From playing Talisman for a while, I get the sense that it's set up with two "paths"; Strength and Craft. The Portal of Power follows this notion, as does the Inner Region, but I've encountered some gaps in this.

For example, the Sentinels are a Strength based challenge, this is fine, but I can't see a Craft based equivalent.

As well, when passing following the Craft route through the Inner Region, the left path, you still encounter the Pit Fiends, which are a Strength based challenge.

Does anyone else have an isssue with this? Does anyone have a solution? For example, what about making the Pit Fiends use Craft instead of Strength?

Thanks.

Sarashinai said:

I think it could be assumed that Craft people have Spell(s) that they can use to avoid the Sentinel. As to Pit Fiends, they are a Strength test on the Craft path to prevent a Str-2 Wizard from getting Gnome + Talisman and breezing to the Crown. Even then they are a pitiful Str-4, which isn't really more than a speedbump even for most Crafters. At least around there, minimum of Str 5 (most likely with a Weapon on top of that) and Craft 9 is what people bring with them when taking the Craft-path. Dwarf + Gnome can make it with less Craft, as can people with Map. Often Strength just goes up to around 7-8 even for Crafters, so Pit Fiends pose no threat whatsoever. It's one of the issue people have with the Craft path and how easy it actually is. They would like to see Pit Fiends get a boost to make them tougher.

Dam said:

Wow. That's a whole lot of assumptions there. Now I know there's a strong luck element to Talisman, but in the time it takes someone on the Craft path to build up what you're describing, two other Strength pathers could be in the Inner Region, at least from how I've seen games go.

Also, since you can carry a maxium of 3 spells no matter how high your Craft is, added to the fact that getting spells is a chance thing most of the time, reliance on spells is a rather finicky platform to play from.

Now I see what you're saying about the Wizard & Gnome combination, and the Dwarf poses a similar problem, but I don't see how the appropriate response to that is to put in something that unbalances a path. The Strength path relies entirely on Strength, with the exception of the random Dice with Death space. Why are there no Craft challenges in the Strength path? Or conversely, replace the Vampires with a random challenge in the Craft path and make the Pit Fiends Craft 4 (or higher if you prefer).

The way I see it, Craft seems to be considered, from the design of the game, to be a secondary ability, which is at odds with some characters being highly Craft focused.

If there are two paths, they should be balanced against eachother.

If Craft is actually to be considered secondary to Strength, then some of the Characters need to be revamped.

If Strength and Craft should be considered equally important to the point where both should be gathered in equal amounts, then I think there should be some changes to how the board functions. For example, to pass through the Portal of Power, you have to succeed at both a Strength and Craft challenge.

What do you think?

Sarashinai said:

Dam said:

I think it could be assumed that Craft people have Spell(s) that they can use to avoid the Sentinel. As to Pit Fiends, they are a Strength test on the Craft path to prevent a Str-2 Wizard from getting Gnome + Talisman and breezing to the Crown. Even then they are a pitiful Str-4, which isn't really more than a speedbump even for most Crafters. At least around there, minimum of Str 5 (most likely with a Weapon on top of that) and Craft 9 is what people bring with them when taking the Craft-path. Dwarf + Gnome can make it with less Craft, as can people with Map. Often Strength just goes up to around 7-8 even for Crafters, so Pit Fiends pose no threat whatsoever. It's one of the issue people have with the Craft path and how easy it actually is. They would like to see Pit Fiends get a boost to make them tougher.

Wow. That's a whole lot of assumptions there. Now I know there's a strong luck element to Talisman, but in the time it takes someone on the Craft path to build up what you're describing, two other Strength pathers could be in the Inner Region, at least from how I've seen games go.

Also, since you can carry a maxium of 3 spells no matter how high your Craft is, added to the fact that getting spells is a chance thing most of the time, reliance on spells is a rather finicky platform to play from.

Now I see what you're saying about the Wizard & Gnome combination, and the Dwarf poses a similar problem, but I don't see how the appropriate response to that is to put in something that unbalances a path. The Strength path relies entirely on Strength, with the exception of the random Dice with Death space. Why are there no Craft challenges in the Strength path? Or conversely, replace the Vampires with a random challenge in the Craft path and make the Pit Fiends Craft 4 (or higher if you prefer).

The way I see it, Craft seems to be considered, from the design of the game, to be a secondary ability, which is at odds with some characters being highly Craft focused.

