Breaking (Bad) Scholars

[David Bofinger]

Originally Posted by EKB

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...").

Big call to make a talent have a negative effect.

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 think it can still be split up, for several reasons:

• It's perfectly reasonable to play a character who knows a bit about scholarly stuff but isn't a full expert yet. Some GMs choose to represent this with studies or in some other way but multiple talents is a simple method in the style of TFT.
• It's reasonable to have a character who is fascinated by history, or by traveller's tales, or whatever. Even if a formal degree at a university teaches all these subjects, some people (autodidacts, dropouts, etc.) are going to only learn some of them.
• The character who has had a classical education, taught by a scholar, but isn't a scholar themselves, is a common trope in fiction and certainly existed in reality.