- Location
- Wörms, the half continent
A combination of hitman and prototype. When you go loud, you look like an Awakened one from Claymore.
General Exalted Thread
samdamandias
Apprentice Plane Wizard
10+ motes is "I need this guy dead right now. but even with a base pool of eight, you can trivially hit 14 dice, with a stunt and then spending the motes from the stunt on an excellency.
The original Team Fortress, on a private server because support was discontinued ten years ago.
Giygas
Cutest Sawk i could find. Lucario is a nice extra.
There is a very recent Fanfic on this forum in which Remnant is an AU of creation, and Ruby exalted as a Sidereal. Link.
Others less recents things... there was a fanfic in which Earth-Bet and the various parallel earths were an AU of creation(The Primordials didn't put the Geass on the gods in the AU. A war between God and Primordials was basically averted only by the entities arriving and giving both sides the idea to create the Exalted to make war for them. Warning: Very simplified and likely partly wrong remembrance of the story.) and Taylor was a Sidereal (And Lung a chosen of Theion. And Piggot an absolute badass willing to modify her own body and burn her own life to learn Celestial Martial arts as a mortal. Literally, she was using Fire Dragon.) but the name escaped my memory.
And then a even less recent "A Sidereal Shard goes to the world of Avatar" quest, which kinda died because of reasons. The name of that too escaped my mind.
- Location
- London, England
That would be Oracle, which I wrote.
Looking back it's not even nearly my best work and I'm slightly annoyed with myself for fucking up the plot and narrative flow like I did, but oh well.
- Location
- The Pagoda of Masks
Absent anima powers, two characters that hold Melee as favored that spend the same amount of their earned XP on melee charms will be about equal in skill when it comes to stabbing people. If the Zenith is just as good with Martial Arts as the Dawn, and the Twilight is just as skilled at Archery as the Dawn, and the Night is just as good at Thrown as the Dawn and the Eclipse is just as good at Melee as the Dawn, then the Dawn player is sort of lacking in things that make them unique.
You could always take a page out of the Lunar storytelling chapters though, differing characters by having them use different weapons. That kind of advice always went over well with the fandom in the past.
Not addressing anyone in particular, just expressing my views to the community.
And sure, the greatest sanxian player in the East has Charisma 5 and Performance 5 and a (Sanxian +3) specialty. But that doesn't change the fact that everyone is pretty much expected to start with Dexterity 5, Combat Ability 5 (Specialty +3) or at a similarly high level of proficiency, with a serious charm investment to back up the dots. Requiring people to shoulder the burden of beginning play as "their actual concept + Dawn level skill in one or more aspects of combat" is a flaw in the system.
I've played in enough games where everyone. regardless of their actual character concept, happens to be as agile and beautiful and willful and as skilled at combat as a human has the potential to be, simply because Dex 5, App 5, Combat Ability 5, Willpower 10 are cheap buys at chargen. Righteous Preacher? Peerless Kung Fu. Librarian Sorcerer? Well they also happen to be a swordmaster! I just want to play a Cunning Courtier, not one who is also an Assassin, but when everyone is kitted out for combat I have to be kitted out as well.
UrsaTempest
Don't Panic!
Also, because consequence of losing combat can be rather final. While if you lose debate... well, it can be final, sure. But not the norm.
Animal Crossing?
If I remember correctly, a Lunar can do it with four.but nobody's ever going to be able to use it because I don't know how many Strength Charms you'd have to stack to lift something the size of an aircraft carrier.
A Strength Excellency
Tearing Claw Atemi
Molted Feather-Weight Technique
And finally Heaven Spanning Staff of the Monkey King.
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So wait. Now we're not just assuming that the greatest sanxian player in Creation is going to invest just as much XP in fighting as the greatest warrior in Creation, but will also favor combat abilities? This is sounding increasingly disingenuous and is more of an argument to reduce or eliminate Favored Abilities than it is an argument to say that Dex 5 Ability 5 isn't a necessity if you want to compete in the big leagues. It started off with the idea that both the Dawn and the sanxian player would have a baseline competence of 13d before equipment in combat, but every time people tell you that this means very little because that's just a starting baseline, and the majority of power comes from charms, you keep disingenuously changing the scenario and hoping people don't notice. Well yes, someone with an equal XP expenditure in combat will presumably be about as good at combat as the combat character. But presumably if your concept is a musician, you are going to be spending your XP on social things and not spending XP on beating the party fight machine at combat, because that is your actual concept.
