Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

ITL 36 notes an option rule for 1 point of talent to help fill out a character's background. Here is an example of how I apply this for a background template for PCs to use as the players find suitable.

Template: Former Apprentice
Background: A wizard who until recently served as an apprentice somewhere, providing fatigue for enchantment and doing other tasks.
Requirements: Character is a wizard who pays for the Aid spell.
Mundane bonus talent: Literacy is the one point of mundane talent.
Background implications: The character was an apprentice serving a wizard's guild, coven, or a lone master. They are therefore to some extent still enmeshed in either the continuing politics of their patron, on bad terms with this patron, or dealing with the breakup or fall of this patron. They are assumed to have no net credit in either case. They can reach back to these contacts, but will need to provide boons at least equal to the favors they ask for. Conversely the GM may reach through these contacts to the PC, but only in terms of job or mission offers, not requirements.

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

The background you wrote is nice.

However:

ITL 36 says that in an optional rule in the Mundane Talents section, which is about the talents listed there, which doesn't include Literacy, which is one of the most useful talents there is.

So claiming Literacy as a "free" talent seems more like a way to try to get a really useful talent for free, instead of having to take Baker, Draper, Gardener...

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

I have to agree with Skarg... I can see expansion or even an alternative acquisition model for 'mundane' talents, but I can't see adding LITERACY to that list.

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

What then is the most common talent that almost every apprentice learns in order to accomplish their daily tasks?

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

I get it, Henry. LITERACY might be considered a 'wizard tax'... unless your definition of wizards includes spellcasters able to learn magic intuitively w/o formal training or study (i.e. Spell Savants).

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

I can see a hedge wizard, shaman or witch being a full wizard without being literate. They learn their craft my word of mouth, not from reading. If anything, it makes the master/apprentice relationship more necessary.

So, yes, literacy is a critical talent for wizard, a wizard tax if you will, but not to be assumed or given for free.

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

Are there any nominations for a better general mundane talent for apprentices? Note that I don't assume free because the cost is the background of the character.


I'd also give Literacy as a mundane talent for nobles that were courtly graces types, not sword knights.

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

Mundane Talent: Housekeeper (1) This talent gives represents the ability to keep shelves stocked and organized, rooms tidied, bookshelves organized, etc.

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

I think the solution to the LITERACY gap is to link the talent to some kind of Education Table. The idea is similar to the Jobs Table, but it sucks money instead of granting it (or creates debt). At the end of the 'term of service' characters come out with a few specific talents.

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

Cultures with high illiteracy, and wizardly assistants in TFT, can manage to do most things just fine. Literacy is still a great and no-doubt pretty common talent for wizards to have, but none of that means it ought to be free.

Of course, it can be fun and interesting when a GM adds a whole layer to character creation where different choices for background can have effects on what PCs start with, and what their situation and connections start out like.

I assume it is pretty common that many wizards learned some non-wizardly talent(s) before it was sorted out that they had wizardly gifts and ought to be studying magic rather than their family trade, etc.

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

Would you charge double for such non-wizardly mundane talents? Seems like one should, per RAW.

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

Then why aren't these pre-study talents at heroic cost?

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

It kind of depends on why most Talents cost double for a Wizard. Is it because Wizards must focus on magic because it's difficult to learn? In that case, mundane talents learned before choosing to study magic might not suffer from the Wizard penalty. On the other hand, are those well-suited for wizardry just not good at learning mundane stuff? If so, then Mundane Talents should cost double even if they represent background knowledge.

I could go either way, but I tend to think that one point Mundane Talents aren't all that useful in play but serve to distinguish characters from one another. For that reason, I'm okay with letting Wizards get a one-point Mundane Talent for free, just like Heroes.

I also let that free Mundane point be spent on languages, since otherwise non-human races end up paying an extra IQ point on a language or the races end up so homogenized that no one bats an eye at a dwarf, orc or goblin who speaks only Common. I'm not keen on that. I also disagree with Skarg that the non-human races generally have enough advantages so that the cost of a language evens out. I suppose it's true for lovable halflings, fleet elves and industrious dwarves, but orcs get doodlysquat from their selection, right? And goblins have the curse of stringent promisekeeping.

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

As long as it’s house rules, why not ditch the hero/wizard cost penalties altogether and go truly classless?

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

Yes, but GMs can do what they want, particularly with what starting characters are allowed, so what I tend to do with such a wizard is give them a 1(x2)-point mundane talent if there is such in their background, though if it's a talent they don't care about and/or haven't kept giving any attention, then it'll be rusty and not as good as someone who actually keeps up with it... if/when that comes into play.

