wizards and the 'scholarly' talents

[larsdangly]

No, I was responding to the suggestion that wizards have some sort of 'meta' type on creation (nature wizard, etc.). I would not want to do that, and instead prefer that you individuate your wizards using talents. It is a separate question how much those talents should cost. I stand by the OP statement, that I find it more interesting when wizards have a bigger menu of relatively affordable talents.

[Tenex]

Yeah, OK, I agree on both points.

[David Bofinger]

TFT basically has two lists of abilities: talents that are cheap for heroes but expensive for wizards, and spells that are cheap for wizards but expensive for heroes, with a small overlap. You're talking about expanding the overlap.

An issue here is that in some campaigns wizards might not be the scholarly type. Or some might be and some might not.

Chris Goodwin suggested a cleaner, more generic method: having multiple cheap lists and any character has some of them. So there might be lists for:

• melee combat
• ranged combat
• woodsy outdoorsy stuff
• scholar-like activities
• spells (at least one)
• everything the thieves' guild teaches
• etc.

Then different characters have a mix of these cheap lists.

• Magic and scholar makes a classic TFT wizard
• Melee or ranged combat plus outdoorsy makes a ranger
• Magic plus outdoorsy makes a druid
• All lists makes a renaissance man, and in some campaigns this might be free
• etc.

Some lists will probably cost more than others. Maybe some lists can be bought at a basic level, so a thief can learn basic combat abilities but fights at a DX negative not suffered by the fighter. I think this has some interesting possibilities.

[Tenex]

Re: DB's post. It's so funny the way this is such an individualistic opinion thing. Gotta love TFT for being so amenable to house rules. I love the fact that SJG is so cool about this aspect that they have a sub-forum for it.

Dave, I think this goes too far. Now you are into the realm of making "classes" and I don't like going down that road.

[Chris Goodwin]

To be fair to David, any flak over that post should properly be aimed at me. :)

[Flavius Marcellus]

What about something as simple as: "Wizards pay twice the cost for any weapon or combat related talents but may purchase other talents at normal cost." ?

[Skarg]

Seems like the question remains "which talents should cost the same for wizards?"

And every player and possibly each wizard PC have a different answer.

My first ITL PC was a wizard who wanted both lightning and to carry a sword. He winced at the 4-point sword talent, but bit the bullet and took it. Then he winced at the cost of a silver sword... and eventually paid it.

But is the concept of a martial wizard who finds both swords and spells compelling any worse than a naturalist wizard or a thief wizard, and is a "traditional" literacy/languages/alchemy/math wizard any more reasonable than those? Maybe or maybe not - it's kind of subjective. (At least if we accept XP for talents, then we can do any of them without needing extra-high IQs.)

Another idea might be to be able to sacrifice some or all of the traditional crossover talents for others. e.g. my Wizard would've been happy to sacrifice easy learning of alchemy and math (if not so much literacy and languages) to be able to be able to learn sword for 2.

Or maybe be able to spend one talent point to have some talent or theme also be learnable normally by that wizard.

But again, if we don't care that much about technical costs, we can also just only have wizards take the talents they are into, and possibly let the GM grant leniency if we wants to to some characters whose concept is they are also into some other things.

So many ways it could be done...