Need for a skill point term
 

What the rules have is the term "IQ point", except when it isn't an IQ point.

ITL 16: "Each starting spell requires 1 IQ point. ... Each spell he starts with costs him three IQ points."

ITL 17: "The total IQ cost of all a starting hero’s talents may not exceed his IQ. (This is really the same system used for spells. The IQ cost of any spell is 1 for a wizard, and 3 for a hero.) Therefore, if a hero learns a spell, it is considered a
talent with an IQ cost of 3. Wizards can also learn talents – but the IQ cost is doubled."

So up to this point the term IQ point is sufficient to define the total "cost" of a character's talents and spells. However a character may purchase additional "IQ points" above his total number of points of IQ.

ITL 45: "Each new spell or talent learned costs 500 XP – or 1,000 for talents marked (2) in the listing, and so on. As when your character was created, spells cost triple for a non-wizard, and talents cost double for a wizard"

Except of course that some talents don't cost double for wizards, including languages (which are talents, except when they aren't).

Which is why I use a single term "skill point" and define a character's skill points as the total number of XPs spent to learn new talents, spells and languages divided by 500 plus their current points of IQ.

What do you call this number?

Re: Need for a skill point term
 

I've never called it anything, so I guess skill point is as good a term as any.

Re: Need for a skill point term
 

Surely "Talent Point" makes more sense, as it's used to purchase Talents. Calling it a skill point is introducing an additional and unnecessary term.

Re: Need for a skill point term
 

This is the sort of nonsense you get by mucking around with a perfectly good system. Justice for IQ! IQ for all (...talents and spells)!
;)

Re: Need for a skill point term
 

Also, see page 42 of the Companion for another solution to the IQ for Talents issue. This is what I used to do.

Re: Need for a skill point term
 

Dunno, I'm new to the system and didn't find it at all confusing.

Re: Need for a skill point term
 

I tend to call them 'talent points'. But I feel like this might be one of those issues where everyone seems to understand what everyone else means regardless of what they say, so it might be a solution looking for a problem.

Re: Need for a skill point term
 

So, what would we be using these skill or talent points for? Determining if two characters are roughly balanced for arena contests? Or the degree of difficulty posed by a module? As in: the labyrinth of Oogu-Warg is an adventure for half a dozen adventurers of about 30 skill (talent) points each.

Re: Need for a skill point term
 

At that point you'd be better off figuring out some sort of 'tier' of adventurer for the difficulties, not necessarily trying to define something that seems fine?

Re: Need for a skill point term
 

I actually see no need whatsoever for this term or any synonyms of it. "IQ Points" are ONLY relevant to new character creation, and everything else in the realm of character advancement is a function of XP. The rules are quite clear on this, and adding another confusing term to an already established mechanism merely complicates things without providing any advantage.

In fact, to be totally honest, I think Steve should get rid of the term "IQ Points" as well -- simply state that when creating a new character, the character receives 500 x IQ XP and may spend on Talents/Spells as they like prior to the start of the game. The rules specify the cost of spells for non-magic users, and the cost of skills for magic users, so there's no difficulty there. Then none of this confusion would even crop up.