Such talents can add personality to characters, and be fun and amusing whether the talents are neglected ("oh, I actually know something about beekeeping...") or kept fresh ("No! We are not just buying salt pork and jerky for rations! Look at the grower's market over there! I see I'll be the one cooking while we're on the road!")

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

1) Because who cares if a wizard is getting a theoretical discount on Baker?

and/or

2) Because they are, and either the GM gives it to them (if their background and behavior during play supports that they still keep up the talent, rather than having neglected it for years), OR the GM specifies that they only get it for free at a neglected level.

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

I tend to approach 'mundane' talents as background color TBH. I let players select any skill they want. I don't charge IQ for them at all, but my list also doesn't include complex professions like lawyers or master musicians.

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

Amen to that! Imagine how much simpler it gets for players and GMs alike when there are no exceptions to whether or not any talents cost double. Everything costs face value for everyone. Problem solved.

If this makes you fear wizards would become too powerful, then call Wizardry itself an (expensive) talent costing 4, 5, or 6 points, thus limiting most wizards to not so many more of the other talents than they can afford already under RAW.

And if you wish to avoid a hero "morphing" into a wizard in actual play (in the rare event they saved up all their XP to make such a transition) simply disallow it. Call the prerequisite for the Wizardry talent "Began study in childhood and completed by late adolescence", thus requiring a new PC that wants to be a wizard to take the Wizardry talent at character creation.

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

This is the approach put forward a long time ago on these forums (maybe by you, Steve?) that I eventually adopted. I also like the idea of books (or scrolls, or carvings on hidden tomb walls, etc) being necessary to learn the art of magic in general and specific spells in particular.

But back to the topic at hand, a free Mundane Talent is an excellent way to fill out a character’s background. But one wonders why all Mundane Talents don’t cost 1 point. It would be nice to have some guidance on what you actually get for the investment for 2- and 3-point ones.

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

I guess I gotta write an article explaining how the mundane talents don't conflict with the other talents.

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

Yes Shostak, I'm guilty as charged - LOL. I've been waving the flag for that idea since 1983. Metagaming had even accepted my article on this to publish in Interplay as an optional rule, but it folded before that next issue came out. So now I just wander the moors every night, ranting about it :)

If I've never mentioned it before, I love your approach to how magic and spells should be learned. And quests for musty old scrolls give adventures a certain flavor. In my group's world we even had a religious order devoted entirely to scouring the hidden places of the world for lost knowledge, and a long-lost encyclopedia of spells that was considered to be the holy grail.

They really need to cost something don't they, just to evenly regulate things. I wonder if fractional costs would be an option -- not quite free but still very inexpensive?

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

And the coin paid is background.

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

Rotten luck! My much younger self would have found that to be such a fruitful article.
Thank you (and I owe it to you).
Mundane Talents are odd things, since they can only deliver narrative advantage, yet they can cost up to three whopping points. And why are they all IQ 8? Without any guidance on what you get for paying two extra points for Artist than you would for Farmer (Really? Farming is not as simple as a 1-point talent would suggest), it seems the best approach is for a GM to just make them all cost one point and give one away for zero at character generation.

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

It is tricky to find advantage for many mundane talents, it's true. Some are not too bad. A trapper should be able to make simple traps suitable for animals, snares and such. A hunter should have some of the knowledge a naturalist has, but limited to typical game. A farmer knows a few things about plants, but this seems hard to payoff in-game.

I've allowed a fisherman to feed the party as a Woodsman would, at least when they are in a suitable setting. A beekeeper might know something about insects generally, but that doesn't seem all that helpful. They could, I suppose, find a means of protecting themselves from wasps in order to bypass a nest.

For a good role-player, these talents provide character. A good role-player uses the talents whenever appropriate, even to no particular advantage, just to round out the character. This is, of course, just a matter of "narrative advantage", as Shostak puts it, but it should entail some XP gain at least.

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

That's a good point. It then becomes incumbent upon the GM to make certain there are opportunities for those Mundane Talents to get some time on stage, as Checkhov would have us do.

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

Right! Though that can be a bit difficult, especially to do it naturally. How is it that whenever Fred is playing, someone always has a sock that needs darning, but when he's not, there is nary a footwear related incident?

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

Yes.

That last part is how I think it's meant. Those talents are mostly not adventuring talents - they're just things people may know because practically no one gets raised as just "an adventurer".

