Utility Talent/Racial Trait overhaul/revamp - New "Abilities" system

Given how our old stats are given by 8 racial points and 5 utilties (1 racial = 2 ability points, 1 Utiltiy = 3 ability points.... Meaning we normally started off with 31 points total, In theory...)

I don't like the idea of less points at start up because that'd be a clear cut nerf to a lot of character who'd try to turn over from old to new... But it could work swimmingly in theory. I'll more be waiting to see the Arcana usage Buff and New Magecraft before I really feel like wanting to change to the new system that much.

One of the nice things about the current playtest doc is that you can pretty much have characters running *either* system in the same campaign right now. Sure, some things have different costs - and so will be stronger or weaker in either system - but overall you can do it if one or two people in a campaign want to try it out.

Of course. That goes for everything always.

Philadelphus wrote:

ZamuelNow wrote:Requesting page numbers in the footer.  Considering a comment made earlier, I wonder if the ability names should stay 12 pt font while the descriptions should be 11 pt font.  It would be subtle but would lessen the amount of page space used.  Might require a page break here or there though.  Suggesting Times New Roman with either Modern Antiqua or Fredricka the Great as the top of page header for better standardization with the other system documents.

I can see about changing the font size. I really like my Droid Serif font, but standardization is good too.

Also, I meant to ask this yesterday and forgot, would people like abilities to be organized the way they were in the utility talents document (Utility Belt, Spellcrafting, Psionics, etc.) rather than by point-cost?

ZamuelNow wrote:I'm pretty surprised Villainous Laughter came back.  Considering how much its worth was contested, I figured it was pretty high on the list of things to get dropped.  Just realized that Audiomancy, Crystalline, Element Master, Minimize, and Sunderblade aren't in the new list.  Mixed on Many Tongues exclusion since it's one of those useful things that never gets used.  Perhaps it should be buffed to explicitly state "speak, read, and understand" so it's more useful for reading ancient texts.  Speak With The Dead seems more useful and worth keeping since its last buff.  Magical Attunement is another in a weird place since it could be argued that Magecraft's removal/revamp means the magic detection should just be lumped in Arcana's base usage since it loses a lot of worth as a flat Attribute.  There's other missing things that seem to either have mirrors available or seem more like NPC powers so I'm not opting to argue for them though I can see their use and probably wouldn't mind if they were back.

Villainous Laughter someone else requested for a character they have. I'm rapidly finding out which utility talents people really care about! Some of those others should definitely come back too.

Magecraft and Sunderblade are two major things I'd love see back asap, I got a LOT of magecrafters and I'm not wanting to shift any of them till we get some type of magecraft back, Sunderblade is just an awesome thing that I'd love to try out in some future campaign or something. Also would put Crystalline and Element Master as two minor things I'd support returning asap. Personally I'm fine with the Point by Point ordering with the talents. That makes sesne to me. But I guess it'd help with the transion if we had it also with it odered like how it is in the Utitly Talents doc. And I don't really see any reason to remove anything in the system unless it can be argued as bad or meh...

The flavorless version of Thunderbird's 5-charge point thing is a sidenote of something I'd enjoy seeing returned to the rught draft doc.

You can houserule that Magecraft is worth any-amount-of-points-you-think-is-appropriate. The baseline for an old utility talent is worth 3 points in the current system (though now the spread of points gives us more flexibility to appropriately cost things by comparative power level).

All I'm really going to ask is that since this is functionally a new edition of PT, you keep the old-style docs around as well for those who don't like the new system, or simply don't want to have to try and convert everyone over on the fly because their campaign's already in progress.

...Because as someone who has played multiple editions of DnD, some are more suited for different styles than others.

The old docs will still be around.

I know this is really difficult to implement, but while we're revamping the abiltiy system a "variable cost" system might be cool.

Like, instead of talent A costing 5 minutes of preparation time and talent B having a limited range or application, both talents would have a specific amount of time they'd cost, a specific limited range or application, and at least one other cost to use that talent like maybe spending a magic point or taking a penalty to a certain check until their next extended rest, and the player could pick which limitation their powerful abilities would have, to create a character who is super-powerful but takes time to do things or a different one who's less powerful and does things interesting.

