The problem is a bit more than just having low App, but that V20 Appearance rules dont work cross splat anyway.
Cappadocian, Samedi and Nosferatu disfigurement flaws also lower App. I have no idea why that makes you less scary.
Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
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Cappadocian, Samedi and Nosferatu disfigurement flaws also lower App. I have no idea why that makes you less scary.
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Discrete is when something is split into pieces. For example, Adorjan's razor-filled winds can make people very discrete.
Discreet is when someone is careful or stealthy. For example, people hiding from Adorjan have to be very discreet.
Rotting corpse Abyssals in at least one edition of Exalted that I played were specified to count as Appearance 5 for intimidation and fear, Appearance 0 otherwise. Is this White Wolf Editing at work?
Exalted doesnt cap pools using Appearance anyway, just bonuses and minuses.
As to WW...I'd say yes because this doesnt make sense even with just base Vampire rules.
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[X] Wear your armor openly, that is bound to make a statement
Discrete is when something is split into pieces. For example, Adorjan's razor-filled winds can make people very discrete.
Discreet is when someone is careful or stealthy. For example, people hiding from Adorjan have to be very discreet.
Rotting corpse Abyssals in at least one edition of Exalted that I played were specified to count as Appearance 5 for intimidation and fear, Appearance 0 otherwise. Is this White Wolf Editing at work?
From Ex vs WoD page 53:
Aspect of the Corpse
(5pt. Flaw, Abyssals only)
In the weeks following her Exaltation, the Abyssal's body began to rot. While her condition in no way debilitates her, she now wears the appearance of cadaver – perhaps mummified, perhaps festering with rot. Her Appearance is permanently rated at 0.
As for the Nosferatu. Well I would put it to you guys, if you met this in a dark alley at night, would you have a 60% chance of scoffing and calling it stinky rather than be afraid? I am assuming it is not contested or the odds are even worse.
Thats honestly an extremely mild and handsome example of a Nosferatu.From Ex vs WoD page 53:
Aspect of the Corpse
(5pt. Flaw, Abyssals only)
In the weeks following her Exaltation, the Abyssal's body began to rot. While her condition in no way debilitates her, she now wears the appearance of cadaver – perhaps mummified, perhaps festering with rot. Her Appearance is permanently rated at 0.
As for the Nosferatu. Well I would put it to you guys, if you met this in a dark alley at night, would you have a 60% chance of scoffing and calling it stinky rather than be afraid? I am assuming it is not contested or the odds are even worse.
Not even joking. Some are absolutely horrific.
Even without the videogame VTMB models.
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Keep in mind Nosferatu have zero App, not one.
So someone sufficiently vain and appearance-obsessed would be certain to scoff by RAW.
Same for a 15 feet burning demon Shintai form.
15ft tall demon? I sleep.
Normalish looking slightly demonic person? Horrific as a human can be.
I love
We have limited Essence and Essence regen at the best of times. We cant afford to burn Essence for every new encounter.
Most human communication, most human expression, is not limited to Intimidation. You only use Intimidation to frighten people.
Normal conversation is Expression. And Molly is shit at it. She has Expression 0, which means that when she sits down to talk to people and persuade them (Like her mother) her Cha/Man + Expression is 3 dice.
Remember, an average mortal dice pool is 4 dice.
And she doesnt have an Excellency that applies to Expression either, even if she could afford to spend the Essence regularly.
Now that I look at it, Im not really surprised she lost her argument with Charity.
She sucks at basic social.
Like....
I am reasonably sure that in Exalted, at least, Appearance is straight up beauty. You can be a Lunar warform, or an Abyssal corpse, and be beautiful. Something like Demon Emperor Shintai's alienness would be represented by a Merit/Flaw that would be something like Supernatural Terror that might key off its App.
Nah. Suboptimal chargen happens, and I see nothing good coming from relitigating it.
We'll live.
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- Germany
We do good work with empathy and subterfuge.
Exalted App works completely differently, as I outlined above.
You never roll App (except maybe some Lunar charm activations?) and App never limits your social pool.
