Ally 2 (Lunar Mate/Bodyguard). There, solved. If Ally 2 is insufficient I suppose I spend on Ally 5 (Elder Lunar Mate/Bodyguard). I don't want to make a combat character, therefore I won't. Maybe if I'm feeling saucy I'll spend Ally 1 (Dragonblooded Outcaste Bodygaurd) five times instead. Or mix it up with a Sidereal or maybe even an NPC Solar to handle all the attempted assassination stuff.
Aside from the other problems with this that people have already mentioned, uh, you do realize this is not a white room, right? Like, Exalted has a predefined setting? The setting which includes many, many people who want to kill you and don't particularly care about whether or not you don't want to participate in combat (in fact, they prefer it that way, because then you're easier to kill)?
Even if the rules allowed you to pull that crap with the Ally and opt out of combat for no additional problems, I as GM would not allow it, because that means you're going to be spending a lot of time reading your smartphone while the rest of the group fights for their lives against the people inhabiting the setting who want to kill them for existing. While I need to run an additional NPC (or
five, wtf), like I don't have enough crap to do already.
You are expected to make a character that works with the setting, like you are expected to make a character than works with the setting in just about every other game you might ever play. "Take something to do in combat, because this is a violent setting in which combat will be imposed upon you whether you like it or not" is not an unreasonable thing to be saying. "Take crafting because I say so" is less so.
If four out of five players in the group really don't want to fight, I
don't run Exalted. Because Exalted is full of dudes who want to kill you, and a setting full of dudes who want to kill you and a group full of people who don't want to fight is a bad combination. I instead pick something else which doesn't have the high level of baseline threat.
e: Do you know why Shadowrun has a Decker Problem instead of a Reverse Decker Problem? Because everyone except the decker
goes on shadowruns. You don't play Shadowrun to
not go on shadowruns, unless you play the decker. Going on shadowruns is inherently part of the game, a core part of the setting. Therefore, the decker is the problem, not the rest of the group.
No, we
are talking about
houserules and have been doing so since
@EarthScorpion suggested the houserule we have been discussing.
Yes, and I'm talking about how 2E Craft is bloated. Did you seriously expect me to be making that observation off your houseruled version of it, which I somehow divined through telepathy? 2E Craft is bloated. One Ability instead of eight or nine, three or four charms instead of ten to eleven is less bloated. This is a
big chunk of freed-up XP that can then be thrown into discounted spells or swording powers or whatever.
How does making them Sorcery solve this problem? You get all the problems of unique artifact powers, in that they are combonotorial hell, but you call it something else and therefore it is okay?
I had two sources of combinatorial hell (unbounded artifact powers, sorcery). I now have one. I hate dealing with it, but if I have to deal with it, one is better than two, since at least they'll need to obey the same constraints instead of two wholly different sets. Especially good is how sorcery generally doesn't let you use charms with it aside from the buff spells (which can still be countermagicked), which makes it a
lot less of a pain in the ass, as it effectively defaults to Combo-NO on an even more exclusionary basis than Combo-NO actually is.
eg, mocking up Saber's Sword of Promised Victory as a Solar Circle nuke spell is a lot easier than doing it as a Solar Melee-esque effect which, as a Melee attack, allows you to stack on all the other melee-affecting crap you might have. The first is an island which doesn't interact with much else (the spell is self-contained, woot, and doesn't even interact with other spells), the latter needs a
lot more testing.
This is evident in every debate you have ever been in, yes. Let us say that some of us are attached to the drama of Exalted and not just the ability to solve the equation of the game like a glorified spreadsheet. This is why my favorite part of the Exalted game happens after we kill the king and take his stuff. "Now what, genius?" is the best part of Exalted. The fact the game decided to spend 50% of its word count on the useless and never in doubt "murder the king" subsystem and none of it on the "well now here is what happens after you kill the load bearing boss of the kingdom" part of the game always annoyed me to no end.
useless and never in doubt "murder the king" subsystem
So, uh, I guess every single hostile trying to kill you in your game turns out to be firing blanks and wielding foam nerf bats, I take it.
