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General Exalted Thread

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Kuciwalker said:
To fix the problem of Endurance being a little underpowered compared to Physique, you could give it some of Willpower's role:
  1. The simple version would be, you can only spend willpower on combat charms Endurance times per scene.
  2. The bigger change would be making Endurance a separate resource entirely and changing combat and athletics charms to use it in place of willpower.
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Endurance isn't actually as underpowered as it looks in Kerisgame - it's just that Keris has Running to Forever and Foam-Dancing Haste, and is additionally so lethal that she fights in short bursts and never needs to engage in extended activity of the sort that would call for Endurance rolls. It's what you use to resist fatigue, environmental hazards, poisons and disease - a lot of Conviction's space, really, since the four Virtues aren't a universal thing anymore in the Kerisgame hacks.

Adding even more trackables to an already-complicated combat system is probably not a good idea.
 
Jon Chung said:
Curse of Sidereal Charms. A person who would never make a Solar Presence charm that arbitrarily fucks with people's minds with no possible defense or counter will happily write a Sidereal Charm that does it from orbit undetectably with no possible defense or counter and not even notice what they just did. This is not a hypothetical, I've sat there and watched people do it.

I blame the original Sidereal Charmset and the intersection of "cast from orbit" with "this entire edition has no resistance mechanisms for anything that isn't physical combat".
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There is no curse in Elvish, Entish, or the tongues of Men that adequately describes how much I hate Shun the Smiling Lady.
 
Imrix said:
I dunno, @Pale Wolf has talked a bit about how it's less absurd than it seems. Like, spears and flails is nonsense, yeah, but there's a lot of cross-application between certain weapons.
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But Melee is just as applicable to spears as it is to flails.
Yeah, cross-application of concepts is a thing between some weapons, but that doesn't change the fact that Melee is unrealistically broad in exactly the way that @Aaron Peori was complaining about that started this discussion.
 
Conjured Blade said:
Maybe a dichotomy between Rigid and Flexing weapons then?
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Well... No. I have no problem with Melee being broad beyond what's realistic.
I have no interest in managing the minutia of my character's competence. I'm perfectly fine saying "I have Melee 5, so I'm good with basically any weapon, but I specialize in causing alcoholism hammers". I'm also perfectly fine saying "my character is very athletic, so they can run and jump and lift stuff, but they specialize in parkour".
I'm just pointing out that even with the exceptions to the differences in how weapons are used, Melee remains incredibly broad.

So is Performance, actually. And Lore and Occult. And Larceny. And Medicine.
 
Alright, just so everyone is clear on what the intent behind Abilities has always been, the question of "is this Ability too broad" has never been the problem. Just like Ability dots are not intended to illustrate a characters top-level capability (because they are rolled as dice or halved as a static value, and therefore unreliable metrics), the division of Abilities is not intended to be comprehensive so much as avoid unnecessary overlap when possible. Back in 1e, the Endurance/Resistance split existed because they wanted Soak-boosting to be a distinct element from poison-immunity, and therefore couched it as "internal threats/external threats." Same reason why Lore and Linguistics are split as essentially Education/Communication, and Ride/Sail as Living Animal/Vehicle, as a means to avoid "(Single Ability) 5: A Complete Character Concept."

Since Exalted is also partially emulating genre though, this means anyone who is skilled enough with a sword can be disarmed of said sword, be thrown through a display of decorative armors, fall down and pick up the ornate lance one of them was holding and use it to spear her foe through the chest as he goes for an overhand deathblow at her prone body. That's cool and makes sense, because the option to use every weapon in the game is not contextually-valid in those situations, and narrowing the application of Melee is just unnecessary granularity in situations when you want to use that lance for the cool moment, but can't because you're Swords +3 instead.

