Leveling up skills

[TippetsTX]

Originally Posted by dmgrafton

For each Talent Packet you received a "free" talent in each Packet for learning a focused profession, assuming traing and support from a mentor, guild etc. We tested each for awhile and were happy so have retained them.

Can you provide a few examples?

[dmgrafton]

Sure.

1. Monk Class
Stats = ST 11 DX 11 IQ 10

Combat talent packet for the Monk Class includes:
~ Thrown Weapons (IQ2/2)
~ Bola (IQ8/1) OR Shaken IQ8/1)
~ Quarterstaff & Nunchucks (IQ8/1) -- We combined these weapons like sword and knife for 1 point since they seemed to go together and separated by ST requirements.
~ Alertness (IQ9/2) OR Acute Hearing (IQ9/2)
~ Silent movement (IQ9/2)
~ Unarmed Combat (IQ10/1)
TOTAL COST = 9 but with a bonus point cost 8, have 2 more points to spend for Combat talents.

For Non-Combat talents -- get 1/2 of total IQ points round up:
~ Literacy (IQ8/1)
~ Climbing (IQ 9/1)
~ Acrobatics (IQ10/2
TOTAL COST = 4 points -- no bonus point for non-combat so can spend 5, have 1 more point to spend.

2. Ranger Class
Stats = ST 10 DX 11 IQ 11
Combat talent packet for the Ranger Class Includes:
~ Bow (IQ7/2)
~ Horsemanship (IQ8/1)
~ Silent Movement (IQ9/2) OR Alertness (IQ9/2)
~ Naturalist (IQ10/2)
~ Physicker (IQ11/2)
TOTAL COST = 8 but with a bonus point cost 8, have 3 more points to spend for combat talents.

For non-combat talents -- Get 1/2 of total IQ points round up:
~ Area Knowledge (IQ8/1)
~ Streetwise (IQ9/1)
~ Tracking IQ10/1)
~ Mimic (IQ10/1)
TOTAL COST = 4 -- no bonus point but can spend up to 6 so have 2 more points to spend.

The definitions of Combat and Non-Combat talents are:

Combat talents: 1) Prevent or shorten the length of a combat or harmful/life-death situation; 2) Increase the effectiveness of accuracy, speed, defense or damage during combat; 3) Reduce the negative impacts of combat before, during or after combat (i.e. eliminate/reduce ambush).

Non-combat talents: 1) Provide a benefit to non-combat interactions and relationships with NPCs; 2) Provide new/unique intelligence that would not otherwise be available; 3) Would allow non-combat work efforts to be completed more efficiently & effectively.

We did other class types as well: Of course Wizard, Explorer (Indiana Jones type), Druid, Rogue/Thief, Bard, Old-World Scientist (think MacGyver, Doc Savage, or an 18th century Batman) and traditional fighter/Warrior.

[David Bofinger]

Originally Posted by dmgrafton

Combat talents were seen as contributing to/preventing the increase or decrease of an opponents ST related to wounds (so in this case Physicker was grouped in the combat talent bucket as well as Detect Traps) and noncombat talents were used outside of melee, like Business Sense.

Interesting definition. Were there any borderline cases you had to talk through, and if so how did you decide?

We allowed PCs 1/2 points of IQ for non combat talents (round up).

Generous. Did you ever see players saying, "You know, I don't want anything else, this is too much, I've started picking things my character probably wouldn't have." Or did you ever find that a player had chosen to give their character some particular talent, hoping it would make them special, and then it turned out everyone had it?

I guess it depends to some extent on how you feel about, for instance, starting characters with multiple advanced combat talents. If you don't like them then you might want to limit starting combat talents below the usual limit of IQ.

I think there are some very interesting ideas here. They might not apply in every campaign but I think in a lot. The philosophy behind it, that more non-combat talents is more fun, is probably more true than not.

The second was we defined simple Classes similar to DnD but strayed somewhat to keep more of the TFT feel of professions. If you opted for one of these classes you received a combat "Talent Packet" and a "Non combat Talent Packet" that tailored the talents to the profession. For each Talent Packet you received a "free" talent in each Packet for learning a focused profession, assuming training and support from a mentor, guild etc.

This benefits characters who specialise to some extent: I'm guessing more or less to the extent of being qualified for a job on the jobs table, or a bit better. So characters who have specialised have an advantage over characters who are more generalist.

I can't see why that would be a good, or indeed a bad, idea. I guess we're trying to encourage players to generate characters which are more fun for other players?

If not, what is our motive here?

