General Exalted Thread

[Shyft]

Okay!

So I need to stress this right out- Numbers, dice, Quantitative mechanics are not bad. They are useful and can be impactful, meaningful and any number of positive things. My argument is that later 2e and currently 3e over-emphasizes them, and does so in an ill-conceived manner that results in the negative states of '900 charm bloat' and 'glacial progression'. Putting the vast majority of dice manipulation in Charms as the exception system also creates a perverse incentive that leads away from utilizing the base mechanics- taken to the extreme you stop using the base mechanics entirely, which is a Problem.

Before I get into the fun design philosophy, a quick note about the ST system probabilities- firstly, a d10 at TN7 with 10-as-2 is effectively the same probabilistic distribution as a coin flip, 50/50 chance of success over R rolls. (The heroic 10 just evens out the distribution). You'd get the exact same probability if it was TN6+ with no heroic 10s. This is why in Warhammer 40k, the Space Marine save is 3+, or a 4-of-6 faces chance of succeeding, compared to the Guardsmen/Eldar save of +4, or flat 50/50 chance.

Secondly, as @Dif mentioned, storyteller systems favor Getting Bigger and Staying Bigger, which generally makes the pool results even out. 5-10 or even 15 dice are much swingier than 20-30 dice.

Okay, so now we get to the fun part.

The oversaturation of die-adder Charms in 3e is poor design because it wastes time, space and other resources- both the developer and the player. This is not an argument if one finds it more fun- that's actually more easy to believe because 'fun' is rooted in 'play', that is to say wiggle room, advantage-seeking, optimization. It is fun, psychologically, to get bigger numbers and see bigger results out of our decisions/efforts. But that doesn't change the fact that Ex3's charms and dice manipulation mechanics could have been designed more elegantly.

Again, this comes back to the brilliance of the Excellency, and how in 1e, charm bloat of 'meaningless' die adders was an endemic problem. 1e Alchemicals prototyped the Excellencies, and then 2e codified them properly. 3e proceded to keep excellencies (and make them free), as well as give more dice manipulation in a system that was already overburdened with charm/artifact exceptionalism. A lot of my frustration with 3e lies in how they took an obvious step backwards in effective design.

And like I mentioned before, this created a perverse incentive to avoid other mechanics. Who here knows what Teamwork dice are? Or Circumstance Dice. Or Tool bonuses? All three of those mechanics, properly elaborated, are far more interesting for the handfuls of dice they grant than any charm-based die adder. For the fundamental reason that they require you to engage with the game world. Charms isolate the player. The focus the player on themselves as an island of mechanics in sea devoid of interaction except when those 'spikes' of competency are relevant. Oh I understand completely that there are other incentives to interact, but the fundamental structure still stands. Exalted 2e had the same problem, where a great deal of it's 'engagement' mechanics and theming were ignored in favor of careful certainty and security.

People never liked sticking their neck out for assets, because doing so was risky. Risk is good though, Risk is memorable, and when carefully managed, is fun. The design goal of a game is to balance risk with it's resolution system (dice), or in the case of Exalted, make a statement of when your dice matter. 2e's difficulty/threshold success scale was extremely short, but it was very useful in establishing that the expectation is not for the world to scale up for an Exalt.

A strong, healthy mechanic for a game is one that promotes the preferred mode of play. Overburdening the design with exception-charms that are essentially contextual less die adders (even if context can be added/inferred) is unhealthy. Now if 3e's 'preferred mode of play' is this island-tower of dice manipulation, so be it, but I will still critique it as being a step backwards from the utility of template dice adder charms.

Which leads me to the hopefully final point: Dice are meaningless on their own in context of Exalted- moreso 2e because it has implicit statements as to what dice mean. Dice are not superhuman in and of themselves. Oh sure, if you roll 30 dice you are 'superhuman' in that no other human can match you except with some alternate mechanic. (It's like saying the 30 success guy can do it in one roll while the regular guy does it as an extended roll over time).

Take Perception+Awareness to notice detail. Even as an Exalt, you are limited to human vision. You can't see what the human eye can't see, even if you have infnite threshold successes. Oh sure you'll still see quite a lot! But not everything. To actually see more than humanly possible, you need a Charm to lens your dice through. This is the advantage of focusing the majority of dice manipulation on foundational Charms like Excellencies- acknowledging that in 2e, having to buy so many of them was an experience burden in an already xp-light game.

 

[Lioness]

The part about needing success in order to avoid the narrative stalling is pretty easily corrected in any system by the person running the game, I've heard it called "falling forward" where you let them succeed but at a cost.

 

[Kaiya]

Okay!

So I need to stress this right out- Numbers, dice, Quantitative mechanics are not bad. They are useful and can be impactful, meaningful and any number of positive things. My argument is that later 2e and currently 3e over-emphasizes them, and does so in an ill-conceived manner that results in the negative states of '900 charm bloat' and 'glacial progression'. Putting the vast majority of dice manipulation in Charms as the exception system also creates a perverse incentive that leads away from utilizing the base mechanics- taken to the extreme you stop using the base mechanics entirely, which is a Problem.

