General Exalted Thread

[Kaiya]

Thank you so much for backing me up here, @Shyft

Have you actually tried doing this, or is it hyperbole/speculation? I'm actually running games in parallel on TGchan right now, one mostly based on D&D/Pathfinder (plus some GURPS) and another mostly based on Ex2, same core group of players, and I've been making what feels like slow but steady progress toward adequate Ex2 rules, whereas I wouldn't even know where to start on modding recognizable exalts into the most basic D&D system of character levels, while GURPS seizes up and chokes on it's own vomit trying to work out the appropriate point-buy cost and other mechanical interactions for something as simple as HGD or Duck Fate.

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You can't mod Charms into D&D, no. The hack gave Exalts some basic extra benefits, a pool of Excellency dice, d8s IIRC, that they could add to their rolls, and a few innate powers lost to Skype logs. If you want Charms, just...mod the Ex3 movement system, instead of trying to fix 2e. Rip out the range bands and write in whatever you feel appropriate to Athletics and such based on what you liked about Second Edition. Start from a less fragile, screwed up baseline, because Shyft is flatly wrong, Ex3 is simply better, on a system level, than Ex2, and is far less fragile to modding to boot.

Or, fuck, go with @EarthScorpion 's Kerisgame (which is very well-done, to be clear, I'm not just suggesting it as "anything but Ex3", it's good on its own merits) hack, if you don't like how complex Third Edition gets, do anything but try to mod Second Edition, because Second Edition is, in fact, that awful.

 

[Sanctaphrax]

D&D's not my thing, but I'm confident I could hack together Exalts-in-D&D over the course of a weekend if I set my mind to it. Homebrewing for a system is almost always much easier than redesigning a system.

I'd be hesitant to fix the things that keep people from using the movement system, by the way. As pointed out earlier, the current system has serious issues that are largely kept in check by the fact that it isn't used.

Assassination Classroom involves hundreds of plausible-seeming sneaky plans, most of which come nowhere close to succeeding. The very best ones usually just end up hitting hard enough to reveal another component of the target's paranoia combo. That's not at all "decided primarily by planning."

I want a game where the outcome of violence is most often decided by raw combat ability, where disparities in skill can be vast enough to reliably overcome the action-economy advantage of superior numbers in most "fair fight" types of scenarios, but which also includes mechanical depth to arrange a variety of decidedly unfair fights. A game where the PCs don't usually need to worry about their own survival - thus freeing up mindshare to worry about everything else in Creation and beyond - but that invulnerability is never flawless and absolute, nor the result of multilayered OOC plot armor.

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That's totally decided primarily by planning. That's like the definition of decided by planning. At least as I would use the words; if you define them differently, it's probably better that we spare ourselves the argument. Arguing over what words mean is always a stupid waste of time.

Anyway, 3e does what you're asking for. Actually, most editions of D&D do too. And Nobilis, I think. And hundreds of other games. 2e is actually unusual in its field in that it doesn't do that.

I like the idea of sorcery, MA Form-type charms, Infinite Mastery, and/or other major scenelong buffs not being comboable, due to the metaphysical logic and tactical implications of the idea that focusing your full power inward to unlock something necessarily involves redirecting that power away from, say, the deflector shields.

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I should warn you, Infinite Combat Ability Mastery is strong enough that making it incompatible with the other scenelong buffs probably just means nobody (Solar) uses the other scenelong buffs.

 

[Segev]

I'm confident I could hack together Exalts-in-D&D over the course of a weekend if I set my mind to it.

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Sure, depending what you feel is important to carry through.

A dirt-simple one is to make it gestalt, and make all PC class folks glow with caste marks when they use any class features or an attack bonus higher than +4.

I would find that dissatisfying, though. The point being that what you can do in a weekend may not be what people are looking for.

 

[Peanut-007]

The reality is that people who 'hate' 2e don't really hate it. They hate that it keeps getting talked about. They hate the buy-in required for it. They're tired of it. 3e was not taken as a Good product, it was taken as 'Anything but 2e'. That bias must be recognized before you can more reasonably assess either editions' faults and successes.