If so, are specialised professionals more fun for other players? Why would we want to encourage them? Or discourage them, for that matter?

My feeling is that a bits and pieces character who dropped out of two apprenticeships, knows boats at least a bit but isn't a real expert, etc., could be fine and I don't see why it should be discouraged relative to a more specialised one.

[David Bofinger]

Originally Posted by dmgrafton

1. Monk Class

This is a lot of weapon skills. In 90% of campaigns characters need something they do in combat and a second thing might be useful occasionally but 90% of the time isn't. Buying half a dozen different such skills is by TFT standards weird and obsessive.

The stealth and counterstealth skills might make sense in some campaigns, but there's also a lot of stories where there is no correlation between martial arts and stealth.

2. Ranger Class

Again, this is very campaign-dependent. Horsemanship, in particular, isn't the first thing that springs to mind for someone who lives in a forest. Robin Hood wasn't famed for his horsemanship, and Aragorn only was to the extent he was good at everything. Physicker is I assume representing D&D magic but it's at least as kin to alchemy in TFT.

In general it seems like this is art imitating art: you're trying to represent D&D classes, rather than represent people who might exist in reality or in stories. And I think that's a path that leads nowhere good. The near-lack of classes in TFT is a good thing, not a problem to be fixed.

[dmgrafton]

I'll go through your questions to see if I can give some info that will help.

Background--First, this is three of us who played TFT -- rather Melee and Wizard -- and DnD back in the late 70s, early 80s. We loved both systems. We did not see one superior over the other -- both had an entirely different purpose-- Melee was arena combat for the most part. We played a few modules like Death Test but they did not compare to the spontaneous dynamics that were both combat and non-combat of DnD story-wise. (I'm not bashing the FT modules, I have played a number of them, it is just we liked the spontaneousness of an unpredictable DM). Fast forward to today -- over 30 years -- we got together to play TFT and loved it -- we see TFT much better than DnD5e for us as original older-school guys -- in that it is cleaner simpler, and allows us to play the story out more than the die rolls, which is where we want to play--the epic quests idea. Our big difference is we play solo so we have a few of us that serve as a portion of the GM/DM role in sessions.

That last bit is important because there is no one person that has driven what I laid out for Talent Packets and special classes that have incentives for certain talents. We all had equal input and there was no rule dictated by any one person like say coming from a DM. We have played for a few years and did a "what can we do to make the game more fun" conversation, and this is what we came up with and I would say overall it has enhanced the "fun-ness" our game play tremendously for a few reasons:

1. We use more talents in the game and our game sessions feel like scenes form a movie because we have more diverse actions being played out. In our sessions combat usually lasts anywhere form 3 to 12 or so turns , depending And in those turns you're only going to use combat talents. When we were honest we said "I'm not picking non-combat talents when I have to make sure I can survive combats coming my way." So we realized there were many talents we never picked and would likely not pick but would be cool to use if we had them. That is when we realized many talents are for non-combat scenarios and if we had them we would likely foster more non-combat scenarios in gaming sessions. Now when we play we sometimes spend an entire 3-4 hours playing non-combat scenarios and have a blast, because we relay on these non-combat talents.

2. We also felt like we we were still playing stereotypical fighters or wizards, as much as we tried to differentiate ourselves with talent use. The approach of "Class" definition and incentive of certain talents aligned to them --we were skeptical of this at first but when we walked away and came back with our beta-test player "class" scenarios and tried them it was a lot of fun and there was a real distinction between the abilities of different class/PCs and it felt like we each had a unique player coming in to help solve the problem versus fighter 1 -- fighter 2 -- fighter 3 -- wizard 1 -- wizard 2 in our combat and non-combat scenarios -- largely because there were many talents we had never used.

That's more of an overview. here are some specific responses to your questions:

A. We did have 1 borderline case that we eliminated -- Thief vs Assassin. They were too close and did not differentiate and you could almost see an Assassin similar to a Ninja. The existing one that is still borderline that we kept was Thief/Rogue vs Bard. Some thieves can be charming and well dressed and have many bard skills vs a more "scoundrel" thief who will knife you in the back. We've kept them regardless and we actually have 1 player who has two PCs halfling brothers, 1 who is a Thief and the who is a Bard and they jointly work the crowds with entertainment and pickpocketing. We never had that scenario until our framework came to be.

B. To your question about people saying did anyone ever say they don't need more than the original TFT rules around talents -- again this is 3 of us saying we wanted more than what we had in teh rules and we all agree that we have more variety in our scenarios because of it.

