Talk:Traits (4E)
Basics
Talents come in three basic types; persona, subplots, and perks. Personal talents affect yourself and your abilities, and include all professions. Subplots have an effect on the story, and is an invitation to the DM to weave stories around your character; it is a statement of interest in a certain type of plot. Perks are social advantages your character enjoys in the game world. Many of them invite to subplots as well, especially political ones, but not as directly as subplot talents do.
I had an idea that the if the professions were called talents maybe the talents could be called gimmicks? --TexaS 10:54, 17 December 2008 (CET)
Heroic Talents
Adopted Race
Perk
Prerequisite: Speak the language of the race that adopts you (if there is such a language).
Benefit: You have very good relations with a race other than your own, to the point that you are considered a member of this race for social purposes. You are considered to be as honorable as any other member of this race, accepted as one of their own. Among humans, this only applies to one human culture; humans are too diverse for any one nonhuman to become accepted among all tyes of humans.
Cause
Perk
Benefit: You are a champion for a certain cause, and know among others dedicated to and against this cause. This gives you a set of friends and enemies depending on the exact cause you choose when taking this talent. Causes can be religious creed
Cute
Perk
The discussion so far went against subdividing cute further. Still, as the complimentary talent to Awe, cute does assume a certain degree of passiveness and/or lack of respect. --Starfox 17:06, 17 December 2008 (CET)
Should these variants exist alongside cute, or should you choose between them when you pick cute? Are these three variants enough? If you have to choose you have to have more, like charming and beautiful. I don't like the idea that a talent many picks has to be split up. It's like every feat or skill that more than one character picks has to be split up. "Oh no, you picked perception too, well I'm better at eyesight, you have to be better at listening or smelling." --TexaS 10:46, 12 December 2008 (CET)
Isn't this solved with no change? --TexaS 10:54, 17 December 2008 (CET)
Benefit: Being cute makes it easy for you to get into social events, make acquaintances, and generally be very popular in a non-domineering sort of way. There is something about you that makes others care for you. People who would ordinarily be hostile might capture ore use you instead of killing you.
- Adorable: You inspire others to take care of you. This often goes with a somewhat infantile presence. As long as you stay somewhat subdued or submissive you can expect many people to give you favorable treatment, with minor gifts, favors, and treats.
- Alluring: You have a mystery about you that is appealing to others. By remaining silent and aloft, you inspire others to think about you and perhaps even approach you. Once they get to know you, they will slowly realize what is under the surface and the allure is replaced by other feelings. This can be bad if there is nothing beneath.
- Perky: You have an upbeat personality and your antics are generally taken in a positive way. This cheers up those around you and contributes to a positive atmosphere. You often serve to inspire others to action, though sometimes not into doing what you want them to.
Deep Pockets
Personal
Benefit: You do not need to exactly specify your equipment list. You can specify items that are in your pack, without specifying them ahead of time. Such an item must be reasonably common in the area, the Dm can veto items he considers outrageous. It can neither weight more than 1 lb per point of Strength you have nor cost more than 5% of your available free gold. When you specify an item like this, you immediately pay twice its normal cost.
Eerie
Perk
Benefit: There is something odd and unusual about you, that makes others leave you alone. This might be a mannerism, such as talking to yourself or staring vacantly into space, or an indefinable aura. The end result is that people expect odd tings from you and around you, and will pay no heed to such occurrences unless they cause some kind of direct harm. They might think you a harmless eccentric or leave you alone out of fear. If there is a witch-hunt in progress, this can backfire; people too cowardly or reserved to do something yourself might still report on you.
Fashion Sense
Perk
Benefit: You have knowledge of fashions of your time and understanding of what can be worn when and to provoke which reaction. This lets you dress for every occasion, and also gives you the know-how to dress unusually without causing a scandal.
Al tough fashion sense most commonly applies to dress and toilette, it can apply to art, architecture, cuisine and other cultural traits as well.
Flighty
Subplot
Benefit: You are a sucker for romance, and constantly tend to get romantically entangled.
Influential Friend
Subplot
Benefit: You have a friend in a high position, corresponding to a perk talent one tier above your own. This can be a childhood friend, an accidental acquaintance, a lover, or otherwise someone in an offical capacity who you know privately. For example, at the heroic tier, you might have an influential friend with an Army or who is a Minister, while at the paragon level your influential friend can even be a King. At the epic level, you can potentially have divine beings as your influential friend.
Inclined to act in your favor, an influential friend has many other obligations and is unreliable even if honorable. An influential friends likes you and wants to correspond with you or sped time with you, but is aware that showing you preferential treatment is somewhat irresponsible and thus does not provide the full support of a Mentor. Pressuring an influential friend can often produce grand results in the short term, but can cause backlash if over-exploited.
