This post was delayed, not because the chapter is long, but because I am a busy man. Work and study and, yesterday, gaming took me away from the keyboard.
We learned in chapter two that it costs fewer XP to buy or upgrade Talents than it does to buy or upgrade skills. I am down this that, because I find the Talents list very inspiring. The combination of talents that you acquire as you develop your characters will make them truly unique.
So, what makes Talents so special in this game? For a start, these Talents have three levels, which is an idea we gave the guys at Fria Ligan back in … episode three, I think it was, of the Coriolis Effect. What it means in practice is that rank one talents might seem a little underpowered compared to their Coriolis equivalent.
For example, take the Executioner talent, which allows a character to swap the dice on a d66 Critical Injury roll, so the tens becomes units a vice versa. Thus a 16 becomes a 61 if you want. At rank one in Forbidden Lands, you only get a re-roll, so you might only replace your 16 with say, 12 if you are unlucky. You can choose which result to accept though. At rank two however, you get the re-roll and the ability to swaps the tens and ones around. So rank one may seem weaker than a Coriolis Talent, but rank two is definitely better than a Coriolis talent. And rank three?
RANK 3: When you inflict a critical injury on your enemy, you may choose freely from the relevant list.
Boom. Head shot. 66. Every time.
And if you want someone dead, it’s best to do it with a crit. Because it looks from the Coldblooded talent that it’s actually quite hard to kill people. Not because people are tough, you can break people, or be broken frightenly easily. But even though they are down, they might not be dead. If you want to finish them off, in cold blood, you normally have to make a roll to see if you can stomach it, and you have to spend a willpower point or take empathy damage. (I forgot to mention Willpower, you earn willpower for every one you roll when pushing.) Of course it’s all a lot easier if you have the Coldblooded talent.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves. The first talent you get you don’t chose. Or rather you get with your kin choice. Like in Star Trek Adventures, Humankind are “Adaptive”. Which kind of makes sense, if you think that all the other races, for all their back-stories, are all really a subset of what it means to be human, with some traits pushed to the fore. I don’t blame Fria Ligan for this, it’s the same for all games, which are (so far at least) all written by humans.
The first choice you get is picking one of three Profession talents. And each of these add a distinct “flavour” to your starting character. So, pick Rider for example, and you are a horseman. But there is difference between, for example, the Knights of Westeros and the Dothraki in Game of Thrones, and two of the Rider talents let you flavour your PC to feel more like one of those. The third, the Path of the Companion twists you more towards the Western trope of a lone horseman and his loyal steed, his one true friend.
But it’s the general talents that let you make your character your own. For example, there are three professional talents for fighters, but everyone fights in the Forbidden Lands so the fighting style Talents are open to all. Are you a Brawler, do you carry at Axe, or (again with the Game of Thrones examples – at least I am not still going on about the First Law books) like Grey Worm, are you a Spear Fighter? Using talents thus allows the game to keep the skill list to a neat sixteen, while allowing detail and diversification. So you don’t need to have sailing on the skill list for most characters or campaign even, but when you need it, it’s there as a talent. And level three of that talent, as well as the weapon specialisations, let’s you roll a d8 Artefact die, massively increasing your chance of success. Similarly, you might have the crafting skill, which makes it possible to have a go at making anything, but with talents, you can specialise, as a Smith, Tanner or Tailor.
To close, there are just a few talents I want to mention. The Berserker talent kind of does what I was trying to do with the The Nhamadan Talent or Neural Sheathing in Coriolis, but given that at rank three is only offers the equivalent of three hit points, maybe it does make my attempt somewhat overpowered. Players who don’t like the thought of being manipulated by other PCs or GMCs might want to consider the Incorruptible talent, which offer some defence or at level three means you simply can’t be manipulated. Fearless give you defence against fear attacks. And finally, Pain Resistant rang an alarm bell when I read that “if you take a single point of damage from a close combat attack, you don’t lose your attack in the same step”. I thought for a moment that meant that when I get to the combat rules, I would discover that people without this talent would not be able to counter attack when hit. “Wow” I thought, “this system IS deadly.” But then I noticed that it also says “This talent can only be used if you use the advanced close combat rules.” Phew!
Combat is the next chapter, and it looks like a long one, so again the post might not be out tomorrow.
fictionsuit.org 