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

The Original Laughter is awesome it more or less is one of the most enjoyable forces in at least one of my games. (admittedly it does not capture what Pinkie does that well though...)

Can't quite say anything about that combo that has not already been said (this is not new at all I think...)

You might have been brought into the system by a friend or family member and are utterly new to everything.

tygerburningbright wrote:The Original Laughter is awesome it more or less is one of the most enjoyable forces in at least one of my games. (admittedly it does not capture what Pinkie does that well though...)

Laughter-as-is is getting turned into a DM-optional virtue like the Master of Madness Destiny was a DM-optional Destiny.

Fury of the Tempest wrote:Am I one of the only people here that actually likes the changes, but I simply think it requires more work?

I'm neutral with a side order of conflicted. Some of the individual changes are good but I'm cautiously the system as a whole. It seems to clash with the concept of making things easier for newer players.

As far as the Tons of Fun table, I think the main issue would be the individual effects as opposed to the mere concept of randomness.

Personally I think this makes it even more simple, since it combines the Racials and the Utilities down into a single thing.

Oh no, there's other issues like missing options and some utilities getting reverted to their older forms and terminology. I'm just attempting to give constructive criticism as opposed to kneejerk.

Pingcode wrote:Going over the new stuff and taking into account the wording of derp, I think this needs an errata that Derp's crit range extension isn't a natural one - besides, it's a drawback, it shouldn't be turned into a massive advantage with certain combos.

Technically it is supposed to work like that, but that was codified a while back before we had things like Reliability (and before I started working on this). It might be time to revisit that decision...

Fury of the Tempest wrote:Not that many upgrades currently... I guess that will come later?

Probably. I learned some good stuff from writing the Talent Specialization System, one of them being that not everything needs to have an upgrade – less really is more, in one sense. It did give me some insight into what makes a good upgrade, so we can hopefully have fewer of them, but better ones in general. That said, there will almost certainly be more added in.

ZamuelNow wrote:It feels like there's an issue of time spent on this could have went into other things, especially since unlike the combat half, utilities weren't broken.  Some had balancing quirks but it didn't seem like the system itself was fundamentally broken.

I can tell you that various things are being worked on in parallel. I'm rubbish at combat balancing, and I did most of the gruntwork on this, so it's certainly not the case that my working on it took time away from other things. Combat balance is definitely coming along; it has a firm mathematical basis, and the monumental task of fixing/updating the combat talents is underway.

ZamuelNow wrote:Most negative standouts are Flight taking up half your character and the things outright removed ranging from Bridle Gossip to Speak With Nature to Green Hooves.  I'm calling those out since I've got players elsewhere using them though I'm assuming Magical Tricks/Magecraft were removed while they get further adjustments.  That said, Forcefield is gone?

What do you mean by Flight taking up half your character? Do you mean point cost? Because I worked it out so that the point cost is exactly equivalent to what it would have been under the old system. It's just easier to see things like that because you're dealing with a single cost, not a cost spread over two separate systems.

Other stuff can quite possibly be added back in. A lot of stuff that was kinda tricky or fairly underutilized got removed so I could focus on the stuff left behind, but I do have plans to add at least some of that stuff back in. It helps to know that people actually want it.  

ZamuelNow wrote:As always, I still advocate Detect Thoughts be renamed Read Thoughts.
-I get what you were going for with organizing with points and it makes sense.  However, it's one of those weird cases where organization feels disorganized since similar concepts are far apart.  Well, more if compared to the utility document than Genetic Engineering.
-I may have to resubmit my suggestion for the Found It! revamp.  The old form is hard to use.
-Terrify still needs a slight keyword adjustment to make it more obvious that everyone can intimidate the terrified creature.
-On the fence about the nerf to the Element of Magic.  Fully respect why it was done though.
-Big Adventure needs a sidebar comment mentioning that the teleport itself can be done even if they aren't in combat.  Arguably the detection passive should also include life threatening out of combat danger.
-Flight is using the old Brawn/Precision terminology instead of mentioning skill checks made to fly and allowing the range of skills.

