Review of the talents of OWRPG
The Old World Roleplaying Game has a plethora of talents that characters can learn - but which ones are any good? Your mileage may of course vary, but this guide gives my opinions based on first impressions and some very limited playtesting. Do you disagree with any of my takes? Leave a comment, if you have good enough arguments I might even update the guide.
(Note: This post was edited shortly after publication to make the blue text easier to read on the black background used on this blog.)
This text is divided into sections where I discuss talents suitable for various in-game activities or character archetypes. Some talents may be included in more than one category. The categories are Awareness talents, Background talents, Healer talents, Leadership talents, Mage talents, Negotiator talents, Scholar talents, Tank talents and Warrior talents. The categories vary in size, warrior talents being by far the largest one.
Talents are rated on a color scale - GOLD means a talent is generally excellent for its cost, and should be considered by almost everyone. BLUE is still very good for almost everyone, but may have a bit more of a cost or be a bit more niche. GREEN is only situationally useful, or good but has an inconvenient cost. PURPLE is usually a poor choice, but could be good in some corner case builds. RED is trash in almost all cases and should probably be avoided.
The lucky talent doesn’t fit into any of the categories. It makes your tests to gamble glorious, which isn’t likely to come up that often but will be nice when it does. More importantly, it gives you a free spending of a fate point (even if you’ve burned all your fate) each session. I consider this amazing, as it is always useful and can be used on important tests. It’s especially good for Elves and others with a low fate score. 4XP probably isn’t worth spending on this until your most important stats are at 4 or higher - but eventually everyone should take Lucky.
These talents improve your senses and ability to react to the world.
Requiring Initiative 4+ (and not being deafened) and costing only 2XP, this talent lets you make awareness tests to hear whispers, mechanical ticks and conversations through walls that are inaudible to most characters. In a spy campaign, that is potentially a huge benefit - though remember that OWRPG requires the GM to let you spot clues without tests, so at best it is probably going to let you get where you were going anyway a bit faster.
Beyond that, having the talent also means you do not suffer penalties for being Blinded condition when making melee attacks or defending yourself. This should include fighting in total darkness, opening up some very interesting combat options while underground. It also lets you ignore some injuries. Getting Initiative to 4+ may not be for everyone, but for those who have it, this talent is very good.
Requiring Initiative 4+ (and not being blinded) and costing only 2XP, this lets you make awareness tests to spot distant threats, tiny details and telltale signs of forgery that others could not perceive. You can also read lips in languages you are familiar with. The spotting of details and forgery could be useful, but OWRPG requires the GM to let you notice clues without tests. Even if that is taken with a grain of salt, this is rarely going to come up. That means this talent is extremely unlikely to give you any really meaningful return on investment.
For 2xp and no requirements, this lets you see up to Long Range in darkness (usually limited to medium), and you get significant bonuses to attacking someone who can’t see you (that you can see) in darkness. Very situational, but great when it does apply - and the cost is very reasonable. If you fight at night or in poorly lit cellars (that have a layout that still lets you attack at long range) a lot, this is better.
These talents help you build a character that is tied to the world.
A thematic talent for a Bretonnian Knight character, though only useful in combat and you could really have the same background-effect by just roleplaying your prayer. For the mechanical effect and rating, find it under Warrior Talents.
Faith costs 4xp and requires you to be from The Empire. (That limitation seems a bit silly to me, as Bretonnian commoners are known to worship gods like Shallya and Rhya, so talk to your GM if you have niche needs.) It allows you to pick a god you believe in so much you are imbued with their divine power. The talent can be taken 3 times, the first gives you some bonuses for being favored by the god, the second lets you perform some spell-like effects called prayers, and the last level lets you invoke a miracle - once. If you perform that miracle, you have to pay again for the level 3 faith in order to be able to do so again.
The gods favors are all very flavorful, and many of them are mechanically awesome as well. And having a strong belief in a deity gives a fantastic connection between your character and the game world. While not mandatory, every imperial character should consider this.
