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View Full Version : Saga like talents for 3.5 Classes ?



Siegel
2010-01-29, 05:05 AM
Would this work ? From what i heard the talent idea is really cool and makes multiclassing much easier.

Giving the Druid the
Wildshape
Nature Spellcasting
Animal Companion

talent trees and the rouge the

Missforune
Sneaking
Skill Talent

talent trees etc.

Would this help balance ?

Yora
2010-01-29, 05:16 AM
Would it work. Yes.

But it's quite some work you'd to put into this. There are 11 core classes and each should have 3 to 4 talent trees of 3 to 5 talents, at least! And you might also want to make talent trees for some additonal classes. And let's not talk about prestige classes. My games only use 9 classes without any prestige classes, so it would not be THAT much work for such a situation. But if you also want to include material from lots of other books, that'd be work for years.

I think it would probably improve the game A LOT, though.

Thames
2010-01-29, 06:44 AM
I've been thinking on this myself - If someone wished to initate a group effort to achieve this I would help.

Anyway what I was thinking was:
Feats cover basic things like the careful shot, deadeye tree branch from saga itll make you better at snipering but not great and thus can cover background things
Skills are still skills
Talents are the funky things which are class specific (something i think was a mistake in saga was the Weapons specialisation talent was available to Jedi and soldier - even if the jedi version was weapon specific, it should have been a soldier only talent considering how multiclassing in saga holds no penalty and class != concept anyway i sidetrack)
Classes should be reduced in number due the flexibility of the talent system (in other words alot of classes will be made redundant as you can just mix and match other classes to the same end) The classes I've been making are the Warrior, Artisan and Mystic which become the Barbarian, fighter; rogue, ranger; wizard, sorcerer based on the talents you take.

Some things aren't talents like spellcasting that should just be a class feature.

An idea for a talent tree could be school specialisation, to increase your abiliities with a given school, Arcane spell failure reduction and other stuff I'll post again later when i have the energy to do a writeup if there is sufficent interest - otherwise ill just make it for myself.

Edit: Oh my answer by the way is may not help balance but it will make characters much more customisable and reduce redundancy in the system and it think it is worth doing

Yora
2010-01-29, 06:56 AM
I'd even prefer a "Saga Fantasy" conversion.

Warrior, Rogue, Priest, and Mage base classes with four Talent trees each. Then you could also make a Ranger, Bard, Paladin, and Druid Talent tree, which can be learned by characters of all classes that meet the requirements.
Though it wouldn't be very much like D&D anymore. :smallbiggrin:

BooNL
2010-01-29, 07:17 AM
It's very possible to use the Saga rules for a fantasy game. The various weapons aren't really any stronger than 3.5 weapons, so you can just rename a couple and remove the rest.

The only two things that'd require work are the armour system and the Jedi. Saga is build around the idea that the heroes wear as little armour as possible. But giving every class a couple of the amour talents from the Soldier line for free should work.

The Jedi should probably be removed as a whole, or refluffed as a gish class. The Use the Force system however, is a really cool magic system as is. You have no spell progression path in any of the classes, instead you spend feats to be able to get more spells to cast.

It works pretty good, but it would remove the Wizard archetype a bit.

Eldariel
2010-01-29, 10:18 AM
It works pretty good, but it would remove the Wizard archetype a bit.

You could do this like Midnight did Channeler; everyone can pick said powers, but Channelers gain most of the abilities by default and gain some expansions on them not available through feats alone.

Person_Man
2010-01-29, 10:30 AM
I too have had this idea, and love it. I personally hoped that 4E would be D&D Saga Edition. But the opposite happened.


And there are some potential problems with Talents - with the biggest one being heavy multi-classing so that people can dip for the Talents they want. But this can be solved with careful writing. You'd pretty much have to abolish PrC as they are written in SWSE. There's no reason to play a class that alternates between Talents and Feats when you can take levels of a class that offers Talents and Feats and Class Abilities.

You'd also have to take a careful look at balance. Each Talent should be roughly equal to every other Talent in terms of power, and every Talent should scale with your character level.

Thames
2010-01-29, 11:00 AM
ok i can see that no-one has the same image of how it should work as me, no problem ill just make it for myself

Dienekes
2010-01-29, 02:15 PM
I, uhh, may have already started out on this idea for a few months now.

Most of what I have done was simply redistributing already pre-made talents into the classes I wanted to use and developed a few talents with yet to be determined balance)

What I've done is

Artisan= Can be bard like and/or builders depending on talents chosen.
Inspiration talent tree, Gossip talent tree (for more intriguey based abilities)
Craftsman talent tree (gives benefit to creating masterwork items and repairing equipment)
Musician talent tree (bard benefits)

Knave= For rogues and assassins and the like, basically taken from scoundrel
Acrobatic talent tree (sorta based on jedi flip like abilities)
Luck talent tree
Misfortune talent tree
Thief talent tree (placeholder name, sorta hodgepodge of roguish skills)

Man-at-arms= Fighters essentially
Defender talent tree (based on armor talent tree but with a few abilities to be a guardsman)
Soldier talent tree (a renamed Commando tree)
Weapon Specialist talent tree
Brawler talent tree

Noble= based on nobles
Influence talent tree
Leadership talent tree
Lineage talent tree
Stewardship talent tree (lot of money based abilities, don't like it pretty much a placeholder)

Priest= based on cleric concept, sorta a mix of the jedi and noble classes early concept
Sermon talent tree (talk a lot and give benefit to allies)
Divine Knowledge talent tree (placeholder for unlocking further divine magical things)
Healing talent tree (should be self explanatory)
Oracle talent tree (based around the idea of divine inspired prophecy)

Sage= the wizard types, primarily based on the jedi
Council talent tree
Alchemy talent tree (unlocking the arts of making magic liquids and whatnot)
Arcane Knowledge (placeholder name to say developing pure magicalness)
Lore talent tree (sorta based on Diligence talent tree but I wanted it to be a bit more knowledge based)

Scout= basically ranger types, based off what else, the scout
Camouflage talent tree
Awareness talent tree
Survivor talent tree
Raider talent tree (based partially on fringer but with a more barbaric feel)

Well I hope that helps in some way. If you want help just ask PM, or if you think I'm a lunatic don't.