Immediate vs. delayed gratification
 

So here's a follow-up question for those few of you who are currently playing Legacy edition rules... are your players following the expected pattern of spending most of their initial XP on stat increases (immediate benefit) or are they saving XP for arguably more impactful but more costly talents, spells or lesser wishes?

And for demographic purposes, please state your session frequency, number of players, and whether you see any difference in the behavior of old vs. young players.

Re: Immediate vs. delayed gratification
 

I've been running a party of 4 for about 3-4 months (maybe a dozen sessions), and so far the non-wizard PC's have been focused on stat rises, while the wizard rose to 35 points and then switched to an emphasis on staff Fatigue points

Re: Immediate vs. delayed gratification
 

I'm running a Friday night game online. One player is always present and 5 or so other drop in/out as they can.

Most of the players are very experienced TFT players/gms with many years more experience than I have.

I think that they are all pretty much spending points on those attribute increases at this point. But it is very early on, 3 or 4 sessions into it.

Re: Immediate vs. delayed gratification
 

A similar question I have is if people who play wizards would advance several IQ levels without learning any new spells, in order to learn many high-level spells while meeting the 1 spell per IQ point limit?

Re: Immediate vs. delayed gratification
 

That does not apply in the new rules.

An IQ 10 wizard could over time learn every spell and talent of IQ 10 or less.

The average character on their 50th birthday should have 40 attributes and 13 skill points above their starting IQ.

So a wizard who starts at ST 8 DX 12 IQ 12 should wind up around ST 8 DX 12 IQ 20 with 12 talent+spells at IQ 12 or less and 13 more talents+spells at IQ 20 or less.

Just remember to use the NPC-only stat of "Mana" in order to not give away powerstones to the player characters. (There is no other justification for giving up skill points for Mana.)

Re: Immediate vs. delayed gratification
 

Not if the average attribute point total is still 30, which the book still says it is.

It'd be pretty bizarre compared to the real world, too. All the professional athletes would be 50-year-olds...

Re: Immediate vs. delayed gratification
 

The average 50 year old on Cidri would have died twice so that's 10 attribute points right there.

2-hex Flying Carpet: $10k, replace once a decade so weekly cost is $20
50 point powerstone $51k once a decade so weekly cost is $102
19 IQ wizard weekly wage: $350

At 8 deaths a weekday that's a sunk cost of $12 plus $250 to recharge the gem.

Add in the overhead of having apprentices around the city to create image of phoenix to fly into the sky as a beacon and the cost to the consumer to defeat death and cure all illness is $500, which is most likely included in the $25/week cost of not being dead.

Re: Immediate vs. delayed gratification
 

Sounds like the expectations of the richest 1% in a dystopian campaign setting where insurance companies and their accountants and financial planners rule supreme. ;-D

I'm imagining healthy young warrior adventurers whose prime survival skill is stealthily avoiding flying-carpet-riding patrols of 50-year-old supermen with 50-point powerstones.

Re: Immediate vs. delayed gratification
 

This seems to be getting into "piracy isn't profitable in Traveller" territory. My question is therefore: is this actually a problem in play, and is there a solution or is it just something long-term campaigns have to be aware of?

Re: Immediate vs. delayed gratification
 

Leaving aside the rules as written where the Revival spell isn't actually useful. (Compare "If an hour passes" on page 10 to "as long as death took place less than an hour ago." on page 33)

Back to skill points and XPs I can make the job progressions on page 58 work of moving up to the next job every five years and needing about five more skill points to qualify for the next job if each weekly job roll grants 10 XPs. The exponential attribute costs then give you 49 year olds who all have dozens of spells or talents.

Re: Immediate vs. delayed gratification
 

I think we may be straying a bit from the intent of this thread guys.

I was interested in what player behaviors ya'll are seeing around the expenditure of XP from actual gameplay using the 'Legacy' ruleset, not a bunch of mathematical extrapolation.

