Blessed Lands – Runic Warrior

You are correct. Runic Tattoo should read at the end:

Special: Once you acquire this Talent, it is no longer a Limited Talent for you.

It looks to me like the Runic Warrior is a way for armor-less characters to pay a price in talents (and a Path) instead of money. Anyone who has the money can pay for fine or exceptional noble garb and put runes on it. Tultipetans and Khitanimen who take the path can instead do without the ultra-fancy clothes and put runes on their bodies. Moreover, the talents don’t allow exceptional runes till Tier V, whereas clothing offers that option at a lower (rune-based) tier, albeit at exorbitant price. Is that a correct (albeit simplified) way of looking at it?

I wouldn’t even call it that exorbitant. Iirc, exceptional noble’s garb costs 20 Gc which, to me, is far “cheaper” than 5 talents.

But far less durable

But also far less likely to explode, as I recall….

Why not take the talent twice in a tier? I don’t see the problem.

Tiered: Tiered Talents possess one to five Tiers. When you first take the Talent, you learn its Tier I ability. Once per subsequent Tier you may take the same Talent again to learn the Talent’s next Tier ability provided your Hero Tier is at least as high.

I’d love to see this errata’d as it causes all kinds of issues unless you fully plan out your character from day 1.

Unless there are specific exceptions made for specific tiered talents, I can’t imagine this will change. Early playtesting didn’t have that requirement until we pointed out to Pedro the amount of abuse that a player could do with spellcasting talents. Imagine an expert at Tier IV deciding what to do next and deciding to become a caster. If they already have Prestidigitation and pick a path that opens up spellcasting, over the course of 6 ranks they can move from casting basic universal spells to Tier IV spells (Path, 2 skills at 2 ranks/skill, Any 2 Talents – Sabatical (+1 casting), A(D)SC I, Any 1 Talent – A(D)SC II, Any 1 Talent – A(D)SC III, Any 1 Talent – A(D)SC IV. For that matter, if they’ve taken the long game they could already be maxing out the skill before then removing the need for the skill selection then and depending on background might not even need the Path either. It also makes becoming a full double caster far easier which isn’t a good path either.

Arguably the highest tiered talents represent a lifetime of dedication to that element if it’s an every tier tiered talent (ex. Weapon Mastery, Stealthy, spellcasting).

With a sweep of his hat,

Paul

A few thoughts:

1. I’d assume this path is more likely for an Expert rather than a Martial, since one of the big benefits of the Martial archetype is the armor talents, which this path doesn’t use.

2. With Khitani not playable, and none of the requisite skills showing up in the Dwarven national skills, and Tultipetan racial skills only offering a single Lore skill that you could burn on one of the Knowledge requirements, even with some crafty character building I think you have to plan on at least one of the three requisite skills being at rank 3 upon character creation.

3. With the Expert archetype it is still possible to hit rank 6 in Tier One with a skill at rank 3 at creation. But you’d have to settle for taking the Path relatively late in the Tier.

Definitely some hurdles and min-maxing you have to get past in order to get the full benefit from this talent/path; I think you’d have to do some serious thinking to determine if it’s worth it for the character you’re trying to build.

That is fair. I don’t have my book with me, but I believe in this specific example the talent is no longer limited the first time it is obtained, and then it is granted at each tier of the path. This means if it is first taken at T2, then at T3 the character could take the talent prior to the next tier of the path, legally gaining the talent twice in a single tier. Unless I’m missing something.

Its the same issue for Verdant Champion (pa), but is even worse, as the earliest you can get in is T3. So: T3: Path; T4, Talent then Path; T5, Talent then Path.