Death spirals with wound penalties is a huge thing in 3E. It's a core part of how combat works, and why several smaller decisives is tactically better than one big haymaker.
General Exalted Thread
- Thread starter Aleph
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Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
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- Bottom of the barrel
Yeah, but you've still gotta build up a Initiative first. In 2e, the first hit was lethal, the second hit was lethal, the third hit was lethal. It was nothing but OHKO attacks every round. 3e also has better come back mechanics, and a way of turning the tide in the right situation.
4 or 5 Charms between your attack and defense Charms are a good idea, simply because it means that if you ever get caught alone (hardly impossible) you can survive a while, while you are in a Circle vs. group fight your combat specced friends don't have to waste actions Defend Othering their team mates.
Note that a DV booster (Dipping Swallow for example), a surprise negator (Surprise Anticipation Method) and 2 or 3 mobility Charms are just as viable a defense. It's about surviving an attempted assassination, not just about getting caught out on the battlefield. Support personnel matters, and killing them early can make for much easier fights later down the line.
Not everyone has or carries a laptop around you know.
And that's a fine absolute baseline for any fight you get into. However, if you can expect to take on more powerful enemy combatants and/or groups of them it's not going to be enough, and you'll eventually get there. Not having to expand on your combat Charm load out and being able to focus on your Supernal and other skills of interest is preferable to having to shore up your combat strength.
I've played a number of Exalted 2nd Edition games, and that had the BP/XP divide as well. Trust me, being able to swing 4 or 5 more Charms than your friends at the same level of experience is rather unbalancing, especially in the early game. And it doesn't get a lot better when you've a played for a year or more.
I'm not saying it's perfect. I'm objecting to 'any ST with sense will change it'. I don't particularly care for it myself, but I also don't care to change it, because the baseline game works fine. It is not a giant game-ruining deal for everyone, and some STs with plenty of sense will make a judgement call to keep it as is because it's just not worth the effort for that group to change. And other STs with plenty of sense might actually prefer it that way. And it works fine for them.
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Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
- Location
- Bottom of the barrel
Says the guy that made him Shiny Sun Jesus
In a previous edition. Which he has since disowned.
Bursting Eagerness Soul
Threadwalking Rating Machine
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- Wisconsin
It actually is a handle for some later charms. Literally the next one up the tree, in fact. And it is indeed shooting fire at people. I was thinking that it would be a (small) AoE fireblast that you can trigger on a hit or when you pick it back up. The whole artifact is designed around the idea of a character that whips it at someone as an alpha strike, then runs up, rips it out of their charred corpse (or the charred landscape) and goes to town in melee. That said, it does explicitly enhance Call the Blade, for those who want to play artillery. Do you think it would be better as a scaling (Essence) or (Essence/2) dice?
Also, in case I forgot to mention, this is an "unlock on attunement" Evocation that is supposed to majorly influence the way you use the Artifact.
Well, we could change it to 'any group who doesn't like randomly giving 100+ XP to one player' if you want us to be specific. I believe that was the magnitude of the difference caused by BP/XP.
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OK, any other advice?
Why is being able to focus your XP on your supernal and other skills of interest better than being able to focus your BP on your supernal and other skills of interest? Assuming you favored whatever combat skill you're investing in (and there's really no reason not to) you wind up in the same place with the same XP cost.
Neither; it hardly matters how many dice you add to your difficulty 4 Call the Blade roll (and CtB is a prereq, so you definitely have it); it's still barely worth mentioning. Call the Blade already say "retrieving your weapon is easy"; another charm that takes it from easy to super-easy just isn't exciting. There's some narrow utility in the case where you use Triple Distance Attack Technique to throw it at medium or long range and someone grabs it and runs, so really you should buff it up and focus entirely on that one scenario. Like, anyone but you who carries it gets the same mobility penalties as a distorted Invulnerable Skin of Bronze, and you can use Call the Blade as a ranged disarm with no attack roll.
Honestly, for something this simple (and entirely passive) I'd make it a non-charm attunement bonus. Assuming I wasn't going to rework it, I mean. (Yes, there's the 1m to reflexively ready your weapon - but that's redundant; CtB already does that at the same cost.)
notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
There are also really cheesy ways to get tonnes of free xp in 3e, mainly by abusing Lore and Craft. I'm not sure if it's enough to make Craft charms not an xp sink, as I haven't run the numbers, but it's pretty clear that the writers don't care about things like 'the whole party should have roughly the same level of xp.'
Because with your combat competence suite already established you never have to look back at it and can continue to focus on growing your character's legend, skills and Charms in the way you want, rather than having to buy a few Charms of no interest to you as a tax to not die.
