Exalted Questions Thread

[Kuciwalker]

3E doesn't really do the Salinan thing. Theres lots of unique ways to sorcery and if you want, one of them might look like the Salinan.

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3e didn't delete the Salinan Working; it just doesn't mention it. It is, of course, one of the primary inspirations for the whole sorcerous workings system to begin with, and is the sort of thing players at the peak of their power are supposed to be able to do.

 

[Kaiya]

So I'm having trouble differentiating between fanon and canon cause it's been awhile. What was so bad about it?

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It was really boring and clumsily put together, tied to the ridiculous mechanics and generally subpar writing and poor aesthetics of the First Age book in general. I've literally never managed to read it all the way through, it's such a drag. There's a reason all First Age discussions are like "Well, my headcanon" "In my game, we" ect ect.

I don't even think the Salinian Working is bad, and I don't believe it'll be left out of Ex3 entirely, even. But at the time of the corebook, Sorcery was moving away from what it used to be in a lot of ways, and needed to stand on its own merits in the new system without referencing stuff with all the baggage of prior editions without clear sight on whether those things would even be included yet. We're still years away from a "History of Sorcery" book, after all. Demanding Ex3 adhere to all the favorite bits of old lore from day 1 was always gonna be an unworkable ask, and that was made clear from the beginning. Holden wasn't 100% gonna throw the baby out with the bathwater, but the situation was bad enough that they did need to take some time to actually find what is bathwater and what is baby and wow that metaphor got dark.

In any case, IIRC Vance was the dude in charge of the Ex3 Sorcery section in the core, and he did a pretty great job with it, and now he's head developer. So whatever happens with Sorcery going forward, I'm confident it'll be pretty neat and avoid the mistakes of the past. I also can't imagine Salina won't be around in some way, since we've already seen most of the old big names are still around, just tweaked and reimagined in this new take on the line.

 

[Imrix]

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. ...

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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This... Yeah, to be honest, this is a pretty good point. I mean, in fairness, Exalted has also pitched itself as a game of larger-than-life heroes struggling with each other over heroic passions, shōnen style, and on that level the intricate tactics subsystems certainly have their place. Plenty of shōnen fights, after all, play out like detective stories, puzzles of figuring out how the opponent's cool techniques work and what their weaknesses are.

But the aforementioned place of those intricate tactics systems isn't everywhere, at the expense of the grand-scale stuff that is also supposed to be core to the game's pitch, and has been ever since the start. For all that I love the philosophical angles of the stories that Exalted clearly wants to tell, it too often leaves the execution of those ideas up to the players. To paraphrase @Pale Wolf a bit, the core principle of any game design concept is that design must have occurred; for the designer to provide prompts for something that is supposed to be core to the game, to perform narration and then leave the mechanical side of those core aspects up to the storyteller and players, is to invert the right and proper order of things.

 

[DayDreamer]

This... Yeah, to be honest, this is a pretty good point. I mean, in fairness, Exalted has also pitched itself as a game of larger-than-life heroes struggling with each other over heroic passions, shōnen style, and on that level the intricate tactics subsystems certainly have their place. Plenty of shōnen fights, after all, play out like detective stories, puzzles of figuring out how the opponent's cool techniques work and what their weaknesses are.

But the aforementioned place of those intricate tactics systems isn't everywhere, at the expense of the grand-scale stuff that is also supposed to be core to the game's pitch, and has been ever since the start. For all that I love the philosophical angles of the stories that Exalted clearly wants to tell, it too often leaves the execution of those ideas up to the players. To paraphrase @Pale Wolf a bit, the core principle of any game design concept is that design must have occurred; for the designer to provide prompts for something that is supposed to be core to the game, to perform narration and then leave the mechanical side of those core aspects up to the storyteller and players, is to invert the right and proper order of things.

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There's a general principle of systems design: the purpose of a system is what it does. My take on the ttrpg corollary is that the purpose of a ttrpg system is whatever the (average) table spends most of its time doing. Good systems make this a good experience. Bad systems make it a bad system. By this metric, the purpose of Exalted is to have measured, deliberative combat where players juggling a lot of priorities and resources.

