Harliquinn wrote:
I think people may either be reading this wrong or I'm missing why this is so powerful in peoples' minds.
4) Talents like Prodigy, Stealthy, etc. give "Bonuses" to a skill. This gives Ranks. Therefore, they stack and are entirely different things.
Sabbatical to me is an opportunity for a character to 'shore up' some shortcomings (For instance, if you weren't able to start with enough ranks in a combat, arcanum, or other important skill, this is your chance to get another rank). You can use it to boost your primary role a little more. Considering that over the course of a career, this is going to be the difference between 1 Rank out of 14-15 (for a 'secondary skill') or out of 18-20 (for a 'primary skill'), it's not going to be game changing for anyone that I can see.
John
Point 4 is huge. Getting an extra rank in a skill is much more powerful than a bonus. It applies to passive, it "stacks" with everything, it works for prerequisites. A bonus is worth much less than a rank in a skill.
My take away from some discussions on number cruching done by others is that 3 ranks is life and death in hitting the required numbers in this game, because of how using multiple dice effects the average. (though I have not crunched the numbers myself) If your bonus puts you hitting 3 over a defense on average you almost never miss, if it puts you three under you will almost never hit. Survival in combat comes down to being able to keep up with the average defenses of our opponents/targets.
I've heard target defenses (and I assume defenses our enemies will be able to hit) are near 35 at tier 5. To hit that as one enters tier 5, with an average state (d8) you'll need 19.5 in bonus to hit on average. If you start with 3 ranks and add 3 per tier 1-4 that gets you 15 ranks. Assume one bonus from a talent. That means you are still 3.5 ranks below affecting your enemy 50% of the time. This puts you in the category of almost never affecting him. So you have to do everything you can to get at least 3-4 more ranks/bonus’s just to stay competitive.
I suspect that by tier 5 that will be easy to do – By maxing out a stat rather than being average, by taking talents like “sabbatical,” by taking paths, and through magic. (magic is the biggie that I don't have a good handle on how ubiquitous bonus's will be and what magnitude they will be by then) But what that means is that everything else that you don’t maximize with every path choice and talent taken will fall behind the curve. If all targets have defenses like that, it is impossible to be good enough at anything else but those two skills you maximize at every chance. Even if you advance a skill every tier by 3, if you don’t support it with talent and path selection, you will fall 3 or more below the curve and thus almost never be able to use it effectively. (unless enemy skills like perception, locks difficulties, traps, riddles, social challenges, and knowledge difficulties don’t rise as fast as combat ones.) Obviously then even the "gain 2 ranks per tier in a new talent" puts you horrendously below that talent being useful at higher tiers.
So talents like this “sabbatical” that give a rank in skills of your choosing are hugely critical to your survival!
It’s a game balance I don’t know how to deal with, because obviously if the campaign makes it easier to get bonus’s, than some will be more than 3 ahead of the curve in their skills, and the challenges won’t be a challenge to those people. I’m not complaining because I think the campaign has come up with an interesting system and I want to see how it works out. I can’t say if this talent should be weaker or other talents should be stronger, but it is clear that this is a very strong talent.
