Is this an oversight? There is a Sunder (Improved) at Tier 3, but no Sunder.

{Edit:} Also noted that Full Throttle (Supreme) is at rank 4 and Full Throttle (Improved) is at Rank 5.

Just now, Khaalis said:

Is this an oversight? There is a Sunder (Improved) at Tier 3, but no Sunder.

This talent has its name taken from the original in the Star Wars system, it’s a ridiculous name that no one has been able to replace. Weapon Break is the best we have so far.

Sunder is actually a Weapon Quality, it allows you to spend 2 Advantage to Damage your opponents weapon 1 step. This talent simply reduces that advantage cost to 1.

Maybe instead of Sunder (Improved), just make it Improved Sunder? The first reads like a talent that builds on another talent, whereas the latter (to me) looks like it's referring to the Sunder item quality.

Other name ideas:

Smasher

Talented Sunderer

Destructor

Break It All!

Shatter

Shatterer

Sundering Blows

Master of Sundering

Break Asunder

I like Shatter, Sundering Blows and Master of Sundering.

4 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

I like Shatter, Sundering Blows and Master of Sundering.

Other possible names = Sundering Expert, Sunder Expertise, Sunderer or just Sundering.

I like Sundering Expertise.

Improved Sunder is reminiscent of the D&D 3.x feats that build on the basic combat maneuvers (trip, bull rush, overrun, disarm, and sunder). It says: there is a Sunder ability or effect in the game. This let's you do it better.

Agreed, Sundering Expertise is much better.

I’ll add my vote for Sundering Expertise as well.

Next version!

6 hours ago, Richardbuxton said:

We just added some Turn Undead Talents in the latest release, you should have a look and see what you think.

The Ever Vigilant series is interesting, Rapid Reaction is very close to this so I probably wouldn’t adapt it as is but there’s something there

Ooh, the turn undead talents are nice. I'll see what I can do to rework the improved and supreme version of ever vigilant.

re: Sunder: Dismantle or Rend Gear.

TheSapient recommended to me that I put these talents up for discussion. They are mostly fantasy oriented, but some can be used in other settings as well.

Charge

Tier: 3

Activation: Active (Action)

Ranked: No

May take the Charge Action, performing a melee combat check against one target at short range. If successful, you immediately engage the target and hit as normal, also knocking it prone. If not successful, you charge past the target and end up at short range to it.

Forbidden Knowledge

Tier: 3

Activation: Active (Maneuver)

Ranked: No

May suffer strain no greater than ranks in Knowledge to increase your ranks in Knowledge by an equal number for the purpose of determining the strength of additional effects for the next spell cast during that round. In this case, your temporary ranks in Knowledge may exceed the usual limit of 5.

Flurry of Blows

Tier: 4

Activation: Active (Maneuver)

Ranked: No

May suffer 2 strain to take the Flurry of Blows maneuver. Your next melee combat check during that turn gains the Linked quality with a rating equal to your ranks in Coordination.

Magic Resistance

Tier: 4

Activation: Passive

Ranked: Yes

Whenever you are being targeted by an enemy's spell, the caster adds 1 Setback die to the check. When making a check to resist a negative magic effect, may add 1 Boost die to the check.

Barbaric Strength

Tier: 5

Activation: Passive

Ranked: No

May use Melee (Heavy) weapons one-handed. Weapons used that way still use the Melee (Heavy) skill.

Shapeshift

Tier: 5

Activation: Active (Maneuver)

Ranked: No

If counting the Primal skill as a career skill, may shapeshift into any animal no greater than silhouette 1 as a maneuver. Until the end of your next turn, you are affected by the Augment spell and may choose to add any of the Haste, Primal Fury or Swift additional effects, suffering 2 strain for every effect added. When choosing to shapeshift into a flying animal, you must add the Swift effect, and when shapeshifting into an animal of silhouette 0, your Brawn may be reduced at the GM's discretion. You may perform the Concentration maneuver each round to sustain the effects of Shapeshift.

7 hours ago, Richardbuxton said:

This talent has its name taken from the original in the Star Wars system, it’s a ridiculous name that no one has been able to replace. Weapon Break is the best we have so far.

Sunder is actually a Weapon Quality, it allows you to spend 2 Advantage to Damage your opponents weapon 1 step. This talent simply reduces that advantage cost to 1.

Wait, doesn't Sunder only require one advantage as is?

1 minute ago, OgreBane99 said:

Wait, doesn't Sunder only require one advantage as is?

Right you are!

Improved Sunder increases the effects, not decreases the cost.

11 hours ago, Richardbuxton said:

This talent has its name taken from the original in the Star Wars system, it’s a ridiculous name that no one has been able to replace. Weapon Break is the best we have so far.

Sunder is actually a Weapon Quality, it allows you to spend 2 Advantage to Damage your opponents weapon 1 step. This talent simply reduces that advantage cost to 1.

