(TFT) New way to improve characters.

["rsmith" <rsmith@lightspeed.ca>]

Hi Everyone.
	Long post below.  I've given a fair bit
of background leading up to it, feel free to
skip to the line of asterisks if you are in a
hurry.


	For a long time I felt that there was not
enough memory for PC's in TFT.  One of the first
things I tried was halving the cost of talents.
But this seemed like too much.  Then I lowered
the cost of SOME talents (including some to 0.5
memory cost).  Eventually I made the superscript 
rules.

	However, I still have a number of 0.5 
memory talents hanging around.


	Now in my campaign, I wanted to fight 
'industrial disease' in magic.  One of the ways
to make it more dangerous and unpredictable that
I tried, was making a D&D like spell backlash 
table.

	Eventually I tossed that, but I still tell 
my PC's that if they roll a 17 or 18, then 
something strange is likely to happen, especially
on high IQ, powerful spells.  (And if the roll is 
an 18 the event will be almost certainly bad.)

	Nor did I like the, "roll a 17 or 18 when
using the Teleport spell then you die" rule.


	So what I did was say that if a wizard 
spends twice as much memory to learn a spell it
is known so well that there is no magic backlash
& no dying on a 17 / 18 teleport.  For most 
spells, people don't bother, but every now & then 
a PC wants to be a real expert in some spell and 
spends the extra memory point, even tho it does 
not really gain that big of an advantage.

	I think that this is a cool roleplaying 
thing.


	Now in my campaign I've added a LOT of 
talents, especially non-combat talents.  I've
noticed that with new players, my pad of 
talents is beginning to become intimidating to 
them simply because there are SO MANY.  Thus I
have started looking to keep ways to cut back 
the number of talents.  However I like to have 
ways for people to improve themselves by gaining 
more skills rather than wholesale upping of 
attributes.   Also TFT already has a lot of 
"Master This" and "Expert That" talents.


	***************************************


	I was thinking of ruling that any spell or 
talent could be bought 3 different ways.  For 1/2
the normal memory points it is half learned.  
Attempting to use it costs you -2 DX and you 
auto fail on a 14 or more.  Rolls of 16 or higher 
are serious mess ups.  For talents that don't 
require many dice rolls, the GM should take
every opportunity to demonstrate the talent is 
half learned and depending on it is a bad idea.

	You could buy it for normal memory.  The
talent or spell behaves as per the rules.

	You could buy it for twice the normal 
memory cost.  The advantage for doing this is
fairly modest so the mini-maxers usually won't 
bother.  You are more immune to most of the bad 
effects of critical misses.  Also in contests 
that directly use that talent you get a one die
advantage.

	PC's could write 1/2 priced talents in 
pencil, normal ones in pen, and highlight or
circle the ones they paid double for.




	The rules above are nice for races that 
have maximum IQ's; you can differentiate 
characters a bit better.  If a character has a 
maximum IQ of 10 then he or she can never become 
a Master Thief.  But if you allow double memory 
to be spent on Thief the PC can feel that at 
least they are a bit better than a NORMAL thief.


	If your campaign does not have some way to
buy extra memory somehow, then few people would
buy the double memory versions of the talent.

	But if you are strictly adhering to the 
cannon memory costs, then I suspect that the 
players will jump at the opportunity to buy a
few half learned talents to give them a bit of
knowledge in areas outside their specialty.

	
	For a lot fewer rules than GURPS spends on
its skills, we get 3 significant levels of 
ability in TFT, and I suspect that people will 
use these more than GURPS does.  (In GURPS a
typical wizard has just about every spell at 
skill 15.  With this system, TFT players might
have a few spells that they are not so good at
and maybe one that they have REALLY chosen to
specialize in.)


	I am quite happy with these rules.  I will
try them out in my campaign and report back.  
Any thoughts or suggestions from the honored 
members of the list?  Perhaps if this is going
to be a regular rule, the advantages of double 
cost talents & spells should be beefed up some? 
 
	(My thinking is that if everyone KNOWS that 
they are not worth the cost, the pressure is off 
the GM to define careful rules for every talent 
to make sure every talent is 'fair' & 'balanced'.) 

	Anyway, let me know what you think.

	Rick
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