Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
I mean, that's one way to do it.
In practice, they seemed overcosted to me.
General Exalted Thread
In practice, they seemed overcosted to me.
The Pursuit of Peace (the place of a certain Style within the game of Exalted) - Onyx Path Forums
(Charm drafts at the end of the thread, curently.)
The Form Charm lets a Pacifist with a Major Principle of Peace drain Initiative from anyone whose Resolve is overcome by social influence which aligns with that Principle. Like Silver-Voiced Nightingale Form, but moreso.
Immediately following the Form is a Charm that lets you powerfully supplement any Peaceful social influence; if the target rejects, you lose some Initiative. If they accept, you are reset to base. (Your base is considered higher if you haven't attacked at all in the scene and are using the Form.) The effects of the Charm grow dramatically stronger at each level of conviction, though even without any, you're at least negating your wound penalties for the roll and applying them as penalties to your target's Resolve.
You can also spend Initiative on a special grapple-gambit Charm that only lets you apply a Restrain action to your target. If the target is about to be attacked or harmed, the hold is immediately broken so that they can defend themselves, though a more convicted Pacifist can maintain the hold by taking the hit herself (she can use Dodge instead of Parry if she's capable of Dragging her captive). But other than keeping someone (like a Limit Breaking Dawn) from attacking others, the hold lets you flurry Peaceful social influence actions and reduces the held character's Resolve against such to 0 before Intimacies. Any Resolve penalties from Intimacies become bonus dice for you.
Also, with the strength of conviction, the holding Charm would let you restrain creatures as big as Mount Mostah if that behemoth has a positive Tie to you. With a sufficiently strong Tie, he might even reluctantly let you Drag him around the battlefield.
This Style is all about letting you survive using social-fu in combat. And running away if that fails.
The Defend Other enhancer will help the Pacifist Runner run away with the person she is protecting. (It can also help her keep up with someone reckless charging into battle, and gives the most dedicated Pacifists the power to protect everyone else from the person she is protecting.)
But this Style is fundamentally going to be present more trouble for group play than most others. An Eclipse Pacifist and a Dawn Tiger Stylist with blood-thirsty artifact claws could have some irreconciliable differences on the battlefield.
The Pursuit of Peace Style likely works best when used by the Circle's combat-specialist, by a lone player, or by an NPC. Unless the campaign features lots of enemies that just won't respond to words - Acceptable Targets like zombies, hungry ghosts, robots, mindless fairy creatures...
In a Zombie Apocalypse scenario, the Pacifist shines when fighting the paranoid or greedy humans you want to make stop fighting you and each other so that everyone can focus on the zombies, whereas the Tiger Stylist is the one actually useful when fighting the zombies.
I embrace the fact that this Style will be the least popular one in Creation and among the game's player-base. That is as it should be, because Pacifism has never been a popular philosophy. Making it easy would be untrue to life, and would raise the question of why everyone isn't doing it.
Mostly, people settle for Crane Style, and even a truly convicted master of Pursuit of Pacifism is going to want to supplement their ability to defend themselves and others with Crane, Dreaming Pearl Courtesan, or Nightingale.
I decided not to restrict or punish a Pacifist who wants to learn Black Claw. The conflict between the ideals of Peace and Chaos seemed a far more interesting curse.
Last edited:
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Don't you, uh, have to do things for your Allies? You don't just get a bodyguard helping you with no thought to themselves; you have to do as much for them as they do for you.
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
Theoretically yes, but it varies a lot. If the rating is a relationship between power and availability, and Ally 1 is a starting Celestial Exalt, then Ally 2 or 3 seems a reasonable investment to get an early Celestial Exalt willing to consistently bodyguard for you, for whatever reason.
greensun
You shall all burn beneath my light!!!
How intelligent are Passion Moreys? Could I hold a conversation with one? I'd normally check my books, but I left it behind at my friend's place and the site use as a reference point doesn't list out stats or if they're intelligent.
Last edited:
- Location
- The end of all things
That's more a sign that Allies is absurdly underpriced. If you care about optimizing such things then you've already maxed it out.
Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
Sure. If they want me to organize their filing system or run their tax collection service in my spare time, why not? If they demand I fight the Wyld Hunt I'll give them a raised eyebrow and point out I have Dex 2 and Melee 0.