"Cross-application of skills" is not really a concern here, so much as "can someone who does this look cool while also doing this, without overlapping with another Ability focus." This is why things like Dodge, the aforementioned Lore/Linguistics and Ride/Sail splits, Endurance and Resistance being merged in 2e, get so much attention paid to them, because they are illustrating different perspective on "what is valid for a person practicing this Ability, in the genre attempting to be emulated." For some people its totally unreasonable that a super-athelete cannot Dodge for shit, because they see the potential overlap there, the same way people see "writing" under Lore and Linguistics and are certain that a Smart Educated Hero can find some means to communicate with whoever they like, on the basis of being that learned.

A lot of it honestly comes down to the impressions of various archetypes that you bring to the game with you, and in the case of situations like the Kerisgame hacks, the impetus tends to be "no one should have to buy this many things to be capable at a lot of roughly-similar archetypal stuff."
 
Imrix said:
I dunno, @Pale Wolf has talked a bit about how it's less absurd than it seems. Like, spears and flails is nonsense, yeah, but there's a lot of cross-application between certain weapons.
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Yes, therefore, if you want to split weightlifting from Athletics because weightlifting has jack to do with running or gymnastics, you're gonna need to split Melee into however many categories where cross application makes sense in order to be consistent. If you let Melee do what Melee does, it makes zero sense whatsoever to split Athletics, instead, Athletics should pull a Pac-Man and eat Dodge.

Melee should eat Brawl/Martial Arts, too.
 
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Jon Chung said:
Anyone who's ever actually done martial arts knows this is total bullshit (I'm a kendoka, ask me to use a spear, ha ha ha), but we throw it in anyway because abilities are allowed to be ridiculously, insanely broad to facilitate gameplay and reduce finicky stat tracking. If people want to start splitting out weightlifting from Athletics because most of it is gymnastics plus track and field, to be consistent you're going to have to split Melee into different weapon groups, Occult into different fields of occult knowledge, Lore into different academic specializations etc etc.

This is dumb, so go the other direction.
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Look @Jon Chung your suggestion is terrible. Some people really like oWoD's wonderful wonderful world of Abilities. It had some real winners with amazing applicability. Like Stone Lore. Yes, it did exactly what you would think and nothing more.

Or let's not forget the endless oWoD social abilities. You had Etiquette. And then you had Streetwise. Then you had Subterfuge, for lying, and Leadership, for leading people. And then you had like, Vamp. The social ability for being sexy. Of course there was also Style, the social ability which governed looking good. Which is similar but not identical to Appearance, which also governed looking good.

And don't forget all the varying combat abilities! You had Dodge, Melee, Brawl, and Firearms. And Heavy Weapons. And Energy Weapons. And Demolitions.

If you wanted to move around? There was Athletics. And Acrobatics. And Jetpack. And Microgravity Ops.

And of course you had my favorite ability. Terrorism. Which was undeniably the best ability in the game, 10/10 must take on all characters. Admittedly, it was an incredibly broad ability and thus shouldn't count. Intelligence + Terrorism to bring down a building! Appearance + Terrorism to disguise yourself to look like a terrorist! Appearance + Terrorism to walk away from the explosion of a bomb you set while putting on shades and not looking at the explosion. Charisma + Terrorism to buy RPGs off the black market. Manipulation + Terrorism to pretend to be a terrorist.

(This was an actual thing I did in an oMage game. I did in fact take Terrorism and use it whenever I could.).

#MakeExaltedoWoDAgain.

(don't. @Jon Chung is right that this was dumb).
 
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MJ12 Commando said:
Look @Jon Chung your suggestion is terrible. Some people really like oWoD's wonderful wonderful world of Abilities. It had some real winners with amazing applicability. Like Stone Lore. Yes, it did exactly what you would think and nothing more.

Or let's not forget the endless oWoD social abilities. You had Etiquette. And then you had Streetwise. Then you had Subterfuge, for lying, and Leadership, for leading people. And then you had like, Vamp. The social ability for being sexy. Of course there was also Style, the social ability which governed looking good. Which is similar but not identical to Appearance, which also governed looking good.

And don't forget all the varying combat abilities! You had Dodge, Melee, Brawl, and Firearms. And Heavy Weapons. And Energy Weapons. And Demolitions.

