[DF] Talents for the Standard Templates

[ErhnamDJ]

Regarding the Martial Artist's Chi Talent, I don't think it's as good a deal as it's being put forward here.

First off, it doesn't do very much as their power talent. It adds to Danger Sense, if you take that, but that's not worth very much. Other than that, it doesn't do very much at all in that regard.


Second, its bonus to skills. For one thing, the starting Martial Artist only gets seven chi skills to start with, and each one only has two points spent on it. You could put two more points into each of those and get the same thing for about the same cost (fourteen versus fifteen points).

Also, the skills themselves aren't each equally useful. Look at these two sample selections:


Selection #1
Autohypnosis
Esoteric Medicine
Blind Fighting
Mind Block
Pressure Points
Immovable Stance
Push

Selection #2
Throwing Art
Mental Strength
Light Walk
Power Blow
Flying Leap
Kiai
Breath Control


The usefulness of those two selections is not the same. If you want to focus on the skills in Selection #1, then you should probably pay a different amount for skill increases than if you want to focus on the skills from Selection #2.


It's also the case that the chi skills are of varying usefulness at different skill levels. Mind Block at 13 isn't very useful. Mind Block itself isn't very useful when compared to Mental Strength or Will.

Each level of a skill isn't worth the same amount. You need to have Power Blow at a high level if you want to use it. Body Control wants a higher level than your HT score. The ones that are more useful---Throwing Art and Light Walk--are both DX-based, which the Martial Artist already has at a high level, and are both useful from the start. You can get one of the best ranged weapon skills in the game.

And you can add other skills after character creation, to purchase all of them, but the person making a Martial Artist will take the seven skills they find most useful to start, and so each additional skill is worth less to them.

I'm just not sure how Chi Talent is supposed to be worth more than a level of Will + a level of HT, which covers most of those skills that aren't already at high levels from the Martial Artist's DX. Or you could do a level of Per + a level of Will + a 5-point Talent (which could include those other skills).

This is the same problem the Barbarian faces. If Outdoorsman didn't have Fishing, it would be a 5-point/level Talent. And you could use those other five points to raise Per, which... raises Fishing. You're paying five extra points a level to raise Fishing. If it wasn't even in the Talent, it would only cost 4/level to raise.


There are seventeen skills in Chi Talent. You're paying five more points for the five worst skills on the list, whichever you consider those to be.

I don't see any reason not to allow them to have a 10/level Talent where they pick twelve that they want, with the option of upgrading to the full 15/level version.

Or even a six skill version for 5/level. They only start with seven chi skills! Right off the bat, they're paying a ton of points for increases in skills that they don't even have. They're paying a ton of points for potential increases later on to skills that, in character creation, they thought were worse than their top seven!

If I make a Martial Artist, how many more of those Chi skills am I actually going to want? If I don't take Autohypnosis and Esoteric Medicine and I don't want to sink points into Power Blow, then that's three skills right there that I might never take, yet that I'm still paying points for as part of Chi Talent. Add a few more in there that I never want, and we're already down to a 10/level Talent. Parry Missile Weapons is way overpriced, my concept doesn't call for Kiai, I didn't take Power Blow so I can't get Flying Leap, and now I'm only using eleven of the potential seventeen Chi skills.


So, while it is significantly less costly to purchase Chi Mastery than to get an equivalent increase in skill levels to those skills from some other means, it's not as effective as it could be if you only want six or fewer or twelve or fewer of those skills. Compare it to Ninja Talent, or the Strong Chi talent from Power-Ups 3. The Martial Artist doesn't have an option for raising a small number of skills like that. It's all or nothing, but I don't think anyone values all seventeen of those Chi skills equally.