This is generally aimed at J.C. - may not be the right place to bring it up but thought would see what everyone thinks.

I am unlikely to be able to put any of these into practice but like chucking ideas out there.

It may be a really dumb idea as I have not fully thought it through. It sounds like it might be a bit like Master characters in the City (that I have never played) but the intention is that you get a skeleton character but then build up with special abilities down to your encounters. So you have some direction but more freedom than usual.

This is centered around the excellent work J.C. had done on the Talisman Tales and got me thinking about assigning special abilities and how

a lot of new characters are totally overpowered etc etc.

So, what I thought was, was about starting with very low powered characters who have minimal abilities but do have a defined progression path that can be augmented with additional special abilities.

The easiest way to explain myself is through an example I think.

(BTW - I have just made these up, they are not balanced or anything)

Everyone gets a character to start with that has very low abilities. In this example, I have drawn the Farmer.

Farmer

S :2 F :2

C :1 L :4

S.A. You may evade enemies in the Fields

Start : Village

Alignment : Good

That is it. Perhaps allowed to draw 1 extra S.A. at random to speed the game up a little.

Also you character will have a promotion class

Promote to : Soldier

Activate : seek the City when you have aquired 1 extra special ability, 3 strength/craft tokens.

Cost : 2 G

So, when you have built up your character a little, you seek the place where you can get promoted and you can change character, keeping existing objects/folowers/spells etc (unless in cost) and importantly your Special Abilities

Soldier

S : 3 F : 3

C: 3 L : 4

S.A. You may evade enemies in the Fields

If one is available, you can always get a Helmet or Sword from the City for free

Start: City

Alignment: Good

This way you get enough of special abilities to form the basis of a character but the real abilities will vary from game to game and allow you to flesh out the character a bit more.

The promotion also "locks in" your base values so that they cannot drop below these values and so not go all the way to the start.

Maybe a particularly nasty card could do that though....

Possibly have a third layer

Promote to: Kings Champion

Activate: seek the Castle when you have 3 additional special abilities, 5 strength/craft token

Cost: 1 Dragon trophy, 4 G and a Follower

etc etc

Other quick ideas of progression:

Urchin -> Thief -> Master Criminal

Acolyte -> Preacher -> High Priest

Apprentice -> Conjurer -> ArchMage

Right, that is out of my head. Now back to work.

It's a nice idea, and a prod for me to finish up that Tales starter deck and then get some card packs out. It's not far off of a notion I had a while back called "Bumpkins for Talisman", where all players start out in the Tavern, have low stats and a gold, and then must make they're way to fame and fortune. And yes, I too had the notion that all could draw a Special Ability card before the game begins, though it is inactive at that time and must be activated along the way.

Oh, and all characters start out Neutral, of course, which has its positive and negative influences.

Some of those other notions about "promoting" characters would also appeal to many. For myself, I've never been fond of artificial bumps to character stats.

Time to get my butt in gear and finish at least one project I started.