And there is a wide, wide gulf between 'what you need to survive combat' (just the paranoia combo and a decent base skill) and 'what you need to be good at combat' ( a fuck of a lot more than that). Especially because the easiest way to access the paranoia combo necessities is through Dodge... which gives you zero offensive skill.
...except it doesn't? There's no mandatory reason to buy Dex 5 Melee 5 or Martial Arts 5 and back it up with charms. Most people buy a combat ability up to 5, with Dex 5 and a relevant specialty, because it means that they can reliably win against low-level opposition. It, and an excellency and maybe a perfect defense (which is all of 3-4 charms after you include prereqs) means that you can't be chumped by five legionaries from the Wyld Hunt deciding to stab you in the dick and can hold off a superior foe long enough that your combat-oriented buddy can engage the guy trying to kill you.
If people are heavily investing in combat as well, that's not because it's 'cheap,' it's because they either want to or expect to engage in combat.
- Location
- Ottawa
Couldn't the same be said for every caste and every ability?
There's nothing stopping the Dawn from matching the Twilight at Medicine, if they favour it.
- Location
- Wörms, the half continent
Heck, battlefield medic is a fairly decent character concept.
Ellf
Apprentice Wizard
- Location
- Virginia
Issue was, in 2e/2.5e especially, it was difficult for a Dawn to be an exemplar in all combats. Dawns are meant to be omnitactical battle hydras, and until the Dawn expansion, they really couldn't be it without a lot of investment and sacrifice in other areas.
MiracleGrow
Miracles for only $19.99 [They/Them]
- Location
- DOOR STUCK DOOR STUCK PLEASE I BEG U
Ive only recently gotten into Exalted but there is one thing that really stands out to me. Holy shit how does a game like this not have a decent wiki of any sort? There is an incredible amount of lore and world information but good god trying to piece it all together is the worst.
Oh and thanks for the recs.
Oh and thanks for the recs.
Like, even in 2E, where a character could be a good fighter with a much lesser combat investment, compare what you need as a fighter and as a non-fighter who wants to survive fights well. Remember that the combos also cost XP.
Non-Fighter:
Anti-Shaping
Perfect Defense
Surprise Negator
Leaping Dodge
Fighter:
Perfect Parry/Dodge
Perfect Soak
Surprise Negator
Leaping Dodge
Infinite (Ability) Mastery
Anti-Shaping Defense
Sickness Negator
Poison Negator (you'll be getting hit more due to the 2/7 filter, you're going to need to negate more bad touches)
...plus...
Possibly some Ox-Bodies (if you're using charms with HL costs, you'll want some -0 ox-bodies so you don't end up with a dice/DV penalty after paying them).
Some Damage Enhancers (to break through very heavy combatants like soakbeast Lunars)
Mobility Enhancers (to chase down the jerk who wants to play Glorious Solar Railgun)
Mote Pool Increasers (to last longer in attrition combat)
Your fighter is going to spend a fuck of a lot more than someone who just wants to survive.
Non-Fighter:
Anti-Shaping
Perfect Defense
Surprise Negator
Leaping Dodge
Fighter:
Perfect Parry/Dodge
Perfect Soak
Surprise Negator
Leaping Dodge
Infinite (Ability) Mastery
Anti-Shaping Defense
Sickness Negator
Poison Negator (you'll be getting hit more due to the 2/7 filter, you're going to need to negate more bad touches)
...plus...
Possibly some Ox-Bodies (if you're using charms with HL costs, you'll want some -0 ox-bodies so you don't end up with a dice/DV penalty after paying them).
Some Damage Enhancers (to break through very heavy combatants like soakbeast Lunars)
Mobility Enhancers (to chase down the jerk who wants to play Glorious Solar Railgun)
Mote Pool Increasers (to last longer in attrition combat)
Your fighter is going to spend a fuck of a lot more than someone who just wants to survive.
azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
An actual samurai would be skilled in Melee and Archery. Achilles invested in Melee and Thrown. I can continue, but instead I will just acknowledge that, yes, this can be a problem, because despite real-life examples almost always have two ways they used weapons we tend to just invest in one, but it's part of why the Martial keyword was created.