-Noted. There IS a method to the madness, I'll edit it into the original post.
-Sure, go ahead.
-I'll look into that.
-Yeah. It was strictly the most powerful Element due to its versatility.
-I can add something like that first one. The second is a little difficult to define...
-Huh, so it is. I went back and checked the Utility Talents document I copied it from and it had that terminology too. I'll have to fix that, good catch.

Fury of the Tempest wrote:How does Changeling Tricky work anymore? You retrain up to 10 ability points? Does that mean all your other ability points are taken by the species's default ability points? If so, don't we need a species default list?

Not to mention, what happens if you have something like Family or simply, a high level so you get more abilities points. Are you still restricted to simply 10 ability points?

So... changeling tricky is looking confusing with no scaling or well... I can't see why anyone would take it anymore... and honestly, Magic as an Element has gotten a lot less exciting.

With Changeling's Trickery, you retain up to 10 points' worth of your abilities whenever you shape-shift. That was my attempt to work it in to the new system, which is rather difficult. I'm rather on the fence about it even being there in the first place.
And yeah, Magic is a lot more in line with the other Elements now instead of being the strictly best one.

Greywander wrote:Another concern has to do with why racials existed in the first place.  There are just certain abilities that members of a specific race are supposed to have, like pegasi with flying and weather crafting.  Yes, you can opt to not take those abilities, but they should be the default, and there should be a good reason why you don't have them.  Under this system, there is nothing telling the player that their pegasus should have a flying ability, that they can, at their discretion, ignore.  It's just not there.  And while many of us are familiar with pony lore enough to know what abilities each race should have, you can't assume that anyone who plays Pony Tales will have this knowledge.  This gets even more problematic with Living Legends, being generic rather than tied to a particular setting.  Living Legends has no lore to draw from.  This is going to cause some confusion when the DM informs you later in the campaign that all elves have flying abilities, or that dwarves all have telekinesis, and yet for some reason, yours doesn't

The problem with that is, there's actually very little that we can agree upon that a race should have. Pegasi can fly, and affect the weather, OK, unicorns can move things around with telekinesis, sure, earth ponies can...um...they can...uh...hmm. If we say "all races should have 8 points' worth of officially suggested stuff," we have to figure what it is that makes earth ponies unique – and there isn't exactly something we can point to in the show and say that. What about donkeys? What makes them unique?

I realize, it feels weird not to have a racial template – it felt really weird to me as I was working on the document. But when you get right down to it, there's very little you can point to and say "this is what makes this race unique", and what there is is not consistent. Trying to have a balanced sort of thing ends up forcing you come up with things for earth ponies so that they're "balanced" relative to the other pony races.

I could potentially see a short list of "suggested" things for each race, like "flight, weather crafting" for pegasi and "telekinesis" for unicorns, but where some races like earth ponies and donkeys would be blank slates. (And then I looked down and realized that's basically what you had proposed, heh. I can look into something like that.)

Greywander wrote:Also, I'm noticing the absence of Magecraft.  How does one do wizardy things now?

Magical Tricks will probably be added back in. Magecraft is going to get a complete overhaul, but I'm not really involved with that so I can't say exactly what will happen.

Greywander wrote:Also, am I correct in assuming that Reliance + Derp means you can reroll 1's, 2's, and 3's with a +5 bonus (but, of course, no magic points)?

That is correct.

Greywander wrote:And lastly: What happened to Laughter? Okay, Laughter was easily the best Element out there, and more than a bit OP. I turned a dragon lord into a pretzel in the Classical Disruption campaign using a Rod of Wonder (same effect as Laughter), so yeah, while it's unpredictable, it still usually leaves you better off than before. Either it had to go, or else the remaining Elements needed a buff to make them comparable. Still, I'd like to see it come back, possibly as an ability.

