d20 Modern: What Would you change part II

[Vigilance]

Say it Again!

I love talents, but I'm not sure they're anything else but class restricted feats organized in trees.

Right, I think the idea was to make class abilities you could choose from.

It's a fine idea, I've done it several times myself in my Legends of Excalibur/Legends of Samurai books.

The problem with talents, imo, is that they work way more like feats than true class abilities. Laying on Hands feels like a class ability to me. Melee Smash? Not so much.

And don't even get me started on Extreme Effort. That reminds me of a feat alright. And the feat it reminds me of is Dodge.

 

[EditorBFG]

Talents, what are they good for?

We just discussed this subject in the Fantasy Concepts project thread, a parallel but very different undertaking than this one, seeking to do for fantasy in some ways what you are doing for Modern.

The conclusion we came to was that talents are good for things you only want certain types of characters to have (rangers, elves, wizards, etc.), but that otherwise they are the same as feats.

Since your project is Modern, everyone is a human, and no one has a special "type" per se, so I don't think you have any need for talents at all. In a fantasy game or something like Star Wars, this would not be the case, but for Modern it is perfect. Besides, as you say, the existing talents act more like feats than class abilities (in Star Wars Saga Edition, this is not the case, but as you say, Saga is not OGC).

Now, there are two situations where you might want to do talents (or feats that behave very much like them):

1) If you ever do a d20 Future kind of thing, you might want to have species-specific talent trees, or maybe just a path of feats for different aliens, that require you to be of that species. This preserves the uniqueness of non-human characters (in situations where you want that uniqueness).

2) Prestige Classes: If you choose to have prestige classes (and that is a big if), having multiple paths of special class abilities to choose from is much better than a static progression. Talents model this well, but you could also have a bonus feat list for the prestige class that features tiers of feats that require levels in the prestige class.

Basically, talents represent limited access feats, but I can only think of a couple situations where you want to limit access in a real world like setting. So I think this is a good call.

 

[Vigilance]

Yeah, it wasn't a decision we came to quickly. As those who have looked at the occupation I posted on my blog can see, it has talents.

So basically, in the last 24 hours, we finally decided to just pull the trigger and make everything feats.

Which means I get to do some re-writing. Such is life

Chuck

 

[EditorBFG]

Yeah, it wasn't a decision we came to quickly. As those who have looked at the occupation I posted on my blog can see, it has talents.

That's funny, because I wrote most of a product that was new and rewritten occupations, each of which gave access to specific talents, but it was decided that this was too far from the existing system, and it ended up not seeing publication. So, great minds think alike, I guess!

(And, in another eerie parallel, neither version will make it to market. But ditching talents is the right thing.)

 

[broghammerj]

Talents, what are they good for?

Set to Music:

Talents! huh-yeah. What are they good for? Absolutely nothing. Uh-huh.

Talatents! huh-yeah. What are they good for? Absolutely nothing. Say it again y'all

Although I like the idea of talents, the execution was lacking in modern. I thought they were a way to differentiate characters of the same class. In the end they were limited and essentially became feats that a PC was obligated to take.

 

[Vigilance]

Set to Music:

Talents! huh-yeah. What are they good for? Absolutely nothing. Uh-huh.

Talatents! huh-yeah. What are they good for? Absolutely nothing. Say it again y'all

Although I like the idea of talents, the execution was lacking in modern. I thought they were a way to differentiate characters of the same class. In the end they were limited and essentially became feats that a PC was obligated to take.

They did that for some of the basic classes. The problem was one of balance. Would you rather have a +2 bonus on Strength checks (not even Strength SKILLS mind you cause that would be... I got nothin') or a +1 damage on all melee attacks?

How many Fast Heroes in existence are there who did NOT take Evasion? In just about every campaign I've run, a player will take one level of Fast Hero at some point for Evasion and +3 Defense.

And people thought the Ranger was broken.

 

[Psion]

We just discussed this subject in the Fantasy Concepts project thread, a parallel but very different undertaking than this one, seeking to do for fantasy in some ways what you are doing for Modern.

The conclusion we came to was that talents are good for things you only want certain types of characters to have (rangers, elves, wizards, etc.), but that otherwise they are the same as feats.

Talents also comes from a different pool than feats and many typically emphasize the class more. This forces some lateral development, which I think makes for more well-rounded characters.

 

[Psion]

Although I like the idea of talents, the execution was lacking in modern. I thought they were a way to differentiate characters of the same class. In the end they were limited and essentially became feats that a PC was obligated to take.

Again, a good thing AFAIAC, forces lateral development instead of hyper-optimized one-note characters.

 

[Vigilance]

Again, a good thing AFAIAC, forces lateral development instead of hyper-optimized one-note characters.

I truly, honestly, have no idea what you're talking about here.

The system I'm using (everything is feats, classes get a feat every level, there's a general feat list and a feat list for each class) is exactly how True 20 does things, and I haven't run into a lot of "hyper-optimized one-note" characters.

I also have no idea what you mean by "lateral development". Is that where everyone flees the base classes at their first opportunity because there's only a few good talents they want?

I'm really not being snarky here.

 

[ashockney]

Talents, what are they good for?

I'll tell you the difference I always thought between talents and feats:

Talents are those things you BEGIN your adventuring career with locked up, that really help to differentiate people, should they be effectively identified and unlocked. Everyone has talents, but not everyone recognized their talents or chooses to use them. As such, thematically, I've always thought they should be a little better. I think in D&D (FRCS) they did something similiar through what they called "regional" background feats.

Feats are the "enhanced" skills that you've learned over time and perfected.