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General Exalted Thread

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I think it's healthy for a game to have moments where everyone steps back to let one member shine at his one thing and look awesome. The problems tend to arise when 1) the one thing takes too long, 2) the one thing occurs too often for too many people, resulting in a game that looks more like strung-together solo sessions. And to a lesser extent 3) the one thing feels obligatory, like how every shadowrun as his mandatory decking scene. When opportunities for the ninja to ninja it up arise organically (and are identified by the players rather than pushed by the ST), people enjoy watching the ninja being awesome.
 
Broken25 said:
Eh, being useful in combat isn't actually that hard, due to pure action economy.

Reflexive defend-other charmtech also help to avoid making weaker character in liabilities.
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I instituted non-charm reflexive defend other in my games for this reason. Though I'd disagree on the additional actions always being helpful because of how costly protecting such a character can be. Depending on the enemy, it can easily rise above whatever benefits the character's actions provide.

The difference between a minimal/non investment character(excellency and nonartifact light weapon) and any enemy who can fight back is large enough that such characters were an active hindrance in most major fights. Even after reflexive defend other came into play, they became one as soon as their mortal bodyguards went down and the loss of mobility for the heavier combat characters mattered. Assuming, of course, it was a fight in which such things could happen given the personalities and factions involved.

One party of mine figured out a good solution to this, give the non combat character super heavy armor on top of body guards. Now they were no longer worth throwing attacks at because taking them out would require effort, and motes, better spent elsewhere.

The player was on board with this, but not also picking up a grand kill stick to force perfects based on luck with, because she felt that wanting to keep herself safe was in character and giant weapons were not.

Leetsepeak said:
Like, it sounds like Storyteller certainly isn't helping, but won't this sort of thing always be an issue where any attempt at gradiating player ability comes into play?
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I've seen systems, mostly more narrative ones, where degree of success and failure were much less binary or at least had wider scales of odds.

My favorite are the new fantasy flight Warhammer Fantasy and Star Wars games. They need special dice to play, but different faces of the die providing different results made it so that failing an action often resulted in some sort of benefit on the character's next action because there are multiple different ways that positive and negative effects happen.

Other systems, GURPS comes to mind most easily, give many methods of manipulating the probability of a given result in exchange for specific benefits and penalties the action takes.
 
Omicron said:
I think it's healthy for a game to have moments where everyone steps back to let one member shine at his one thing and look awesome. The problems tend to arise when 1) the one thing takes too long, 2) the one thing occurs too often for too many people, resulting in a game that looks more like strung-together solo sessions. And to a lesser extent 3) the one thing feels obligatory, like how every shadowrun as his mandatory decking scene. When opportunities for the ninja to ninja it up arise organically (and are identified by the players rather than pushed by the ST), people enjoy watching the ninja being awesome.
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One of the entire sessions of Gloam was everyone cheering Song on while she fought that Dragonblooded, and it was one of my favorite sessions! Getting to see someone else be super awesome can totally be a fun way to spend the afternoon.
 
Omicron said:
Like running it in FATE, or...
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Which can work for Heroic Mortals up to Heroic 1CDs or starting DBs.
Graveless said:
Anyone who wants to enter the field needs to be skilled or they'll just bring everyone else down.
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In the game that gave rise to Dr.Murderblender, the way for the circle to GTFO was for Professora Sneakypants to bodily grab the other members of the circle and run, since she had decent Strength and Endurance along with Athletics 5 and a bunch of Athletics charms.
 
azoicennead said:
... I've seen what can be done with charms that allow reflexive Defend Other actions.
No, thanks.
@Chloe Sullivan can tell you about the shenanigans that can result.
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Not true, man, I totally actually spent my action on defend other in your game. Though I might have picked up reflexive DO later. I don't remember.

The problem was that I had a DV of 13. Next time don't let me take temperance style. 5 Dex, 5 MA, Black Jade Serpent Sting Staff (defense 6) for a base of 8, and then +5 DV from the opening temperance charm. Oh, and Protection of Celestial Bliss for another +2 defense, which cancels out the -1 DV from the DO action...

Every round of combat in game one was mostly me stunting a defense (just in case more DV than the enemy had attack dice wasn't enough), while everyone else went wild offense, Chris murdering multiple foes with Daiklaive and the other two maybe plinking a little.