Lackey
Perk
Prerequisite: Level 4
Benefit: You have an lackey who will provide for and serve you as long as it involves little personal risk. The lackey will travel with you, take care of your mounts or carriage, arrange for food and lodging, set up camp, stand guard, and do other domestic duties. A lackey avoids combat and only fights if sorely pressed. Sometimes, a lackey might provide more exiting services, such as opening a locked chest you bring back to camp, scouting, or acting as a foil, but never in competition with another player character.
A lackey is an NPC two levels lower than yours of a class and race agreed upon with the DM.
Special: The lackey is and NPC and is thus designed by the DM. You can take this talent several times, each time gaining a separate lackey. If your lackey is killed, you will want to retrain this talent.
Scrounging
Weak and pretty uninteresting, needs more.
Personal
Benefit: This lets you improvise and scrounge for food and gear in trash bins and ruins. Use your Dungeoneering, Nature, or Streetwise for this, depending on the environment. This lets you come up with improvised weapons like staves, clubs and daggers, as well as makeshift tools that negate the penalty for lack of a toolkit.
Special Mount
Perk
Benefits: You have acquired the services of a special mount, often of a type not easily found. Choose a creature of your level or lower. The mounts from Adventurer’s Vault page 11 are all available, and the DM might allow you to select a truly exotic creature such as a Unicorn. The mount will carry you in combat, but will not otherwise partake in adventures or fight for you except to defend itself.
Notes: Tough not required, the feats Mounted Combat and Mount Companion greatly increase the value of your special mount. To gain a new special mount, either to change or because the old one died, you must respecify this talent.
Spin Yarn
Personal
Prerequisite: Trained in Bluff.
Benefit: By continually speaking, you may keep your audience captive with outrageous tales, distracting them. You can keep this up beyond all reason. You must first engage the victim in conversation, and then make a Bluff roll against the targets' passive Insight. You can target several people at once with no penalties, but use the highest value in the audience for a difficulty. A successful roll lets you keep telling the story for five minutes before you need to make a second roll.
Combat, an alarm, and other direct threats and immediate situations will break your hold on people. You might have to use your Spin Yarn on someone who comes to interrupt, or lose your audience.
- This is too bizarre and open to abuse for my taste. --Urban 13:49, 22 January 2009 (CET)
Paragon Talents
These talents become available at level 11. At this level, character can assume social obligations and responsibilities, gaining power and influence thereby. You should choose such positions sensibly. While it is certainly possible for a rogue to be a High Priest in church that has gone political, such a position is generally more appropriate to a divine class character.
The practical benefits of such a position rarely applies to adventuring, but is a reward in itself as it gives you prestige and social status. It is generally a good idea to have an Agent to run the practical side of such a position, leaving you free to adventure.
In many cases, paragon talents build on heroic talents, but they generally do not replace them. For example, it is possible to be a Baron without having Blue Blood, but you do not get the respect due a blue-blooded scion of an ancient lineage. You can retrain your heroic talent, but in this case this means you have advanced beyond your origin; your family is ancient but not originally baronial, and you are still seen as an upstart when you become a baron. In many cases, this has been explained as a part of the paragon talent, but even when it is not, paragon talents expand upon but do not supercede heroic talents.
Army
Perk
Benefit: You have a horde or army of low-level followers you can call upon. When in active service, these followers take time and money to maintain, tough a successful campaign generally pays its own expenses and you can employ them to patrol or as a garrison to defray costs. The army generally has a comprehensive look-and-feel; an infantry force, engineering corps, barbarian horde, or cavalry squadron. You build it like an encounter, with an XP budget equal to the gp cost of a magic item of your level. No member of your army has a higher level than half your level. An army can be used for military campaigns, as guards, and for other tasks that need a lot of people; they are not very useful on adventures.
Special: This feat can be taken several times, each time with a different army, often different in style.
Baron
Perk
Benefit: You are a regional landowner of considerable power, controlling a town or several villages. Benefits include a corps of guards similar to half an Army and a castle, but these guards are needed in the area and cannot range far or take part in adventures. You are also a political figure of importance, and your voice will be heard on most matters.
Notes: If you lack the Blue Blood talent, you are newly ennobled; while admired for your prowess, you do not gain the full respect due ancestral peers of the realm.
Environmental Echo
Personal
Benefit: Your association with an element or force is strong enough that the effect goes with you wherever you go. Decide on an effect related to the powers you have, typical examples include elements, times of day, seasons, and so on. Wherever you go, the effect you are related to grows stronger. If you are related to winter, it is always cold where you are, if you are related to spring flowers bloom in tour path, and so on. While this has no direct game effect, it establishes you as a personage of power and importance.
