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Old 04-28-2018, 09:36 PM   #21
platimus
 
Join Date: Dec 2017
Location: behind you
Default Re: Talent System

Quote:
Originally Posted by Terquem View Post
I might, might, be the one person who disagrees.

I don't think the characters in a fantasy game should have pages of talents. I understand (I think I understand?) why players want their characters to have many talents, for me it is a reflection of how games have evolved from many years ago when a party of adventurers took on the challenges of an adventure to developments where a single character takes on the adventure alone (Tomb Raider, and such adventures).

I like player characters who have a simple, short list of talents and can compliment other characters with different talents.
You are not alone.
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Old 04-29-2018, 12:11 AM   #22
Skarg
 
Join Date: May 2015
Default Re: Talent System - buying talents with experience.

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Originally Posted by Rick_Smith View Post
... I don't really mind being able to buy talents, with experience, but it needs to increase the attribute total somehow. I've experienced it NOT working that way for several years and was unhappy with it. The most over powered characters were ALL from that period of my campaign.
Yes, I agree the cost shouldn't just be flat. And, when playing in Thail using the rules you were using at the time, where mIQ cost in scale with the PC's attribute total, but didn't add to it, I remember as a player realizing there was an odd effect where it made sense to get as much mIQ as seemed useful before increasing attributes, in order to get it as cheaply as possible - so I think they need to either scale together, or scale independently.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Rick_Smith View Post
(If you do allow this, make buying talents expensive. If I were to try this again, I would cost buying one memory for at least a full attribute.)
I think this requires more explanation. Surely +1 mIQ is a sub-set of the benefits of +1 IQ, so it ought to cost less, no?

Also, I think I'd want a fair amount of mIQ to be notably less expensive than attributes, as I'd hope for experienced characters not to be mainly super-high attributes and more like interesting attributes but nice talents.
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Old 04-29-2018, 12:24 AM   #23
Skarg
 
Join Date: May 2015
Default Re: Talent System

Quote:
Originally Posted by Terquem View Post
I might, might, be the one person who disagrees.

I don't think the characters in a fantasy game should have pages of talents. I understand (I think I understand?) why players want their characters to have many talents, for me it is a reflection of how games have evolved from many years ago when a party of adventurers took on the challenges of an adventure to developments where a single character takes on the adventure alone (Tomb Raider, and such adventures).

I like player characters who have a simple, short list of talents and can compliment other characters with different talents.
I don't think they should have pages of Talents, but looking through and remembering some of the literally thousands of NPCs I made for TFT before we outgrew it, one of the edges that was breaking down, was what experienced NPCs ought to look like. The high attributes started to feel weirdly excessive and unlike the more moderate characters (and unlike the character I imagined them to be when they were 32 points), and there aren't many options for making them very interesting with Talents. Seems to me there would be ways to design some advanced talents and ways to get them without jacking up IQ, that could make that more interesting and satisfying. Necessarily-High-IQ martial artists bother me more than Conan the Wizard.
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Old 04-29-2018, 01:15 AM   #24
Rick_Smith
 
Join Date: Apr 2014
Location: Coquitlam B.C.
Default Re: Talent System - buying talents with experience.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Skarg View Post
...

I think this requires more explanation. Surely +1 mIQ is a sub-set of the benefits of +1 IQ, so it ought to cost less, no? ...
Hi everyone, Skarg.

No.

I costed the memory at the price of attributes, and people bought a TONNE of memory superscripts because they DIDN'T RAISE THEIR ATTRIBUTE TOTALS.

I am saying if they do raise your attribute totals (so buying lots of memory increases the cost for attributes), they can be 'fairly' priced. If you make is so they don't raise the attribute totals, then make buying mIQ expensive.

Warm regards, Rick.

Last edited by Rick_Smith; 04-29-2018 at 09:39 PM. Reason: Fixed spelling error.
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Old 04-29-2018, 01:19 AM   #25
Rick_Smith
 
Join Date: Apr 2014
Location: Coquitlam B.C.
Default Martial arts talents require too high an IQ?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Skarg View Post
... Necessarily-High-IQ martial artists bother me more than Conan the Wizard.
Hi everyone, Skarg.
I lowered the IQ levels of the Unarmed Combat talents some, so you could say I'm already on your side. But playing devil's advocate, how many ancient masters of martial arts (who knew all of the mystical and difficult passes and moves), were dumb? It seems to me that the stereotypical martial arts master WAS wise.

:-D

Warm regards, Rick.