If you just told someone the setting fluff, I strongly suspect that the idea of making a system with this purpose to represent the experience of playing Exalted would be strange and counterintuitive.

 

[Azrael]

...I suppose this is the correct thread for this.

Okay, in Revlid's She Who Lives In Her Name charmset, and related custom Yozi charmsets (Isidoros, Metagaos, Elloge, ES's Szoreny and Oramus), there are 'Infernal Geomancy Charms' inspired by an edit of canon's Holy Land Infliction.

These Charms, as part of their text, describe how they warp Creation's environment, and how any Wyld-Tainted land they are used on becomes pure- if Yozi-tainted- Creation.

My actual question, therefor, is what about Shadowlands? Do these charms close them? Do they warp Shadowlands the same as regular environments? Do they not work?

Now tagging the two people most obviously qualified to answer the question @Revlid @EarthScorpion

 

[Shyft]

@QafianSage regarding the Salinian Working-

There are two ways to approach this topic, the subjective version which is largely meant to be 'for flavor' and the objective version that implies you've read more of the books and are looking at it from a doylist perspective instead of watsonian.

The Salinian Working, like the Order-Conferring Trade Pattern (a fun detail that got overplayed a lot), was one of those 'historic' memes or touchstones that modern Creation knew about and repeated without really understanding what it was- the actual history and origin, as well as it's specific function. It was later expanded upon in some books to again be 'modern mythic' knowledge, but still not specifically historically accurate.

Functionally, the Working was intended to justify the tropes and trappings of sorcery and to enmesh it in Creation in a in-universe fashion- that is to say, make it so there's more than one way to become a Sorcerer (while being so vague there is effectively only one way to become a sorcerer but each stop in the path is very open-ended).

As for what the working actually does:

• The 5 stations of sorcery are baked into the fabric of Creation. Any character who Wants to learn sorcery will eventually, across the course of their life, encounter all 5 stations with Sacrifice being the last.
• A teacher will always appear to satisfy the needs of the student- this may be a litereal sorcerous instructor, or a character or event that 'instructs' the aspirant sorcerer and leads them to the realization that They can wrest the very fabric of the world to their wills.
• Spells themselves are encoded upon the world when cast or 'lost', so that eventually, any and every spell can be recovered. Examples include spells woven into the muscle fibers of a particular lineage, the plumage of a bird species in the south, striations and rock formations in a cave and so on.

The origin of the Working was with a First Age Solar named Salina, who we got more of an insight into in the much maligned Dreams of the First Age publication. She was a Zenith (and that's important because she was meant to demonstrate that you don't need to be a Twilight to be Top Sorcerer). And her big thing was anacho-freedom- imagine the most free-range parent to ever parent, except as an essence 10 godking, and you've got Salina. She was hands-off everything, but cunning enough to politically maneuver her agenda (getting the working made) into Deliberative law and co-opted the rest of the Exalted Host to build the thing for her without them realizing it until it was already done.

On top of that, the idea of Workings were in part cribbed from Raksha Onieromancy (it's a a complex topic) and the Salininan Working itself. In late 2e during the last big errata pass, they tried to include a Charm that mechanized the process of feats on the scale of the Salinian working, and for many people that was when 2e jumped over the last shark, because it was blithely trying to use a Charm to solve a sorcery problem (in an already bloated charm system and a weak sorcery system).

THen we come to 3e Workings, which are basically 'do-anything' one-off rituals.

 

[Jon Chung]

Like, the whole paranoia combat thing. Everyone agreed that paranoia combat was mechanically superior and grindingly un-fun. And so often, the suggested homerule solution was to give everyone all the components to engage in paranoia combat for free. Which confused, and still confuses, me.

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The point of doing that is to knowingly accept a bad state (paranoia combat is boring) to prevent a worse state (your players encounter Exalted 2's batshit lethality and explode into fine red mist, ending the game). Remember that the problem with Exalted 2 combat is lethality, and paranoia combat is the band-aid preventing lethality from turning your game into a hilarious farce. Suggestions to hand out paranoia combos for free are aimed at making sure that this fail state cannot occur.

