Carrnage
Human
- Location
- New Zealand
also Infernals have the alternative of Shintai forms, when they decide to get all big and boss monstery.
General Exalted Thread
Also, at least in 2.0, Warstriders were horrible vs normal Exalted due to the -3 external penalty to attack rolls against non-house sized things. Sure, they were immune to a lot of weapons thanks to Soak/Hardness, but their offense(unless a much superior elder, in the realm normally having a 6 die advantage over you) basically evaporated, and the additional soak isn't all that impressive: against most Grand weapons, even the Colossi only has 15 Soak, vs the base damage of 16(technically 20 due to the str requirements) for a Grand Gormaul. Nevermind the whole part about (Essence Minimum Damage).
Oh, and due to the large penalty to Awareness rolls, it's also easy to get Unexpected Attacks against them.
So, really, the lore is entirely correct. They just failed to mention that the Lore is talking about the Warstrider pilots, not the enemy.
It's probably a charm that's got prerequisites in the love-focused social tree and the mobility/flying tree. For mechanics, take a look at that Infernal Monster Style charm, and modify it somewhat to be suitably Adorjani.
Kylar
In Training Forever
- Location
- Canada
In addition to everything everyone else has said? Warstiders are walking munchkin bait, due to their hilarious ground speed (who the fuck thought speed multipliers of that magnitude were a good idea), clinch rules, and warstrider weapons, which if they hit, splatter you. This is a bad thing, since some genuis made it so you use your normal health levels in a warstrider, and some of those weapon are rocking Overwhelming 8 (canon Lunars can use these normally at E5).
You want to use warstriders, find a rewrite.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
Anyone know a good rewrite for warstriders?
Not really. I've seen a couple, but none of them really address the problems, unless having things go to the side of 'completely broken'. I think this is largely due to the fact that Exalted's system doesn't handle large numbers well, and large numbers is what Mecha's are all about.
Oh god, I forgot about the clinch rules. I haven't used the Canon ones in so long.
Yes, balance the entire game around Dexterity being a god stat(but therefore cannot be raised). Then add a method to use Strength for accuracy, and for a method of attack that instantly removes a character from play unless dodged or parried.
greensun
You shall all burn beneath my light!!!
Because its better than Bing.
But seriously, there is no way that you'd just stumble across a forbidden file, you'd have to looking for them.
(These of course means that clever demons and Exalted sometimes hack them so that they won't explode the second you open it.)
Infernals don't have to worry either, they get free access to most of the information placed there as a matter of course
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greensun
You shall all burn beneath my light!!!
At least Orbalises' search engine doesn't maim the souls of those who use it!Hey, it's no worse than Yahoo.
IIRC, there was a Warstriders/Power Armor/Magitech rewrite called Skins of Steel which was supposed to be good.
Kylar
In Training Forever
- Location
- Canada
It was good. Then the author went to far, and just kept adding rules. The current incarnation is unfortunately a bloated mess.
Here it is, for those interested.
Romantic_Kaiju
Romantic Kaiju
- Location
- National Battlefield
Fuck he updated it.
Are there more ...
You Know what, I'll just read it and decide whither to use the MK2 or the original Skins of Steel rule set
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
Send me a copy of the original?
Romantic_Kaiju
Romantic Kaiju
- Location
- National Battlefield
Okay link to the original version of Skins of Steel
http://forums.whitewolfarchive.com/default8cab-2.html?g=posts&t=69965
I have begun reading through the Updated rules, and while through, for lack of a better term, it does have problems (like repeated and out of place text)
Edit: SO far I think I prefer the original.
http://forums.whitewolfarchive.com/default8cab-2.html?g=posts&t=69965
I have begun reading through the Updated rules, and while through, for lack of a better term, it does have problems (like repeated and out of place text)
Edit: SO far I think I prefer the original.
Romantic_Kaiju
Romantic Kaiju
- Location
- National Battlefield
And Right, I've just gotten to the systems portion of the new version of the homebrew, and it is incomplete, with large gaps in the work, as a side note, The Original version, linked in my last post, will just give you the warstrider rules, that might be the better Idea to use (or go find a different version)
Murderhobo of Nod
The Antisocial Alpaca
H'loh! Can anyone help me?
On dragon blooded names. . .
Do you just make crap up? Or is there an actual naming convention going on? And can dragon blooded become akumas or devil kin (assuming a parent as demonic heritage/or sorcery hax.)
Thank you!
On dragon blooded names. . .
Do you just make crap up? Or is there an actual naming convention going on? And can dragon blooded become akumas or devil kin (assuming a parent as demonic heritage/or sorcery hax.)
Thank you!
There's not a convention persay, just like there isn't a convention for people of Caucasian ancestry. I think the standard in Creation is the western style of First Name Last Name, but I could be wrong.