If there are two paths, they should be balanced against eachother.

If Craft is actually to be considered secondary to Strength, then some of the Characters need to be revamped.

If Strength and Craft should be considered equally important to the point where both should be gathered in equal amounts, then I think there should be some changes to how the board functions. For example, to pass through the Portal of Power, you have to succeed at both a Strength and Craft challenge.

What do you think?

The two paths are the same of Talisman 2nd edition, where you had no chance to increase Craft by cashing Enemy Spirits. Considering this, the paths were (almost) perfectly balanced at that time and so were Characters like Dwarf and Followers like Gnome, that had no Strength equivalent.

Things have changed now and it's easy to see Characters with Craft 10+, especially in revised 4th edition. This counts for average gamers; Dam and his mates play as fast as they can, in a very competitive way and quite regularly, and I assume that the average Talisman player is not that skilled and steady. The higher chance to gain Craft might have required some changes in the Inner Region, most notably for the Pits Space. Now with Fate the Inner Region is too easy ; I've never seen a Character in trouble there, except when targeted by nasty Spells.

Something needs to be done to re-balance the paths, since many new rules deprived the Inner Region of its original feel. I'm sure that future expansions will bring new material to make the endgame more entertaining and challenging.

PS: may I say that this thread is a General Talisman discussion and not a Rules question? It should be moved to the general section.

Sarashinai said:

I haven't really seen this so far with Upgrade + Reaper (32 games done so far; all but 2 were 3-player games). Only one that regularly takes the Str-path is the Troll for obvious reasons. Warrior is another candidate for that path, but in our games he for some reason does horribly, so rarely even makes it that far. Even with Fate, I think a lot of it harks back to the 2nd edition days when Dice with Death was truly feared, no matter how über your character was, luck could mess up your plans, stalling you indefinately at DwD (in fact, I can probably count with one hand the number of times someone took the Str-path in 2nd edition, even accounting for almost 10 years of playing). Fate (sadly) nerfed DwD among many other nasties. Too lazy to check my logs for the 32 games in detail, but I'd say at least 75% of the wins have come via the Craft-path. Troll has never taken the Craft-path so far, but on the other side of the coin, I remember at least once Minstrel taking the Str-path with Str 9 and winning. Lowest Craft for a character that took the Craft-path was a 5 (with Gnome + Map), but Dwarf regularly rushes the Crown with 7-8 Craft. Quick check on my logs showed that Sage and Merchant, in addition to the Minstrel have taken the Str-path to the Crown, despite all 3 characters starting with Str-2.

Sarashinai said:

I wouldn't say it unbalances the path. If anything, the pre-Fate DwD totally messed up the Str-path. Not to mention that Mines has Gnome to reduce it to 2 dice, Crypt doesn't have a similar card, only Shovel, which is duplicated as Map for Mines. Back in the day of the 2nd ed, even though you couldn't gain Craft from trading in spirits, Craft was still more easily gained, at least in our games. I'd say Craft still remains the easier to gain. Even the best stats boosters are both for Craft (Maiden and Solomon's Crown +2 Craft), Str only has Magic Belt, most of the others add to both (Unicorn, Ring, etc) or only help in battle (weapons). Since Craft is easier to gain, Craft-path is the faster way to the Crown, but adding a minor roadblock in Pit Fiends forces the Crafters to at least grab a couple of points of Str before heading to the Middle.

I agree with The_Warlock, this should be moved out of the Rules section of the forum.

I'm going to go through the deck and look at how the cards are distributed and post again. Thanks for your replies so far, I hope to see more again.

As a follow-up, one of my players and I sat down to try to balance out the two paths. Although there is a bias in the cards towards strength, especially in the creature encounters, we didn't find it to be large enough to make it necessary to change the content of the adventure cards. However, since there was no balancing card for the Gnome's ability in regards to the Mine, we instigated a rule that said that the Gnome no longer influences the Mine.

We then made the following changes to the Inner Region. Please let me know what you think.

We found the Plain of Peril to be a wasted space, so we added a rule to this space; Talisman are now protective magical objects, without them you can't survive the massive magic forces in the Inner Region, from the Plain of Peril space on, if, at any time, you are on an Inner Region space, not including the Crown of Command space, you must immediately turn back and make your way out of the Inner Region and return when you have a Talisman.

We left the Mines and Crypt as they were.