If you're good/experienced enough with the system to ensure that they never encounter lethality because you are carefully curating the enemies they're encountering and/or your group is perfectly happy to retcon events like catching goremauls with your face and having your brains turned into chunky salsa on the fly, you don't need to give out the paranoia combo, because you're handling lethality some other way. Thing is, that other way is a) dependent on the GM being an Exalted 2 system expert, b) dependent on the group being excessively retcon-friendly. Neither of these assumptions are generally true, therefore the generally-applicable advice is to hand out the "I have a lifebar! I won't die on contact!" combo for free instead. This is much less fragile and has wider applicability.

Even if everyone already knows how to build a paranoia combo, doing that ensures that all the characters in your party are baseline combat-capable for free, allowing them to spend their chargen resources on stuff that isn't "I have a lifebar! I won't die on contact!". 4 charms is almost half of your starting allotment, a non-trivial expenditure.

 

[Kuciwalker]

The point of doing that is to knowingly accept a bad state (paranoia combat is boring) to prevent a worse state (your players encounter Exalted 2's batshit lethality and explode into fine red mist, ending the game). Remember that the problem with Exalted 2 combat is lethality, and paranoia combat is the band-aid preventing lethality from turning your game into a hilarious farce. Suggestions to hand out paranoia combos for free are aimed at making sure that this fail state cannot occur.

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Lethality is not, actually, the problem with Ex2 combat. If you simply fixed lethality you would not make it one bit better. The problem with Ex2 combat is that it is a bland, tactically empty system so useless that the game would be better off if it were simply removed entirely.

Fixing lethality to fix Ex2 combat is like fixing your unicycle so you can ride it on the interstate to work.

 

[Kaiya]

Lethality is not, actually, the problem with Ex2 combat. If you simply fixed lethality you would not make it one bit better. The problem with Ex2 combat is that it is a bland, tactically empty system so useless that the game would be better off if it were simply removed entirely.

Fixing lethality to fix Ex2 combat is like fixing your unicycle so you can ride it on the interstate to work.

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By the end of the 2.5 Celestials game I played, no one ever was at risk of being splattered, and hadn't been for like a year and a half. What did happen was we all rolled 21 dice at Target Number 5 twice and took the better roll, and hit maybe one in three times. Everyone had soak in the 30s except the sniper, who had her own issues, so whenever you did land a hit, it rolled ping.

My solution was to spec Overwhelming, and this sorta worked? The other Sidereal's solution was to spec aggravated ping damage, and that was a bit more effective.

the dragonblooded player's solution was to throw 50 dice of damage and laugh because Essence 5 Earth Dragons were fucking nuts.


The game ended because we all were sick to death of actually playing the game, and the only fun we had was the fluff scenes and off-session minis we played together.

 

[Shyft]

And, just so we all remember, back on the old WW forums there was of course the lovely meme 'Don't mess with Perfects until you fix Lethality!'

I personally hold to the believe that paranoia combat is... It exists, it's a terminal end-state of the mechanics, but I also believe that it's greatly exacerbated by people ignoring, avoiding or being unawares of numerous other rules and mechanics that increase or more importantly decrease it's severity.

Like, let's take the oft repeated 5 mortals with sledgehammer thought experiment, as Chung likes to point out- the basic rationale being that the optimal strategy for beating a non-paranoia solar is by surrounding them with 5 mortals equipped with sledges (highest damage mortal weapon iirc). This triggers the surrounding rules, which means the Solar must put 1 person against their back giving them a free Unexpected Attack. Since the Solar in this example lacks a surprise negator, they take the hit with no opportunity for DV and are likely struck so hard, they take HL damage and in turn start falling down the death spiral.

What is often forgotten or ignored is that you can chose to put your back against a wall- or that a small space can limit the total number of incoming attackers and make surrounding impossible. Further still you can argue/encourage Players to actively pursue these advantageous positions, which creates meaningful tactical gameplay. Consider also that the 'surrounding' thought experiment ignores vertical movement- A str 2 Ath 1 Exalt can jump three yards straight up, more if they stunt or channel a WP/virtue. Granted this assumes you survive long enough to Jump as part of your acting tick, but my point stands. The point of stunting is to create these kinds of non-standard advantages, and the point of Charms such as Flow Like Blood is to let you spend more time on different kinds of stunts.

