General Exalted Thread

veekie · Jun 9, 2016

Well if you want 'realistic' craft...Lore and Occult for the 'blueprinting' phase, where you design what it CAN do, and also where libraries, research, ancient lore crystals go for having the necessary principles.

Then Craft for the implementation phase of anything you already have the design for. You still need the tools and materials of course.

Repair and upkeep are harder, but not impossible without knowing how it works.

Which also explains why you get so many Magical Material/Supreme Quality versions of vanilla Age of Sorrows equipment. You already have the design from common knowledge. You just build it better, shinier and more choppy. More advanced toys requires a knowledge base and compatible bullshit raw materials

Chloe Sullivan · Jun 9, 2016

Jon Chung said:
Craft has never worked as a standalone focus in three editions of this damn game. I think it has never worked because people keep trying to make it a singular standalone focus by itself. This doesn't seem to work, so why not try something different?

How about we build off the Sorcerous works systems and use it for any long term downtime thing, be it craft, sorcery, kingdom building, business running, etc.

Or just build a new system and do the same with that.

Unified mechanics sounds nice.

Aaron Peori · Jun 9, 2016

Jon Chung said:
Uh, no. "I have to be able to fly to build a plane" is not what I said.

Then you may not want to champion @Aleph's point because that is the exact point she said.

Aleph said:
... uh

if you are going to make a solid-state spell in the form of a sorcerous artifact that has the same effects

then generally, right

you need to actually know the spell

So if this isn't actually your argument, perhaps don't defend it. She literally says you can not build an artifact that does what the spell does without being able to use the spell. Not "theoretically know how the spell works" or "theoretically be capable of casting the spell" but literally "know the spell". Unless we're using a strange definition of "know the spell" that is different than how every RPG that has ever existed has defined it.

Craft has never worked as a standalone focus in three editions of this damn game. I think it has never worked because people keep trying to make it a singular standalone focus by itself, such that "I build stuff" requires as much character-building focus as "I am Invincible Sword Princess". This doesn't seem to work, so why not try something different?

Martial Arts has never worked in three editions of this damn game. Organization management has never worked in three editions of this damn game. Many things have never worked in three editions of this damn game. You can choose to ignore them, if you wish. But if you do you are cutting out a huge segment of the people who play Exalted and why they play Exalted.

Do you not want to win?

You don't win Exalted, Jon. I want my character to be unique and interesting. This will not be the case if everyone in my Circle has the same magic sword as I do. And since the system being proposed means that I can only produce Magic Sword X unless I invest in buying Spell Which Is Magic Sword Y Instead then... yeah.

No, spells aren't free, that would be dumb. The thing is, B has a bunch of noncombat things he can do and A does not, yes? Why should B's noncombat investment allow him to match A's combat investment?

Except all of B's noncombat things are stuff that makes him better at combat. Like, according to the @EarthScorpion and @Aleph system I don't have the ability to make flexible downtime stuff, Unless I literally spent my character resources on Spell For X I can not do Magical X. So all those Craft Charms and Spells are only useful for Making Swords.

Didn't notice this earlier:

pheonix89 said:
@Aaron Peori
Why would you pick up crafting? Well, that Cherub shrine you're dissing charges from ambient essence. Being able to send messages to the other side of creation without touching your own mote pool is quite handy, wouldn't you agree?

EarthScorpion said:
I'm sorry, where did I say you didn't have to pay for artefact use?

So, as you can see, you can not actually make an artifact that casts the spell at not cost to you. He was quite explicit. Having the artifact allows you to cast the spell for the exact same cost; its only utility is allowing people who do not know the spell to cast the spell.

SinisterPorpoise · Jun 9, 2016

linkhyrule5 said:
Honestly, I was thinking I'd steal a trick from corporate law and make them characters, if rather strange ones.

This whole thing sounds a little like a description of a Primordial's Soul Pantheon.

linkhyrule5 said:
Ennh. That feels like it's leaning too far to the "no fun allowed" region to me.

By this point Earthscorpion's catchphrase is "No Fun Allowed".