Forgot to mention this in the original thread, though I've edited it in there now: Laughter's effects are going to be re-done into a new, separate, official-but-optional supplement (much like Magecraft was) with a new Virtue of Chaos that players can take with the DMs permission (because there are some people who don't like Laughter or want it their campaigns, but can't exactly ban one of the Elements of Harmony at the moment). I'm not involved in writing such a table because I'm rubbish at coming up with random effects – but there's a whole thread dedicated to coming up with an official Laughter table.

Fury of the Tempest wrote:Actually, now that I think about it... how would the level 4 Self-Destiny, and more importantly the Evolution destiny, work with these changes?

Destinies are getting reworked, though not by me. I believe Evolution is getting cut.
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Lastly, this is not a final draft. There are some utility talents that are missing from the new document because I was working quickly and cut them for time. That doesn't mean they're gone for good, just that they might need some thought to work back in – but knowing that people are interested in them gives me motivation to work on them.

Also, if you want to houserule anything like that in in the meantime, utility talents have a cost of 3 points.

You know what we need? One of those talent calculators like you see for WoW or most other MMOs out there. It would make it much easier to view and compare abilities, and compute point spending. I'm willing to help create art assets for such a project, if anyone knows how to do such a thing. (A modular design that allows one to easily insert or remove abilities without rewriting the code would probably be best.)

As for racial templates, yeah, they don't need to be filled out to meet a quota. For earth ponies, canonically, they're heavily involved in the food industry. Look at all the ponies with food-related cutie marks and see how many of them are earth ponies. How this relates to abilities, I don't know. I imagine that each DM might have their own set of racial templates based on their interpretations of the races, and that this will be even more true for Living Legends.

As for Laughter, yeah, it had issues (can you say, "plot derail"?), but it was fun, too. Really, it's "power" was more dependent on the effects of the Tons of Fun table. Turning a dragon lord into a pretzel? OP. Turning a dragon lord pink? Less OP. Turning a dragon lord into a dragon lady? Uh... I think reintroducing it as an optional Virtue of Chaos fits rather well.

For magic, I think it's worth asking if we need a separate spellcasting system or not. Having all magic aside from some very specific spells fall under one or two utility talents doesn't make a lot of sense, but it also seems like it could get complicated very fast if we tried to lay down some more specific rules.

Old Laughter is going to be an optional DM virtue called  "Chaos" that DMs can choose to introduce, without feeling the pressure to include that making the effect one of the mane six elements was.

Philadelphus wrote:Other stuff can quite possibly be added back in. A lot of stuff that was kinda tricky or fairly underutilized got removed so I could focus on the stuff left behind, but I do have plans to add at least some of that stuff back in. It helps to know that people actually want it.  

Yeah, Speak With Nature is surprisingly high on my list since two different players have it and it's been one of the main way they've discovered plot points while still being forced to figure out the right questions to ask.  As far as Bridle Gossip/Word of Wisdom, I think the way to handle it is to figure out how much each verse is worth by itself and then allow it to be purchased multiple times, up to a set limit.

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The idea behind the Found It! revamp was that with Thataway being more usable for the cost, FI becomes more character specific but able to be used at will instead of needing to guess.  Thus, it sort of mutates into Rarity gem finding than Pinkie spotting something but it allows the two utilities to fill different niches and better work in tandem with each other.  The revamped form could still have a range buff option since that's something the new system would be better designed to support.

Found It! - Revamp Proposal 2:

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I may attempt something with racial templates via some reverse engineering.  I'll probably weigh in on the earth pony thoughts there.

There shall definitely be suggested templates. If you guys want to put some together first, that'd be awesome.

Ok, let's see, Speak with Nature, Sweet and Elite, Words of Wisdom, Villainous Laughter, Pinkie's Interrogation, and Forcefield have all been added back in. Detect Thoughts has been renamed Read Thoughts. Terrify has had its wording tweaked slightly to better clarify it (hopefully). Flight abilities have been fixed, and I added a clarifying clause to the note for Loyalty. I think that covers the majority of points ZamuelNow brought up.

