Lursi wrote: ↑Tue Sep 11, 2018 7:09 am
I just wondered:
What is the benefit of a discipline to have talent X as a discipline talent? Now it is more a burden, because with talent options you have the choice whether you really want it and also a little bit when you want it.
You might be seeing this backward. It's not a question of what 'benefit' is there to a discipline talent. The discipline needs to have a core of talents that define what is at the hearth of that Discipline (no matter what is your approach to being an Archer, it HAS to have Missile Weapons at it's core), the optional talents are just a way to vary this a bit as many people would approach a discipline with different outlooks. Is my Archer a 'ranger', a 'spy/assassin', a pure soldier? There is many ways of seeing this (and indeed they even included some variations even if first edition with the specialization paths) and I don't think it takes so much away from Versatility, in fact it helps a lot with overlapping stuff rolling a windling scout (yay! I got climbing AND Astral Sight, that's helpful).
Karma was just supposed to be a bonus/focus mechanic they wanted to give in to use in case of an emergency but my guess is that they took a long time to find a way to make it work in a simple way. They used to have to stack so many rules/mechanics over it to prevent abuse that it was a pain to run (I remember my very first GM just completely ignored Karma in his games). I mean remember:
- Karma ritual was a Talent (e.g. you were spending LP and 'wasting' a 'Talent slot' for it).
- Karma points themselves cost karma (so had to keep track of it)
- Limited amount that could be replenished every day (another thing to keep track of)
- Different dice depending of the race (hey, more stuff to keep track again)
- Some talents could USE them, some did not (more tracking? yes sir!)
- Oh hey and make it so that some talents NEED to spend karma to work at all, oh, but better yet, lets make that optional depending if it's ALSO a discipline talent.
Man, keeping track of all this was a pain for the players, just image the GM. So they decided to streamline the game by simplifying it a lot. Which is pretty much what the whole 4ED did.
Now it's just:
- You want to use Karma? Is it a Talent? Yes? Then do it.
The way I see Karma is that the energy comes from the Discipline part of your Pattern so even if you have a talent as Versatility, your 'Archer core' would not 'power up' the talent Emotion Song. However I would see Karma working on an (hypothetical) future 4ED version of the Journeyman Discipline.