Jon Chung said:
Do you not want to win?

No? Mostly because that not the point of the game.

Cosar · Jun 9, 2016

DayDreamer said:
A can totally do stuff in downtime. He can run a kingdom (Conan-style, with no administration skills) or go on some solo adventure that he negotiates with the GM, or anything else that makes sense in the context of the story. Hell, depending on the rules for how long Crafting takes and how long downtime is, B might be able to do that stuff too, spending every day hearing petitions before retiring to the forge in the evening.

The point is that B can't do thing in downtime supernaturally well. He only has combat based special powers, so he's better than equivalent xp characters who aren't so focused in combat, but the advantage is that those characters are better at non combat.

Jon Chung · Jun 9, 2016

Aaron Peori said:
Then you may not want to champion @Aleph's point because that is the exact point she said.

So if this isn't actually your argument, perhaps don't defend it. She literally says you can not build an artifact that does what the spell does without being able to use the spell. Not "theoretically know how the spell works" or "theoretically be capable of casting the spell" but literally "know the spell". Unless we're using a strange definition of "know the spell" that is different than how every RPG that has ever existed has defined it.

Example, from how I understand this to work:
a) Knowing "Fly" lets you shortcut the process of "Design a plane" (because you have practical knowledge of how magical flight works), and serves as a viable prerequisite for "I can design a plane".
b) If you have a working plane to study or the complete blueprints of a plane, you can use that as a "spellbook" to learn "Fly", because such a thing is definitionally a demonstration of the principles of magical flight.
c) If you want to actually build a plane, you must have a working plane to disassemble so you can copy it or a blueprint of a working plane.
d) If you don't have a plane to copy or the plans for building a plane, you can attempt to invent a working plane from first principles so you can use those plans to build your plane, and knowing "Fly" rather helps you do that, see a).
e) "Fly" needs to be fueled somehow, whether it's you casting it or the plane "casting" it (because there's no real difference here, "Fly" is being used and "Fly" costs motes), so you need to pay for it yourself or get a hearthstone battery or a bound demon or whatever.

Aaron Peori said:
Martial Arts has never worked in three editions of this damn game. Organization management has never worked in three editions of this damn game. Many things have never worked in three editions of this damn game. You can choose to ignore them, if you wish. But if you do you are cutting out a huge segment of the people who play Exalted and why they play Exalted.

Well, I murdered Martial Arts, did I not? Pretty thoroughly. So did you, even if you didn't do it as drastically.

Aaron Peori said:
You don't win Exalted, Jon. I want my character to be unique and interesting. This will not be the case if everyone in my Circle has the same magic sword as I do.

You do win conflicts in Exalted. You do so by leveraging everybody's skills towards a common goal. If you can make lightsabers, and your friend is a swordsman, yes, by all means, I think you should give him one. This makes it more likely that he lives through the next fight. Which makes it more likely that you live through the next fight. And so on.

Aaron Peori said:
And since the system being proposed means that I can only produce Magic Sword X unless I invest in buying Spell Which Is Magic Sword Y Instead then... yeah.

I don't think it requires that, though? At least, not as I understand it. Rather, inventing a magical widget requires you to know how the magic works so you can widgetify said magic. If you have the plans for a working widget or a widget to copy, you don't need it.

Aaron Peori said:
Except all of B's noncombat things are stuff that makes him better at combat. Like, according to the @EarthScorpion and @Aleph system I don't have the ability to make flexible downtime stuff, Unless I literally spent my character resources on Spell For X I can not do Magical X. So all those Craft Charms and Spells are only useful for Making Swords.

If spells are cheap, isn't that fine? You can fly with a spell, for example. Nobody else can, unless you build a flight widget for them. Flight widgets need resources to build, which they should be helping you get, fuel to operate, which they should supply themselves, and maintenance to keep going, which they should be compensating you for... all of which you are presumably willing to do because you have shared goals.

Aaron Peori said:
So, as you can see, you can not actually make an artifact that costs the spell at not cost to you. He was quite explicit. Having the artifact allows you to cast the spell for the exact same cost; its only utility is allowing people who do not know the spell to cast the spell.