Do note that you cannot get the talent if you are touched by the winds or otherwise capable of spellcasting - doesn’t say in the talent descriptions, but it does say so on page 138. Which is problematic, because it is very possible to roll both of those talents for an imperial character during character creation.
This costs 4xp and requires the Questing Vow talent, which again has a lot of requirements, meaning this is basically an “end game” talent - before you consider that you must drink from the actual Grail to take this talent. This means this talent is only going to see play in extremely rare circumstances. If you DO manage to fulfill those circumstances, it gives you a ton of amazing benefits - great stuff. I like that this talent exists, but I don’t think I will ever see it in play. And if I do, it feels a bit like a level 20 capstone from D&D - once you get it, the campaign is basically over. So in practice this is useless. But as something to aspire to and in the odd campaign where the GM will let you play on as a grail knight for a significant time, it is clearly golden.
For 3XP (no requirements) you can hate a group of NPCs such as beastmen, orcs or dwarves. As a background talent, it gives a tangible effect, and playing around the distracted condition when your enemy is present could be fun - but note that the condition doesn’t require you to bear any animosity towards the object of your hatred, it just wants you to focus on them. The combat benefits this gives is bad compared to just spending the XP to improve your combat stats, and while the roleplaying potential is okay, it’s not a fantastic mechanical representation of hatred.
For 3XP and no other requirements, you commit to a moral code such as the strictures of a god or a code of chivalry. The talent lets you make a test glorious OR lets you spend fate to auto-succeed once per session. The limitation is that the test must be made to fulfill your vow. This may require some thinking to have apply, and depending on your code it may not come up every session. Apart from that, I really like the talent.
For 3XP and being a dwarf, you can start the game as… old. Which is a lot cooler in dwarf society than it sounds. This can only be taken during character creation, and it lets you be a longbeard - though the talent doesn’t specify it, in the lore that generally means you are at least a hundred years old and have a beard that reaches the floor.
Mechanically, you get +1d to escape conditions, as well as to remove them from allies. It also changes your social expectations vs dwarf NPCs, which can be useful (but also a problem if you don’t want to be a traditionalist). A bonus to recover from conditions is pretty good, to make the most of it, couple it with an okay leadership score and the Hold the Line talent. In general though, I would say just being a longbeard is worth it for the flavor, but the cool factor does require a GM who uses dwarven NPCs and plays into the dwarven culture.
For 3XP and requiring the Blessings of the Lady talent (which itself has a lot of requirements), this lets you become a questing knight. You become immune to the Distracted condition (making this interact interestingly with Hatred and some other rules) and you can spend fate or activate Honor Bound (which you need to get the prerequisites for this) to remove the Broken condition upon getting it, which prevents Broken from turning off Blessings of the Lady.
It’s not a very big effect, but the flavor of becoming a Questing Knight may be worth it for you.
For 3XP during character creation, you can be the descendant of someone famous. This requires you to work out the details with your GM. It affects what people expect of you in social encounters.
This is cool, but would have benefited enormously from some good examples. It is too likely this won’t affect a campaign unless you have a very good GM, and the mechanical effects are very situational and minor. Unfortunately a bad choice unless you really like the flavor or have a GM who is willing and able to build parts of the campaign around it.
A bit uncertain about where to put this, but as it's a “character creation only” trait, I guess I’ll put it among the backgrounds. For only 2XP, you can be small. It lets you break ties in your favor when opposing with agility (which significantly includes using Athletics to dodge in combat), although your opponents win ties on opposed Strength tests (which are much rarer). You can slip into and out of places others can’t, and can hide in plain sight with stealth. You are burdened if you carry a two-handed melee weapon.
This is a very good talent for anyone planning to be stealthy or to defend with Athletics. It is only bad if you want to be a strength-based or two-handed-melee-based fighter. Short kings are where it is at in OWRPG. In contrast to most of the background talents, which are often only really good if you like the flavor, this one is only really bad if you don’t like the idea of being tiny. The only reason it isn't gold is that the main benefit disappears if you're planning to use Defence instead of Athletics to defend yourself.
