Talents for MH:RPM Paths okay?

[Flyndaran]

I'm not sure if there should be a talent that covers them, as their really hard to increase feature seems intrinsic.
Is this right, wrong, insane, etc.?
I've only read MH 1, and not thoroughly, so I may be missing something obvious.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I'm not sure if there should be a talent that covers them, as their really hard to increase feature seems intrinsic.
Is this right, wrong, insane, etc.?
I've only read MH 1, and not thoroughly, so I may be missing something obvious.

RPM is derived from Path/Book magic in Thaumatology which gives some alternatives for how Magery can work. You could modify it with one of those instead or in addition to capping effects that Magery already has.

[Sunrunners_Fire]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I'm not sure if there should be a talent that covers them, as their really hard to increase feature seems intrinsic.
Is this right, wrong, insane, etc.?
I've only read MH 1, and not thoroughly, so I may be missing something obvious.

You could allow it ... but you only should if you think that witches aren't powerful enough in Monster Hunters and wish to fix that 'problem'.

I wouldn't do it unless all of the player-characters were witches.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Sunrunners_Fire

You could allow it ... but you only should if you think that witches aren't powerful enough in Monster Hunters and wish to fix that 'problem'.

I wouldn't do it unless all of the player-characters were witches.

Or you are using RPM as the basis for a different magic system, which I suspect is the case here.

[vierasmarius]

RPM doesn't treat Magery as a Talent, but instead as a sort of Unusual Background that caps the maximum skill level of Path skills, and provides an Energy Reserve. I don't think it would be too unbalanced to introduce a separate Talent [10/lv] which simply raises all Path skills. After all, it would be equivalent in price to IQ!, but have no effect on other IQ skills.

You could also include certain Path skills in other Talents. For example, a Talent related to physiology (especially the cinematic skills, like Esoteric Medicine, Pressure Points and Body Sense) could include the Path of Body, while a metaphysical Talent could include the Path of Spirit.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I'm not sure if there should be a talent that covers them, as their really hard to increase feature seems intrinsic.
Is this right, wrong, insane, etc.?
I've only read MH 1, and not thoroughly, so I may be missing something obvious.

In this regard, Talents function as a subset of IQ. There is always the "threat" that if you do not make Talents available, players will choose to raise IQ instead.

Raised IQ optimizes the character broadly, for a very wide range of skills, whereas a Talent for all of RPM or for a subset of RPM optimizes the character more narrowly, and therefore makes the character more capabilitistically distinctive, which is good as long as the Talent makes sense from an in-world and in-character point of view (which many of GURPS' Skill Talents do not).

It therefore seems quite sensible to me.

You could offer a 15 CP/level Talent for all RPM Skills, and some 10 CP/level ones that cover specific flavoured subsets of RPM, or even Talents that work "across" the RPM Skills, e.g. a Talent for using RPM with Dreams or with Aniamals or anything else that isn't already covered by a specific RPM Skill, and which makes sense to use for at least two different RPM Skills (and preferably at least 3) so as to justify the 5 CP/level cost.

[Kuroshima]

In my soon to begin Supers game, one player wanted to build an RPM mage. Thing is, in this game I allowed people with powers to take attributes over 20, as long as they had a Power that (loosely) justified it, and they took the levels over 20 with the Power's PM, and Super Attribute. The character told me he didn't want IQ over 20, but that if there wasn't a talent for RPM, he would have to take IQ with Super Attribute and sell down Will and Per. Faced with the prospect of the character having IQ 30, I decided to allow for a 10 point talent that boosted the RPM skills.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

RPM doesn't treat Magery as a Talent, but instead as a sort of Unusual Background that caps the maximum skill level of Path skills, and provides an Energy Reserve. I don't think it would be too unbalanced to introduce a separate Talent [10/lv] which simply raises all Path skills. After all, it would be equivalent in price to IQ!, but have no effect on other IQ skills.

You could also include certain Path skills in other Talents. For example, a Talent related to physiology (especially the cinematic skills, like Esoteric Medicine, Pressure Points and Body Sense) could include the Path of Body, while a metaphysical Talent could include the Path of Spirit.

The energy reserve is almost useless without ritual adept to use it instantly. That just leaves the skill ceiling. With modifiers from books, etc. 12 isn't that bad of a level.
So in a low fantasy setting, that ends up making magery not worth much, which seems backwards to me.

Either way, thanks everyone for your views.

[Kuroshima]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

The energy reserve is almost useless without ritual adept to use it instantly. That just leaves the skill ceiling. With modifiers from books, etc. 12 isn't that bad of a level.
So in a low fantasy setting, that ends up making magery not worth much, which seems backwards to me.

Either way, thanks everyone for your views.

I'm not sure I agree. After all, with skill 12 you are very limited in how much energy you can gather. Of course, at home, with grimoires, ritual space, charm creation kits and whatever, it's less of an issue, but you may need to cast on the field, though not in combat.

[Mathulhu]

Having played a RPM mage who had to default from Thaumatology. Magery can be exceptionally important because tapping your own pool has no chance of critical failure.

When you have to make lots of rolls to get a reasonable amount of power that chance of critical failure creeps up surprisingly fast.