Are Talents overpowered?

[Vaevictis Asmadi]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Like I said, 10 and 15pt talents are basically a dead issue.

Unless their skills use more than one attribute?

[smurf]

Talents are the best thing in 4th.

IQ vs Talent.

IQ can be used for everything. Does make much of a character though.

Talent adds depth to the character.

I agree with a max of +4 no more.

Talents can be abused for selecting 1-5 skills when there could be more. GM to watch. Talents ought to be built around the 15pt marker with less as the exceptions.

IQ +4 = 80pts
Talent +4 = 20-60pts

Even with knocking down will and per can bring IQ cost down to 40pts.

However talent also lets you learn more quickly and if people see that you have talent you can gain some influence.

There is nothing to stop a talent being used for dex too, as in conjunction with IQ, and yes could knock off points for move and dodge, manual dex etc. In short the long way around for what Talents do brilliantly.

[Figleaf23]

I don't think Talents are necessarily overpowered, but they are a sub-optimal and abusable patch for the problem of overly-broad basic attributes.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

the guy who buys Int!

Such metatrait only exists if you allow it. It's definitely a houserule.

(IQ-Per and Will). He spends 80 pts on IQ for +4 subtracts 20 pts from Per and then Will for 20 each and has _All_ IQ-based Skills at +4.

He's also used up 40 points of his disadvantage limit on "boring" secondary characteristic reductions instead of actual disadvantages.

All the Skills in Business Acumen are IQ-based.

That doesn't mean they can't float to other attributes. Merchant, IME, gets floated to Per quite often.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Such metatrait only exists if you allow it. It's definitely a houserule. He's also used up 40 points of his disadvantage limit on "boring" secondary characteristic reductions instead of actual disadvantages.

That doesn't mean they can't float to other attributes. Merchant, IME, gets floated to Per quite often.

It's not a house rule. It's a house rule to ignore the disad limitation for realistic character concepts. Besides, for anything but really low point totals, I find it hard to get near the limit anyway.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

It's not a house rule.

Give me the page reference for IQ!. It isn't in the rules, it was something Henry Cobb made up based solely on the pre-release hype for 4e. It is absolutely not in the published rules.

In particular, allowing characters to take reduced secondary characteristics when they buy up attribute levels in-play is absolutely not supported in the rules. The only way this works is if you let them take it as a metatrait, which means you need to allow that metatrait in the first place!

Besides, for anything but really low point totals, I find it hard to get near the limit anyway.

50% of total points is a "rule of thumb" not an actual rule. Notice that lots of published material for high point games (including all of Dungeon Fantasy, Action!, and Monster Hunters) uses a much lower limit.

[kirbwarrior]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Besides, for anything but really low point totals, I find it hard to get near the limit anyway.

For me, it highly depends on character concept. Playing a realistic poor child was enough to fill out disadvantage limits once. Another time I had only taken Curious (15) with 5 quirks.

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Give me the page reference for IQ!. It isn't in the rules, it was something Henry Cobb made up based solely on the pre-release hype for 4e. It is absolutely not in the published rules.

In particular, allowing characters to take reduced secondary characteristics when they buy up attribute levels in-play is absolutely not supported in the rules. The only way this works is if you let them take it as a metatrait, which means you need to allow that metatrait in the first place!

While that's definitely true in play, without a disadvantage limit and/or a GM saying 'no', it is completely allowed. You are allowed to buy those secondary attributes down. (One of the reasons I separated them from IQ in my housrules).

Back on topic, where talents shine the most is when they have a collection of different attributes. I'm pretty sure Outdoorsman has skills across DX, IQ, Per, and HT.

Talents being weak is a byproduct of DX and IQ not being defined as their own talents, not a weakness of talents themselves. I've already come up with some talents worth more than [20], since they cover so much (Omnitalent I have squared at [40], while you could make an Adventurer's Talent worth [25], and shoving about 100 useful skills in it, putting it on board a similar level as DX and IQ). In all honesty, if I had built talents my self from the ground up, I may have used the fact that Foo+1 is effectively IQ (Only to increase Foo -80%) [4], and made talents taking that into account. It's finicky and complicated, though, so how talents are being treated right now is fine (If someone wants more details, I can post it or start a new thread or something).

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Such metatrait only exists if you allow it. It's definitely a houserule. He's also used up 40 points of his disadvantage limit on "boring" secondary characteristic reductions instead of actual disadvantages.

IQ! is shorthand and not a Meta-trait.

Disad Limits are an optional rule and not mandatory.

I never use Disad Limits. It encourages people to take more Disadvantages because they think they are "supposed to". I use the GM Veto instead.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

IQ! is shorthand and not a Meta-trait.

You can't normally choose to take disadvantages willingly in-play and you do not normally get points back for disadvantages gained in-play. It can't work except as a meta-trait.

Disad Limits are an optional rule and not mandatory.

No more than any other rule. It isn't specifically called out as "Optional" like Bleeding or the Harsh Realism rules.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

You can't normally choose to take disadvantages willingly in-play and you do not normally get points back for disadvantages gained in-play. It can't work except as a meta-trait.

No more than any other rule. It isn't specifically called out as "Optional" like Bleeding or the Harsh Realism rules.

Who said you were lowering your Per and Will in play? You can't buy Talents in play either so it's pretty clear that we are discussing initial builds and not growth in-play.

It is not labeled "Optional" but neither is it made mandatory. B.11, last sentence of the first paragraph under disadvantage Limit says 'In practice, most GMs will want to set a limit on the amount of Disadvantage points a PC can have.".

That's more of an observation on GM desires than a Commandment. It also doesn't tell you what a Disad Limit should be if you set one. It suggests 50% but in my experience 75 pts of Disads for a 150 pt character tends to be crippling. Even back in 3e, 40 pts of Disads on a 100pt character could be overkill. 500pts of disads on a 1000pt character might not even be theoretically possible. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be a good level for balance.

So, GMs are not commanded to set a Disad Limit nor are they told what that Limit should be. More than anything else it seems to be a suggestion on common practices rather than even an endorsement of good ones. That's a little bit less than advice much less a _rule_.

No one says "You might want to charge twice as much for DX and IQ as you do for ST and HT". Much more positive verbs are used in that case and for other rules in general.