You could cover the difference between 'normal sized weapons' and 'big weapons' by making the artifact weapons come in 'Klave' and 'Dai-Klave,' for which the 'Dai-Klave' is a template for increasing the raw damage stats of a weapon by supersizing it, rather like the way Beamklaves are a thing. And also note that a lot of older weapons are not in fact supersized, and that such large weapons are a result of much lost knowledge in the forging of magical weapons.
General Exalted Thread
You could cover the difference between 'normal sized weapons' and 'big weapons' by making the artifact weapons come in 'Klave' and 'Dai-Klave,' for which the 'Dai-Klave' is a template for increasing the raw damage stats of a weapon by supersizing it, rather like the way Beamklaves are a thing. And also note that a lot of older weapons are not in fact supersized, and that such large weapons are a result of much lost knowledge in the forging of magical weapons.
- Location
- Virginia
I can see two ways:
- Charms that let you treat mundane weapons like artifact weapons. The most important issue is that these need to be Reflexive otherwise the action cost is a really big deal.
- No inherent statistical bonus to artifact weapons, but the option to purchase Evocations from them.
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Well, for your specific example, you could produce Charms that provide benefits for drawing multiple distinct weapons in quick succession. Yes, these technically enhance artifacts, but the use case for "I have a dozen excellent mundane swords ready" is so much more common than that for "I have a dozen artifact swords ready" that you still provide what is in practice a benefit to people using mundane weapons and not artifact ones.
Or you could just make "big surfboard-sized weapon you can wield like it's light" one way of getting an artifact weapon's statline of strength, cutting power, and so on, while performing the right rituals and working the edge just so and so on can get you an equivalent weapon in a normal human size.
vicky_molokh
Posthuman spidery thingy.
- Location
- Kyïv, Ukraine
And yet he seems to be deriving What They Are And What They Do from the ruleset, not from ancient exchanges with the authors. Also, treating the system as having meaningful statements about the setting and how it's meant to be played seems to be exactly what his approach was described as:
'This item requires Strength 3' seems to be as meaningful a setting-statement as 'this action provides a -2 die penalty'. Actually probably even more so, since attribute levels are more clearly defined than penalty levels.
Eh, you can make them balanced in a way where they have a reason for existing, but it would not be anything the way Exalted does.
E.g. in FATE Core you can have a character with a mundane rapier, a Great (+4) Fight rating representing mostly skill and the Master Fencer Aspect, and another character with a Great (+4) Fight rating mostly representing a strong weapon and a bit of skill and a By My Father's Daiklave! Aspect.
In GURPS, there are provisions for buying artifacts the same way one buys powers but with a certain discount granted for the fact that an artifact can be stolen/broken/etc. So you have a psionicist with Mind Control [50 points] and an enchanter with an Amulet Of Mind Control [less than 50 points, with precise cost dependent on how easy it is to steal/break/etc. the amulet]. The enchanter makes an amulet because it's somewhat faster than learning the mind control discipline.
Balanced and meaningful, but totally incompatible with White Wolf's system of choice for this game line. (Though I heard WW tried to do modifiers with Aberrant.)
Noctum
Dual Paradox
- Location
- Under the Skies Above
Okay, to got off on a complete tangent here. My brother had an odd thought that I decided to pass on.
How in the bloody blue hells (pun intended) has the current Ambassador to Hell, with his very nice spy network through Hell, not found out about the existence of the Green Sun Princes after four years of them running around. 50 Exalts are not exactly subtle.
How in the bloody blue hells (pun intended) has the current Ambassador to Hell, with his very nice spy network through Hell, not found out about the existence of the Green Sun Princes after four years of them running around. 50 Exalts are not exactly subtle.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Because the Unquestionable of at least five different Yozis, including "Censor of the Endless Desert" "Floating Eyeballs Literally Everywhere" "Say Something You Shouldn't, I Just Dare You" Orabilis, have been taking great pains to keep it from him.
He may know that they're doing something with a group of powerful akuma they're trying to send into Creation, but he doesn't know they're Exalted yet. Hell is a big place.
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
@ Noctum: Malfeas is physically bigger than Creation by an incredible amount. The actual Yozi Malfeas is like as wide as the orbit of jupiter?
@Imrix and @vicky_molokh re: Craft Bloat - there's been a lot of discussion of my essay style, but I'll toss out something- I did do a lot of research into archived developer discussions (notably Borgstrom's, Grabowski, Goodwin and Chambers) before distilling them into the essays, and then I looked at the actual rules to draw conclusions.
