Talent Tree Discounts

According to the core book,

“The cost to acquire talents within a particular talent tree is reduced by 25 for each level of focus training a character has with the skills in that talent tree.”

  1. Does that mean you get a experience point discount from the overall skill associated with the tree?
    1a. How does this work for talent trees like Martial Arts or Philosophy that have more than one skill associated with it? Martial Arts says they count as Melee talents, do you use Melee even though the skills Discipline and Lore are also used for step 0? Do you pick one? Combine them? Not get a discount?

  2. Or get a discount based on your skill focus of the particular talent you are acquiring?
    2a. Again, how does this work for talents that have more than one skill associated with it? Can I combine my focus to get a discount?

The reason I ask is because we had a player able to get all of Martial Art 2nd row talents for near zero experience points because his skill focuses are so high.

Yes. The whole tree is either associated with a certain Skill, so you look at the Focus in that Skill for the 25 XP per rank of Focus discount.

Martial Arts or Philosophy are associated with a Skill, too, so you only apply the Focus in the associated Skill (Melee for Martial Arts for example) to determine the discount.

No. It is always a single skill for the whole tree - or no skill at all, so no focus.

For example, the Berserk tree does not have a single skill associated with it, so there is no discount at all in learning the Berserk Talents.

With a Focus of 5 that is 125 XP discount, so the root Talent and the tier 1 Talents only cost 75 XP each. That is the maximum discount you can get, as Skills are maxed out at 5 Expertise and 5 Focus.

If this character has Melee Expertise 5 and Focus 5, that is fine. This is as intended regarding the Focus discount rules. - Such a character is probably a one-trick pony, so you have to put up challenges on Skills that are not maxed out to make things interesting.

Where are you getting this information?

The core book clearly states “The cost to acquire talents within a particular talent tree is reduced by 25 for each level of focus training a character has with the skills in that talent tree.”

Per Wander, “Martial Arts talents count as Melee talents for purposes where the total number of Melee talents are calculated.”

Same with Philosophy, “This talent tree is based on the Counsel skill for occasions when the total number of talents associated on a skill must be determined.”

They say nothing about experience point discounts. And experience point discounts say nothing regarding “total number of talents should be determined or calculated,” just skill focus.

However, now that I’m looking at both books, Bard has the word (Personality) under it. Maybe Martial Arts, Philosophy, Berserker, and Wise Master all get zero focus discounts. That makes way more sense.

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