A wood elf can spend 3xp to get this. It will make them instinctively aware of spites within medium range, being able to test to see them even if they use illusory magic to conceal themselves. It also makes you able to try to persuade such creatures to help you, though it will come at a cost.
This talent is either going to be completely useless, if the GM doesn’t use spites in the campaign, or amazingly good if he does. As such, it is mostly a background trait that ties you t o the lore of the wood elves and their connection to nature spirits. I’m not fond of it, because of its “all or nothing” relevance depending on the GMs plans.
With this talent, you have magical talent, which is an awesome tie-in to a lot of things in the world. It’s good mechanically as well. See the Mage Talents section for a full run-down.
These talents help you heal yourself or your friends. (Well, this talent - there's only one.)
This requires 3xp and the anatomy lore. Requiring a lore is a pretty high cost, but due to the way it can prevent festering wounds, Anatomy is a very good lore to have - so someone in the party is probably going to qualify. This trait allows you to stop an ongoing effect from a wound with a recall test, and you can perform surgery without medical facilities. Note that its only useful for wounds that require healing to stop their effects, not just treatment (as you could do that without the trait). These wounds start appearing at wound level 14 (so the second or third wound roll usually), and include such effects as being continuously drained, staggered or burdened, being unable to use an arm, etc. In a long battle, where something like this happens to a major combatant, this talent could be a life saver. Its not going to be useful all the time, however, but your allies will thank you when it does come into play.
These talents let you lead others, particularly in battle, buffing them.
Removing the staggered condition while doing something useful is very good, and for a reasonable 3XP this is pretty good. Fellowship 4 is a bit niche, and this isn’t really useful for the frontline fighter who wants to hit things - but for a character who invests heavily in social skills and not that much in combat, this is a gold talent: The help action is very good in this game, and doesn’t risk much, and you can almost always justify using Leadership to encourage your allies in combat - and you only have to be within earshot, meaning you can stay far away from the frontline if you have little protection. For such a character, the help action is good on its own, and this makes it a lot better.
For 3XP and only requiring you to have “Musicians gear” (I would also allow the Golden Voice talent to stand in for the gear here, but RAW it doesn’t work), you can play your instrument without using an action in combat… the things you can use this for seem very similar to what you could just do by speaking or shouting, so not very useful. But, you can also use your action to inspire comrades with a leadership tests, allowing some of them to win ties on opposed tests when defending themselves until your next turn. This potentially has some use for a high leadership character with nothing better to use their actions for in combat, especially if her allies are under attack from a large number of not-very-skilled foes. I doubt it is much better than the Help action in most situations though. Thematic for a bard-style character, but I think there are much better options.
Having no requirements beyond using a short-ranged melee weapon and costing only 2XP, this gives +1 to allies attempts to oppose melee attacks from charges in your zone. Now, spears, cavalry spears and polearms are okay weapons (especially if you have the Faith talent with Myrmidia), so boosting them is good. The usefulness of this is going to depend on how often your allies get charged. If your GM loves charging in loads of minions and targeting the weakest character in your group, this could get a lot of mileage. If you’re always on the offensive, it won’t. Not a bad talent for a spear-user to get.
For 3xp and Fel4+, you can make a leadership test as part of the Recovery action to remove the staggered condition from allies in medium range. It prevents you from making other tests during the same actions (so no holding the line while tending wounds), but this is still good - in melee, you may want to use the recovery action to stand up from prone, for instance. This is likely to come up often enough to be useful, at least for an off-tank with good leadership. I like Allies in Arms better as I think the Help action is more likely to be more generally useful than a Recovery action without tests, but this is still good.
Costing 3XP and the Wizard talent, this allows you to counterspell enemy casters AND to end magical ongoing effects. It obviously only applies to spellcasters, but unless you’re in a campaign where you only fight Khorne berserkers and Ulric priests, this is going to be good. Magic is dangerous.