Along the Craft (left) path, we change the encounter in the Vampire's Tower to be similar to the Werewolf's Den on the Strength (right) path. You roll two dice and fight a Vampire with a Craft value the total of the dice. You must fight it again on your next turn if you don't defeat it.

On the Strength path, we replaced the Dice with Death space with a monster encounter. Hell Vines (Strength 8): Roll two dice. If the total of the dice is greater than your Craft, do not roll any dice for your attack. On your next turn, you do repeat the Craft roll. You must fight it again on your next turn if you don't defeat it.

And, finally, we replaced the Valley of Fire, another wasted space, with Dice with Death. In this way, every player is faced with DwD, everyone has both Craft and Strength checks, and the Craft path isn't faced with the Vampire's tower just draining life at random.

P.S. I am going to ask this thread to be moved.

Sarashinai said:

I don't necessarily think Plain of Peril as a wasted space. It's pretty much the only space on the Inner Region where you can encounter another char and take their Talisman away (the others being Valley of Fire and Crown of Command, but taking a Talisman there doesn't matter under RAW). Timing your movement to the PoP (or getting a hail mary through the Magic Portal with the Thief) and taking a Talisman (esp. if the only Talisman the character has) sets them back a few turns (unless they luck out and draw a Talisman next turn at Portal of Power or Hermit is sitting in Crypt), while you can immediately be on your way to the Crown.

Sentinel can be avoided with spells and craft path have a gnome that help it to be more easy, vampire is in my opinion more easy than dice with death (actually Death stopped people for long time, with fate too, it is very random), so i agree to keep pit demons strength based or craft-only- toons can wind it too fast. But while it stop from rushing-games, in middle games we found it very easy, nobody care about pit demons in our matchs (werewolf is not super hard too but surely is more feared); we thought to raise his strength but then "craft path" could be too "hard" for mages type class that need then have a high value for both strenght and craft while a warrior can go in "strength-path" with minimum craft, so i think higher value in strength dont balance it.

Actually i didnt think about a "craft" werewolf, could be nice to try

We had a idea but didnt test it yet: in rulebook it say that you figth with demons 1vs1 but if you win first demon you can fight next one in same round, normally that mean in our games that is useless to roll how many demons are there, because you can win all of them without roll (10 in strength and you can win automatically), so 1 or 6 of them is the same, you auto-win. What if you need meet this demons in different rounds? i mean: if you roll 3 demons you figth first one, you win and kill it now in next round you fight second...and so...you can move ahead when you eliminated all of them, while this continue to stop rushers but without nerf mages it give a handicap to easy-winners because you lose Time there if you roll high (and so you could force them to use fate there) and so who need run (maybe because more than 1 running for crown) could decide to go for the strength path (actually it happen very rarely in our games because craft one is too much easy) . Of course this is just a idea and not tested yet...so it could be a epic fail of a idea hehe but i like to know what you think. Keep in mind that at this moment i dont have expansions so gnome is pretty common to be drawed

my 2cents

Dam said:

I don't see anything in the rules saying that you can't use a special ability on another character while in the Inner Region, only that you can't encounter another character in any space other than the Plain of Peril and the Valley of Fire.

Now, I'll freely admit that, in the past, I've run up against the wording that the game writers have used, so it might be that I've missed something that categorises using a special ability as an Encounter. You let me know.

Andraax said:

In my rules, I may have forgotten to mention, the Gnome doesn't help with the Mines anymore. Although the Map and Shovel are still in the deck.

The Pit Fiends work in a similar way, you keep fighting them until you lose a health point. But since your point is that you'd always win, then that won't happen. Instead of changing the way their fought, what about making a "harder" version of The Nightmare. That's a Craft creature that always has the same Craft value as the character who is encountering it. For example, you could have them roll a die and based on the result add 0-3 points over the character's own Craft rating. That way they can still win if it gets a maximum roll but it doesn't change the way it's fought.

Sarashinai said:

Encounter/land on are the same, so you can only use a special ability against another character if you choose to encounter him/her, which you can only do at PoP, VoF and CoC in the Inner Region. Check the turn sequence at the back of the rulebook. Special Ability use is under "Encounter Character" path in the tree.

Dam said:

Yep, the turn sequence at the end agrees. The change in the rules that I made for the PoP doesn't change that fact that characters can be encountered on it, but your means I have to reconsider what I did with the VoF.