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General Exalted Thread

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Anasurimbor said:
Don't worry, this is an easy problem to solve. First Circle Demons who know Celestial Martial Arts are:
a) Extremely rare
b) Extremely useful

They are therefore:
c) All already bound.
:V
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Wait. Isn't Mara already free?

But anyway, is the cap on dragonblooded enlightenment a matter of lifespan or a limit just like Sidereal martial arts?
 
Salty said:
I also know it was changed entirely in the 2.5e errata. And into a rather weak Charm, at that.
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Look, there is no way to prevent MA from being combinatorial hell as long as you can a) use MA with your native charms (with every splat having different native charms) and b) use MA with other MA. Therefore, either you make MA wholly and entirely self-contained (which is impossible - reflexives, permanents and scenelongs exist) or you just shrug and delete it, because fuck MA.

My solution to the problem is to turn MA into glorified specialties (ES/Aleph's game uses this - Styles), Peori likes turning them into glorified artifact weapons, both solutions work fine in terms of excising the concept of charmshared all-splat combat charms from the game (since the charmshare is the problem here which we must solve to remove combinatorial hell) while still having something in the game called "martial arts styles".
 
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Jon Chung said:
Look, there is no way to prevent MA from being combinatorial hell as long as you can a) use MA with your native charms, and every splat has different native charms and b) use MA with other MA. Therefore, either you make MA wholly and entirely self-contained (which is impossible - reflexives, permanents and scenelongs exist) or you just shrug and delete it, because fuck MA.
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I think I'd opt for the modified form of the first option (i.e. Closing off MA from the rest of the charmset as much as I can) over the second, because I just don't see anything to be gained from the second, while my choice allows for potentially retaining value.

...And seriously, are Permanent Charms such a big deal with MAs? All the ones I can remember (and not many of those) dealt with upgrading other Charms inside the Style.
 
Salty said:
I think I'd opt for the modified form of the first option (i.e. Closing off MA from the rest of the charmset as much as I can) over the second, because I just don't see anything to be gained from the second, while my choice allows for potentially retaining value.
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What value? You want to say "My character uses Tiger Style!"? Great, in my system you pick up Tiger Style +3 plus a couple situational +1 bonuses on top, and you can stunt all your Solar Charm attacks using tiger puns. In Peori's, you make a set of artifact smashfists that can't be removed, with tiger themed bonuses, and you can stunt all your Solar Charm attacks using tiger puns.

You don't need a set of tiger charms, because those are paid for with development resources in the tune of orders of magnitude more than either of the above.

Salty said:
...And seriously, are Permanent Charms such a big deal with MAs? All the ones I can remember (and not many of those) dealt with upgrading other Charms inside the Style.
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Let's say Solar Bob buys a Permanent Solar Resistance effect that makes him hella tough. Oh whoops, Solar Bob's Tiger Style soak charms work with this! Tiger Style is balanced around soaking hits rather than avoiding them? Well, Solar Bob also learned Solar Melee and Solar Dodge because he's a Solar, so he's got Fivefold Bulwark Stance and Flow Like Blood up, which are both scenelongs, and the Solar Standard Issue Paranoia Combo running, which is made of all reflexives.

Would "you can't make a valid combo of MA charms with non-MA charms or charms from a different MA style" stop Solar Bob? Nope. Not happening. Guess we're back in combinatorial hell, where we must pay our testing penance.
 
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Jon Chung said:
In Peori's, you make a set of artifact smashfists that can't be removed, with tiger themed bonuses, and you can stunt all your Solar Charm attacks using tiger puns.
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I can't believe how wrong you are, again.

You make a set of artifact razor claws that can't be removed, with tiger themed bonuses, and you can stunt all your Solar Charm attacks using tiger puns. :V

(And potentially use it as a catalyst to cast Tiger themed Sorcery.)
 
To be quite frank, the repeated come-back to "combinatorial hell is why Martial Arts should be discarded wholesale" has done more to convince me thatthe combinatorial hell concept was a bad bugbear to be largely dismissed, as opposed to making me agree that Martial Arts should be discarded.

It's a pretty simple reasoning too - Martial Arts are cool, provide player and NPC options to broaden the scope of tactics, aesthetics and mechanics available to any combattant, and are a powerful motivator in getting people invested in homebrewing (the closed, thematically-consistent nature of a single MA set makes them a solid exercise in learning Charm design in a way that loose additions to a complete Exalted set aren't). They are also anime as shit.

When I was first exposed to the notion of "combinatorial hell" I was receptive to it but at this point I have come to the conclusion that it exists largely to make the game poorer by burning down its richer and wild aspects - the constant refrain of "give them Spirit Charms" in answer to anything that isn't an Exalted Charmset, the calls for removing MA entirely - and as a result I don't find it an argument of much value anymore.
 