For 3XP and the Wizard talent, you can have a familiar. It could be a small demonic creature of some kind, or an unusual animal. This marks you as a mage, and most people will find their appearance disturbing, which is fun thematically but could cause you some problems in a social campaign. The effects are pretty good, and you can take the talent several times to improve your familiar.
Armored improves your resilience by 1, which is good for a wizard as they generally can’t use armour (without their casting rolls turning Grim). Babbler has your familiar constantly muttering, but gives you +1d when memorizing spells - probably not worth the continuous noise which is likely to cause trouble in both stealthy and social play. Bookrest holds your spellbook for you in combat and gives you +1d on formalizing spells, both of which are useful traits. A Chaos Sink lets you reroll miscasts. Combatant familiars lets you count as two people for outnumbering in combat, and can tank a wound for you. Flight lets the familiar fly. Linked lets your familiar go off on their own, and you can see through its senses - note that this should also allow it to wait at home if you’re going to a social function and don’t want to disturb people. Poison Tongue lets the familiar talk to others, and gives you a bonus if you use the Dispeller talent. Fantastic if you also have Linked and Flight, as it can be used to send messages. Skulker lets you hide your familiar in another realm until you wish it to return. Good to avoid social problems, but I would think Linked is better.
The Familiar trait can greatly improve what your character can do, and helps anchor them in the world as it gives the world something to react to the character to. The only reason it isn’t gold is because it will take a lot of XP to build up good combinations of effects.
For only 2xp, as long as you’re not a dwarf or halfling, you can have magical talent. It will allow you to do some minor spells, and make it much easier to become a powerful wizard. If you’re going to be a wizard, this is awesome - it saves you more XP in the long run than you spend on getting it, and it ALSO gives you +2d to learn a magic lore - note that if you start out as a wizard, you can (and should) choose a different lore for this talent than the wizard one to get that bonus and the ability to improvise spells from another school than your own. Even if you’re not planning to be a wizard, having magical talent is an amazing tie-in to the world, and being able to improvise magic can be awesome. Well worth the XP. The only problem is that it locks you out of getting the possibly even more awesome Faith talent, see page 138 of the players guide.
For 4XP a level, taking the wizard talent again and again lets you cast better spells, more minor spells before miscasting. The downside is that your miscasts can be worse when you do get them, requiring the use of the Recover action to manage your miscast pool. That’s a very small downside though, and any wizard worth their salt will spend their XP here.
This doesn’t neatly fit into any of the categories, but someone looking at negotiator talents is more likely to fulfill the requirements, so here it goes. For only 2XP and requiring Fellowship 4+, this lets you practice the Music trade lore without the correct gear, which isn’t that big a deal. But the big deal is you can perfectly imitate any sound you have heard, including other persons voices. This is potentially huge - but is likely to come up less often than you think, unless you are really creative. Still, a good talent if you have the imagination to make use of it.
If you have Initiative 4+ and 3xp to spare, you can get this - which improves the Scrutinize action. Normally, the scrutinize action lets you ask questions to find out how to calm someone down or anger them, what they want and what they expect of you. This talent expands the list of questions to let you check if they are lying, what they are feeling, who their boss and underlings are, etc. The GM must reveal the targets actual thoughts or feelings about the question you ask if you succeed the necessary tests. No caveats here. For an investigator or an intrigue campaign, or really any campaign with social interaction, this has the potential to be game-altering. You may not want everyone to have this talent, but someone probably should pick it.
For 3xp, you can use your grooming kit, a Dexterity check and a minute, to appear unrecognizable to anyone who don’t know you well, and you can temporarily masquerade as a status different from your own. This could be very good in a social campaign, but will depend a lot on your circumstances. I can’t help but think that just using the XP to improve your fellowship will generally be better, though if you have the imagination and setup to make it work, it has potential.
