Re: (TFT) TFT: Playtested Expert/Master Talents

["Ty Beard" <tbeard@tyler.net>]

Howdy all!

> Hey guys.  As some of you probably remember, last year I did a study of
> Ty's expert and master weapon talents and found them to be /way/ too
> powerful compared to what one pays for them.

I missed that; could you email me your study?

> Today I gave it some more
> thought and tried to come up with some reasonable talents that would be
> balanced, and below is the result.

<snip>

My versions of the talents originally had a cost of 3 IQ each for axe/mace
and sword. I reduced the cost to 2 points because I believe that talents in
TFT are generally too high.

>    1. The difference between an expert and a normal fighter is /defense/.
> Any fool can swing a sword and hit someone standing right in front of him.
> An expert will know how to better defend himself and parry blows to keep
> from being hit himself.  This is especially important with such deadly
> weapons being wielded, when one good sword stroke stands between victory
and
> death.  This is why -- at least in the movies -- a duel between two
> swordmasters (such as Obi Wan and Darth Maul, or D'Artanian and whoever he
> fought) takes so long.  For this reason the talents include /defensive/
> bonuses and not simply increases to DX or damage (experience and magic
cover
> those two bonuses more than adequately).

My solution was to require a higher minimum DX -- thus expert swordsmen
would necessarily be better offensively than plain old swordsmen. I
increased the damage to give the expert swordsmen the ability to mow down
hordes of rabble -- something that is difficult to do in TFT currently, For
instance, a broadsword averages 7 points of damage. Against ST 10,
club-armed rabble, it takes 2 hits on average to put him out of action. But
a master swordsman will average 11 points of damage -- enough to kill his
target in one shot.

>    3. The talents follow the same general pattern as Ty's original talents
> of the same names.  This makes it easy to "grandfather-in" these (in my
> opinion) better talents into existing characters.  The master talents got
a
> boost from IQ 12 to 13, and all of them cost 3 IQ points each, just like
> Fencing, Two Weapons, and all of the master professional talents in ITL.

I agree that the 3 IQ cost is more consistent with TFT -- but I still feel
that talents cost too much in TFT.

>    (To grandfather in a talent, I recommend simply /giving/ the character
> whatever he needs to meet the higher requirements.  If he has (for
example)
> Expert Sword, give him two more IQ points to cover it.  For the master
> talents increasing his IQ by one is sufficient.  This is how I'm handling
> the one expert swordsman in my campaign (who is a 16-year old warrior
> princess, played by a 12-year old girl).)

You might also use "talent points" -- for each attribute point spent, you
get 2 IQ points of talents (but your IQ remains the same).

>    What do you think?

IMHO, a perfectly valid alternative to my talents.

--Ty Beard

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