High Circle Preview: Troubadour

[Mataxes]

A new preview has gone up. This time around it's the Troubadour.

For those who are interested, here's Morgan's commentary from his blog.

Questions? Comments? Discuss them here!

[Dougansf]

What's the difference between Book Memory and Eidetic Memory?

Because I can imagine not needing Book if you already have Eidetic.

[Tattered Rags]

Encore says "abilities." To be clear, that includes Talents, correct?

[The Undying]

I'm noticing a common verbiage in the previews that is kind of "X allows Y to be used in a new way." I'd say that Concise Casting and Spliced Weave fall into this category. It seems like part of the ED4 redesign is to make individual Talents more interesting and useful in latter Circles by augmenting their use with secondary Talents, rather than constantly giving new Talents that do complete new things. And I'm not referring to Talents that just give Step bumps like Willforce.

If I am noticing a trend here, it'd be neat to have a mini-article talking about this direction. Honestly, if this is indeed a thing, seems like the explanation is probably straight forward: we [design team] wanted to simplify the gameplay by reducing the number of abilities/Talents while also making remaining abilities/Talents more powerful and versatile by continually augmenting how they can be used.

[The Undying]

Encore says "abilities." To be clear, that includes Talents, correct?

I'm guessing this is just a verbiage issue. "Abilities" probably means both Talents and Skills. Letting something just improve Talents isn't a huge deficit as, honestly, seems like most players don't flesh out their characters with Skills, but it would minimally allow default Skills to be improved. But, this is just my take.

[Mataxes]

Encore says "abilities." To be clear, that includes Talents, correct?

I'm guessing this is just a verbiage issue. "Abilities" probably means both Talents and Skills. Letting something just improve Talents isn't a huge deficit as, honestly, seems like most players don't flesh out their characters with Skills, but it would minimally allow default Skills to be improved. But, this is just my take.

Pretty much. "Abilities" refers to any number of things that a character might be able to do that falls under the general heading -- talents, skills, relevant Discipline powers, that sort of thing.

[Mataxes]

What's the difference between Book Memory and Eidetic Memory?

Because I can imagine not needing Book if you already have Eidetic.

Eidetic Memory provides a bonus to all tests made to recall information, which includes Book Memory tests, as well as Knowledge tests.

[Lys]

It occurs to me that Witty Repartee was originally a Talent Knack for Resist Taunt called Rapier Wit. What is the reason for changing it into a full Talent of its own?