Before I get into the fun design philosophy, a quick note about the ST system probabilities- firstly, a d10 at TN7 with 10-as-2 is effectively the same probabilistic distribution as a coin flip, 50/50 chance of success over R rolls. (The heroic 10 just evens out the distribution). You'd get the exact same probability if it was TN6+ with no heroic 10s. This is why in Warhammer 40k, the Space Marine save is 3+, or a 4-of-6 faces chance of succeeding, compared to the Guardsmen/Eldar save of +4, or flat 50/50 chance.

Secondly, as @Dif mentioned, storyteller systems favor Getting Bigger and Staying Bigger, which generally makes the pool results even out. 5-10 or even 15 dice are much swingier than 20-30 dice.

Okay, so now we get to the fun part.

The oversaturation of die-adder Charms in 3e is poor design because it wastes time, space and other resources- both the developer and the player. This is not an argument if one finds it more fun- that's actually more easy to believe because 'fun' is rooted in 'play', that is to say wiggle room, advantage-seeking, optimization. It is fun, psychologically, to get bigger numbers and see bigger results out of our decisions/efforts. But that doesn't change the fact that Ex3's charms and dice manipulation mechanics could have been designed more elegantly.

Again, this comes back to the brilliance of the Excellency, and how in 1e, charm bloat of 'meaningless' die adders was an endemic problem. 1e Alchemicals prototyped the Excellencies, and then 2e codified them properly. 3e proceded to keep excellencies (and make them free), as well as give more dice manipulation in a system that was already overburdened with charm/artifact exceptionalism. A lot of my frustration with 3e lies in how they took an obvious step backwards in effective design.

And like I mentioned before, this created a perverse incentive to avoid other mechanics. Who here knows what Teamwork dice are? Or Circumstance Dice. Or Tool bonuses? All three of those mechanics, properly elaborated, are far more interesting for the handfuls of dice they grant than any charm-based die adder. For the fundamental reason that they require you to engage with the game world. Charms isolate the player. The focus the player on themselves as an island of mechanics in sea devoid of interaction except when those 'spikes' of competency are relevant. Oh I understand completely that there are other incentives to interact, but the fundamental structure still stands. Exalted 2e had the same problem, where a great deal of it's 'engagement' mechanics and theming were ignored in favor of careful certainty and security.

People never liked sticking their neck out for assets, because doing so was risky. Risk is good though, Risk is memorable, and when carefully managed, is fun. The design goal of a game is to balance risk with it's resolution system (dice), or in the case of Exalted, make a statement of when your dice matter. 2e's difficulty/threshold success scale was extremely short, but it was very useful in establishing that the expectation is not for the world to scale up for an Exalt.

A strong, healthy mechanic for a game is one that promotes the preferred mode of play. Overburdening the design with exception-charms that are essentially contextual less die adders (even if context can be added/inferred) is unhealthy. Now if 3e's 'preferred mode of play' is this island-tower of dice manipulation, so be it, but I will still critique it as being a step backwards from the utility of template dice adder charms.

Which leads me to the hopefully final point: Dice are meaningless on their own in context of Exalted- moreso 2e because it has implicit statements as to what dice mean. Dice are not superhuman in and of themselves. Oh sure, if you roll 30 dice you are 'superhuman' in that no other human can match you except with some alternate mechanic. (It's like saying the 30 success guy can do it in one roll while the regular guy does it as an extended roll over time).

Take Perception+Awareness to notice detail. Even as an Exalt, you are limited to human vision. You can't see what the human eye can't see, even if you have infnite threshold successes. Oh sure you'll still see quite a lot! But not everything. To actually see more than humanly possible, you need a Charm to lens your dice through. This is the advantage of focusing the majority of dice manipulation on foundational Charms like Excellencies- acknowledging that in 2e, having to buy so many of them was an experience burden in an already xp-light game.

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I am like 90% sure you're not talking about the final version of Ex3, which has a pretty generous rate of progression. In a month I've raised 3 attributes and gotten 3 new Charms. 9xp cap per session is rather a lot.

like...every two sessions, get a Charm and an attribute or a Charm and 1 or 2 skill dots. This is easy.

 

[Shyft]

I am like 90% sure you're not talking about the final version of Ex3, which has a pretty generous rate of progression. In a month I've raised 3 attributes and gotten 3 new Charms. 9xp cap per session is rather a lot.

like...every two sessions, get a Charm and an attribute or a Charm and 1 or 2 skill dots. This is easy.

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Doesn't it still scaling cost to raise Attributes? Like, Rating x4 xp per dot? Like... 9xp/session, assuming 4 sessions/month, that's 36xp. Assuming 3 favored Charms, that'd be 24xp with 12 left over.

 

[Accelerator]

I am like 90% sure you're not talking about the final version of Ex3, which has a pretty generous rate of progression. In a month I've raised 3 attributes and gotten 3 new Charms. 9xp cap per session is rather a lot.

like...every two sessions, get a Charm and an attribute or a Charm and 1 or 2 skill dots. This is easy.

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Wait.... a month in real time? Or game time?

 

[Omicron]

Doesn't it still scaling cost to raise Attributes? Like, Rating x4 xp per dot? Like... 9xp/session, assuming 4 sessions/month, that's 36xp. Assuming 3 favored Charms, that'd be 24xp with 12 left over.

