Abolish Naturalist and Thief

[warhorse11h]

Originally Posted by hcobb

Rest in the labyrinth by sitting down on your Dire Wolf, spot the ambush 95.37% of the time, then have your three Light Crossbow snipers light up the ambusher with branded bolts.

What is the house rule consensus on riding a Dire Wolf through the labyrinth and using IQ 17 Alertness to spot everything as "you must sit or lie down quietly, doing nothing else." as per ITL 9?

In a word, "Disallowed!"

[hcobb]

"A goblin sorceress is a munchkin of all things." -Protagoras

[Skarg]

If it's a munchkin letter-of-the-rules twisted-imagination TFT game, then I'd turn to you for the answers to what happens.

In other games, dire wolves are either untrainable and eat the goblins who try to ride them, or are mysteriously trainable by goblins but then are quite lame due to applying the encumbrance rules to a ST 16 one-hex mount.

Alertness would I think be impaired by trying to be super-observant while also trying to ride an overburdened wild canine.

Seems to me the rolls mentioned in talent descriptions are intended as starting points for GM assessments, not licenses/guarantees that you'll not run into harder situations.

Labyrinths designed by GMs aware of the Alertness and Detect Traps talents and spotting rules may liberally assign a lot of dice to things that are supposed to be challenging to notice (even by very perceptive characters), and/or have any wizards who might be involved in the labryrinth defense cast Conceal spells.

Even an Expert Horseman riding a nice horse in pleasant conditions isn't resting "quietly, doing nothing else."

[Skarg]

Oh, and back to "Abolish Naturalist and Thief" (or Woodsman - I think you must have meant Woodsman?), even if the GM rules (as I wouldn't) that:

* Pathfinder means you can not get lost in the wilderness.
* There's a spell that lets you not need real food.
* There's a spell that lets you ignore weather.
* It's not an issue to cast these spells regularly in terms of fatigue.
* There's a spell that lets you ignore weather.
* It's not an issue to cast these spells regularly in terms of failed/fumbled spell rolls.

Then it still wouldn't imply to me that it would "Abolish Naturalist", because Naturalist and Woodsman are talents available to anyone, while Meal / Stalwart / Pathfinder are spells which even if you trained non-wizards in them would cost them 9 learning points total, and they don't cover the same range of abilities / information.

And, I don't particularly want more of my wizards learning spells to cover what ordinary naturalists and woodsmen can do, nor do I particularly want the wizards who do know those spells to have to cast them regularly to cover a lack of naturalists and woodsmen.

[hcobb]

Originally Posted by Skarg

Then it still wouldn't imply to me that it would "Abolish Naturalist", because Naturalist and Woodsman are talents available to anyone, while Meal / Stalwart / Pathfinder are spells which even if you trained non-wizards in them would cost them 9 learning points total, and they don't cover the same range of abilities / information.

There's non-wizards? Why?

ITL 41: "If a party without a Woodsman is traveling through wilderness without rations and/or camping gear, each member must make a 3-die roll daily against IQ, or take one hit of damage from exposure, lost sleep, bad food, etc."

And this saving throw is a problem when every party member is a IQ 15+ wizard because of what exactly? (Or just lug around a wizard's chest and a book with Meal, Stalwart, etc.)

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by hcobb

There's non-wizards? Why?

Because only 1 in 300 are wizards, and even those often take low ST and die if things manage to attack them.

Just because a wilderness wizard might have enough IQ to spot ambushes with/without Alertness doesn't mean they can't be devoured by animals that they noticed but fail to overcome.

Originally Posted by hcobb

ITL 41: "If a party without a Woodsman is traveling through wilderness without rations and/or camping gear, each member must make a 3-die roll daily against IQ, or take one hit of damage from exposure, lost sleep, bad food, etc."

And this saving throw is a problem when every party member is a IQ 15+ wizard because of what exactly? (Or just lug around a wizard's chest and a book with Meal, Stalwart, etc.)

* As seems amazingly frequent, you're looking at the situation upside-down and backwards from any perspective that makes sense to me.

* If everyone is IQ 15+, I'm not particularly bothered that being that smart means they may be often be able to figure out how to do without serious consequences from lack of equipment.

* However when they do fail rolls (and a party relying on everyone not rolling 16+ every day will fail some), it will become an issue since that exposure/starving damage cannot be healed by anything but good food & serious shelter.

* All such rules are of course minimal starting points which the GM should replace with discretion and/or develop further if a situation doesn't make enough sense or gives weird gamey results. If you just mean to point out that the travel and exposure rules are weak and have some possibly gamey sort-of-loopholes, then yes, of course. Probably the GM should handle such situations with other than just these systems, and I'd love to see more developed travel and exposure rules. It seems to me it'd be far more constructive to request and/or draft some such rules instead of enigmatic inaccurate claims that Naturalist/Woodsman aren't useful.

* Why is your starting point for causation munchkiny choices of attributes? In considering the characters in the game world, they're not caused by willful munchkin choice of point-buy. There are about 1 in 300 that are wizards, and their attributes are not just matters of choice. Not all that many wizards have IQ 15. Not all that many choose to go adventuring, let alone in groups, and probably not all-wizard groups. The proportion of parties in the wilderness who are all IQ 15 wizards is very small if there even are any.

* And even if there is one, and/or we're just talking about the context of a PC munchkin group:
* If they're starting characters, that means they're all low-ST, low-DX, and so in order to avoid having to camp and bring food, they're all not very competent in non-IQ ways and may all get devoured by wolves or something - but at least they didn't have to pack food or a tent?
* If they're highly competent wizards, then fine, hopefully IQ 15 also indicates they know what they're doing, and they have really good intelligent reasons not to just being food and camping gear, and/or companions?

* Other stuff... I'm wearing out...

* Again, try to find Meal & Stalwart in my campaigns. No one seems to know of such spells.

It really seems like this is a non-solution to a non-problem. Or, a completely obtuse criticism of the game design that almost no one really gets because of the unclear claims and exaggerated conclusions?

[hcobb]

Goblin sized cot: 15 pounds
Thin goblin sorceress: 70 pounds
Goblin sized robes: 3 pounds
Full sized staff: 5 pounds
Three pounds of other stuff: 3 pounds

Total is 96 pounds, divided by two is 48 pounds, bringing the Light Crossbow man ahead and behind her from four to eight times their 12 ST as they carry her around the dungeon so she can rest and watch the ceiling for slimes.