Breaking (Bad) Scholars

EKB · 05-30-2024, 08:27 AM

In my campaign/house rules, I've rewritten the Scholar talent as follows:

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Scholar (3): This talent represents the knowledge of a sage or loremaster. A character with this talent rolls against IQ to remember a fact or recognize an unusual object or condition. The number of dice rolled depends on how obscure the fact, object, or condition is. Characters without this talent roll twice as many dice.

Note that the Literacy talent is *not* a prerequisite for Scholar. Non-literate, oral tradition scholars will often be called “Loremasters.”

The Scholar talent has the same base cost for wizards as for non-wizards.
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Further thoughts:

The Scholar talent is culture-dependent with different cultures having different versions. "Twice as many dice" is for non-scholars of the same culture, with members of different cultures likely needing to roll more or fewer dice. Common knowledge in the Million Kingdoms may be obscure in the Empire of the South or among the Northern Barbarians, and vice versa.

A +1 reaction bonus from the Scholar talent is *highly* situation-dependent; I prefer to downplay it and even to give a -1 reaction penalty in some cases ("damn prissy egghead..."). So I left out that bonus as a "standard" part of the talent.

The Scholar talent will give the character a big vocabulary in the languages he speaks, which is not quite the same thing as a high level of fluency. It will be more a matter of being able to speak in a "scholarly" register, if desired.

Recognizing languages is not specifically called out in my version, but would fall under an "object" (for writing) or "condition" (for spoken language). So a Scholar would automatically (2 dice vs IQ 13+) recognize languages that a non-scholar would need to roll 4 dice vs IQ to recognize, 3 dice to recognize 6 die obscure languages, 4 dice to recognize 8 die obscure languages, etc.

I'm in the camp of "In a medieval or renaissance world, scholarship will be more unified, rather than specialized the way it is in modern times." Which is why I'm disinclined to split up the talent as suggested in this thread.

05-30-2024, 08:27 AM	#8
EKB Join Date: May 2024	Re: Breaking (Bad) Scholars In my campaign/house rules, I've rewritten the Scholar talent as follows: ---- Scholar (3): This talent represents the knowledge of a sage or loremaster. A character with this talent rolls against IQ to remember a fact or recognize an unusual object or condition. The number of dice rolled depends on how obscure the fact, object, or condition is. Characters without this talent roll twice as many dice. Note that the Literacy talent is not a prerequisite for Scholar. Non-literate, oral tradition scholars will often be called “Loremasters.” The Scholar talent has the same base cost for wizards as for non-wizards. ---- Further thoughts: The Scholar talent is culture-dependent with different cultures having different versions. "Twice as many dice" is for non-scholars of the same culture, with members of different cultures likely needing to roll more or fewer dice. Common knowledge in the Million Kingdoms may be obscure in the Empire of the South or among the Northern Barbarians, and vice versa. A +1 reaction bonus from the Scholar talent is highly situation-dependent; I prefer to downplay it and even to give a -1 reaction penalty in some cases ("damn prissy egghead..."). So I left out that bonus as a "standard" part of the talent. The Scholar talent will give the character a big vocabulary in the languages he speaks, which is not quite the same thing as a high level of fluency. It will be more a matter of being able to speak in a "scholarly" register, if desired. Recognizing languages is not specifically called out in my version, but would fall under an "object" (for writing) or "condition" (for spoken language). So a Scholar would automatically (2 dice vs IQ 13+) recognize languages that a non-scholar would need to roll 4 dice vs IQ to recognize, 3 dice to recognize 6 die obscure languages, 4 dice to recognize 8 die obscure languages, etc. I'm in the camp of "In a medieval or renaissance world, scholarship will be more unified, rather than specialized the way it is in modern times." Which is why I'm disinclined to split up the talent as suggested in this thread. __________________ I was denied tenure at IOU.