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Don't worry, we all hate scaling XP equally

The division of XP and (Exalted) XP throws a wrench in that calculus. Four sessions at maximum gain each session is 20xp, 16exp. So that's 2 favored Charms with 4xp leftover, and enough XP for, I don't know, 0 to 3 in an unfavored Ability, raising an Attribute from 3 to 4, two Willpower dots. Decent but it's still scaling XP and it still sucks.

That said the flat XP rates I've seen and used myself need some work. As it stands it's a bit easy to just have every Attribute and Skill you care about at 5 relatively quickly, and when everyone is a 5/5/5 Physical perfect human, no one is.

 

[ichypa]

So here's one of the reasons why I dislike pushing unnecessary die adders as part of a game design structure- show of hands, who here knows what a Skinner Box is? If they don't, I only need point you at any MMO, lootbox, GACHA or similar 'DING TO PROGRESS' game in the world. Reward structures are hardwired in to our brains and our gaming toolkit.

*snip*

So what about die adders? Or better to say 'Quantitative' effects- to just cover anything that manipulates dice results instead of creates a new action. Die adders are a very obvious skinner box mechanic, because they create a narrow, easy to understand reward of 'I am better at this thing'. I say that this is effective design, but I will fight bloody handed before I say it is good design. Skinner boxes are awful game design tools, and can be downright predatory- Fortunately we're not experiencing such a bad one with Exalted.

Quantitative mechanics and design that includes it with reasonable guidelines is good. The beauty of an Excellency was that it was a one-stop shop of all your die adding needs and it created an expectation that your scale of 'adding dice' ends. Every 'exception' in this already exception-based design adds complexity to an already large and sometimes unwieldy ruleset. This is not an argument against complexity in and of itself, but if a game is going to be complex, I want it to be meaningfully complex.

Qualitative design- that is to say a mechanic that creates a New Option is more evocative, more memorable, more useful in the long run. It's more enriching to the player to get a new thing they can do than it is to only get better at the things they do. In an ideal case you want a balance of both mechanics- and in the case of Excellencies, the templating is ideal because you don't need to complicate charm trees with more complex die adders.

Even at their most basic, the Excellency itself makes a statement on the Exalted and other Essence-wielders. Arbitrary die adders however do not. They just... manipulate the outcome. Do you really want to spend 8xp on something that just changes how dice works, or would you rather spend it on something meaningful ?

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Honestly, I hated dice adders, at least when they take the form of being gated so that only those who can use Charms can have them. This is because 1) those that don't have them can't keep up with those that do, which means that "meaningful competition" gets whittled down to those that have similar magics, and 2) personally, it makes having invested in high base stats feel less meaningful; like am I one of the greatest swordsmen in the world because I have Melee 5, or because I can just dump motes into my Melee Excellency? Is the only reason my character can say he's one of the greatest swordsman in the world because he is Exalted?

I've aways thought that Exalted could benefit from taking a page out of Trinity/Aberrant's chargen, and dividing it into Character and Template stages. "This is what my character can do because of who they are, and this is what my character can do because of their Template." In Exalted, "template power" sort of consumes "character power," a problem that I think is adjacent to the lack of interaction with base mechanics I think you've noted in the past. Charms come off to me as less a character's superpowers -- the things that set them above and apart from their peers -- and more as what a character can do, of being the primary way that a player character is meant to interact with the world. The thing that should be what sets them apart, what makes them special, feels like its instead meant to act as the baseline of play.

I think that I, personally, would prefer it if Exalted kept all the dice tricks and threw out all the dice adders; those at least feel like they're giving you more bang for your buck instead of being able to drown the opposition in money.

Because Exalted gives me a bunch of numbers, so many, with which to build the story of a person. It tells the stories no other game does. D&D doesn't give me Reroll 5s and 6s on tests of speed, showing how I never come within an inch or a foot of failure. It gives me +1 Charisma and a flat number bonus like double proficiency or whatever. That is when numbers bore me. When the story it tells is so limited. I like D&D most when I can get a Fighting Style to reroll 1s and 2s on the damage roll, when I get advantage, when I can do stuff with the dice that say something about how I'm fighting. But that actually limits me to certain concepts pretty hard, and then I get bored because D&D is kind of a progression of More Numbers and Bigger Numbers, and the fights end up being really samey.

Meanwhile, with the Solar I'm playing right now, if you roll any ones or twos to attack her, I can ping a Charm after you've rolled to raise my Defense by that much, showing how I see the flaws in your attack even as it lands and direct it away, because I'm that amazing. If I land a hit, I gain a flat number bonus to make my unarmed attacks hit like artifacts, and double and reroll tens on damage, showing that when I hit hard, it's catastrophic for you, I don't always like the most amazing hit, but if it's good, it's great. I can keep your defense value from refreshing, and have another Charm to take advantage of stacking onslaught.

All of these are super basic numbers powers, but they add together and cascade into this brilliant, shining warrior who strikes with the force of a mountain, whose technique is so amazing that she's tracking the flaws in yours even as you begin to touch her skin, who is so fast, so relentlessly vicious that if you don't end the fight soon, she'll end up tearing you limb from limb from sheer aggressive cussedness. This is why I love Ex3's dice tricks, because with relatively simple effects they let me build and visualize the story of how I fight, how I win, how I gain those small edges that end up being decisive.

