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Exalted Questions Thread

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Shyft said:
But in practical terms, as much as MDV fist makes sense in a rational resource-management sense, it isn't how people actually think. And a lot of the garbage output of Exalted in general, any edition, is in how people approach games themselves. Like... on paper, if I'm engaged in a social situation, and I take a hard hit of UMI that saps a lot of WP, the game and my first response should't be draw my sword and fite, it should be leave the social scene. Escalating to Fight is a meme that Jon Chung popularized as a means to criticize the garbage output of WP as mental influence resistance. It's an indictment of that mechanic, not an optimization strategy.
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Right, I consider the issues with Social Combat/UMI/WP-depletion to pretty much just be an extension of Paranoia Combat, with all the problems that entails.

I think the source of this problem is that someone decided that social interaction should be modeled as another form of combat, rather than actually attempting to model social interaction.
 
Sydonai said:
Right, I consider the issues with Social Combat/UMI/WP-depletion to pretty much just be an extension of Paranoia Combat, with all the problems that entails.

I think the source of this problem is that someone decided that social interaction should be modeled as another form of combat, rather than actually attempting to model social interaction.
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To an extent- but you could also say that trying to model social interaction without addressing its transactional nature was a misstep too. Like, I personally hold the intimacy system as fairly brilliant, because it provides meaningful definitions for the kinds of things people hold as ideals or values. (Compulsion, Illusion, Emotion, Servitude).

But, the real crux of the 2e social system is that it's both meant to be about convincing Great People of History to do things Today, and to do things From Now On, until acted upon- intimacies by their nature are intended to create behavioral inertia. It's just that PCs don't want to have intimacies stapled onto their characters, and there's not enough Carrot to do so. That's rfine to a point, because the rules are meant for PCs to stick these things onto NPCs.

As you say, if ou approach combat as symmetrical design and adversarial design, it breaks down. It's actual purpose is to arbitrate success/failure on PCs achieving their goals.
 
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Shyft said:
Aye, as you say @Phigment - a lot of the problems exist, but in practice they don't come up anywhere near as often. So yes, the problesm should be called out as criticisms of the design and watchposts for future designers to draw insight from. But those are again, not meant to be strategies you share as 'Builds' to win the game.

As much as I despise 3e from a philosophical standpoint, I make no claim to say that people are not having fun with it- it's design does not preclude or deny fun. But fun is... well you can design for it but it's not really something you want to design for.
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Out of curiosity, what's your issue with Ex3? I came into Exalted more-or-less with Ex3, then discovered the earlier editions afterwards, so I'm curious as to others' thoughts on it.
 
Sydonai said:
Right, I consider the issues with Social Combat/UMI/WP-depletion to pretty much just be an extension of Paranoia Combat, with all the problems that entails.

I think the source of this problem is that someone decided that social interaction should be modeled as another form of combat, rather than actually attempting to model social interaction.
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Eh, keeping in mind that if its not a Total Control effect it just makes you do One Thing(if at that). You might hate doing that one thing, but its not Character Over like Paranoia combat would suggest.
 
2e Sorcery Question.

