wild talents discussion

[A Stinky Bug]

I think it would be best if these wild talents were kept to mudane, basic skills that certain guilds dont get. As in a warrior thug who suddenly comes to realise he can haggle and barter like merchants.

[Agent_137 (2L2L)]

Ok. I'm definitely interested in wild talents, but something that wouldn't shift balance at all.

here's my idea.
Wild talents would be rare.
Wild talents could be -ANY- skill (except maybe some super high blow up the world spell that i don't know about.)
Wild talents wouldn't happen for some number of days of play.
Wild talents would have a karma check. Let's say 2. (don't want the beauty of randomness giving some newbie twinker Fire Rain.)
The wild talent wouldn't branch. You just get that skill, with some fair cap less than that of a primary guild, but more than a subguild.

So basically, you probably won't even notice.
Most people won't get shit.
Some people will get crap like "underwater basket weaving."
And every now and then, some poor Byn Sergeant will fart fire.

p.s.
I don't want to leave this in the Immortals' hands because if they say "yes, we'll look over your app and roll a few dice for you" then they'll get swamped with apps. And if they say no, then, i'm a sad panda.

[Larrath]

Nothing in-game should ever ever be affected by karma.  Karma is completely OOC, and a warrior with 8 karma should be no better codedly than a warrior who had his elf option removed.

Second, just no.  Seriously.   This isn't some H&S where people study magick casually.  People who want to learn even a tiny bit of magick have to go through great lengths to avoid being killed by the Templarate.  If some random warrior learned a medium-power spell, they'd either try to forget that spell as best as they can or leave the city and pursue their studies and become sorcerers.

I'm even sick of arguing against this.  I don't think this will help the feel of the game at all.  If you want to play a mercenary that can cast fireball, you can special app.

Any wild talent could seriously affect game balance.  Magickers with scan.  Rangers with disarm or Heal or all sorts of very nasty spells.  Magickers with psychic powers.  Psionicists with haggle!!!  This goes much further than giving one out of ten PCs basketweaving or a couple of warriors Listen or haggle to a ranger.

[amoeba]

I wouldn't worry too much about arguing, it's highly unlikely it will happen.  If it makes people feel better to wish for things thats fine. And for the record I'm not for the idea.

[Anonymous]

Nothing in-game should ever ever be affected by karma.  Karma is completely OOC, and a warrior with 8 karma should be no better codedly than a warrior who had his elf option removed.

This just struck me as odd.

I think it's clear that a player with a decent level of karma/good account notes is much more likely to receive an additional skill if he or she mails the mud account requesting it with a reason than a player who has a track record of inconsistent adherence to the rules who does the same.

Specific to the thread I've alway wished that there was a move away from cookie-cutter characters but to me the answer isn't giving every merchant a chance to have a flamethrower.

A 'random selection of skills from a staff-defined subset' subguild might be nice though.

[Kennath]

My thoughts can be summed up as:

magic/psionic wild talents = no
mundane wild talents = yes

Delirium, I agree.

I say that merchants with a weapon skill will own the world. And rangers with sap.... ohhhh ya. and templars with backstab, and burglers with dessert sneak. I'm not being sarcastic, I say EVERYONE would have a quirk outside their guild, may it be farting and emptying an entire bar, or useing a merchant to cut down scrabs.

[Maybe42or54]

Except for the templars part. I'm not seeing how any of that is impossible. I just don't know templars either so.. It may be ossible. Since they get whatever the highlord wants to give them.

[Dracul]

Nothing in-game should ever ever be affected by karma.  Karma is completely OOC, and a warrior with 8 karma should be no better codedly than a warrior who had his elf option removed.

...

Well directly against that, karma -does- affect such thing. A vivudian will never be as powerful as a sorcerer. Well, codewise that is.

[SpyGuy]

My thoughts can be summed up as:

magic/psionic wild talents = no
mundane wild talents = yes

Delirium, I agree.

I say that merchants with a weapon skill will own the world. And rangers with sap.... ohhhh ya. and templars with backstab, and burglers with dessert sneak. I'm not being sarcastic, I say EVERYONE would have a quirk outside their guild, may it be farting and emptying an entire bar, or useing a merchant to cut down scrabs.

