ITL Legacy: changes from original?

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by Steve Plambeck

Such an excellent summation Skarg! For as closely as I've been looking at all this and posting about these things the last few months, I couldn't possibly have pulled all that out of my hat on short notice. It's quite a formidable amount of changes when you see them all together!

Thanks. It's not all of them, either. Just the ones that came to mind that seemed might be of most interest.

Originally Posted by Steve Plambeck

This is the one that has me puzzled. I'd almost swear rolling 4 dice was hiding somewhere back in the older rules, although I haven't spotted where. My group played it as 4 dice, not -4 DX, during all the 80's and 90's. If we did that as a house rule I'd be surprised, because we put all our house rules in writing, I was the editor, I still have the manuscripts, and that just doesn't appear among them -- ergo it must have been canon.

If 4-die untalented attacks appear in original TFT rules, I think it must be in a later reprinting of original basic Melee or Wizard that I don't have. I'm pretty sure it's nowhere to be found in AM, AW, ITL, or the Steve-era printings of Melee or Wizard.

[Chris Rice]

If it does exist, it won't be in Melee or Wizard as the concept of "Talents" doesn't exist in those games. I also couldn't find it in AM, AW, or the original ITL.

[Skarg]

I guess I was tired last night. Yes my morning mind agrees there wouldn't be anything about talents in basic Melee and Wizard.

[Steve Plambeck]

Originally Posted by Chris Rice

If it does exist, it won't be in Melee or Wizard as the concept of "Talents" doesn't exist in those games. I also couldn't find it in AM, AW, or the original ITL.

Yeah, like Skarg I only thought of that later. That's what we all get for posting near dawn all the time! LOL

Thanks for checking too Chris, and I went back to Advanced Melee and original ITL too, and no they don't say that either. I figure it wouldn't even belong in Advanced Wizard so that I didn't check, but if you say it's not there then I'm sure it's not.

I guess my old group had the idea 4 dice for no talent was official, but impossible to say where we got the idea now.

Now for the new mystery: in rechecking original ITL and Advanced Melee, there appears to be no reference to the -4 DX for no talent as well! So where did that ever start? There's a lengthy paragraph on what to do if someone wants to try something they don't have the talent for, but at the end of it all SJ concludes is that the GM should make up a severe penalty if they choose to allow the attempted action, with no suggestion at all as to what that penalty could be.

Odd we can't document where either idea started! One or the other must be in print somewhere before Legacy ITL!

[Chris Rice]

There is a sneaky hidden reference in the original AM on p26 under Special Combat Talents which mentions the -4 DX for unskilled weapon use. But I can't see it elsewhere in the book.

I doubt the "4 dice for untalented attempts" exists in the canon and I wouldn't want it to or we'd have powerful Wizards picking pockets and other nonsense just because they have a high DX (for example)

[JimmyPlenty]

Originally Posted by Steve Plambeck

Yeah, like Skarg I only thought of that later. That's what we all get for posting near dawn all the time! LOL

So I'm not the only one who stays up uber-late?

[hcobb]

Originally Posted by Chris Rice

I doubt the "4 dice for untalented attempts" exists in the canon and I wouldn't want it to or we'd have powerful Wizards picking pockets and other nonsense just because they have a high DX (for example)

ITL 8: "Most weapons are fairly easy to use, so if you pick up a weapon without training, you can still hit with it, at a penalty of 1 die."

This is more restrictive to high DX types than a -4 on their inhuman DX.

If they have DX 19 then this is a 95.37% chance for 3/(DX-4) but only a 94.6% chance for 4/DX, also their chance to break the weapon decreases from 0.46% to 0.39%

[Steve Plambeck]

Originally Posted by Chris Rice

There is a sneaky hidden reference in the original AM on p26 under Special Combat Talents which mentions the -4 DX for unskilled weapon use. But I can't see it elsewhere in the book.

I doubt the "4 dice for untalented attempts" exists in the canon and I wouldn't want it to or we'd have powerful Wizards picking pockets and other nonsense just because they have a high DX (for example)

Bingo! That's well hidden indeed. There certainly doesn't appear to be another mention in any of the original rules, so I'm still left to wonder if my group just missed this or decided to use 4 dice as a deliberate house rule.

I always had a sense 4 dice was harder than -4 DX, at least for higher DX figures, and Henry has demonstrated that below.

Originally Posted by hcobb

ITL 8: "Most weapons are fairly easy to use, so if you pick up a weapon without training, you can still hit with it, at a penalty of 1 die."

Bingo #2 -- thanks Henry. Now I do remember that from my first hurried read of the new ITL, and thinking at the moment "Good, they didn't change that!" when in fact they must have changed it from what Chris tracked down in Advanced Melee.

Originally Posted by hcobb

This is more restrictive to high DX types than a -4 on their inhuman DX.

If they have DX 19 then this is a 95.37% chance for 3/(DX-4) but only a 94.6% chance for 4/DX, also their chance to break the weapon decreases from 0.46% to 0.39%

I always thought so too, and probably did the math back in the day as well.

Something else to reign in the superhuman DX figure, and one I think we used for awhile but later abandoned, was this:

When rolling against 4 dice instead of 3, do not change the automatic success and failure cutoffs. This had effects I liked. Now the untalented figure could not roll triple damage (because you can't roll a 3 on 4 dice), rolling a 16 for automatic failure became easier, and there was substantial risk of rolling one of the eight possible results above 16 for something very bad to happen. Now the superhuman really can't rely on their super DX anymore when attempting things outside their skill set -- it became dangerous to do so.

[Aman]

yall are way ahead of me on tracking all of this; you're starting to remind me of peopel who know the creator's work better than the creator does.
:)

BUT I think there is some reference to GMing some of these things on p.8-9 of the ITL-L version.

This has references to rolling with no skill at all, and increasing the number of dice to make things more difficult.

Hope that is helpful!

[Skarg]

Henry's reference to ITL page 8 is about Legacy ITL, and non-weapon talents.

Original ITL lists the -4 DX penalty for using weapons without the talent, above the weapon talents listed under IQ 7 on original ITL page 12.


Henry's notion of the mathematical advantage of using 4 dice seems unlikely to be very helpful, to me. His own examples show extremely small differences. And considering a DX 18 figure trying to roll either 3 dice versus DX -4 or 4 dice versus DX, both look like 90% to me.