I've been thinking about what to do with 'useless' talents, that you stop being able to use due to a career transition.

It seems like quite a harsh penalty, and could potentially put big limitations on the careers players are willing to transition to, or just make them feel hard done by. It could also lead to players specialising in just one or two categories of talent when it might be interesting to be more generalist.

My proposed solution is to allow players to 'socket' out of career talents in the wrong spaces, at the cost of one each of fatigue and stress. e.g. a soldier turned mystic could socket one of his 'tactic' talents into a 'focus' slot by paying the 'out of career' penalty/tax.

Once socketed, they would work as usual.

Some possible variations on this: I could require a fortune point also be spent to socket the 'wrong' card.

I could require the cost (of 1 fatigue & 1 stress) to be paid every time the talent is recharged after use.

It would still make the career talent sockets meaningful, but wouldn't leave players feeling too hard done by and suddenly 'forgetful' of something they used to do all the time when they start a new job.

What do you guys think about this?

Good/bad idea?

Too easy / too hard a fix?

Any potential problems likely to be caused by allowing this?

There is the focus talent that allows you to use reputation/tactic talents, one of my players got that to help with this problem. Then there is the party sheet where my players often put the talents they can't use themselves.

But maybe a system where you can get fatigue/stress/spend fortune to be able to slot another talent type could be a good idea (I'd go for 1 fatigue and 1 stress I believe and only make the effect last that encounter).

Which focus talent is that? Because I haven't heard of it...

Yeah, see, I think players benefit from their talents when they advance along a particular line. If they have a particular character in mind, then they should talk to you and from there be able to develop their character in a particular way.

Crazy Aido said:

For a start; I don't know all the options well enough to guide my players, but more than that - I don't want them to be 'forced' into going a certain route. If they know they want to be X, become Y and finish as Z, then fine. But if something happens to them in character that makes them change direction suddenly, - or perhaps they're just playing a 'jack of all trades' type character, then I want them to be able to do so without penalising them mechanically. Too much, at any rate.

I know they still have the party card, but it's not unthinkable that a group the leans towards a certain (let's say thuggish) persuasion could pick the 'gang of thugs' party, and still end up without being able to socket or use talents that they've previously learned, but now have no slots for in their current career.

Crazy Aido said:

It's called "Creative thinking" and it appeared in the gathering storm.

It allows you to slot any other talent onto the card, in effect making a focus slot into an "any-slot" on your career card. So for one advance you can buy creative thinking and use talents that you've aquired previously (provided that you have a focus slot).

It should be easy enough to create similar talents for tactic and reputation, giving the players the option to spend an advance to be able to use talents that they previously have aquired and doesn't have slots for in their current carreer (in effect adding a greater degree of versatility to the character).

Interesting...

One advance for an effectively "open" talent slot. Very interesting.

Crazy Aido said:

Yes, but as it is now there is only a Focus talent that does this. So if you're in a career that doesn't have a focus slot avaliable you cannot make use of that particular talent. Of course creating similar reputation and tactic talents would not be very hard.

Not too hard at all.

Of course, without the talant card, what you could do is tell players they can "open" one of their talant slots for 1 advance, at each career.

Well, I'm all into simplicity so here's my alternative :

When a character changes career, he can exchange unwanted talent cards for others that his new career can socket. The new aquired talents obviously doesn't count for the actual career advances.

So effectively, the character always has talents that he can socket. The downside is that he'll lose those talents he really liked and couldn't socket with his new career.

Silverwave said:

Interesting idea... Though I personally don't like it. I think talents are supposed to be very characterful - quirks of character or certain knacks, techniques or things they are known for. So I don't like the idea of suddenly losing your reputation for being wealthy and suddenly becoming as hard as a dwarf instead.

It's a solution of sorts, but it doesn't really solve the problem of having talents that are no longer useable: it means they can never be used again! (Even though they wouldn't 'lose out' mechanically as they could pick up several new talents.)

Well, think about it this way : if your old career granted you reputation slot and your new one isn't, maybe it's just that! You were a roadwarden, which is kind of prestigious and when you decided to become a mercenary, suddently nobody respected you as much. But then again... commoners get a reputation slot so I wonder what it really means, lol.

Like previously said, there's that focus talent that lets you socket reputation/tactic talents. It's somewhat the same as paying 1 advance to "open up" a slot in my mind though you're probably limited to 1 card of that talent when you could open up all your talents. It's a matter of taste, wheter you want to let player open up any of their talents.

Would opening up a talent carried away when you change career? Because that focus talent card does stay with your character and could serve with any career.

How about allowing socketing of talents to be neutral, so that any talent can fit into any slot, but limit the purchasing of talents to those shown on the career card? This would allow for the idea that you haven't magically forgotten your previous talents, but still shows that a characters learining is affected by their career.

If this is too easy, maybe you can add a black dice for each talent that is not used by the current career?

Chefsim said:

I really like the idea. Clean and simple.

Me too. I think that's a very good house rule.