Talents from Set 2 & 3 and Specialisations from Set 3

[King_Kull]

I'm thinking about the game balance of the Talents and Specialisations of Set 2 and 3. Do you allow your players the access to all talents (Set 1-3) or do your player are limited to the talents at the respective levels of the sets, for example, a warrior of 3rd level can only take talents from Set 1, a rogue from 13th level can take all talents? And what abou the specialisations? Can a player take a specialisation from Set 3 at 6th level? I'm asking, because one of my players would like to take Poison Making at 3rd level and I can't decide, if I should say yes or no. Is it the intention of the game that you can take some talents only at certain levels or is it a wrong assumption?
Thank you ahead for your comments.

[Vaelorn]

My understanding is that as long as the character meets the requirements then they should be able to take it. I can't see any reason why the Set 3 talent 'Oratory', for example, shouldn't be available to a 3rd level character. Whether that talent would be useful for him depends on the style of the campaign, of course!

[vonpenguin]

I personally would allow full access to anything they qualify for. Otherwise you wind up with some oddities like polearms, generally considered peasant’s weapons, only being available to the best fighters in the world. In your example of poison making keep in mind that the price and difficulty of making the poison, while not impossible, is high enough and time consuming enough that it won’t make the character overpowered in any real way. I mean there is the potential issue with any of the crafting talents that the player will sell their services to supplement their income but that problem would exist at any level.

[Pytorb]

My understanding is that as long as the character meets the requirements then they should be able to take it. I can't see any reason why the Set 3 talent 'Oratory', for example, shouldn't be available to a 3rd level character. Whether that talent would be useful for him depends on the style of the campaign, of course!

I very much agree with this, for Focuses, Talents, Specialisations and Spells. The only area I wonder about is taking double Focuses before level 11. Should a level 2/3/4 character be able to focus exclusively on one thing or does the ability to double Focus only come with the complete understanding of the skill that comes from being higher level?

[vonpenguin]

From my reading of the rules +3 focuses are a purely 11+ thing. This is likely a balance thing but if you need a fluff based rationale then I would say that a lower level character is more of a generalist, they need to spread themselves out and once they understand how things interact they can adjust that to one specific skil, maybe? Not perfect but it's something.

[Elfie]

Yeah I definitely let characters take any talents or specializations or spells or weapons or focuses or ANYTHING that they meet the requirements for regardless of what book it is.

And the double-focus thing is explicitly only for level 11+ characters, so lower-level characters don't meet the requirements.

[Elfie]

One anecdote about this. I had a mage who took Flaming Weapons at level 2, a spell that is from Set 2. He failed the roll EVERY TIME HE CAST THE SPELL until he hit level 4 and took the Primal focus and a Magic advancement. I thought this worked perfectly. He was a low-level mage trying to use more dangerous magic than he was really ready for, and it knocked him on his ass constantly until he really focused (har har) his learning.

[King_Kull]

Wow, thanks for the quick replies. Okay, with the requirements, some of the Talents can only be taken at higher levels and therefore it will not uncalance the game. But personally, mages in my game can only take spells from Set 2 & 3 at 6th level or higher. I find the idea, that a mage learns first the low grade spells and the become much more powerfull very good and it reminds me of the computer game . okay, this sound a little geekish

[Giorgio]

I allowed my players to take any focus and talent they qualified for from set 1 and 2, but I restricted the spell selection to only set 1 spells at character creation to keep things simple. They can choose spells from set 2 from level 2 onwards.

Set 3 stuff is off limit till the material is published.