Fair if there really is only one way to pay for it, but I don't think this is the case in what they're doing.

DayDreamer · Jun 9, 2016

C.o.S.a.R said:
The point is that B can't do thing in downtime supernaturally well. He only has combat based special powers, so he's better than equivalent xp characters who aren't so focused in combat, but the advantage is that those characters are better at non combat.

He can go on supernaturally good solo-adventures that involve combat, getting whatever rewards the GM is willing to give him for that, possibly including Artifacts. I have had GMs who did this, I have been a GM who did this.

Dawn PC says, "while Eclipse is doing his statesman thing and Twilight is doing her crafting thing, I want to ask a local tracker to tell me if/where any mysterious ancient temples or whatsnot are, and then go raid the shit out of them, looking for whatever loot I can. OOC here, I'm looking for Artifact X, which I think would be fun for my build. Is that okay? Alternatively, I could just get dots in Resources or something. The GM goes "naw, the Artifact sounds reasonable."

Aaron Peori · Jun 9, 2016

Jon Chung said:
Example, from how I understand this to work:

That does not match their made statement.

EarthScorpion said:
No. I mean, "we define an acceptable spell for characters to use which defines an acceptable statline for a superior-to-mundane magic weapon". Then, a daiklaive is a permanently instanced object of that kind. "A red-jade daiklaive" is a permanent way of using Burning Blade of the Sorcerer, which is a spell which makes a flaming sword shaped from Fire Essence (or perhaps you want a different kind of red jade daiklaive - one which means that mundane weapons and arrows that try to strike the wielder superheat if parried, which is a solid form of White Hot Guarding Sentinel which creates a golem of white hot metal that defends the sorcerer).

This isn't a statement open to interpretation. He explicitly says that one artifact weapon emulates a certain effect and if you want to emulate a different effect you have to use a different spell. I asked him about that making the spells cheaper and he explicitly said no, they do not let you cast it at reduced cost (see quote in the post you responded to) and when I said that meant it allowed you to learn spells at the cheap @Aleph said that is not the case, you must know the specific spell to emulate it.

Like, I quoted all the relevant stuff here. I'm not responding to the theoretical outline you proposed but the actual outline the two people who are proposing it actually posted in the actual thread. If they meant something entirely different, they did a terrible job of actually saying so.

Well, I murdered Martial Arts, did I not? Pretty thoroughly. So did you, even if you didn't do it as drastically.

I changed it to a more functional form. i didn't eliminate it. I'm not saying the existing systems work. I'm saying the system proposed by @EarthScorpion and @Aleph is both a: mechanically ridiculous and b: thematically banal. It does nothing I want from either Craft or Sorcery by creating some strange half-assed hybrid which is worse than both and completely destroys two interesting character concepts.

You do win conflicts in Exalted. You do so by leveraging everybody's skills towards a common goal. If you can make lightsabers, and your friend is a swordsman, yes, by all means, I think you should give him one. This makes it more likely that he lives through the next fight. Which makes it more likely that you live through the next fight. And so on.

I have no problem with giving my circlemate a lightsaber, so long as I get to have a cool and unique lightsaber all my own which I am better at using because its mine and I built my character towards being "guy with a cool lightsaber."

Sanctaphrax · Jun 9, 2016

Shyft said:
Generally, any problem with Craft boils down to "Why do I have to run tangent quests to get my gear?"

What you want to avoid, as a designer, is hermitism- where players can sit safely in their bases and craft solutions to problems without risk.

Aaron Peori said:
Like, let's say we have two characters. Both can afford to buy Ten Charms. Character A buys ten Melee Charms. Character B buys five Melee and three Craft and two Sorcery (including one Create Magic Sword spell). Character B is clearly inferior to character A in Melee, and the only benefit he gets (building swords) is something that Character A gets for free just by knowing him (unless character B just refuses to give Character A Magic Swords which he can produce for 0xp Because He's An Asshole or something, I suppose).