Genius
Perk
Prerequisites: Celebrity
Benefit: You are recognized as especially gifted, your works are given the highest regard. This is usually applicable to artists, but activists, muckrakers, priests, scholars, and philosophers can also qualify. Whatever you say or do is news, and your opinion weights heavily on public opinion. This gives you little direct power, but access to the highest circles. And if you are insulted or express your dislike of something, it can cause social chaos.
Guild Master
Perk
Benefit: You are a master of a guild, or in the case of very large and powerful guilds, a ranking official and regional leader. A guild is a professional organization as outlined under Guild Member above. You can call on your subordinates for support and professional services; this allows you to delegate work related to your organization. The guild also reports to you, which gives you a great deal of information.
Notes: Unless you are also a Guild Member, you do not gain access to guild resources like a guild member does; you are assumed to lead the guild from above, not be a working member.
Haunted
Perk
Benefit: You are a magnet for spirits and poltergeist events. Odd but minor things happen near you; milk goes sour, animals walk on their hind legs, apparitions appear, and ghostly voices bemoan their fate. This gives you a solid reputation as a spooky person whose interests are not to be crossed; ordinary people dare not oppose your interest, tough they might petition lords and heroes to help them if you become an acute threat. Even persons of import show you a mix of fear and respect, but more guardedly. Overusing respect earned this way can backfire.
High Priest
Perk
Benefit: You have a high position in a church or religious order, generally being the regional leader comparable to a bishop. You can set the policy of the local church, and learn a lot of information about religious and magical events. You can declare holidays and feast days, and are expected to officiate at important ceremonies; if you do not it is seen as divine censure and can have political and divine repercussions. Unless you are also an Ordained Priest, you do not have the grassroots contacts that position brings.
Lord Justice
Perk
Benefit: You are in a high judiciary position; depending on the locale, this can be a barbarian law-speaker or a robed and bewigged judge. In either case, your voice is given high regard on matters judiciary, and you are expected to resolve conflicts and settle disputes. Though it is not mandatory to be a skilled Governor to take this position, it is generally very hard to be a respected judge without such expertise.
Magical Warden
Perk
Benefit: You are the guardian of a magical site; this can be a gateway to another world or a place of power. It is best to choose a place of power that has already appeared in the campaign, so that it has an already established magical effect. Typical effects of such sites are to aid certain rituals or allow travel to other planes. They also act as monster magnets; your presence influences what kinds of monsters appear, generally insuring they are amenable to your cause. A site with a responsible warden is an asset to its neighbors, and this position gives you social standing approximately equal to that of a baron or bishop.
Mastermind
Perk
Benefit: You are the regional master of an organization of Secret Agents. Your word is law to your lesser brothers. They will report anything they hear and are willing to do anything for you, but their fanaticism makes the society frail; it is easy to carelessly throw away the lives of your followers if you are not careful.
Maecenate
Perk
Benefit: You have arranged to support artists in your name, either by spending money directly or (more commonly) through the channels you gain from other social paragon talents. As a result, you are seen in a good light in the artist community, which helps you create a good public image, portraying yourself in the best possible light. This serves to enhance any fame or titles you already have, letting you affect how others see you and talk about you. If you are not already one of the rich and famous, patronizing the arts does little except give you personal satisfaction.
- Maecenate does not appear to be used in English, and I can't find it in online dictionaries. Patron (as in patronage) is probably a better name. See Gaius Maecenas legacy on Wikipedia for background; if maecenate was an actual word it would have been mentioned there. --Urban 13:45, 22 January 2009 (CET)
Minster
Perk
Benefit: You have made a political career and won access to important political venues; as a royal council, minister, or otherwise close to the seat of power. In this way you are a power behind the crown, with insight in and influence over policy.
Perk
Benefit: You have one or more ships at your command. These vessel can be worth as much as a magic item of your level, and the crew is an Army with an XP budget of half that. You might not own these ships - it can be a merchant flotilla, part of a navy, or pirates, but you can use it on adventures and the crews are loyal to you; for all practical purposes it is yours. The crew generally stays with the ship and will not enter a dungeon.
Oracle
Perk
Benefit: Your visions are recognized; people believe you speak with the voice of supernatural authority. They might not agree, but they certainly take note of what you say. A true oracle is also a Medium, and now spiritual visitations are common; your fame has spread both in the spirit world and the mundane world. otherwise, you are a fake oracle and can invent your own mystic revelations.
