Costs of spells and talents - requirements.

[David Bofinger]

Originally Posted by Rick_Smith

David suggests we would like to avoid high attribute prerequisites for talents if possible.

If anything my position is stronger: I would avoid any attribute prerequisite unless there was a convincing argument it was needed, regarding them as guilty until proven innocent.

• If the talent requires a roll against something then I'd generally feel that was disincentive enough to purchasing it with a low attribute. So no need for a DX minimum on a talent that makes you do more damage in attacks: if you don't have the DX to hit why should we care if you do more damage.
• Some talents provide abilities that don't involve rolls. For instance a combat talent that forced enemies to roll an extra die when attacking you. This sort of talent probably does need a prerequisite.
• Sometimes the roll is against one attribute but we feel another is important so we impose that as a a prerequisite.

Worked example: We might think that becoming a great martial artist requires strength of will to learn meditation and spend hours squatting ten centimetres off the ground practicing breaking rocks by flexing your pectoral muscles. Will is represented by IQ in TFT, so we might say that the thought of a martial artist with low IQ offends us as implausible. If unarmed combat required lots of rolls against IQ to be effective that wouldn't be a problem. But in fact it requires rolls against DX. So we would probably wish to impose an IQ prerequisite, but no DX prerequisite ... until the higher levels, which give defensive bonuses that don't require DX rolls, and therefore get DX prerequisites as well.

Time in game spent doing something. (e.g. 2 game years in the army.)

TFT tends to assume there are gaps between adventures where the characters take up regular jobs, but for most modern styles of play that doesn't happen. Instead characters adventure continuously and progress fast. "Must have four years' experience," then becomes an immovable roadblock, permanently prohibiting certain lines of improvement. That sucks. I figure if you've had time to significantly increase an attribute then you've had time to pick up a new skill.

Talent prerequisites.

Obviously relevant sometimes. I think again the test is, "Would I find a character who can do X but not Y downright silly?"

Attribute total. (You must have 35+ attributes to buy this. Gamey, but simple.)

So everyone picks up the relevant talent at the same attribute level, and character diversity suffers again. No thanks.

Attributes with boolean gates: ("Running requires ST above average for your race, or a DX 11+.") (Still uses attributes but gives more character variety.)

I would use the same test as I gave above: does it feel unbelievable.

Look at Lowest, Middle or Highest attributes: (Charisma requires the Lowest attribute to be 10+.)

Ditto.

Costs Karma. To gain the Luck (0.5) talent, requires the sacrifice of 3 Karma points.

I don't mind sacrificing the little bastards, just show me where they live. Seriously, the question then becomes how one gets a karma point. Completing heroic quests? It might make sense in some campaigns but not all.

Memory cost. This talent fills up your brain bad.

Assuming memory is a soft limit rather than a hard one, I think this should be the winner most of the time, the main tool we pick up to solve this problem. If it's really good, make it expensive to buy, not by fancy indirect methods but by suffixing to its name, between parentheses, a terrifyingly large positive integer. You can make it 12 if you need to: there's nothing stopping you.

Of course we don't know how talent purchase works. Tell me what you think of this:

• Your first as-many-as-your-IQ points of talents and spells are free. So you start the game with this many, if you want them.
• The next AMAYIQPOTAS cost some number of experience points per memory point of talents.
• The next AMAYIQPOTAS cost twice that.
• The next AMAYIQPOTAS cost three or four times that.
• The next AMAYIQPOTAS cost four or eight or whatever times that.

We make talents more expensive, perhaps, since this is kind of generous.

Sacrifice of magical in game resource. "To learn Astral Awareness (0) talent, you must sacrifice a Greater Wish and 500 XP."

See karma.