Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Plambeck
In any event, taking all four of those talents would have cost 16 talent points. Imagine the starting wizard with 32 points to pay spell costs, plus twice his ST added in. But then that superhero would have to have started with ST 8, DX 8, and would probably have been skewered by a crossbow bolt and killed before getting off one spell in combat - LOL.
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Looks like it only requires 14 points (but IQ 15 prereq for Advanced Sorcery) because sorcery and wizardry only cost 3 if you know the other one.
So a starting wizard could be ST 8 DX 9 IQ 15 and know all of those, and would have half-ST costs for spells, 8 ST-based mana, and another 30 IQ-based mana.
Team them up with a couple of assistants at say ST 10 DX 13 IQ 9 with the Aid spell, and they could Aid the wizard/sorceror's DX.
Or someone could start with ST 8 DX 12 IQ 12 and start with Advanced Wizardry and one talent, 12 spells at half-ST-cost, 8 ST-mana and 24 IQ-mana.
I don't think it's all that crazy if that's what you want, and if the GM gatekeeps access to the talents by the characters' background or in-play activities needing to be special training, and that's the world/game situation you want.
It does make a very large difference in the power balance, especially the advanced talents, compared to original RAW ITL/AM/AW. The available mana especially. But it's not all that much different from a high-powered game where powerful wizards have access to strong ST batteries and/or apprentices.
The talent difference is pretty large, but talents aren't all that powerful for wizards compared to their spells.
Your frame of reference is a lot different since your game worlds already had wizards with a bunch of talents in addition to a full IQ of spells. In our games, most wizards would tend to have very limited talents because of the conflict of resources. Adding more talents wouldn't upset all that much, though I would expect some/many of them using them to be better wizards/combatants - e.g. taking Missile Weapons to shoot lightning and fireballs better.
The advanced talents, if available in our campaigns, would have been obvious choices for all wizards who got past starting level, especially Advanced Sorcery. From the perspective of wizards who aren't used to spending much if any IQ on talents, they'd simply want as many of these as they could get, and consider the extra talents they could learn gravy.
So I tend to think something other than just IQ ought to be determining who has talents of this type. In new ITL, there'd tend to be the 500XP per talent point cost, which could serve, but I think also has its own issues.