If you wanted to move around? There was Athletics. And Acrobatics. And Jetpack. And Microgravity Ops.

And of course you had my favorite ability. Terrorism. Which was undeniably the best ability in the game, 10/10 must take on all characters. Admittedly, it was an incredibly broad ability and thus shouldn't count. Intelligence + Terrorism to bring down a building! Appearance + Terrorism to disguise yourself to look like a terrorist! Appearance + Terrorism to walk away from the explosion of a bomb you set while putting on shades and not looking at the explosion. Charisma + Terrorism to buy RPGs off the black market. Manipulation + Terrorism to pretend to be a terrorist.

(This was an actual thing I did in an oMage game).

#MakeExaltedoWoDAgain.

(don't. @Jon Chung is right that this was dumb).
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...what?

(Only has experience with nWoD, didn't know they had so many skills.)
 
The Laurent said:
...what?

(Only has experience with nWoD, didn't know they had so many skills.)
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oWoD had some issues with supplements adding more and more abilities because they tended to focus on specific things that the core books did not. Like, if you're going to have a game about space travelers in space doing space things who might find Earth weird and alien and stifling, it makes sense that they might have Space Only Abilities like Microgravity Ops and Helmsman which means they're hot shit in space but kinda flailing around badly on Earf.

Or if your game is going to be one about high-stakes political intrigue and terrorism, having Terrorism as a basic Ability makes sense.

But of course this is like how in ancient nWoD games they suggest you replace Firearms with Archery, Drive with Ride, and Computers with fuck-if-i-know. oWoD didn't do that. They suggested, of course, adding these abilities in. Leading to hilarity.
 
EarthScorpion said:
Religion, incidentally. So Religion was the skill for reputable Roman civil society faith and Chistianity-once-it-became-relatively-mainstream, while Occult was weird shit that proper citizens didn't know.
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See? That's sensible. oWoD is not. FYI: This is a list of oWoD abilities:

http://www.pen-paper.net/indices/wod/abilities.pdf

Tolerance being a Talent is hilarious. They probably actually mean drug/alcohol tolerance, but I choose to assume it means racial tolerance. Most people in oWoD will have 0 dots of Tolerance, meaning that they're all racist/sexist deplorables. Fluff-mechanics integration, everyone!
 
MJ12 Commando said:
oWoD had some issues with supplements adding more and more abilities because they tended to focus on specific things that the core books did not. Like, if you're going to have a game about space travelers in space doing space things who might find Earth weird and alien and stifling, it makes sense that they might have Space Only Abilities like Microgravity Ops and Helmsman which means they're hot shit in space but kinda flailing around badly on Earf.

Or if your game is going to be one about high-stakes political intrigue and terrorism, having Terrorism as a basic Ability makes sense.

But of course this is like how in ancient nWoD games they suggest you replace Firearms with Archery, Drive with Ride, and Computers with fuck-if-i-know. oWoD didn't do that. They suggested, of course, adding these abilities in. Leading to hilarity.
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Though, weird note here, I'm not entirely sure (having thought about it) that Drive-Ride is a good switch-over. Like, it might make a decent mechanical abstraction, but it does seem weird when you consider that there's another Skill for handling and dealing with animals.

...Animal Ken. I mean, a horse isn't a car, if you don't know how to take care of horses and etc (which would be under Animal Ken) then how exactly are you a hotshot horseback rider in the first place?

So, and one would have to test out how well this actually went, I wonder what would happen if you just allowed Animal Ken to take on a bit more burden. I doubt it'd lead to it being a god-skill, and while it does have some weird abstractions like, "The girl who feeds the birds is also a decent rider"...so does every skill, so. *shrugs*

Edit: I mean, obviously, it might unbalance things to get rid of a skill entirely, I was just more thinking in general.
 
