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Old 02-10-2019, 04:57 PM   #11
TippetsTX
 
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Default Re: Skill point costs

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Originally Posted by hcobb View Post
That means that everybody grabs the talents they need at creation by front loading IQ then spend XP on DX.
Unless you reconnect IQ and talent/spell aquisition. Oooo, snap!
;)
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Old 02-10-2019, 06:25 PM   #12
hcobb
 
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Default Re: Skill point costs

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Originally Posted by TippetsTX View Post
Unless you reconnect IQ and talent/spell aquisition. Oooo, snap!
;)
Nascent Abilities: Each figure can have one nascent ability at a time and one can be chosen at character creation. A new nascent ability may be studied for at any time. The previous one (if any) is lost and the character speeds three months per skill point with exposure to the subject matter at which point the nascent ability exists. Examples of exposure: Carrying a magic item that grants that ability, or a book with that spell written in or a book listing the features of the critters of Cidri (for Naturalist) or a X to Y dictionary (to learn a new language). A nascent ability becomes the actual talent or spell once IQ increases and/or XP pay for it, until that time the nascent ability can be used by rolling two additional dice to perform the spell or action in question.

Deals with the hot XP instant talent problem.
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Old 02-10-2019, 07:01 PM   #13
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Default Re: Skill point costs

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Originally Posted by hcobb View Post
Deals with the hot XP instant talent problem.
Or you could just adapt the old rules...

As a character gains experience, he may add IQ points, allowing him to learn new abilities. However, a figure cannot just increase his IQ and suddenly gain a new ability "out of the blue" — he must have studied it.

At any time, a figure may be studying any three talents or languages. When he increases his IQ to the point where he can add a new talent or language, he may take any one of those that he has been studying (assuming, of course, that he also meets any DX or ability prerequisites for that talent). He may then start to study a new ability.

A figure may choose to study anything he/she likes. However, it would be foolish for an IQ 8 figure to begin to study three IQ 13 talents, since he could not take any of them until he reached IQ 13.

It is not necessary to learn new talents or languages in the order in which you begin to study them.

If a figure, once having started to study a talent or language, wishes to abandon that study, he or she may do so, but there is a penalty: loss of half the experience points he/she has at the moment the study of that ability is abandoned, or 1,000 EP, whichever is higher.

It is possible for a character to have a negative amount of experience points, but this does not cause loss of attributes or abilities — it just means the character must work up to zero before accumulating a positive total again.


My current plan will require players to allocate all earned XP into 'buckets' for attribute increases, talent/spell aquisition or other options to enforce this idea of progression planning.
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Last edited by TippetsTX; 02-10-2019 at 08:31 PM.
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Old 02-10-2019, 08:46 PM   #14
larsdangly
 
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Default Re: Skill point costs

However you adapt this to your specific tastes, we should all remember what long running campaigns were like under the ca. 1980 rules: Everyone had values of 16+ in every stat, and it was a little hard to tell people apart. I think the game is enormously more interesting with experienced characters now that you need to specialize in some specific way if you are going to become excellent at something, and there are lots of different directions you might go with that specialization. So, some tough choices, but also a lot of interesting diversity among characters.
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Old 02-10-2019, 10:27 PM   #15
Skarg
 
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Default Re: Skill point costs

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Originally Posted by larsdangly View Post
However you adapt this to your specific tastes, we should all remember what long running campaigns were like under the ca. 1980 rules: Everyone had values of 16+ in every stat, and it was a little hard to tell people apart. I think the game is enormously more interesting with experienced characters now that you need to specialize in some specific way if you are going to become excellent at something, and there are lots of different directions you might go with that specialization. So, some tough choices, but also a lot of interesting diversity among characters.
Yes, though I think this can be accomplished by anything that limits attribute bloat. The current/new attribute costs do this.

Talents should also be limited to prevent excessive talent bloat, but that was not a problem with the old system that TippetsTX advocates.

Requiring training time (and maybe practice too) and appropriate requirements for each talent could also limit talent bloat without involving XP.

A combination system might not require XP to learn talents, but still allow spending IQ to facilitate learning talents.
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Old 02-13-2019, 01:43 AM   #16
JLV
 
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Default Re: Skill point costs

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Originally Posted by TippetsTX View Post
So setting aside my personal issues with the new XP rules, I actually like this idea. For example, we could multiply the IQ level by 50 to get the XP cost. That would make IQ 10 spells our baseline at 500 XP.
I've proposed the idea before *shrug*... ;-)
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Old 02-13-2019, 01:44 AM   #17
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Default Re: Skill point costs

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Originally Posted by larsdangly View Post
However you adapt this to your specific tastes, we should all remember what long running campaigns were like under the ca. 1980 rules: Everyone had values of 16+ in every stat, and it was a little hard to tell people apart. I think the game is enormously more interesting with experienced characters now that you need to specialize in some specific way if you are going to become excellent at something, and there are lots of different directions you might go with that specialization. So, some tough choices, but also a lot of interesting diversity among characters.
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Old 07-01-2019, 05:11 AM   #18
Tywyll
 
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Default Re: Skill point costs

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Originally Posted by Skarg View Post
If you base costs on attribute totals, a peculiar incentive is created to stay at low attribute values to get the lower rates. (Some of us have experienced this as a side-effect of certain old mIQ house rules.)


I'm tending to think that talent learning systems that involve something other than XP are needed for this and several other issues.
I'm actually using a set of old house rules that have this (a talent costs 1/2 an attribute point) and I've made a house rule that humans can learn talents more cheaply (because non-humans have a whole host of advantages in my setting). What this has done is meant the two players playing humans have parked their character's development at 35 attribute points while they pick up cheap talents now. Its a bit meta-gamey but I don't mind. It means they stay 'lower stat' for longer and who cares if they pick up animal handler and sex-appeal? Like, a lot of the talents are more flavor than anything.
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