C. Your question about having multiple advanced Weapon talents: We came the realization about a year into it (2nd time around) that our goal in playing was to have as much fun as possible. We realized that in combat which lasts 3-12 turns on average, you could choose to use Talent A or Talent B in a specific turn in combat , but in the long run it doesn't matter if you have 5 talents or 10 talents or 30 talents, you can only use a set no of actions in 3-12 turns of combat. So the additional talents just gives more options to make the combat play out with more variety and the outcomes could be different than always using the same 1 or 2 or 3 talents in a combat. Also remember that these Talent Packets only really give 1 added IQ point, so it is not awarding any real significant benefit. A good example of a talent none of us ever considered until we made these changes: Blowgun talent -- A Thief chooses to pick Blowgun with that 1 extra point that they saved. That really is not going to amount to much-- how often will a Blowgun really define a combat outcome? It won't much of the time-- BUT -- it is great to have it as an option to use that 1 time in 1 year's span of game sessions where you want to try and assassinate the town mayor or the evil King of the Burning Island.

We have never seen our party out-fight creatures became of these added talents.

D. Again responding to your query on the simple DnD version of classes -- This is not for everyone, we can see that, and our decisions were very specific to what we wanted to have as opportunities to playing our game. We had "persona icons" for each class to help describe to what we saw this class looking and feeing like. For example, not presented to you but we defined an "Explorer" class that has talents like Whip, Area Knowledge, Climbing, Recognize Value, etc. And the personas we thought about when we created them were Indiana Jones and Laura Croft Tomb Raider. Note also that these talent packets actually left points over for a PC to choose specific talents. So in the Explorer example a PC could select Crossbow Talent if they wanted.

E. Horsemanship and the Ranger class. Our campaign is set on a continent that is a little larger than the United States and horses are mandatory to be able to move when we need to -- though we often stay locally in certain areas we do move longer distances. For the Ranger class we had a specific persona of Aragon from LOTH and in the books he has a special bond with his horse, so that was asked for in the class and for that persona it makes sense.

I would not get too caught in the specifics of some of what I laid out-- the permutations are endless depending on what is desired or the group agrees to.

F. To your last point and my last comment. In terms of encouraging or discouraging choice through these Classes and talent packets -- they are not mandatory -- only blueprints you can use if you want. We still often use the traditional TFT approach for just picking talents from scratch for some PCs and many NPCs.

So I agree that to an extent we have emulated DnD with the class idea because it feels easer to create a character that fits something we want to play. But it also aligns to TFT/ITL P12 and following which lays out sample character blue prints as ideas and we actually started with these. The more we discussed it we like the "persona icon" idea to describe these character-types. So whatever you call it, this character-type from TFT or DnD class-type it's probably laid out in both systems because it's just a good idea and people resonate with it. That is what happened organically to us as we evolved in the game. Again I would say we had a lot of fun with it, even more I would say than in the 70s and 80s.

[timm meyers]

Originally Posted by dmgrafton

F. To your last point and my last comment. In terms of encouraging or discouraging choice through these Classes and talent packets -- they are not mandatory -- only blueprints you can use if you want. We still often use the traditional TFT approach for just picking talents from scratch for some PCs and many NPCs.

So I agree that to an extent we have emulated DnD with the class idea because it feels easer to create a character that fits something we want to play. But it also aligns to TFT/ITL P12 and following which lays out sample character blue prints as ideas and we actually started with these. The more we discussed it we like the "persona icon" idea to describe these character-types. So whatever you call it, this character-type from TFT or DnD class-type it's probably laid out in both systems because it's just a good idea and people resonate with it. That is what happened organically to us as we evolved in the game. Again I would say we had a lot of fun with it, even more I would say than in the 70s and 80s.

I would not think that offering this "class" talent option would supplant most players PC designs. The whole "packet" idea is reasonable, and the free/discount talents is balanced by the uniformity of choice imho. Honestly any advanced talents with prerequisites are essentially the same thing as "classes".
The PC that attains UC V will more times than not be nearly identical in build to any other UC V player. Toughness II or Weapon Mastery fighters usually share similar ancillary talents due to the fact that we are all building from the popular archetypes (classes) we have read or seen in fantasy. Yes it is great to dream up your own unique wildman warrior to roam the wastes but a cut and paste "Conan" packet barbarian with an extra free talent point because you had to have carousing and horsemanship is a fine option also.

