Re: New Skills
 

Who else: Scholars, Mechanicians, and anyone else who wants to communicate effectively and produce books that can easily be learned from. Wizards too - Advanced Wizard has rules for learning and casting magic from written books and scrolls - well, it would naturally be really helpful if they were well-written, as opposed to poorly-written. The given rates of learning and reliable casting for books and scrolls could be for those written by people with the Writing talent (and Calligraphy...?), while those written by someone without could be slower and/or less reliable to learn or cast from.

There could also be a Reading talent (prereq Literacy) which would represent the ability to read and understand more quickly, to comprehend dense texts, and make understanding poorly-written texts easier. Also helps understanding nuance, poetry, subtle hints & clues, etc. Also useful for Scholars, Wizards, Mechanicians, etc. who have access to valuable but dense reading materials. People with Reading talent learning from written sources would do so more quickly (or those without, less quickly), and have less difficulty reading poorly-written texts, bad calligraphy, etc.

Re: New Skills
 

Many people have suggested Quick Draw talents, though I would suggest that these should still involve some sort of penalty (-2 adjDX?) for using a weapon you just readied the same turn. Otherwise, it just removes ALL effect/significance of having a weapon ready or not. (Seems to me that makes situations and choices less interesting.)

Re: New Skills
 

Definitely a Streetwise equivalent. I would also suggest a Heraldry talent—knowledge of the arts, people and politics, but no musical instruments.

A Lore or Area Knlowledge would be nice as well.

Re: New Skills
 

Hi JLV, everyone.
Oh, maybe? Want to weigh in Chris?

Fencing is IQ 10, and requires a DX of 14. So a starting character can take both Sword and Fencing talents.

So someone with Sword + Fencing feels to me like a "talented beginner" or perhaps a "competent swordsman". Good but not exceptional. Certainly not the best of the best, the master swordsman of sagas & legends.

Under current rules (where you can pick up as many talents as you want), characters with another focus (say a Thief armed with a rapier), could max out sword fighting talents fairly casually. "You know, swords are not my main focus, but it is only one talent. What the heck. I'll be equal skilled to the best swordsman. Why not?"

***
UC v, requires DX 16, & 11 memory. UC v is an example of a "hard to get talent".


If Strike Master (6), required a fairly high IQ (need to know lots of physiology of many different types of creatures and monsters), then gaining it would require some focus and effort. Our casual thief might not have the IQ, or wish to spend that much experience to get the 6 point talent.

Expert Defender (4), needs medium ST & IQ and requires a high DX. Our casual thief has the DX & IQ, but being in fights defending is not his main focus. If there was a better hiding / sneaking talent (which I suggested), maybe he would go for that rather than getting a couple more ST and taking this talent?

Trained Reflexes (11), adj DX 16+. (Perhaps broken up into a couple of talents). This gives UC v like abilities but for armoured fighters. No way the casual thief is getting this.

***

A few tough to get, powerful talents would increase the number of characters possible. TFT could better distinguish between a beginner, an average practitioner, and a master. It would also give something for a mid level player to really lust after. "Let's play next week! I'm only 3 sessions away from getting talent X!"

Warm regards, Rick.

Re: New Skills - Streetwise.
 

Hi JLV, everyone.
I thought Streetwise WAS in original TFT, but it is not. Definitely a good addition.

Warm regards, Rick.

Re: New Skills
 

Rick's list, plus a Writer talent, as mentioned by Skarg.

IMO, Quickdraw should have a DX penalty or an extra die vs AdjDX for the attack, not separate QD roll, with a note that a fumble results in disarming oneself.

Re: New Skills
 

Ok, Rick asked for some more information on my views, so here goes:

If we look at Sword and Sorcery fiction (the quoted example was of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser), but it could easily have been Conan or Elric; the heroes are often faced with life and death challenges which they nearly always somehow manage to overcome by the skin of their teeth. For us to believe that the heroes are in real danger, the challenge they face has to have a high chance of them failing to overcome it. The heroes are of course skilled individuals in their own worlds, but their escapes from tight spots often go beyond mere skill; they are rescued by a powerful Magician, spared by the lascivious Evil Queen, find a hidden Scroll etc. How does this happen? Well, obviously it suits the authors purpose and that of the story, but how do we make our games reflect this?

Many modern RPG designs such as FATE, Barbarians of Lemuria etc have accepted that some sort of means must exist beyond skills/Talents/attributes, and include some sort of Luck/Hero/Karma mechanism which allows the player to overcome bad luck or otherwise influence the story direction in some way. If we allow this survivability to be purely by skill/talents, then logically, the characters must never have faced enough of a challenge in the first place.

Now, Melee/Wizard are renowned as tough games with high casualty rates, which is fine for one-off games, but those of us wanting to run extended campaigns need something else. Of course, the GM can fudge things to keep the characters alive, as I've often done, but wouldn't it be better if the players could fudge things themselves?

Now, sorry for being a bit long winded here, but I'll finish by summarising with two points:

1. I did not say we shouldn't have advanced combat Talents. What I said was I didn't think the solution was to have "lots of Advanced combat Talents." In other words, the problem (if it's felt to be a problem) won't be solved entirely in this way.

2. Having "Karma" points or whatever you want to call them, allows us to more closely follow the kind of things that happen in the stories, enhances player choice and increases character survivability without attribute bloat or massively expanding the Talent system.

Re: New Skills
 

I am probably going to be odd-man-out on this one, but I highly resist the idea of including "Quickdraw" into TFT, for the simple reason that nearly every member of the adventure party will take it. If everyone takes it, then it stops being special to that super-swordsman, and it just ends up as another player cheat.

I get the idea behind it, and why people really like this thing - and yes, this is the classic Samuri/Conan move - but from a dramatic tension perspective, I think it hurts the overall game-tension level in the long run; and that would hurt TFT.

My 2 cents.

JK

Re: New Skills
 

As TFT stands at the moment, I don't think most characters would take it because, (a) it cost a Talent point that you could use for something else, (b) it's only useful occasionally or to a very specific character type (i.e., the javelin throwing swordsman etc). Obviously game styles will vary and if you feel it breaks your game you wouldn't use it. That's why I didn't use the New Followers Talent for example.

Re: New Skills
 

Here are 32 new talents

Research (find things out about the world and people)

• Sense motive
• Interrogation
• (Knowledge)
• (Talent fields)

Knowledge (declare things your character already knows)

• Nature
• History
• Architecture
• Architect
• Mining
• Dungeoneering
• (talent fields)

Manipulation / Influence (get people to do what you want)

• Intimidation
• Torture
• (Membership / culture / reputation)

Arts (bard specializations -- perform in front of a crowd)

• Acting
• Musical performance
• Composing
• Dance
• Comedy

Culture / reputation (make impressions, use reputation)

• Etiquette
• Poetry appreciation
• Poet
• History
• Music appreciation
• Social dancing
• Literature appreciation
• Pedigree
• Renown
• Wealth

Ranking Membership (contacts, influence)

• Guilds
• Police
• Government
• Royalty
• Military

Level 2 (higher levels of existing talents)

• Chemistry 2
• Alchemy 2