This one could really be almost any category. For 3xp (no other requirements), you can use any skill you’ve used to distract an opponent to oppose their actions - and if its against a beast or monster, the opposition is glorious. The Distract action in social encounters can be used using Charm, Leadership, Brawn, Athletics or Dexterity. The Improvise action in combat only mentions Leadership, but it seems very likely you could distract an opponent using Brawn, Athletics or even Weapon skill. For combat purposes, this means you can become a pretty good debuffer, penalizing an opponent to attack others while getting bonuses to defend against them. But to get mileage out of the talent, you should probably find non-combat uses for it as well, and it doesn’t seem NPCs can roll to persuade you in this game as the Persuade action as written only works on NPCS. If you have the imagination to find non-combat uses fairly often, this could be good.
For 3xp, a silver or gold tier character with Fellowship 4+ can basically make higher-tier NPCs take lower-tier party members seriously. For a mixed-status party in a high society social campaign, this could be very good. But for most campaigns, a Fellowship 4+ high tier character can probably just deal with the test-reqiuring hobnobbing herself. I love this in theory though.
These talents are tied to the use of Lores, or knowledge in general.
For a reasonable 2XP, and requiring Reason 4+, this allows you to make a test glorious if you would get bonus dice from more than one lore on a test. Now, even if you have a GM who grants bonus dice from lores often, how often is this going to apply? And out of that, how often is rerolls going to be better than just rolling extra dice? If you need rerolls you could just spend fate. I do not see this coming into play very often, and I can’t see it having any noticeable effect when it does.
For 2xp and requiring Reason 4+, this allows you to get bonus dice from Lores even if drained, and you ignore penalties from Drained and Distracted to discover Insights. Furthermore, you remove Drained and Distracted when discovering Clues. To be honest, I doubt Drained and Distracted is going to be a common enough problem for this to be good, and it also requires you to get bonus dice from lores quite often. It feels like what it does is prevent some mid-tier wounds from preventing you from being a cool lore-guy when you need to be once in a blue moon. 2XP isn’t that much, but I’d rather use it for something else.
These talents make you better at surviving damage and other negative effects.
If you have T5 and 4XP to spare, this lets you heal some mid-tier wounds between combats instead of per day. Its pretty good in a combat-heavy campaign, where you can expect to take damage several times per day, but the high requirements, and lack of usefulness in a slightly less violent campaign where multiple damage-taking scenes per day is rare lands this as a situational talent.
Requiring 3XP and T4, this lets you roll 1 fewer dice on the wounds table (minimum 1) when you take a wound. That is very good, as it will generally let you take one extra wound before having to worry about any significant effect. The requirements aren’t too off-putting, so I consider this a great pick.
This requires 2XP and not being an elf, which isn’t that high a cost. You never become ill from eating or drinking, and are very resistant to ingested poison, including alcohol. If it was any poison, this would be good, but ingested poison isn’t likely to come up that often, unless you make it come up by challenging people to drinking contests and so on. Unless your GM loves to have everyone become sick from eating all the time, this talent is probably a waste of XP. Save up and improve your Toughness instead.
For 3XP (and no other requirements), this reduces potency of any spell that affects you by 1, even dispelling it entirely if it reaches 0. This has some rather interesting effects. Usually it will reduce damage or duration, but it can also affect the number of targets. Take a spell such as wind blast - it affects a potency number of zones. So if you are in one of those zones, the potency goes down and one fewer zone is affected - though not necessarily the zone you are in. This one will keep the GM on his toes. Note that it’s not optional, so this talent can prevent friendly mages from buffing you. Very situational, but potentially good.
For 4 XP, with no other requirements, you make glorious tests to resist exposure to Chaos. However, with the way exposure works in OWRPG, you can always just choose to say no to temptation after failing one of the tests that this talent help with. Unless your GM is really good at giving you devils deals you find hard to say no to, this has no real effect.
These talents are useful to those who wish to excel at fighting.
For 3XP and only requiring Ag4, this talents lets you ignore enemies when moving in combat. As a bonus, you also take less damage from falling. The second part is situational at best, but not being blocked by enemies in combat is very good - Giving ground is generally the best choice when staggered a second time, and with this enemies can’t prevent it by surrounding you. Agility 4 is a very reasonable requirement for many combat characters (except perhaps dwarven shield-tanks).
