Non-Stacking Talents

[Tyneras]

How much would a limitation on talents be that prevented them from having stacking bonuses to skill? That is, if you have 2 talents that overlap, the overlap would only use the best talent bonus, not add them together.

[Langy]

It's not a general limitation; this should only decrease costs if the player actually encounters a situation like that.

In that case, just use the normal Talent pricing rules for whatever situation the character is in. He has one Talent with 10 skills, another Talent with 9 skills, and 4 of the skills are shared between the Talents? That should be priced at 10/level for the first Talent and 5/level for the second instead of the normal 10/level for both.

Remember the normal pricing rules: 5/level for 6 skills or fewer, 10/level for 12 skills or fewer, and 15/level for any more.

[Tyneras]

Originally Posted by Langy

It's not a general limitation; this should only decrease costs if the player actually encounters a situation like that.

In that case, just use the normal Talent pricing rules for whatever situation the character is in. He has one Talent with 10 skills, another Talent with 9 skills, and 4 of the skills are shared between the Talents? That should be priced at 10/level for the first Talent and 5/level for the second instead of the normal 10/level for both.

Remember the normal pricing rules: 5/level for 6 skills or fewer, 10/level for 12 skills or fewer, and 15/level for any more.

If Talent prices were a simple linear relationship (say 1 point per skill per level) I'd just do something like that. Unfortunately the pricing is kinda wonky.

[Langy]

Originally Posted by Tyneras

If Talent prices were a simple linear relationship (say 1 point per skill per level) I'd just do something like that. Unfortunately the pricing is kinda wonky.

There's an alternative pricing scheme in Power-Ups 3: Talents that's essentially linear; 1 point/skill with a 5 point minimum per level.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Tyneras

How much would a limitation on talents be that prevented them from having stacking bonuses to skill? That is, if you have 2 talents that overlap, the overlap would only use the best talent bonus, not add them together.

Does it really matter? I'd expect players who buy Talents during character creation to almost always buy the maximum allowed stack right away, 4 levels in vanilla GURPS and 6 in DF/Action(/MH?), or else buy as much as they can afford right away and make a beeline for maximizing the stack with earned experience points.

Assuming a normal campaign with a 150+ point budget, of course. Things will almost certainly be different if points are very thight.

[Tyneras]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

Does it really matter? I'd expect players who buy Talents during character creation to almost always buy the maximum allowed stack right away, 4 levels in vanilla GURPS and 6 in DF/Action(/MH?), or else buy as much as they can afford right away and make a beeline for maximizing the stack with earned experience points.

Assuming a normal campaign with a 150+ point budget, of course. Things will almost certainly be different if points are very thight.

World design, actually. Toying with the idea of make a number of techniques, perks and spells available ONLY through various martial or magical styles. Since the styles would be package deals with their own talents (which are prerequisites for said abilities), there's a non-trivial chance anyone who wants to diversify would have significant overlap, doubly so for spellcasters.

But using the alternate talent pricing (thanks Langy!) solves this neatly.

I'm strongly considering removing Magery 1+, making Magery 0 a binary can/can't cast spells switch, and putting all of the old Magery skill increases in the hands of the style talents.

[Peter Knutsen]

If so, why not just use a flat -15%? Or -10%? Clean, and much simpler than sitting there and counting overlap in each of a multitude of potential combinations.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

If so, why not just use a flat -15%? Or -10%? Clean, and much simpler than sitting there and counting overlap in each of a multitude of potential combinations.

I'd probably use a -20% as it divides nicely into the little 5/level talents, and given the situation described above in the first post where roughly half the skills overlapped it might qualify as a "50% of the time" Accessibility, which comes to -20%.

[lvalero]

In my DF I allow stacking talents with a capped limit.

All character have a talent called "class-talent": wizard, warrior, rogue, paladin, etc...

This is part a talent and part an "unusual background" advantage.

You can stack talents over your skills, but your class-talent is the maximum stackable bonus.

So a 3-level rogue could stack up to +3 in bonus from one or more talents.

[weby]

In my current game talents stack up to the +4/skill. I have been using variable cost talents similar to the one in power ups since long before it came out. Thus for talents that would be >+4 total, the PC gets a direct discount of 1 point/skill that would go over/level over to the highest price talent.