Abyssals below 3 App become App 0 and above become 5 iirc. 5 is the beautiful corpse vampire idea, and zero is...a corpse. By raising Essence I think.
Edit: Expression thing was my mistake. Didnt notice Performance for some reason.
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Yeah OK I have been convinced, the cap on appearance is in at least one regard that is very important to the quest the Shintai form really silly. The silliness transcends my concerns about the system. So here is what we are going to do.
As long as one knows that one is observed a character can choose what kind of image they want to give off:
Scary is Intimidate
Funny is Perform
Seductive is Empathy
Etc...
But as this is not an active thing you are doing but just your image at first impression you cannot use excellencies.
And yes this means that a thoroughly inhuman being like say a red court vampire in its natural form can come off as something other than a slavering monster if it has good social skills. The image of a eight foot tall bat monster breathing an air of bonhomie is intriguing to me in the way that 'monsters are not scary at first sight and never to vain people' is not
@uju32 @Alratan I do hope this makes sense, though I am of course always open to suggestions... in this case in the morning though. It is past midnight for me.
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This sounds like it was written on assumption of the rule that appears elsewhere in Exalted 2e, which worked to support Appearance 0 Abyssals. I went to find exact wording:
'Characters with a hideous visage have a higher effective Appearance rating for the express purpose of intimidating others or resisting intimidation (Appearance 1 = Appearance 3, while Appearance 0 = Appearance 5).'
So I'm going to blame poor Exalted editing for putting those rules so far away from each other, and poor Vs editing for seemingly forgetting to carry over the support rule.
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Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
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Again, this is coming from someone super ignorant of Exalted or any other rule system being used for this quest (I feel like I should just copy/paste this into any rules-based discussion), but couldn't we just decouple Appearance from Intimidation if that's an issue?
Rather than using Appearance, why not Strength? Someone like Hendricks, Marcone's bodyguard, is a big intimidating dude, but he's Appearance 1 at best. It's much more fitting to use his apparent size and physical strength as a basis for any attempts he makes to Intimidate someone.
Or Charisma + Intimidate for someone who might not look beautiful or strong or graceful, but has a certain strength of personality about them?
For someone like Molly, who has a high Strength and Dexterity rating that isn't necessarily apparent when she's trying to pass as a muggle, Charisma + Intimidate seems like it would be reasonable, IMO.
Rather than using Appearance, why not Strength? Someone like Hendricks, Marcone's bodyguard, is a big intimidating dude, but he's Appearance 1 at best. It's much more fitting to use his apparent size and physical strength as a basis for any attempts he makes to Intimidate someone.
Or use Dexterity + Intimidate for someone who moves with uncanny, perhaps even inhuman grace?Hendricks' Description said:
Or Charisma + Intimidate for someone who might not look beautiful or strong or graceful, but has a certain strength of personality about them?
For someone like Molly, who has a high Strength and Dexterity rating that isn't necessarily apparent when she's trying to pass as a muggle, Charisma + Intimidate seems like it would be reasonable, IMO.
I think this works best.
Allows interesting scenarios such as the vampire one outlined and seems to work.
Cha is Attribute and Intimidate is an Ability.
In this ruleset, do we roll one...thing raw, or raw Attri+Ability without excellency?
I like it either way and approve.
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You could also pass on rolling for first impressions. I dont think we did with ebenezer?
We didnt roll 1 dice to make a bad impression on him I remember.
He is really not the kind of person that ever judges a book by its cover, comes from being a hoary old wizard, but there are people who do that so I need a rule for them. Rolling Appearance+Desired stat for the impression one is trying to give seems most suitable and it has the advantage of inclining people to play to their strengths. If you have good perform you are going to be inclined to try to be funny or dramatic, if you have good intimidate you are going to be tempted to go for scary etc... That is true to what people tend to do so I think a good system, oar at least as good as I can come up with on the fly close to midnight.
Cha should have been Empathy, fixed. You roll Appearance+ appropriate ability.