UNSTOPPABLE FOUNTAIN OF THE DEPTHS The White TREATISE said:
Cost: 20m Target: Area
Shouting the Birthing Word of Rivers and unleashing the blue-tinged Essence of this spell, the caster strikes the ground with his foot, fist or weapon. The ground before him cracks open, and a roaring torrent of water gushes forth, flattening everything before it in an area three yards wide, two yards high and 20 yards long. The crushing force of the Unstoppable Fountain of the Depths lasts for 10 minutes, after which it slows to a gentle stream of pure water. This stream lasts for a number of days equal to the sorcerer's permanent Essence, during which time it cannot be poisoned or otherwise fouled, save by spells cast by a sorcerer or necromancer of greater Essence than the caster's own.
Anyone caught in the path of the birthing torrent could be swept away. The sorcerer's player rolls (Perception + Occult), adding a number of successes equal to his permanent Essence. This is the attack roll for the wave of water, using a base damage of 10B. The wave of water cannot be parried without the use of Charms. If the wave of water inflicts enough damage to result in a knockdown (see Exalted, p. 153), the difficulty to resist this effect is 5.
Those who suffer knockdown are caught up by the water and carried along. The players of such characters may roll (Strength + Athletics), with a difficulty equal to the caster's Occult rating, for their characters to stand up. Handholds in the area add up to three automatic successes to such attempts.
After the initial burst, the unstoppable fountain becomes an environmental effect three yards wide and extending 20 yards before the water's force dissipates—or maybe longer, if it fl ows down steep terrain. A creature caught in the path of the fountain, whether it remains standing or is swept along, suffers three levels of bashing damage (Trauma equal to the sorcerer's permanent Essence), which may be reduced as normal for environmental effects (see Exalted, p. 131).
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From What I can see reading this, there isn't a time limit, so this spell just up and creates a Spring with a very forceful current. So unlike the Spell Water from Stone (TWT, P 68), you just have to worry about the strong current.

Is this right?
 
Romantic_Kaiju said:
From What I can see reading this, there isn't a time limit, so this spell just up and creates a Spring with a very forceful current. So unlike the Spell Water from Stone (TWT, P 68), you just have to worry about the strong current.

Is this right?
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From the spell description:
"The crushing force of the Unstoppable Fountain of the Depths lasts for 10 minutes, after which it slows to a gentle stream of pure water. This stream lasts for a number of days equal to the sorcerer's permanent Essence, during which time it cannot be poisoned or otherwise fouled, save by spells cast by a sorcerer or necromancer of greater Essence than the caster's own. "

You get 10 minutes of brutally strong force, then Essence days of gentle water flow, then it ends.


Compare to Water From Stone, which gets you years, months, or days of water, depending a climate, and may create a permanent trickle of water.
 
Phigment said:
From the spell description:
"The crushing force of the Unstoppable Fountain of the Depths lasts for 10 minutes, after which it slows to a gentle stream of pure water. This stream lasts for a number of days equal to the sorcerer's permanent Essence, during which time it cannot be poisoned or otherwise fouled, save by spells cast by a sorcerer or necromancer of greater Essence than the caster's own. "

You get 10 minutes of brutally strong force, then Essence days of gentle water flow, then it ends.


Compare to Water From Stone, which gets you years, months, or days of water, depending a climate, and may create a permanent trickle of water.
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Thank you, the "after the initial outburst" part that made me think the stream lasted past the days.
 
Can someone explain to me what the Salinian Working is and what it did/does? I keep seeing it mentioned in conjunction with sorcery.
 
veekie said:
Its basically printing a sorcery primer into the fabric of reality, so anyone suitably receptive can learn sorcery through observing nature, so sorcery cannot be lost to humanity.
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Also, this way, no spells can be lost via death or destruction. Once you make a spell? It's preserved forever.

Which reminds me. Terrestrial circle sorcerers are relatively common. There must be at least a million different terrestrial circle spells out there, embedded in Creation.
 
Accelerator said:
Also, this way, no spells can be lost via death or destruction. Once you make a spell? It's preserved forever.

Which reminds me. Terrestrial circle sorcerers are relatively common. There must be at least a million different terrestrial circle spells out there, embedded in Creation.
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Said sorcerors have a PRETTY high chance of Darwin Awarding themselves out of the game. You still need an essence pool to make it work in 2E, and 3E doesn't do things the same way.
 
Kaiya said:
There's fewer mortal Sorcerers than Exalted Sorcerers in Ex3. Sorcery is not common, even relatively.
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But... I was referring to dragonblooded sorcerers. I-

*opens corebook 3e*

*notices there is no mention of the Salinan working in the sorcery section*

*wonders whether or not he should just burn the book*

Urgh.... Just.... frack it.
 