Jon Chung said:
Yes. Toss Craft as far as we are able to do so, fold it into other stuff whenever it is possible to do so. It's the worst decker problem in the game, so let's murder it. Collapse the kudzu down into a small and compact form which doesn't require fully dedicating your entire character build to something you can only use in downtime, by yourself, sitting in a corner.

I think all this stems from the same central mistake that makes Ex3 Craft such a disaster: a singular focus on Artifact creation.

If Craft is just for making magical gear, then it's a total trainwreck of an ability. It needs to be useful for solving problems on normal timescales.

Shyft · Jun 9, 2016

Unfortunately, if you make it solve too many problems on mortal timescales, it becomes MacGuyver, and while I understand why people want to be able to do that, it's actually not very entertaining, mechanically.

Like, the hypothetical 'On Screen' crafter either has to improves everything (which gets exhausting), or the ST has to provide relevant details to be utilized (also exhausting). And then you get into charm precedent that waives necessary resources in play.

This is for a similar reason why I dislike FMA-style transmutation as being in the domain of Craft- no matter how cool it looks, it isn't healthy for gameplay.

Candesce · Jun 9, 2016

Sanctaphrax said:
If Craft is just for making magical gear, then it's a total trainwreck of an ability. It needs to be useful for solving problems on normal timescales.

Or strategic timescales should damned well have the mechanics to support craft doing useful stuff beyond handing out bling.

One or the other.

Aaron Peori · Jun 9, 2016

Shyft said:
Unfortunately, if you make it solve too many problems on mortal timescales, it becomes MacGuyver, and while I understand why people want to be able to do that, it's actually not very entertaining, mechanically.

Like, the hypothetical 'On Screen' crafter either has to improves everything (which gets exhausting), or the ST has to provide relevant details to be utilized (also exhausting). And then you get into charm precedent that waives necessary resources in play.

This is for a similar reason why I dislike FMA-style transmutation as being in the domain of Craft- no matter how cool it looks, it isn't healthy for gameplay.

Indeed. This is why in my Theoretical Exalted Rewrite all five player subtypes get a Downtime Activity Ability. In fact, my rewrite would give each caste/aspect/whatever a way to do something during each phase of the game. It would be impossible to design a character who can't engage in combat, social conflict, exploration, intrigue/mysteries or resource management/empire building.

Jon Chung · Jun 9, 2016

Aaron Peori said:
That does not match their made statement.

This isn't a statement open to interpretation. He explicitly says that one artifact weapon emulates a certain effect and if you want to emulate a different effect you have to use a different spell. I asked him about that making the spells cheaper and he explicitly said no, they do not let you cast it at reduced cost (see quote in the post you responded to) and when I said that meant it allowed you to learn spells at the cheap @Aleph said that is not the case, you must know the specific spell to emulate it.

Like, I quoted all the relevant stuff here. I'm not responding to the theoretical outline you proposed but the actual outline the two people who are proposing it actually posted in the actual thread. If they meant something entirely different, they did a terrible job of actually saying so.

I'll leave that to them, then. I'm talking about the "mash up magical-lewt Craft and Sorcery, reduce Craft monofocus decker problem" concept.

Aaron Peori said:
I changed it to a more functional form. i didn't eliminate it. I'm not saying the existing systems work. I'm saying the system proposed by @EarthScorpion and @Aleph is both a: mechanically ridiculous and b: thematically banal. It does nothing I want from either Craft or Sorcery by creating some strange half-assed hybrid which is worse than both and completely destroys two interesting character concepts.

Oh, I see. I'm reading "Martial Arts" here as "Splat agnostic/shared, themed, combat magic powers". Which is just as dead under your "style as virtual artifact weapon you 'craft from yourself'" concept as it is under my "it's just a specialty on top of your native powers, stunt your kung fu" concept.

Aaron Peori said:
I have no problem with giving my circlemate a lightsaber, so long as I get to have a cool and unique lightsaber all my own which I am better at using because its mine and I built my character towards being "guy with a cool lightsaber."

Eh. If you wanted "guy who fights well with a cool lightsaber", should you not have gone for "Invincible Sword Princess who bought a lightsaber at chargen" rather than "engineer who builds lightsabers"?