Last edited by Rick_Smith; 04-29-2018 at 09:40 PM.
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Old 04-29-2018, 01:20 PM   #26
KevinJ
 
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Arizona
Default Re: Talent System

Hey guys, take to the party...
Back in early 1981 I played Fantasy Trip with a guy named Steve and he had a couple of work arounds for character bloat, one was Education ED. For 1 pt of Education you got 2 IQ pts you could spend on Talents. This meant more realistic IQs.
Another thing this Steve guy did was separate HT and FT. Both were based on ST, but FT was Fatigue that was used to power spells and hold a drawn bow while aiming, and HT was Health, what you lost in combat and through physical mishap.
Another thing this Steve guy did was blur the line between Hero and Wizard. In his game we didn't pay double for spells or Talents. This meant that you could be a Wizard and still have a few talents (the mage in my game is also a Physicker and plans on ganing Scholar soon.)
The last interesring thing Steve did was create mage colleges; Telecommunicists, Summoners, Illusionists, Healers, War Mages, and even the Archmage college.

I'm currently running a modifier version of TFT and the biggest issue one of my players has is the 'slow advancement' compared to more modern games like Dumb & Dumber. My three inexperienced role players are having a lot of fun with the story, 'adventure', and building their characters to fit a character concept while the experienced gamer is trying to fill every role instead of phocusing on the character concept he himself chose. The problems that players have with TFT is not the system, but their experience with Monte Haul games.
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Old 04-29-2018, 11:03 PM   #27
Skarg
 
Join Date: May 2015
Default Re: Talent System - buying talents with experience.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rick_Smith View Post
No. I costed the memory at the price of attributes, and people bought a TONNE of memory superscripts because they DIDN'T RAISE THEIR ATTRIBUTE TOTALS.

I am saying if they do raise your attribute totals (so buying lots of memory increases the cost for attributes), they can be 'fairly' priced. If you make is so they don't raise the attribute totals, then make buying mIQ expensive.
Oh, I see. Yeah, I can imagine. If you don't have mIQ use its own scale, nor increase the attribute total for cost purposes, then there's that weird gamey incentive to wait as long as you can stand before actually raising IQ, as the EP cost could stay quite low. Also ugly is that it doesn't make the same character cost the same amount of total EP, because it matters in what order you used your EP on what, which again seems like an irritating gamey thing.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Rick_Smith View Post
Hi everyone, Skarg.
I lowered the IQ levels of the Unarmed Combat talents some, so you could say I'm already on your side. But playing devil's advocate, how many ancient masters of martial arts (who knew all of the mystical and difficult passes and moves), were dumb? It seems to me that the stereotypical martial arts master WAS wise.

:-D
IQ 14 seems like a high minimum bar to me, and one that doesn't seem like it would be needed to train expert martial arts. IQ 10 seems high for Unarmed Combat I, too, as does IQ 12 for Unarmed Combat II. Even worse is that UC V takes TEN memory points, leaving the IQ 14 martial arts master (who also needs to be DX 16) a mere four points to know anything else, and what strikes me as an appropriate question is "who that has IQ 14 is foolish enough to know they could learn any talent but only leave 4 points for anything other than unarmed combat?

All of which is actually secondary to the experience I describe as "Necessarily-High-IQ martial artists". Unarmed Combat Talents were a rare novelty amongst the hundreds of high-level NPCs I made for my TFT campaigns, usually an afterthought put in with spare IQ because extremely few of them would really focus on those talents. But the way that Talents use up IQ points, and the other advanced combat Talents that are available (thown weapons, fencing, missile weapons, warrior, veteran, running, tactics, and (expert) horsemanship (or even learning spells) were all far more popular than Unarmed Combat, as were the attempts to add more advanced combat talents, such as Defensive Quickness) all add up to remove IQ points and create a dilemma where an experienced person is running out of available IQ points and ends up either doing without something that would seem to fit their experience (and jacking up their DX or ST to high levels instead), or jacks up their IQ to a level that often doesn't really fit their character concept as an experienced thug/adventurer/mercenary/whatever.
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Old 04-30-2018, 08:26 AM   #28
Kirk
 
Join Date: Feb 2018
Default Re: Talent System - buying talents with experience.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Skarg View Post
Oh, I see. Yeah, I can imagine. If you don't have mIQ use its own scale, nor increase the attribute total for cost purposes, then there's that weird gamey incentive to wait as long as you can stand before actually raising IQ, as the EP cost could stay quite low. Also ugly is that it doesn't make the same character cost the same amount of total EP, because it matters in what order you used your EP on what, which again seems like an irritating gamey thing.