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That's an interesting perspective. I'd never thought of it quite like that before, I admit.

And like I mentioned before, this created a perverse incentive to avoid other mechanics. Who here knows what Teamwork dice are? Or Circumstance Dice. Or Tool bonuses? All three of those mechanics, properly elaborated, are far more interesting for the handfuls of dice they grant than any charm-based die adder. For the fundamental reason that they require you to engage with the game world. Charms isolate the player. The focus the player on themselves as an island of mechanics in sea devoid of interaction except when those 'spikes' of competency are relevant. Oh I understand completely that there are other incentives to interact, but the fundamental structure still stands. Exalted 2e had the same problem, where a great deal of it's 'engagement' mechanics and theming were ignored in favor of careful certainty and security.

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This paragraph pretty much sums up why I like Storypath so much more that Storyteller. Exalted basically enables the player to dismiss context, regardless of whether that context is positive or negative. There is no incentive for players to look at the world around them and reach out for advantages, if even if the opposition does then those advantages still can't match up to a Exalt PCs ability to just throw dice around, assuming that the opposition's attempts to leverage advantages and disadvantages don't run into the Exalt's ability to just ignore them.

With Storypath, context is king, and is probably just as, if not more, important than actual success or failure. Even when player characters are going around negating opposing context, it almost always requires the consumption of a non-insignificant amount of resources; the fact that they can ignore the context feel meaningful.

The part about needing success in order to avoid the narrative stalling is pretty easily corrected in any system by the person running the game, I've heard it called "falling forward" where you let them succeed but at a cost.

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[Insert Storypath shilling here]

I am like 90% sure you're not talking about the final version of Ex3, which has a pretty generous rate of progression. In a month I've raised 3 attributes and gotten 3 new Charms. 9xp cap per session is rather a lot.

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[Jealousy about being able to actually play Exalted intensifies]

 

[SerGregness]

So here's one of the reasons why I dislike pushing unnecessary die adders as part of a game design structure- show of hands, who here knows what a Skinner Box is? If they don't, I only need point you at any MMO, lootbox, GACHA or similar 'DING TO PROGRESS' game in the world. Reward structures are hardwired in to our brains and our gaming toolkit.

In context of an RPG- the cooperative kind like DnD or Exalted- this reward structure is rooted in among other things Character Advancement, the goodfeels you get from spending XP. Some games push this harder, making each incremental gain in prowess a hard-fought endeavor. Other games are easier about advancement- in the case of Exalted 2e... Well I can't say with any certainty they intended Charms to be what they are, but the results are as follows: 2e Charms are Big and Chunky, with the expectation that the vast majority of advancement is done with them, followed by [Splat Trait]. Abilities for most Exalts, Attributes for others, Essence for Infernals and so on.

Like, in most of the games I've played/run, people never bought Attributes unless a sudden surge of XP made it possible. Saving for a big purchase like that- or Permanent Essence, was more useful in the long run than what amounted to +1d and another +1d on an excellency. Traits for most Exalts didn't matter except to define initial competencies and baselines- and to diferrentiate players from each other with their base traits first. Recall also that in 1e but moreso 2e, Charms are written wtih an eye towards 'weight classless'. The much maligned DB charms aside, your Charms didn't care what you fought, they worked, end of story. Lunar PDs worked just as well as Solar PDs at defending- there was no ST-deployable 'gotcha' built in that says 'Cannot be stopped'. like 'Unblockable Except against Primordials'

Remember also that in most storytelling guides, XP per-session is something like 4-6 with a big injection during 'storyline completion'. I want you to think about that environment for the moment- especially those of you who haven't played a game of Exalted any edition. I also want you to understand the brilliant psychology of stunting, despite it's later impact on the fandom. Stunting gets you dice, stunting gets you motes, stunting gets you experience points. In a game that includes and emphasizes character advancement, experience points are good. If not the greatest good.

Now the reality is that Exalted and most WW games are storytelling games first and foremost, progression is a side effect. Charms being big, sweeping comprehensive effects are due in part to how in 'practical play' you get one charm every two weeks. To say nothing of any necessary trait increases. Most games I've been in or run have settled at 8xp/session, because we can't afford to play that slow.

So let's extrapolate a bit with 'Storytelling' as the primary goal of an Exalted game. The advantage of 'Big Fat Charms' as opposed to incremental ones like 3e is that personal competence spreads out and shoots up quickly, enough that you don't need to progress broadly to have a functional character. Now maybe there's an argument to be made for increasing starting charm totals or any number of chargen tweaks, but the core idea, the... I hestiate to say ideal state, is that out of chargen, you shouldn't need to buy anything more. (This is a drastic oversimplification and I do not mean to imply you should cut out advancement systems).

So what about die adders? Or better to say 'Quantitative' effects- to just cover anything that manipulates dice results instead of creates a new action. Die adders are a very obvious skinner box mechanic, because they create a narrow, easy to understand reward of 'I am better at this thing'. I say that this is effective design, but I will fight bloody handed before I say it is good design. Skinner boxes are awful game design tools, and can be downright predatory- Fortunately we're not experiencing such a bad one with Exalted.

