12-20-2021, 02:36 AM | #21 | ||
Join Date: Jun 2019
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Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
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If I've never mentioned it before, I love your approach to how magic and spells should be learned. And quests for musty old scrolls give adventures a certain flavor. In my group's world we even had a religious order devoted entirely to scouring the hidden places of the world for lost knowledge, and a long-lost encyclopedia of spells that was considered to be the holy grail. Quote:
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12-20-2021, 07:05 AM | #23 | |||
Join Date: Oct 2015
Location: New England
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Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
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12-20-2021, 07:59 AM | #24 |
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Boston area
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Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
It is tricky to find advantage for many mundane talents, it's true. Some are not too bad. A trapper should be able to make simple traps suitable for animals, snares and such. A hunter should have some of the knowledge a naturalist has, but limited to typical game. A farmer knows a few things about plants, but this seems hard to payoff in-game.
I've allowed a fisherman to feed the party as a Woodsman would, at least when they are in a suitable setting. A beekeeper might know something about insects generally, but that doesn't seem all that helpful. They could, I suppose, find a means of protecting themselves from wasps in order to bypass a nest. For a good role-player, these talents provide character. A good role-player uses the talents whenever appropriate, even to no particular advantage, just to round out the character. This is, of course, just a matter of "narrative advantage", as Shostak puts it, but it should entail some XP gain at least. |
12-20-2021, 08:17 AM | #25 | |
Join Date: Oct 2015
Location: New England
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Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
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12-20-2021, 08:47 AM | #26 |
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Boston area
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Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
Right! Though that can be a bit difficult, especially to do it naturally. How is it that whenever Fred is playing, someone always has a sock that needs darning, but when he's not, there is nary a footwear related incident?
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12-20-2021, 09:00 AM | #27 | |
Join Date: May 2015
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Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
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That last part is how I think it's meant. Those talents are mostly not adventuring talents - they're just things people may know because practically no one gets raised as just "an adventurer". And it seems natural to me that the higher costs are for talents that take more to get a useful level of skill. As ITL says, Mundane talents are also available at Master level for 3 points. So yes, there can be a lot to Farming, but 1 point in Farming is also very useful - for doing much of the basic work of farming, and knowing things about it. Artist/Calligrapher costs 3 points because it represents a high degree of ability. It lets you do something along the lines of this: https://pro-cdn.pixelmator.com/pro/s...anuscripts.jpg If you just want to be able to make reasonably good drawings, you could take "Drawing" for 1 point. (Drawing isn't listed, but as ITL says, not everything is.) Well, I see games worlds like places you can visit or be a part of through roleplaying, and I want them to behave as makes sense, and if the players or GM can find logical ways that non-adventuring talents become relevant or interesting, or if that leads to play being something worth telling a story about later, then I see that as a nice bonus, but NOT something I'd want the GM to intentionally go out of the way of logic to artificially set up. Last edited by Skarg; 12-20-2021 at 09:06 AM. |
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12-20-2021, 09:54 AM | #28 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Pacheco, California
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Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
Note that Calligrapher is the required talent to copy magical books at ITL 141.
I'd like to know what Handyman enable, other than taking doors off their hinges in the labyrinth.
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12-20-2021, 12:03 PM | #29 | ||
Join Date: Oct 2015
Location: New England
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Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
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12-20-2021, 03:38 PM | #30 |
Join Date: Jun 2018
Location: Durham, NC
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Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
This is how I use the Mundane talents. They allow for mundane jobs. Unfortunately, the Jobs Table does not list these as necessary for skills, so I have added these jobs to the table. Also note that any cost 1 or cost 2 Mundane talent has a Master level at cost 3 (this is in ITL). So, I have that added too. It just always seemed an obvious hole that job talents did not have jobs. This is what I have:
- All cost 1 Mundane Talents, but not Miner: $15, Risk 3/18 - All cost 2 Mundane Talents: $30, Risk 3/18 - All cost 3 Mundane Talents including Master Mundane talents but not Master Miner: $50, Risk 3/18 - Miner (cost 1): $30, 4/17 - Master Miner (cost 3): $55, 4/17 Miner is separate since it is a more dangerous profession. Also note that there already is "fisherman" and "scribe" jobs on the job table. So, I say these are different than the mundane talent ones. For example, the mundane talent fisherman is shore fishing, while the job table fisherman that requires Seamanship talent is fishing from a boat/ship. I did not bring this up in the House Rule collecting topic as I did not see it as a big deal. But maybe I should have. |
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