...that sounded even harder out of my head than it did in it. I'll still throw this idea out here in case someone likes it and thinks of a way to revamp it, but darn.

Arguably, it could be partially handled by taking the prep time manipulation options from Magecraft and allowing all skills to use it.

In thinking about whether or not Many Tongues should come back, I started contemplating whether or not it needed restructuring or any sort of prerequisite.  In that, I came up with a possibility though no clue if any would be interested.

Language:

AProcrastinatingWriter wrote:I know this is really difficult to implement, but while we're revamping the abiltiy system a "variable cost" system might be cool.

Like, instead of talent A costing 5 minutes of preparation time and talent B having a limited range or application, both talents would have a specific amount of time they'd cost, a specific limited range or application, and at least one other cost to use that talent like maybe spending a magic point or taking a penalty to a certain check until their next extended rest, and the player could pick which limitation their powerful abilities would have, to create a character who is super-powerful but takes time to do things or a different one who's less powerful and does things interesting.

...that sounded even harder out of my head than it did in it. I'll still throw this idea out here in case someone likes it and thinks of a way to revamp it, but darn.

If I understand what you're saying...

Have the core part of the ability have a reduced cost (always 1 point?), and allow players to spend additional points to increase the power, range, duration, casting speed, area of effect, and number of uses per day. This would be neat, as it would allow customization of abilities, although I feel it would be much, much harder to balance. I feel like it would need to be standard that getting enough upgrades automatically reduces the casts per day, requiring you get spend more points to get more casts per day.

Greywander wrote:

AProcrastinatingWriter wrote:I know this is really difficult to implement, but while we're revamping the abiltiy system a "variable cost" system might be cool.

Like, instead of talent A costing 5 minutes of preparation time and talent B having a limited range or application, both talents would have a specific amount of time they'd cost, a specific limited range or application, and at least one other cost to use that talent like maybe spending a magic point or taking a penalty to a certain check until their next extended rest, and the player could pick which limitation their powerful abilities would have, to create a character who is super-powerful but takes time to do things or a different one who's less powerful and does things interesting.

...that sounded even harder out of my head than it did in it. I'll still throw this idea out here in case someone likes it and thinks of a way to revamp it, but darn.

If I understand what you're saying...

Have the core part of the ability have a reduced cost (always 1 point?), and allow players to spend additional points to increase the power, range, duration, casting speed, area of effect, and number of uses per day.  This would be neat, as it would allow customization of abilities, although I feel it would be much, much harder to balance.  I feel like it would need to be standard that getting enough upgrades automatically reduces the casts per day, requiring you get spend more points to get more casts per day.

No, although that's a good idea too.

I mean more like...some talents have the cost of a magic point to use, or the cost of a preparation time of a minute or whatever. I was thinking more like at character creation, talents that have a cost have instead a list of potential costs...like, say, Talent A might cost a minute of prep time, or a magic point, or a penalty to Persuasion checks, or a specific range. When that talent is chosen at character creation, the player chooses one of these costs, which becomes the cost that one character needs to pay to use the talent.

Category Suggestions:
-Burrower and Webspinner for Woodsman
-The element born abilities for a new category called Elementalist.  Possibly move Element Master there as well.
-I'm wondering if Utility Belt category should be broken up due to how massive it is.

Wording revamp suggestion:

Forcefield Rewording:

Minor pet peeve about the doc: Could the font size/style, and general ability formatting be altered to match those of the other official docs (so copying/altering them and adding flavor is hassle-free)?