A Solar who invests in Archery will strike faster in combat. A Solar who invests in Thrown mastered the death of a thousand cuts. A Solar who invests in Melee masters the concept of the riposte. A Solar who has mastered War can freely switch between using any of these, does them just a little better, and can become a one man army.
How is that different from calling characters who just invest in combat "Killfuck Soulshitter" and decrying them as a bad character concept?
I mean, apparently when playing a Dawn I need to seriously invest outside of my character's focus; what makes non-combat-focused characters special?
(Also, the actual requirement is to just be able to survive, which is a significantly lower bar.)
What you're complaining about is a fundamental problem that has resulted from the origins of tabletop RPGs in war games - the focus on combat.
The last point is just a problem of you not having the same expectations/interest as the rest of your group, which is a problem of communication.
Actually, there are quite a number of other skills that aid in combat. That's one of the problems in the 2ed system, where Dawns would have a bunch of redundant combat abilities while also needing to pay quite a bit to cover some necessary other aspects(Awareness, defensive charms, etc). Now, this has been addressed in 2ed and in 3rd, but not by removing these things. Simply by making Dawns more able to chose this abilities without any taxes. So, yes, two characters who invest equal resources into these abilities will supposedly have equal capabilities(ignoring suboptimal charms and the like). The cost, however, is that this means the characters can't spend resources elsewhere: If I make a Dawn Combat/Socialite who spends 80% of his xp on combat or combat related areas he's going to be about as good as a Zeinth Combat/Socialite who did the same, but neither are going to be as good at Social stuff as a Zenith Combat/Socialite who went 20%/80%.
Your comparison also breaks down because comparing two characters in the areas they are similar while ignoring the areas they differ kinda misses a big issue. Yes, if you take two characters and have them spend XP the exact same way then they're likely going to be very similar mechanically and in how they play. But having two people with melee doesn't mean that you have that. Not only is melee big enough for variety to exist within it (a light weapon user will feel different than someone wielding a massive hammer), not only can you have different degrees of competence (one spends 50% of xp on combat stuff, the other spends 20%), but Melee is one of 10 favored or caste abilities.
Oh, and lol "absent things which make one person better than another at this skill, both are equal". I mean, yes, that's valid, but the premise makes the argument absurd.
There are two things here. First, a non-insignificant part of that assumption is the XP/BP divide. If you change that, it becomes much less difficult to have non-5's in core areas. Dex and willpower still have weight behind them due to being god stats (Dex is king in combat and many out of combat applications, willpower gives you motes, mental defenses, mental health bars, charm costs, etc). Especially if you go to a full xp system, where getting that 5 in an attribute or ability costs a lot.
Second, it's pretty easy to not do combat at that level. How much depends in your ST, but even for pretty hardline "I'm going to run the world as full of extremely competent people" ST's there's plenty for players who aren't at max mundane skill level to face, and at most it means that certain high level fights need to be avoided or set up in such a way that it's not a white room fight. I mean, remember, non-solars exist in the game, and they have lower dice limits. The fact that they can overcome challenges means that the Maximum solar dice cap isn't strictly necessary. Hell, mortals are a thing, and they too can overcome stuff. It makes combat easier, especially against weaker foes, but that doesn't need to be a given.
This is especially true if one person on the team is combat focused. Yes, they're combat focused and will be able to fight things evenly that you can't. That doesn't mean that suddenly you need to get to their level. That just means that you won't be fighting the same things that they are evenly.
Yes, a lot of people will go 5+5+3 with large combat suites, but that's because a lot of people find combat, or the idea of combat, fun, and thus want to be able to do a lot in combat.
I know I don't have to tell you this, but to make a point: don't forget War, Athletics, Awareness, Dodge, Ride, and Resistance at minimum.
Combat skills are important for combat, yes. But if you had a character who was 100% in Melee and a character who also had a mix of other combat related skills, well, I could easily see the more rounded character doing significantly better (hell, in 2ed the 2/7 filter relies on some of those other abilities).