And it seems natural to me that the higher costs are for talents that take more to get a useful level of skill. As ITL says, Mundane talents are also available at Master level for 3 points. So yes, there can be a lot to Farming, but 1 point in Farming is also very useful - for doing much of the basic work of farming, and knowing things about it.

Artist/Calligrapher costs 3 points because it represents a high degree of ability. It lets you do something along the lines of this: https://pro-cdn.pixelmator.com/pro/s...anuscripts.jpg If you just want to be able to make reasonably good drawings, you could take "Drawing" for 1 point. (Drawing isn't listed, but as ITL says, not everything is.)


Well, I see games worlds like places you can visit or be a part of through roleplaying, and I want them to behave as makes sense, and if the players or GM can find logical ways that non-adventuring talents become relevant or interesting, or if that leads to play being something worth telling a story about later, then I see that as a nice bonus, but NOT something I'd want the GM to intentionally go out of the way of logic to artificially set up.

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

Note that Calligrapher is the required talent to copy magical books at ITL 141.
I'd like to know what Handyman enable, other than taking doors off their hinges in the labyrinth.

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

Then all Mundane Talents should be one point for the basic level, two for better, and three for master level, to allow for mediocre Calligraphers and Master Farmers. But again, the question is why bother if there isn't some kind of real payoff for the investment? You can put three points into Master Guitarist, but it doesn't actually give you anything nearly as useful as two points in Bard (which, admittedly, requires a modestly higher IQ).

I wouldn't want the GM to go so far out of the way as to suspend the logic of the game, either. But, if I spent three precious points on Artist, I'd be more than a little disappointed if the GM made minimal attempt to have it be relevant in the adventures, just as I would if I spent points on Remove Traps and never found opportunity to utilize the talent.

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

This is how I use the Mundane talents. They allow for mundane jobs. Unfortunately, the Jobs Table does not list these as necessary for skills, so I have added these jobs to the table. Also note that any cost 1 or cost 2 Mundane talent has a Master level at cost 3 (this is in ITL). So, I have that added too. It just always seemed an obvious hole that job talents did not have jobs. This is what I have:

- All cost 1 Mundane Talents, but not Miner: $15, Risk 3/18
- All cost 2 Mundane Talents: $30, Risk 3/18
- All cost 3 Mundane Talents including Master Mundane talents but not Master Miner: $50, Risk 3/18

- Miner (cost 1): $30, 4/17
- Master Miner (cost 3): $55, 4/17

Miner is separate since it is a more dangerous profession.

Also note that there already is "fisherman" and "scribe" jobs on the job table. So, I say these are different than the mundane talent ones. For example, the mundane talent fisherman is shore fishing, while the job table fisherman that requires Seamanship talent is fishing from a boat/ship.

I did not bring this up in the House Rule collecting topic as I did not see it as a big deal. But maybe I should have.

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

Where "should be" means you can add more mundane talents if you want more variety and detail, as ITL already says... and if "mediocre" means novice levels of the more complex Mundane talents, then yes.


Because no universe provides balanced "real payoff" to adventurers no matter what they choose to do with themselves! "I became a master cheesemaker instead of learning Fireball - why isn't the GM giving me cheese-based adventures?" "Yeah, the GM should look up that issue of Roleplayer that has the entire College of Cheese Magic developed, with Cheese Missile designed to be competitive with Fireball!" (No, really it does, but no, I don't want the GM to do that - would you?)

Three points in Master Guitarist does give you three points of value - in Guitar talent! You will out-guitar people with only one or two points in Guitar talent! If you're roleplaying someone who chose to develop their guitar skill to a masterful level, then that character presumably felt it was worthwhile, for that character's own reasons. If you're also a clever roleplayer who wants some other adventure-related opportunities to get out of that talent, that's up to your creativity as a player, just as it is to find someplace to use your weapon talents to advantage. Maybe that's why there are more adventurers with weapon talents than there are master guitarists. On the other hand, there are also some clever players, who may figure out that they might be able to do things like create a compelling distraction with a masterful guitar performance, and/or impress various NPCs, and/or get into close range of important people by being entertainment fit for a king, etc.


Yes, a clever GM will also think of such possibilities, though I personally would hope the GM would stick to logical ways and amounts of that. Although, if you're really a master guitarist, you may be able to develop a reputation as such by performing in appropriate places, and that would naturally tend to lead to more opportunities. And Master Guitarist may also include some amount of knowledge of how to look for guitar opportunities. Although, not all those opportunities might be adventure related, or desired.

