Talents and Deluxe T&T

[grrraall]

T&T types are very very broad: warriors, wizards, paragons (used to be warriors-wizards), rogues, and a bunch of specialists.
If you want your wizard to be like a skald, you could give him a talent for Arts, probably based on CHR.
If you want your wizard to be more of the witch/druid type, give her a Potions Concoction talent.
Etc.

Also, talents can be used to save your character's skin.
In a desperate situation, I used to tend, as a GM, to give the characters an opportunity to make a SR to flee or try something crazy to save their lives.
Now, I tend to ask them to use their talents.

[mosker]

(Reposted from Trollhalla)

Re: Talents.

Those of you who read the small print in later printings pre-5th edition FBI solos might remember the suggestion that if you were playing with the 5th edition, adding 10 to all monster ratings would help achieve the proper level of difficulty (naturally tough->T&T standard: dumping characters into woodchippers.)

It was a flawed, limited solution, but it worked.

So...

I'm especially asking those who play purchased solos and GM adventures, and those who write them, can you think of any rough rule of thumb to bridge the gap between players with talents and those without?

[zanshin]

Well if the player has a dice rolling talent you need to have more 'make this choice and die' paragraphs in the solo if you want to ensure they lose

For player characters on the other hand I would suggest leaving the player to self adjudicate. Perhaps give some broad guidance at the start of the solo. I don't think Talents should make a SR harder - if you want to play with Talents, you want the customisation it brings, and as there are only certain saves it is relevant for. I don't think the + 10 MR solution equivalent is granular enough.

[quoghmyre]

Over the years I've given this a lot of thought, this is what I've settled on...

Talents, Skills and Flaws in the Southern Most Realms
The goal of adding talents, skills and flaws into T&T is to give the players greater avenues for roleplay. They should use the standard T&T mechanics and integrate easily. They should not require onerous additional bookkeeping.

A Talent or Skill (TSF) can be anything the player chooses for their character. This is part of character development. TSF are determined at character creation before adding the kindred bonus. Each primary stat over 12 entitles the character to a TSF, stat - 12 = number of TSF. A warrior with a ST of 15 can have up to 3 strength related talents or skills, if they also have 13 CHR they get an additional charisma based talent or skill. The GM may alter these to suit the current game setting.

After choosing all the TSF the player wants for his character, they then roll 3d6 (TARO) for each TSF. These can now be used to make SRs. Our warrior chooses Bending Bars, Mighty Blow and Arm Wrestle for his strength related TSF and Seduction for his CHR TSF. Then rolls 18 for Bending Bars, 12 for Mighty Blow, 6 for Arm Wrestle (which is now a flaw), and 18 for Seduction. Talents can be both strengths and weaknesses... Our warrior's low Arm Wrestle suggests that while he may be really into Arm Wrestling, he's quite bad at it.

A player may opt to use the TSF for any applicable SR, the GM may also change the level of the SR to reflect the use of the TSF, the task may even become more difficult. Our warrior is trying to talk his way pass the night watch, he opts to use his Seduction TSF, this puts the level up as there is currently a crack down on soliciting in the city. Remember, SRs are cues for great roleplaying!

When a character goes up a level they may chose to either apply their level up bonus to their primary stats as normal, or add the new level number to a TSF.

[unclecranky]

I tend toward the "using talents for flavor" school, and while I like the beta talents pdf that got sent out, I doubt I'll go with it regardless of the way the rest of DT&T plays out.
The original talents list as written in 7.5 (let's face it, 7th ed. was a little TOO out there in some ways and a little too "rules heavy" in others) was nearly perfect. I don't see the need for improvements, especially ones that inject complexity.
But I do use talents, and in a way, always have, and the reason is flavoring. I used to have a homemade list of saving rolls for the various kindreds for various activities, and my players USED it. Because of that list, people knew what each kindred was supposed to be good at. It helped define the kindreds in their minds, if not the characters themselves.

[machfront]

The changes are interesting. I wonder about the first bullet point in zanshin's OP. Do the new rules mean that the Talent isn't tied to a particular Stat but instead are separate modifiers to be used with any stat (which is how it should have always been IMO)?

However, I'm in the same camp as derv and unclecranky.

I don't think Talents are a bad idea at all. But I found that simply the act of adjudicating an SR (either to a different level or granting a bonus) to usually be sufficient.

After all, though not all players are keen on even writing a very short paragraph about their PC and their background, it's certainly at least on their mind if they're going to be adjusting attribute scores (if you allow such a thing), choosing their type, and choosing Talents. So to me, it made just as much sense to just have them quickly scratch down a few one-or-few-word notes about what their characters was good at or what they were familiar with or some inherent perhaps odd talent they had and then just let that be a guideline in play.
While it's true in that case there is no 'hard-wired' score to such things I found it easier to deal with. No one knows better how things should be adjusted than a GM with his group, at the table, at that moment.