But as for craft bloat, I wrote my essay with an eye towards how players interact with craft- the existence of multiple craft abilities is actually very easy to explain- it's meant to allow PCs and NPCs to specialize. The idea of the omnidisciplinarian crafter was likely not intended from the outset.
Now, my reading of 1st edition and some of the 1e legacy code in WotLA implied that 1e's craft system was [Specialty First]. you could have 5 dots in Swords, 5 dots in First Age Weapons, etc. 2nd edition standardized it to the 5 elemental crafts (a good decision) and then Magitech/Genesis. After that we had the specialist crafts which were largely ST-permission only or splat unique like Moliation, Craft Gossamer, and Quintessence.
But like I mentioned earlier, your game will have to account for what players will want to do logically- and that's be the do-everthing crafter.
@Imrix and @vicky_molokh re: Craft Bloat - there's been a lot of discussion of my essay style, but I'll toss out something- I did do a lot of research into archived developer discussions (notably Borgstrom's, Grabowski, Goodwin and Chambers) before distilling them into the essays, and then I looked at the actual rules to draw conclusions.
But as for craft bloat, I wrote my essay with an eye towards how players interact with craft- the existence of multiple craft abilities is actually very easy to explain- it's meant to allow PCs and NPCs to specialize. The idea of the omnidisciplinarian crafter was likely not intended from the outset.
Now, my reading of 1st edition and some of the 1e legacy code in WotLA implied that 1e's craft system was [Specialty First]. you could have 5 dots in Swords, 5 dots in First Age Weapons, etc. 2nd edition standardized it to the 5 elemental crafts (a good decision) and then Magitech/Genesis. After that we had the specialist crafts which were largely ST-permission only or splat unique like Moliation, Craft Gossamer, and Quintessence.
But like I mentioned earlier, your game will have to account for what players will want to do logically- and that's be the do-everthing crafter.
- Location
- NYC
Hell is very, very big, and chaotic, and the people in charge are actively keeping it from the ambassador. He's probably heard rumors, but he's heard hundreds of rumors, each distinct, stretching back over the last century–these are nothing new, even if there might be slightly more evidence that something is going on. The Yozi have created some new form of super-Akuma. They're an entirely new breed of Demon, not an Exalted type at all. It's actually all a distraction from some entirely separate scheme by the Ebon Dragon to take control of the thirty-sixth layer of Malfeas. Kimbery has figured out how to distill her essence into humans to make super-Lintha.
- Location
- Spain
One of his spies has heard of it, but he has yet to report because he has to travel a hundred thousand creations worth of space to get back to the embassy.
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Noctum
Dual Paradox
- Location
- Under the Skies Above
Thanks for pointing that out.
You know, I'd actually forgotten that Orabilis has Eyes everywhere. I'm used to thinking of him as the Unquestionable who teleports in when someone finds out something that they shouldn't have.
And this as well. It's easy to forget about just how big Malfeas is at times. My brother is now enlightened as to the answer of his idle thought.
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vicky_molokh
Posthuman spidery thingy.
- Location
- Kyïv, Ukraine
So . . . in your opinion, huuuge swords having Strength 3 or at most 4 in the prerequisites - is this a case of a system number informing us about the way the setting/game is meant to be played? Why no/yes? Since you've done way more research on Exalted than I did in all possible ways.
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
Yeah, that's what I thought. You really can't analyse Exalted just from the published text.
Quantumboost
Now with 50% more dots in Dimensional Science
- Location
- Ensemble Space
Everyone expects the Orabilis Inquisition!
...It's like ninjas, that way. Doesn't actually help to expect it either.
I would broadly agree with you, that you don't need an artifact weapon to be combat relevant, but there is one key point where the artifact/mundane split invalidates mundane weapons: overwhelming damage. A weapon's overwhelming damage starts very low (1-2), and the switch from mundane to artifact is huge (3-6). Certain Charms boost post-soak damage or overwhelming in one way or another, but these Charms aren't accessible to all builds. Doing 1-2 Initiative damage a hit will basically never be able to win a fight, so your build will be rendered not viable in certain situations.
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
Honestly I think Strength Minimums are as much a legacy code from the WoD era- but I haven't read them enough to say this with any certainty.
The other thing to note, is that the minimum traits are not supposed to reflect feats of strength, but some other nebulous quality of Trait. A strength 2 person isn't 'Able to lift 40lbs' (even if the book say sthey can), a str 2 person is an average human.
