Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

Some thoughts:

1. The main effect of such a system would be to make it possible, but very expensive, to be a real expert in a mundane talent.
2. It makes it possible to distinguish between a person who is an ordinary farmer and a person who is known as a very skilled farmer. I'm not sure that's something people are clamouring to be able to do, though I guess it does no harm.
3. It will tend to price PCs out of the mundane talent market. Instead of paying a small fee in talent points to be able to farm, it's now a small fee to be able to walk around behind a plough, and a more substantial fee to be a farmer. As it stands nobody much bothers to buy the mundane talents, so making them more expensive or less useful is almost certainly a bad idea.
4. The example given for a farmer is probably not a good one. The 3-point farming talent doesn't describe someone who runs an estate: that needs literacy and some kind of administrator talent but it doesn't require you to be a genius at the actual farming bit. In the same way that officers in the army or navy are not the best riflemen or most skilled knot experts but have special command talents, the genius farmer is likely to be a highly valued employee but not the manager.

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

It seems pretty good to me from the standpoint of making sense, and what characters (perhaps mainly NPCs) who have mastered Farming would have. Of course, it's also only different from RAW by the IQ 9+ requirement, which probably a GM making a master farmer NPC would give them anyway.

And as for the critique that most PCs would find it too expensive to want to ever get... that seems entirely appropriate to me, again from a making-sense perspective (my usual perspective). If people want a PC who is a master farmer but are stopped by a perspective along the lines of "but it's penalizing them 2 talent points", then I'd say that if the GM has sympathy for that perspective, they can make such rulings as:

1) Ok, that makes sense for your nice character background, so yes you can start as a Master Farmer and you may still start with up to IQ in other talents.

2) In this campaign, PCs can take up to 3 points in mundane talents if they explain the background well and the GM approves.

3) You earned XP that went into Master Farmer while working as a farmer and being mentored.

etc...

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

The problem is that six points is a lot in that it lets a figure have up to that many basic Mundane Talents, and that seems like too much of a good thing.

Again, I think simplifying is the best route here; make all of them cost the same and give out one for free at character generation (because if Mundane Talents weren't ever mentioned in the rules, good players and GMs would add this level of detail to characters anyway).

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

Of course that brings us right back to the question, should all mundane talents cost the same? Should they all be single level talents? That's what I was hoping to address.

Maybe not six points then. Maybe three. Skip prerequisites and let the most valuable mundane talents cost a flat 3 each. It's not a take it or leave it proposal.

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

As to #1 and # 3, perhaps you overlooked the part of the plan where I said these mundane talents points would be separate from and in addition to a PCs normal talent points. Spending the 6 mundane talent points wouldn't reduce the normal talents a character could choose.

Nor have I made mundane talents more expensive -- quite the opposite. Instead of each costing 1 point of the 1 point allotted, they would cost 1/6th point, 2/6th points, or 3/6th points out of the 1 free point towards mundane talents. Just so as not to introduce fractions, I multiplied everything by six. Now a "1 point" mundane talent costs only 16.66% of the mundane talent allotment (now 6), whereas before it cost 100% of that allotment when the allotment was 1. Thus a character could now have a little training at a few different mundane talents, or a lot of training at one single mundane talent. All without either choice compromising their combat and adventuring talents.

Agreed that "farmer" may not be the best example, but only because I don't have an agricultural vocabulary. I should have avoided the word "estate", perhaps substituting "plantation" or some other name. The point is there is a reasonable distinction I would think between the level of skill needed to keep a small family farm of a couple acres, and the skill needed to plan and direct the planting, care, and harvesting of several crops at once over a couple hundred acres. The latter needs to know a lot more about farming than the former. If "Master Farmer" doesn't sound right, another term could be found.

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

Steve has a cool idea here that makes Mudnane Talents mechanically useful.

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

Thanks Steve and Shostak,
This is exactly the point I made earlier. See post #30:
http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.p...8&postcount=30

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

My apologies for missing that, Axly; there is a lot of similarity. It was Steve’s suggestion that the Mundane Talent remove the risk roll altogether that grabbed my attention. Your proposal, which minimizes the risk but leaves the possibility of failure, is probably more realistic. But I still think none of the Mundane Talents would be worth a two- or three-point investment.

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

WMG: Lawyer is a 3-point talent because Law School survival is all about virtue signalling through mindless effort.

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

In our society, at least, law school and medical school have a lot in common. But Physicker is only a 2-point talent.