But... you're buying a few charms of no interest either way; it's only a question of doing it sooner or doing it later. Do you mean it just feels better to you, psychologically?
Okay, so to weigh in on this discussion a bit, since you said that this would be your first Exalted game, I'd say that as a new player you want to try and have something to do for every broad 'category' of activity you guys might get up to. So, some way to contribute to combat, some way to contribute to social situations, and so on. Probably 7-9 charms in your Supernal Ability, and 2-3 charms in a couple others secondary focuses will suit you well along with the Excellencies you get for your caste and favored Abilities.
Overspecializing isn't bad per se, but it can be harder to play, and if you're a hyper-specialized combat monster and the group ends up going to a diplomatic function, you may end up being bored. Spreading your charms out is less about power for me, and more about staying engaged with the game.
As for other tips: Sorcery is awesome, as was said earlier. Also, 'combat' abilities are not limited to just what's under the Dawn caste skills. Basically every caste can put together pretty decent warrior kit except maybe Twilights. Dawns have all the attacking skills, yes, but a supernal Resistance Zenith is a beast, and an Eclipse or Night with supernal Ride makes a super annoying horse archer. The list goes on.
This next one is from personal experience: Make sure your whole group and the GM are all on the same page with regards to what you all want to get out of the game. Related to that: Keep good lines of communication open between everyone and make sure you guys talk out issues before they have a chance to breed resentment.
Forgive those of us who have grown rather tired of the Dev team's continual 'creative process' of writing some seriously dumb precedence-breaking bullshit, defending it aggressively for months as not being dumb precedence-breaking bullshit, only to finally abandon it some years later in a fit of pique because a better idea came along instead, and therefore we should take it on pure faith this next Big Walkback won't be repeating that mistake again elsewhere but in an equally annoying area to cope with. Because at least they are giving the illusion of learning from their past, right?
"Disowning" bad ideas or not, its unfathomable how willing some people are to humor this unprofessional attitude of "listen, Those Old Things we made caused so many unexpected and unacknowledged problems last time we're not even entertaining them as reasonable options anymore. We're not sorry about that, we're just sorry you felt it necessary to call us on it before we were ready. But hey, this New Idea is going to be super-choice and amazing, and you'll wonder how you ever doubted us! For real this time!"
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azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
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Yeah, and I ran two for something like a year and several months, respectively. Care to make an actual argument?
Seriously, the shittiness of the BP/XP split is mathematically verifiable. You can check the work.
I have. At least a dozen times. I actually used my own character as an example of system flaws.
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OK, do you have tips for a Twilight then?
Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
- Location
- Bottom of the barrel
If its your first game, stay away from crafting.
The system is a mess, and you'll likely have a lot more fun with Sorcery or Lore anyway.
Yzarc
The Spark of Madness
To be fair, 3E Crafting is workable if you spend a lot of effort into it. Outside of the important Dice adder/Doubler/Speed charms you really don't need any of the others if you plan things.
But ya, the infinite craft abilities is an utter mess. At the minimum unless you are using the 2E Craft abilities, skip it in your first game. Not worth the hassle.
But ya, the infinite craft abilities is an utter mess. At the minimum unless you are using the 2E Craft abilities, skip it in your first game. Not worth the hassle.
notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
Go for the Lore/Craft infinite xp engine (both of them). Defend it to your ST that it's both RAW and RAI. Then defend yourself from the ST throwing the book at you. It's pretty heavy.
Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
- Location
- Bottom of the barrel
When the ST complains, explain that Holden said there is nothing wrong with the charms, the problem is with them claiming your character is badwrongfun
notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
And remember; Immaculate hunts, as written, are both pretty weak in combat, and have tonnes of artifacts (which are all totally unique and not just stat-boosters in this edition), and are thus easy sources of loot.
Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
- Location
- Bottom of the barrel
Tyrant Lizard Familars?
Perfectly balanced.
Take two, your gonna need them to carry all that immaculate loot, don't forget to forge a chariot for them to pull
notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
It is indeed true, a Tyrant lizard is less impactful to a campaign than being larger than normal or being able to learn kung fu. Not even knowing kung fu, just being able to. Take three to be safe. (and to prevent inbreeding when mating season starts. That won't get to be a problem until the second generation is grown up, but better to start early on that sort of thing. Also, one male, two females. And abuse Lore introduce fact for their mating cycles [the male will mate with as many females as possible, the females will raise the children, they're fine in groups if they're trained, they have clutches of 5-10 at a time...])
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