Hold Thread (and replacement thereof)

[Tattered Rags]

Did you ever PM Panda about Hold Thread? I still feel like we're missing something.

As for your replacement ideas, option 2 seems more solid, if replacement is desired. Downside being that now people have to wait for them. I could see a player grabbing Banish at Circle 6 because his new summons at 5 went awry.

Option 1....I think Tenacious Weave is more situational than Hold Thread, but I still am uncertain as to the value of Hold Thread in general, so....

[The Undying]

I have not. I always appreciate when Mataxes and Panda weigh in, but I really get the feeling that this Talent is what it is. Given the feedback I got on Spliced Weave (which was entirely fair, I'm not complaining, I very much appreciated it), I'd anticipate a similar response, which would ultimately wrap up with "I'm sorry you don't like it, feel free to change it, enjoy the game your way" (which, again, is entirely fair, isn't meant sarcastically, and is pretty much the only thing that can be said in that situation). Unless one of them were to chime in with "oh man, we never realized it was this bad, despite it being around for three editions and increasing the cost on it every time which suggests we thought about it," which I very much don't see happening , I'm not really sure there's much they could say that would change my opinion on the Talent.

[Tattered Rags]

I kinda thought the same thing, which is why I never contacted him, either.

[The Undying]

On your thoughts regarding placing Banish at Circle 8, trust me, I feel your pain. We just have to break some eggs to make this omelet.

For me, a Discipline Talent should be flavorful, attractive, and rewarding of the investment.

Hold Talent ranks pretty poorly in all regards. Flavor-wise, eh, it's a magician Talent versus being directly in line with their Discipline, and it's not core to the practice of magic; this makes it more Option territory. Attractiveness, again, eh, a Talent that basically allows you to hold your breath isn't super interesting, its availability opens up a few doors we don't otherwise have, but again, given most of the commentary we've seen on why other things are placed in the Options category, this "trick some people might find interesting" is better as an Option. Reward-wise, this Talent feels nice at 3-6 Ranks, CERTAINLY not 15, and I don't really feel like it's rewarding having to drag that along for the ride.

Tenacious Weave, to me, sits better at the Circle 8 tier, honestly because it's slightly LESS useful than Banish. Flavor-wise, again, it's a generic magician Talent, not related to Discipline, but I can at least see how this Talent could be considered more core to basic magic use than Hold Thread. Attractiveness, it's pretty low as it really feels like a mechanic that exists to fight a different mechanic, much like Threadweaving, its use is pretty boring, BUT, it lends itself to Epic Spell Battles, which is more likely to happen than the Hold Thread trick. Reward-wise, this Talent gets better with each rank, and even if it's boring, when you use it, the difference between TW 1 and TW 15 is instantly apparent, which is not the case with Hold Thread, and cost doesn't keep going up.

Banish, though, I still feel as the best candidate (for the two Disciplines). Flavor-wise, this is right in their wheelhouse, an argument can be made for putting it further up in advancement (Summoners need to traffic with spirits and get a feel for them before they can understand how to banish them), and while I can understand the original argument for putting it as an Option (not everyone feels the need to banish spirits), I can easily see a strong counter argument for putting it as a Discipline (anyone that can Summon really should main-line learn how to Un-Summon). Attractiveness, it's pretty high, instant removal of hostiles (whether you summoned them or someone else summoned them) is nice and feels good every time you do it. Reward-wise, it's significant because you need high Rank for high SR, and even banishing a low SR with high Rank provides insurance against potential Astral Backlash, which is very good.

[The Undying]

A bit of extra commentary, specific on Elementalist, which for me appears to be the easiest one of the lot:

- Runner up candidates to slide in would be Fireblood and Gliding Stride. Both of these build on the Elemental aspect, which is very flavorful. However,we aren't doing ourselves any favors putting these in from an attractiveness standpoint - they're too niche. Reward-wise, they're good, both get significantly better with more Ranks.

- None of the other Options feel good as Discipline Talents to me.