Shyft · Jun 9, 2016

Well @Aaron Peori - I've tried this too, and I think it's doable- but one thing I've learned, is that PCs don't give a shit.

Which is to say, that expecting a unified 'every player jumps in and does their rolls' system is not a good baseline assumption. Like, the fact is, not everyone is going to be interested in being The Dawn of a Project (even if they're not the Dawn).

On my end, my solution to this problem was to allow for NPCs to fulfill all 'leading' actions, because it's much more likely for a single PC to want to grab all of those bonuses, than spread it out among the PCs.

Aaron Peori · Jun 9, 2016

Jon Chung said:
I'll leave that to them, then. I'm talking about the "mash up magical-lewt Craft and Sorcery, reduce Craft monofocus decker problem" concept.

See, your problem to solve is my reason for playing. I don't particularly care, for example, about resolving one on one fights. But the downtime "build an empire" stuff is much more interesting. This is why I would more realistically create a unified system for Craft an Infrastructure Building than eliminate Craft. I want a system for creating a trade company, a temple, an army, a spy network and a magical cannon and I want them to roughly run on the same system.

Oh, I see. I'm reading "Martial Arts" here as "Splat agnostic/shared, themed, combat magic powers". Which is just as dead under your "style as virtual artifact weapon you 'craft from yourself'" concept as it is under my "it's just a specialty on top of your native powers, stunt your kung fu" concept.

But my system does allow splat agnostic shared/themed combat magic powers, its just that those powers are balanced as Artifacts and not as Terrestrial/Celestial/Solar tier Charms with a dozen units.

You could totally have an effect in my system which amounts to "I breath fire" and it would be costed and balanced in relation to an artifact that allowed you to shoot fire.

The major balance point of my system was that it soft-capped the amount of out-of-theme powers you could get because stacking Styles on top of each other came at escalating costs and harsh penalties for failing to meet those costs.

Eh. If you wanted "guy who fights well with a cool lightsaber", should you not have gone for "Invincible Sword Princess who bought a lightsaber at chargen" rather than "engineer who builds lightsabers"?

But I don't want to play a character who just happened to have a lightsaber fall into his lap. I want to be the guy who built and mastered the lightsaber. I don't want to be Arthur having some lake throw a sword at my head. I want to be Sokka, forging the Space Sword and being awesome and cool with it.

Graveless · Jun 9, 2016

@EarthScorpion and @Aleph For this crafting modification, would having a consultant who knows a particular spell be enough?

It's something that would get a non-sorcerer crafter out into the world and negotiating with allies, especially if they were required to be physically present for a significant amount of time.

In a similar vein, would it need to be specifically sorcery or could correctly aspected spirits with high occult also function for those purposes?

Sanctaphrax · Jun 9, 2016

Shyft said:
Unfortunately, if you make it solve too many problems on mortal timescales, it becomes MacGuyver, and while I understand why people want to be able to do that, it's actually not very entertaining, mechanically.

Like, the hypothetical 'On Screen' crafter either has to improves everything (which gets exhausting), or the ST has to provide relevant details to be utilized (also exhausting). And then you get into charm precedent that waives necessary resources in play.

Not necessarily. Adventure-time Craft doesn't have to allow tedious stuff like upgrading every piece of mundane gear you have.

I doubt you've read my Craft project or its appendix, since they're for 3e. If you want to know what I mean when I suggest that Craft be useful on an adventuring timescale, you should take a look. It's all in there.

Shyft said:
This is for a similar reason why I dislike FMA-style transmutation as being in the domain of Craft- no matter how cool it looks, it isn't healthy for gameplay.

What's so unhealthy about it?

I don't see anything wrong with PCs being able to create whatever simple mundane object they need. In a game where single swordsmen can outfight armies, the ability to build a cart out of nowhere seems pretty harmless.

Walker of the Yellow Path · Jun 9, 2016

Aaron Peori said:
I want to be Sokka, forging the Space Sword and being awesome and cool with it.

