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Gained talents and improvement

Posted: Mon Jul 01, 2019 11:58 am
by Avanti
Good day!

I'm considering something: can an adepts improve talents gained via Thread items using legend points?

Simple answer is NO, but...

when I think about it, it's a bit like Versatility. As long as the adept has access to the Thread, the Talent is available. If the adept ever looses the Thread (or item itself) the talent is lost (along all the LP's used to improve it).

Too OP? What do you think?

Re: Gained talents and improvement

Posted: Mon Jul 01, 2019 6:38 pm
by ChrisDDickey
In addition to being overpowered, it is a bit too ... I am not sure of the word.

Many GMs never take an item away from a character or allow it to be lost, stolen, broken, confiscated, or too difficult to recover. For example even when a PC breaks out of prison, it is considered good form for him to find all of his gear, stored together, someplace nearby and not too heavily guarded. If bandits immediately split your stuff up, with your armor going on one bandit, your weapons going to several more, your gems to others, etc. it is not a hint that your stuff is gone for good, it is a hint that all these bandits are destined to die as soon as you escape and can get back here with your friends.

Permanently taking away a thread item is hard. Having the item thrown into the deepest ocean usually just simply requires a simple task for a hastily summoned water elemental. Just about the only way to try to keep adventurers from something they truly want is to hide it really well, or have it guarded by a truly fearsome guardian. Adventurers routinely obtain hidden and guarded items. They are good at it. It's what they do. In short, valuable items are almost never just lost irrecoverably.

Without the real possibility that the item can be permanently taken away, what you are talking about is overpowered.
If a GM does successfully take away a standard thread item that a player may have poured several thousand LP into is usually considered by the player to be a pretty dick move. Taking away one that is the key to a power he may have poured tens of thousands of LP into would be a majorly dick move.

So the proposal is overpowered, and if the GM ever decided to exercise the one and only control that you have baked into the proposal, everybody would consider him a major dick. I don't see this workable as written or anything I would want to introduce to my table.

Re: Gained talents and improvement

Posted: Mon Jul 01, 2019 6:53 pm
by Sharkforce
i'd say no simply because it isn't their talent. to improve the talent would require enhancing the pattern of the thread item, and while i would say that isn't impossible, it is not at all the same procedure you'd take to improve one of your own talents.

it is at best only a very little bit like versatility, because versatility is part of your own pattern. you may be doing something that an elf or a t'skrang couldn't, but it is still very much a part of you, something internal.

Re: Gained talents and improvement

Posted: Mon Jul 01, 2019 7:09 pm
by Lursi
In my game, players can loose items and die as a cause of their actions. I like sandboxing and yes, also the challenges that surely kill you knock on your door once in a while and the adventure can be the polite decline of it.

I do give them however 4 times the recommended LP.

I pay in advance.

Re: Gained talents and improvement

Posted: Mon Jul 01, 2019 7:16 pm
by Lursi
ChrisDDickey wrote:
Mon Jul 01, 2019 6:38 pm
a major dick.
I had a great laugh about your description of being a dick, a major dick and pulling off a dick move!

There is indeed typically too much dick around a RPG table!

Re: Gained talents and improvement

Posted: Mon Jul 01, 2019 10:28 pm
by Bonhumm
Lursi wrote:
Mon Jul 01, 2019 7:16 pm
I had a great laugh about your description of being a dick, a major dick and pulling off a dick move!
Well, take a look at his last name, he certainly knows everthing about being a dick :D

Re: Gained talents and improvement

Posted: Mon Jul 01, 2019 11:15 pm
by Tattered Rags
To bring in a little rules-based rationale (RAW, if you will), relevant sentence in bold:
4EGMG, pg. 203 wrote:Some Thread Ranks provide a bonus to a character’s rank in a talent (but never skill), for example, “+1 rank to Avoid Blow”. If the character does not know the talent in question, he now knows it at the indicated rank, but cannot increase its rank by spending Legend Points, nor can he spend karma when using it. If he knows the talent, the thread item increases the effective rank, but does not affect his natural rank for improving the talent with Legend Points.
I knew it was somewhere, but I kept looking in individual thread item descriptions.

Re: Gained talents and improvement

Posted: Tue Jul 02, 2019 2:11 pm
by Belenus
Tattered Rags wrote:
Mon Jul 01, 2019 11:15 pm
To bring in a little rules-based rationale (RAW, if you will), relevant sentence in bold:
4EGMG, pg. 203 wrote:Some Thread Ranks provide a bonus to a character’s rank in a talent (but never skill), for example, “+1 rank to Avoid Blow”. If the character does not know the talent in question, he now knows it at the indicated rank, but cannot increase its rank by spending Legend Points, nor can he spend karma when using it. If he knows the talent, the thread item increases the effective rank, but does not affect his natural rank for improving the talent with Legend Points.
I knew it was somewhere, but I kept looking in individual thread item descriptions.
Thank you for picking it out, but the question was never if the rules allow it or not.
The question was if it could be a good idea to houserule it different.
And I'd simply follow the other answers: No :lol:

Re: Gained talents and improvement

Posted: Tue Jul 02, 2019 2:36 pm
by Tattered Rags
Technically, QAW was a rules question:
[C]an an adepts improve talents gained via Thread items using legend points?
QAI: You're probably right.

:P

Re: Gained talents and improvement

Posted: Wed Jul 03, 2019 11:06 am
by Avanti
Now this turned quickly into a dick thread :D

Anyway thanks for the opinions. And yes - QAI was about a house rule :)

Anyway I was milling over this and honestly came to the same conclusion as the rest of you guys. It was just a weak moment on my part, having considered something like that. :ugeek: