- Pronouns
- They/Them
Honestly, partially because of Earthscorpion's descriptions and stuff, I'm if anything more interested in the various creation Realms than the Exalted per-se, if that makes sense?
General Exalted Thread
Honestly, partially because of Earthscorpion's descriptions and stuff, I'm if anything more interested in the various creation Realms than the Exalted per-se, if that makes sense?
That gosh-darned Magnus. I still roll my eyes at that: locked up, with no motes to spend and no contact with the outside world, he's still soooooo much smarter than your characters that (a) any advice he gives them will come with hidden consequences that further his ingenious plans, which your characters will never detect, and (b) you'll still have to go to him for advice.
It might have been mildly tolerable if he wasn't also Hatewheel's PC, but.
It did a reasonably good job, for the time. Vehicle combat is more-or-less normal combat, but vehicles get a scale modifier. Two vehicles on the same scale (fighters vs. fighters, say) dice off as normal, but if you shoot at a larger thing, the difference in your scales adds to your accuracy and his toughness; if you shoot something smaller, the difference adds to its evasion and your damage. Or something to that effect; it's been a while.
(The damage system in general was not great, but that was a simple and relatively clever way to handle things.)
It might have been mildly tolerable if he wasn't also Hatewheel's PC, but.
It did a reasonably good job, for the time. Vehicle combat is more-or-less normal combat, but vehicles get a scale modifier. Two vehicles on the same scale (fighters vs. fighters, say) dice off as normal, but if you shoot at a larger thing, the difference in your scales adds to your accuracy and his toughness; if you shoot something smaller, the difference adds to its evasion and your damage. Or something to that effect; it's been a while.
(The damage system in general was not great, but that was a simple and relatively clever way to handle things.)
samdamandias
Apprentice Plane Wizard
Or football hooligans, or if we want to go really far back, Roman charioteer gangs.
Hummingbirds tend to jump from "Try to look bigger and more lustrous than you" to "I am swordfighting you with my face!" pretty quick, especially if their source of food is involved.
Other than the famine one, these are the sort of problems that one can use pretty much any city as a backdrop for. On the other hand, I just realized the city's most valuable trade resource, which might be important: bright colorfast dyes.
You'd think that culture clash between city-states in the Hundred Kingdoms or the far East would sort of be a running joke in the more "civilized" parts of creation.
Are these man sized humming birds or humans inspired by humming birds?
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
I believe the original poster said it could be either, though I prefer the "hummingbird-worshiping human" option here.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
So while the idea has been in my head for a while since posting this I've been thinking about it more.
I like Jibei a lot, although it may be hard to sell it as more than "obvious fantasy Japan." I also like Nechara with its high-magic feel. I have some ideas to set a Solar Quest in there, maybe.
You seem to have a lot more ideas for how it would go than I do and seem to be a better writer to boot.
If you want to use the idea, as a quest, fanfic or even straight up rpg campaign, then knock yourself out.
Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
What system did you have in mind?
A literal translation of 3e mechanics into a group-controlled solo game?
A simplified system that can resolve multiple elements in a single roll with fewer fiddly modifiers?
A totally narrative system where success or failure is determined entirely by the players' choices and the resources available to them?
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The way that's worked best for me in running a Quest so far was to eschew rolls entirely in favor of a narrative system. However, due to the sometimes vague limits of to Exalts, attributing failure or success can prove... Contentious. So I've been fiddling with simplified mechanics in a single-roll system, but I'm not sure what I have so far is satisfying my needs.
Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
Rolls and purely narrative systems each have their place. I'd probably use rolls in an Exalted quest, for just the reason you give. However it's framed, it can be difficult to accept/pitch an Exalt losing unless there's an element of honest, hands-off chance-based resolution involved.
I'd suggest boiling the traits down a lot. As an off-the-cuff thing, I'd say characters have five Abilities, which are broad, themed areas of competency that can be given in-universe descriptions like "impossibly skilled" or "barely competent" and can be named after the five Elements or the five Astrological Houses or the five Solar Castes. Or given boring descriptions like "Wits" and "Presence", but whatever.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This is similar to what I've been working on, yeah. Let me actually put that down...
A (Tentative) System For Quests
Sometimes, the outcome of an action may be in doubt. In such a case, the roll is assigned a Difficulty (being a number), and the Traits of the character are factored into a pool of d6s; every result of 4 or above is a "success." If the number of success equals or surpasses the difficulty, the action is successful.
(I totally stole stuff from @MJ12 Commando's Cowls and @EarthScorpion's From This Damned City)
Traits
The two basic traits forming a pool are Skills and Aspects. There are five Skills, which represent a character's competency at a broad array of interconnected abilities; there are an arbitrary number of possible Aspects, which represent a character's personal background and specialties.
Skills are rated from 1 to 5, where 1 represents lack of training or talent and 5 represents the superhuman capabilities of powerful beings. Skills have overlap by design, as they represent related competency. Physical resilience is the domain of both the Warrior and the Prophet, so that a fearless berserker need not "invest in" both Dawn and Zenith.
Dawn is the Warrior's skill. It is used in all forms of personal combat both armed and unarmed, as well as to lead armies, devise tactics, resist injury, and be aware of one's surroundings and impending danger.
Zenith is the Prophet's skill. It is used to persuade, inspire, seduce or intimidate, to hold fast to one's convictions, as well as to demonstrate general fitness, to survive in the wilderness and resist wounds and deprivation. It also covers astrology, theology, and prophetic knowledge.
Twilight is the Sage's skill. It is used to represent knowledge both mundane and occult, from human anatomy to the courtship of spirits, as well as to investigate and uncover new knowledge, teach and manage students or organizations.
Night is the Scoundrel's skill. It is used to evade notice, infilitrate places, steal and assassinate. It also aids in perception and investigation, in pretending to be someone one is not, and in demonstrating speed, strength and agility, avoiding harm and evading combat.
Eclipse is the Emissary's skill. It is used in navigating etiquette and social expectations at all ranks of society, in travelling by sea or steed, in knowing the ways of spirits, in trading, negotiating and persuading by writ or word - and, at times, in disguise, subterfuge and espionage.
Aspects are short descriptors of a character's background or special skills. Having an applicable Aspect adds +2 to a roll, and each further Aspect which could contribute to this action adds a further +1. Sample Aspects might be "Realm Legionnaire," "Veteran of the Battle of Futile Blood," and "Fur Trader," all of which may be found in a mortal soldier who defected from the Legions after one of their most crushing defeat and now finds a living in the North.
When a roll is made, it is defined as either "High" or "Low." A low roll grants unambiguous success if its difficulty is met, whereas a High roll will leave a character suffering from some kind of stress or damaging consequences even in the event of success. For instance, most fights would be High rolls for a mortal; even if she succeeds in defeating an opponent of similar skill, she may be wounded, exhausted, or have broken her spear in the fighting. Such damage does not inflict penalties on the character's rolls; rather it impacts their options in later votes, and may turn a Low roll into a High one, until valued things are lost - whether one's arm or one's lover.
An Exalted character has Excellency. When failing a roll in a domain covered by her Aspects, or when succeeding at a High roll, she automatically spends one Excellency and downgrades any negative consequences. Rather than being slain in battle, she escapes alive but wounded. Rather than owing a favor to a courtier in exchange for a service rendered, she convinces him to help without strings attached. A character starts with 5 Excellencies, and regains spent Excellency with a full night's sleep.
Charms are unique powers of the Exalted. As a rule, they do not modify a dice pool; rather they allow new actions that would otherwise not be possible or applicable, generally offering new (usually better) voting options to deal with any given situation.
***
Any thoughts? I feel it's workable but I'm not quite satisfied by it; it has essentially no place for the "incrementally become better at X" abilities that allow Exalts to have a spectrum between "defeat ten men" and "defeat a thousand."
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- Location
- Spain
The rules are generally good, but i disagree with the refresh condition here. It should be narratively based i think.
Time is of highly variable value in a quest. You can have months of updates covering a single afternoon or a single update covering half a year.
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- Location
- New York City
What's this in reference to?
Mangus is a character that Hatewheel made created; there are a couple things he's done that involved him(ink monkeys, or forum games where people asked him questions and he responded from Mangus's point of view). Mangus is supposed to be a Late First Age Twilight, one of the eldest at the time. I though he was largely ok in that timeframe with the presentation he was given.
In Gunstar Autochonia, he's back, and he's still an elder Twilight. In fact, he's smarter than the entire host put together(or, his viewpoint is such that he can think of solutions that no one else can, which amounts to the same thing). He's also a menace to Autochonia, so he's kept under lock and key, prevented from even respiring motes supposedly. And yet, when the Host does consult him, no matter what, he still outwits them and has cunning side effects to the solutions that only he can provide. IE, he's a total author's pet, and one that doesn't really fit in with everything else.
The first Age Mangus wasn't on the straight an narrow, but the way's he expressed being a somewhat crazy Elder were in line with the rest of the Solar Host, especially since you could see how he'd be a good reason for the usurpation (don't want Sidereal interference? Better cause more fate errors to keep them busy). Now he's more this antagonist that no one's been able to crack, despite there being multiple elder Exalted with personality rewriting charms available.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Basically, Magnus was designed to be Hannibal Lecter from Silence of the Lambs scaled up to the power levels of Gunstar Autochthonia, and from pretty much the moment he was published the community was torn between people who like playing Clarice Sterling/putting their players into the role of Clarice, and those who argue that this cannot work given the parameters of how Solars and Autochthonia work.
He's basically a narrative contrivance; either you like what he's there to do and you handwave how implausible it is, or you don't and he's egregious on every level.
He's basically a narrative contrivance; either you like what he's there to do and you handwave how implausible it is, or you don't and he's egregious on every level.
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- Location
- London, England
It's interesting, certainly. I do like the Skills system, since it adapts easily across the different kinds of Exalted. Certainly I can see how it would have been employed in Age of Bronze, with the five castes each having their own basic roles that don't quite perfectly match up to the Solar ones but can still work under the same system.
Likewise the Aspects work pretty well, since I can picture most characters I've played and quickly come up with a handful of different aspects that suit them, possibly with more to follow after a bit of consideration.
Aside from charms offering new options, it might be worthwhile to allow them to magnify the scope of success on a roll. For example, someone with points in Eclipse should be able to study the network of allegiances and power groups in a foreign court over a period of time and come up with a general idea of who's who and what they all want. That seems like a relatively basic thing that any diplomat or spy is going to want to know how to do.
If they have the charm 'Understanding the Court', though, they're obviously going to be better at this sort of thing than a mortal diplomat. Now, you don't really want to be messing with the actual difficulty of the roll itself, so the remaining options are either making it happen faster, or giving you more information. I would recommend the former, honestly, since unless you're delving into outright mind reading there's not an easy divide between 'what a skilled mortal can find out' and 'what a skilled Solar can find out' - there is only so much information there to be discovered in the first place, if that makes sense.
Now granted this could also be reflected in a full rule set where 'study the court' is a defined action with the speed and detail determined by threshold successes or whatever, but the basic idea of this system is to keep things simple. Thus rather than having the charm be a dice-adder that will usually produce a given result, the charm allows you to produce the desired result from a roll and can thus be factored into your planning (both player and ST) much more easily.
I might be explaining that poorly...
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That's true, but I want the Excellency to have in-setting reality, so to speak - if it takes a month to go through a single day and the character exhausts their Excellency, it should feel like the exhausting, continuous effort that it is for said characters.
Although I might add some more narrative or character-driven refresh clauses.
I think I understand. It's good material.
I wish I weren't going to be computer-less from tomorrow on or I'd start drafting an actual Quest.
- Location
- Spain
About charms, i still think that, (Maybe with the exception of iconic and powerful charms), they are better represented as somewhat broad categories where you have supernatural competence. More or less this:
Relatively freeform powers that you can use for stunts fit better for Quests than the rigid "You can do exactly this" nature of Charms.
The issue, as with many things, is presentation. Lecter isn't who you go to just because he's really smart. It's because he's an expert in the field of psychiatry as well as a serial killer himself. The latter also informs why he's locked up and why no one on the FBI's side can get his expertise first hand. Mangus is locked up because....he has really big ideas? It's not quite clear, expect for the idea that he's automatically better than you, so fuck off for trying to work against him. It'd work better if Mangus was somehow tied to the Primordials or Tomb Stars, thus giving both a clearer reason for him to be locked up, as well as something that other exalted couldn't or wouldn't do. Hell, make him an void tainted Alchemical researcher: his knowledge about how to change Autochothon would make sense, but also leave his knowledge suspect as well as immediately signal that you don't want to do what he did.
Basically, if you're setting this guy up as Hannibal Lecter, then actually do that. Make him and his knowledge something that the PC's want access to without them wanting to actually get it themselves. Don't just make him super smart, because that's halfassing the process as well as not really giving a good reason for being separate from all of the other Elder Exalted with high Intelligence.
I think that's due to going very rules light(at the base). Cutting out dice pool adders and switching from 25 abilities+9 attributes to 5 is going to cut out some of that. The rest is due to charms not quite existing yet. Though, how exactly do Aspects add? Some seem obvious(if you're a fur trader you add that based on rolls to trade fur), but what about the veteran one? In any case, you're going to have to be pretty careful about giving skill increases, given how broad they are.
It might be better to have the charms be in groups of 5 (so Warrior, Prophet, Sage, Scoundrel, and Emissary), using the dynamic Broken25 suggests above. Then split up abilities a bit more(doesn't need to be back to the 25+9, but even the 15 from Earthscorpion's houserules allows for more differentiation between characters).
- Location
- NYC
The bigger issue there is that "super smart" is a terrible trait for most tabletop games because it's incredibly hard for a GM to play that in a satisfactory way. You could see this problem manifest in the ways that the devs tried to defend him, with stuff like "he had the idea of trapping Adjoran in a prayer wheel, that's why he's so terrifying who would even think of something so crazy?!?!"
The problem is... well, half my party would think of that. In fact, they tried something pretty damn similar in one of the games I played. Having a superintelligent character that can be interacted with requires that the GM be able to convincingly imitate a superintelligent person, which is stupid. Granted, this is a problem Exalted has normally, with questions of what 10+ successes gives you on an Intelligence roll to come up with a plan or such, but assigning it as pretty much the sole character trait of an NPC is just dumb.
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
Really, the problem with the Magnus that I had is that he was supposed to be just Smarter Than You and locked up for his Terrible Deeds, and it left me thinking 'why?' without any sense that these were meant as questions left to the reader instead of plotholes. I can think of reasons why Magnus might be super-smart in a way that's unavailable to players or the other Solar Elders, despite that he's running on the same magic as them. I can think of reasons why the Deliberative didn't social-fu Magnus into willing compliance.
The problem isn't that the Magnus' writeup made no effort to answer these questions - it's that the Magnus' writeup seemed entirely unaware that these questions existed.
The problem isn't that the Magnus' writeup made no effort to answer these questions - it's that the Magnus' writeup seemed entirely unaware that these questions existed.
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
He can be done reasonably, yeah. The GM in the high-essence Gunstar game I'm in did it okay, actually, in that his mad plans aren't due to any actual exceptional or unusual Charms he possesses, but due to the fact that he managed to get a metaphysical line in on a grand-scale prophecy that no one else could see with such clarity. This might still have been a bit grating, except this prophecy was something we managed to create (retroactively, due to ShenanigansTM), and it all tied neatly together.
This, though, is obviously not a one-size-fits all solution, and it doesn't really make the text less dumb.
- Location
- Ottawa
I liked the Magnus well enough until I learned he was Hatewheel's ex-PC (or a previous incarnation of them). That just made the whole thing seem sleazy and self-indulgent. Especially since there are 3e Charms named after him.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
While I have no love for the Magnus, you could argue that those Charms are named so due to the connotations of the word 'Magnus' in itself and not due to Hatewheel's character.
I mean, it literally means 'great'.
- Location
- Ottawa
Magnus was an adjective in Latin and is a name in English. I don't think it's ever been used as a generic noun like that.