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I personally prefer 3e because the system usually works well enough out of the box for me to tell the stories I want to tell with it. The combat, social, and war systems are all systemically better in actual use and are easier to introduce to people to then I ever found 2e to be, there are actual bureaucratic rulesand guidelines in the corebook even if they aren't the best, and I don't need to ignore entire systems to actually play the game in a manner approaching fun like I did with combos.

In my personal and subjective opinions, 2e was far more broken then 3e. However 3e has its own problems, there's a bloat of overly specific charms in the core that would have been better served as "things you can do with charms" rather then "charms in and of themselves". There's also a lack of clarity on where some narrative effects of charms and mechanical effects of charms split off from each other. Dual Magnus Prana is the worst offender on this count. I'm not sure they were clear enough on the limits and potential of sorcererous workings. Martial Arts needing charms, multiple abilities, and its own four dot merit without a mechanical benefit before they work is pretty dumb.

3e has its flaws but I don't think they're anything close to the ones that dragged down 2e. Really though it's hard to say given how relatively little has come out. I really liked Dragonblooded both in writing and in mechanics but DBs, Solars, and their wonderful toys are what currently make up 3e. Until we see how they inevitably fuck up Lunars this edition I wouldn't really be confident in saying anything about which is ultimately better. 3e hasn't had the oppurtunity to pump out Scroll of Heroes and Chapters 1 and 2 of Infernals yet.

 

[strange_person]

You can't mod Charms into D&D, no. The hack gave Exalts some basic extra benefits, a pool of Excellency dice, d8s IIRC, that they could add to their rolls, and a few innate powers lost to Skype logs.

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Pathfinder already has that much. paizo.com - Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Mythic Adventures (OGL) What I want out of Exalted is more than just over-the-top wuxia powers stacked on top of a standard D&D murderhobo chassis.

I should warn you, Infinite Combat Ability Mastery is strong enough that making it incompatible with the other scenelong buffs probably just means nobody (Solar) uses the other scenelong buffs.

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I'm not talking about making it incompatible with other scenelong buffs once it's active, I'm saying during the action where you activate I(A)M you can't be doing anything else that counts as a charm activation. Stacking several scenelong buffs would require a corresponding number of actions during which your usual paranoia combo was off the table. That provides the basic dynamic of a boss fight against a paired Solaroid and Lunar: Theoretical peak performance needs some setup time to get all their ducks in a row, whereas the bodyguard-beast can boot up an assortment of Fury-OK and/or Gift effects from a cold start. Armor-Forming Technique and Hide-Toughening Essence click on when they're needed and stay on, contrasted with Durability of Oak Meditation which only lasts for a moment, or Iron Kettle Body which substitutes for armor rather than complementing it, or Glorious Solar Plate which requires an action and breaks stealth.

As for keeping things balanced, I think there need to be more rules, or at least clearer guidelines, for what counts as ending/leaving a scene, and how to go about forcing such a scene transition without resorting to teleportation magic. That way, when the Invincible Sword Princess sinks half her mote pool into scenelong buffs, there's a more concrete strategic case to be made for retreat being a legitimately useful tactic rather than a matter of futile cowardice. If she pursues, that's a new scene about her chasing you; if she stays put, the fight scene still ends but now you've also got a better chance to re-establish stealth. Either way, she wasted twenty-plus motes, and might need to do it again less than an hour later, which makes social/Stealth/Survival taunt-and-run tactics a potentially viable attrition strategy, thus a meaningful alternative to direct application of perfect-or-perish brutality.

Say, while I'm thinking of it, how about a Craft charm tree that functions somewhat like Glorious Solar Saber/Plate/etc., but with a focus on granting temporary artifact-quality gear to other people? Ideally with some synergy bonus to DB weapon-creating charms that can't easily be shut off when they start using it against you, as a sort of counterpart to Defense-From-Anathema Method/Dragon's Parable Defense.

 

[Shyft]

I think the thing about Scene Longs (and lots of people have this problem) is that they exist in context of Exalted's action economy, and we've all experienced how unforgiving it is even with a defense combo available. You raise the relevant point that you honestly should be taking turns, spacing out your scene-long activation with defensive play and maneuvering.