Now remember- Sledgehammer surrounding is a thought experiment meant to illustrate a deleterious state- in most at-table games, 5 mortals with sledges are not going to be used because it's not really a cool battle scene.

Of course Chung would point out the above insight requires high level system mastery, which is an unreasonable expectation to have for a game- the game needed to communicate these things more clearly- even though it is fun in it's own way to tease out these interactions and develop meaningful tactical play. I also want to stress that there is a line between 'Actually supported by the rules' and 'intuitive accepted arbitration' by the storyteller. I support both equally, but it's really important to know where that line is when discussing the game design itself.

Exalted 2e's combat engine expects you to put a lot into it, but you also can get a lot out of it if you pay attention. Unfortunately the energy you have to invest in doing that is far higher than most people want to pay.

 

[Imrix]

What is often forgotten or ignored is that you can chose to put your back against a wall- or that a small space can limit the total number of incoming attackers and make surrounding impossible.

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No, this is not actually true. The 2e corebook says this;

MULTIPLE OPPONENTS
In open terrain, a human-sized character can be attacked in close combat by only five human-sized opponents. Even if a larger group coordinates (see p. 144), they simply don't have the room to cluster any tighter. In cramped quarters such as a hallway, stairwell or doorway, the maximum number of opponents that may engage a character in close combat drops to three (or even less at Storyteller discretion). This number increases proportionally for smaller attackers, so characters run a real risk of being torn apart by a mob of frenzied hatra or a school of razor fish. Conversely, large opponents such as buck ogres or tyrant lizards can flank only one to each side at most, even in the most open terrain. Anyone who is pressed inside a maximum permitted cluster of combatants has no room to maneuver and cannot choose to move or dash away using an action. Furthermore, such a character also suffers a -2 Dodge DV penalty unless she uses a stunt or magic to somehow evade without giving ground. Worst of all, if she cannot maneuver (either from being ganged up on by a maximum cluster of opponents or because of the terrain), one of her opponents gains the benefits of an unexpected attack. The player of the character trapped in a group chooses which opponent she exposes her back to. No restrictions limit the number of opponents that may attack a character with ranged attacks, making a concentrated archer volley the best means of ganging up on a single adversary.

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It is certainly in-genre to suggest that you can negate this rule by putting your back against the wall, and indeed the language, "the player of the character trapped in a group chooses which opponent she exposes her back to" seems to support this, but the bolded portions of the quote say otherwise; pressing your back against terrain simply means that less enemies can surround you at once, but because you are still considered to be surrounded with no room to manoeuvre, you must select an opponent (note the language. You cannot stop this by choosing to expose your back to a circlemate by fighting back to back with them; they are not an opponent) whose attack is to be considered unexpected. You are correct that a player can escape this situation by jumping clear, but that's an after-the-fact solution.

 

[Shyft]

No, this is not actually true. The 2e corebook says this;
It is certainly in-genre to suggest that you can negate this rule by putting your back against the wall, and indeed the language, "the player of the character trapped in a group chooses which opponent she exposes her back to" seems to support this, but the bolded portions of the quote say otherwise; pressing your back against terrain simply means only that less enemies can surround you at once, but because you are still considered to be surrounded with no room to manoeuvre, you must select an opponent (note the language. You cannot stop this by choosing to expose your back to a circlemate by fighting back to back with them; they are not an opponent) whose attack is to be considered unexpected. You are correct that a player can escape this situation by jumping clear, but that's an after-the-fact solution.

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I stand corrected then! While perhaps not the most demonstrative example, I still hold to my general position that there is more to Ex2's combat engine and tactical gameplay than most people allow for.

 

[Cosar]

I think you're also missing something here: 5 mortals with sledgehammers is generally not going to be a combat encounter. But that's not setting a high bar. Encounters can easily have 5 combatants that are each on their own more powerful than those 5 mortals, or have some more powerful combatants with mortal backup. The argument "well, the thought experiment isn't going to happen so it's not as important" doesn't really work when the though experiment is lowballing the encounters you can face.