For 3 XP, you can slowly ruin the armor of opponents. It requires you to use a weapon that already deals extra damage or ignores armor, meaning the talent reduces the effect of your own weapon. It also requires a successful attack, meaning it is useless against minions. It is a potentially good buff for your allies if you’re fighting a lot of heavily armored knight champions or dragons, but I think there are better choices.
This is a weird one. Requiring Strength 5+ and 4XP, you can get a free melee attack when you inflict the staggered condition using brawn. Now, the only way to do that in the rules as they are written, is with an unarmed attack or attack with a knuckle iron - from the description, I guess a shield bash or pommel strike is meant to work as an unarmed attack. Trouble is, attacking like that risks you missing and getting staggered yourself - and then that free melee attack runs that same risk. Therefore, this is probably only good for very high Strength/Brawn characters that can generally rely on landing a Brawn attack. In such a case, the following melee attack should probably also be an unarmed attack (unless your melee is very good as well), and you’ll wound by doing double stagger - which means this talent can be a part of a brawler build that basically ignores enemy toughness and armor. That is a very peculiar build, but it looks like it could be effective. I have a feeling that’s not how C7 wanted this to work, but it’s the use I can see for it.
Its a cheap talent at 2xp and requiring only agility 4+, but it is only useful when fighting on horseback and getting knocked from the horse. Even then, it doesn’t prevent you from being knocked off your horse, it just lets you get back on more easily - basically it lets you get back on the horse as easily as getting back on your foot. That is useful if you have a lot of mounted battles, I guess - and it could be thematic and fun for an acrobatic horseman character. But I think there are more useful talents.
A bretonnian with High society lore and the honor bound talent, can spend 3XP to be able to pray to the Lady of the Lake immediately before or during the first turn of battle (requiring an action). It lets that character then ignore a single Wound during the battle. The blessing is lost if you are Broken, and you must follow the code chivalric and the rules of knightly honor or be unable to use this talent at all. This is very thematic, and ignoring a wound is a good bonus, but having to use an action (or setup) to do it, and then having all those requirements and limitations means that mechanically there are better things to do with your XP.
Reason 4+ and 3+ XP isn’t too bad a cost, and this lets you remove the staggered condition when you aim. I think the Aim action is mostly good for weapons with a high reload time, though it could also see use against very high resilience opponents where you need a lot of successes. Letting you remove the staggered condition for free is good, but I’m uncertain if you will suffer from it often enough as a ranged combatant for this to matter a lot. It will probably be best in a combat with many ranged enemies - so not bad, but not very good either. I wouldn’t go out of my way to get it, but if you happen to be using a long-reload weapon and have good Reason, and find yourself being staggered a lot - by all means!
A high cost of 4xp and requiring 5+ strength and the use of a 2-handed weapon, this is not going to be for everyone, but if you do fulfill the requirements it is really good if you find yourself fighting in close range of more than one opponent a lot. It lets you deal staggered condition to other enemies in close range when you wound an enemy, which could easily turn you into a mean minion mowing machine.
Requiring 2xp and WS3+, this is extremely cheap - the WS requirement is almost not a requirement at all, as this talent boosts your Defence - and if you’re using Defence instead of Athletics to oppose attacks, it probably means you have WS 3 or better. This talents lets you remove the staggered condition from yourself instead of inflicting it on the enemy when you successfully oppose a melee attack. I think this is very good - though probably only if you have a high enough Resilience to get staggered a lot. Staggering the opponent doesn’t always apply anyway, as they may already be staggered. I assume you can still use this talent in such cases, otherwise it will be less useful.
For 2xp and with no requirements, you may Give ground when you successfully oppose an attack. Note that it can be a ranged or a melee attack. You can only give ground once per turn, so make sure you don’t use it if you might need to give ground later that turn - but this can allow you quite a lot of off-turn mobility, taking you out of range of enemy attacks or positioning you to improve your allies outnumbering bonuses. The cost is extremely low, and I feel this is good for everyone. Its pretty close to being gold.
