise their DX in order to be able to soak up the DX penalty of wearing armor, which for higher-end fighter characters (40-50 points) often leads to characters with very high DX such as:

ST 13 Very Fine Bastard Sword 2d+3 +1DX
DX 20(16) Fine Plate 6 -4DX
IQ 10 Large Shield 2 -1DX
MA 10(6)

But it also applies to:

ST 13 Morningstar 2d+1
DX 15(13) Leather Armor 2 -2DX
IQ 8 Small Shield 1 -0DX
MA 10(8)

This is a natural/practical/common thing to do - fighters need to have high enough adjDX to reliably hit things, but they'd like to be able to wear armor, so they often raise their DX several levels above the adjDX they want, so they can wear armor and still hit things reliably.

It sort of makes sense - the DX, usually bought with combat EP, represents learning to be able to fight effectively in armor...

But it also has effects that don't make so much sense. For example, if the character takes off the armor, he has a really high DX for all purposes. If he learns any talent that tests on DX, he's going to be better at it than anyone without combat experience. The really high-DX fighters (18+) are even probably going to be better than most non-fighters at things that impose a penalty for not having a talent.

It makes sense to me that experienced fighters would tend to have a good overall DX. Some probably do develop really high DX. But mostly, it seems to me, experienced warriors would develop great fighting skills.

So if I were going to run a TFT campaign, I'd probably house-rule some talents that can represent that and have them cost about the same EP it currently takes to raise DX high enough to soak armor, and then raise the cost to actually raise DX to 16+, because I'd like those attribute levels to represent people with exceptional raw talent, and be able to represent really skilled combat veterans without making them super-agile, so if I were adapting those characters to my new house rules, they might be something like:

ST 13 Very Fine Bastard Sword 2d+3 +1DX
DX 14(16) Fine Plate 6 -4DX
IQ 10 Large Shield 2 -1DX
MA 10(6)
Armor III (reduces armor DX penalty by 3)
Sword +3 (+3 DX with sword)

ST 13 Morningstar 2d+1
DX 12(13) Leather Armor 2 -2DX
IQ 8 Small Shield 1 -0DX
MA 10(8)
Armor I (reduces armor DX penalty by 1)
Ax/Mace/Flail +2 (+2 DX with morningstar)

They're effectively the same characters, except for the part I didn't really intend for the previous characters to have (where if they pick up the Dancing talent, suddenly they're great performers due to their er... combat experience).

.......

That's what I meant in my confusing post. Going further, I think the same issue applies somewhat to ST and IQ and other character designs and wizards: experience is usable only to raise the three attributes, and so experienced people have really high attribute totals, which means they tend to make almost all 3d6 rolls, which largely removes some interesting elements from gameplay. When experienced fighters fail to hit it's a surprising flub. Some mechanics that matter for 32-to-36-point characters start to be less meaningful to 38+ point characters, in some ways that don't make great sense (not tripping on dead bodies is ok, but Shield Rush?).

Master wizards also having huge IQ for all purposes and so making all their IQ and detection rolls is another thing.

So is other characters who got high IQ to be able to fit the talents they want in their memory.

Another aspect of experienced characters always having high attribute totals is that the role of attributes to describe what a character is like sort of blurs as the added points from experience get layered on, especially when they get up to like 48+ points.

And then there's the part about total talents limited to IQ points. Yes, it often seems like a reasonable limit if we think of starting characters or modestly model ourselves, but in some cases it has weird results. Part of that is because talents include not just mental skills but also physical skills and a few traits that mostly aren't even skills (Charisma, Alertness, Acute Hearing - a charming very observant person with those three talents is out 7 points of talents - if they can read, swim, ride a horse, run quickly and play a musical instrument, that takes minimum IQ 14, and they won't really have much learning.) A common TFT example is knights: Sword, Shield, Pole Weapons, Unarmed Combat I, Expert Horsemanship, Courtly Graces - that's 11 points, meaning well-trained knights who know anything more than that are going to have to be pretty smart. Add Warrior, Tactics, Literacy, Bow, and Swimming? Unreasonable? That requires IQ 18! Add Fencing ("ability to use a sword WELL") for IQ 21. (At least he shouldn't miss the option of Alertness or Acute Hearing, since his IQ should be plenty to make practically all detection rolls.)

It seems to me like all of those quibbles could be handled by allowing EP to be spent on extra Talents rather than increased attributes, and adding talents that do the same things that raising attributes do, but only for specific things (e.g. armor wearing, weapon using, spell rolls, powering spells, learning spells). And it could also open up the possibility of adding talents which would do other interesting things to make characters different from each other.