If you need names, I generally go with Anathema's name generator. The Realm generator is for Realm/Shogunate names, the Threshold is for elsewhere.
Dragonblooded can be Akuma's/Demonblooded, just like anyone else.
Kylar
In Training Forever
- Location
- Canada
The answer to this will vary, based on where you are. If your a Realm DB, then your house name is really, REALLY important and a lack of one is equally so. Lookshy, its important but they bring in enough foreign DBs it won't matter. Your standard Outcaste? Regional naming standards apply.
Drakeneisen
Rogue Scientist
Generally, if the DB is a member of a great house, the house name comes first (example: Tepet Ejava, of house Tepet).
If you exalt, then being ghost blooded / god blooded / whatever stops mattering (you get Exalted charms, what do you need spirit charms for?), so a Dragon Blood could be a devil kin, but it wouldn't matter in terms of rules. In the fluff, I seem to recall that other supernatural blood lessens the chance of Terrestrial exaltation. Becoming an Akuma is a separate thing entirely, and DBs can do it the same as anyone else.
If you exalt, then being ghost blooded / god blooded / whatever stops mattering (you get Exalted charms, what do you need spirit charms for?), so a Dragon Blood could be a devil kin, but it wouldn't matter in terms of rules. In the fluff, I seem to recall that other supernatural blood lessens the chance of Terrestrial exaltation. Becoming an Akuma is a separate thing entirely, and DBs can do it the same as anyone else.
A Dragon Blooded can become a Akuma like all other exalted but of course that has the usual problems of agency loss for the player. And depending on which fluff you want to go with. The first Demon Blooded was a Dragonblooded that had some power over storms on account of her demonic father , back in first edition something like that just raised the cost for you to buy regular charms while the second edition went with "NOOOO"
Fun fact the First , and only Akuma , that we got for the First Edition of Exalted was also a Dragonblooded, okay it was a Lintha so that skewers that one a bit but Dukantha was the first of them, note I don't remember on top of my head how Second Edition Akumas worked in terms of the investiture so take my advices with care.
Or to cite the first edition players guide " Knowing about the procedure requiresa intelligence and occult roll with 6 success, knowing about the prices requires 8 success."
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The 2E combat system makes sense actually, it's just that the failstate is really whack.
"We want noncombat characters to be able to easily survive combat and maybe contribute a bit to said combat." -low buy-in
"We want a game where guys can stab giant Dyson spheres to death and die to swords." -scalability
"We want a game where player characters aren't special." -universal game mechanics
The end conclusion, especially since they were wedded to the Storyteller system, was some sort of 'cheap perfects are your primary line of defense against most threats'. The problems with implementation were that perfects also used your offensive combat pool, were built around a system which meant that if you could reduce the need to perfect (by having a really good 2/7 filter) you could win at everything forever even against foes which should be more powerful, the game became "got a perfect defense? No? Plz die nao" no matter how many HLs/etc you had because HLs/soak were expensive and damage boosters were cheap, and the overvaluing of armor/HLs (probably because they were afraid of the 2/7 filter but were looking at the exact wrong problems).
The funny thing, actually, is that if you look at the fail state from a cinematic point of view, it looks really dramatic. Cinematically, it's really mobile with lots of fast attacks (lots of flurrying) and them jumping like wuxia monks (because of the flurrybreaking). If you were to animate that fight, it's a desperate fight between two people which ends when one of them makes a single mistake and either dies, or gets injured and then gets finished off (because of the death spiral from wound penalties added to the fact that once you get injured, you're out of motes). It's a very certain kind of "high tempo" duel common in fiction, where two incredibly skilled fighters duel knowing the first to get tired and make a mistake (ie, run out of motes), dies.
It just doesn't work that way in a pen and paper game. But a Paranoia Combat melee duel actually looks a lot like what you'd see if there was a VS mode in MGR:R, and you had a "low health" start so you could take 1-2 hits before you lost (ie, parry like fuck because if you fuck up your perfect parries or your Defensive Offence perfect dodges, you're fucked).
(Chung's observed to me that Raiden in MGR:R is basically the perfect model for a Solar Meleeist)
...
Of course, then we also hit the... uh, archer issue, which is basically a product of the combination of "overstatted ranged weapons with stupid-long ranges", "the fact that by RAW it's as easy to hit a cloth dummy target with a bow as it is to walk up to it and stab it", and "archers find it trivial to shoot you at close range with a bow and dodge you, without having to use Charms".