IQ 14 seems like a high minimum bar to me, and one that doesn't seem like it would be needed to train expert martial arts. IQ 10 seems high for Unarmed Combat I, too, as does IQ 12 for Unarmed Combat II. Even worse is that UC V takes TEN memory points, leaving the IQ 14 martial arts master (who also needs to be DX 16) a mere four points to know anything else, and what strikes me as an appropriate question is "who that has IQ 14 is foolish enough to know they could learn any talent but only leave 4 points for anything other than unarmed combat?

All of which is actually secondary to the experience I describe as "Necessarily-High-IQ martial artists". Unarmed Combat Talents were a rare novelty amongst the hundreds of high-level NPCs I made for my TFT campaigns, usually an afterthought put in with spare IQ because extremely few of them would really focus on those talents. But the way that Talents use up IQ points, and the other advanced combat Talents that are available (thown weapons, fencing, missile weapons, warrior, veteran, running, tactics, and (expert) horsemanship (or even learning spells) were all far more popular than Unarmed Combat, as were the attempts to add more advanced combat talents, such as Defensive Quickness) all add up to remove IQ points and create a dilemma where an experienced person is running out of available IQ points and ends up either doing without something that would seem to fit their experience (and jacking up their DX or ST to high levels instead), or jacks up their IQ to a level that often doesn't really fit their character concept as an experienced thug/adventurer/mercenary/whatever.
We've encountered this problem, too, and just like I can't watch martial action in movies because of its fakery, it's difficult to accomodate the UC talents in TFT, as well. I can't speak directly to IQ and martial ability except through my own experience with training and teaching it over 45 years but to say that low IQ doesn't lend itself to more advanced understandings and abilities in MA, as a rule.

But MA *does* take a fair amount of time for successive gains over brawling, so in the end there probably wouldn't be many that know it well and practically, both for lack of access and the ability and time it requires. We usually don't have many characters that go beyond UCI and UCII unless it is a dedicated martial artist that commits to picking up all of them. Those characters either usually don't survive long enough to become good, or don't contribute much more than their own survival to a party and are not usually welcomed as a party member.
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Old 04-30-2018, 03:09 PM   #29
Rick_Smith
 
Join Date: Apr 2014
Location: Coquitlam B.C.
Default Unarmed Combat talents - thoughts on balancing.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kirk View Post
We've encountered this problem, too, and just like I can't watch martial action in movies because of its fakery, it's difficult to accomodate the UC talents in TFT, as well. ...
Hi everyone, Skarg, Kirk.
The abilities at Unarmed Combat Four (UC iv) and UC v are pretty awesome. UC iv gives you eyes behind, and UC v makes you (4, 6 or 7)vsDX to hit, even if you are using weapons! So lots of people would LIKE to have these talents. Which is likely why Steve Jackson gave them a high required IQ, a high required DX, and a high total memory (mIQ) cost.

I like the UC talents. UC v is the only 'super' talent that is as awesome as the high powered wizard spells. (I consider a problem with TFT is that high level fighters are bland, but high level wizards get awesome cool spells.)

David has argued persuasively to me, that high attribute requirements is something you want to avoid as much as possible for Talents in TFT.

So my question to you is, if you lower the minimum required IQ, and the total mIQ cost, (and perhaps the minimum required DX), how do you make super awesome talents, hard to get? Unless you can find a good answer to this question, SJ is unlikely to adjust the rules on the Unarmed Combat talents.

Warm regards, Rick.

Last edited by Rick_Smith; 04-30-2018 at 05:12 PM. Reason: Defending, Dodging cause more dice for UC v.
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Old 04-30-2018, 03:22 PM   #30
Rick_Smith
 
Join Date: Apr 2014
Location: Coquitlam B.C.
Default Weirdness in UC talents. Too high Min IQ requirements?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Skarg View Post
... IQ 14 seems like a high minimum bar to me, and one that doesn't seem like it would be needed to train expert martial arts. IQ 10 seems high for Unarmed Combat I, too, as does IQ 12 for Unarmed Combat II. ...
Hi everyone, Skarg.
I totally agree. I made Unarmed Combat One (UC i), require an IQ of 7, since all sorts of Martial Arts Dojo's around here will take 5 year old kids. I don't think that throwing a basic punch or doing a proper kick is more complex than using a sword competently. (Fun fact - in TFT if you pick up the IQ 7 SWORD talent, you have learned 1/2 of everything there is to know about sword fighting since there are only two talents that allow you to improve your sword skill !!!)

If UC i was IQ 7, and each of the later UC talents was one IQ higher, then UC v would be an IQ 11 talent. (I'm not arguing for this change, since it will ruin play balance. Just thinking out loud here.)

Warm regards, Rick
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