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- Location
- The end of all things
3e's pick 5 of 8 Caste Abilities method works much better here. Drop out the attack abilities you aren't going to use for critical Abilities like Resistance, Awareness, or Dodge.
Dawns also have excellent Anima Powers and a monopoly on taking offensive combat Abilities as Supernal, making them potentially way better at fighting than anyone else.
There was a wiki, but it was shut down awhile ago. I think it was around when Onyx-Path took over.
Ellf
Apprentice Wizard
- Location
- Virginia
Yeah. 3e has a lot of plusses. There's just... Well, there's a reason I call the book my rule enforcement beat-block.
In the Exalted 1e corebook, p. 17, under "Suggested Resources," we find Ninja Scroll, Streetfighter(!), and Final Fantasy VII. Let me just quote that first one in its entirety:
Ninja Scroll said:
It's perfectly fine to not enjoy Exalted's deliberate anime inspirations and themes, or to not want to play games in that style. Like what you want to like! But if your argument is that these are influences that crept in later, rather than being baked in intentionally from the very beginning, then you are factually incorrect.
This.
I came to Exalted late in the day via Quests and the like, and had to do a lot of catchup on the lore.
But the setting elements from 1E have always been clear that this draws as much, if not more, from Japanese anime and videogames as it does from gritty sand and sandals type fiction.
I mean, the more literary references mentioned in 1E include such works as Moorcock's Hawkmoon and Glen Cook's The Black Company, with direct comparisons being drawn between the Lady, the Ten Who Were Taken and actual Exalts. Or Final Fantasy 7, wherein the comments regarding it in 1E was, and I quote, "the huge weapons and over the top special effects of the magic are absolutely the best".
Even the references to classic literature explicitly mention The Iliad, where mythological Greek heroes slaughtered their way across the battlefields of the Trojan War with superhuman prowess and nary a care for numerical disadvantage, with only comparable heroes and sometimes a god to give them pause. And even the gods were not safe from getting shanked by mortals.
Straightfacedly suggesting that over the top, superhuman feats are a recent introduction, as opposed to something baked into the core DNA of Exalted from the very beginning, suggests a certain amnesia or plain ignorance about just where the series came from.
Your Exalted May Differ, and that's fine; encouraged even.
But one should be wary of claiming personal preference as the way things are/were.
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- Location
- Virginia
About 50% of this conversation is asinine, but there's an interesting game design feature (arguably, bug) behind some of it. Actually two.
The first is, for a combat engine to be fun qua game all players need to have a reasonable chance to hit (in D&D 4e they found 60% to be a sweet spot here) as well as, slightly less importantly, a reasonable chance to avoid being hit. Whiffing all the time is boring! In a d20 system that means everyone's attack bonus and AC should fall within a certain band; in a Storyteller system it becomes even more important that everyone have basically similar dice pools, because of how quickly the probabilities go to 0% or 100% after you get a certain distance from the median. Thus, the system can't really use the size of your combat dice pool as the primary means of distinguishing characters by level of combat investment; doing so would basically turn combat into a decker problem.
This actually works fine, though, because Exalted uses Charms to distinguish the fighty and less-fighty characters. This is great! "I have two extra dice" is boring. "I have these five cool powers I can use" is fun. A character with 15 Melee Charms is going to definitely outshine someone with 3 Archery and 2 Dodge Charms, even as both of them get to participate in the combat.
The problem is that Exalted represents the size of your dice pool as being a very important reflection of how notably talented you are. So it looks a little odd that all of the players are 5-5 in a combat ability.
One way to square this circle is to just not care (one of my favorite solutions to a lot of problems); another is to say, look, fighting is important in Creation, and Exaltations are pretty handy for delivering sudden improvements in skill. So it's not surprising that a lot of Exalts, after they Exalt, are able to quickly ascend to just past the heights of mundane excellence in some kind of fighting.
The second game design issue is that Storyteller uses the same dice mechanics for all of its different systems, even though those systems vary wildly in the number of rolls involved in resolving a challenge. A Survival test might involve only a single roll, while combat can involve dozens. In a single roll-off, 4 dice have a chance of beating 10; when aggregating across a dozen rolls, even 8 dice are at a serious disadvantage against the same 10. The fact that combat is resolved in a detailed way magnifies the importance of each die many times over.
