Remove ads

General Exalted Thread

Reader mode
Kuciwalker said:
The system's mechanical incentives lie in the opposite direction of good role-play. That's bad. So it should be removed. If you want to add Styles in its place, that's fine, because Styles create mechanical incentives towards good role-play.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Hey! You can totally get roleplay fodder off a Swords +3 specialty!

Accelerator said:
Or 4 dots in resources?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Enough to buy a concubine!
Full list from 2e:
Royal rainment (clothing of gold studded with gems)
Royal jewelry (gold and pea-sized gems)
Concubine (skilled, attractive, disease free)
Fine simhata (lion-horse)
Buy an estate
Build a country villa or townhouse
Furnish a posh townhouse or villa
Staff a grand palace for a month
Furnish a grand palace (meager)
Grand banquet for 200
Erect a manse (Rating • to •••)
Buy a yacht or ship
Crew and provender a ship for a month
Rent a crack mercenary company for a month
Rent a mercenary army for a month
Raise a new legion
Keep a legion armed, fed, paid, and in the field for a year
Caravan of two dozen wagons, 100 guards and hangers-on
Price of commission (Legionary Command)
Dowry for a mortal family marrying into a Dynastic house
Plate-and-chain armor
Reinforced breastplate armor
Chain swathing armor

Morphic Tide said:
It busts believably
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
But being able to actually shoot people with finger pistols is 100% believable.
 
TenfoldShields said:
Sin Hinar, the Black Sargassum Sea
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Broken, lonely yet forever alone by its very nature, and deserving of pity and destruction in equal measure. This seems like exactly what I'd want out of a Kimbery Third Circle. Damn fine job, @TenfoldShields.

Although personally, I'd assume that the real danger from Sin Hinar in Creation is probably cultists, men and women who've looked into its depths and seen a good that isn't really there. A godlike being that accepts all, embraces all, and merely wishes to be loved? Whether through misplaced fervor or intentional deception, convincing the broken and dispossessed that salvation lies in the Black Sargassum Sea would be scarily easy.

That could end up being a real bait-and-switch for PCs who think they're dealing with some kind of maritime Neverborn cult...

Also, what I first thought of when reading the first paragraph:

 
Jon Chung said:
I am specifically talking about getting perfectly equal skill in every hand to hand weapon created in human history off one skill, and how this is a gameplay construct that makes no real-life sense but is a decent workable system abstraction for the purposes of Exalted anyway.

You can agree with this statement, yes? You learned the long sword, can apply some of the concepts you learned there to things similar to a long sword (half-swording would presumably map nicely to spear thrusts, yes?), but cannot wield a meteor hammer.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

As a minor nitpick, firstly you keep on using the example of the meteor hammer (as well as previously having done so with similar niche weapons, like the Kusari-gama). Something like this would, in the latest edition, be covered as a martial art weapon, not a melee one. So as an aside, the examples that you're trying to use for your point are flawed to begin with; Melee as an ability mostly covers weaponry that tend to appear (with minor changes) across various cultures - things like swords, spears, shields, staves, axes, clubs, etc.

To get to the actual point however, you're sounding a little fixated on the whole 'perfectly equal skill' component of the mechanic. No one has said that training with a given type of sword will result in a 1:1 transfer of every hour spent honing that ability into equal familiarity with a spear, or a rondel dagger, or two swords (both of the same type as a pair or as a mismatched set), etc. The point is that the concept of overlap between weapons that the way the Melee mechanic works has some truth to it.

And with that, I imagine I've said all I have to say on the subject.
 
Giygas said:
Uhh, do you have any ideas on how to convert Martial Arts and Evocations?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I have no ideas on converting Martial Arts, other than to say that I think they should have stuff tied to several Abilities/Skills.

For Evocations, I despise having them be a way to say that your sword is a special, unique Relic without giving any guidelines a let how the hell you make the Charmset. My advice is to either get rid of the special snowflake thing or give extensive guidelines on making the Charmtree, with a bunch of sample Evocations to help people get started.

If you go away from the special snowflake thing, then have Evocations come with prerequisite qualities of the item. Tie them to combinations of what the User is, Material the thing is made of and the actual Thing, with stronger effects based on how many line up on a theme. It makes it less crazy to set things up, especially if you follow the associated Exalt's abilities for what a Magic Material gets as a focus.

