Topic: Professional abilities

[Fidoric]

Hello everybody.
I am considering removing the "Shield Training" talent from the fighter list of professional abilities. That is justified that for example, your average two-handed weapon or polearm wielder will not need it and worse will "lose" one professional ability.
The big question is what to put in its place ?
 
My first idea was to give fighters "instinctive defense" or a lesser version of it (for example requiring that you must be aware of the attack), thus translating their general fighting training (the first thing you learn when training with lethal weapons is to avoid being hit). But I am also well aware that this is a powerful talent and that it will make the fighter profession a more powerful one (not to my dislike), thus shifting the balance between professions. This can also adress some old threads concerning the balnce between fighters / rogues / monks.

Another solution would be to give a choice of talents like, for example, the pilot profession in Harp SF.

Has anyone of you ever done this ? How have you handled this problem ?

[Ecthelion]

What about letting the player choose any (non magic-related) Talent that costs up to 10 DP? That way a fighter that wants to use a shield may put the Shield Training back on his list and others can choose, but only from Talents that are similarly powerful as Shield Training.

[WoeRie]

I really like the idea. However I would go with the full version of Instinctive Defense. No problem with the 20DP extra.

I always had the feeling that the fighter is a little bit weaker than our Jack-of-all-Trades, the Rogue, which can be made to an even more powerful fighter as the Fighter himself, especially if the fighter decides to use no shield. This would give him the bit extra power to show the rogue how a battle axe can be wield by a real fighter 

[Right Wing Wacko]

Offer a choice.
Shield Training or
Skill Specialization in Polearms or somesuch..

[Witchking20k]

I allow the Player to choose a 10pt talent or put those 10pts towards another talent.

[Fidoric]

And what about something akin to RM2 old Arms companion: Way of the Warrior. Something like: you can ignore penalties (but not wound) up to your SD bonus ?

[Karizma]

If you have Martial Law, letting them take "Combat Awareness" talent seems sensible for Fighters.  If not, then "Accelerated Healing" or "Skill Specialization (Weapon of Choice)".  I would consider "Instinctive Defense", but it's quite expensive, and it somewhat undermines the need for a shield.

[Witchking20k]

You could also allow the Player to purchase a Blood Magic ability, and the corresponding skill.

[uberyoung]

I can't remember exactly which talents I swapped out (as I haven't got my paperwork with me at the moment), but I have in the past offered a choice of builds something like:
1) Sword & Board - Talents as per HARP rules
2) Skirmisher - Instinctive Defence replaces Lightning Reflexes & Shield Training
3) Archer - Speedloader replaces Lightning Reflexes & Shield Training

I've also been thinking about going down a slightly different route...
Take away all professional abilities (except maybe the +'s to skills), and each profession gets to pick a '1st level training package' (all balanced to cost the same DP's, +30 (or something) to cover the loss of the professional abilities) as their career starting point in life.
That way you can start your adventuring career as a 'Town Guard', 'Sharp Shooter', 'Pict Warrior' etc. or similar...
As the DP costs are all the same, you can balance out the talents / skills given in each package...

[Fidoric]

That way you can start your adventuring career as a 'Town Guard', 'Sharp Shooter', 'Pict Warrior' etc. or similar...
As the DP costs are all the same, you can balance out the talents / skills given in each package...

Is it not what Professional Skill Ranks stand for ?

[uberyoung]

You could just spend your PSR's for this...

Applying another 5 seconds thought, it may be better to replace the Starting Skill Ranks AND Talents with such a 'package'.

Therefore you start as a 'Town Guard' (which denotes your 'basic training', including skill ranks and talents) and then can spend your 2 x DP's where you like after that...

You can have a selection of these + the original 'build' in the rules (for maximum flexibility)...

[Witchking20k]

Well, the training package rules pretty much cover starting your career as a town gaurd or something simillar.  When I create training packages I alway include 10-20 pts in talents in the cost.  I know it gets discounted with the ranks cost, but it does make a fairly heroic impact on the game.

[RandalThor]

This is why I would like to have a guidline that says how many "points" each profession is worth. I did something like this for the professions and the races for my work on making the character creation process more like Shadowrun, and for making a levelless HARP.

As far as I could determine, the professions (and the races) did not balance out. No horrible imbalances, just not fully balanced. (One of my more prevelant gaming buddies was a real monster about balance. Everything had to balance! If he was interested in a game, really interested, and he got it, then there were some small imbalances, he began to hate the game, just over the imbalances. So, I go into the trying to balance things when GMing.)

[Witchking20k]

I have written a set of racial creation rules based loosely on those presented in Talent Law some years back and re-made the races using those.  It allows for Base Talent Points similar to those in RMSS.