Tiered Talents

I am of the opinion that there are many things that if you dont do it within the framework of taking them during that tier you lose them, so I think that your example of weapon mastery you would just be out of luck.

I would point out there are ways to make up for missed talents, by taking paths that provide those talents after you take the feats themselves.

OH FINE PEDRO JUST MAKE IT EASY (lol!)

Tiered:Tiered Talents possess one to five Tiers. When you first take the Talent, you learn its Tier I ability. You are free to take the talent as many times as you wish with each tier a prerequiste for each subsequent tier, until the talents tier would exceed your Hero Tier

or something along those lines if that’s the way you want to go

I am not convinced this is a good idea. Hat’s example is extreme and makes me itchy. I don’t really want to see “insta” masters in some facet of the game that should show real and prolonged dedication to master. But maybe some flexibility would be beneficial.

On the one hand it could fix a few things like the val Holryn Bear/Dog which seems to need a little love (see in another thread). It also would place somewhat less emphasis on knowing at creation what you were trying to get to mechanically at Tier5. Those things are good.

On the other hand it destroys the incentive to “burn” talents early to invest in a big payoff down the road (counter spell, Hawkeye). Maybe that dilutes the sense if accomplishment one will have when we finally get there. That might be bad. And as I said I would like to avoid insta-mastery in one tier. Finally it potentially adds even more complexity to the game … As some of you know my preferred standard for errata is “this fixes a real immediate problem” and is higher than “this would make a cool house rule.”

If a revision is being considered perhaps a good balance point would be some ability to double down 1/Tier on Tiered talents so long as you don’t go over your character Tier. Perhaps some form of Training talent (Intensify Effort?) that would then bypass the need for errata while still allowing a fix … Comes at some cost since you then can’t select Sabbatical.

I am not convinced this is a good idea. Hat’s example is extreme and makes me itchy. I don’t really want to see “insta” masters in some facet of the game that should show real and prolonged dedication to master. But maybe some flexibility would be beneficial.

On the one hand it could fix a few things like the val Holryn Bear/Dog which seems to need a little love (see in another thread). It also would place somewhat less emphasis on knowing at creation what you were trying to get to mechanically at Tier5. Those things are good.

On the other hand it destroys the incentive to “burn” talents early to invest in a big payoff down the road (counter spell, Hawkeye). Maybe that dilutes the sense if accomplishment one will have when we finally get there. That might be bad. And as I said I would like to avoid insta-mastery in one tier. Finally it potentially adds even more complexity to the game … As some of you know my preferred standard for errata is “this fixes a real immediate problem” and is higher than “this would make a cool house rule.”

If a revision is being considered perhaps a good balance point would be some ability to double down 1/Tier on Tiered talents so long as you don’t go over your character Tier. Perhaps some form of Training talent (Intensify Effort?) that would then bypass the need for errata while still allowing a fix … Comes at some cost since you then can’t select Sabbatical.

I disagree. I think allowing taking a tiered talent more than once per tier (provided you don’t go over your tier) is very necessary. Yes, someone could use it to get insta-mastery but it’s much simpler just to errata/clarify this to allow taking it multiple times per tier without further restriction (though I’m also fine with further restrictions if that’s how Pedro decides he wants to do it).

As someone who’s never gotten to tier 3 with a character, I wouldn’t feel any diminished sense of accomplishment from going Weapon Mastery Tier I to Weapon Mastery Tier V within tier 5. Just getting to tier 5 would be a bloody miracle for me.

I can appreciate that sentiment. The challenge is that the issue we’re discussing isn’t one for just the living campaign. Presumably there are a lot more folks playing than are involved in Living Arcanis and in the home campaigns the pace of advancement is likely to vary significantly.

I looked for pretty much as extreme an example as I could find. Spending just 2 tiers to get full Tier 5 spell casting, passive CTNs of 32 for both Divine Casting and Psionics is huge if not broken. I agree that it would be nice to be able to catch up a Talent if you happened to miss one.

I think the rules could be tweaked to find the right balance, but opening things up completely is problematic. It’s already extremely easy to be a caster on top of being a martial character. Make it too much easier and you’ll rarely find builds without it. There are enough self-buff and utility spells out there that being a maxed out caster isn’t required to really leverage the talents. Especially as every spell casting talent you take is the equivalent of 3 – 5 talent selections.

With a sweep of his hat,

Paul

Instead of making a whole new talent, why not just errata the following:

[Tiered Talents]
Special: Any tiered talent can be taken up to twice in any tier, but a character can not benefit from a tiered ability until they are that tier or higher.