For a while now I’ve really been into an old Star Wars system called Saga Edition that I appreciate greatly for its ability to really customize a character. A major part of that customization comes from its use of a talent system instead of most other systems that automatically assign class features, and I’m curious if there are any other ttrpgs that use talents.
I’m pretty sure the Dragon Age ttrpg also uses them, but what other systems do, and are any of them still actively being produced?
Sounds a bit like the Archetype system in Pathfinder 2e. A lot of the customization of your character comes from archetypes, not class features. The nice thing is that most archetypes can be taken by any class, so you can use the “Archer” archetype as a fighter, ranger, rogue, or even as a wizard (though there might be some antisynergy there)
13th age does this. Choose 3 or 4 out of a total pool of X per class. Helps it so no 2 chars of the same class are samey, gives players agency in builds… I love it and it seems a lot mor exciting than a subclass based system like in dnd.
I also feel the talents in 13a are mooostly balanced with each other, but I haven’t played it long enough to guarantee this
WFRP (Warhammer Fantasy role play) has a fun system where there are lots of careers, but those careers have talent options. Each talent isn’t limited to one career so there is overlap but the combination of talents and skills is what makes the careers unique.
This was probably one of my favorite systems when it comes to just a giant list of potential skills. The way they’re grouped by level and just the crunch of leveling was fun.
UESRPG3e uses talents in that way. It helps that spells can be customized too, so that you can be a viking that enhances their axe with ice, or a blizzard evoking ice mage depending on how you invest your talents and skills and how you build your spells.
