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This stuff? ^^^

That's good. Admittedly, we've got that sort of in the works with the quick-start packet... if I can find enough time to go back through and edit it.

(That's another thing... I just need more Passions-begotten time.)

I guess a big decision would be on what direction you want the material to take.

Thread Items: Earthdawn magical items are more than simple tools with general bonuses and abilities. They each have a legend of their own, and players must explore the item's background to unlock subsequent tiers of power, each stronger than the last. Magical items in Earthdawn are also unique in that players must spend experience points - called Legend Points - to unlock the bonuses and abilities.

- Versus -

Thread Items: Earthdawn is a land of epic adventuring where Adepts pit their strengths against enemies both mundane and magical. Fantastic conflict leads to impossible victories and, sometimes, the tragic fall of heroes. Through the powerful magics wielded by Adepts, once mundane arms and armors can gain a legend and resulting magical powers of their own, often times outliving the Adept that once bore them. Mountain-top battles set against a raging storm can imbibe the victorious sword with the power of lightening, while a dying Adept's last oath of vengeance can forever fortify her armor against Horrors like those that fell her. These magical items are not in stores and stalls but instead lie in forgotten kaers and long-lost battlefields for the brave to find and restore to glory. However, for an Adept to unlock an item's potential, he must uncover the item's unique legend, often times treading once more the fields and trials in which the item partook, forever weaving his own legend to that of the item's. Without these efforts, even the mightiest items are no better than their mundane counterparts.

Dougansf wrote:I thought of some more Optional Rules it would be great to see.

Minion rules: I've heard of having enemies surrender / flee if they take a Wound. I've used this in my past 2 sessions, and it's helped combat speed greatly. I also considered making them flee when they reach about half of their Unconsciousness Rating.

Gang / Mob rules: After a few Circles, it seems that non-Adepts are hard pressed to be a challenge, but a mob of them might still be. Rules for treating a group of minions as a single unit would be great.

Disclaimer: I'm running an online game for 3 hours every other week. Anything that speeds up combat and moves the story along is a great help.

The Krilworm has something like that, which includes a WIL Roll when one of the swarm dies. That is easy to use and works rpetty fine.

An optional rule my group was looking for just the other day:

Merging Skills with Talents. ED3 had rules that a skill could be upgraded to fill an available talent slot when the Adept was capable of learning it. If, say, a Troubadour created his character with the melee weapons skill, but picked it up as an option at third circle. Am I just missing this option in ED4 or is it not listed anywhere?

If it isn't listed, I definitely recommend it find its way into the companion.

Merging Skills with Talents. ED3 had rules that a skill could be upgraded to fill an available talent slot when the Adept was capable of learning it. If, say, a Troubadour created his character with the melee weapons skill, but picked it up as an option at third circle. Am I just missing this option in ED4 or is it not listed anywhere?

My players (lots of experience with 3rd edition) were just asking about this last session, so I'd love to either see a rule or hear the arguments against it.

Thanks!

MetalBoar wrote:

Merging Skills with Talents. ED3 had rules that a skill could be upgraded to fill an available talent slot when the Adept was capable of learning it. If, say, a Troubadour created his character with the melee weapons skill, but picked it up as an option at third circle. Am I just missing this option in ED4 or is it not listed anywhere?

My players (lots of experience with 3rd edition) were just asking about this last session, so I'd love to either see a rule or hear the arguments against it.

Thanks!

As long as your PCs are spending Legend on Skills, I see no reason why this wouldn't be a problem. But if they're just using Skills as a means to pre-raise their Talents, that's not cool. I let my players respend such Legend on new Skill Ranks instead of on Talents.

I don't have any heartburn one way or the other. That being said, my preference is against it:

- Learning a skill is SIGNIFICANTLY different than learning a Talent. Someone that knows the Melee Weapon Talent cannot teach someone the Melee Weapon Skill - the Talent use doesn't technically KNOW how to wield the weapon, the magic takes over, whereas the trained use is very much knowledge-based.

- Too much chance for LP cost disparity. I would hope that players wouldn't be trying to game the system in order to skim LP by buying what may be a cheaper skill. That being said, though, remember that skill LP pricing is a bit wonky: a "Novice" skill actually following the Journeyman pricing tier (Rank 1 = 200 LP, not 100) and "Journeyman" skills are Warden pricing tier. So, unless we're talking about Talents that are usually Novice-tier but are only given to a Discipline at Warden level because it's very much outside their wheel house, or we're talking about Multi-Discipline, there really isn't a cost SAVINGS to be had.

- Players really should be advised that having mundane skills is important, even for Adepts. I don't want to get into specifics (wrong forum for it), but by the time Adept players get into Journeyman, they should be away that relying on Talents always being available isn't a good bet. If they choose to ignore that, it should be reinforced through suffering until they learn the lesson. =)

The ED3 rule for aligning talents and skills was formulated specifically to avoid any LP disparity. As far as i can tell from looking at the numbers in the alignment chart, there is no way to buy a skill and then convert it into a talent and come out ahead in terms of LP, nor is there any way to screw yourself over and come out behind. The problem ED4 has is that skills are no longer all priced the same, which would require two alignment charts rather than just one, but aside from that it's completely doable. Helll you can reverse engineer the alignment system's first principles fairly easily: You purchase the first rank of the Talent version at its normal cost, then you convert every rank of the Skill into the appropriate LP cost, and finally you use that LP to purchase ranks in the Talent.

For example consider a character who is a two-weapon Warrior, who started off with the Second Weapon skill since the player did not want to wait to play her concept. Suppose that when she reaches Circle 5 and is able to buy the Second Weapon talent, her skill was at Rank 3. Now the first rank of a Journeyman Talent is 200 LP, which are paid up front. Then the first three ranks of a Journeyman Skill are 1600 LP, which lets her buy the talent up to Rank 4. So for the cost of 200 LP she can realign her Second Weapon 3 skill into a Second Weapon 4 talent. No LP is created or lost in the conversion.

Another house rule for our Earthdawn campaign is the following: karma ritual is only possible once a day. And in addition to that, all accumulated karma is gone, when you sleep (get your recovery tests filled up).
That leads to the usual conclusion, that each adept makes his karma ritual in the morning and his max karma is everything he can spend during the day.

I made up this house rule for the following reason: when you take the standard rule, each character can do his karma ritual as often as he wants and whenever he wants, leading to a dungeon crawl constantly interrupted by adepts running low on karma and performing their rituals. That felt a bit ridiculous so I came up with this house rule.

A house rule we are using at our table is that advancing in Circles does not require visiting a trainer and therefore does not cost silver as long as the Adept does not change title rank.
This allows an Adept to go up in Circle in the wild as long as time is granted for meditation on ones abilities.

The reason we use this rule is our GM's haven't really grasped balancing monetary rewards with LP and we play mostly only once a month, but still wanted to see the characters advance.

It can be explained that as an Adept reaches a new rank in the discipline being followed a trainer teaches the basics of the abilities of that rank, but as walking the path of the discipline is a very subjective experience the Adept must unlock these abilities within himself through meditation as this adapts the taught basics to the adept's pattern and style.

A trainer is of course required for gaining access to Circle 5, 9 and 13 as well as picking up additional disciplines.