I want to stick with socketing talents, and I know that some of the advanced careers introduce 3 or more talent slots, but that this is pretty inconsistent.

I was thinking of allowing all characters to buy an additional talent slot as they move up the ranks, so at rank 2 they can have 3 talent slots, 4 at rank 3 etc. I was thinking that this could be done as an Open Career Advance, one of two ways:

1) You spend an advance, and it locks one of the talent slots of the current career, so that when the character changes career you carry one slot with you. This offers no immediate benefit though, but encourages investment for the future (and I would expect most players to do this as their 9th or 10th advance)

2) You spend an advance and gain an additional slot of one of your current talents. This means you do gain an additional benefit, but won't be available to characters until they reach rank 2.

By implementing this rule, I would then effectively ignore all the careers with multiple slots, except where it indicates what slots a character may be able to buy. Thoughts? Suggestions? I'm not dead set on this and would welcome any comments on pitfalls I haven't spotted!

Generally the talents are pretty flexible and socketing and unsocketing talents is fairly common. In as a whole a player usually has access to all their talents and only in special circumstances does it make a difference or require any actual special action to unsocket and socket a new talent. The limiting aspect is to ensure that when a talent is used, that for at least some time a socket is locked down preventing you from unsocketing it. This is the important aspect of the mechanic and the limiting factor is part of its balancing effect of talents.

The strength in talents is that they usually almost guarantee success for a particular type of situation, in particular since the talent type is usually associated with the professions focused ability. For example the Connected talent adds 2 fortune dice to a "social action", something a character with access to the repution talents is probobly already good at. This practically assures success. If that same player also had the Confident, a Favoured By Fortune and Silver Tongue talents in as a whole he becomes socially perfect in any situation and will always succeed. The fact that talents refresh pretty quickly, means that the result of having "more talent slots" is that this player will be able to "combo to success" pretty much every social situation he gets himself into.

2 Talents is already quite potent in particualr professions that have 2 talent sockets of the same type. 3 or even 4 would definitily throw the balance off.

I've seen some GM's introduce "removal of sockets" and I believe this to be severly broken. This version certainly has a bit more control but strictly speaking 2 is the magic number, 3 is very potentant. Anything more than that and you might as well just skip the rolling because the outcome of any given action in which a players talents can be used is assured.

The players need to feel the limiting factor of talents and this of course goes back to core game design "player decesion". The more you have the more the game feels like a game and the more your choices matter. Broaden it too much and the only time the player makes a choice is when he buys the talents, using them becomes automatic if they are all available simultanously and hence effectively eliminating player choices and eliminating the potential danger of failing.

I think the default system is quite good, I would be weary of changing it. Its kind of got a fixed balance in its link between the strength of the talents, the professions that can access them and how many you can use at once, but its a fragile balance that with this rule I think might be disturbed.

very nice ideas there! i also always wanted to stick to the socketing of talents.

i'm torn whether to make it a carrer or non-career advance, since it might count towards your career when you buy the talent in that same career too.

so in gerenal, you would have any rank one character starting with 1 slot and then open up the advance at rank 2? that would sound nice to me. and that way all players could also use all those talents they bought eventually.

although i might start with 2 slots for a rank 1 character and then have them buy a third later.

maybe you could also grant an additional slot as part of the dedication bonus? that would motivate the players to finish their careers and invest that 1 advance point even more!

but of course you would also have to set a limit, so that the talents don't get too many to handle at once. maybe a limit of 5 or 6?

I created a few new talents for this very purpose.

They can be found here: dl.dropbox.com/u/14855200/NewTalents.jpg

I think I've posted them once before. But the general idea is that everyone can spend advancements on purchasing extra talent slots, but also have the slots on their career sheets avaliable. Works very well in my group. Oh, I only allow my players to purchase each talent once, so you can only purchase one extra focus slot for your character.

I have not tried this so take it with a pinch of salt but I hated the fact that you could switch out of a career and 'lose' a talent slot if you had previously been in a 3 talent slot career so my random thoughts on it were thus.

When you buy the dedication bonus in career with 3 talent slots you retain that 'extra' talent slot if you transferred into a career with less than 3 talent slots, you pick which slot at the time of purchase. You cannot get another '3rd slot' if you buy another dedication bonus in another 3 slot career but you can change the type if you desire.

With the introduction of 4 talent slot careers in Heroes' Call I would allow a 4th slot for purchasing that dedication bonus too.

I think allowing a 3rd slot to just anyone is a slap in the face to players who dedicate themselves to a particular career path, people who 'bum around' in the low tier careers should not have the same 'status' as those professionals in higher careers.