 

[BossFight]

So demon summoning question. Demons are compelled to serve by the surrender paths no? Can't remember if canon or fanon. If it is canon, why do people need to spend motes overcoming the demons resistance to force them to serve? Why can't they just compel them by their authority as a solar or whatever?

 

[EarthScorpion]

I think you're also missing something here: 5 mortals with sledgehammers is generally not going to be a combat encounter. But that's not setting a high bar. Encounters can easily have 5 combatants that are each on their own more powerful than those 5 mortals, or have some more powerful combatants with mortal backup. The argument "well, the thought experiment isn't going to happen so it's not as important" doesn't really work when the though experiment is lowballing the encounters you can face.

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Especially when the cliched Wyld hunt is a full sworn brotherhood of Immaculate monks.

 

[GardenerBriareus]

So demon summoning question. Demons are compelled to serve by the surrender paths no? Can't remember if canon or fanon. If it is canon, why do people need to spend motes overcoming the demons resistance to force them to serve? Why can't they just compel them by their authority as a solar or whatever?

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From a Doylist perspective, it makes summoning 2CDs and Unquestionable into something that's significantly taxing, so you don't have to worry about PCs chain-summoning five 3CDs over the course of a single Calibration and then facefucking the Realm.

In Watsonian terms, I'm not sure. My gut instinct is to say that it's thanks to the Law of Cecelyne, so summoners have to be capable of somehow establishing dominance over their prospective minion before the Surrender Oaths properly take hold. I do know that Infernal Exalts can essentially just go "KNEEL BEFORE ME" while flaring anima and get obedience, but that's because they have significant sociopolitical power in Hell itself and all but the most ignorant demons would realize just how difficult life could be if they fuck around with a Green Sun Prince.

I'm going to just pass this over to @EarthScorpion, since he has a better mind for adjudicating this sort of thing.

 

[Cosar]

So demon summoning question. Demons are compelled to serve by the surrender paths no? Can't remember if canon or fanon. If it is canon, why do people need to spend motes overcoming the demons resistance to force them to serve? Why can't they just compel them by their authority as a solar or whatever?

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In second edition, demon summoning wasn't explicitly part of the oaths. It was something that Exalted learned out to do later by taking advantage of the oath. Sorcery as a whole is something that wasn't part of the original exalted capabilities.

 

[EarthScorpion]

From a Doylist perspective, it makes summoning 2CDs and Unquestionable into something that's significantly taxing, so you don't have to worry about PCs chain-summoning five 3CDs over the course of a single Calibration and then facefucking the Realm.

In Watsonian terms, I'm not sure. My gut instinct is to say that it's thanks to the Law of Cecelyne, so summoners have to be capable of somehow establishing dominance over their prospective minion before the Surrender Oaths properly take hold. I do know that Infernal Exalts can essentially just go "KNEEL BEFORE ME" while flaring anima and get obedience, but that's because they have significant sociopolitical power in Hell itself and all but the most ignorant demons would realize just how difficult life could be if they fuck around with a Green Sun Prince.

I'm going to just pass this over to @EarthScorpion, since he has a better mind for adjudicating this sort of thing.

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I mean, I'd just say that if you don't have risk when summoning demons, your rules have failed at genre emulation and thus you need to scrap whatever setting element is being used to justify risk-free summoning.

 

[Kaiya]

I mean, I'd just say that if you don't have risk when summoning demons, your rules have failed at genre emulation and thus you need to scrap whatever setting element is being used to justify risk-free summoning.

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This was my biggest problem with Ex3 demon summoning. You can Excellency your binding, Mara can't Excellency her resolve. I'm hoping the upcoming 3rd Circle Demon is more difficult to bind.

 

[Phigment]

So demon summoning question. Demons are compelled to serve by the surrender paths no? Can't remember if canon or fanon. If it is canon, why do people need to spend motes overcoming the demons resistance to force them to serve? Why can't they just compel them by their authority as a solar or whatever?

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Demons are compelled to show up when you call for them and stand there while you break them into relatively compliant slaves. They can't just decide that being mentally broken into a slave is awful and stay in Hell instead, or immediately attack you upon being summoned, before you get to grind them down.