Costing 3XP and requiring nothing except fighting mounted, this lets your mount attack when you attack - though they have to pick a different target than you, which is the real cost here. Realistically, you will be riding a horse, which means this gives you a Close 3d/3 dam3 attack, which is okay. A free attack is awesome, but requiring you to be mounted and a different attack means this is only a good thematic pick for a knight or other character. It’s great when it comes into play, but a lot of fights happen indoors where being mounted isn’t possible.
For a hefty 4XP, but with no requirements, thai makes your enemies Broken if they give ground from you (with the exception of Fearsome enemies). That means that until they succeed at a Ld check, enemies who retreat from you are basically out of the fight. This is very likely to come up often enough to be good, especially if you manage to get it off against a major threat.
For 3XP (no requirements) you can pick a group such as high elves, westerlanders or orcs, that you hate - you get +1d on melee tests against them, but you are also distracted while they are in your line of sight, meaning you are bad at anything else. If your campaign revolves around fighting a specific type of enemy, and you are a front-line fighter who very rarely wants to do anything but attack, this is good - but in almost all cases worse than just improving your weapon skill.
This trait requires Agility 5+ and 4XP, which is a high cost, but do you know what breaks nearly every game? Allowing extra attacks. Do you know what is always good? Extra mobility. Do you know what is almost always amazing? Being able to do things outside your turn. This talent does it all. It lets you move to intercept and attack someone giving ground into or out of your zone, as long as you aren’t staggered or have an enemy in close range. The requirements and high cost keeps this from being broken, but it is really good.
If you have Initiative 5+ and 3XP, this talent says you can always oppose incoming attacks with athletics (which is an Agility skill, not an Initiative one). It also means you always go first in combat, even if ambushed. Ignoring ambushes is good, as it gives you a free turn in such cases. The first part is a bit more involved. Athletics can usually be used to oppose both ranged and melee attacks, the exceptions are: Being defenceless (which this doesn’t help with), being ambushed (note that the ambush part of this talent doesn’t mention the part where ambushes prevent you from opposing attacks, so being allowed to use Athletics to dodge there is meaningful. Aaand, that seems to be it. This basically counters most effects of being ambushed for you personally. That’s not bad, but probably not worth it overall. If your GM likes to come up with custom reasons why you can’t use athletics to defend, is that one guy in a prominent Actual Play on youtube who doesn’t allow athletics to counter ranged attacks, or more ways of preventing athletics for defense appear in the future, this will be better.
For 3xp and a fairly reasonable requirement of S4+, this prevents dice penalty from the heavier weapons such as Greathammers, Greatswords, Greataxes, Flails and Morning stars. The morning star will then be a one-handed S+1 damage silver tier weapon, which I don’t think is worth the 3xp compared to just using an Axe, for normally S damage but the same damage vs armored enemies. The Flail is a S+3 2h silver tiered weapon… I would probably just use a halberd instead, same argument as the axe. The Great*-weapons are more interesting, especially the silver-tier greataxe S+3 and +1 damage vs armor is a lot. Still not sure if it is worth the 3xp unless you really like the idea of using these weapons - if you’re using any of these weapons for flavor reasons, this talent is a no-brainer once your Weapon Skill is 3+.
Requiring a hefty 4XP, WS4+ and BS4+, this lets you make both a throwing attack and a melee attack when charging. Two attacks isn’t bad, and charging isn’t rare. Throwing weapons in general are worse than other ranged weapons, but this talent allows for a build where they make sense. It’s situational and requires a specific build, but its not bad.
For 3xp and requiring a reasonable BS4+, this allows you to immediately aim or attack when you complete reloading a weapon, as long as you are not staggered and did not move. With a good enough dexterity score, this talent can double your rate of fire with a crossbow or gun, which is awesome. Good for anyone with a crossbow or gun, mandatory for anyone specializing in these weapons.