Well, IIRC, Sokka would have been a Melee/Thrown character who started raising Craft later in the game when he picked up a good Mentor who helped him. So it's more like the Dawn ran out of Combat charms to buy and then remembered he Favored Craft on a whim.

veekie · Jun 9, 2016

I personally did in 3E craft, just allow the crafter Zenith to make minor talismans completely improvised/stunted out of their random junk to assist with situations and reward NPCs they like. Lets them build up the craft points for making shit they actually DO want in a constructive manner.

Very helpful with boosting rolls on skills the party lacks.

Jon Chung · Jun 9, 2016

Aaron Peori said:
See, your problem to solve is my reason for playing. I don't particularly care, for example, about resolving one on one fights.

The decker problem is real - any case where one character's mechanics don't interact with the others' and he may as well not turn up to the session because all his crap can be resolved separately is bad. If he has no ability to contribute outside of that because his focus is so XP-hungry it consumes his entire build, that is shit and should be mechanically prevented.

As such: the thing he spends XP on to do his decker crap also doubles as useful stuff he can use when he actually turns up to the session, because we have a) made the decker crap rely on 'useful' stuff instead of just itself and b) considerably slimmed it down so that he can afford to buy that stuff, as opposed to repeatedly blowing XP on redundant Craft Abilities and piles of minigame Charms that cost the same as full Charms.

eg, instead of
- Craft: Fire 5
- Craft: Earth 5
- Craft: Magitech 5
- Craft: Bees 5
- Craft: Bullshit 5
- ...
- ~10 Craft Charms

we do
- Craft 5
- ~3 Craft Charms
- ~1 Occult Charm
- ~15 (cheaper than Charms) Spells

Is that not superior? Twilight dude can craft stuff, cast spells, craft magic stuff based on the spells he knows, be useful in the group and there's even a built-in reason for him to want to go hunting for specific bits of ancient lore and for the rest of the group to help him do it, because now specific items have specific requirements.

It does mean that every single magical crafter capable of independent magitechnological invention will also be a magical caster, but I don't particularly see that as problematic compared to all the bloat I just killed.

Aaron Peori said:
But the downtime "build an empire" stuff is much more interesting. This is why I would more realistically create a unified system for Craft an Infrastructure Building than eliminate Craft. I want a system for creating a trade company, a temple, an army, a spy network and a magical cannon and I want them to roughly run on the same system.

That works fine too, but even in such a system, I would drastically cut down on the amount of bloat it takes to do Craft.

Aaron Peori said:
But my system does allow splat agnostic shared/themed combat magic powers, its just that those powers are balanced as Artifacts and not as Terrestrial/Celestial/Solar tier Charms with a dozen units.

You could totally have an effect in my system which amounts to "I breath fire" and it would be costed and balanced in relation to an artifact that allowed you to shoot fire.

Yes, but the virtual artifact is unique to the person in question, IIRC (there is no "every single instance of this style-artifact must be exactly identical to every other" rule), which allows for much less annoying balancing because you can build whatever it is the virtual artifact does as "this is balanced for a Solar Exalt specifically and need only reference the Solar Charmset", or whatever.

Aaron Peori said:
The major balance point of my system was that it soft-capped the amount of out-of-theme powers you could get because stacking Styles on top of each other came at escalating costs and harsh penalties for failing to meet those costs.

Whereas I hate combinatorial hell enough that I want to kill it wherever it is found, with great joy. I also hate bloat, almost as much.

Aaron Peori said:
But I don't want to play a character who just happened to have a lightsaber fall into his lap. I want to be the guy who built and mastered the lightsaber. I don't want to be Arthur having some lake throw a sword at my head. I want to be Sokka, forging the Space Sword and being awesome and cool with it.

Then, "I built a space sword" should probably be reasonably costed thing to acquire, yes? Not, let's say, the horrible bloat that Craft generally is. You buy the rare space rock with your BP, say you built the space sword with it and your minor investment, move on.

linkhyrule5 · Jun 10, 2016

DayDreamer said:
I am a programmer. Laziness isn't a virtue in programing, elegance is: you want to capture some experience (in a game, generally depth) as best as possible with as little complexity as possible. Complexity has only a loose correlation with word count: there are massively complex system that can be described in under a page, and annoyingly simple ones that take five (see Legends of the Wulin for examples of both in the same book).

