Re: (TFT) Shields and Feats.

[Jay Carlisle <maou.tsaou@gmail.com>]

Some thoughts or whatever...

Mastery is the idea of maximizing the execution of a Talent where
Expertise is concerned with the study of said Talent objectively. A
Master without Expert understanding isn't going to instruct others as
effectively while an Expert can communicate procedure but can't teach
any underling essence passively present as part of a Talent which
requires practice not perception to produce.

Talents in some instances at least may better be modeled as a skill
mountain rather than skill tree with each steep of elevation on the
mountain a more basic group of principals applying to the specific
implementations of the base generally the idea being Musashi's mastery
of "Sword" allowed Him to apply His understanding to not swords such
as boat oars to effect where a grunt trained in gladius gets a
negative modifier when using a saber say...

A low IQ cost could mean more minimal limited focus for a given Talent
which may be preferable when a population in general is primarily
concerned with say agriculture first and military ability second. A
population focused on the same Talents as Joe Average Adventurer
probably has problems practically speaking in producing the
necessaries needed to support it... Sparta suffered from such a
mismatch of practical focus I think for example.

Practically speaking many specific attack/defense items are very
specific to their time and place such that Persians may find wicker
shields suffice until bronze blades are replaced by iron and etc. This
can also be affected by other considerations such as available
materials for production and the ease of which makes spears eclipse
swords in situations requiring fast cheep equipping of martial forces
as opposed to the cost and time required to outfit the finest
equipment for each individual. Less practical concerns like profit can
play more of a role than warranted also.

The more formalized combat is the less the focus is on the fatal often
times such that ransom makes capture a consideration apart from
straight killing. Warrior cultures tend towards garish flamboyant
costuming for identifying the participants at least in part with these
self imposed limits formally passing into competitive sport at some
point and degrading into what is generally termed "total war" today
where civilian losses top martial totals in WWII for example. Such
reduction and square one restart results are not always preferable but
the modern mythology promotes progress as a fundamental result of the
civilized process that produces improvement over what was practiced in
the past ergo "slave" was shed by the american civil dustup and was
always generally a similar condition until finally done away with
which fails to account for the fact that the condition today arguably
exceeds that exhibited by any past period depending upon definition of
course but mainly owing to the same numbers that could be said to skew
the straight count from a population present today as availability
also creates a cost decrease with a slave cost just before the civil
war running ~30k adjusted in one estimate I ran across recently verses
today's ~$7... assuming that isn't sensationalized of course the point
being convincing the tribe to sleep where they poop so some psychopath
could take on the role of king wasn't unquestionably the start of an
elevator ride of up up upward progress period.

Position can play a key role in conflict and take priority over
physical injury as goal. Pushing through resistance can signal a
significant sign that further fighting would be fruitless if say the
supporting camp can no longer be protected from plunder and the food
feeding the fielded force is lost and so to the force in short order.

Oversimplified musings for consideration not advocated as correct...
listing everything with prices gives an impression that all weapons
are available at once at some Weapons Are Us big box retail
merchant... Other setups are possible.