But, you know, I paid points for that bodyguard. Therefore I get to have a benefit for it, and I design it myself. Just like when I drop BP in a daiklave I get the daiklave I want rather than the ST telling me that no, my daiklave isn't available and only works on alternate Tuesdays. I figure Motivation/Defining Principle: Be PCs Waifu Bodyguard is within the limits of the system.
Last edited:
On the other hand, if someone comes up to me with an artifact that as a costless effect makes all of their attacks unblockable and undodgeable, I reserve the right to tell them no.
Just like someone trying to have 2 characters for the price of 2 bp.
Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
Ah. So the ability to trivially kill any opponent with a single hit is perfectly reasonably priced but the ability to have an NPC handle the combat subsystem for you is severely underpriced?
But I don't want to have two characters for the price of one? I want an NPC who fights off other NPCs for me. I have no plans on roleplaying as this character or whatever. They can also be doing stuff like being a barbarian warlord or whatever in their spare time, I suppose.
Unless you are saying that we should force every player to engage with the combat subsystem of the game for some reason? Like we do with every other subsystem, of course. I mean, all characters should be forced to engage in social conflict and if they try to opt out its okay to deiberately screw over the player for that decision even if they have another NPC or PC ally who is better at that thing and they just don't find it fun?
Last edited:
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
It's not really, no. Ally means they will reliably help you out, but that doesn't in any way mean they have Motivation or Defining Principle of Helping You Out.
...is not the benefit of two dots of Artifact.
To add to this, Aaron's position means it's reasonable to have a circle of 5 other solars helping you for 10bp. That's not something I would consider reasonable at all.
Also, the fact that grand goremauls are so effective is considered a problem, not something desirable.
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
I tend to think that every PC in Exalted needs to have An Answer to violence because, as Chung said, violence is kind of a non-optional part of an Exalt's life. "Be good at a type of violence myself" is an answer, not the answer. So, I tend to lean towards Aaron's position on this issue; I'd probably veto an NPC ally whose whole Motivation or their sole Defining Principle is to protect the PC just because, but an Ally who is written to have an ironclad long-term arrangement of sticking around and being the PC's sword-arm in exchange for whatever seems suitable for their story (and which the player doesn't regard as so onerous as to get in the way of their story), seems eminently reasonable to me.
Might be a wee bit cheap for 2 BP, but I'm not interested in haggling over the price.
Might be a wee bit cheap for 2 BP, but I'm not interested in haggling over the price.
Last edited:
vicky_molokh
Posthuman spidery thingy.
- Location
- Kyïv, Ukraine
You can have it for free if another PC does it (and I've seen enough players make characters in duos like that, and occasionally whole parties, that I can say this is not pure theorycraft). How much it overloads a GM (esp. if there are more than a couple party NPCs) is probably a bigger deal than how much it costs in points.
Otherwise I agree: while a whole motivation is probably too much to ask*, a mutually beneficial arrangement is perfectly in-genre and is a reasonable answer to how one gets past Wyld Hunts.
* == Though the way Lunar fluff is set up, maybe not; I'm not a Lunars expert.
Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
I don't think "I start with Excalibur and Kavacha" should be reasonable for 10bp and yet here we are.
If a player wants to skip the segments of the game focused on crafting, or focused on locating, purchasing, stealing or looting an epic magic item worthy of going down in legends all by itself by spending some points at chargen, let them. On the other hand, if the PC wants to skip the segments of the game where they locate, win the loyalty of and become important to a NPC of considerable power this is suddenly bad?
Why?
Eukie
Powered by furious Canadian redheads
When you drop BP on a bodyguard, you get a bodyguard, just as when you drop BP on an Artifact you get an Artifact. However, what you're doing is dropping points on an ally, so you get 2 BP worth of Ally. This doesn't mean you get a lovingly devoted bodyguard; going by Exalted 2e (for instance) is someone who "won't risk their lives for any but the most important causes—possibly, not even then." Further, there's no particular reason to believe you should to design the Ally (and thereby assign them motivations that happen to be "bodyguard my PC waifu"), nor do the rules seem to imply that the intent is you can get an Ally such that the way you repay your debts is through doing their tax returns.
It's a pretty poorly written Background in a questionable design space, but interpreting Allies as "you get a Celestial Exalted Bodyguard with a Defining Principle: 'be PCs Waifu Bodyguard'" is so liberal an interpretation it just tried to run in the Swedish elections.