Now, racial templates...you guys want some of those. Bear in mind that I wasn't planning on making these so what you're getting here is fresh off the top of my head, and subject to change and revision. With that said, here's my take:

Each race will have two sets of abilities: core abilities, which are what you might call actual racial traits – things that a member of that race ought to be able to do just by virtue of being a normal functioning mature individual of that race. The other will be suggested abilities, which are just that: suggestions for new players unsure what to take. They're things I think might go well or fit flavor-wise for some races, and I've given my reasoning where I thought it wasn't clear. They're open to change, so if you think something else would fit better (or some of them just don't really fit) feel free to say so.

Earth Pony:
Core abilities: None
Suggested abilities: Instant-Party (could flavor either Pinkie-Pie style food-out-of-hyperspace, or go for a slightly more canonical ability to grow plants for food really quickly), Nimble Hooves (let's face it, you really need them as an earth pony), Adept (to represent down-to-earth grit and determination), Hop, Skip, and Jump (to represent general physical ability), Yee-Haw! (the same), Speak With Nature (general plant affinity).

Pegasus:
Core abilities: It's Almost Like Flying, Weather-Crafter
Suggested abilities: Flight, Flight School, Awesomeness/Coolness/Radicalness (for that fighting pegasus spirit that refuses to give up in the face of defeat), Haste (pegasi seem to be pretty fast when they put their minds to it), The Rainbow Dash (some of them really, really fast).

Unicorn:
Core abilities: Telekinesis
Suggested abilities: Advanced Telekinesis, Spellchild (to allow them to work a little magic "for free"), This Is Whining! (for magically turning things around), Dispel Magic (for dealing with other unicorns' spells).

Baby Dragon:
Core abilities: Fireborn, Pyrotechnics
Suggested abilities: Longrunner (to represent that dragon stamina), Burrower (good digging power), Grandeur (because how cool is it to have a dragon in your party?).

Minotaur:
Core abilities: Terrify
Suggested abilities: Attack The Day (inspiring allies to greater heights), Fracture the Fourth Wall (because they seem to be able to do that), Challenge Fate/Against the Gods (because that seems like a thing they'd do), Nimble Hooves Hands (because they're probably a bit better at fine manipulation than most ponies).

Donkey:
Core abilities: None
Suggested abilities: Stubbornness, Stubborn as a Mule, Longrunner (for general donkey stick-to-it-iveness), Iron Pony (for even more Endurance), Hop, Skip, and Jump (general physical fitness).

Buffalo:
Core abilities: None
Suggested abilities: Hop, Skip, and Jump, Longrunner, Iron Pony, Herd Mentality (for working together with tribe members to accomplish tasks), Yee-Haw (general physical fitness).

Hippogriff:
Core abilities: It's Almost Like Flying, Weather-Crafter, Thunderborn
Suggested abilities: Flight, Flight School, Lightning Rod (lightning afinity), The Rainbow Dash (EXTREME SPEED!).

Zebra:
Core abilities: Words of Wisdom
Suggested abilities: Enchantment (general magical versatility, through potions of course), Hop, Skip, and Jump (general physical ability), Strengthen/Weaken Subtance (potions), Speak With Nature (nature affinity).

Griffon:
Core abilities: Terrify, It's Almost Like Flying, Weather-Crafter
Suggested abilities: Flight, Flight School, Haste (general speediness), Dirty Look (because I'm sure they could give a real good one), Watching Like a Hawk (sounds griffonish), Eagle Eye (flavorful).

Changeling:
Core abilities: It's Almost Like Flying, Telekinesis, Changeling's Trickery
Suggested abilities: Flight, Flight School, Advanced Telekinesis, Cunning Disguise (highly appropriate), Nightwatch, Untraceable (seems appropriate for a changeling), Telepathy (seems appropriate for a sort of "hive-mind"), Haste (for fiery meteor smashing), Spider Climb (for hanging on to things), Empathetic (for "sensing emotions", like love).