Therefore, Weapons that require str 3 to me declare that an above average person can wield them effectively.
Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
Yes, but... Okay, let's look at Daiklaves.
This description is from 1e, where they're more than four feet long and at least six inches wide. A four-foot-long sword, by the way, isn't obscene. Sure, it's about twice as long as your average katana, but it's about average for a European longsword (if we're including the hilt). The real sticking point is the six-inch width, which is twice as wide as William Wallace's claymore at its widest point. It gives the thing the proportions of a snowboard. As far as I'm aware, there is no actual sword that has ever looked like this.
So we're talking about a sword with about three times of heft of your average longsword... which does, if you check the stats for 1e, a grand total of +1L damage. You see what I'm getting at, here? The dude with a cool looking normal sword just painted it gold and strapped two more swords to its blade, for +1L damage. This is part of why daiklaves felt so trivialized, by the way - because they were trivial. They were, as has been raised earlier, literally just Sword Of Swording +1, standard D&D loot. There's a reason 3e tries to get you to invest both personally and mechanically in a specific weapon.
It also means that the standard "heroic" sword is a big metal snowboard, which heavily implies that anyone who wants to play as one of the many, many anime characters who use non-absurd giant swords can go sit and swivel. Zorro, Sailor Venus, Kirito, Trunks (or Yajirobe), Signum, almost anyone but Ichigo in Bleach... they're neglected, because the game is primarily interested in representing Cloud Strife and Zabuza. The latter is a fairly thinly-populated category, which becomes even thinner, relatively speaking, when you include all of the game's non-anime inspirations. Aragorn! We reforged the sword that broken! It's now bigger than Frodo.
Not really true.
Sephiroth's weapon is oversized, but not obscenely so. The Masamune is twice the length of a normal odachi, closer to a horse-killing zanbato... but that's only a little longer than a large claymore, and it's probably about as heavy. Its unwieldy length is pretty clearly meant to communicate his inhuman grace and dextrousness, and provide a deliberate contrast to Cloud's crude heavy strength-based weapon. It's no coincidence that it most resembles the overlong but strangely elegant sword of Sasaki Kojirou, while Cloud's weapon was inspired by Musashi's crudely-carved oar.
The Dragonslayer is specifically called out as being absurdly heavy, to the point that no-one but Guts could possibly wield it. When he does so, he's explicitly fueled by rage and ridiculous, unrelenting determination. The dude picks up Berserker Armour at some point just so he can keep going, and it eats into his stamina like no-one's business. It's true that Guts doesn't act as a burst-fighter, but that's because the story goes out of its way to point out all the reasons he should be a burst fighter but can keep on going throughout the night because he is/has Guts.
There are other examples where this comes out - Zabuza from Naruto is an ambush fighter, before that series went to DBZ-shit, and is scary because a) he can stealthily ambush you even with a giant sword, b) he'll be in-and-out before he even gets tired. Inuyasha's Tessaiga is normally a cool magic katana, but it acquires a massive shroud of energy or outright transforms into a giant sword when he pumps it with spirit energy. The same goes for Fate Testarossa's Bardiche, which is normally a fairly sensible polearm but transforms into an absurdly large energy sword when she burns energy (and armour) and goes all-out. Sanosuke in Rurouni Kenshin is more dangerous when his ridiculous giant sword is broken, because even though he was strong enough to wield it, it was slowing him down.
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying, here. Guts with the Dragonslayer is explicitly slower than he was with his older, lighter but less powerful longsword - and fast, agile opponents are explicitly able to take advantage of that to strike at him, unless he's able to pin them down (like, say, getting stabbed through the cheek and biting down on their weapon, because HE'S GUTS oh god I miss Berserk). When Cloud wields shorter and lighter swords in Advent Children, he's notably faster and more agile than when lugging around his massive Buster Sword, capable of deflecting bullets.
Guts uses the Dragonslayer because it's suited to his fighting style and is the best weapon for him to take on giant, superhumanly tough enemies - not because a giant sword is just intrinsically superior in all ways. Hell, Cloud uses the Buster Sword basically for sentimental value, remember.
wut
I can attack maybe three times in Dark Souls with my Greatsword before I become so puffed-out that I can't even block a zombie with a broken sword. In that same time span I can stab someone with my Rapier twice as often and still have Stamina left over - and that's not to mention what they do to my relative encumbrance values and ability to just dodge out of trouble. The counterbalance here is that my Greatsword hits like a truck. This sells me on the idea that my huge awesome weapon which I swing like Guts does - all sweepy and devastating because I can barely handle the weight - is in fact a huge awesome weapon, and not an ornament piece with an anti-gravity module attached.
