General Exalted Thread
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
At their most basic, the Lintha are an ethnic group largely involved in piracy who practice demon-worship. They have fairly deep and involved fluff beyond that which people will no doubt get into for you, but most core material should make sense with that information.
- Location
- Singapore
Attributes can be raised through training, right?
how does one raise appearance?
how does one raise appearance?
Other than using makeup and hairstyling and acquiring a sense of fashion and getting in shape and all the other ways people generally use to appear better? :lol
Generally, Appearance also covers how you carry yourself, so think of it less as "looking good" and more as "presentation". A man who did'nt win the genetic lottery can still have an air of importance or impressiveness about him by the way he walks or carries himself.
- Location
- Quezon City, Philippines
Plastic Surgery and Botox.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Eh it's not that bad, it stings far less than people make it out to.
Alternatively, realise that Appearance doesn't just cover how sexually attractive someone is.
- Location
- Singapore
Though it's what comes to mind first.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
While, it is true that Appearance represents more than how sexually attractive a character is; this is still a huge part of the parcel of Appearance, which I personally find detractive from the game, despite the mythological baggage of figures such as Helen of Troy or Aphrodite, and would rather that one simply use a Merit like nWoD's Striking Looks instead. We don't need three different social stats, and the difference between them is already negligible to the point that distinguishing between uses of them can be rather challenging in certain situations. Appearance is certainly more than mere sexual attraction, but this is still a large aspect of Appearance and one that is hard to ignore, at that; which I personally find to trouble my ability to immerse myself in the game due to the subjectivity of desirability and good looks.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I was about to protest that I liked Presence, Manipulation, and Composure, but then I checked and...really? Charisma, Manipulation, and Appearance?
...how do I into old White Wolf? It feels so weird and unintuitive, even though I'm sure there are a lot of people going like, "Presence, Manipulation, Composure, what even is this shit?"
Yeah, no, nWoD is better, but the lack of distinction between Presence and Manipulation is still a defect in the system.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Maybe, but I do think it's something that could be dealt with, and frankly I'd not want it to be reduced to one social stat, anyways, even if the distinction should perhaps be drawn more clearly.
Ultimately I'd rather have more granularity in the social aspect than less. So, it's something I can deal with. At the very least, you can imagine and write a character that has low Presence but high Manipulation, I think?
Or visa versa? And if you can imagine the distinction, you can build on it. The question of course is how much the game itself mechanically incentivizes actually treating them differently, but *shrugs.*
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- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
And it's such an annoying one at that, because it doesn't even come close to properly simulating how debating and rhetoric works! Oh my God I could strangle the one who got the idea to separate them.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
It's weird because I'm not that picky with it? I mean, I can totally imagine characters in fiction that have one but not the other, and putting it all in one thing makes it too generic and easy. Wormtongue and other sleazeball assholes who look like they were born with a bottle of hair grease in their hands (you know the type) clearly fit the "Manipulation over Presence" model, and there are an infinite variety of heroes who are bad at lying but good at smiling and being vaguely charming and forceful.
Yes, you're totally right that that's not how debate and rhetoric work...but neither is having a single stat where you just "get good" at it, so it's not as if it's rejecting a state where things make sense. Like, it's not, "If we reduce it to one stat, we've successfully simulated the real world and everything is good" so it really just comes down to preference, unless one proposes an alternate system or whatnot.
Edit: Also, we should probably drag this debate into the WoD thread instead of here.
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That means precisely nothing. I can also imagine a character with good spatial intelligence, but poor academic intelligence - and yet you aren't proposing splitting them. Every game line requires decisions of where the level of resolution should be drawn. The reason that the Presence-Manipulation (which is identical to the Charisma-Manipulation divide) split is a bad one is because they're not meaningfully different at the system level.
It's a badly done design that's legacy code from VtM 1e - from 1991. The social system does not have enough hooks to divide them, and the split as it exists does not really represent human interaction well.