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Cute buzzwords Shyft, but if you're going to call dice tricks Skinner Boxes you're using that term in a way that's broad enough to lose all meaning (I am being charitable, here). At the very basic level, Operant Conditioning is about introducing a reward for some behavior to see if that behavior can be conditioned into the subject, but the dice tricks you hate so much are only one option you can take when you have XP to spend on a charm. You were going to buy something anyway. There's no behavior being encouraged, here (except, I suppose, 'get together with your friends and play some Exalted') since normal XP is granted for every play session by RAW, so there's no game action you can take to get more of it. Hell, in that light, the Splat XP roleplaying rewards are way more Skinner Box-ey.

 

[Chehrazad]

That said the flat XP rates I've seen and used myself need some work. As it stands it's a bit easy to just have every Attribute and Skill you care about at 5 relatively quickly, and when everyone is a 5/5/5 Physical perfect human, no one is.

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Man, Lords of Silk and Stone got fucking wack towards the end. @Stormwhite's Fire Aspect was physical 5/5/5 and could eat Solars as a healthy dinner right after the breakfast tyrant lizard and rider, while Isra had so many spells we needed to write new ones just so she could continue, and her Attributes sure weren't bad either lol. My favourite part was when I discovered I had too little Perception to aim her spells properly so I waited until the end of the session and immediately upgraded it to 5 in the meantime. Juniper definitely was no slouch either if I remember her stats right. Christ, it got insane.

 

[Sanctaphrax]

In the real world, the things we construct using geometry inevitably break down.

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Not nearly as fast as the things we construct without using geometry.

I have a strong positivist streak, and I'm not happy with the way my "side" has been represented in this argument.

The world really is a logical place; it has to be, or the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences wouldn't hold. Human limits make it impossible for us to grasp its structure in any detail, but we can see glimpses of the fundamental orderliness of the universe every time a mathematical concept developed for one thing holds true for another, every time a machine works, and every time a logical argument holds true.

Most of the time, there's not too much difference between an illogical universe and a logical one that you can't hope to understand fully. But...

...actually, on second thought, this has nothing whatsoever to do with Exalted. Why am I even talking about this?

But TTRPG does number crunching badly in general, because it's humans doing probability math which our brains suck at, so usually people do it wrong anyway, and it's fiddly and the math to predict it is an ass.

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On some level, soccer involves more number crunching than any video game. Bouncing balls can get ridiculously complicated, mathematically speaking. But somebody who likes number crunching won't get their fix from soccer, because playing it doesn't involve interacting with the numbers at all.

In that sense, tabletop games tend to be the only ones that involve number crunching at all. Computer games generally don't, unless you get really deep into them, because for the causal player all the mathematical stuff is absorbed into a black box.

WIldbow did and does many foolish and terribly advised things. He is not an example of anything, except maybe how to depress people via the internet, at which he is an undisputed master.

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Fight me, Monotov.

 

[DayDreamer]

I don't think it's that controversial to say that Exalted (any edition) isn't a great, or even good, system for generating the kinds of stories Exalted purports to tell, either on a macro or micro level. I think it generally does a reasonable job of (unless you're just perfecting everything) having good tension and energy at the table a reasonable portion of the time, as players are throwing tons of dice at problems, describing awesome feats, and doing other stuff that has a good feeling of power and consequence. But there's nothing particularly Exalted about that experience, at least to me.

The frustrating thing is that there are hundreds of ways this could be improved, even without going to PbtA or Burning Wheel variants or other systems that have explicitly narrative resolution mechanics to make the mechanics of Exalted line up more with the kind of storytelling its supposed to promote.

To pick out one at random, Exalted is supposed to be a game of choice and consequence. Why is there no universal mechanic where, if you fail an action (by some amount), you can pick up a flaw to succeed? Or charms that have secondary effects that trigger on failure, so I have more incentive to throw them out (if I miss with my big will-power consumed overwhelming strike, it's going to absolutely wreck the ground I do hit, creating a minor earthquake)?

For another—the 2nd excellency is honestly one of the best ideas in 2E. It allows for players who want to roll tons of dice to do so, and for players who don't like rolling tons of dice to avoid doing so, without affecting how capable the character is (in theory). Why not make this kind of thing more universal, where you can opt out of dice tricks or dice boosters to just accept some flat bonus or discount that keeps you approximately as powerful?

I do think that rolling more dice and having dice tricks can feel like power to some people, but it's problematic in two ways: 1. it takes more time to resolve, which is problematic in a multiplayer game, and 2. in opposed rolls in which the winner takes all, it can make even small differences in skill almost insurmountable given the d10 probability curve. These problems have solutions though, which is why it's annoying that no edition of Exalted has really used them.

 

[Omicron]

Man, Lords of Silk and Stone got fucking wack towards the end. @Stormwhite's Fire Aspect was physical 5/5/5 and could eat Solars as a healthy dinner right after the breakfast tyrant lizard and rider, while Isra had so many spells we needed to write new ones just so she could continue, and her Attributes sure weren't bad either lol. My favourite part was when I discovered I had too little Perception to aim her spells properly so I waited until the end of the session and immediately upgraded it to 5 in the meantime. Juniper definitely was no slouch either if I remember her stats right. Christ, it got insane.

