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Old 02-09-2019, 06:24 PM   #1
hcobb
 
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Default Skill point costs

ITL16: "But note that many really exceptional individuals will have a stat total of 36 or less, but augment it by knowing many, many more spells or talents than they started with."

This is insane WRT the XP costs on page 45.

To hammer these into alignment requires a really massive change so how about: Additional skill points learned in play cost the square of their current attribute total then divide by five in XPs.

So a 36 point hero would pay 2 * (36^2) / 5 = 518 XP to learn Bow (a two point talent).

This would balance off stat pumping vs large skill set.

A 30 point wizard pays 180 XP to learn each new spell and a 40 point wizard pays 320 XP to learn each new spell and so on.
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Old 02-09-2019, 10:11 PM   #2
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Default Re: Skill point costs

I think the new XP rules make it pretty clear that most players will focus on stats until they get to the 38-40 point total range, and then shift to almost exclusively investing in talents, mana and minor wishes. The only exception that has come up in my group is that wizards seem to like switching to investing in mana when their attribute totals reach 36 or so. That said, once you hit 40 points you are pretty much 'locked in', stat-wise.
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Old 02-09-2019, 11:20 PM   #3
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Default Re: Skill point costs

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Originally Posted by hcobb View Post
A 30 point wizard pays 180 XP to learn each new spell and a 40 point wizard pays 320 XP to learn each new spell and so on.
So a more experienced (and presumably better prepared) wizard is stupider/less competent at learning than a beginning one?
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Old 02-10-2019, 03:22 AM   #4
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Default Re: Skill point costs

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So a more experienced (and presumably better prepared) wizard is stupider/less competent at learning than a beginning one?
Note that the higher stat wizard is learning a spell that is either: of a higher complexity, of a greater chance of success, or at a lower cost in terms of his total strength. He is paying more for a better ability.
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Old 02-10-2019, 03:43 AM   #5
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Default Re: Skill point costs

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Originally Posted by hcobb View Post
Note that the higher stat wizard is learning a spell that is either: of a higher complexity, of a greater chance of success, or at a lower cost in terms of his total strength. He is paying more for a better ability.
Perhaps, but given his generally superior skills, I would think he would find it comparatively easier to learn new magical spells, not harder. In other words, the cost to learn a spell should remain about the same since the "difficulty" of the spell is already factored into the IQ requirement, which must be acquired before spells of that "level" can be learned.

if you must attempt to make more powerful spells more costly in XP, the cost to learn a spell or talent should be based on the IQ required to learn the spell itself, not the "experience" of the person attempting to learn it. That's simply insane -- so some low XP Wizard that opted to plus up his or her IQ and not any of the other Attributes has a DIFFERENT cost to learn a given spell than a more well balanced figure of equal IQ?

A better way to approach it would be to decide on some basic spell learning cost in XP multiplied by the IQ level of the spell. At least that makes sense and is consistent with the difficulty of the spell itself, and not some strange reliance on whether or not someone chose to increase ST or DX as well as IQ.
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Old 02-10-2019, 06:14 AM   #6
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Default Re: Skill point costs

The cinematic take on the current TFT rules goes like this.

Newbie shows up at the master's joint and is put to work chopping wood, punching water or doing pushups until his stats are trained up enough to reach the talent requirements.

Then once he's at the upper thirties stat wall he's finally allowed into the library and starts adding talents.

Right?
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Old 02-10-2019, 11:18 AM   #7
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Default Re: Skill point costs

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.
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Old 02-10-2019, 11:20 AM   #8
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Default Re: Skill point costs

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I'm tending to think that talent learning systems that involve something other than XP are needed for this and several other issues.
Then use three months of training per skill point.
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Old 02-10-2019, 04:04 PM   #9
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Default Re: Skill point costs

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Originally Posted by JLV View Post
A better way to approach it would be to decide on some basic spell learning cost in XP multiplied by the IQ level of the spell. At least that makes sense and is consistent with the difficulty of the spell itself, and not some strange reliance on whether or not someone chose to increase ST or DX as well as IQ.
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.
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Old 02-10-2019, 04:50 PM   #10
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Default Re: Skill point costs

That means that everybody grabs the talents they need at creation by front loading IQ then spend XP on DX.
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