This would, of course, make Jade specialized to a frankly ridiculous extent. 'My armor is White or Blue Jade, my sword is Red or Blue Jade and my shield is Green or White Jade' would quickly turn into the go-to layout of sword and board Celestial Exalts who can't get a full set of what they actually have an Affinity for.
 
Last edited:
LastChronicler said:
As a minor nitpick, firstly you keep on using the example of the meteor hammer (as well as previously having done so with similar niche weapons, like the Kusari-gama). Something like this would, in the latest edition, be covered as a martial art weapon, not a melee one. So as an aside, the examples that you're trying to use for your point are flawed to begin with; Melee as an ability mostly covers weaponry that tend to appear (with minor changes) across various cultures - things like swords, spears, shields, staves, axes, clubs, etc.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

First: I don't care about 3E. Second: Yes, I keep using the meteor hammer as an example for a reason, because it is a perfect example to illustrate that learning every single melee weapon ever wielded by human hands in one skill is not a real-life thing.

LastChronicler said:
To get to the actual point however, you're sounding a little fixated on the whole 'perfectly equal skill' component of the mechanic. No one has said that training with a given type of sword will result in a 1:1 transfer of every hour spent honing that ability into equal familiarity with a spear, or a rondel dagger, or two swords (both of the same type as a pair or as a mismatched set), etc. The point is that the concept of overlap between weapons that the way the Melee mechanic works has some truth to it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

My point is that the real-life concept of overlap between weapons due to similarity in application does not support how Exalted's Melee ability works. It would support a collection of weapon group skills, or a relationship web between individual skills where learning one skill also raises related skills at some lower conversion rate.

Remember, again, that I am not talking about either of these things, I am, again, talking about how Melee works.

LastChronicler said:
And with that, I imagine I've said all I have to say on the subject.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Sigh.
 
notanautomaton said:
Currently I'm having MA go into the splats Charm-trees as Style Charms, and I'm not sure what to do with Evocations yet. Off the cuff I could make Evocations costless effects, with the 'cost' coming from either Initiative or be restricted based on time.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Morphic Tide said:
I have no ideas on converting Martial Arts, other than to say that I think they should have stuff tied to several Abilities/Skills.

For Evocations, I despise having them be a way to say that your sword is a special, unique Relic without giving any guidelines a let how the hell you make the Charmset. My advice is to either get rid of the special snowflake thing or give extensive guidelines on making the Charmtree, with a bunch of sample Evocations to help people get started.

If you go away from the special snowflake thing, then have Evocations come with prerequisite qualities of the item. Tie them to combinations of what the User is, Material the thing is made of and the actual Thing, with stronger effects based on how many line up on a theme. It makes it less crazy to set things up, especially if you follow the associated Exalt's abilities for what a Magic Material gets as a focus.

This would, of course, make Jade specialized to a frankly ridiculous extent. 'My armor is White or Blue Jade, my sword is Red or Blue Jade and my shield is Green or White Jade' would quickly turn into the go-to layout of sword and board Celestial Exalts who can't get a full set of what they actually have an Affinity for.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Mmhhh. I may now try to infect your Homebrew with mine, but maybe you could have both Martial Arts and Evocation be the same thing: power born from an alteration/external tool? Like with Aaron Peori ideas, but with associated charms.

Of course, you would have to make so both aren't better than one other, and thus you would either have to simplify things and get rid of Disarming(Maybe leave it as a combat ending maneuvre, when the enemy has lost and you show mercy by not killing him. Or something stunt like, for when the enemy loses lot of Initiative [You are still going to use initiative, right?]), or make another maneuvre to disarm martial arts/allow a disarming of martial arts. (Something that i thought immediately before writing, and that must be considered very carefully. After all, being disarmed may mean losing access to the charmset. Or it may mean simply losing the artifact like powers, and the charmset is still here.)
 
Jon Chung said:
My point is that the real-life concept of overlap between weapons due to similarity in application does not support how Exalted's Melee ability works. It would support a collection of weapon group skills, or a relationship web between individual skills where learning one skill also raises related skills at some lower conversion rate.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Yes that would be more realistic but it would also be very combersome to deal with compared to the current single ability value plus specialties which allows for specialization or being a omnidisciplinarian warrior. I imagine most players don't want to track a complex web of skills and abilities just so they can fight the same way they would using the original simple system except for being weaker when they decide to pick up a new weapon.