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Juniper was a Water Aspect detective with Mental Primary and she still had Str 3/Dex 5/Sta 3.

Her mental attributes, of course, were 5/5/5.

 

[Chehrazad]

Juniper was a Water Aspect detective with Mental Primary and she still had Str 3/Dex 5/Sta 3.

Her mental attributes, of course, were 5/5/5.

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Naturally, naturally. Isra never had a full row of 5s, instead she had Dexterity 5, Appearance 5, Manipulation 5, Intelligence 5 and Perception 5.

"Only" one at the absolute human limits of dexterity, an awesome beauty that nearly transfixes all who see her (it certainly transfixed @Cornuthaum haw haw haw), pretty much the ultimate smooth operator, a certified genius and probably better eyesight than some birds of prey.

 

[Monotov]

In that sense, tabletop games tend to be the only ones that involve number crunching at all. Computer games generally don't, unless you get really deep into them, because for the causal player all the mathematical stuff is absorbed into a black box.

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Not really? Take EU4, you need to watch things like moral modifiers, territroy modifiers, how you tax vs production income balance out, etc. Otherwise you just get steamrolled by the AI any time a war breaks out, because you didn't have the economy long-term to build up a strong enough army to tell France to fuck off, or lack the standing treasury to just spike your forces via mercenaries. Lots of numbers generally leads to a massive learning curve, which is basically a difficulty overhang in paradox games, but the games where interacting with numbers is a necessity to ever succeed are out there.

 

[Sanctaphrax]

There are video games which require number-crunching. Maybe that's one of them; I've not played it.

But such games are in the minority. To play most video games, you don't even need to do addition.

 

[QafianSage]

Somewhat off-topic, but this video makes me think of @EarthScorpion 's Oramus:

Spoiler

Plus, it's just generally interesting.

 

[BossFight]

Because Exalted gives me a bunch of numbers, so many, with which to build the story of a person. It tells the stories no other game does. D&D doesn't give me Reroll 5s and 6s on tests of speed, showing how I never come within an inch or a foot of failure. It gives me +1 Charisma and a flat number bonus like double proficiency or whatever. That is when numbers bore me. When the story it tells is so limited. I like D&D most when I can get a Fighting Style to reroll 1s and 2s on the damage roll, when I get advantage, when I can do stuff with the dice that say something about how I'm fighting. But that actually limits me to certain concepts pretty hard, and then I get bored because D&D is kind of a progression of More Numbers and Bigger Numbers, and the fights end up being really samey.

Meanwhile, with the Solar I'm playing right now, if you roll any ones or twos to attack her, I can ping a Charm after you've rolled to raise my Defense by that much, showing how I see the flaws in your attack even as it lands and direct it away, because I'm that amazing. If I land a hit, I gain a flat number bonus to make my unarmed attacks hit like artifacts, and double and reroll tens on damage, showing that when I hit hard, it's catastrophic for you, I don't always like the most amazing hit, but if it's good, it's great. I can keep your defense value from refreshing, and have another Charm to take advantage of stacking onslaught.

All of these are super basic numbers powers, but they add together and cascade into this brilliant, shining warrior who strikes with the force of a mountain, whose technique is so amazing that she's tracking the flaws in yours even as you begin to touch her skin, who is so fast, so relentlessly vicious that if you don't end the fight soon, she'll end up tearing you limb from limb from sheer aggressive cussedness. This is why I love Ex3's dice tricks, because with relatively simple effects they let me build and visualize the story of how I fight, how I win, how I gain those small edges that end up being decisive.

This is much more appealing to me than buying the Hadoken Charm that lets me throw a fireball at range, because that, for me, just doesn't really do much. It would be strong as hell, it's a great Charm, don't get me wrong. But I'd much rather have Charms to perfect how I fight now than which give more ways to engage period, because I like using my Charms to build the warrior who practiced one blow ten thousand times, rather than ten thousand blows once.

And, again. I understand why you prefer just grabbing the Hadoken to getting Excellent Strike or Lightning Speed. That's totally fine, and a cool way to play! The best games have players who use both approaches, so you have an interesting variety of how the players engage in combat and a variety of tools to deal with problems!

I just wish you wouldn't actively insult the way I like to play because you find the appeal elsewhere.

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I'd just like to say you've convinced me to give 3e a try. One of the things that has always drawn me to exalted is how the charms it provides tell a meaningful story of who the character is by telling you what they can do. When 3e came out and people started talking about the abundance of dice adders I assumed they where just getting a bunch of +1 everywhere or the equivalent, but you've demonstrated that they really do meaningful add to the characters story.

 

[QafianSage]

I'd just like to say you've convinced me to give 3e a try. One of the things that has always drawn me to exalted is how the charms it provides tell a meaningful story of who the character is by telling you what they can do. When 3e came out and people started talking about the abundance of dice adders I assumed they where just getting a bunch of +1 everywhere or the equivalent, but you've demonstrated that they really do meaningful add to the characters story.

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I have to say that this conversation has basically done convinced me of the same. I've taken the time to go through the charmset more thoroughly, and with an eye towards this kind of story-from-the-numbers, and I can see it. I personally still prefer the option-increaser charms over dice tricks, but I can see more of the value in the latter. I guess that's +1 Linguistics and a fully-realized specialty in Borgstromancy I gained. Also, I took the advice earlier on and asked my players, and it seems like they want to play full 3e rather than BlueWind's version. Though I'm using a craft rewrite, because fuck that subsystem.