In my experience playing/running the game years ago, most STs allowed everybody to have pre-fight DBZ aura powerups because we bought 3-5 scenelongs and expected to use them. I think in practice though, Exalted 2e was more expecting players to only ever use 1-2 except in rare cases like Prismatic Arrangement of Creation Style. At this point it doesn't matter for the sake of the discussion that there's 'no point' due to other disruptive mechanics, just talking it out and identifying functions and concepts is important.

 

[strange_person]

Sure, depending what you feel is important to carry through.

A dirt-simple one is to make it gestalt, and make all PC class folks glow with caste marks when they use any class features or an attack bonus higher than +4.

I would find that dissatisfying, though. The point being that what you can do in a weekend may not be what people are looking for.

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A starting solar exalt with reasonable investment in Athletics, Dodge, and Survival is the kind of person who could've been relaxing on some beach on Alderaan when Tarkin gave the fire command, shrugged off the actual attack for 8m, then made their way through the rubble field, entered the Death Star, and demanded to speak to someone's manager about the cause of all this commotion. "Nearly spilled my drink, and the bar where I'd go to get a new one seems to have been vaporized! That sort of customer service is completely unacceptable." Gestalt classes just don't adequately represent that sort of power.

 

[Kaiya]

A starting solar exalt with reasonable investment in Athletics, Dodge, and Survival is the kind of person who could've been relaxing on some beach on Alderaan when Tarkin gave the fire command, shrugged off the actual attack for 8m, then made their way through the rubble field, entered the Death Star, and demanded to speak to someone's manager about the cause of all this commotion. "Nearly spilled my drink, and the bar where I'd go to get a new one seems to have been vaporized! That sort of customer service is completely unacceptable." Gestalt classes just don't adequately represent that sort of power.

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um, that's more than Essence 2, and more than 10 Charms. That's like...fuck, trying to remember my 2e. Essence 3 for Element Resisting Prana. One prereq, so two Charms, but you also need Essence 3. Essence 4 for Mountain-Crossing Leap and even that won't get you to orbit very fast. Ten miles per jump probably leaves you failing in the hundreds of miles between floating chunks of planet. And, again, that's an Essence 4 Solar. Way, way past chargen. You can totally perfect the beam at E2, though.

Surviving the Death Star Blast and making your way to the Death Star itself is still Essence 5 all said and done, to have the motes to pull it off and the Charms to not just...float, because space is actually really big.

I am like 90% sure a 3.5 wizard could do it with level 6 spells? Something to breath without air, Teleport/Fly, various protective buffs. Let alone a Gestalt class.

 

[Queshire]

um, that's more than Essence 2, and more than 10 Charms. That's like...fuck, trying to remember my 2e. Essence 3 for Element Resisting Prana. One prereq, so two Charms, but you also need Essence 3. Essence 4 for Mountain-Crossing Leap and even that won't get you to orbit very fast. Ten miles per jump probably leaves you failing in the hundreds of miles between floating chunks of planet. And, again, that's an Essence 4 Solar. Way, way past chargen. You can totally perfect the beam at E2, though.

Surviving the Death Star Blast and making your way to the Death Star itself is still Essence 5 all said and done, to have the motes to pull it off and the Charms to not just...float, because space is actually really big.

I am like 90% sure a 3.5 wizard could do it with level 6 spells? Something to breath without air, Teleport/Fly, various protective buffs. Let alone a Gestalt class.

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Whew, that's much better. As someone who has never actually played Exalted and mostly looks at it for story purposes, that sounds much more in line with my mental picture of Solar capabilities.

 

[Kaiya]

Whew, that's much better. As someone who has never actually played Exalted and mostly looks at it for story purposes, that sounds much more in line with my mental picture of Solar capabilities.