A charm that lets you reflexively defend other probably should have some sort of attached cost or condition to make combat more interesting though. Otherwise it just gets boring.
 
azoicennead said:
1) Get reflexive Defend Other.
2) Boost your DV.
3) Allow your allies to basically disregard their own defense because you've got it covered.
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I'm with @Broken25 here, this was the intended result of the house-rule. It was supposed to let one combat focused character who wanted to be super defensive keep their party protected while their allies felt free to use the fun offensive charms that are otherwise ignored. We also didn't have anyone pump their DV nearly as much until Essence 4 and unlimited Infinite Ability Mastery arrived.

One of the biggest problems in my game was the battle bros who used it to render each other invincible, but we modified the mechanics after the second fight to fix this. The other was the use of defend other to enable long powerup actions. This would work with the basic action just as well though.

Here's what I used for this.

Reflexive Defend Other(Reflexive/ special)
During step 2 of an attack, a character within Dexterity/2 yards of an ally may call a reflexive Defend Other to protect her companion. The defender immediately increase the DV penalty from her last action by 1 when she uses this maneuver, then compares it to the attack's successes. This penalty persists until her DV refreshes.

If her, now lower, PDV would prevent the attack from hitting, then it fails. If her DDV would normally prevent it from hitting, then she is struck by the attack with a threshold of 0 successes by dodging into the path of it.

If the attack overcomes her DV, then she may either allow it to pass to the defended companion or have it hit herself. If she lets it past, then her Defend Other only absorbs 1 of the attack's initial successes. Perfect defenses with a duration longer than Instant would need to be activated for each attack that this maneuver is declared against.
 
Jon Chung said:
Man, there were people seriously defending Obsidian Shards of Infinity, promoting the use of Scroll of the Monk for newbie GMs because they could make NPC antagonists easily by just giving them a random style, claiming social combat was good and blaming me for the existence of combat lethality in 2007.
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I remember reading through those threads and alternating between laughing and crying.

It was a great time.
 
The important thing to remember about paranoia combat is that if you had the random luck to not have it impact your game, it doesn't exist in your eyes, and Jon Chung is the guy whose Internet rantings convinced your Dawn to invest in some weird combo that completely destroyed your game forever. Confirmation bias plays into that as well.
 
Omicron said:
The important thing to remember about paranoia combat is that if you had the random luck to not have it impact your game, it doesn't exist in your eyes, and Jon Chung is the guy whose Internet rantings convinced your Dawn to invest in some weird combo that completely destroyed your game forever. Confirmation bias plays into that as well.
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Well, but the knowledge of paranoia combat's existence would logically also allow you to find ways around it and know how to not include it.
 
Broken25 said:
Actually, it doesn't. That's the fun of it.

It's like one of those mind-destroying lovecraftian secrets, once it is unveiled, you can't put it back in the box.
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What.

Like, I know what makes the system tick and dance and do funny tricks, therefore I know how to not make it do these things, it won't stop being a shitty system, but the issues are migitated.

I may only be tired, but this seems like logical progression to me.

Let's take an example:

1): Poisons as written are literally cancer and ruin the fun of everyone.
2): Therefore, no NPCs use poison.
3): Whenever poison is used, it's basically equipment bonuses.

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Cosar said:
The issue is that so many factors lead to the paranoia combo. Limited health, wound penalties, magical flurries, high 0 mote damage, keywords, limited charm use, etc. Covering everything is hard.
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I feel like this is letting the perfect be the enemy of good.

Of course you can't fix everything, that would require restructuring the system from the foundations like @EarthScorpion and @Aleph, and even then EarthScorpion still threatens Aleph with actually using the combat system.

You could make a new edition, but as this thread shows, that edition will still have errors and mistakes.

But you can deal with the issues that are, because you know of these issues.
 
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Cosar said:
The issue is that so many factors lead to the paranoia combo. Limited health, wound penalties, magical flurries, high 0 mote damage, keywords, limited charm use, etc. Covering everything is hard.
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Basically this.

The more you know 2E, the more you realize you need to use paranoia combat or rewrite the whole thing.
 
The point is more that the reasons for using the paranoia combo are strong enough that even fixes generally still end up with the paranoia combo. Just a lesser version.

Hell, the most important part of the paranoia combo, and the part that's generally hated the most, is that you respond to everything with a pd. Fixing that requires fixing lethality, which is a huge undertaking.
 
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