But it would be different from the existing system. And there could be other ways around those quibbles.

[Chris Rice]

Originally Posted by larsdangly

I think talent levels that just jack up your quantitative chances at doing something are not very interesting, and they cruft up the game system (because everyone needs to keep track of levels of everything). That steers you off to GURPS, Runequest, etc.

But talents that 'unlock' some sort of capability are a great way to differentiate two characters from one another. The talent is basically an 'on/off' switch for some functional ability. If there are a couple dozen such abilities, and each character has a half dozen, that is plenty of variation among characters.

This is how the talent system works, generally. For that matter, it is also how the magic system works (i.e., magicians have some list of spells that represent the unique effects they can achieve; there are only a few dozen in total, and each character has a dozen or so).

If you want to apply this concept to fighting ability, you just to come up with a balanced, interesting (hopefully fun!) list of a dozen or so special capabilities characters might be able to buy as talents. There are already a couple things like this (e.g., Two Weapons)

This is exactly my feeling in regards to TFT Talents, and what I think I tried to express in my original post when starting this thread. Well said!

[Rick_Smith]

Hi all,
A few people have listed what talents they have, and have modestly assigned 0 memory cost (mIQ) to a number of talents that they have. However, there is a friend of mine who is a polymath of skills, whom I greatly admire. Art, I think, could fairly be said to have these talents:


Art is a dual Canadian / German citizen. In order to get his German citizenship he moved to Germany and joined their army. He currently competition shoots in IPSIC for fun. I would not be adverse to giving him Missile Weapons since he shoots very well. He did fencing long ago, and says he was pretty good at it. But let's just give him:

German Language (1), Guns (2), and Knife (1).

Until the laboratory closed down he worked for several years as a professional Chemist. He managed the lab, fixed the equipment. I'm not sure what skill represents his management ability. (I would not say he is Charismatic enough to give him Charisma.) But he should get:

Literacy(1), Chemist (3). // Others count literacy as free, but I don't see why.

For a while he ran a professional photography studio. In addition to taking pictures on film and with digital cameras, he developed and manipulated (chemically), negatives. To save money, he would buy damaged or broken equipment and repair it. He is also an artist, and uses photoshop to manipulate photographs or do art for his current job. He does not do calligraphy, but I am sure he could do so if someone paid him for it.

Photography (1?), Artist / Calligrapher (3).

He swims well, and used to run (but does not run since an injury several years ago). I'm told he used to be a good climber before his injury, and I have no reason to doubt him.

Swimming & Diving (2), Running (2), Climbing (1).

He has worked for several years house building and he 'helped' me build an extension on to my house and wired it last year. (By 'helped' I mean he did the work, and I acted as an unskilled assistant to him.) He has carpentry and electrician. Electrician requires mathematics. (As does chemist now that I think of it.) When the weather is not too bad for his arthritis, he does professional electrician work for a local company, On The Level Contracting.

Mathematician (3), Carpenter (1), Electrician (2).

When we go on hikes he knows an immense amount about the plants and animals. It seems that anything I can point at, he has several stories about if that can be used as food, interesting historical facts, or fun stories about its evolution or how it fits in with the ecology. I would not be adverse to giving him Naturalist, but since he has never done this professionally, let's be conservative and just give him:

Woodsman (1).

His wife bought a business and Art does the heavy (mental) lifting in it. He repairs and maintains computers, trouble shoots software incompatibilities, does purchasing, payroll, (which needs Math), creates art for the company, etc. I think he needs:

Business Sense (2), Computers (1). // And management skills.

He rides well and has a knack with animals. I would not be adverse to giving him Animal Handling, but he has never does this professionally so let's just give him:

Horsemanship (1).

In the army he was trained in First Aid, and thinking about it, he had to pass a bunch of First aid courses when he worked in the laboratory. I would not give him Physicker, but many Game Masters allow a 'half as good' talent First Aid in their campaigns:

First Aid (1).

He loves to drive and does maintenance on his car. When he was a young man, he rebuilt his motorbike. If anyone has a mechanical problem Art will be invited to look at it. He likely can do one of: fix it, say what is wrong (but too much trouble for him to fix quickly), or say that something is so messed up it is likely better to replace it.

Mechanician (2).

He cooks wonderful food. In the last 3 years he has taken, preserves, jams, homemade salsa to a major fair in Washington state. I believe he currently has 6 blue ribbons.

