Fourth Edition Preview -- A whole lot of talents

Discussion on the Earthdawn game line, errata, and feedback not related to playing or GMing.
Telarus_KSC
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Re: Fourth Edition Preview -- A whole lot of talents

Postby Telarus_KSC » Sat Feb 08, 2014 4:44 pm

In previous editions, Distract was a core Discipline talent for the Airsailor (it's assumed you have "crew mates" around). It was pretty weak, especially because running many NPCs on the player's side (along with the enemies) was rough in the early editions. I fixed some of that in my house games by coming up with a mass-combat Unit system (where the players could control their armsmen simply, 1-roll-per-Unit style). This made my girlfriend's Airsalor rock a little more, but it really didn't change the _tactics_ she chose when triggering Distract (& would often go for Attack+Second Weapon instead, due to her training in swordsmaster skills alongside the Airsailor Talents).

This new Distract Talent means Airsailors are now able to tactically manipulate the battlefield. I like this VERY much.

As to Surprise Strike, I always ran it as usable if your enemy doesn't detect you as a threat.... so this new change isn't that big for my game, but having it called out explicitly in the rules allows the players to better understand when they can use this Talent. Also, with Awareness filling in as an active PER defense, this change may not be as big an impact as it first seems.

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Re: Fourth Edition Preview -- A whole lot of talents

Postby j0hn » Sat Feb 08, 2014 4:52 pm


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Re: Fourth Edition Preview -- A whole lot of talents

Postby Danger » Sat Feb 08, 2014 5:12 pm

Last edited by Danger on Sat Feb 08, 2014 5:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Fourth Edition Preview -- A whole lot of talents

Postby Danger » Sat Feb 08, 2014 5:16 pm


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Re: Fourth Edition Preview -- A whole lot of talents

Postby j0hn » Sat Feb 08, 2014 5:23 pm


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Re: Fourth Edition Preview -- A whole lot of talents

Postby Utsukushi » Sat Feb 08, 2014 7:32 pm

I think it's tough. I can absolutely see j0hn's point. 4th Edition D&D tried to make everything equally useful all the time, and too many people started seeing through the flavor text and realizing that it really didn't matter what ability they used. Or even what class they were playing. Everything boiled down to rolling basically the same dice for the same effect, and the stylish names faded to the background.

But with the way Earthdawn runs, especially as you get out of the earliest Circles and to the middle-to-high levels, your Talents have to be good or they're not going to work. So you either spend a lot of your LPs investing in something in the hopes that just once in a while it will be useful, and then yay! You'll have it available! Or you focus on the things that are keeping you alive every day, and suddenly you're hit with a situation where you need that back-burner Talent and.. you either don't have it at all, or it's just not good enough to make the roll.

Of course, GMs can be expected to tailor challenges to their group to some extent, but that's a lot to drop on the GM, and has its own issues. (Really, how many encounters can you tailor to make Air Speaking helpful before it starts to feel forced? I'm getting zero. Is anybody else getting zero?)

I know we're not really getting into them yet, and the blog sounds like the devs aren't too big on them to start with -- but I think Knacks have a lot of potential to bridge that gap. You can start with a simple, baseline Talent (say, this "Awareness"), that probably lots of people have and can use all the time, and then you can develop it in your own way. At less cost than it takes to develop and keep up with a whole separate Talent, you can give the "baseline" Talents abilities that maybe don't come up all the time, but make your character more unique -- like, your Warrior has learned the Knack of spotting traps as well as a Thief, for example, or has learned to zero in and sense hidden weapons better. I'd like to see Knacks made more integral. More expected.

I very much liked some of the Talents that did, indeed, do the same thing, but handled it differently, and could therefor make sense for different Disciplines.. but it's definitely fair to look at that as clutter, so I'm pretty happy with the idea of consolidating them, in the long run. And again, I think that Knacks could be used to fix that, without breaking what's being fixed now.

Have to second asking about Taunt. In 1st Edition, it was badly broken at higher Ranks - because it subtracted so much and everyone was playing at such a high level to start with, suddenly being at -10 was devastating.

In 3rd Edition, it's broken at lower Ranks - because when you're starting at Steps around 9, even a -2 can quickly wipe out your effectiveness, and since it also reduces and then targets your Social Defense, you just need one semi-lucky roll and it's over; the Taunter wins. The 3rd Edition Fix was centered on the idea that it at least limited the reduction to a -4, though, and it sounds like 4th Edition is removing that cap on Success Levels, so... it feels to me that if Taunt is left alone but ported into the new system, it will be broken at both ends.

Taunt and Battle Shout are great ideas, but they still need work.


I liked Detect Quarry for the new suggestions on Direction Sense.


Tenacious Weave looks awesome, especially with Dispel Magic becoming a Talent. (And therefor probably a more common innate ability for Horrors and Creatures...) And I really like a lot of the combinations being made!

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Re: Fourth Edition Preview -- A whole lot of talents

Postby etherial » Sun Feb 09, 2014 12:18 am


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Re: Fourth Edition Preview -- A whole lot of talents

Postby kosmit » Sun Feb 09, 2014 12:27 am

Duvvelsheyss

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Re: Fourth Edition Preview -- A whole lot of talents

Postby Panda » Sun Feb 09, 2014 1:16 am

I like the design space that knacks inhabit quite a bit and have ideas for them. However, I'm not necessarily fond of all the previous examples. The implementation of knacks is an interesting space to explore and how it can be utilized to give further distinction to the various disciplines.
Earthdawn Developer and I have a gaming , though, let's face it, it is really an Earthdawn blog which also happens to have some reviews.

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Re: Fourth Edition Preview -- A whole lot of talents

Postby kosmit » Sun Feb 09, 2014 3:15 am

Hmmm... Different knacks to Summon talent allowing summoning different/stronger spirits etc.
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