[phiwum]

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.