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A starting Solar is definitely a total badass, but "surviving the destruction of a planet with no consequences" is very much endgame-level play. Or, well. High-XP anyways, my Ex2 games "endgame" was about 500xp past the point a Solar could pull that off >_>

 

[MJ12 Commando]

Nah, not necessarily. Like, my Solar has a Defining Principle, "If demons exist, they live within the hearts of Dragons." If a Dragonblooded built up to 20+ initiative and rolled to force my surrender, I'd use that defining principle for +4 resolve, plus my stunt for +5 resolve, for a total of a static value of 9 (base 4 Resolve) that the DB has to beat before I spend motes on Integrity Excellency. Generally speaking, they wouldn't really be able to actually beat my resolve without burning some serious motes. And if they do, then yeah, I spend WP to spit in the Dragon's perfect face.

And then they throw a massive decisive attack at 20 initiative with double 10s to damage, very scary! And then my Reckless Fury Discard lets me look at their roll after they make it and raise my parry by the ones and twos, and the more dice they roll, the more of those they have. But lets assume they hit anyways, and I don't use Reckless Fury Discard.

20 damage, double 10s is about 10 decisive damage. I have Stamina 5, 3 -0 health levels. I spend 6m on Iron Skin Concentration and grow 5 more ablative health levels. Their "devastating decisive attack" has successfully put me in my -1 wound penalties (barely), I still have 10+ health levels total, they reset to base initiative, and have blown their entire mote pool on having enough social dice to beat my resolve and on having the dice and damage to hit me and actually deal damage.

I smile, and link Battle Against A True Hero in the OOC chat as I say "You'll have to do better than that" and I start launching alternating Withering and Decisive attacks to crash them and then just hit them with 5-8 initiative decisives because my damage has doubled 10s, rerolling 10s and every single hit I land will be devastating, because playing like no one can ever turn the fight around is the sucker's move. Having high initiative means you have a lot of momentum going, means you are consistently doing well, holding your ground and gaining some.

Doesn't mean things can't turn around like snaps.

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I mean the issue here is that if an opponent is actually trying to demand your surrender and is managing exactly that rather than being forced to go all-out in self-defense, I would suggest that they are going to be at a pretty significant advantage because they're not doofuses, so you probably shouldn't be assuming that you're really the one who has a significant combat advantage over the other side.

 

[Kaiya]

I mean the issue here is that if an opponent is actually trying to demand your surrender and is managing exactly that rather than being forced to go all-out in self-defense, I would suggest that they are going to be at a pretty significant advantage because they're not doofuses, so you probably shouldn't be assuming that you're really the one who has a significant combat advantage over the other side.

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Well, that's the whole point, isn't it? I actually might be! There's a lot of way to build a character, after all. I frequently have poor offense but amazing defense, or am untouchable in one arena and vulnerable in all others. My thing, mechanically, is very much the sort of builds who win by turning a losing fight around, because that's what I enjoy. It's worked out both badly and well for me, mind, which just sorta drives the point home again: You can't really assume, that just because it looks like you're winning, or just because you have a trick up your sleeve, that you'll definitely win. There's always room for that glorious turnaround.

that said you make a very fine point because I have literally never successfully done this to @Omicron who pretty much lives to show how little my tricks mean to his ridiculous overwhelming power.

 

[Maugan Ra]

But I wanted to really underline this point- one of the great things about 1e/2e that 3e sacrificed, was the ability to approach combat challenges non-linearly. Armor is hard to wear. You can't assume to have it on at all times, and those who can wear it 25/7 (DBs, some Lunars) are terrifying. Remember, Dragonblooded can sleep in full plate armor. Anyone else would barely catnap and be covered in chafing sores- even a Solar!

So in 3e, there's no incentive to approach problems atypically- the rules themselves force conflict down into the Initiative system/scale. Maybe that's a boon- because 'Ganked in your sleep' is cool if a player does it, but less cool if it gets done to a player without the storyteller knowing what they're doing. Basically 3e sacrificed a lot of the interplay of 2e in favor of it's own combat system.

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This is confusing to me, since between gambits, hold-at-bay, in-combat social influence and ambush attacks Ex3 has considerably more ways to resolve problems 'atypically' than Ex2 ever did, so I'm convinced I must be misreading this somehow.

