07-01-2019, 12:23 PM | #21 | |
Join Date: May 2019
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Re: Starting with a Mana Staff?
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I do understand the feeling that it is somehow short-cutting the development process you want to see your characters going through. :/ Are you planning on limiting starting spells as well? |
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07-01-2019, 12:31 PM | #22 | |
Join Date: May 2018
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Re: Starting with a Mana Staff?
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But TFT (both original and Legacy) explicitly allows different characters to start with different amounts of talent points and has no restrictions about starting characters taking talents with prerequisites. This sounds to me like TFT actually doesn't fit your concept of the rarity of expertise (but B&BM does). TFT does, however, support the concept of the cloistered warrior, trained from birth, who starts out as an expert, and that's a trope just as well-trodden as the know-nothing village kid who has to learn everything the hard way. You could say that TFT supports both but given the simulation results, it seems to favor the experts. |
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07-01-2019, 03:24 PM | #23 | |
Join Date: May 2019
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Re: Starting with a Mana Staff?
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07-01-2019, 04:17 PM | #24 | |
Join Date: May 2015
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Re: Starting with a Mana Staff?
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And yeah, I'd kind of expect Mr Normal to be a better fighter with better life expectancy than the Hatchet expert. No, as I would not use the RAW "500 XP is the only way to learn a spell" thing, and I have never experienced high IQ starting wizards to actually be an issue unless they team up with a bunch of people willing to cast Aid on them. What I do usually do (unless I am running a more by-the-book game) is edit what spells are known and available and in what versions, how they work exactly, etc. |
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07-01-2019, 04:44 PM | #25 |
Join Date: May 2019
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Re: Starting with a Mana Staff?
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07-01-2019, 04:55 PM | #26 |
Join Date: May 2015
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Re: Starting with a Mana Staff?
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07-02-2019, 03:57 AM | #27 | |||||
Join Date: Nov 2017
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Re: Starting with a Mana Staff?
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Also, Olympic athletes are the best in their fields and they are rarely over 20 (depending on the sport). You are looking at someone who dedicated themselves to fighting from a young age, that's all the talent represents. The Talent is not that much superior to skill without it, despite its name. Quote:
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Do you limit wizards to IQ 8 spells? Your argument equally applies to them. Quote:
B) Mr. Expert needs to spend that 1500xp to buy talents he couldn't afford as well, they just don't impact combat. The xp still has to be spent. C) Mr. Expert does +1 damage with his ax/mace, which doesn't come near to equalling mr. Normal. He inflicts a -1 to be hit (which is good) but that just brings Normal down to 50% to hit him, a hit which will likely end his career. he can also inflict a shrewd blow (if he's lucky enough to get behind an opponent or attack one that is knocked over). In essence...wheeee? I mean, is that so powerful you have to hide it behind a gate? And again, everything you are saying applies even more to wizards. Do you penalize them equally? |
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07-02-2019, 11:28 AM | #28 | |||||||||||
Join Date: May 2015
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Re: Starting with a Mana Staff?
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In games where you're the GM, ok. Quote:
Now, I can stretch that and say ok to an occasional character concept that is stretching to get Sword Expert, but: a) it's a weird person with an unusual background who despite being below-average ST and the minimum DX 12 needed for weapon expertise, is somehow a very well-trained weapon expert despite having been a below-average fighter otherwise. b) if the game is using the RAW talent-learning rules, is essentially getting a 1500 XP head start and hoping the GM will let his PC not face difficult enough combat situations to survive long enough to be given enough XP (probably for roleplaying well and avoiding getting killed) to capitalize on it. If I WERE running a game where the starting PCs were supposed to be the equivalent of Olympic fencers, then I would allow Expert and Master weapon talents, but they would also start with more than 32 points! Quote:
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The new extra 500 XP per point incentive seems to me a little-if-at-all-considered side-effect of the new way to learn talents, whose stated purpose was to give something for PCs to consider spending XP on instead of attributes when attributes start getting really expensive. That's why the value is so out-of-whack for closer-to-average characters. Quote:
The argument about taking advantage of high IQ to save massive amounts on spell learning costs does apply equal to them, and does seem to me nearly-equally problematic for wizards. But as for the topic of disallowing expert combat talents to beginners, it does not apply, because my argument is that it is inappropriate in terms of what I think those talents represent and what starting characters represent. Wizards represent people who are focused on magic, and to me even a ST 8 DX 8 IQ 16 starting wizard just represents a very learning-focused wizard who has neglected their physical aspects and their spellcasting skill. (i.e. They are not thematically inappropriate, but if using the RAW spell-learning system, they are ridiculously advantaged if they survive and get given XP to get their DX up.) Quote:
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Otherwise I would only restrict spells if there were some reason to, such as the spell was supposed to require some particular experience or training or source to learn that a beginner would not have access to. Sometimes I do do that, particularly when I have charted out which groups know and teach which spells in the campaign world. In which case, if a beginning wizard's background would not have given them access to such learning, then yes, those spells would be unavailable. |
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07-03-2019, 09:35 AM | #29 | |||||||||||||||
Join Date: Nov 2017
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Re: Starting with a Mana Staff?
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Rename the talent if what you think it represents bothers you. Call it Weapon Focus and call master weapon expert. Boom, problem solved. Quote:
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07-03-2019, 11:42 AM | #30 |
Join Date: May 2015
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Re: Starting with a Mana Staff?
Apologies for my part in utterly going off topic in this thread.
The last few posts now cover about a dozen topics, none of which are "Starting with a Mana Staff?" at all. There are now multiple back and forth posts covering several topics each. I don't mind continuing to discuss them, but I feel like I've posted my positions twice here already. If you're interested in going into more detail on any of them, I think they should be broken out into their own threads rather than trying to have a dozen off-topic back-and-forth discussions at once. |
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