Diamond Dogs:
Core abilities: Burrower, Nightwatch, Scent Tracker
Suggested abilities: Herd Mentality (because they seem to come in packs), Villainous Laughter (seem like they'd be good at it), Gotcha! (good for grabbing troublesome creatures).


Well, in writing these templates I may have solved the problem I was having with how to deal with Changeling's Trickery in this new format. I need to look at it some time when it isn't late and I'm not stupidly tired, but I think with some judicious wording this should allow changeling-type abilities in the system.

Pingcode wrote:Going over the new stuff and taking into account the wording of derp, I think this needs an errata that Derp's crit range extension isn't a natural one - besides, it's a drawback, it shouldn't be turned into a massive advantage with certain combos.

Ping, my understanding is that Derp turns 2 and 3's into nat-1's...

When it comes to the new system. I love the idea. But will take time to move over from the old, that's my opinion. Also this is but a first draft, so I'd hope it get's refined quickly within a week or two.

Ok... One thing I dislike that I just noticed... WHY does the level up for new points be the same? Wasn't the point of this new system to allow for passive character growth for ALL levels?

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.

Philadelphus wrote:Ok, let's see, Speak with Nature, Sweet and Elite, Words of Wisdom, Villainous Laughter, Pinkie's Interrogation, and Forcefield have all been added back in. Detect Thoughts has been renamed Read Thoughts. Terrify has had its wording tweaked slightly to better clarify it (hopefully). Flight abilities have been fixed, and I added a clarifying clause to the note for Loyalty. I think that covers the majority of points ZamuelNow brought up.

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.

While reworded, Brawn and Precision are still mentioned in the flight tree. While things like "I fly with my healing!" comes off like someone trying to min-max or metagame, alternate skills are sometimes used for the skill check. It should really be restructured as "## penalty to skill checks made to fly" and state that they should pick a flight skill. It's one of those forum errata things that either never made it to the documents or made it in but got overwritten. That reminds me, both Flight and Weather-Crafter need to state that the user may treat clouds as solid objects.

Now, racial templates...you guys want some of those. Bear in mind that I wasn't planning on making these so what you're getting here is fresh off the top of my head, and subject to change and revision. With that said, here's my take:

Each race will have two sets of abilities: core abilities, which are what you might call actual racial traits – things that a member of that race ought to be able to do just by virtue of being a normal functioning mature individual of that race. The other will be suggested abilities, which are just that: suggestions for new players unsure what to take. They're things I think might go well or fit flavor-wise for some races, and I've given my reasoning where I thought it wasn't clear. They're open to change, so if you think something else would fit better (or some of them just don't really fit) feel free to say so.

It mostly seems to work.  It's a little interesting that in more direct conversion from the old guides, I found that unicorns and pegasi were worth 12 points while earth pones were 10 points due to lacking a racial in the conversion and needing to use approximations.  I like the fact that while the old system had things that seemed to be approximations and guesses for the race templates, it felt like they really worked for the concepts.

As far as show canon, it explicitly states that earth ponies grow crops well but it implies that they are good at all ends of the food production chain with the number of food based jobs and the fact that this isn't mirrored in the other two pony races.  The subtlety and the overlap with singular individuals of other races muffles things.  Essentially, earth ponies are harvesters and homemakers, unicorns are artisans and scholars, and pegasi are military and athletes.

Also missing from the list, is Thunderbird...

Fury of the Tempest wrote:I hated the old laughter with a passion... I almost never wanted it to be used.

Which caused arguments...

Am I one of the only people here that actually likes the changes, but I simply think it requires more work?

A few more upgrade options would be nice, but there's more important stuff to work on.

Fury, you aren't alone in likeing the changes, I like them too. And equally feel that this first draft needs a good deal of revision before it's finalized.