What's wrong with sunder? It describes it perfectly.

Very nice work! I love the wider range of options this provides, especially when PCs are going to face the necessity of buying a lot more Tier-1 and Tier-2 talents than they would have in Star Wars.

I appreciate the shoutout on "Respected," but the source should probably be listed as AOR p. 155 and EOTE p. 142 instead, since it's just a generalized version of Respected Scholar.

3 minutes ago, SavageBob said:

Very nice work! I love the wider range of options this provides, especially when PCs are going to face the necessity of buying a lot more Tier-1 and Tier-2 talents than they would have in Star Wars.

I appreciate the shoutout on "Respected," but the source should probably be listed as AOR p. 155 and EOTE p. 142 instead, since it's just a generalized version of Respected Scholar.

We have others that are like that. Your idea, you wrote it, your credit.

Edit: Heck half the talents I get credit for have been torn apart, edited, and rewritten by everyone on the team! LOL

Since you folks are attributing the authors in the source listings (instead of just "CCC"), I was actually the one who came up with Finesse (Improved). It's ego-gratifying that I could help this project even just a little bit, so it's nice seeing my user name.

5 hours ago, Klort said:

TheSapient recommended to me that I put these talents up for discussion. They are mostly fantasy oriented, but some can be used in other settings as well.

Charge

Tier: 3

Activation: Active (Action)

Ranked: No

May take the Charge Action, performing a melee combat check against one target at short range. If successful, you immediately engage the target and hit as normal, also knocking it prone. If not successful, you charge past the target and end up at short range to it.

Forbidden Knowledge

Tier: 3

Activation: Active (Maneuver)

Ranked: No

May suffer strain no greater than ranks in Knowledge to increase your ranks in Knowledge by an equal number for the purpose of determining the strength of additional effects for the next spell cast during that round. In this case, your temporary ranks in Knowledge may exceed the usual limit of 5.

Flurry of Blows

Tier: 4

Activation: Active (Maneuver)

Ranked: No

May suffer 2 strain to take the Flurry of Blows maneuver. Your next melee combat check during that turn gains the Linked quality with a rating equal to your ranks in Coordination.

Magic Resistance

Tier: 4

Activation: Passive

Ranked: Yes

Whenever you are being targeted by an enemy's spell, the caster adds 1 Setback die to the check. When making a check to resist a negative magic effect, may add 1 Boost die to the check.

Barbaric Strength

Tier: 5

Activation: Passive

Ranked: No

May use Melee (Heavy) weapons one-handed. Weapons used that way still use the Melee (Heavy) skill.

Shapeshift

Tier: 5

Activation: Active (Maneuver)

Ranked: No

If counting the Primal skill as a career skill, may shapeshift into any animal no greater than silhouette 1 as a maneuver. Until the end of your next turn, you are affected by the Augment spell and may choose to add any of the Haste, Primal Fury or Swift additional effects, suffering 2 strain for every effect added. When choosing to shapeshift into a flying animal, you must add the Swift effect, and when shapeshifting into an animal of silhouette 0, your Brawn may be reduced at the GM's discretion. You may perform the Concentration maneuver each round to sustain the effects of Shapeshift.

Charge I feel needs some further cost, difficulty, or penalty. It could be increasing the difficulty of the attack, suffering strain, flipping a Story Point, or granting opponents a Boost to hit you, but as it stands here, it's just a straight, big upgrade to melee combat checks, and the only downside is you end back where you started. Should also specify melee or brawl. I think there has been some discussion on a similar talent already...

Forbidden Knowledge: is the intent to allow a character to double their effective ranks for the purposes of improving the effects of a spell?

Believe there has also been some discussion on Flurry of Blows. This should also specify melee or brawl.

Magic Resistance looks good. I believe @OgreBane99 had something similar in his Fantasy Talents list, that was unranked, but added 2 Setback/Boost, and cost a Story Point to activate. Personally, I would prefer moving away from too many ranked talents, particularly at higher tiers.

Barbaric Strength looks good as is.

I feel like Shapeshift should either be an additional effect for the Augment spell, a talent adding that additional effect to the Augment spell, or a way to change shape without requiring magic directly, which means disconnecting this from a Magic skill, and from the Augment spell.

In the latter case, I think I would want to make this a chain of talents (talent, improved, supreme), where the last one basically does what we're looking at here. It should be an action to change shape, requiring a skill check of some sort (probably daunting), with a specific set of abilities you gain, and maybe a choice among a small set of options, and it should have a fixed duration.

1 hour ago, Dragonshadow said:

Since you folks are attributing the authors in the source listings (instead of just "CCC"), I was actually the one who came up with Finesse (Improved). It's ego-gratifying that I could help this project even just a little bit, so it's nice seeing my user name.

My apologies! This would entirely be my fault. I will get that fixed, and I think we will do a mini-release to correct some smaller errors.

6 hours ago, OgreBane99 said:

Wait, doesn't Sunder only require one advantage as is?

