General Exalted Thread
- Thread starter Aleph
- Start date
Just shy of three times the length. Madness.
Just to give an idea of the madness entailed in this?
The Revised TAW that @Revlid put out, which is basically a stripped down MOEP which provides the charmset (ruthlessly optimised for the 1-5 Essence range and for what player characters can actually expect to buy, much like the old corebook) and some setting elements and the like - and which also provides a full and comprehensive mutations system which is fully mechanised and far more consistent than anything in canon.
61,000 words. And that's without any professional editors or the like - there are some bits where we could have trimmed even more wordcount off.
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Jon Chung
=][=
I cannot help but think that one should be proud of, say, reducing the original 35,000 words down to 15,000 words with the same amount of content present in less space, as opposed to increasing the size by three times.
Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
I feel like that's not enough of a compensation for how good Hateful Wretched Noise is. I don't like the Compulsion because it's such a harsh penalty that it makes me not want to ever take this cool Charm (compare to, say, Witness to Darkness or Crowned With Fury, which manage to avoid stepping over that line for me), but just stripping it off entirely gives you two Solar-tier Charms for the price of one, except they're also permanent and cost no motes.
The price of sometimes suffering a -1 external penalty unless you're using one or more of the noise-cancelling mechanics available to Infernals (like the totally free Scourge anima) isn't enough to compensate for that. I'd consider reducing it to a free Keen Hearing Technique if that's what you're going for, with a parallel to Unsurpassed Hearing Discipline if you, I dunno, spend motes or accept a further penalty or something.
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To quote a fellow much smarter than me:
Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.
I read the Scourge anima as only cancelling noise in the area around you - you still hear things from outside the area. So you can knife someone within the area and their scream won't be heard, but it doesn't cancel the noise of the street party going on outside.
But yes, hmm. Splitting up into two Charms is probably the easiest fix. Or yeah, a mote spend for the really enhanced level. Probably just an option for Indefinite commitment to get it - heh, if you don't commit, while your hearing is that acute all the time, you can't process it.
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"I have made it longer because I did not have the leisure to make it shorter."
?
Blaise Pascal, who wrote this as a post script of one of his letters, used this as a comment on why this particular letter was unusually long. He simply didn't have the time to make it a shorter but just clear letter.
Aleph
Princess of Stabbity
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Yeah, but, uh
this is Exalted 3e we're talking about.
"Short on time" is not a phrase you can really use to describe them.
Yup.
It was never meant as a compliment to the Exalted 3rd Edition developers...
Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
- Location
- Bottom of the barrel
Can't wait until we get that Lunar Errata guys!
- Location
- London, England
Yeah, I'm hoping to introduce my friends to Exalted when 3e drops, and the massive amount of charms is probably going to be something of a problem. I'm probably going to have to be much more involved in character creation than I might otherwise like - describe things in terms of specialities within abilities and ask which areas they're interested in focusing on.
Actually, I might very well just produce a quick print-off of those charms available at Essence 1 and give that to most of them to look through while I deal with Supernal abilities on a player-by-player basis. Giving them something which is effectively two novels stapled together to reference for their charms is going to end in tears.
Actually, I might very well just produce a quick print-off of those charms available at Essence 1 and give that to most of them to look through while I deal with Supernal abilities on a player-by-player basis. Giving them something which is effectively two novels stapled together to reference for their charms is going to end in tears.
- Location
- Quezon City, Philippines
@Maugan Ra
You could do what I did and introduce them to 2e or 2.5e.
When I introduced Exalted to my friends, I skipped over Solars since my friends would have found them boring. They prefer Grimdark, Edgy, Weird, and Metal so the choice was between Abyssal and Infernals. But since, Abyssals is, in my not so fair opinion, shit unless Exalted Modern, I went with the Green Sun Princes.
You could do what I did and introduce them to 2e or 2.5e.
When I introduced Exalted to my friends, I skipped over Solars since my friends would have found them boring. They prefer Grimdark, Edgy, Weird, and Metal so the choice was between Abyssal and Infernals. But since, Abyssals is, in my not so fair opinion, shit unless Exalted Modern, I went with the Green Sun Princes.