Also Exalted draws heavily from anime and wuxia where picking up a strange weapon and immediately kicking ass is a standard trope.

While not applicable for mortals exalts have an inherent ability to not take the normal -2d penalty for trying to use a ability without any dots which means operating outside of their normal skillset doesn't give them penalties. If not knowing which end of the sword to hit the enemy with won't penalize their dexterity dicepool then why should using a different weapon penalize their melee?
 
cyberswordsmen said:
Yes that would be more realistic but it would also be very combersome to deal with compared to the current single ability value plus specialties which allows for specialization or being a omnidisciplinarian warrior. I imagine most players don't want to track a complex web of skills and abilities just so they can fight the same way they would using the original simple system except for being weaker when they decide to pick up a new weapon.

Also Exalted draws heavily from anime and wuxia where picking up a strange weapon and immediately kicking ass is a standard trope.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Yes, exactly so. Melee, therefore, is an unrealistic game abstraction we use because it's convenient and useful, not because it is realistic. And given that we are comfortable with using unrealistic game abstractions because they are convenient and useful, we should complete the process and kill off Dodge, Resistance and Brawl/Martial Arts.

cyberswordsmen said:
While not applicable for mortals exalts have an inherent ability to not take the normal -2d penalty for trying to use a ability without any dots which means operating outside of their normal skillset doesn't give them penalties. If not knowing which end of the sword to hit the enemy with won't penalize their dexterity dicepool then why should using a different weapon penalize their melee?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Separate issue.
 
Edited it, like the idea of it as being the Second Soul. So it's not the Fetich but it's vying for power with it and the Fetich is probably like, moderately to significantly concerned about its activities and probably willing to help Infernals that fuck it over. Yeah I sorta like that dynamic dunno. >>

GardenerBriareus said:
Broken, lonely yet forever alone by its very nature, and deserving of pity and destruction in equal measure. This seems like exactly what I'd want out of a Kimbery Third Circle. Damn fine job, @TenfoldShields.

Although personally, I'd assume that the real danger from Sin Hinar in Creation is probably cultists, men and women who've looked into its depths and seen a good that isn't really there. A godlike being that accepts all, embraces all, and merely wishes to be loved? Whether through misplaced fervor or intentional deception, convincing the broken and dispossessed that salvation lies in the Black Sargassum Sea would be scarily easy.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Stop you'll make me blush. :V

And I think the reason it's cults aren't, mm, aren't such a huge-huge danger (though I could totally be wrong) is that it's really pretty shit at tactical or strategic thinking beyond "eat x now, eat y later, eat z sometime after that". Like iirc Octavian shills for his cults like a CIA agent in Afghanistan, passing out demons and weapons and bits of dank lore and making sure they're organized enough to be useful and have some kind discipline going on.

Sin Hinar just wants to hug everyone and you do you as long as that includes getting in its mouth. :V It speaks to people and woos them and taints them and twists them but I don't think it ever really organizes them. And absent organization there's only so much you can do. But it has the advantage that its sales pitch is really appealing to people whose lives are pretty shitty.

Which...is a lot of people in Creation.

GardenerBriareus said:
That could end up being a real bait-and-switch for PCs who think they're dealing with some kind of maritime Neverborn cult...
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Ah yeah heh! I basically wrote it with the idea that like...mm. It's for telling stories about quarantines and infections and junk. You have to keep the borders sealed to keep it from spreading. To fight it you have to burn out the akuma and the cultists and the drowned village nerve-centers. And naturally you have some villagers holed up at the local Immaculate temple trying to ride out the storm and stuff.

I'unno, I really like quarantine stories like that.
 
Last edited:
Jon Chung said:
Yes, exactly so. Melee, therefore, is an unrealistic game abstraction we use because it's convenient and useful, not because it is realistic. And given that we are comfortable with using unrealistic game abstractions because they are convenient and useful, we should complete the process and kill off Dodge, Resistance and Brawl/Martial Arts.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The situation is not at all comparable though. Those are 4 (plus martial arts which is kind of an abomination mechanically) not the dozens of abilities that you would be adding with your system. They also have their own mechanical niche where the fit rather than all being completely redundant in function with different tools being used to apply them like you would with a split melee ability.