6 hours ago, TheSapient said:

Right you are!

5 hours ago, Swordbreaker said:

Improved Sunder increases the effects, not decreases the cost.

SMH, of course I got it backwards.

2 hours ago, DarthGM said:

What's wrong with sunder? It describes it perfectly.

Sunder is fine a a weapon quality, I really like it. Improved Sunder as a Talent is where I have a problem, it’s name implies there is a talent called Sunder.

Expert Sunderer

or

Sundering Expert

or

Sundering Expertise

are all better

1 hour ago, yeti1069 said:

Charge I feel needs some further cost, difficulty, or penalty. It could be increasing the difficulty of the attack, suffering strain, flipping a Story Point, or granting opponents a Boost to hit you, but as it stands here, it's just a straight, big upgrade to melee combat checks, and the only downside is you end back where you started. Should also specify melee or brawl. I think there has been some discussion on a similar talent already...

In my eyes, the downside is that if you fail, it puts you at short range past the enemy, which is potentially right in the middle of the enemy lines (or at GM's discretion into a wall, a pool of acid, a gaping abyss, lots to do here with threat and despair), but increasing the difficulty by 1 seems like a fair and fitting penalty to me.

Quote

Forbidden Knowledge: is the intent to allow a character to double their effective ranks for the purposes of improving the effects of a spell?

Yes, so for example if you have 3 ranks in knowledge and add blast, you can pay additional "mana" (i.e. strain) to gain Blast 6.

Quote

Magic Resistance looks good. I believe @OgreBane99 had something similar in his Fantasy Talents list, that was unranked, but added 2 Setback/Boost, and cost a Story Point to activate. Personally, I would prefer moving away from too many ranked talents, particularly at higher tiers.

This stems from a discussion with a player on what defense to apply to magic attacks, and is supposed to be an anologon to the defense talent. If in your game the usual ranged or melee defense applies to spells, feel free to ignore this talent.

Quote

I feel like Shapeshift should either be an additional effect for the Augment spell, a talent adding that additional effect to the Augment spell, or a way to change shape without requiring magic directly, which means disconnecting this from a Magic skill, and from the Augment spell.

In the latter case, I think I would want to make this a chain of talents (talent, improved, supreme), where the last one basically does what we're looking at here. It should be an action to change shape, requiring a skill check of some sort (probably daunting), with a specific set of abilities you gain, and maybe a choice among a small set of options, and it should have a fixed duration.

This one is supposed represent the ability of druids and shamans, but depending on the setting it could be uncoupled from magic skills. In a typical fantasy scenario though, I'd find it weird to have some dwarven warrior turn into a wildcat all of a sudden. The connection to the augment spell is just for convenience, since it does all that I think a shapeshift ability should do.

Doing it as a chain of talents sounds interesting. From the top of my head, I might change it into something like this:

Base: Turn into any animal of silhouette 0 as an action.

Improved: Turn into any animal of silhouette 1 as a maneuver and gain the benefits of the augment spell.

Supreme: Turn into any animal of silhouette 2 as an incidental and gain augment with primal fury.

The increments might be too steep, but something along those lines maybe.

My issue with Charge is that the failure condition may not actually mean anything. Combat here is a bit more abstract, so ending up at short range doesn't necessarily mean you're in any particular other position. It relies heavily on what the GM is doing and how good they are at describing the setting, and managing all the pieces.

Basically, I see it as, normally you spend a maneuver to engage, then make an attack. If you fail to hit, you are engaged and did no damage. With Charge, you make an attack. If you fail, you (may) still have a maneuver to engage with your target: you are engaged and did no damage. Same number of actions, same results, but the talent gives you a pretty strong option that, if successful essentially gives you a third maneuver on your turn. And even the failure condition could be a boon: if fighting Melee minions or an immobilized enemy, forcing them to take a maneuver, or being out of reach, is a good thing. Then there's the fact this talent seems to ignore difficult terrain...

My point with Shapeshift is that I think it feels more like an additional effect that can be added to the Augment spell, but if that's not the route you want to go, then it would make sense to separate it from magic entirely.

Id imagine only characters who have some back story involving shapeshifting would pick up such a talent.

Honestly I think Reckless Charge from the GenCon module is a better charge.

Augment really is Shapeshift already, you just have to describe it that way. If you where going to have a talent that made you better at Shapeshifting then really it should just allow you to reduce the difficulty of augment by one, perhaps only when targeting yourself. Or perhaps it allows the concentration manoeuvre to be an incidental.

I noticed one small error:

Physical Training
Tier: 2
Activation: Passive
Ranked: Yes
Add ■ per rank of Physical Training to
Athletics and Resilience checks.

The icon should be blue, not black. I rather doubt Physical Training is meant to apply Setback to Athletics and Resilience.

As far as the Improved Sunder name goes, I'm partial to the more awesome-sounding "Shieldbreaker".