For 3xp, if you have Reason 4+ this talent can let you give ground within short range, and if you give ground into a zone with enemies you are only broken if you move into close range with an enemy. This talent is pretty good on its own as it gives you more options to avoid damage - especially when surrounded by zones with difficult terrain or doorways held by enemies, but if you also take Acrobatic it becomes really good.
A high cost of 4XP and requiring WS5+, this lets you force your attacker to give ground, fall prone or suffer a wound when you successfully oppose a melee attack with defence. This is a very good talent, for anyone built to use defence to oppose melee attacks. The fact they can give ground means its not really overpowered unless you and your allies are good at positioning, but the potential here is enormous. Pair it with Interceptor to make it truly ridiculous.
For 3xp and Initiative 4+, this allows you to fire a shot if you are charged by an enemy you aimed at last turn. You get the bonus from your aim action, and you can make the attack at whatever time during the charge move you like. If you regularly use the aim action (probably because you’re using a reload weapon), and end up getting charged, this could be very good. It only works against the target you aimed at, though, and this doesn’t change the fact that you can’t fire if an enemy is in short range - meaning that a savvy GM will charge you with another enemy than the one you aimed at first if he can. I think you will get very little mileage out of this, but it will be nice when it does come into play.
For 3xp and no stat requirement, you can remove staggered from someone on your steed or vehicle when you take the manoeuvre action OR when you succeed on athletics or driving checks to control the steed or vehicle. (Watch the commas here, this one is phrased so its easy to think you must manoeuvre and then make a test, but it only requires either one.) It is likely that the person you choose will be yourself mounted on a horse, a lot of the time. This one isn’t too bad, as charging is the manoeuvre action, and that is an action you will likely want to take after being staggered and giving ground - meaning you often need to get rid of staggered when you take this action. That it also triggers in other situations is gravy. This is a pretty good bonus, though it took me several readings to realize it. Having to be mounted for a talent to work isn’t great though, so it’s still not fantastic.
For 4xp and no stat requirement, you can be a bully. If an enemy you have distracted attacks anyone but you, their attack is grim. This makes you a better tank, if you want to be the big guy in armor who just takes blows, while someone else deals the damage. While its a cool and potentially very useful ability if your GM loves to hit the squishies, 4xp for this isn’t great. If you end up with heavy armor, a shield and leadership as your best stat though, consider pairing this with the Snake Charmer talent to become a truly annoying tank.
This costs 3xp and requires the Resolute talent, and makes you immune to Broken. If it didn’t require resolute, it would be very good but because it does, you should already have very few problems with the Broken condition. Fearsome enemies and some spells may be the exception, so if you tend to encounter those, it is still a good pick.
If you are a high elf, you can spend 3xp to get this, which is kind of a mix between Resolute and Unbreakable without the Reason requirement. You don’t become Broken if you retreat into a zone with an enemy as long as that zone has an ally, and if you are Broken you can Recover in a zone with an enemy as long as that zone has an ally. This could be good if there are zones with enemies and allies all over the place, and the recovery part works whatever the reason you were Broken, which is good. It will be good if you fight a lot of fearsome enemies.
For 3xp and requiring Ag4+, you can move a zone when you move quietly or move carefully as part of the manoeuvre action. This is potentially extremely useful if you’re dealing with a lot of difficult terrain, which you are likely to as it is the easiest way for a GM to make a battlefield interresting. It also makes move quietly more useful if you like to dive out of view to stay alive on the battlefield and make your attacks unopposed - great with Short Size which lets you hide in plain sight. Useless for a non-stealthy character with a GM that never uses difficult terrain, good for anyone dealing with difficult terrain, amazing for those who use stealth as part of their combat tactics.
Requiring S4+ and costing 3xp, this allows you to take the staggered condition to make a melee test glorious (obviously only works if you didn’t already have the staggered condition). This is very high reward, mid to low risk… Remember that you’ll be staggered anyway if you miss, and in any case, staggered isn’t THAT dangerous as long as you can give ground, and making a test glorious is really good, so this talent is a great pick unless you’re a good enough fighter to reliably wound your opponents without it.
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