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

The point cost is for game balance, at least one would think so; you pay X in order to do Y instead of paying N to do Z, and X=N-1 and the comparable utility of Y and Z are such that Z is a little more valuable (which justifies its cost of N). One should not have to pay X or N to do what amounts to Zero in-game. Anything that is essentially filling out a character’s background or personality and that has no mechanical effect on the game should cost nothing; otherwise you are just penalizing players who want a more fleshed-out character.

And yet the Master Guitarist will likely wind up having the judges declare the Bard (who paid a mere two points) the winner in the guitar duel they engaged in.

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

I could kill right now for some saganaki!

This puts me in mind of Robert Culp's character in the sixties TV series "I Spy". Us boomers will recall he was a touring master tennis player who was secretly a CIA agent, on tennis tours in foreign countries that otherwise would be highly suspicious of any American visitor. He completed covert operations under this cover, because he was a creditably good tennis player.

Perhaps the GM would allow a goblin with Master Guitarist to be admitted to the Elf Queen's ball, when other goblins wouldn't get past the guards. But this one does because he's a reputable master at a form of something the typical bards can't provide. Or the Goblin King allows a dwarf to work at his palace because he's a master brewer and the court loves his beer.

Granted though these would be mostly special case scenarios. But it's hardly unheard of for players to build a new character specifically designed for an upcoming adventure, if the GM has telegraphed what or where that adventure may be.

Masters of mundane talents are probably more likely to be NPCs the GM drops into a story as a plot device. We used to occasionally give an NPC to a player to keep for their own when they needed a replacement character in the middle of an adventure. It might be amusing to saddle a player with such a character, just to see if they could create a use for a mundane talent they never would have chosen on their own.

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

Absolutely. The same applies to many Master (non-mundane) skills. A Master Armourer is useful as an NPC, less so as a character. It takes rather a lot of time, money and XP to perform that job.

Clever.

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

I don't agree. The costs of the mundane talents are about how hard the thing is to learn.

The point is that it's a role-playing game about self-consistent imaginary game worlds that operate as one might expect NOT from min-max game theory, but as makes logical sense.

As for penalizing for "no mechanical effect", 1) ITL suggests letting PCs take a point of mundane background talent for no charge, and 2) there ARE mechanical effects of knowing a mundane talent - the GM should acknowledge the knowledge and ability of a PC with such a talent and let them use it as makes sense.


Why would that be likely? Seems to me that would only happen if the judges are incompetent to judge a guitar talent contest, or are easily swayed, no?

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

Whataboutism a mater luter who does excellent technical note playing to back up your Bard singer composer?

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

If that were true, then the point costs listed are inaccurate. The idea that learning to be an artist is somehow much harder than learning to farm is not supported by my experience.

If that were true, it would diminish the significance of points at all. But it isn’t about min/maxing at all, but about some sense of rough equivalency.

If all Mundane Talents cost one point, I would not have an issue, since anyone could get the talent of choice at no cost at character generation. That isn’t what RAW gives, even as the suggested option you mention. Another option that would be consistent would be for Mundane Talents to be required at character generation at a cost of one. And a third options would be for Mundane Talents to have tiered costs, but to be fleshed out with guidance on what you actually get for the points, e.g. a social bonus for those with higher cost, which for all practical purposes would make them standard talents.

Does Fishing confer ability to feed a party adventuring along the coast or any familiarity with boats? Does Artist give any limited form of Recognize Value or Scholar? Or, does Master Guitarist confer any of the benefits of Bard?

Who knows? The only guidance is “It’s up to the GM.”

And why are they all Mundane Talents IQ 8? Why not 7 or 9?

Because the Bard gets a social reaction bonus (a mechanical effect) while the Master Guitarist does not.

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

As long as the Bard prevents anyone saying "whataboutism", that sounds like a good idea for a great performance.


They're not inaccurate if you include Master Farmer for 3 points, and add Drawing for 1 point.

As I offered a while ago:

I would say the opposite, that it is true (that the talent points are mainly about a notion of how hard it feels like things would be to learn), and that it doesn't diminish the "significance" of points. It is its own level of significance apart from the significance of their utility. And if/when it makes sense, I would much rather use a value that makes sense and feels like it correctly represents effort, than choose values in a vain attempt to balance talent choices.

In fact, I would despise an RPG that achieved point-buy value-equivalence. If 1 point in Baker were as useful for an adventurer as 1 point in Crossbow, I do not want to know much about that silly universe (unless maybe it's a good joke about how silly it is).

For people concerned with balance, there is a natural balance effect when you provide many choices with values that reflect how useful and hard to learn talents would actually be. People choose to learn things that make sense for them to learn. And it leads to a world that feels real, and like you can actually experience making choices in that situation, because the values represent how they'd be.