Cook (2).

He has a way with women that would make men younger than him (and better looking) jealous. (He never has problems finding sex partners, and was in the swinging community years ago.) Now KEEPING women he is not so good at. But if anyone I know would have Sex Appeal it would be Art.

Sex Appeal (1)

Other talents Art might have...
He has built fine furniture and other wood working. Joiner (1).

He is comfortable on boats but has never worked professionally in them. Boating (1).

He often notices things that I and others miss. Alertness (2).

I wouldn't like to face him in a fight. Unarmed Combat One (2). (I think he said that as a Sergeant in the Army he taught UC to new recruits. He is actually a pretty good teacher, but Teaching is not a standard TFT skill.)

He is well read and knows a lot of history. Scholar (History) (3).


And that is it. I would say that Art is easily has an IQ of 13 to 15. He is a very smart and well read man, but not a genius.

Not counting the talents at the bottom (which I said he MIGHT have), his total is...

34 memory points spent.

I want to emphasize that I feel that this is a conservative estimate. I would have NO problem giving him several of the skills I left out for one reason or another. Now a key thing is that he is a fairly old man, and he has changed careers a few times, so I can say that he has worked professionally as this and as that.

But he is hardly unique. If you read biographies of interesting people, many of them have LOTS of TFT skills. (Look up Thomas Cochrane for a very fun read. Abraham Lincoln is also a man of many skills.)

However, TFT is supposed to be simulating a fun fiction. And there are many, fictional characters with plenty of skills. Further, having lots of skills is fun.


I'm aware that I am fighting for a lost cause here, but if you are looking for real world examples of people who have more skills than their IQ would allow in the TFT rules, it is really not that hard to find them.

Warm regards, Rick.

[David Bofinger]

I've argued before that there are four necessary levels of talents to be able to describe characters well:

• 0: You don't have it.
• 1: Sub-professional level: amateur-level skills, or something you know a bit about in the course of your job but isn't your specialty, or something you used to know and have got rusty at.
• 2: Professional level: a few skills like this will make you a living.
• 3: Expert level: The other professionals look up to you.

TFT generally has Level 0 and Level 2 and occasionally it has Level 3. But it hardly ever has Level 1. I think Level 1 is actually quite important. Pretty much every soldier in the army probably has basic level Woodsman, and when the city guy comes along who's never seen two trees in one place before you notice that, but the soldiers aren't skilled at it like the scout. Probably every sailor has basic skills with boats, and when the landsman comes along he's noticeably ignorant compared with the sailors, but there's also the boat guy who actually knows what he's doing. Perhaps TFT assumes Level 1 for some talents, at least for PCs, and it's Level 0 that's missing, but that's not always clear. Anyway, I think all four levels are needed.

And since we're talking about ourselves, I claim Level 1 at writing science fiction novels and software engineering.

[Jim Kane]

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

I've argued before that there are four necessary levels of talents to be able to describe characters well:

• 0: You don't have it.
• 1: Sub-professional level: amateur-level skills, or something you know a bit about in the course of your job but isn't your specialty, or something you used to know and have got rusty at.
• 2: Professional level: a few skills like this will make you a living.
• 3: Expert level: The other professionals look up to you.

TFT generally has Level 0 and Level 2 and occasionally it has Level 3. But it hardly ever has Level 1. I think Level 1 is actually quite important. Pretty much every soldier in the army probably has basic level Woodsman, and when the city guy comes along who's never seen two trees in one place before you notice that, but the soldiers aren't skilled at it like the scout. Probably every sailor has basic skills with boats, and when the landsman comes along he's noticeably ignorant compared with the sailors, but there's also the boat guy who actually knows what he's doing. Perhaps TFT assumes Level 1 for some talents, at least for PCs, and it's Level 0 that's missing, but that's not always clear. Anyway, I think all four levels are needed.

And since we're talking about ourselves, I claim Level 1 at writing science fiction novels and software engineering.

THIS is another excellent post, which, much like Larsdangly's post cited above, actually exhibits thinking which works in concert WITH the established form, feel, and function of TFT; as opposed to against it - AND, goes it one better, by not only examining the pre-existing structure, but the refines the existing design even further conceptually - and then, offers a potential solution to improve what we already have; while maintaining the all important TFT form, feel, and function.

That's a nice piece of thinking you have put out there David - Good Work!

