Converting 3rd Ed Disciplines to 4th Ed

[Panda]

There is mostly only good news: you are probably going to like the Shaman, which has recently received a great deal more attention as other projects have moved along. Though they won't be a particularly social discipline - this function is filled quite well by Illusionist. Though, part of the plan is for them to have a somewhat unique/different relationship with a particular kind of spirit. How this will all work out is still in development. Other good news is their draft spell list is coming together faster than initially anticipated. The testing and tuning of it will likely still take a while, along with whatever custom talents need to be developed.

[Valentius]

Hey Panda, I just want to say I appreciate all the hard work you are doing converting all these side disciplines to 4th Edition. I like the Monk and the War Rider. I am curious though, do you have any plans on converting the Talents from the other books too?

[Panda]

Thank you. I'm uncertain exactly what you mean with regard to talents from other books. Can you be more specific?

[Valentius]

The Cathay book and Namegivers has a bunch of talents not in the core book. Some of thee talents are specific to the Disciplines in those books (Like Regeneration which is a Master Dragon Excellency talent for Monks), others are just generally new talents. I was wondering if you would be converting at least the ones that are Discipline specific?

[Panda]

Here is the short answer: talents are not being updated individually, but as a part of updating disciplines to which they may be appropriate.

Below is a slightly longer answer:

Updating talents depends on a number of different factors. The most important: is there an ED4 discipline which uses this talent? If there isn't, then I will not be updating the talent. This question is more complicated than it seems, because part of it goes to: is this a talent which pre-existing disciplines should have had a shot at getting? If the answer to this is yes, then it means there is a place for the ability, but as a talent isn't necessarily the right place.

I don't want to create a situation where all of the disciplines developed at a later date have access to better toys than the core disciplines; they are the core disciplines for a reason. There are other remedies which can be applied to such abilities which can benefit everyone as appropriate.

This still leaves a situation where no discipline has the talent and it's not something anyone else should have either. It's not necessarily the end of the road, but it may mean it isn't coming back in any form.