I also like to resolve this problem by not caring, but if I had to justify it I'd say that the systems with more rolls are generally the systems with more mechanics, which are, implicitly, the systems players are playing the game to engage with (otherwise why waste all the design effort?). So it's not surprising that players have a disproportionate investment in those systems.
The first is, for a combat engine to be fun qua game all players need to have a reasonable chance to hit (in D&D 4e they found 60% to be a sweet spot here) as well as, slightly less importantly, a reasonable chance to avoid being hit. Whiffing all the time is boring! In a d20 system that means everyone's attack bonus and AC should fall within a certain band; in a Storyteller system it becomes even more important that everyone have basically similar dice pools, because of how quickly the probabilities go to 0% or 100% after you get a certain distance from the median. Thus, the system can't really use the size of your combat dice pool as the primary means of distinguishing characters by level of combat investment; doing so would basically turn combat into a decker problem.
This actually works fine, though, because Exalted uses Charms to distinguish the fighty and less-fighty characters. This is great! "I have two extra dice" is boring. "I have these five cool powers I can use" is fun. A character with 15 Melee Charms is going to definitely outshine someone with 3 Archery and 2 Dodge Charms, even as both of them get to participate in the combat.
The problem is that Exalted represents the size of your dice pool as being a very important reflection of how notably talented you are. So it looks a little odd that all of the players are 5-5 in a combat ability.
One way to square this circle is to just not care (one of my favorite solutions to a lot of problems); another is to say, look, fighting is important in Creation, and Exaltations are pretty handy for delivering sudden improvements in skill. So it's not surprising that a lot of Exalts, after they Exalt, are able to quickly ascend to just past the heights of mundane excellence in some kind of fighting.
The second game design issue is that Storyteller uses the same dice mechanics for all of its different systems, even though those systems vary wildly in the number of rolls involved in resolving a challenge. A Survival test might involve only a single roll, while combat can involve dozens. In a single roll-off, 4 dice have a chance of beating 10; when aggregating across a dozen rolls, even 8 dice are at a serious disadvantage against the same 10. The fact that combat is resolved in a detailed way magnifies the importance of each die many times over.
I also like to resolve this problem by not caring, but if I had to justify it I'd say that the systems with more rolls are generally the systems with more mechanics, which are, implicitly, the systems players are playing the game to engage with (otherwise why waste all the design effort?). So it's not surprising that players have a disproportionate investment in those systems.
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- Location
- Ottawa
Funny how often this kind of complaint comes up, isn't it?
I've seen it in Magic, in D&D, in Exalted, in video games...
"Once INSERT PROPERTY HERE was an intellectual game for adults. But over time it was dumbed down and mixed with anime, to appeal to children and casuals. INSERT PROBLEM HERE comes from INSERT COMPANY HERE pandering to idiots who like Naruto."
Sometimes it's reasonably well-founded, or seems to be. Other times it's obviously stupid. Either way it just keeps showing up, in more or less exactly the same form, regardless of the actual situation of the game being complained about.
Jon Chung
=][=
To elaborate, this is a game where the core premise involves being an epic mythological anime solar god-king hero selected by cosmic lottery in a post-apocalyptic world ruled by your ex-minions, who are also epic mythological anime heroes, who all want to kill you because they think you are an existential threat such that going from post-scarcity magicyberpunk arcologies to mud huts was an acceptable tradeoff to not have to worry about you anymore or their religion thinks you're worse than literal devils from Hell.
To play Exalted is to willingly go in knowing that this is the premise. The game is pretty up-front about how hostile the setting is. Since people are inevitably going to try to kill you, you should probably have some way to not die when people inevitably try to kill you. Given that you are an epic mythological anime god-king, you can get to the point where it is very difficult to kill you with minimal resource expenditure. As this is not only practical, but also thematically fitting with the image of golden anime god-king, why would you not do it?
It costs you three ability points and three and a half bonus points at chargen to have Melee 5 (+3 Swords). This is not a character concept in itself, this is a casual impulse purchase. Add three charms out of ten and you have a perfect defense and a surprise negator.
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Don't they also reference the Ramanaya and Journey to the West, both of which have power levels so ludicrous that even Dragonball Z is like "slooooow down?" A game of close-to-human heroes Exalted really, really isn't.