Re: Immediate vs. delayed gratification
 

My results are very clear: Up through total XP awards of about 1000 pts, heroes start thinking about transitioning from stat rises to new talent buys at around 600-800 points, and start actually doing it around 800-1000, whereas wizards do something interesting: they transition from stat increases to putting ST in their staff after their XP total hits 400-600 (basically, as soon as a point of staff ST is cheaper than the next stat point). I didn't see this one coming, actually; I thought they would charge up their staffs a bit later. Everyone has their eyes on XP-based minor wishes, but is waiting until they have met some character goals first; I doubt I'll see that really happen until people have ~5000 XP total.

Re: Immediate vs. delayed gratification
 

That is very useful information, thank you. Are you doling out XP at the rates suggested in the new ITL?

Re: Immediate vs. delayed gratification
 

How much cash on hand do these wizards have? Nobody's going for powerstones?

Re: Immediate vs. delayed gratification
 

I award about 50 XP per hour of effective play, which is working out to about 100-150 per session. We are playing once per week or two on average, and the surviving PCs are around 1000-1200 XP (roughly; they tend to erase as they spend, so I'm going by memory).

Re: Immediate vs. delayed gratification
 

No one has put any thought into power stones or buying spells or commissioning items or whatever. It just isn't the sort of players or campaign that I have. They are into treasure, but want it for more ordinary reasons - a fine sword, plate armor, a good horse, wine women and song, etc. The party has only two magic items: a flaming broadsword they know how to use and a scroll in a language they don't know.

Re: Immediate vs. delayed gratification
 

Personally I'd say, given the lack of time to have extensively played under the new rules, that it's more a "be aware of this possible issue" thing than an actual problem encountered in play. Obviously, one or two people might have some actual statistical analysis if they've got a large group and have been playing hard, but most of us don't have sufficient data to firmly declare "this is a problem" at this point.

Re: Immediate vs. delayed gratification
 

I've been playing a roughly weekly campaign using the new edition RAW since it was released in pdf. And, I know the original game very well (pretty frequent play since it was published ca. 1980). I'm aware of the peculiar logical implications of a few of the rules re. magic item generation, experience, wishes, etc., but I haven't encountered any meaningful 'problems' in my campaign. And at this point I don't expect them to emerge. Because the power progression of PC's is pretty predictable and constrained in the new edition I doubt there are any nasty feedback loops I haven't encountered yet. I've tried most of the new talents on for size by giving them to NPCs and seeing how the work in play; they seem pretty good - useful but not fundamental game changers. Basically, it all seems solid.

Re: Immediate vs. delayed gratification
 

Great to hear!

Are you doing RAW for the combat as well? Any observations there?

Re: Immediate vs. delayed gratification
 

Yes, RAW for combat. I would say the only house rule I miss is one I've long used where I give a damage bonus to people with ST in excess of that required for a weapon (in 1:2 ratio, up to double base weapon damage). I've always felt this is a good rule and will also be good patched onto the new edition. But it's a trivial thing, really. Another thing I've been sort of ignoring is the 1 hour grace period for death of figures reduced to -5 ST or below. I prefer the game to have some sort of hard threshold for getting instantly murdered, rather than letting people at -48 ST or something linger for an hour.

My one observations is that the advanced UC talents really have an impact at the table. A 'ninja' sort of character that went after the party to capture them for a bounty succeeded at taking out all 4 without herself getting a scratch; part of her success with stealth and use of a blowgun with paralytic poison darts, but at the end of the encounter she basically walked up and kicked the crap out of two fighters in the blink of an eye.

Re: Immediate vs. delayed gratification
 

Just out of curiosity, what UC level was your 'ninja'?

Re: Immediate vs. delayed gratification
 

Yes,

I'd like to hear a bit about the ninja chick as well.

I've never played an unarmed character, and I'd be curious how she overcame the two warriors with ease?