Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
The specific point in question was if a machine gun would run an exalt out of motes to defend against or not. At which point Neph barged in with "Mortals don't get to win".
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General Exalted Thread
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The specific point in question was if a machine gun would run an exalt out of motes to defend against or not. At which point Neph barged in with "Mortals don't get to win".
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That was one aspect, another aspect to the discussion that got burned into my brain was someone insisting that America would rapidly figure out thaumaturgy and use the public education system to start mass-producing wards to force foreign Exalts who weren't ridiculously high essence to spend wp every 100 yards or so or turn back, mostly because at the time there wasn't a lot stopping the Realm from sequestering off whole cities or regions like that.
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Yeah, but there's I believe literally one page of one minor book that suggests that thaumaturgy can do that, and zero other content in the entire rest of second edition Exalted that suggests thaumaturgy can do that. I know there's zero hints in third edition that that could happen, and I don't know of anything in first edition, either, although I'm less familiar with the material there, so I feel very comfortable stating that, no, thaumaturgy wouldn't do that no matter if America has disbanded the Department of Education or not.
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There are some interesting questions buried in this kind of thing about how you handle mortal agency in exalted, and "mortals cannot win" is something I'm kind of allergic to stakes wise even if the mechanics are going to give that resolution to onscreen conflicts a lot. The Exalted v. America thing, though, is a very distracting hypothetical and buried in a lot of the 2E fandom (and sometimes freelancer) fascination with technologically (and sometimes socially) uplifting the setting back to pseudomodernity.
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Does anyone remember the Bunraku rules? That was an old setting addition that introduced the Bunraku as Mortal made Warstriders based on giant puppets. General Exalted Thread
It is related to this original fic: Bunraku (Samurai Mecha Quest) Original
I bring this up as they provided a means of allowing mortals to compete with Exalted on the limited level of direct combat. It didn't disrupt the balance of the setting as the Bunraku were extremely expensive and required extensive maintenance from trained professionals. A Mortal dominated city would have as a few squads of them so they could fight off the more physical supernatural champions or break hordes of lesser enemies.
It is related to this original fic: Bunraku (Samurai Mecha Quest) Original
I bring this up as they provided a means of allowing mortals to compete with Exalted on the limited level of direct combat. It didn't disrupt the balance of the setting as the Bunraku were extremely expensive and required extensive maintenance from trained professionals. A Mortal dominated city would have as a few squads of them so they could fight off the more physical supernatural champions or break hordes of lesser enemies.
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I find that easier in 3e than in past editions. In 2e everything used to be limited to enlightened mortals, but in my current campaign there is material to include almost anything (artifacts atunable by mortals, strange people, magical things from creation, context of the moment, sorcerers, sorcerous workings, etc.), so much so that in the campaign I am currently running I have not even needed to use exalted as antagonists.
Generalmente nos interesa más contar una buena historia que arrasar con todo de un solo toque (también ayuda que solo juguemos con terrestres), así que si algo parece defectuoso, a veces lo debilitamos (como la mecánica de choque y limitar los artefactos en la creación de personajes a uno) o si algo es demasiado débil para lo que queremos, no está de más mejorarlo (como una batalla contra un jefe inesperadamente larga entre un soberano y un lagarto tirano invernal). Es algo que ya hice en la 2.ª edición, pero es mucho más fácil en la 3.ª (en la 2.ª edición, básicamente rehice el juego).
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It isn't just you
Oops, sorry 😅. We're generally more interested in telling a good story than wiping everything out in one fell swoop (it also helps that we only play with land-based players), so if something feels flawed, we sometimes nerf it (like the crash mechanic and limiting artifacts at character creation to one), or if something is too weak for what we want, it doesn't hurt to buff it (like an unexpectedly long boss fight between a suzerain and a winter tyrant lizard). This is something I did back in 2nd Edition, but it's much easier in 3rd (in 2nd Edition, I basically remade the game).
What? I didn't say I wasn't interested in telling a story or that I wanted things solved in one swoop so the first part, or at least a translation of what you said doesn't seem to apply. I can understand buffing NPC's so that they can compete, but given how 3ed is set up, I don't think those kinds of buffs really end up being different from what you need to make mortals relevant in 2e, at least in terms of dice pools and supplemental charms.
Though given what you wrote, I guess I should clarify: 'optimize their dice pools' means, in my experience, that players generally go for having 4+ in the abilities they consider core to the character and an excellency, which makes a lot of mortals and even spirits in a position of needing a lot of luck.