The overall point here is that, well, you can't be talking about how it could be better without a more clear articulation of what it is that you want. I'm pretty sure that, for what I said I was optimizing for, this is pretty close to as efficient as it gets.

There are a whole set of potential problems here, stemming back to the core question of what you want. Should organizations really have a distinction between Melee, Brawl, Ranged and Thrown? Does War represent their strategic skill or their armies? How do funds work, how does this system promote the interesting choices that make managing an organization compelling? How would you represent choosing between centralizing and decentralizing power, or nationalizing debt? What are the levers that Solar Conan has over his kingdom, and how, mechanically, can you represent the anger of his conquered nobility?

Thing is, you're not optimizing in a vacuum. Exalted and the WoD already exist, and the overhead of learning those systems are paid by the players and ST. So you want to be lazy - you want to reuse existing systems as far as they can stretch, so that players go "oh, it's like X but with the names changed a little," and all the answers just fall out of that metaphor.

Funds? Resources go up to 10. Centralizing and decentralizing power - I did in fact explicitly mention this, you represent power by how devoted (how many dots in the Principle) the organization is to that person, and force it to spend resources on ignoring whoever's at the top, same way that ideals and friendships have power over a person. The division of Melee et al is entirely separate, as a platoon of archers requires mechanical differentiation from a platoon of knife-throwers to precisely the same degree that an Archer PC requires mechanical differentiation from a Knife-Throwing PC. Solar Conan can either throw Bureaucracy Charms and actions as social attacks at the kingdom as a whole, or simply express his opinion and force his kingdom to spend "willpower" to resist if it succeeds on five dice worth of "Fear and Awe (Conan)". And that kingdom is likely to have another Principle of "Resentment (Conan)", too - and if it's really necessary there can even be mechanics for deriving an organization's Principles from those of its component parts.

But like, I think you could've guessed most of that, because at the end of the day, it just works like a player. Maybe a decanthrope player, but ultimately like any other character. A character has Abilities, a character is ruled by their Principles, a character can be hit with social, a character has emotions and Intimacies. The numbers and Sizes are just a little bigger.

DayDreamer said:
Because (larger) organizations are big, complex machines with tons of layers separating the leader from the actual everyday workers, and if Exalted (and especially WoD) is trying to emulate the real world, leaders mostly interact with their staff by passing directives down to their VPs/direct subordinates and make high level strategy decisions, which are often poorly implemented or performed less-than-optimally by their staff.

Except magic, and astrology, and general bullshit. And even beyond that - that's precisely the point of an abstraction. I'm not really interested in making Sim Satrapy or Guild Tycoon, I'm interested in ... well, whatever my Motivation is, which is at the nearest approach might look like "improve the lives of X Satrapy." So all that day-to-day interaction gets abstracted away, and you're left with "how do I use an organization as a tool, and what does it mean to have Backing on my character sheet?"

pheonix89 · Jun 10, 2016

@Aaron Peori
I was making the fairly reasonable assumption that the Cherub Shrine being discussed in thread was the same as the one in Kerisgame. Which does have downsides of its own relative to casting the spell - charge up time and breaking if you repeatedly use it where it can't acquire air essence, for instance. And ES and Aleph and Chung have all repeatedly spoken of Artifact power sources other than personal motes, so assuming it can't be powered by anything else is just deliberately misreading them.

Cosar · Jun 10, 2016

DayDreamer said:
He can go on supernaturally good solo-adventures that involve combat, getting whatever rewards the GM is willing to give him for that, possibly including Artifacts. I have had GMs who did this, I have been a GM who did this.

Dawn PC says, "while Eclipse is doing his statesman thing and Twilight is doing her crafting thing, I want to ask a local tracker to tell me if/where any mysterious ancient temples or whatsnot are, and then go raid the shit out of them, looking for whatever loot I can. OOC here, I'm looking for Artifact X, which I think would be fun for my build. Is that okay? Alternatively, I could just get dots in Resources or something. The GM goes "naw, the Artifact sounds reasonable."

