Unless I misremember, both 1st and classic editions of Earthdawn only required a talent be used once per rank to advance it. Requiring it to be tagged the new ranks triangle number is a very different beast. I mean to get to rank 10, it is the difference between requiring it to be tagged 9 times vs 54 times. These seem to me to be incredibly different numbers.
Some skills seem incredibly easy to tag. I would expect Awareness to be tagged in more scenes than not. All of a persons favorite combat skills will probably all get tagged every fight with rare exceptions. I think a person occasionally using their less favorite, or backup combat skills just to keep their hand in to be a good thing.
I also think it would usually be a good thing if a player approached a GM and said "you know, we have been doing a lot of town adventures lately, and I would love to raise my characters Wilderness Survival a rank or two, Just so you know, after this current adventure is concluded, my character is going to be actively looking for adventure opportunities out in the wilderness where he can get Wilderness Survival tagged frequently, and if the area has venomous opponent, that will be a plus as well. I hope my character can soon find an adventure in line with his searching". This seems like a very good statement both in game and out of game. But I only think it would be a good thing if such conversations happened occasionally, not frequently. Also, the other players/characters might not share their companions enthusiasm for seeking out venomous opponents.
Where I see a problem is that it seems to me that some skills are much more difficult to tag than others. Or that you would normally do everything in your power to avoid tagging. Sure Life Check is the extreme (but important) example, but there are others: Lion Heart, Heal Animal Companion, etc. Graceful Exit often means your character ran from a fight. It's nice to have that be an option, but it is usually not the optimal outcome of the fight.
So I can see that Andrew has a whole lot of experience GMing with a requirement that skills be tagged once before they are advanced, but I am unsure how that maps to experience with a system that requires skills be tagged "the new rank times" to advance. I mean how many times did players struggle to get get specific Talents tagged even that one time? If a character picks up Lion Heart as a Warden Core skill, how long will it take to get that skill tagged 54 times in play? And no, I don't really consider allowing the player to spend 54 weeks in training instead to be an adequate alternative.
I like playing by the rules, and greatly prefer to see workable rules rather than rules that everybody knows 90% of the tables will end up discarding at least part of the time. I think it is possible to do this, but I don't think the original rules, not the current errata meet that threshold.Statistics:Posted by ChrisDDickey — Fri Apr 12, 2019 7:43 am
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