Accelerator said:
But... I was referring to dragonblooded sorcerers. I-

*opens corebook 3e*

*notices there is no mention of the Salinan working in the sorcery section*

*wonders whether or not he should just burn the book*

Urgh.... Just.... frack it.
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No. Don't burn the book because it fails to include an obsolete piece of the setting from previous editions.
 
The Salinan Working is one of my favorite bits of background lore in the entirety of "things that happened in the First Age", albeit largely because of ES' handling of it. It's a single woman trying to make Sorcery, a tool for the great to become greater and oppress those beneath them, into something that the weak can use to become great. It's the pinnacle of what Sorcerous Workings can achieve, an inspiration to the people of the Second Age that shows them what they once were capable of. It's a concept that overflows with flavor and thematic potential, making it possible for you to have a Sorcerer who learned his craft from the shadows cast by wheat sheaves under the moonlight, or the motion of migrating fish.

I won't restart the eternal argument of mythic science vs. mythic fantasy, but I will say that I object to the idea that 3E's handling of the First Age is axiomatically better than what the fanbase made of the old 2E lore.
 
GardenerBriareus said:
I won't restart the eternal argument of mythic science vs. mythic fantasy, but I will say that I object to the idea that 3E's handling of the First Age is axiomatically better than what the fanbase made of the old 2E lore.
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I'm not arguing about what the fanbase did. I'm saying the actual written professional text was terrible, and everything of value came from third party efforts to salvage it. It needed to be changed somehow going into Ex3, and I'm pretty sure they couldn't legally just dig through the best homebrew and republish it, so the sum of fanbase works was never going to be a thing.
 
Kaiya said:
I'm not arguing about what the fanbase did. I'm saying the actual written professional text was terrible, and everything of value came from third party efforts to salvage it. It needed to be changed somehow going into Ex3, and I'm pretty sure they couldn't legally just dig through the best homebrew and republish it, so the sum of fanbase works was never going to be a thing.
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So I'm having trouble differentiating between fanon and canon cause it's been awhile. What was so bad about it?
 
QafianSage said:
Out of curiosity, what's your issue with Ex3? I came into Exalted more-or-less with Ex3, then discovered the earlier editions afterwards, so I'm curious as to others' thoughts on it.
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My reasons for disliking 3E:

The underlying system isn't bad: it's a pretty deep combat engine with some interesting, non-obvious decisions, and a lot of ability for Charms to impact different parts of it, resulting in different archetypes and characters playing out really differently. If Exalted were pitched as a tactics game I could be into it. The social system is also fairly reasonable, as are a number of other subsystems.

But Exalted isn't pitched as a tactics game. Exalted is pitched as this game about larger than life Heroes in a world that doesn't shy away from what that means. It's pitched as a game about how power corrupts, and how strength can't solve every problem.

And at this, it fails catastrophically. If I'm playing a game where I'm some kind of superpowerful demigod, I want to feel like a superpowerful demigod. I want to declare I do things, and have them just happen—not look at my dozens of charms and figure out if one of them can do it, then track multiple different resources, then roll, then reroll if I have dice tricks. I want to have some kind of rules for what it actually means to be superhumanly intelligent. I don't want combat to be this incredibly intricate back and forth that makes me to manage, like, four+ different resources—I want it to be tight and refined, with a focus on specific, key decisions.

I want a system that's consistent, where I don't need to learn a billion fiddly subsystems. The Lore-to-declare-stuff subsystem is cool. Why not just use it for Medicine, Survival, Occult, and Bureaucracy, for their respective areas?

I want the system to give me some meaningful guidance on how it's core pitch works in play. If I take over a city, I want the city to give me actual rules for managing that city, so that it doesn't depend entirely on if the GM is creative and smart enough to figure out what kind of issues can challenge someone two times smarter than any human has ever been.
 
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