There is no automatic translation software on SV. Jose7057 wrote in Spanish, so that's what it is.
both systems are different enough that the adjustments should be different (giving a mortal martial arts in 2e didn't even help, they still disintegrated at the slightest touch), and while we tend to optimize characters based on the objective (it's common in all ttrpgs) it doesn't affect us that much, limiting character creation to a single artifact helps with that, plus we use the unified experience system (crucible of legends) so there's less incentive to level everything to 5, and the mechanics are consistent enough to avoid abuse (in combat I can add more enemies, or put enemies that force them to spend motes to defend, and in social I can make them spend willpower if dramatically possible or increase and decrease resolve values thanks to intimacies). and sorry for the last message, I'm a native spanish speaker and since I use google translate to translate the page, I forgot I was on an english site😅
OctarineShrike
I ask again, what does Hongyuan need?
Does anyone know where the question of artifact dot ratings(they have relevance for evocation design) for the purpose of charms like glorious solar saber or exquisite relic bow for abyssals is answered(assuming an answer exists)?
Well, no, the principle issue I've found in both is that the mortal dice pools are generally small so the adjustments would largely be in the same direction, even if the specifics would have some difference. Artifacts certainly ramp numbers up eventually, but I haven't really had people with massive panoply's at the start and I've seen the same issue even then. Stats are a bit more all over the place, but even with a unified experience system starting without a 4 is decidedly abnormal in my experience(and it's certainly not something that the game assumes given it directly encorages going up to 5 if you want to). In some ways attributes are even worse, since raising them in play can be so painful.
And it's not just the excellencies, though those are some of the starkest divides. But a lot of charms enhance actions to such a degree that without charms use on the other side it's incredibly hard for mortals to matter mechanically. Battlegroups can help, but it both limits things(it's hard to justify why every battle seems to have large elements of field armies present), but also Exalts tend to have a lot of means to really punish battlegroups. Sorcery can be especially nasty in this regard. They are, at the end of the day, a supplemental thing, especially thanks to how they work with initiative. But socially things are much, much worse. Intimacies can help, but in my experience with even a only somewhat social focused character(3/3 in terms of attribute/ability with a couple of charms) the only way to meaningfully resist for 'normal' mortals was to rely on very strong intimacies. And for a character with a bit more investment they basically might as well not have statistics. And on the flip side, if the mortal is trying to influence the characters, well, you can run into the same dynamic, just where the only way is to massively metagame and constantly utilize the players intimacies in a way that seems to punish them for it. About the only way I could see it, without massively bending what mortals can do (and thus no longer really being in 3e mechanically), is for some sort of attrition play but that's basically just 'what if we reinvent 2e social combat from first principles'.
Arms of the Chosen gives bad advice. Don't let Evocations do Exalt style dice tricks or just-better-attacking in general, give them cool flashy stuff and utility effects they can't get elsewhere and sick finisher moves. The bread and butter needs to be MA and their own Charms otherwise DBs just get Solar Melee in a daiklave and things go badly.
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I know that.
I think the main problem non-exalts have this edition is that the combat engine only wants a certain number of solo combatants at a time before you're going to want to turn them into trivial opponents or a battle group for the sake of everyone's sanity.
HamSandLich
MEAT WIZARD
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WHALE FACTS WHALE FACTS THE SPOKEN ARE STILL ALIVE THE VOICE IN MY MY SHOWER DRAIN TOLD ME SO
I feel like mortals having very little meaningful agency as a whole is kind of on-brand for what Exalted is in general.
I'm not saying Mortals should never be able to matter, but that should be on the back of like, some kind of supernatural edge, sorcery, incredible and generational mastery of a craft, or straight up just being an army.
Addendum: I mean agency in the sense of being able to oppose Exalts and Gods and stuff, not agency in the sense of being able to meaningfully act on Creation.
I'm not saying Mortals should never be able to matter, but that should be on the back of like, some kind of supernatural edge, sorcery, incredible and generational mastery of a craft, or straight up just being an army.
Addendum: I mean agency in the sense of being able to oppose Exalts and Gods and stuff, not agency in the sense of being able to meaningfully act on Creation.
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Yeah. If you actually ran a combat with lots of singular elite troops you could probably wear characters down at certain points, but the system says not to do that. And it would take probably a week to actually run it.
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Onyx Path just posted a preview for one of the Exigent charmsets that's going to be included in Champions of the Divine Flame, one of the two upcoming Exigent supplements. It's for the Chosen of Knives, which was one of the backer requests for a full charmset write-up from the Out of the Ashes backer campaign.
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The problem here is how nebulously defined a heroic mortal is. There's scople for individual mortal combatants but it's a matter of selling it to your players that these paticular guys have the kind of narrative significance to deserve it because if they're taking the PCs head on they're probably going to get really humbled at best.
UrsaTempest
Don't Panic!
if you're several individual mortals willing enough to take an exalt that implies you're narrative important, yes?