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Personally I think Martial Arts should just be separated from an actual skill. Rename Martial Arts as Brawl and then have Martial Art Schools actually based around what skill they should be thematically invoking. Weapon focused styles should be built under Melee, Thrown, or Archery as required, while the more esoteric schools should just be built around there own relevant skills, like Dreaming Pearl Courtesan should just be built around Socialize and if White Veil style wasn't just a rumor it's probably be built around Larceny and and maybe also Socialize, those schools built on the virtues should probably invoke integrity and so on. And then any Martial Art schools that are actually built on bare handed or improvised weapons like First Pulse can be put under Brawl where they thematically fit.
 
Omicron said:
When I was first exposed to the notion of "combinatorial hell" I was receptive to it but at this point I have come to the conclusion that it exists largely to make the game poorer by burning down its richer and wild aspects - the constant refrain of "give them Spirit Charms" in answer to anything that isn't an Exalted Charmset, the calls for removing MA entirely - and as a result I don't find it an argument of much value anymore.
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To be honest, the reason that I keep doing the "spirit charms pls" is because I am in the unique situation that I find spirit Charms conceptually interesting and really nice to have lying around, and I see no reason not to limit these to only gods and demons. I actually really like Evocations, I just think they're a lot of work and I don't have the time in my schedule to spend time doing balance considerations and homebrewing as much as I want to when I could be studying and optimising myself so I can reach the Singularity the exams in jurisprudence. I personally don't really like Martial Arts, because I find them non-representative of actual martial arts and lead to artificial divides such as "the knight who has trained his entire life doesn't actually know martial arts despite the hundreds of instruction manuals and teachers and so on", they don't really resemble Wuxia to me either, because in Wuxia, everything is martial arts.

So, a lot of my objections to these things are, amusingly more of a thematic nature than a mechanical nature, but I can understand your frustration with the argument. If I had to constantly listen to people telling me how the stuff I liked was stupid, I'd get annoyed pretty quickly as well.
 
Omicron said:
To be quite frank, the repeated come-back to "combinatorial hell is why Martial Arts should be discarded wholesale" has done more to convince me thatthe combinatorial hell concept was a bad bugbear to be largely dismissed, as opposed to making me agree that Martial Arts should be discarded.
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There are four basic ways to deal with combinatorial hell as a game designer:
  • Redesign to avoid it.
  • Nerf everything so that it doesn't matter because even if someone stacks all the bonuses they are still within reach of someone who doesn't.
  • Have all the money so that you can hire enough testing staff.
  • Abdicate your duties, release a badly tuned game that an intelligent player can break over their knee seven different ways before breakfast, and use Rule Zero and forum bans to shut down all criticism on the official forums.
 
grommile said:
There are four basic ways to deal with combinatorial hell as a game designer:
  • Redesign to avoid it.
  • Nerf everything so that it doesn't matter because even if someone stacks all the bonuses they are still within reach of someone who doesn't.
  • Have all the money so that you can hire enough testing staff.
  • Abdicate your duties, release a badly tuned game that an intelligent player can break over their knee seven different ways before breakfast, and use Rule Zero and forum bans to shut down all criticism on the official forums.
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You guys do realize that game balance isn't a binary on/off feature that you should always maximize and anything less is awful, right?

Balance is a quality. It's good to have balance; just like it's good to have a thousand other things, from clarity of presentation to interesting mechanics to tactical depth to whatever else.

But it's a quality that goes into, ironically, a balance. It is something that can be had in a certain quantity, and which can be traded off for other features when doing so is beneficial to the game as a whole.

If you don't have time and money to design your game to have all of combat balance, tactical depths and plentiful character options, then as a game designer you must strike the right balance to please your intended audience and have the game be what you want it to be. That means that if you want more tactical depth and character options, you will trade some balance to do it because of "combinatorial hell."

And that isn't objectively bad. It's a design choice which shifts your game away from certain audiences and towards others. Like, say, away from Jon Chung and towards me. I would like Ex3 less if it had better balance but no Martial Arts.

Now of course someone is going to jump on me and say "but they did have the money and time, 3 years six hundred thousand bucks blah blah blah" but I don't care, that's not relevant to this discussion, which has people arguing that combinatorial hell is the worst thing ever in the abstract and that you shouldn't design for it in the first place.

Which, no. Balance is a currency, like every other aspect of your game's design.
 
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grommile said:
  • Abdicate your duties, release a badly tuned game that an intelligent player can break over their knee seven different ways before breakfast, and use Rule Zero and forum bans to shut down all criticism on the official forums.
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lol

Sadly this will probably lead to another 3e argument, but at least I can laugh at this. Because, this is hilarious.
 
grommile said:
  • Abdicate your duties, release a badly tuned game that an intelligent player can break over their knee seven different ways before breakfast, and use Rule Zero and forum bans to shut down all criticism on the official forums.
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You forgot the step where you also shut down criticism on unofficial forums (well, rpg.net at least), by exploiting just how many White Wolf/Onyx Path freelancers and employees there are on the moderation staff.
 
EarthScorpion said:
You forgot the step where you also shut down criticism on unofficial forums (well, rpg.net at least), by exploiting just how many White Wolf/Onyx Path freelancers and employees there are on the moderation staff.
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And get a moderator warning for your toxicity.