- Location
- London, England
Eh, in general I like 3e, and I think many of the systems are a significant improvement over what we currently have. The charm bloat is an unfortunate problem, but not an insurmountable one, and I suspect that I'll still enjoy the game once I start playing.
I have no intention of trying to learn all of those charms when constructing my NPCs though. I'll read them through to get a rough idea of what they're capable of and then go with the Quick Character method of just summarising them in my notes. Which is honestly the sort of thing I do in most of my games anyway - I tend to adapt things on the fly and improvise like crazy anyway, since I find that more enjoyable than planning everything out in advance.
FaeGlade Plural
Semper Legens
- Location
- Land of Bureaucracy
- Pronouns
- Plural/They
What I did with my players (we started a campaign back in February, using the leak) was to ask them about general character concepts. Then I proposed a fighting style, a social aptitude and another set of options to them, and then built their characters for them.
Mostly, you have to look at charm cascades as their own things, not at every individual charm in it. Which helps if you want to make things accessible.
As an example, I pitched Essence-Lending Method and it's follow-up charms like this:
"You learn how to manipulate essence, willpower and life-force. At first you can give it to your allies, later you can use it in combat against your enemies."
That is sufficient to give the player an idea whether they want it. It doesn't show the exact mechanics you can do with it, and the benefit of some of it's enhancement charms - but several of those just reduce cost/enhance range/improve action economy, so it doesn't change the concept of what you're doing with it.
Mostly, you have to look at charm cascades as their own things, not at every individual charm in it. Which helps if you want to make things accessible.
As an example, I pitched Essence-Lending Method and it's follow-up charms like this:
"You learn how to manipulate essence, willpower and life-force. At first you can give it to your allies, later you can use it in combat against your enemies."
That is sufficient to give the player an idea whether they want it. It doesn't show the exact mechanics you can do with it, and the benefit of some of it's enhancement charms - but several of those just reduce cost/enhance range/improve action economy, so it doesn't change the concept of what you're doing with it.
I'm going to note that at 100,000 words, Exalted 3E's charm section is quite literally somewhere around half the size of the Restatement of Torts (418 pages laid out much more loosely, at ~400 words a page, than your average RPG with very dense pages), which is a comprehensive guide to an entire field of law.
When you're using that many words to describe your elfgame magic, I think there's an actual, serious concern.
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greensun
You shall all burn beneath my light!!!
Ugh, this is just making me feel worse about it; what I find annoying is that in just about every other respect, aside from crafting which they've somehow made worse, they've streamlined or made improvements everywhere.
Combat is quicker and simpler for the most part, sorcery is just plain better and Creation itself has been more filled out, with the South-East actually having something interesting located there.
But the charms are just bloated and boring. I mean seriously, they've made Heaven Thunder Hammer boring, how in the name of Christ to you do that! Actually, going over the charms, it looks like there are two different design processes going on; some are more classical Exalted, damage enhancers and trick that make you better at your chosen field, and then there is the new stuff that is rerollers and dice tricks that aren't at all interesting.
greensun
You shall all burn beneath my light!!!
Actually, you're right. Hm, must have gotten my names mixed up with another charm, ugh, this will annoy me to no end. I know that there was charm that had annoyed , even more than usual. I think it was a brawl charm that let your reroll tens. (Also, I hate dice trick charms, like seriously, they're boring as fuck.) or the one that let you rereoll 7s.
Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
- Location
- Bottom of the barrel
Guys, theres theoretically only a day or two left. Lets stop being pessimistic, be polite and hope for the best.
Assuming we get the product in the next fortnight (Oynx Path Release date) we can judge it based off the actual release then. Lets not prejudge it too harshly, who knows someone might have taken advantage of Infernal Charmtech to slash the number of air breathing mermaid charms and use the excess word count on the next Devil Tyrant Avatar Shintai.
Who knows, they might have even replaced the word Trieme with Junk, Galleon or Frigate!
Assuming we get the product in the next fortnight (Oynx Path Release date) we can judge it based off the actual release then. Lets not prejudge it too harshly, who knows someone might have taken advantage of Infernal Charmtech to slash the number of air breathing mermaid charms and use the excess word count on the next Devil Tyrant Avatar Shintai.
Who knows, they might have even replaced the word Trieme with Junk, Galleon or Frigate!