 

[Cornuthaum]

Naturally, naturally. Isra never had a full row of 5s, instead she had Dexterity 5, Appearance 5, Manipulation 5, Intelligence 5 and Perception 5.

"Only" one at the absolute human limits of dexterity, an awesome beauty that nearly transfixes all who see her (it certainly transfixed @Cornuthaum haw haw haw), pretty much the ultimate smooth operator, a certified genius and probably better eyesight than some birds of prey.

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Haw haw haw

Fun fact with uncapped app-increasing charms and boosting your Appearance to 16 for the purpose of one roll

 

[Chehrazad]

Haw haw haw

Fun fact with uncapped app-increasing charms and boosting your Appearance to 16 for the purpose of one roll

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@Maugan Ra gave me a two-die stunt.

 

[Shyft]

Alright, so if I miss someone in this, I apologize. There's a lot to respond to!

@SerGregness regarding your post about 'filtering', Exalted 2e was 'balanced' along the idea that things were filtered in abstract tiers (in a rarely read section stapled at the end of Charms) that among other things describes Hazard Ratings and the like- a decent idea without the proper support. (The guidelines rapidly break down in Actual Play). Charms like Authority-Radiating Presence and Flawlessly Impenetrable Disguise are meant to 'filter' meaningful opposition down. Charms like Judge's Ear are meant to filter out un-fun gameplay- and I should stress this that Judge's Ear was created in context of other games of the era, where lie detection and obfuscation were used as GM bludgeons for rail-roading.

So there is an argument to be made that an Excellency is sufficient filter for a given game, I don't know if it is or not, but it's not an unreasonable conclusion.

@Kaiya - you have several posts, so I'll try to address them in some semblance of order.

You compare/contrast the idea of dice having meaning, and they do/can. I make no arguments to the contrary. I want dice to be meaningful. I want dice manipulation to be meaningful. I want dice and their adjustment to make statements just as you point out. My argument is not in that 'dice/manipulation is bad'. It's that over-emphasizing it is poor design practice. One of your later posts explains how you adore the ability to capitalize on an opponent's rolls of 1s, that's an interesting mechanic! My issue is that there are too many of these in 3e and that they slow the game down. The complexity burden they add makes an already slow combat system (a problem with had with 1e, 2e and now 3e) even greater. This is not a single-person pogrom against those mechanics, but a criticism against their saturation and the knock-on effects.

As a related question- do you play online with a dice bot, or at a table with physical d10s?

That aside, what you're arguing in favor of, I would call textural mechanics- things you can do/buy to add texture to your character. Exalted needs those. My argument is that the best textural mechanics are ones that create new options or incentivize 'genre' behaviors. Not at the exclusion of dice manipulation. The argument is 'why are you spending thousands of words on what could be handled much more elegantly (dice manipulation) on things that need more words to function effectively and convey meaning?' This is not an indictment of how you, Kaiya, have fun. This is a critique of the game we got and how for 600,000 kickstarter dollars, I expect good work. Instead we got active throwbacks to bad 1e decisions.

Your later post that denotes 'Improvement vs Hadoken' is an interesting point. I am at a design level not arguing for a system that is 26 'Letter' charms that are all meaningfully distinct, run through a roll-engine that only has 10 levels of variability. Exalted has always had a... I hesitate to say 'problem', with Wide vs Tall, where the optimal strategy is 'Tall' but the 'Fun' strategy is 'Wide'. (For a given value of fun).

A system that gives you 50 different ways to punch but no meaningful differentiation in that punch is just as bad as one that only gives you one punch, but 50 ways to improve it. The problem with number-focuses is that after a certain point, the numbers dissolve into meaningless mush. You eventually will get So Good you splatter everything. 2e had the problem of this happening very early, which is why people were so happy with 3e and it's staggered systems to defray that. Without something to do with your dice, there's no point in having the dice. And most of 3e's die adders are very niche specific instead of generalized.

This sort of builds into what I feel is a problem with 3e's design philosophy, that @ichypa brings up with their character/template comment. At the end of the day, the storyteller system inherits the bias of World of Darkness being as Earthscorpion says, being made for back-alley knife fights until someone pops a bloodpoint and everybody is ludicrous gibs because that's how Vampires Roll.

The fact is, the 2-15 or so dice an average mortal can get is fine for a mortal game or one with firmly controlled dice manipulation, but in a wild romp like Exalted, the probabilities get so distorted that the results turn to mush. 2e's model of Charms is much closer to 'templating' than many people likely realize, in that the best Exalted characters are characters first and then Charms second. Infernals deliberately inverted that to a certain extent- but I digress.

Like, let's take a character I made a while ago, King of White Sands Endless Horizon- she was a Dawn and had Sail favored. The way I built her, I figured out who she was before Exalting, and then figured out who she was after. I'm 100% certain people still do this with 3rd edition, but the 'build psychology' of 3e's charm trees, supernal and so on seems to encourage the unconscious perception of the charms as a toolbox to describe your character- they're Adjectives, not Verbs. The vast majority are Adjectives, I mean, but the real meat and potatoes are the Verbs- the Actions, the Doings.