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MJ12 Commando said:
See? That's sensible. oWoD is not. FYI: This is a list of oWoD abilities:

http://www.pen-paper.net/indices/wod/abilities.pdf

Tolerance being a Talent is hilarious. They probably actually mean drug/alcohol tolerance, but I choose to assume it means racial tolerance. Most people in oWoD will have 0 dots of Tolerance, meaning that they're all racist/sexist deplorables. Fluff-mechanics integration, everyone!
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opens pdf

"Assbeating"

closes pdf

(lol jk I kept reading obviously)

edit: actually "Panhandling" is my favorite I think
 
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The Laurent said:
...speed reading.

...
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Tbh I think there's a valid way to use hyper-specific, obscure skills like this in a game as granular as Exalted or oWoD.

Let a character buy them super-cheap, and let them either give a +1d bonus once per session/story if you can justify it or add +1d to a relevant stunt in Exalted once per session/story (how often does that hinted-at-character-trait come up in a novel?) So if you bought, say, Speed Reading for 1 XP (it would probably have to be less than 1 XP), you could turn a 2-die stunt in Exalted which pertained to, say, Bureaucracy into a 3-die stunt (you jump into the Realm Law library and burn through all the books or something).

That lets you have the fun of fiddly bits on your sheet, but doesn't actually make them take up that much 'space.'

So for the example of "Panhandling" you might be able to use it to boost a stunt to disguise yourself as a beggar, or ask for money because ninjas in teapots stole all of yours, or whatever.
 
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MJ12 Commando said:
Tbh I think there's a valid way to use hyper-specific, obscure skills like this in a game as granular as Exalted or oWoD.

Let a character buy them super-cheap, and let them either give a +1d bonus once per session/story if you can justify it or add +1d to a relevant stunt in Exalted once per session/story (how often does that hinted-at-character-trait come up in a novel?) So if you bought, say, Speed Reading for 1 XP (it would probably have to be less than 1 XP), you could turn a 2-die stunt in Exalted which pertained to, say, Bureaucracy into a 3-die stunt (you jump into the Realm Law library and burn through all the books or something).

That lets you have the fun of fiddly bits on your sheet, but doesn't actually make them take up that much 'space.'

So for the example of "Panhandling" you might be able to use it to boost a stunt to disguise yourself as a beggar, or ask for money because ninjas in teapots stole all of yours, or whatever.
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How would you have something cost less than 1 XP?
 
MJ12 Commando said:
Tbh I think there's a valid way to use hyper-specific, obscure skills like this in a game as granular as Exalted or oWoD.

Let a character buy them super-cheap, and let them either give a +1d bonus once per session/story if you can justify it or add +1d to a relevant stunt in Exalted once per session/story (how often does that hinted-at-character-trait come up in a novel?) So if you bought, say, Speed Reading for 1 XP (it would probably have to be less than 1 XP), you could turn a 2-die stunt in Exalted which pertained to, say, Bureaucracy into a 3-die stunt (you jump into the Realm Law library and burn through all the books or something).

That lets you have the fun of fiddly bits on your sheet, but doesn't actually make them take up that much 'space.'

So for the example of "Panhandling" you might be able to use it to boost a stunt to disguise yourself as a beggar, or ask for money because ninjas in teapots stole all of yours, or whatever.
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I think you just described a nerfed version of specialties.
 
Azrael said:
Say '2 for 1 XP' or whatever it is.

'3 for 2 XP' maybe? Who knows, this is just me giving examples.
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Oh, well, that's a point. I do think it'd get slightly awkward to note on the character sheet. Like, noting, "This XP is half-used, do not get rid of it, there's still another random partial skill they can tie to it."

But other than book-keeping, there's nothing that stops that kind of thing.
 
The Laurent said:
Oh, well, that's a point. I do think it'd get slightly awkward to note on the character sheet. Like, noting, "This XP is half-used, do not get rid of it, there's still another random partial skill they can tie to it."

But other than book-keeping, there's nothing that stops that kind of thing.
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...No, I mean. When you buy one, when you spend your 1 XP, you get more than one of the things. At no point do you divide XP or anything, you just spend 1 XP and add 2 things to your sheet.
 
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