- Moving up an Option Talent makes the most sense as the designers have specifically pointed to these and said "we feel these make the most sense as being part of the Discipline repertoire." However, for Elementalist, we could also move in Iron Constitution if we were feeling squirrelly (and it doesn't conflict with they as-of-yet un-previewed Warden Options). Iron Constitution reinforces the image of Elementalists being hardy, even though it doesn't have the strong elemental flavor we get from Earth/Wood Skin. However, it does kind of fight against Cold Purify, and I could see where a player might feel a bit cheated if they felt they had to pick up both (forced into the one for them as an individual, and then forced into the one for the group, which would've worked well enough for them as an individual).

[The Undying]

Oh man ... I was describing this whole problem to my friend and my brain made a connection that hadn't tripped before: literally, the only benefit of ranks in Hold Thread is to reduce the number of times you have to roll the Talent test.

1) In ED4, the cost is 1 Strain/turn. This never changes.

2) From the first edition this ability was introduced, you can just extend with a new test. This is unchanged in ED4.

So, add those together, and the only Rank benefit you actually receive is having to roll less. Technically, this is a "benefit" as every roll is a chance to fail (and you get bugger all for extra successes), but really? The entire reason to improve the Talent is to use it less? In earlier editions, at least it was only one-time Strain at activation, meaning more ranks meant less Strain, which at least had value.

[edit: I am wrong. Completely forgot that the test is HT versus Weaving Difficulty. So you need to rank up to hold higher threads.]

This is now 100%, without question, Knack territory for me as written in ED4...

[Lys]

That's not true, you have to actually succeed at a Hold Thread test in order to use the Talent, and the more ranks you have the more likely you are to succeed, especially against high Weaving Difficulties. That said, it is really weird how they increased the cost. Someone had to look at Hold Thread as it was ED3, decide that it was too good at just 1 Strain for the duration, and changed it to 1 Strain per Round. This is just bizarre to me, since as this discussion has already covered the Talent is clearly pretty useless.

[The Undying]

Yeah, I had a temporary case of the dumb, must have squeezed in my correction before you posted

This is just bizarre to me, since as this discussion has already covered the Talent is clearly pretty useless.

The conclusion I've kind of come to in my head is that one of the designers used it heavily with their character, GM'ed games that gave significant opportunity for this type of thing, or had a player that really liked it on his/her Wizard and used it consistently. As a result, it created a PERCEPTION of high value that just doesn't live up to the cost in the community.

For what it's worth, if players tend to get the jump on their enemies, AND their combats tend to be very short (say4 or 5 turns), then the value of this Talent goes up significantly. Still not great, IMHO, but useful. Take away the first one, it has almost no value. Take away the second, the value reduces quickly as the turn count increases.

[Kosmit]

Hold tread is useful mostly in combat so it's use is narrow and not flavorful. It's not the same as Willforce which improves even non-combat spells.

It could definetly be moved to options. Same could be said about Tenacious Weave but it still improves more spells and is more appliable.

Nethermancer could get a talent focused on Summoning / Blood magic / fighting horrors (He's Master of Masters so maybe quick something that allow him to summon without long ritual? Or creating blood matrices on the fly as proposed earlier?) Or maybe some life extending hacks?

Elementalist. Shock Treatment is nice and thematic as discipline talent here. Same as with Nethermancer there could be something linked with Summoning or Elementals.

Wizard. Wizards are masters of theoretical magic? Maybe give them another bad-ass glyph? Or... allow them to cast spells from other disciplines! It could be grimoire only but increase the feel that they are masters of magic.

Ilussionist... This is tough because Manipulate Reality ability is quite awesome. I know this is madness... but Versatility They would be able to become someone else entirely as part of deception

[The Undying]

Hold Thread is actually really only useful BEFORE combat. It may sound like I'm splitting hairs, but this is a critical hair to split. Once combat has started, it's actually pretty garbage.

The justification for my recent recommendations is minimal change. We know the Journeyman Option Talents aren't going to show up again so swapping one into the spot won't really affect anything. Pulling existing non-Option Talents can be a problem, at least for the as-of-yet Un-previewed Elementalist, because the Talent chosen could show up there. Finally, coming up with a new Talent to fill the slot both risks balance problems and collision with Warden+ Talents or forethcoming Knacks at any Circle. I think it's hard to really consider complete removal of the Talent until we've seen the Companion as a whole.

And yes, Versatility showing up anywhere other than as the Human racial Talent is, indeed, madness