 

[Kaiya]

This is confusing to me, since between gambits, hold-at-bay, in-combat social influence and ambush attacks Ex3 has considerably more ways to resolve problems 'atypically' than Ex2 ever did, so I'm convinced I must be misreading this somehow.

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Shyft hasn't finished reading the book.

 

[strange_person]

um, that's more than Essence 2, and more than 10 Charms. That's like...fuck, trying to remember my 2e. Essence 3 for Element Resisting Prana. One prereq, so two Charms, but you also need Essence 3. Essence 4 for Mountain-Crossing Leap and even that won't get you to orbit very fast. Ten miles per jump probably leaves you failing in the hundreds of miles between floating chunks of planet. And, again, that's an Essence 4 Solar. Way, way past chargen. You can totally perfect the beam at E2, though.

Surviving the Death Star Blast and making your way to the Death Star itself is still Essence 5 all said and done, to have the motes to pull it off and the Charms to not just...float, because space is actually really big.

I am like 90% sure a 3.5 wizard could do it with level 6 spells? Something to breath without air, Teleport/Fly, various protective buffs. Let alone a Gestalt class.

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Essence 3 for Element Resisting Prana is plausible at chargen. No need for Mountain-Crossing Leap; Racing Hare Method is more efficient, and you're already in orbit - around the star - because the whole planet's been converted to a debris field. Maybe stunt Leaping Dodge Technique to ride the blastwave as a knockback effect, reducing the distance you need to traverse under your own power. Based on the mechanics of Elsewhere-Evoking Asana from MoEP: Alchemicals, that microgravity environment with scattered gravel has an instability rating of only 3, easily manageable at Athletics 5 even without charms.

A mid-to-high level caster (notably far more complicated than typical chargen) could cope with space, sure, if they had the right spells prepared, but they probably wouldn't be able to keep that sort of protection active full-time without depending on magic items, and they absolutely couldn't casually no-sell the superlaser blast itself with little or no warning, which is really the most important part.

 

[Kaiya]

Essence 3 for Element Resisting Prana is plausible at chargen. No need for Mountain-Crossing Leap; Racing Hare Method is more efficient, and you're already in orbit - around the star - because the whole planet's been converted to a debris field. Maybe stunt Leaping Dodge Technique to ride the blastwave as a knockback effect, reducing the distance you need to traverse under your own power. Based on the mechanics of Elsewhere-Evoking Asana from MoEP: Alchemicals, that microgravity environment with scattered gravel has an instability rating of only 3, easily manageable at Athletics 5 even without charms.

A mid-to-high level caster (notably far more complicated than typical chargen) could cope with space, sure, if they had the right spells prepared, but they probably wouldn't be able to keep that sort of protection active full-time without depending on magic items, and they absolutely couldn't casually no-sell the superlaser blast itself with little or no warning, which is really the most important part.

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Ah, so you are assuming stunts work nothing like how they actually work, and interpreting the Charms wildly outside the actual scope of their power based on unrelated mechanics for an unrelated book. You might be able to persuade a given ST to let you pull this if they either didn't really know Exalted that well, or were more in it for the silly fun, but this is not a rules as written or intended interpretation. This is "I can make a not-completely-unsupportable argument for why you shouldn't hit me with the corebook for the suggestion".

Seriously. Stunts don't let you do whatever the fuck you want. They're dramatic descriptions of what you do, for which you gain a few dice. You don't get to fudge the rules in your favor like that with them. And Racing Hare Method? Not that fast. Essence 3, Athletics 5 gives you 80 miles per hour. You are not getting to that Death Star.

 

[Maugan Ra]

Shyft hasn't finished reading the book.

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Yes, I suspected that might be the case, and if it is so then @Shyft - honestly, please stop making all these grand sweeping statements about the relative abilities and mechanically-expressed themes in a system which you are comparatively illiterate.

You missed the synergy and themes and mechanical foundation to Solar Archery because you didn't know how the combat system worked. You've apparently missed that ambushes and sneak attacks are still present and viable in 3e, even to the point of 'getting shanked in your sleep'. Hell you made a big point in the post I quoted about how most people are unable to sleep in armour when, in fact, 3e retains exactly the same rule in the armour section of the core book.

