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The rule about Talents only being usable once per round unless otherwise noted is new to 4th Edition. It's not in any prior edition to the best of my knowledge, and it isn't even in the original pre-release version of 4th. Which would explain why i was unaware of it until like an hour ago. This amusingly means that in prior editions you could in fact Taunt an arbitrary number of times per round, and nobody noticed. It appears that the sentence was added at a very late point in ED4's development, so damage replacement talents like Claw Shape and Crushing Blow were not updated accordingly. This should probably be clarified in errata.

It's a case of clarification that... doesn't quite do what it's supposed to.

Taunt, for example, was a (Standard) action until ED4. So by the rules already in those editions it could only be used once anyway. This isn't the only talent that had that kind of change.

Changing these to simple actions doesn't mean they could now be used a whole bunch of times in a round. So, a line was put in about that, but not all of the talents were sufficiently reviewed to make sure they worked in that framework. (It was late in the process, and at that point I really just wanted to get the book done and out.)

Taunt was a simple action in 3rd Edition and i think EDC as well. They forgot to add an only once per round limit when they changed it, but it made sense for it to have one, and the rules usually explicitly said when simple action charms could be used more than once (see Anticipate Blow). So while the rules technically allowed arbitrary uses of Taunt per round, like i said nobody really noticed. Manoeuvre is the one that changed from standard to simple for ED4.

It seems to me like you would have had no problems if you had worded the rule to say, "Talents that require a Simple Action can only be used once per round unless otherwise noted." That would have caught all the Talents that should have such restrictions but don't (Taunt, Manoeuvre, Spot Armour Flaw), while leaving alone the various free action Talents which are intended to be usable whenever their trigger conditions are met.

At present that is my recommended errata, as fixes everything with one line.

Lys wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 27, 2017 8:37 pm

At present that is my recommended errata, as fixes everything with one line.

Except that I'm not 100% sure the division between simple/free actions is consistent enough for that kind of clarification.

(This is a case where my "old guard" status shows. Something is either and action or it isn't. Beyond that... ? *shrug*)

@Mataxes

If the only problem identified thus far is "the once per turn limit does not apply to Damage Replacement Talents," I'd say just add that as errata to the "Talent Test" paragraph (p. 120). If EVERYTHING needs a review, tho, I guess no short cut.

Mataxes wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 27, 2017 9:52 pm

Lys wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 27, 2017 8:37 pm

At present that is my recommended errata, as fixes everything with one line.

Except that I'm not 100% sure the division between simple/free actions is consistent enough for that kind of clarification.

(This is a case where my "old guard" status shows. Something is either and action or it isn't. Beyond that... ? *shrug*)

I did a search for "Action: Free" in ED4PG and, IMO, the only Free Action this could potentially break is True Shot when mixed with Multi-Shot. Considering that one would likely blow all their Karma and most of their HP, I'm cool with it.