On Tue, Dec 1, 2015 at 2:20 PM, David Bofinger <bofinger.david@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I feel that a barely trained fighter SHOULD be beaten by highly skilled
> adversaries.
>
> It means "he's not much in the brains department, but he knows about
> hurting people" ceases to be a functional character. I think that's one of
> the archetypes so it's probably a shame. By making IQ start at 9 you're
> reducing the range of characters.
>
> I'm not talking about getting feats because you bought something else, I'm
> talking about buying the feats and there is nothing else. The idea being
> that everything written down on a character sheet is a qualitative change
> and you should be able to tell characters with that feature apart from
> characters without it. Changing ST 10 to ST 11 isn't a qualitative change
> so we ditch the ST attribute, though we might still have feats that imply
> strength and are useful in situations that ST would be useful. Feats are
> things like "Knows the basics of using melee weapons", "Familiar with ships
> and the sea", "Wears heavy armour", "Scholar", "Speaks goblinoid and is
> familiar with goblin culture", etc.. A lot of them would be TFT talents,
> but TFT attributes are also folded into them.
>
> It's not really a fully-developed idea. Something I'd like to implement.
>
> --
> David
>
>
> On 2 December 2015 at 05:22, Rick Smith <rick_ww@lightspeed.ca> wrote:
>
>> Hi David,
>>   Thanks for the comments.
>>
>>   Two handed weapons used to do one extra point of damage.
>> In my revised weapon list they usually do 3 extra points of
>> damage.  (The exception is pole weapons.  A two handed pole
>> weapon does +2 damage, but then gets a x 1.5 multiplier if
>> it charges closing the distance by 3 hexes.)
>>
>>   I have added lots of talents some of which come on the even
>> number of IQ points, (e.g. IQ 10, 12, etc.).  However, to make
>> talents easier to find, prerequisites are 2 IQ lower than the
>> more advanced talents.  This means that given that Shield is
>> IQ 7, then advanced shield talents will fall at IQ 9 and 11.
>> (I've added so many talents, that this rule is actually fairly
>> important to help people remember where to find talents.)
>>
>>   We will have to agree to disagree about making an IQ 8
>> fighter obsolete.  I feel that a barely trained fighter SHOULD
>> be beaten by highly skilled adversaries.  I am not troubled
>> that many of the advanced fighting skills are higher IQ than
>> 8.  That is how the TFT system is set up.  If you wanted to
>> grab a bunch of my talents, but make them all IQ 8, it would
>> not trouble me.
>>
>> The last edition of D&D that I played much was 2nd, which
>> was before feats, so I can't comment much on them.  But if
>> you were to write up a bunch of feats, I would read them
>> with interest.
>>
>> In D&D you get more feats with higher levels.  Would your
>> feats be based on buying DX and ST (but not IQ), or would
>> you have another system?
>>
>> Warm regards, Rick.
>>
>>
>> On 2015-12-01, at 1:25 AM, David Bofinger wrote:
>> > If you make shields much better, you need to make two-handed weapons much
>> > better as well. Or one-handed weapons worse. Probably a bit of both.
>> >
>> > Caveat: This is based on what I've seen of Rick's advanced weapon
>> talents,
>> > which might have changed since I saw them.
>> >
>> > Rick, you seem to like putting all your combat expertise talents (shield,
>> > weapons) at IQ 9, 11. I'm not sure why you do that but it has a couple of
>> > effects I suspect are undesirable. First, IQ 9 is only just above the
>> hard
>> > deck of IQ 8 so it makes the classic IQ 8 fighter pretty much obsolete.
>> The
>> > benefits of IQ 9 talents greatly outweigh the cost of 1 point so IQ 8 is
>> no
>> > longer a sweet spot. As an example:
>> >
>> > Fighter ST 12 DX 12 IQ 8 [Knife, Sword, Shield, Running, +3 @ IQ 8]
>> > broadsword, small shield: 2+0, aDX 12, stops 1, parries on 12 (10%), MA
>> 12.
>> >
>> > Fighter ST 11 DX 12 IQ 9: [Knife, Sword, Shield, Improved Sword, Shield
>> 2,
>> > +2 @ IQ 9] shortsword, small shield: 2+1, aDX 12, stops 3, parries on 14
>> > (22%), MA 10.
>> >
>> > OK, it's not absolutely one-sided, but I know who I'd rather back in a
>> > fight. It's a pretty huge gulf in capability. Two-handed weapons also
>> take
>> > a hit.
>> >
>> > I don't think the simple fighter should be made obsolete. Have to
>> compete,
>> > sure, but not get badly outcompeted by obvious analogous designs.
>> >
>> > Generally it tends to make the odd-IQ levels more useful than the even
>> > IQ-levels, for anyone with an interest in melee combat. That's already
>> true
>> > to some extent in the standard rules, because the best stuff is, IMO,
>> > somewhat more common at odd IQ than even, at least at lower IQ levels.
>> IQ 8
>> > has Seamanship/Boating/Horsemanship which might be useful but is highly
>> > situational and anyway that doesn't count because we don't get to choose
>> > whether we have IQ 8. IQ 9 has Missile Weapons which can easily be really
>> > important, IQ 10 has Fencing but that's not a huge deal, IQ 11 has Two
>> > Weapons which can be quite a big deal (along with three critical party
>> > skills, it's a big skill monkey level), IQ 12 has nothing much, IQ 13 has
>> > nothing much, IQ 14 has the high level unarmed combat abilities though
>> they
>> > cost a fortune. Add in your special combat talents and I think characters
>> > will be putting their IQ up two at a time.
>> >
>> > (Another feature of your weapon talents is that IQ 9 to IQ 11 is a
>> smaller
>> > jump than IQ 11 to IQ 13 so characters tend to stop at IQ 9 or IQ 13. I
>> > think.)
>> >
>> > I'm not sure what the answer is to this. But I sort of like the idea that
>> > the special abilities should be a bit more like what D&D calls feats and
>> > less just "add two". Actually, my current theory of RPG design is to
>> ditch
>> > as many numbers as possible and describe everything by characters having
>> > feats. Because feats are more fun than numbers.
>> >
>> > --
>> > David
>> >
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