Talents: Talent Tests – Drakensang: The River of Time

This guide explains how to run a talent test in Drakensang: The River of Time.

A talent test is typically used to calculate success or failure with a talent. This test involves rolling a 1D20 die against the three attribute values associated with the talent. The character must meet or exceed the three dice rolls in order to pass the test, but the character can use his or her prowess with the talent (TP) as bonus points where needed.

For example, the animal lore talent is associated with cleverness, courage, and intuition. If the character has scores of 12, 11, and 14 for those attributes, and rolls 13, 15, and 10 in the talent test, then the character would only pass the test if he or she has a TP of at least 5 in the talent (in order to bump up cleverness by 1 point and courage by 4 points).

Some tests also involve bonuses and penalties. In general, bonuses are added to the character’s TP, and penalties are added to each roll of the dice. For example, with lock picking the tool bonus (or -10, if the character doesn’t have a tool) is added to the TP, and the difficulty of the lock is added to the dice rolls.

For each successful test, some number of prowess points are left over. These points are usually used in magic talents, and are designated as SP. Generally, the higher the SP, the more effective the talent is. For example, with the attributo agility talent, (SP*/3 + 1) is the bonus applied to the target’s agility.