Put all of that together with Solar Archery and Solar Athletics and Solar Awareness, and that's why the dominant mode of combat is the Glorious Solar Railgun. Because the best kind of perfect defence is "I'm sorry, you have a sword with an engagement range measured in yards, and I have a bow with an engagement range measured in 'can I see you'. And I move as fast as you. And I can see you. Enjoy bleeding motes while I pelt you with arrows, and if you somehow manage to get close I'll just flurrybreak and jump away again. And then go stand on top of a tree and keep on shooting."
(That is because the bows in the corebook, as statted, are not actually bows. They are more like hypertech semi-auto rifles. Or Tenno railgun bows.)
That is also a point-it actually does look very Wuxia in imagery, especially since in Wuxia people only rarely bust out their super flashy death magics and whatnot (another thing it encourages). It's just boring to play through. I'm wondering if the issue with Exalted 2E was that they hacked the wrong parts of the Trinity/Aberrant system that Exalted 1E used (ticks, social combat) when they really should have dealt with things like combat tempo and death/dying.
I'm imagining, say, a hypothetical Exalted 2E where instead of Health Levels you had a Threat/Finisher/Consequences meter, wherein successful 'attacks' against you generated Threat, and if you have enough Threat on an enemy you can enact a Finisher on them, causing a certain amount of Consequences. Armor would provide some protection against Threat and Finishers (by increasing the thresholds for both), but none against Consequences, and dependent on the toughness of the character you might be able to suffer X Consequences and they might be of Y severity. A dagger Finisher against an unarmored person might be 'stabbed in gut', but against an armored person it might be 'stabbed in eye slits', which takes a fuck of a lot more effort to set up, and you're less concerned with the dagger-wielder, thus lowering their Threat.
So a Stamina 3 Extra might be taken out of the fight with one Consequence, like "Broken Arm" or "Stabbed in eye" or something, while someone with Stamina 5 might take 2 (which heavier weapons like swords can deal). Heroic characters would get more Consequences, and characters who are Really Tough might be able to ignore lesser Consequences. Heavier weapons would generate Threat more slowly, but enact harsher Consequences and possibly get to their Finishers sooner. Perfect Defenses would be 'aggro dumps' in this scenario, basically letting you, at significant cost, dump all Threat you've suffered from one target or potentially from multiple targets.
Because of the exact mechanics here, even weapons like "I am Isidoros. I am a black hole" or "I have a nuclear bomb" can be statted out in a scale that is reasonably playable. Just assume they have a relatively low Threat generation, a relatively low Finisher threshold, and the Consequences they enact are "Instant Death".
tl;dr: Designing combat systems is hard. I need to go into the Aberrant 2.0 thread and talk more about how I'm trying to make it vaguely modern-combat-ish.
EDIT: I also realize that if you play with the Threat/Finisher/Consequences thing, you have an incentive to have two weapons. You use your light, fast weapon to lead in and tire the enemy out (generating Threat) and then you cut them in half with your big heavy weapon (using that to create a Finisher). You'd have to create reasons to have single weapons then, but the system seems to be an interesting one if nothing else.
Bows as written are prooooobably way too lethal, yes. They should be harassment or pinning weapons, things that you use to threaten attacks or force enemies to wear heavier armor (thus reducing their DVs and making them more vulnerable to your grand killstick equipped peoples), with high mote buy-in to keep a ranged combat style working because they trade damage and firepower for range. It's not actually fun being an archer then, though, which is the issue.
Bows in Exalted are basically generic eurofantasy bows where they punch through plate armor and make everyone sad-this leads to the hilarity of heavy armor being shockingly useless and encouraging the 2/7 filter 'helicopters with deflector shields' paradigm more.
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That sounds a lot like what the Devs have revealed about the Exalted 3e combat system, actually.
Just compare them to the stats of guns in Shards.
Yes, but I have relatively minimal faith in Exalted 3E's system because some of the hints of HEROISM and MATURITY I'm getting are really missing the point of "there are good people and bad people but on the whole ancient fantastical realms are kind of shit". Exalted, at its core, is a rejection of fantasy tropes.
I recall guns doing approximately the same damage as bows, with approximately the same rates, and remember, guns versus bows should be no contest assuming Extras on both sides. It should be "guys with LMGs and ARs come onto the field against an equal number of guys with bows, guys with bows die inflicting no losses". If someone is using a bow in Heaven's Reach or Exalted Modern, my thought should be holy shit, that guy must be really fucking good, rather than the idea that the bow is a viable weapon.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
What exactly does 2/7 filter mean?
also, how exactly do "offensive motes" from overdrive pools work? Does a martial arts or archery attack that heals count as offensive? What about a charm that boosts your defense but also gives you a counterattack if the enemy misses?
also, how exactly do "offensive motes" from overdrive pools work? Does a martial arts or archery attack that heals count as offensive? What about a charm that boosts your defense but also gives you a counterattack if the enemy misses?