It does seem weird and kinda at odds with the core system to have a modifier (talents) and have the target numbers also be malleable by way of said modifiers. It's a strange sort of double-dipping.
To echo derv's words, if you're going to have modifiers that make a target number easier, you actually invite a need to have the target numbers absolute. (Though that would be problematic as so many of us view what SR may be appropriate or X or Y differently, which goes back to what I mean by 'no one knows better than the GM' as I stated earlier. As well as being problematic considering the weird probability relation of SRs, DARO, and the stats themselves...

Perhaps I just view it all as taking three lefts instead of one right.

[zanshin]

Perhaps the idea of bonus and reducing SR by Talent could be thought of in this way.

With training (i.e. a Talent) certain things don't need a roll. You can just 'do' that thing as a matter of course. I gave cart driving as an example. Another might be tuning a new musical instrument - with training, a routine exercise. Without training, a challenging SR.

Then there is another situation - driving a cart through a fast moving river under arrowfire, or soothing a wild beast with a song.

In both these cases the Talent provides a bonus to the roll, but a roll will most definitely be needed.

That is generally how I interpret Talents. It is not necessarily double dipping.

[cram]

Feb 27, 2014 2:33:41 GMT -5 machfront said:

I don't think Talents are a bad idea at all. But I found that simply the act of adjudicating an SR (either to a different level or granting a bonus) to usually be sufficient.

After all, though not all players are keen on even writing a very short paragraph about their PC and their background, it's certainly at least on their mind if they're going to be adjusting attribute scores (if you allow such a thing), choosing their type, and choosing Talents. So to me, it made just as much sense to just have them quickly scratch down a few one-or-few-word notes about what their characters was good at or what they were familiar with or some inherent perhaps odd talent they had and then just let that be a guideline in play.
While it's true in that case there is no 'hard-wired' score to such things I found it easier to deal with. No one knows better how things should be adjusted than a GM with his group, at the table, at that moment.

I like the paragraph idea alot Mach, it is in line with making folks pay attention to real development of the character, the fiction begins to drive the action more and players are less likely to look around the table and ask things like, "who here has the best Luck?" like happens so frequently with people who forget they should be roleplaying not wargaming.

[unclecranky]

Which is why I like T&T. Wargames are impersonal, they require sacrifices (like chess), and like chess, they require each party to be 'equipped' properly - not just with certain types of characters, but often, with just the RIGHT sort of that type of character- co-operative, please, with only one or two character flaws (but nothing TOO kinky please - we're British). Kinda like That Other Game.

[quoghmyre]

I have never seen a player come to the character creation, start of game with any idea of what his character is or will become. One of the greatest parts of T&T is meeting this bumbling noob character and then see them grow and develop through the trials and tribulations of a fantasy adventure. Not one of the many players I played with would want to write a paragraph! about anything, lol.

[zanshin]

Wow - some of my players will write pages of backstory. Most IME want customisation and options. I have never had any trouble getting a talent out of them.

[unclecranky]

I've seen that, too, Zanshin. But after they've written their character's biography, I've found that the LAST thing they want to do with those little darlings is send them into a nasty, dank tunnel-complex...
"Eeek! A mouse! What if it's rabid?" Is what I tend to hear from the aspiring li'l Hemingways.
Now, the player who sits down for 10 minutes and rolls his dice, picks a talent, and equips his imaginary Conan, HE'S the one my Janitorcs need to fear. He (or one of his nasty buddies) will have a pickaxe, sixteen crossbows, food for a month, a hundred torches (it's a BIG tunnel complex) six spare weapons each, a 10', 20', AND 30' pole, and all the healing they can get their grubby little forepaws on. And explosives. And THEY game for days.

[cram]

Clearly yet another demonstration of the elasticity of T&T. The range over what character description covers may vary from where the character recieved that strange mark on their side (which is mostly hidden from anyone's view and therefore it is only known about by the player and possibly the GM) to "my guy has silver hair, black eyes, and never smiles". Two extremes of the same facet and both playable depending on the group.

But I think by 'paragraph' only a sentence or two is required to get started and let the character build from there. When it comes to this sort of thing some players are like actors in that they must be given some ideas and motivations for the role they play, others are more like writers that will run all over the place with character developement; somewhere in the middle is the sweet spot for tabletop I think.

[dekh]

Talents should be restricted to Rogues.

Warriors were too busy training to do warriory things and Wizards were too busy training to shout "Take That, You Fiend" to learn to be a blacksmiths as well.

Oh I dunno. Cat, pigeons. It had to be done. I had nothing else to say.

[zanshin]

Thats a bold statement dekh.

I would not like it to play like that in my games. You could equally argue that Rogues are too dilettanteish to acquire a proper Talent. Conan is clearly a warrior in T&T terms and has skills as a Blacksmith, a thief , a leader and a lover.