 

[strange_person]

This is confusing to me, since between gambits, hold-at-bay, in-combat social influence and ambush attacks Ex3 has considerably more ways to resolve problems 'atypically' than Ex2 ever did, so I'm convinced I must be misreading this somehow.

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Ex2 had called shots, a blockade movement action, crude mid-battle social influence was possible by exploiting virtue compulsions and of course the idea of unexpected attacks is not new. It also had a lot of mechanics built around the assumption that important plots and landscape-shifting activities would unfold over the course of in-game months or years. If you want to lay siege to an unassailable manse by redirecting the dragon lines which power it, how do you go about that in 3e? Improvise some one-off Sorcerous Working, I suppose, and when someone else tries to interfere you can just go ahead and have another kung-fu duel about it, because there's no other mechanics left to explain what professional geomancers are or are not routinely capable of.

 

[Kaiya]

Ex2 had called shots, a blockade movement action, crude mid-battle social influence was possible by exploiting virtue compulsions and of course the idea of unexpected attacks is not new. It also had a lot of mechanics built around the assumption that important plots and landscape-shifting activities would unfold over the course of in-game months or years. If you want to lay siege to an unassailable manse by redirecting the dragon lines which power it, how do you go about that in 3e? Improvise some one-off Sorcerous Working, I suppose, and when someone else tries to interfere you can just go ahead and have another kung-fu duel about it, because there's no other mechanics left to explain what professional geomancers are or are not routinely capable of.

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Yes, Ex2 had non-functional systems that are broadly crude, primitive versions of the stuff Ex3 employs. I find it, not cute, what's the word. Oh yes, annoying.

I find it annoying that you're blaming Ex3 for not having every subsystem Ex2 did and all the Manse support when Ex3 hasn't had the chance to publish the manse or sorcery books yet. There's the core, one splatbook, one supplement out. And it still does all this shit better than Ex2 did, just by having actual functional subsystems you can steal from to improvise something.

Seriously, stop acting like Third Edition cut everything away. It's not finished yet. psst, know what the Ex2 core doesn't have? Detailed rules on Manse sieges.

 

[Maugan Ra]

Ex2 had called shots, a blockade movement action, crude mid-battle social influence was possible by exploiting virtue compulsions and of course the idea of unexpected attacks is not new. It also had a lot of mechanics built around the assumption that important plots and landscape-shifting activities would unfold over the course of in-game months or years. If you want to lay siege to an unassailable manse by redirecting the dragon lines which power it, how do you go about that in 3e? Improvise some one-off Sorcerous Working, I suppose, and when someone else tries to interfere you can just go ahead and have another kung-fu duel about it, because there's no other mechanics left to explain what professional geomancers are or are not routinely capable of.

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There are however mechanics to explain what sorcerers are routinely capable of, which is pretty good going for a core book and one supplement. As for your other points...

- Called shots in combat were, as I recall, functionally irrelevant outside of style points. Ex3's gambit system does everything they do and more in a much smoother, easier to manage way.

- Ex3 has an inherent blockade movement function woven into the core movement rules, in the form of the disengage action, and has a lot more room for actually using it in practice.

- Exploiting virtue compulsions was a crude and unreliable means of applying social influence in combat, Ex3 allows you to do that and so much more (and if you are really stuck on wanting someone to have the old virtues just add a principle to that effect).

- Ex3 stealth splits unexpected attacks up into ambushes and surprise attacks, thereby allowing you to use stealth in combat to gain an advantage without utterly splattering the opposition all over the walls.

...so yeah your point seems to be 'Ex3 expanded and improved all of these subsystems and options in a significant manner'?

 

[strange_person]

Ah, so you are assuming stunts work nothing like how they actually work, and interpreting the Charms wildly outside the actual scope of their power based on unrelated mechanics for an unrelated book. You might be able to persuade a given ST to let you pull this if they either didn't really know Exalted that well, or were more in it for the silly fun, but this is not a rules as written or intended interpretation. This is "I can make a not-completely-unsupportable argument for why you shouldn't hit me with the corebook for the suggestion".