I like your later point about how large weapons are often presented as an equalizer rather than dominator, but that's only relatively speaking - and in all the examples you're giving here, it's very clear that there's defensive magic at play.
Guts needs to hit (some, not all) Apostles more than once because they're giant monsters with tons of health levels - it would take a regular sword even more time to kill them, and whenever he hits anything without supernatural toughness (and a bunch of things with supernatural toughness) it dies instantly. Cloud needs to hit Sephiroth a bunch of times in his final combo because he's some kind of weird Lovecraftian avatar - he doesn't even bleed each time he's hit, just explodes into smoke and feathers. Most of their fight consists of the two trying to not get hit - and when Cloud's hit, it's clearly a fight-ending injury until he gets the obligatory plot-tier edge-of-death pep-talk. The Shinigami in Bleach are specifically using their native magic to harden their skin, to the point where Kenpachi injures Ichigo's hands when he tanks his first attack.
My favoured solution, again, is to make it so that daiklaves aren't the only supernaturally effective weapons out there.
They're certainly not in mythology or anime, not by a long shot.
Of course, this comes back to "but then we need to find something to distinguish a fuckhuge sword from a not-fuck-huge sword", and I plump for "the fuckhuge sword acts like a fuckhuge sword" and our opinion is split again because that means fuckhuge swords are as hard to use as fuckhuge swords, and they don't always seem that way in anime.
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The reason that Daiklaives were impressive was because they are made of one of the Magical Materials.
They got the MM bonus, and if your opponent tried the "I'll just flick your weapon and cause it to shatter in your face" trick or something similar it wouldn't break.
And because it's Attuned to you it counts as "you" on a metaphysical level, but that's more a part of being an Artifact in general.
I'm pretty sure that "Klaive" is Whitewolf for "Artifact Dagger".
Which probably means it would be on the level of "Now this is a knife".
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notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
People keep bringing up Bleach, but I actually don't think it's a very good example. Bleach initially explains that a zanpaktou's size is impressive because it has a direct correlation with the power of the shinigami. However, the first time Ichigo gets in a fight with an actual shinigami the idea that his sword's size has any meaning is soundly disproven; his sword is broken and he himself is nearly killed because Byakuya is insanely out of his league.
Throughout the Soul Society arc alone, it's made extremely clear that a zanpaktou's size and form is largely irrelevant, except for how it affects reach and so on; every single one of the captains has a drastically smaller weapon than Ichigo does, and his fights against them do not exactly express the overwhelming power of a larger weapon. Hell, his most impressive display of overpowering his opponents in that arc is him shattering the zanpaktou of three lieutenants in a space of moments, and he did that entirely unarmed. In the Arrancar arc, his dad actually calls out an enemy for being a moron and not knowing that sword size is cosmetic and irrelevant, and that captain-class shinigami are all actively suppressing their weapons' size.
Bleach's "giant weapons" thing is mostly for Ichigo, and narratively it is used to first indicate that Ichigo has immense potential (as sword size correlates to power)... and then the assumption that "big sword = more powerful" is broken as a deliberate move to impress upon the audience (and Ichigo) that they only have a small piece of the rules, and a small look at the power scaling. After that point, he has his shikai because it's what his shikai looks like, and it's not really demonstrated to have any significant practical utility due to its size.
This is actually another point to the "Ichigo is Too Strong for his own good" thing, since the reason that his blade is always in Shikai is(again) that he can't suppress his power.
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Yeah, though again that's tied to it being a Shikai specifically, not its physical proportions.
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
I'm pretty sure that's the thickness of the blade. Width is from one edge of the blade to the other, not one flat to the other.
EDIT: nevermind i was being dumb
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- Location
- The end of all things
They could, but to do that they'd have to make a whole new edition. It's a great idea in theory, but in practice it'll never actually come out. It's too bad, because it might do things like put Daiklaves on a diet, making them "up to 6 inches wide" instead of "at least 6 inches wide."
Er... this is already the case?
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Technically, no; daiklaves are defined as oversized + featherlight in the core.
Dark Abstraction
Infrequent Participant
- Location
- United States
No, see, because if it was a 6" thickness, it would no longer be a sword because it's incapable of actually cutting anything.
That would literally be like using a
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notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Well like... presumably they put an edge on the thing. It's not blunt.