Costs of spells and talents - requirements.

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by Rick_Smith

Hi Chris,
I'm sure that your system would work, but I think that it is too far from old TFT for Steve to use. I would love to see that article, thank you! Email sent.

Really? It sounded to me like Chris was suggesting a system pretty much the same as your mIQ house rule but called Knowledge instead, which is also very similar to just allowing buying talents with XP, except for details of what you call it and how much XP it costs.

[JLV]

That's true Skarg, but Rick has already stated (several times) that he doesn't think his system will ever be adopted by Steve for TFT proper. So he's not being inconsistent here...

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

[*]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.

Yes, especially if you have a balanced adjustment to use it. e.g.. You can try a Shrewd more-damage attack at adjDX -4.

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

[*]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.

Or some other drawback when you use it, such as you're rolling another die to hit them when doing this, too.

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

[*]Sometimes the roll is against one attribute but we feel another is important so we impose that as a a prerequisite.

Yes.

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

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.

Yes, though there are alternatives. For example, there could be an UC talent that gave your attackers a penalty to hit you when you use it ... equal to the amount you make an IQ roll by, and lets you act normally, but if you crit fail your IQ roll or miss by 5+, you're failing to concentrate effectively, and end up taking the normal Defend option instead.

I think that such mechanics, and having options that give advantages if you can make a penalized roll, tend to not only work well as barriers, but also can make gameplay more interesting.

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

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.

Well it is a different type of restriction, that is mainly relevant in campaigns that include time passage, yes. My own bar for whether a limit sucks is whether it doesn't make sense or feel right at a certain point, and mine can be exceeded sometimes if the gaining of abilities feels excessively fast and/or lacks an in-game reason. I tend to like time-experience limits a lot, but I also think they could/should be able to be accelerated IF someone is learning in a more intense way (i.e. maybe you could gain the talent currently mis-named Captain in much less that two years at sea IF you were pressed into a ship crew and had intense shipboard experienced for a few months. q.v. the short story The Sea Wolf).

I think time/training requirements are nice in that they provide a way to fill the gap left by TFT XP being generic, storable, and spendable at will. That is, it feels fake & wrong & gamey when characters just magically improve in major ways gaining skills that they didn't actually do anything in-game that would lead to them having those abilities. i.e. there wouldn't need to be time requirements if the XP system had typed XP and you could get XP by training, studying, and/or actually experiencing/learning something. But that would be crunchy and the "record-keeping" dreaded by some, so what's an effective way to provide a similar limit that's easier to use?

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

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

Yes.

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

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

This is always a bar for all game rules mechanics for me, and a reason why I love TFT & GURPS and the main reason I want to tinker with certain rules.

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

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.

Yes.

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

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.

Yes.

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

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.

Yes!

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

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

Or you tune the experience cost to increase your capacity to whatever feels right.

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by JLV

That's true Skarg, but Rick has already stated (several times) that he doesn't think his system will ever be adopted by Steve for TFT proper. So he's not being inconsistent here...

Maybe not in his own thinking, but Steve did post two versions of a new XP system that let you buy talents over IQ with XP, which is effectively the same thing.

[Skarg]

I tended to feel that Missile Weapons represented some innate aptitude rather than just something anyone could train up. Maybe that would be an option too, especially since it tends to be like a +3 DX for archer types that doesn't cost any attribute points.

Originally Posted by zot

These are very cool!

I don't see why they need to be called "advantages" though -- they could be called "options", turned "option talents". The text of an option talent could contain the limitations, like a character can have no more than 2 option talents. Or only one option talent if it's supposed to be a "signature feature".

Yes.

It would be a way to shift the non-learned talents, too (Acute Hearing, Charisma).

Wizardry itself might be an option.

Physical beauty might fall in this category.

There could also be negative options you could choose to gain another option, maybe including lowering your base attributes.

[JLV]

Originally Posted by Skarg

Maybe not in his own thinking, but Steve did post two versions of a new XP system that let you buy talents over IQ with XP, which is effectively the same thing.

Actually Steve's revisions are more in line with the proposal I (and one or two others) made months ago on the original thread than they are with Rick's various rules.

[Rick_Smith]

Originally Posted by Skarg

One side-quibble:
I think that reading of the Death spell is your interpretation or house rule. The spell is vague as its wording wasn't revised from Wizard to Advanced Wizard. One wizard dies, but it just says the other loses the same amount of ST. I assumed this meant fatigue loss rather than damage, but it would be an interesting distinction and perhaps-wanted discouragement to use the spell (I think I like the idea, but am just pointing out it doesn't seem to actually say it does damage to the survivor).

Hi Skarg,
If you are right, we have been playing it wrong for 40 years!

Warm regards, Rick.

[Chris Rice]

Originally Posted by Rick_Smith

Hi Skarg,
If you are right, we have been playing it wrong for 40 years!

Warm regards, Rick.

I always thought the description for the Death spell was crystal clear.

..."When the spell is cast, compare the ST of the Wizard with that of the victim. The LOWER strength (at that moment) is the amount of ST lost by EACH of the two. In other words, the weaker one immediately dies, and the stronger one loses that much ST. Therefore, if a Wizard uses this spell on a stronger opponent, it means his own death instead."

The spell is clearly talking about damage not fatigue strength, and this is stated to apply to both characters.

[zot]

Originally Posted by Chris Rice

I always thought the description for the Death spell was crystal clear.

..."When the spell is cast, compare the ST of the Wizard with that of the victim. The LOWER strength (at that moment) is the amount of ST lost by EACH of the two. In other words, the weaker one immediately dies, and the stronger one loses that much ST. Therefore, if a Wizard uses this spell on a stronger opponent, it means his own death instead."

The spell is clearly talking about damage not fatigue strength, and this is stated to apply to both characters.

In TFT, fatigue can kill you. If cast down to 1 ST and take one hit of damage, you die. I don't see how the showing description makes it crystal clear.

[Chris Rice]

Originally Posted by zot

In TFT, fatigue can kill you. If cast down to 1 ST and take one hit of damage, you die. I don't see how the showing description makes it crystal clear.

It doesn't say it kills the weaker one with Fatigue ST any more than the damage caused by Lightning Bolt or Fireball is said to be Fatigue ST. Fatigue ST is only for casting spells, not for damage caused by them. And this spell causes DAMAGE to both.

If you look carefully, the spell does not have a ST to cast.