I wouldn't be against merging Dodge with athletics, resistance with survival and martial arts/brawl is a whole issue itself.

If I were to go with your level of realistic modelling I would have to split athletics into running, jumping, and lifting. I would resistance into disease resistance, endurance, unarmored tanking and armor use. Dodge is niche enough as is. Ride would need to be split according to what you would be riding. Survival would be split into wilderness survival and animal husbandry. Peformance would become speechmaking, singing, dancing, every individual instrument. Lore becomes dozens if not hundreds of skills. It quickly becomes a massive mess to keep track of and doesn't really fit the great man narrative nature of exalts.
 
cyberswordsmen said:
The situation is not at all comparable though. Those are 4 (plus martial arts which is kind of an abomination mechanically) not the dozens of abilities that you would be adding with your system. They also have their own mechanical niche where the fit rather than all being completely redundant in function with different tools being used to apply them like you would with a split melee ability.

I wouldn't be against merging Dodge with athletics, resistance with survival and martial arts/brawl is a whole issue itself.

If I were to go with your level of realistic modelling I would have to split athletics into running, jumping, and lifting. I would resistance into disease resistance, endurance, unarmored tanking and armor use. Dodge is niche enough as is. Ride would need to be split according to what you would be riding. Survival would be split into wilderness survival and animal husbandry. Peformance would become speechmaking, singing, dancing, every individual instrument. Lore becomes dozens if not hundreds of skills. It quickly becomes a massive mess to keep track of and doesn't really fit the great man narrative nature of exalts.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I want to point out that Jon's been arguing against hyper realistic splitting of skill trees, and has been advocating for making the Abilities more compact by folding Dodge into Athletics and all that stuff.
 
Broken25 said:
Eh, honestly an Elder dragonblooded shouldn't have much problem making mortals run in terror from him. He is, after all, a literal divine being covered in fire.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I'd run from a completely normal mortal who set themself on completely normal fire if they kept walking towards me while burning. Seriously, that's terrifying.

Aaron Peori said:
So a brainstorm idea on how to deal with the problem of Abilities versus Specialties.

Instead of having Dots in an Ability all characters learn Skills. A Skill gives a flat +1 bonus to a task, to a maximum of +5. Characters may not take the same Skill twice. However they can take increasingly more limited versions of their skills.

So instead of having Melee 5 or Throw 5 a character would have the following:

Fighting -> Close Combat -> Armed Combat -> Swords -> Rapier
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Exalted character sheets don't need even more fiddly crap to keep track of.

And from a realism point of view, "only legendary masters are better with the rapier than with the claymore" is no better than what we have now.

Given that PCs generally specialize via Charms, I think the best way to handle specialization is by having Charms for specialities. I tried that for Craft and it worked great. For Melee I'd probably make it a bit broader than a single weapon - one Charm might work with anything really heavy, another might work with anything flexible, another might work with anything small enough to use in a grapple.
 
Sanctaphrax said:
Given that PCs generally specialize via Charms, I think the best way to handle specialization is by having Charms for specialities. I tried that for Craft and it worked great. For Melee I'd probably make it a bit broader than a single weapon - one Charm might work with anything really heavy, another might work with anything flexible, another might work with anything small enough to use in a grapple.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Roughly the D&D 4 approach, then - which I mean to come across as a neutral descriptor; imitating D&D 4 in this respect doesn't necessarily carry either the virtues or the flaws of the rest of the game.

But "the sword fighter doesn't fight like the chain fighter doesn't fight like the axe fighter, because different/more effective powers," was one of its big ideas. It seems like something similar could be done for Exalted.
 
Come to think of it, it would be kinda neat to have an RPG with a skill-grid type system, where you can pick up skills in isolation but either it's cheaper to buy adjacent skills or high skills can "spill down" into their neighbors.
 
Sanctaphrax said:
I've never played D&D4, but from what I've seen its approach to weapon types is a good one.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I think after a fashion this is what Evocations are trying to do - to move some of your magic oomph into, maybe not a specific type of weapon, but still some gear-specific choice that shapes your fighting style.

The really narrow range of choices right now is limiting that, maybe, and there could certainly be arguments about the implementation, but the goal's not a bad one.
 