So you would make the character with 0 non combat charms as good at the non-combat stuff as those with combat charms? Yes or no?

Aaron Peori · Jun 10, 2016

Jon Chung said:
The decker problem is real - any case where one character's mechanics don't interact with the others' and he may as well not turn up to the session because all his crap can be resolved separately is bad.

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That works fine too, but even in such a system, I would drastically cut down on the amount of bloat it takes to do Craft.

The point of making a unified system for all character subtypes to engage in Downtime Activity is that all the players would be engaged in downtime activity that played off each other. Much like characters work together in combat to overcome a foe, the characters work together in Downtime to enhance each other with synergy effects. The magical trade group buys raw material for the magic cannon and the magic temple, the magic temple produces magical energy which can be used to fuel the cannon and as bribes for the spy network in local spirit courts, the magical spy network steals information which allows the trade network and army to operate with less risk and more reward, the magical army protects the trade network and temple to allow them to operate smoothly and produce better rewards and the magical cannon makes the army more efficient at its job while keeping the local spirit courts from interfering with the temple.

If you design the system right, there is no such thing as a "Decker problem" as all the players will be engaged in the system since they can all contribute to each other. If players refuse to participate... well, no game system can solve that. If only one player spends any XP on combat skills and the other players just play Pokemon on their gameboys while you run through a hour long duel with the Dawn then the Dawn is the Decker in this situation.

And I don't really think that Craft was very bloated. Craft had, what... ten Charms in 2e compared to how many Melee Charms? If we're cutting down on Craft bloat I also want to cut down on Melee bloat and Socialize bloat. Players should be able to invest just as deeply into Craft as into Melee and get just as much fun out of it as a result.

Of course, in my ideal game players would be unable to dump everything into a single Charm tree. You'd be forced to spend resources on at least one combat tree, one social tree, one downtime tree and so on. I'm not certain how to handle it, but I wouldn't want a 10 Melee Charms vs 10 Craft Charms character.

Yes, but the virtual artifact is unique to the person in question, IIRC (there is no "every single instance of this style-artifact must be exactly identical to every other" rule), which allows for much less annoying balancing because you can build whatever it is the virtual artifact does as "this is balanced for a Solar Exalt specifically and need only reference the Solar Charmset", or whatever.

No, the effects could be as standardized as having a daiklave. You just balanced them around the idea that a daiklave was a daiklave and a Snake Stylist was a Snake Stylist. I had some fluff about unique traits of the user serving as exotic training methods, but that's just fluff and has no more mechanical balance then "Only a Solar may forge this three dot daiklave of Does Aggravated Damage to Zombies"

Then, "I built a space sword" should probably be reasonably costed thing to acquire, yes? Not, let's say, the horrible bloat that Craft generally is. You buy the rare space rock with your BP, say you built the space sword with it and your minor investment, move on.

I could say the same thing about, say, defeating a rival. "You could just spend BP on "I defeated Chejop kejak" and move on. The point of the game is to set up entertaining challenges and goals, Jon, not to win.

pheonix89 said:
@Aaron Peori
I was making the fairly reasonable assumption that the Cherub Shrine being discussed in thread was the same as the one in Kerisgame. Which does have downsides of its own relative to casting the spell - charge up time and breaking if you repeatedly use it where it can't acquire air essence, for instance. And ES and Aleph and Chung have all repeatedly spoken of Artifact power sources other than personal motes, so assuming it can't be powered by anything else is just deliberately misreading them.

(shrug) I explicitly pointed out that making it cheaper than Sorcery undercuts Sorcery and @EarthScorpion explicitly declared it didn't reduce the cost at all. If you have a problem with how he explained his system, take it up with him and @Aleph. I am objecting to their system as described. Since I don't read (or particularly care about) Kerisgame I'm not familiar with anything but what they said in thread.

pheonix89 · Jun 10, 2016

Their system as described includes all sorts of alternate power sources.

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