It has been my impression that this is what subguilds are for, to allow you some skills outside of your guild skills.  And I wouldn't be surprised if there's a reason why there are no subguilds that give scan, magick or psionic abilities or weapons skills.  If we want to add options like this I'm all for logically expanding the subguild list but it's not a priority to me.

As far as the narrower topic of wild talents, I'm completely against magick talents at all.  Call me a Dark Sun purist for this but I do not want to see a warrior casting remove poison, Arm is set up in such a way that that character would be hunted down and slain.  And what on earth is the point of having a wild talent that you have to constantly hide and never use?  If you want this sort of ability you can have it...by special application.  This to me should be the rarist of mutations, and the way I see it you basically get all the IC drawbacks of being labeled a magicker for one lousy ability.

As for what I would see as a good wild talents system is something basically similiar to Dark Sun.  Maybe even have a subguild called "Wild Talent" as to be the route to get this sort of thing.  Everyone has the minor psionic skills contact and barrier and no one blinks an eye.  Have a few people have some other minor psionic skills, preferably random, that could be of use in certain ways but wouldn't necessarily provoke a witch hunt if you were found to possess them.  Something that would in my mind enrich the psionic aspect of the game (since psionicists are in my experience some of the rarest and most secretive of all guilds) without broadening the use of magick or powerful psionics.

But that's just my opinion.

[Jherlen]

In a perfect game it -might- work.

In a less than perfect game, sooner or later you'd see the staff give someone Skill X that his guild/subguild shouldn't normally have, and instead of using it as a roleplaying opportunity the person would just run off twinking it. You know it would happen. This would probably discourage them from giving anybody else that skill.

Also, say you're a warrior but you use your 'wild talent' of super psionic doom to kill somebody. I wouldn't be surprised if people started crying foul and whining about favoritism. Arm's playerbase is far more mature, but that's what would happen on other places I've played.

So.. if they were just mundane talents, given to very trusted players and only very rarely... maybe? But it seems like at that point it would just be so restricted as to not even be worth discussing.

Now, as a slight derail.... what would be cool for a high-karma player is to email the staff as a special app and tell them he wants to have a character with a karma guild who discovers it 'by surprise' in the game. Then you go roll up just your average human pickpocket and, without your knowledge, the staff selects one of the karma guilds available to you and guides your transformation from normal Joe into Joe the Nilazi of d00m. THAT would be awesome... but it would also take a lot of special staff attention, which might not be fair to expect.

Where was I? Oh yeah, I'm not really a fan of this.

[Dalmeth]

Couldn't this wild talent business be approximated by making a character in the appropriate karma guild, making it older than normal, and then making a background which would incorporate a life as something else?  Next, you choose a subguild which would connect this character to its past.  It seems simple enough to me.

[flurry]

For the most part, I have to say I don't really like the idea of wild talents much.  I don't like cookie-cutter predictability or guild-sniffing either, but I don't see wild talents as a fix to that.  If it were that common, it wouldn't be special.   To address the mundane guilds problem, I'd rather see a more significant change in the guild/subguild system that involved more of an a la carte system at least for subguild skills.  I think you have to keep guilds as we know them in place to keep some kind of logical skill branching.  

I guess the bottom line for me is that I think magick/psionic wild talents seem like they would do more harm than good (if just given out, and not attached to karma).   Mundane wild talents would be harmless enough, I suppose, but I don't really see the benefit.   If anything, I'd rather have a choice of an extra mundane skill, that I knew fit my concept, than some random mundane skill.    Great, my warrior has dyeing.   Wow, my merchant has parry.

As for what I would see as a good wild talents system is something basically similiar to Dark Sun.  Maybe even have a subguild called "Wild Talent" as to be the route to get this sort of thing.  Everyone has the minor psionic skills contact and barrier and no one blinks an eye.  Have a few people have some other minor psionic skills, preferably random, that could be of use in certain ways but wouldn't necessarily provoke a witch hunt if you were found to possess them.  Something that would in my mind enrich the psionic aspect of the game (since psionicists are in my experience some of the rarest and most secretive of all guilds) without broadening the use of magick or powerful psionics.

This I actually kind of like.   This "wild talents" subguild would have to require karma, IMHO.   And maybe only mundane guilds could use it?