Seriously. Stunts don't let you do whatever the fuck you want. They're dramatic descriptions of what you do, for which you gain a few dice. You don't get to fudge the rules in your favor like that with them. And Racing Hare Method? Not that fast. Essence 3, Athletics 5 gives you 80 miles per hour. You are not getting to that Death Star.

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Per Shards of the Exalted Dream, Voidfighter Gunships have a top speed of 120 mph, two-thirds of which seems like sufficient velocity if you're not being pursued and the Death Star is just sitting there - as it seems to be, at least until the Falcon arrives. Possibly deep space travel involves some sort of scaling factor, relative to movement in atmosphere. As for 'unrelated mechanics from an unrelated book,' Elsewhere-Evoking Asana is pretty clearly constructed as an elaborate reference to hard-scifi hazards of vacuum exposure, so it's a decent starting point for the problems involved in EVA without a suit.

Maneuvering in hard vacuum with nothing to push off against wouldn't be possible, that's true. However, even at E1 Graceful Crane Stance lets you violate conservation of momentum (and thus the Tsiolkovsky Rocket Equation) by treating "any surface at least as strong and wide as a human hair" - such as, say, individual grains of sand, much less full-sized planetary gibs - as a three-foot-wide platform with a safe working load of half a ton. If that's not enough, perhaps on the grounds that those grains of sand don't count as being sufficiently strong when they're not really attached to anything, well, Feather-Foot Style makes it possible to kick off of outright non-solid surfaces, explicitly including molten rock. Essence 3 and an extra Favored Charm or two would cut deep into the bonus point budget for a standard starting character, but going by the errata there'd still be enough left for WP 10.

A one-die stunt lets you do things that wouldn't otherwise be possible, such as 'fudging the rules' to parry a lethal and/or ranged attack with your bare hands. A two-die stunt further allows "limited dramatic editing," such as happening to be on the side of Alderaan facing the Death Star, and jumping onto a piece of debris which then 'splashed' particularly far in a convenient direction. Most of the work of propelling the rocks to that speed is done by the planet-destroying explosion (should I go dig up a frame-by-frame analysis from some star wars vs. star trek fansite, proving that the leading edge of the visible debris was moving at almost relativistic speeds?), stunting just lets you pick one that happens to be headed on a course more to your preference.

If you're going to threaten to throw the book at me, at least read it yourself first.

 

[Imrix]

Per Shards of the Exalted Dream, Voidfighter Gunships have a top speed of 120 mph, two-thirds of which seems like sufficient velocity if you're not being pursued and the Death Star is just sitting there

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Voidfighter Gunships' speed are also based off the laughable mechanics of Wonders of the Lost Age, which means their top speed is a third of the WW2-era Spitfire Mk.1 in level flight, and should generally be discarded. I have a quote from Vance when I discussed this with him prior to 3e where his reaction was "argh. Errata: Voidfighter speed should be Plot/Plot."

 

[Kaiya]

Per Shards of the Exalted Dream, Voidfighter Gunships have a top speed of 120 mph, two-thirds of which seems like sufficient velocity if you're not being pursued and the Death Star is just sitting there - as it seems to be, at least until the Falcon arrives. Possibly deep space travel involves some sort of scaling factor, relative to movement in atmosphere. As for 'unrelated mechanics from an unrelated book,' Elsewhere-Evoking Asana is pretty clearly constructed as an elaborate reference to hard-scifi hazards of vacuum exposure, so it's a decent starting point for the problems involved in EVA without a suit.

Maneuvering in hard vacuum with nothing to push off against wouldn't be possible, that's true. However, even at E1 Graceful Crane Stance lets you violate conservation of momentum (and thus the Tsiolkovsky Rocket Equation) by treating "any surface at least as strong and wide as a human hair" - such as, say, individual grains of sand, much less full-sized planetary gibs - as a three-foot-wide platform with a safe working load of half a ton. If that's not enough, perhaps on the grounds that those grains of sand don't count as being sufficiently strong when they're not really attached to anything, well, Feather-Foot Style makes it possible to kick off of outright non-solid surfaces, explicitly including molten rock. Essence 3 and an extra Favored Charm or two would cut deep into the bonus point budget for a standard starting character, but going by the errata there'd still be enough left for WP 10.