Just go GURPS!

Fencing Weapons :
Main-Gauche (DEX-5, Jitte/Sai-4, Knife-4, any Fencing Weapon-3)​
Rapier (DEX-5, Broadsword-4, any Fencing Weapon-3)​
Saber (DEX-5, Broadsword-4, Shortsword-4, any Fencing Weapon-3)​
Smallsword (DEX-5, Shortsword-4, any Fencing Weapon-3)​
Flails:
Flail (DEX-6, Axe/Mace-4, Two-Handed Flail-4)​
Two-Handed Flail (DEX-6 Kusari-4, Two-Handed Axe/Mace-4, Flail-3)​
Impact Weapons
Axe/Mace (DEX-5, Flail-4, Two-handed Axe Mace-3)​
Two-Handed Axe/Mace (DEX-5 Polearm-4, Two-Handed Flail-4, Axe/Mace-3)​
Pole Weapons
Polearm (DEX-5, Spear-4, Staff-4, Two-Handed Axe/Mace-4)​
Spear (DEX-5, Polearm-4, Staff-2)​
Staff (DEX-5, Polearm-4, Spear-2)​
Swords
Broadsword (DEX-5, Force Sword-4, Rapier-4, Saber-4, Shortsword-2, Two-Handed Sword-4)​
Force Sword (DEX-5, any Sword-3)​
Jitte/Sai (DEX-5, Force Sword-4, Main-Gauche-4, Shortsword-3)​
Knife (DEX-4, Force Sword-3, Main-Gauche-3, Shortsword-3)​
Shortsword (DEX-5, Broadsword-2, Force Sword-4, Jitte/Sai-3, Knife-4, Saber-4, Smallsword-4, Tonfa-3)​
Two-handed Sword (DEX-5, Broadsword-4, Force Sword-4)​
Whips
Force Whip (DEX-5, any Whip-3)​
Kusari (DEX-6, Two-Handed Flail-4, any Whip-3)​
Monowire Whip (DEX-6, any Whip-3)​
Whip (DEX-5, any Whip-3)​
Other
Tonfa (DEX-5, Shortsword-3)​
Cloak (DEX-5, Net-4, any Shield-4)​
Garrote (DEX-4)​
Net (DEX-6, Cloak-5)​
Lance (DEX-5, Spear-3)​
Parry Missile Weapon (No default)​
Shields
Shield (DEX-4, any Shield-2)​
Buckler (DEX-4, any Shield-2)​
Force Shield (DEX-4, any Shield-2)​

Easy, right?

:V
 
Last edited:
Eukie said:
Easy, right?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
And then there's Wildcard skills like Sword! or Staff! or Fist! (And I'm pretty sure that Staff and Two-handed sword default to each other at -2 for thrusting attacks)

Of course, GURPS also has a finer gradation of skills and is based on a bell curve instead of a dice pool so that stacking bonuses becomes less important. GURPS does solve the problem of DEX being the godstat for combat by making DEX twice as expensive. (But GURPS also breaks everything down to the point that some people recreated other things in the game system from first principles on accident)
 
samdamandias said:
And then there's Wildcard skills like Sword! or Staff! or Fist! (And I'm pretty sure that Staff and Two-handed sword default to each other at -2 for thrusting attacks)

Of course, GURPS also has a finer gradation of skills and is based on a bell curve instead of a dice pool so that stacking bonuses becomes less important. GURPS does solve the problem of DEX being the godstat for combat by making DEX twice as expensive. (But GURPS also breaks everything down to the point that some people recreated other things in the game system from first principles on accident)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Storyteller dice pools are also bell curves (approximately speaking; it's actually the sum of two non-independent binomial distributions), actually.
 
azoicennead said:
But being able to actually shoot people with finger pistols is 100% believable.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

"I am simply so good with my sword that I can make a new sword from nowhere, made of golden nuclear laser-fire."

"I am so strong that I can create silver death-claws of murder."

"I am so knowledgeable that I can shoot firebolts."


Realism is a virtue here.

(Unlike mechanical acumen, which is a deadly sin, if we go by Scroll of The Monk. :V)
 
Okay then, I feel depressed and broken inside due to the election results and I need something to occupy my mind with.

Please give me some homebrew you want me to write.

I need something that isn't this disaster of an election.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top