Regarding D&D, my son (13) just played his 1st game with friends and told me it is better than TFT. (AHHHHH!!!)
In asking why, the reason became quickly apparent. He got to choose his class from fighter to thief to magic user etc. and then roll his stats giving him all his skills and abilities that matched this archetype. In essence he could create a character without needing to know the rules or delve deep into some creative vision.
Even with pre-generated PC's TFT does not match this sense of character creation or creative prompt. So, I think there is some additional advantages and uses for your "class" options.

(Hopefully I can turn my son away from the dark side but they already have a 2nd game scheduled tomorrow, sigh, I am a failure as a father)

[tomc]

Originally Posted by timm meyers

(Hopefully I can turn my son away from the dark side but they already have a 2nd game scheduled tomorrow, sigh, I am a failure as a father)

Don't worry about it. You're playing the long game. ;)

[Steve Plambeck]

Originally Posted by timm meyers

Regarding D&D, my son (13) just played his 1st game with friends and told me it is better than TFT. (AHHHHH!!!)
In asking why, the reason became quickly apparent. He got to choose his class from fighter to thief to magic user etc. and then roll his stats giving him all his skills and abilities that matched this archetype. In essence he could create a character without needing to know the rules or delve deep into some creative vision.

Wow -- my deepest sympathies! Kids today...

Moving on, I guess that's a valid point in some ways. Probably a significant number of young potential recruits feel the same way -- it's not all that unreasonable to want to skip reading the rules, ignore character generation, start playing instantly, and figure you'll learn as you go. You're there to have fun, not work! How should we, as the old guard, deal with that? Handing out pregenerated characters is one way I suppose, and talent packages could well come into play here.

Would it be feasible to bring a first-timer into an existing campaign, just tell them assign your 8 free points across the three attributes, pick a weapon or two from the weapons table and just run with it? Let the GM keep a side list of what talents they demonstrate using in play, and at some point (after play) just hand it to them. During play if they want to pick a lock, just tell them no, they can't and the reason why if they don't have the IQ or room left for the needed talent. If they do have the IQ and room for the talent, then say they have it, put it on their record sheet, and tell them what to roll. Hopefully they'll catch on when they run out of things you let them try, realize there are checks and balances, no one is superman to start, and remind them to read the rules when they want to know how that all works.

If they insist on starting as a wizard, that's a little harder. Perhaps pick 4 or 5 of the most commonly used survival spells for them, tell them they have them, and remind them they can pick the rest later.

More work for the GM to save work for a player, but coddling first time players is something we all must do to at least some extent.

[David Bofinger]

Also an interesting philosophy. Characters start with half their IQ in talents and get new ones ultra-cheap until they reach some threshold where the curve gets steeper. So initial character advancement is mostly inexperienced people learning the basics of adventuring. There are campaigns for which this would make sense.

[Shostak]

Originally Posted by timm meyers

Honestly any advanced talents with prerequisites are essentially the same thing as "classes". The PC that attains UC V will more times than not be nearly identical in build to any other UC V player.

Yes. It is an unfortunate result of attribute prerequisites; get rid of those and the uniformity disappears.

Regarding D&D, my son (13) just played his 1st game with friends and told me it is better than TFT. (AHHHHH!!!)
In asking why, the reason became quickly apparent. He got to choose his class from fighter to thief to magic user etc. and then roll his stats giving him all his skills and abilities that matched this archetype. In essence he could create a character without needing to know the rules or delve deep into some creative vision.
Even with pre-generated PC's TFT does not match this sense of character creation or creative prompt. So, I think there is some additional advantages and uses for your "class" options.

(Hopefully I can turn my son away from the dark side but they already have a 2nd game scheduled tomorrow, sigh, I am a failure as a father)

GURPS is even less class-based than RAW TFT, and the process of character creation can be daunting due to the myriad possibilities. Gaming Ballistic came out with Delvers to Grow for GURPS DFRPG to speed up character creation, which can invite choice paralysis to those less experienced with the system. But the important distinction is that in D&D, a character is wholly defined and constrained by their class, whereas even with the aforementioned template approach, GURPS characters are fully customizable. TFT teases with the promise of such customization, but undermines it with various prerequisites.

One can use RAW TFT to simplify character creation a bit by using the Jobs table, which lists prerequisites to qualify for various employment. A GM who wants to be even more helpful could add to entry for each job any attribute prerequisites for talents listed as qualifications. For instance, a Healer will need IQ 14 so as to be able to take Master Physicker, and an Army Sergeant or Courier will need at least IQ 11 in order to take all of the listed talents. This means that no starting Healer character will be wielding a weapon heavier than a saber, which seems as unsatisfying and arbitrary as all of the D&D class limitations.