(And this is why we play GURPS where "help me out all the time as my loyal bodyguard without requiring any meaningful reciprocation" is a 4.0 to 6.0 cost multiplier compared to regular allies.)
((Actually GURPS isn't all that much better about Allies being way too powerful.))
- Location
- NYC
Deleterious effects on gameplay. Combat takes a lot of time to run, characters take a lot of time to make. You're placing a significant burden on the GM here: they'll have to run an extra character in pretty much every single fight, figure out advancement stuff, etc. And meanwhile, you'll be sitting out a pretty significant chunk of the gameplay, because your character can't do anything meaningful in combat. So, two (or whatever) hours of every session will be spent twiddling your thumbs, which is a bad dynamic overall.
There are some other big issues here: namely the assumption that your ally whose running a barbarian kingdom or whatever will actually show up at every fight. They've got their own stuff going on, and unless you really contrive it (which constrains the GM's ability to do interesting storytelling things), there'll be no plausible reason why the NPC will be there to defend the party when they're ambushed by laserghouls at night. Ally doesn't mean you have a pet NPC, it means that you have a useful and valuable contact or friend who will help you out when they can, but won't always be there for you.
Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
Now replace "combat" with "any other subsystem" and explain why combat is the sacred cow that we must sacrifice all PC ideas to appease.
Because one of those is significantly more powerful than the other, and with significantly greater impact on the game. You're saying that having 2 exalted characters is exactly the same as having 2 short daiklaves. How does that make sense?
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
For perspective, Dace is a signature character and he's a mercenary commander. He fights other peoples battles for pay - apparently even after the signature Circle comes together. I haven't seen anybody decry this as poor writing, or somehow beneath one of the Exalted. It thus seems reasonable to me to suggest an Exalt who lives as a high-grade bodyguard, hiring themselves out to Gods and other noteworthies, such as fellow Chosen.
I rather think that if somebody is paying however-many-BP's to buy an NPC so they can ignore the combat system, they're not going to be terribly active during fight scenes anyway. I've known players like that. Perfectly decent people to have at the table, but totally uninterested as soon as the words 'Join Battle' were uttered.
So why do they need a second character to do that for them, rather than the people in the party?
Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
What impact? I have an NPC who fights off Wyld Hunts for me. If my game focuses on my attempts to redesign the trade system of the Hundred Kingdoms by introducing fiat currency his complete lack of "market manipulation Charms" means he is exactly as useful as a short daiklave in the game, that is, not at all. He exists entirely to justify why I don't have to spend points on combat Charms I will never use and don't particularly care to expend my resources on.
Unless for some reason every game of Exalted must feature extensive combat?
Any number of reasons. Apparently according to @Jon Chung and others in this thread having other PCs with combat ability is insufficient because Ninjas. Also, perhaps none of the players in that particular game want to play combat characters. Maybe our Dawn caste is Zhuge Liang, far more interested in running logistics and strategy than engaging in personal combat at the front lines.
Maybe we just don't want to run session with two hour long combats because the combat system sucks and all combats are predestined victories because five Solar Exalts with combat Charms are going to roll over everything but peer level combatants. Maybe having peer level combatants show up every single session strains out suspension of disbelief to the fucking breaking point because in all of Creation with 700 Celestial Tier opponents spread out over a landmass three times the size of Earth with bronze age travel speeds and at least four other realms (two of which are as big as if not bigger than Creation) they are also spread out over somehow we run into a dozen Lunars/Sidereal/Solaroids in as many sessions.
Maybe if the extent of combat is "some bandits on the side of the road" or "the local militia" or even "one Dragonblooded at an Immaculate temple two months travel from the nearest other Dragonblooded and his handful of mortal acolytes" where the result of breaking out the combat system is both preordained and not fun for us... why should we be forced to do so?
I agree that in Creation hvaing some excuse for "why haven't you been ganked yet" is probably needed. I just don't see why Ally 2 (Celestial Exalt bodygaurd) is seen as not a solution to that.
Unless you think Exalted is D&D and every adventure should contain 4.5 equivalent CR rated combat encounters?
Last edited:
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
If you want a game of Exalted that doesn't have much combat, that's a thing to talk over with your GM and group, not something to try to get by by taking massively absurd readings of rules that will dramatically increase GM workload.