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- florida
Gotcha, and no worries. Now go get some sleep
Infernal Molly lost an argument to her mother while being backed up by her father.
I would argue that we arent doing good work socially.
You did roll App.
In vanilla Exalted 2E/2.5E, Appearance would also act as a passive modifier to normal social.
For every App dot between two parties, the uglier party suffers a -1 success penalty to their ability to make an argument.
If an App 3 dude is talking to a bunch of App 2s, he or she has a +1 success advantage
That was the basis of a bunch of Lunar and Alchemical social strategies of the Pretty Kitty line.
If you were App 1 and were arguing against an App 5 person who had the same Man/Cha and Presence, you were effectively at -4 penalty, and would need to spend WP in order to not be convinced.
If the two of you were making rival arguments to a crowd, you'd be crushed trivially.
App was Important in EX2.
Go get some sleep
Thats not rolling App, thats comparing raw attribute.
I am not sure if its a 2.5 thing, but the bonus/minus of App difference was maxed at 3. Yes, in all cases, including stuff like Sol and Luna's 15 Apps
App 5 vs App 1 the max difference is stil 3. Which is pretty large still, just saying
Edit: But yes, it was important. That is true.
If we had Exalted ruled I'd have wanted good App, I just didnt know the V20 system, and I think its just bad even so.l
Edit 2:
Though it was not super duper important in 2.5 since App dice werent in the Excellency pool.
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I mean to be fair Charity was rolling raw willpower through that whole thing, she was not trying to persuade anyone, just hold on to her view. She most certainly did not persuade Molly.
Both Lunar and Alchemical Pretty Kitty strategies had charms to uncap it.
An E5 Alchemical could walk around with App 8 permanent without artifacts, and could hit you with Appearance 16 for a scene.
Uncapped. Mindbreaking levels of beauty.
Still hella hilarious to watch the heroic mortal standoff an Infernal Princess of Hell and a Knight of the Sword in social combat.
Doesn't this just turn into.
1WP to resist, Solar turns on mindfuck Charms (Hypnotic Tongue Tech) / anyone with good combat rolls Join Battle and rips social build a new one?
Unless its done somewhere where they cant fight but thats a pretty big provocation and I can't think of a situation except MAYBE Yu-Shan.
Edit: Talking about 16 dice beauty.
Edit: Like how one Solar Artifact that makes it so you always look beautiful if your App is good, even if you look like a dino or unwashed corpse, but may result in people acting contrary to your wishes even so.
I think it was some kind of amulet.
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For the same reason you don't use Sword Length.
This is funny to me because I've seen something like this happen in several discussions of editions and supplements for D&D, for Exalted, for Three Bells, and for a couple of scrappy fantasy heartbreakers, and it often leads into the same loop:
An initial designer starts with a plan to keep physical and mental attributes separate, as much for conceptual reasons as for system playability and simplicity.
A later developer goes "Hmmm, my dumpstat-Charisma barbarian should be good at intimidating people" and prints something like Fearsome Gaze that uses Strength for Intimidate, instead of Charisma. (D&D doesn't have Appearance)
This exception opens the floodgates to a bunch more exceptions. People start making clever arguments for "Can I add my Intelligence to my sword's damage by knowing where best to hit" "Can I add my Stamina to my research roll by studying longer" "Can I add Charisma to my armor rating by looking so cute the enemy doesn't want to attack me" et cetera.
D&D 3.5 had a very splatbook-friendly policy that led to a lot of feats and class abilities printed for things like that, and even dumber ones. Some of my favorite dumb stat adds are:
-add Constitution to Reflex saving throws
-add Strength to Will saving throws
-add Dexterity to Fortitude saving throws
-add Constitution to Reflex saving throws
-add Strength to Will saving throws
-add Dexterity to Fortitude saving throws
People who don't like exceptions decide to close the floodgate by banning the first one, or resetting the system in a new edition: No, Intimidation runs on Charisma, intimidation is an act of social communication, you can't intimidate by sheer size and strength, for the same reason that a longsword doesn't give an intimidation bonus over a dagger.
After the reset, it repeats.