If they were all one point, then you could use that free point of learning to either choose to be a Draper, or a Lawyer. Any you could learn either for the same effort during play, too. You'd also have an over-abundance of PCs claiming more impressive or useful talents for free, or suddenly becoming Lawyers or Astrologers during play for the same cost as learning Knife or Swimming.

And perhaps more important, having advanced and rare knowledge is something that many players can figure out uses for in a roleplaying campaign.

Of course, if the GM doesn't care and sees no value in Lawyer and/or no need/desire to have them cost more, they can let players start with whatever, as they can anyway. But offering that some talents require more serious effort to learn seems to me like useful data that would be lost (and made more gamey) if simplified to 1 point for everything.


So, the GM gets to answer those questions. As they should. Unless you want Fishing rules. I mean, I do want fishing rules, and I have come up with rulings for them them as GM several times. Yep, you can try to fish. Depends of course on your gear, where you are trying to fish, what fish are there, whether they're biting which is about various conditions, and in any case usually takes an investment of time, and is variable, etc. I usually try to apply as much or as little detail to that as the players are interested in (which can vary a lot by player). Should ITL have included a section on detailed fishing rules? Probably not. It's only one of the Mundane or other talents that could be developed into mini-games. But if/when players are into trying to fish (or use any talent beyond what has detailed rules in ITL), hopefully the GM can come up with something.

Even better if there are house rules or Hexagram articles to choose between, but again it's appropriate for the GM to be choosing which such rules to use (or tweak) or not.

Perhaps a valuable starting point would be just a more developed list of mundane talents with more levels and a little description of what each entails. Probably there ARE 1-point version of Lawyer and Astrologer but they are limited compared to the 3-point versions (just representing SOME knowledge of those fields, but not very complete knowledge).


Again, because it's a peripheral subject, and this lets them all be listed in one concise section. If a GM prefers to be more detailed and consistent, they probably aren't all IQ 8. One GM added a bunch of sub-human talents including Counting I, Counting II, Counting III...


The GM isn't limited to determining what happens only based on what mechanics are listed in ITL.

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

Is astrology at ITL 43 or instead Astrologer at ITL 36?

Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
 

You've both anticipated my next suggested solution. I envision:

1. A longish one or two page table of mundane talents to take the place of the paragraph about them on ITL 36. Any small, practical bonuses that might apply to certain combat or adventuring situations would be noted next to each entry in the table.
2. Each entry has both an IQ level, probably just varied from IQ 7 to IQ 9 or 10.
3. Each entry has a point cost of 1, 2, or 3.
4. Some entries would be prerequisites to others.
5. Optionally, and similar to the Jobs Table, each entry could have a weekly net income. Higher incomes belonging to the higher IQ and/or more expensive ones. This income would only apply however when the PC was taking an extended break, and was staying where such talents would be useful. You couldn't earn anything fishing during a stay with desert nomads. But unlike the Jobs Table, we wouldn't bother with assigning risk and risk rolls.
6. Every PC would get 6 points to spend on mundane talents at character creation. If that sounds like a lot, recall I'm proposing point cost of 1, 2 and 3, and prerequisite costs in some case. All this is completely separate from the regular talent rules. Unused mundane talent points could not be used ever to add regular talents. Optionally though I see no reason not to let a PC learn a mundane talent in like, but then it would be treated the same as learning any regular talent -- unused mundane talent points would be lost forever after character generation.

Here's a sample

IQ 7 Farmhand - cost 1 - income 0
IQ 8 Farmer - cost 2 - Prerequisite: Farmhand - income 15
.........(must own a small farm to earn the income,
..........and be there full time)
IQ 9 Master Farmer - cost 3 - Prerequisite: Farmer - income 50
.........(must own a large farm or manage an estate full time)

So a new character that wishes to start as a Master Farmer has to spend all 6 of their mundane talent points on that (because of the prerequisites) and can take nothing else.

Starting as a Farmer instead only costs 3, leaving 3 points for another mundane talent or 2 at lower levels

Starting at Farmhand costs 1, guarantees you subsistence income on breaks from adventures, and leaves 5 points to take some combination of other mundane talents,

And this would become the template for any multi-level mundane skills. Of course most or many would only have one or two levels.

Keep in mind a PC starting with Master Farmer merely has that as background -- they don't own anything more than any other starting character. In fact, earning the income to buy their own farmland might well be the reason and motive to on risky adventures in the first place. Of course once they get addicted to the income, they might decide to save farming for their old age (if they survive that is).

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.