(TFT) talents and magic weapons.

[Rick Smith <rick_ww@lightspeed.ca>]

Hi David,
  I remember reading the Fafird and Grey Mouser stories by Fritz
Lieber.  They were awesome sword fighters, and they had two
weapons, Greywand and Cat's claw, (a longsword and rapier
respectively).  

  I had always assumed that these swords were fine as all get out
and magical to boot.  But then in one of the stories it mentioned 
that they had broken or lost their blades several times, and each
time replaced them with similar weapons.

  HOLY COW!  Fafird and the Grey Mouser were awesome, not 
because they had magic weapons, but because THEY were 
awesome!

  I thought about how I would make them in TFT and realized 
that there were very limited ways that people could distinguish
their characters apart from just getting ever more attributes &
buying good stuff.

 At that point, I really embraced more fighting talents for fighters.
I wanted LOTS of talents that would allow a fighter to get better,
even if they lost their favourite sword, and had to pick up some
random replacement.

  So (if I ever get my new talents on to the web), you will see 
lots and lots of ways for characters to get perks in combat with
talents.  The Advanced Shield talents are just the small edge 
of the wedge.  ;-P


  As for the reason I made a ST 8, DX 8, IQ 16 wizard, the story 
is actually very short and slightly funny.

  We were playing a long series of arena combats with fighters
and wizards.  My friend Prasad created an elvin wizard with 
something like ST 9, DX 14 and IQ 9 plus a few utility spells.  
He came into combats armed with a wooden dagger with the
staff spell on it.  

  He would charge forward..  engage us in HTH and kill us with
a dagger.  Our characters were totally unprepared for this
'unusual' style of combat from a wizard and he was a bit lucky
so he gained a couple attributes which he put into DX.  

  Cool.  Kudos to him for coming up with a creative and 
unusual character.  We admired the gutsiness of the design
concept.

  Then he claimed that this character was unbeatable.

  (I do not have the proper smilies to show my disbelief, 
astonishment and the eye rolling preposterousness that I felt 
about this claim.)

  So I created the 8, 8, 16 wizard with Summon 7 hex dragon.
First turn I summon dragon (had a 8 adj DX and rolled an 8).  
Second turn Prasad knew he was in trouble when I passed out 
maintaining it, and it roasted him.

  The win was absolutely dependent on luck.  I had a 25% 
chance of making my spell.  And it would never work against 
another wizard who didn't charge forward so I could engage
him on the first turn with the dragon.

  Anyway, he never made that claim again.  

  I semi retired the character... once in a rare while, I would 
send him in against figures who did low damage.  I lost two
combats but survived (got 20 exp each) and then lucked out
and won a combat (30 exp) and gained an attribute that I
put into DX.  Then I lost another fight but survived and was then 
killed.

:D

I knew I had only a 25% chance of winning, but I could write up
4 one trick wonders like that wizard and if each had 25 to 40%
chance of winning (ST 15, DX 9, IQ 8 heavy crossbowman any
one?), his character would likely die before the four combats 
were up.  And the boasting rights were sweet... I killed the 
undefeatable character with a IQ 16 arena combat wizard.

Warm regards, Rick


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