Representative
Perk
Benefit: You are a political representative on the ruling body of your country. If your country has a parliament, you can be a member. You might also be a spokesman for a noble family, burgomaster, ambassador, elected judge, governor, or otherwise be an officer of whatever political system you are a member of. This does not mean you have access to government (choose Minster for that), but you can make political appeals and have them respected and your opinion is given due weight. If you are mistreated or ignored, there might be unrest in the group you represent.
Paragon Adventurer
Perk
Prerequisites: Trained as a Celebrity.
Benefit: You are recognized for your superior class abilities. Whether you are known as a magus, master thief, dragon-slaying warrior or whatever other famous deed you have done matters not; whatever your abilities they have given you recognition. You can freely associate with nobility as an equal, and your advice is sought on matters great and small.
Trendsetter
Perk
Prerequisites: Trained as a Celebrity.
Benefit: You have the presence and fame to create fashion trends. If you also have Fashion Sense, the trends you create are in good taste and become successful. Otherwise, it is very hit-and-miss; people imitate your style, but often do not win acclaim for it, which tends to create cliques and subcultures. Either way, you are notorious in fashionable circles.
Epic Talents
At this level you approach absolute power as an independent monarch or other great leader. Granting such powers is always at the discretion of the DM, who should be consulted before taking these feats. If your area of expertise is the focus of the campaign, you should expect to have to work for your advancement; becoming the king might be the focus of a campaign. In other games, this is just a backdrop, a wayside honor largely irrelevant to your adventuring activities; in this case it is usually easier to gain power, but the impact is also much less.
Epic talents often give worldwide influence, but this influence is vague. If you want direct influence in a smaller area, it is generally wise to hold on to your paragon talents. If you retrain those, you are assumed to have retired from such lower positions in order to enjoy the benefits of your new exalted position, leaving day-to-day activities (and the influence they bring) to someone new.
Archpriest
Perk
Benefit: You are the titular head of your religion, and can give orders to bishops. Your word is law in religious matters, tough it takes tact and diplomacy to get the law implemented across the world.
Chancellor
Perk
Benefit: You are the prime minister of a major power, responsible for day-to-day policy decisions and in charge of the judicial, financial, and diplomatic corps.
Epic Adventurer
Perk
Prerequisites: Trained as a Celebrity.
Benefit: You are recognized for your superior class abilities. Whether you are known as an archmage, legendary thief, or master of dragons. Whatever your abilities they have given you world-wide recognition. You can associate with royalty as an equal, and your personal influence is that of a small nation.
King
Perk
Benefit: You are the lord of a county. You might bear a different title and your powers might not be absolute, but you are the final executive authority of a nation, if not a major power.
Magical Locus
Perk
Benefit: The mark of a saint or archmage, you embody a magical phenomena to such a degree that supernatural effects happen spontaneously up to a mile away from you. Choose one type of effect such as plants growing in barren soil, the dead reanimating, the sick getting cured, or supernatural creatures of a certain type manifesting. You have no direct control over this, but effects are generally benign to you and your interests. The level of such events is on the heroic scale and around 20 levels below your own.
Marshal
Perk
Benefit: You command the military forces of a major power; a large nation or military alliance. You can call a levy and demand armies from regional lords and allies.
Mogul
Perk
Benefit: You are a master of professional and commercial ventures, a merchant lord or guilder of worldwide repute. Wherever you go, members of your profession come out to greet you and seek your aid and advice. You do not hold direct authority, but your influence can drive nations bankrupt.
Shadow Lord
Perk
Benefit: You are a master of plots and secrets; aware of and in a position to manipulate several Masterminds, either because you are their shadow mentor, or because you have spies planted in their organizations. Your information network is vast, and you can cause all kinds of events all over the world, but you have little direct control over what your minions do; such control would jeopardize security.
Prophet
Perk
Benefit: You receive direct guidance from a supernatural source - or at least people believe you do. Strangers treat you as the emissary of a god - or demon. If you are also a Medium, your visions are genuine, and the power level of the spirits guiding you has increased manifold; you now hear the voice of past kings, primordials and demon princes, archfey, or gods. If you are also an Oracle your visions are frequent.
Notes: There is a danger in playing a genuine prophet; you are a tool of fate and lose some control over your character. In many cases, it is more interesting to play a false prophet or one at odds with his visions, who sees but does not fully believe. In other cases, the Dm might simply let you decide what your visions are.
Visionary
Subplot
Benefit: Your ideas run like wildfire trough the world. Whether the listener knows who spoke them or not, your views and ideas spread rapidly, possibly changing the life of millions. If you express dislike for something, it comes under immediate public scrutiny. If you express a preference for something, it is likely to garner followers and grow into a popular movement.