Talents & Martial Arts

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Infornific

First, the idea that a small Talent with combat skills was ok but a large Talent with combat skills was unbalancing. That strikes me as a little odd - a big Talent isn't a whole lot cheaper than DX so a 15 point Talent with all melee combat skills doesn't seem too unbalancing in practice.

Partly it's a factor of the alternate pricing - with the 1 point per skill option, it's less difficult to generate unbalanced talents. But no, a 15 point talent with one class of weapon skills isn't unbalanced. The unbalanced cases are mostly small talents that cover just the weapons I want (equivalent really to what you seem to want here, a talent that covers just the skills found in a particular martial art and no others), and a talent that includes weapon skills from several different categories (for example a 5 point talent with Karate, Shortsword, Spear, Spear Throwing and Guns (Rifle) is fairly obviously a bad idea).

And yes, I do have reservations about Job Training. It's *purpose* is to be unbalancing in a particular way - effectively a method of creating a character class niche.

Cosmic (can be learned) (+50%)
Limitation: Character must be trained in the martial arts style. (-10%)
Limitation: Signature - fighting style is more easily identified (-10%)
Limitation: Only applies to Techniques and subskills used in the relevant martial art (-10%)

Having to already have a trait to buy another is not a limitation, it's a prerequisite. Requiring a prerequisite doesn't provide a discount.

Limitations have to be actual drawbacks. So what's the disadvantage of somebody identifying your fighting style?

Applying only to subskills in the martial art, maybe, but it's going to be hard to draw the line. For example this means the talent doesn't apply to a *standard attack* with the skills covered, since that's not improvable and hence not going to be listed. And if you do allow that, well, all other techniques are just a standard attack at a penalty, and the bonus adds to that....

On the other hand, I don't see why you need Cosmic for a talent to be learnable. Which advantages can be learned is a setting decision.