Even though you're a moderator yourself. :V

EDIT: Though, admittedly it isn't like the 2e writers were much better.
 
I mean, I've been on the OPP threads since before they existed and I glance at rpg.net every once in a while when someone starts crying that they've been unjustly banned.

By and large bans of Ex3 detractors aren't about them being detractors. It's about them being a minority, so whenever they start talking shit about the game they get a larger group of people telling them they're wrong. Then since they're "fighting" overwhelming numbers and have to answer many sides at once they progressively turn into raging assholes rampantly strawmanning their opponents, debating in bad faith and insulting people. Then they get infracted because of course.

It's no different from holding a minority position on any other forum on the Internet. Dogpiling is bad because it tends to turn the person being dogpiled into a huge dick if they don't fold quickly. It's part of why I tend to withdraw from debates in this thread relatively quickly (the other part is that I have better things to spend my time on). I like my pristine record of no infraction.
 
Speaking for myself only, I don't think I was banned for criticizing 3e. I think my ban was almost entirely for not deferring to Rich's status as "the boss".

Remember, I was advocating for the writers of Ex3 when I was banned. And I was nicer to Rich than I was to the people I argued about Ex3 with.

Anyway, the balance situation's not as dire as some of you are making it out to be.

If you keep an eye on the variables that affect the power levels of Charms, and are careful not to let those variables be meddled with easily, you can avoid many combinatorial problems pretty easily. So don't make Charms that scale with your limb count, when characters can increase that easily enough. Don't make Charms that increase your base Attributes unless you've designed every Charm that looks at those Attributes with the bonuses in mind. And so on.

Some Charms naturally combo well. Others don't. When you're worried about combinatorial problems, it's advisable to design the latter type of Charm. Partly for that reason and partly for flavour reasons, I think it's a good idea to focus Martial Arts on Form-type Charms and Simple attack Charms. Also, I think making them shorter would be sensible.

Other problems can be addressed by placing some general limits on how things stack and combine. Splat-specific Charms are obviously a good way to do this. Dice caps are another.

There's a lot you can do to minimize the problem while allowing characters to mix and match dozens or hundreds of Charms.

PS: One of my hobbies is Magic, and I dabble in card design. So obviously I've thought a lot about this sort of thing. In general, I think Magic design is worth looking at when considering this kind of issue. Of course, Magic's example shouldn't be followed too far. Good MtG decks are supposed to curbstomp poorly-made ones.
 
Sanctaphrax said:
PS: One of my hobbies is Magic, and I dabble in card design. So obviously I've thought a lot about this sort of thing. In general, I think Magic design is worth looking at when considering this kind of issue. Of course, Magic's example shouldn't be followed too far. Good MtG decks are supposed to curbstomp poorly-made ones.
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Magic also has rotation and card bans. Neither of which Exalted really has.
 
Omicron said:
I mean, I've been on the OPP threads since before they existed and I glance at rpg.net every once in a while when someone starts crying that they've been unjustly banned.

By and large bans of Ex3 detractors aren't about them being detractors. It's about them being a minority, so whenever they start talking shit about the game they get a larger group of people telling them they're wrong. Then since they're "fighting" overwhelming numbers and have to answer many sides at once they progressively turn into raging assholes rampantly strawmanning their opponents, debating in bad faith and insulting people. Then they get infracted because of course.
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This is basically my analysis as well, most defenses tend to break down in the face of superior numbers because you have to make loooooooooong posts to ensure that you respond to everyone and when you're done writing, your opponents have all posted even more posts and maybe you argue against people who are skilled and know rhetoric which is even worse because they tend to make long posts that require you to make even longer posts to counter them, which naturally tends to break down over time.

Omicron said:
It's no different from holding a minority position on any other forum on the Internet. Dogpiling is bad because it tends to turn the person being dogpiled into a huge dick if they don't fold quickly. It's part of why I tend to withdraw from debates in this thread relatively quickly (the other part is that I have better things to spend my time on). I like my pristine record of no infraction.
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I also tend to withdraw for that reason, as well as the fact that I find arguing about pretend elfgames tedious most of the time. I sadly can't boast about an infraction-free record though, I accidentally used a homophobic slur once, and @Cavalier rightly infracted me for it.

I'm so ashamed for having done it. :sad:

(On the bright side, the fact that I haven't used the word since is a sign that the Pavlovian conditioning works. :V)
 
To be honest, I think it's unfair to characterize Exalted 3e as badly balanced.

I do not believe its design principles lend themselves to easily balancing new material – official or otherwise – but that's not the same thing as being badly balanced. The core book, its combat system in particular, has clearly gone through a great deal of testing and retuning to ensure it returns the desired result. This is not to say one must share that desire, or enjoy the means through which it is reached, but to deny it was tested at all seems disingenuous.

It is very hard to balance hundreds upon hundreds of distinct widgets, and you may not particularly want to play a game with hundreds upon hundreds of distinct widgets regardless of whether or not it has been balanced, but a game with hundreds upon hundreds of distinct widgets can be balanced, in a vacuum.
 
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