-How does the new Element of Magic work with preparation times? The old one had them count down within Magic's activation time which made a few unusable.
-Considering the new point based setup, why is Advanced Telekinesis split from Telekinesis instead of being an upgrade?
-What is the current cost breakdown for boons and destinies with the new system?
-Suggesting a new category, Fateweaver, to accommodate the racials added to the main document that manipulate rolls.
-In light of the needed loss of its passive stat boost, a proposed buff for Eagle Eye:

Eagle Eye Buff:

ZamuelNow wrote:Category Suggestions:
-Burrower and Webspinner for Woodsman
-The element born abilities for a new category called Elementalist.  Possibly move Element Master there as well.
-I'm wondering if Utility Belt category should be broken up due to how massive it is
...
-How does the new Element of Magic work with preparation times?  The old one had them count down within Magic's activation time which made a few unusable.
-Considering the new point based setup, why is Advanced Telekinesis split from Telekinesis instead of being an upgrade?
-What is the current cost breakdown for boons and destinies with the new system?
-Suggesting a new category, Fateweaver, to accommodate the racials added to the main document that manipulate rolls.
-In light of the needed loss of its passive stat boost, a proposed buff for Eagle Eye:

Eagle Eye Buff:

-Those are sensible suggestions, I've moved the remaining abilities and made the Elementalist category. Utility Belt is definitely getting large, isn't it? It's kind of the go-to place for stuff that doesn't fit anywhere.
...
-Element of Magic should work the same way as before, it still requires prep times. It now has a 10 minute duration rather than 5, though, so it should render a few more abilities available.
-Advanced Telekinesis used to be an upgrade of Telekinesis, but it got specifically split into its own separate utility talent a while back and I just left it when I ported everything over.
-Destinies are worth 2, 3, and 8 utility talents, so that's 6, 9, and 24 points. I'm not sure what the equivalent value is for boons, I know there's been talk about potentially removing them and replacing them with something else due to just not being as fun a concept as they sounded in theory.
-That could work. Let me just think it over and see what would go in there.
-That sounds good. In fact, I added a slight clarification to Eagle Eye, so it now reads like this:

Eagle Eye (1)
You take no penalties to your Perception checks from weather or atmospheric conditions such as smoke, fog, rain, etc. You can also clearly see small objects and fine details up to a mile away.

Apologies to everyone else waiting for answers, this week was really busy for me. This is all still very much on my mind, and I plan to get some more work done in the next few days.

Edit: AProcrastinatingWriter, could you perhaps post an example of what such an ability as you're proposing might look like? That would help me understand it better, I think.

Philadelphus wrote:Apologies to everyone else waiting for answers, this week was really busy for me. This is all still very much on my mind, and I plan to get some more work done in the next few days.

Certainly understandable.  I think I personally need to be careful since my reading speed skews my expectations of response times.

-Advanced Telekinesis used to be an upgrade of Telekinesis, but it got specifically split into its own separate utility talent a while back and I just left it when I ported everything over.

Fair enough.  It does technically have differing applications than the standard.

-Destinies are worth 2, 3, and 8 utility talents, so that's 6, 9, and 24 points. I'm not sure what the equivalent value is for boons, I know there's been talk about potentially removing them and replacing them with something else due to just not being as fun a concept as they sounded in theory.

They might not get mindblowing responses but I'd hate to see boons removed outright.  The concept of gaining things as a team isn't a poor idea in itself.

-Element Master disappeared.  I'm assuming it was in the process of being moved and accidentally got deleted?
-As far as a new Fateweaver category, I'd suggest the following (and their upgrades) be moved to it:

Fateweaver Candidates:

-Suggesting Call Out be moved to the Woodsman category.
-What's your opinion of the proposed rewording of Forcefield's description? (above post) Likewise wondering about bringing back Many Tongues in a new form and revamping Found It?
-Dazzling Wings is still using the old Brawn/Precision wording.
-Requesting a return of the Green Hands/Hooves, Minimize Sunderblade, and Audiomancy utilities.
-Considering some of the discussion in the errata thread, I'm going to make an official request for adding the magic interrupts for the other two attributes. Both could stand to have more abilities and the incoming revamp of Magecraft lessens one of the original concerns with the concept.

Magic Interrupt Talents:

One thing to note is that we don't want to port *everything* over into the new system. The original document got rather bloated with various redundant or confusing/difficult-for-the-dm abilities mainly for the sake of adding more content.

Then I suggest, you start working on a topic to help explain and debate how to either fix such things for the GMs... Or at least allow people to try and see the stuff that are on the chopping block that aren't going to be ported over. Or we try to help figure out how to solve the issue with this thing. Also such a task would help people get a feel for the power levels of the new point system for future building of talents.