Put another way, spending motes to lower their resistance and engaging in a battle of wills to compel them to serve is what invoking the surrender oaths looks like. If they didn't have those binding oaths you would have to actually use your mental influence and persuasion charms to convince Octavian to work for you, not just your summoning. If you don't like forcing them to serve, just summon them, let them loose unbound, and then negotiate the terms of their service to you the old-fashioned way, like you would with any other person-like entity. Maybe it'll turn out well!



As far as the ganging up and unexpected attacks, remember that Exalted 2e combat as written is happening by ticks, and you can move on all ticks, not just the ones where you act. (This makes Exalted combat terribly hard to do on a battlemap, FYI.)

So, it's not like this is D&D, where all the goblins beat your initiative roll and therefore get to walk up and surround you before you're allowed to re-position. If you roll initiative and five guys are trying to surround and shank you, follow the example of many a real-world combatant, and back away before they box you in, until it's your tick to attack them. Unless they're much faster than you or started from already having you surrounded, that should take care of most issues.

If they ARE starting from a position of surrounding you, or have you completely outclassed in maneuverability such that you can't avoid being boxed in, stunt like mad. Climb a tree. Duck under the legs of the guy in front of you so he hits the guy behind you and you're not surrounded any more.

If you can't stunt your way out of it, ask the GM why he's set up an ambush specifically to mercilessly murder your character, because at this point he's trying too hard for it to be an accident.

 

[Cosar]

If you can't stunt your way out of it, ask the GM why he's set up an ambush specifically to mercilessly murder your character, because at this point he's trying too hard for it to be an accident.

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If a rule being used means that the ST is trying to specifically murder your character it's probably a bad rule.

 

[Phigment]

Yeah, but bad rules are easy to come by, and this one isn't even easy to pull off unless you've already got the character over a barrel. It's not something that's going to just happen.

A waiter at the restaurant could poison your character's tea, too, and if the Wyld Hunt could identify a Solar, they'd have every reason to make that happen. But in the game, if your Storyteller springs something like that on you by surprise, it's perfectly reasonable to ask what he's hoping to accomplish here.

Sometimes, you have to default to TV logic, where getting unfairly attacked is the setup for how you narrowly survive the unfair attack in a fun way, and that's great. If you're working on Roman Politics logic, where all your best pals in the Senate form a violent mob and throw a surprise stabbing party, that's fine, too, but you should probably check with your gaming group and make sure everyone likes that idea.

 

[Shyft]

As far as the ganging up and unexpected attacks, remember that Exalted 2e combat as written is happening by ticks, and you can move on all ticks, not just the ones where you act. (This makes Exalted combat terribly hard to do on a battlemap, FYI.)

So, it's not like this is D&D, where all the goblins beat your initiative roll and therefore get to walk up and surround you before you're allowed to re-position. If you roll initiative and five guys are trying to surround and shank you, follow the example of many a real-world combatant, and back away before they box you in, until it's your tick to attack them. Unless they're much faster than you or started from already having you surrounded, that should take care of most issues.

If they ARE starting from a position of surrounding you, or have you completely outclassed in maneuverability such that you can't avoid being boxed in, stunt like mad. Climb a tree. Duck under the legs of the guy in front of you so he hits the guy behind you and you're not surrounded any more.

If you can't stunt your way out of it, ask the GM why he's set up an ambush specifically to mercilessly murder your character, because at this point he's trying too hard for it to be an accident.

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Unfortunately as Imrix pointed out, once you're surrounded- the text of the rules precludes the ability to move/dash even with a stunt- I consider this an oversight- and as Cosar says, it's not a well-written rule. 'Fixing Exalted 2e rules' is not this thread's purpose though- I do enjoy discussing it however.

This comes back to again how Exalted played is generally not a 1:1 match with it's rules. Because the game never tells you 'characters joining battle start X yards apart', you just eyeball that and they don't even tell you to eyeball it or why- because if you start combat with everyone within 5 yards of each other, then it's going to be a ridiculous clash.

 

[veekie]

Guys, question thread. Exalted edition design debate #10032 in the other thread please.

 

[Drak4806]

Are the five magical materials indestructible?