Also, bluntly, Wormtongue isn't a real person and he's ugly and loathsome to show that he's evil. He's not a good justification for anything. And a character being bad at lying is a question of Abilities, not Attributes - lying is an acquired skill, as can be seen by how much children improve at it and how it's something you train.
(Also, likewise, if we're going to be blunt characters who are super-persuasive but also bad at lying don't really exist in real life either - not in the way that fiction depicts it. They're bad at lying because it's a way of showing that they're a good person, because good people don't lie. It's a not-really-a-flaw used as a signifier of moral virtue. If you really want to make such a character, make it a Flaw - don't fuck up the Attributes for it)
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Well, then what's your proposal, or is it that there should only be one social Attribute? Because I think making, "Social stuff" into just a single attribute fucks up attributes at least as much.
Since we're being blunt here (as you said), I think it fucks it up more than the split/divide.
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grommile
nasty-minded old cynic
- Location
- NERV-Mercia
- Pronouns
- Traditional/Animate
Henry Kissinger, on the other hand...
It is that the system as implemented cannot support a difference between the two, and so there should not be a divide. So, yes, there should only be one social Attribute, because each Attribute should be a meaningful hook into the system and this divide does not do so.
Hence, one Social Attribute, and represent the different way you use them with Styles, so the Unctuous Vizier Style, Rabble-Rousing Demagogue Style and Virtuous Speaker Style separate characters in style without producing the problem that a Presence 5, Manipulation 5 character is not 70XP worth of "better" than the Presence 1, Manipulation 5 character.
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- Pronouns
- They/Them
I mean, as I kinda said when I suggested we might want to move to the WoD we're talking about nWoD here and you're trying to bring your Styles into it? ...Man, that'd be a huge overhaul, and I honestly don't think it'd really help the system that much?
Also, frankly, I think what having just one Social Attribute does is mostly just devalue it? It becomes the D&D thing where you can trivially make it a dump stat or ignore it because you can "get good" at social trivially easily compared to "getting good" at literally any and all other aspects of the game, so you just invest a few XP and then ignore it for what the game has all but told you is the real important thing: the combat.
Pfft. "The D&D thing". That has never not also been an White Wolf thing too. Look at system complexity. You might act sneeringly to D&D, but when you compare the relative system complexity and time invested into basic elements of the game you find that the Storytelling/Storyteller system thinks the really important thing is combat.
And that's even more true in Exalted. Just compare the amount of Charmtech development between the aspects of the game. By the end of 2e, the number of Solar Hero Style charms was comparable to a MoEP.
The social system is already pre-devalued. All it is right now is an XP trap punishing people who don't have the system mastery to realise that a Manipulation 5, Charisma 5 character is not meaningfully much better at social things than the Manipulation 5, Charisma 2 character. And that's bad design.
If you want social things to be put on an equal footing with combat, then go write a better system where there is a meaningfully different mechanical role for two social Attributes - or simplify the combat system down as well and use the chance to resolve the Dex issue that's existed since, again, 1991. Don't stick your fingers in your ears and pretend that the system as it is puts equal effort into combat and social things.
Romantic_Kaiju
Romantic Kaiju
- Location
- National Battlefield
Hmm, I've been going through my Splat Folder, as I have Finally decided to mess with the Wiki Raw Data for Dragon Blooded. And I noticed I have the Ten Thousand Dragon Rewrite, by these Guys;
- Authors: Rodrigo Acuña, Jorge Desormeaux
- Editing and Layout: Jorge Desormeaux
- Fiction: Rebecca "AstraKiseki" Mooney, Rodrigo Acuña
- Fiction Editing: Rebecca Friedman
- Art: Michelle Figueroa micer on DeviantArt
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
SEVEN TYPES OF INTELLIGENCE AT LEAST LETS DO THIS YO
Bursting Eagerness Soul
Threadwalking Rating Machine
- Location
- Wisconsin
Do you have a link to this?