A one-die stunt lets you do things that wouldn't otherwise be possible, such as 'fudging the rules' to parry a lethal and/or ranged attack with your bare hands. A two-die stunt further allows "limited dramatic editing," such as happening to be on the side of Alderaan facing the Death Star, and jumping onto a piece of debris which then 'splashed' particularly far in a convenient direction. Most of the work of propelling the rocks to that speed is done by the planet-destroying explosion (should I go dig up a frame-by-frame analysis from some star wars vs. star trek fansite, proving that the leading edge of the visible debris was moving at almost relativistic speeds?), stunting just lets you pick one that happens to be headed on a course more to your preference.

If you're going to threaten to throw the book at me, at least read it yourself first.

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That isn't limited dramatic editing. That is nakedly interpreting the rules in the most gonzo way possible to justify your inflated view of what Solars can do. You don't get to decide that you were in the exact perfect spot to abuse various wordings, clauses, and implications on RL laws of physics to do what even high-Essence Charms wouldn't normally let you do. You get to declare "He may have made me disarm before entering, but I snuck in a dagger" when an unexpected fight breaks out.

Also, note the part about this explicitly not letting you do shit the ST feels strains disbelief. It's not "do whatever you feel like", it's "do neat little things that are plausible in the setting."

"I jump from asteroid to asteroid and sneak into the death star which I then dominate at chargen" is not a neat little thing that doesn't strain disbelief. It's T-Rexes in F-16s, except somehow worse.

also seriously lol on voidfighter speeds. The speed of a mildly fast car is not getting you anywhere in space.

 

[strange_person]

know what the Ex2 core doesn't have? Detailed rules on Manse sieges.

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That's true, most of the geomancy and thaumaturgy rules are in Oadenol's Codex. However, the 2e core still had fairly detailed rules for manse construction, a primarily geomancy-oriented artifact (the Singing Staff), and about as many thaumaturgical procedures for the Art of Geomancy alone as the 3e core has for all thaumaturgy combined, despite being a couple hundred pages shorter. That by itself would seem to imply the subject is being treated as a... lower priority, at the very least. Developer commentary, reclassification of manses and demesnes into lesser vs. greater instead of a 5-point scale, thoroughly decoupling hearthstones from manses, and the larger philosophy of striving to prevent any sort of magic from becoming the least bit quantifiable or repeatable for fear of losing it's mystique, leads me to believe the 3e dev team did their absolute best to tear the whole geomancy subsystem out by the roots, and salt the earth where it once laid so nothing would ever grow there again. Being a fan of said geomancy subsystem, this is a problem for me.

 

[Kaiya]

That's true, most of the geomancy and thaumaturgy rules are in Oadenol's Codex. However, the 2e core still had fairly detailed rules for manse construction, a primarily geomancy-oriented artifact (the Singing Staff), and about as many thaumaturgical procedures for the Art of Geomancy alone as the 3e core has for all thaumaturgy combined, despite being a couple hundred pages shorter. That by itself would seem to imply the subject is being treated as a... lower priority, at the very least. Developer commentary, reclassification of manses and demesnes into lesser vs. greater instead of a 5-point scale, thoroughly decoupling hearthstones from manses, and the larger philosophy of striving to prevent any sort of magic from becoming the least bit quantifiable or repeatable for fear of losing it's mystique, leads me to believe the 3e dev team did their absolute best to tear the whole geomancy subsystem out by the roots, and salt the earth where it once laid so nothing would ever grow there again. Being a fan of said geomancy subsystem, this is a problem for me.

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You know what? Just go play 2e, that's very clearly the best thing for you. But don't expect other people to be enthusiastic about helping you homebrew for a broken, hated system that has been replaced by something superior and is actually getting developed for. And don't expect people to not correct you when you spout off wild inaccuracies about a gameline you clearly don't understand very well at all.