So Horizon was one Person, and then after Exalting she became essentially a New Person, inheriting lots of things from the 'Old Her', but tangenting into her powers. This is not to get into the debate of 'Are charms nouns in 3e', but just more that in 3e, I would be encouraged to pick charms based on what Horizon Does, instead of picking charms based on what Horizon can do as a Solar.

 

[Kuciwalker]

I'm late to this, but "why are you even playing Exalted?" is an unintentionally hilarious question posed from the people who despise the current, widely-played edition of the game.

 

[Kaiya]

Doesn't it still scaling cost to raise Attributes? Like, Rating x4 xp per dot? Like... 9xp/session, assuming 4 sessions/month, that's 36xp. Assuming 3 favored Charms, that'd be 24xp with 12 left over.

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Five sessions a month was my assumption. 25xp, 20 Solar XP. It costs more to raise attributes past 3, but to raise all your low attributes to 3 is 4xp to 2, 8xp to 3. This raises a lot of excellencies and just generally makes it easier to act outside your normal wheelhouse. Once I have all Attributes at 3+, I'll be evening out my miscellaneous skills. If I had any artifacts, I'd buy Evocations, nearly all of which do those "Cool new thing" stuff you mention. Or Sorcery, of course.

To be clear, if you aren't aware: Splat XP is a 3e thing you earn via roleplaying your intimacies, doing good teamwork with other PCs, or acting out the themes of your Caste in various ways. It's capped at 4 per session, and cannot be spent on Splat Charms. Solars have Solar XP, Dragonblooded have Dragon XP, and it can safely be assumed this trend will hold.

So you have a main XP track you can spend on anything, and a secondary one that can be spent on anything but Splat Charms, which provides its own encouragement to fill out your character without just Charms.

I'd just like to say you've convinced me to give 3e a try. One of the things that has always drawn me to exalted is how the charms it provides tell a meaningful story of who the character is by telling you what they can do. When 3e came out and people started talking about the abundance of dice adders I assumed they where just getting a bunch of +1 everywhere or the equivalent, but you've demonstrated that they really do meaningful add to the characters story.

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I'm very glad! PM me if you need any help building characters, I've memorized about 60% of the Solar set, and am more than happy to lend my madness to you!

 

[Lioness]

[Insert Storypath shilling here]

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I know, the person who I coined the phrase from worked on Scion 2e.

 

[Accelerator]

Arrrghhhh!!!!

You know what's most annoying about the Solar Exalted? That they aren't so flashy, at essence 1. Heck, they only get anime-style slashes at essence 3!

Anyway, something I made. Its set in the modern age. Essence 1 solar exalted versus a monster made by a sorcerer.

Spoiler

To this day, Aaron would never know why he moved.

Perhaps it was the slithering sound of a snake tail over the concrete. Perhaps it was the dripping of acid venom from a fanged maw. Maybe it was the swishing sound, as a bladed forearm swung through the air. Maybe it was a low, growl, as an inhuman predators spied its prey.

Aaron leapt forward, his feet somehow finding traction across the oil-slick floor. Behind him, a jagged claw passed through the space his body had been a second ago, slicing through it with a razor sharp blade. His dodge was not perfect, and the blade sliced through his clothing and traced a line across his ribcage. His shirt was torn open, and began to stain red, as the skin broke.

Regaining his balance and gritting his teeth at the icy pain passing through his side, Aaron spun around and turned to his attacker. Needle sharp teeth. Jagged forelimbs. A serpentine body. Insectoid eyes. Drooling mouth. As he watched, a drop of drool dropped from the toothy jaw, and struck the concrete ground. A puff of smoke welled up, and a pit was formed. Acid spit. He thought. Joy.

The monster reared back, and spat several gobs of acid at him, three of them at once. Moving with effortless ease, Aaron shifted to the side, and did not even bother to look at them pass by as he searched for something he needed. A weapon. He thought. He needed a weapon to deal with that. Spying a pipe, he nodded to himself. He grasped it with both hands, and with a grunt of effort, tore the pipe out of its bracing, and held it one handed in a stance. Looking at the beast before him, he began to sprint forward, legs a blur as he moved through 10 meters of space in less than a second. The pipe in his hand swung, downwards against the beast's head....

Only to be stopped by a claw. It seems that the creature was smarter than he thought. The creature's other claw swung forward, and he parried that away. Then again. Then again. The exchange lasted for seconds, but even in those seconds, he could feel his strenght draining away. He had to end this, quickly.

He blocked a blow from one set of claws.... and backed away, as if he had been overpowered and he was off balance. The creature shrieked in triumph, as it sprang forward towards him, claws outstretched and eyes open in glee. Those eyes widened momentarily in surprise, as he dodged the leap, pushing his strength into his limbs as he moved out of the way of the advancing leap. The monster, having overextended itself, had no way of defending as he brought down the pipe onto its skull with the full force of a sledgehammer. The creature's body fell to the ground, its head caved in, twitching jerkily as a destroyed nervous system misfired signals into its body.

Then it lay still.

It was over.

The question is... is this ok? I'm trying to do a thing with superhuman skill and speed.