It is with posts like this which FIRST establish themselves conceptually as fitting into the TFT form, that we can then begin to intelligently work out the specific operational details as the NEXT stage of rules development - and thereby preserve the TFT feel, form, and flow with surety.

Without such pre-qualification that the rule being address will "fit in the TFT mold" in the first place - as David has demonstrated here - there is no point to expend the time to entertain the minutia of presented DX bonus and penalties, etc; for "rule(s)" which will never fit into the TFT structure after-the-fact.

I think David's outline for a standardized and uniform background structure to the Talent System deserves serious consideration by all; as a contribution which could quite possibly raise and refine the TFT game experience on-the-whole.

Again, nice work David; please stay with it.

JK

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

I've argued before that there are four necessary levels of talents to be able to describe characters well:

• 0: You don't have it.
• 1: Sub-professional level: amateur-level skills, or something you know a bit about in the course of your job but isn't your specialty, or something you used to know and have got rusty at.
• 2: Professional level: a few skills like this will make you a living.
• 3: Expert level: The other professionals look up to you.

TFT generally has Level 0 and Level 2 and occasionally it has Level 3. But it hardly ever has Level 1. I think Level 1 is actually quite important. Pretty much every soldier in the army probably has basic level Woodsman, and when the city guy comes along who's never seen two trees in one place before you notice that, but the soldiers aren't skilled at it like the scout. Probably every sailor has basic skills with boats, and when the landsman comes along he's noticeably ignorant compared with the sailors, but there's also the boat guy who actually knows what he's doing. Perhaps TFT assumes Level 1 for some talents, at least for PCs, and it's Level 0 that's missing, but that's not always clear. Anyway, I think all four levels are needed.

And since we're talking about ourselves, I claim Level 1 at writing science fiction novels and software engineering.

Yeah, this is an excellent point. I don't think it's possible to really represent the different skill levels that people have without at least this many levels, though some GMs can use discretion to handle the difference between 0 and 1 in TFT, and DX/IQ can be thought to represent the difference between levels 2 and 3 for talents without expert levels in TFT, except that it determines how good a character is at everything that uses that attribute if they have the talent in it.

[JLV]

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

I've argued before that there are four necessary levels of talents to be able to describe characters well:

• 0: You don't have it.
• 1: Sub-professional level: amateur-level skills, or something you know a bit about in the course of your job but isn't your specialty, or something you used to know and have got rusty at.
• 2: Professional level: a few skills like this will make you a living.
• 3: Expert level: The other professionals look up to you.

TFT generally has Level 0 and Level 2 and occasionally it has Level 3. But it hardly ever has Level 1. I think Level 1 is actually quite important. Pretty much every soldier in the army probably has basic level Woodsman, and when the city guy comes along who's never seen two trees in one place before you notice that, but the soldiers aren't skilled at it like the scout. Probably every sailor has basic skills with boats, and when the landsman comes along he's noticeably ignorant compared with the sailors, but there's also the boat guy who actually knows what he's doing. Perhaps TFT assumes Level 1 for some talents, at least for PCs, and it's Level 0 that's missing, but that's not always clear. Anyway, I think all four levels are needed.

And since we're talking about ourselves, I claim Level 1 at writing science fiction novels and software engineering.

Hmm, that is exactly the same system I proposed months ago, only I named them: Novice, Apprentice, Journeyman, and Master (in keeping with medieval nature of the game).

The only real difference is that I said that at Level 0 you had enough familiarity with the task that you no longer had to roll 4 dice for success, and now could just roll 3 dice. If you had NO level in the skill (not even "0") you had to roll 4 dice against your relevant characteristic in order to succeed. After that, basically, each level of skill lowered your success roll by one (that is, if you had level skill Level 1 (apprentice), for a DX-based skill, and needed to roll 12 to succeed, if you rolled a 13 you still succeeded: 13-1 = 12).

No huge amounts of difficulty in remembering the effects of the Talent's current level, since it's the same for EVERY talent, so that beats the argument I keep seeing here regarding complexity.

The only exceptions to the above might be for things like Armor; where the increased skill level could either reduce the DX penalty of the armor, or could increase the hits stopped by one per level. (That second option is because as you master the talent, you learn how to use the armor more effectively.) Similarly for all weapons, you could either reduce the TO HIT roll by one, or increase the damage inflicted by one per level. You could simply declare which advantage you were using (reducing the "TO HIT" roll, or increasing the damage) at the moment before you actually rolled the dice to determine success.

But of course, when I suggested it, I got pooh-poohed and told it was silly.