General Exalted Thread

[Aranfan]

I like the 3e social system.

 

[SerGregness]

I like the 3e social system.

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I love the idea of it, but I don't quite grok it yet. I can whip up a satisfying fight scene with some Abyssals, no sweat, but for whatever reason I don't quite grasp how to make an equivalent social encounter. Sure, I know how all the individual pieces work, and I can handle my players trying to bribe and/or threaten random mortals, but I'd love to be able to put together the kind of layered social encounters that it seems should be possible. Some kind of diplomatic summit with conflicting agendas, factions and some hardcore exalted social opposition.

 

[Tahu1809]

So as someone who maybe end of up getting a hard copy of 3e this Christmas how hard are the rules going to be to learn? Should I go back to my 2e core and read/ re-read thous rule to give me an idea, or am I better going into this blind?

Also I was thinking it would be a cool idea to make an Autochthonia Solar ( I.e. a mortal Autochthonia who exalted while on an expedition in Creation) now I know that I'm likely going to need to read Vol:6 of Compass of Celestial Direction, but I was hoping some people would be willing to spit ball some general ideas like what the reactions from the Autochthonia side of things would be in general, or what should I do with the soul gem (should it stay, or should it explode)?

 

[Salty]

So as someone who maybe end of up getting a hard copy of 3e this Christmas how hard are the rules going to be to learn? Should I go back to my 2e core and read/ re-read thous rule to give me an idea, or am I better going into this blind?

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The major difficulties you will have are most likely going to be
A: Charm headspace. There are a lot of them to keep track of now (even more if you add in Evocations), and they all do different things at different times for different costs.
B: The social influence system, especially as regards changing people's minds.
C: Craft, but only if you choose to engage with that. Its this whole huge game within a game with its own resources and a hideous amount of charms dedicated to it.

System mastery...well, I don't think anybody really has that yet.

 

[AmineHsu]

I like the 3e social system.

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I actually really like it too...Before charms get involved. I can't really say much more without getting fairly close to a banned topic, but I really, personally, feel like 'socially defensive' charms are a bit lacking compared to 'socially offensive' charms.

 

[Talkkno]

I actually really like it too...Before charms get involved. I can't really say much more without getting fairly close to a banned topic, but I really, personally, feel like 'socially defensive' charms are a bit lacking compared to 'socially offensive' charms.

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Does it favor offense more then defense then the regular combat system?

 

[AmineHsu]

Does it favor offense more then defense then the regular combat system?

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'Social Combat' now Social Influence is a completely different beast from combat now, it's just convenient to talk about it in terms of 'attack' and 'defense'. That said, it is much more binary than combat, with a certain level of nuance.

 

[Talkkno]

'Social Combat' now Social Influence is a completely different beast from combat now, it's just convenient to talk about it in terms of 'attack' and 'defense'. That said, it is much more binary than combat, with a certain level of nuance.

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I mean there's always the defense of "join battle" isn't there?

 

[Salty]

I mean there's always the defense of "join battle" isn't there?

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Actually, no.

Social actions are explicitly allowed in combat time, and attempting to initiate combat does not break off social actions. Actually designed a whole core book Martial Art (Black Claw, IIRC) around it.

They got tired of MDV Fist too.

 

[holyseamces]

I mean there's always the defense of "join battle" isn't there?

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Actually no, and depending on certain charms can be a bad idea.

 

[Kylar]

Does it favor offense more then defense then the regular combat system?

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Not really?

Like, certain charms that-shall-not-be-named aside, it's hard to make a character do something they don't want to in Ex3. At the same time, you've put what your character wants to do on your sheet- that's Intimacies.

Social encounters tend to be more about figuring out what they want and using that. Or brute force making them care about something (that you can tap appropriate Intimacies to resist).

If anything, I'd say the current system favors 'defense' but you need to have your defenses in place and setup properly, and if someone is trying to convince you to do something in line with your defenses, they work against you.

It's really context sensitive, but it means you can do things like getting a Solar Brawl monkey to stop attacking by offering him pizza with stuffed crust.

 

[Jon Chung]

Like... okay. What I'm trying to get at, independent of how nuanced or not the actual resistant mechanics were, was that Social Combat was not supposed to be about basic human interaction. IT wasn't about convincing someone to buy you lunch or get laid or go to the movies. It was meant to be about modifying the kinds of root beliefs and causes that make people make history. I agree 100% that it's broken and we've gone on at length as to where it fails, but assessing and understanding its potential functions I feel is still important.

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I don't think this makes a lot of difference here. Even if the only time you ever pull out the system is when you're trying to have a debate with your Dragon-Blooded nemesis over the fate of the kingdom, the fact that it doesn't actually work will immediately make itself known when you start rolling dice. Like, the fact that you can force him to do whatever you want (except kill himself or throw his life goals) once you run him out of willpower isn't going anywhere, so all the incentives present for his player to immediately call Join Battle once he sees your Presence pool is bigger than his apply.

The only way to dodge that is to not roll dice and resolve every social interaction with roleplaying, which leads us to question our life choices in paying for things that don't work.

 

[Tahu1809]

The major difficulties you will have are most likely going to be
A: Charm headspace. There are a lot of them to keep track of now (even more if you add in Evocations), and they all do different things at different times for different costs.
B: The social influence system, especially as regards changing people's minds.
C: Craft, but only if you choose to engage with that. Its this whole huge game within a game with its own resources and a hideous amount of charms dedicated to it.

System mastery...well, I don't think anybody really has that yet.

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Well it's all hypothetical till after Christmas. I just wish I knew someone willing to guide a newbie threw a story. Something "simple." I.E welcome to the new and improved Creation, hears whats new, hears whats old, hears is whats changed, and hear is whats the same.

 

[The_Reptile_]

That's largely because as of right now, lore wise, there reslly isn't anything new. Oh there are promises sure, but until they get printed into official documents it's just hearsay. All there is is the Dreaming Sea which is just a small part of the larger setting.

 

[Shane_357]

I've been wondering, what level of involvement do the administrations of places (be that kings or bureaucrats) have with the gods of their region? Would a king be able to bribe a minor terrestrial goddess with an impressive new title and pride of place during a festival honouring multiple gods?

 

[Faraway-R]

It is a darkly amusing thing that I have to break out a modified version of @Jon Chung's old refrain; don't touch social defence until you've fixed social lethality.

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...And now I have to dust off my memories of one semi-social area that actually did give us that. Kinda-sorta if you squint your left eye, and turn your right eye to watch the horizon while standing on your arms in the middle of a cartwheel.

Raksha vs Raksha in Shaping Combat.

For all that it's modelled after normal Combat, it's actually rapidly altering the scenery and events to tell someone a more compelling tale. And in fact, the consequences of losing Shaping Combat were those of social nature quite often, such as Ring-related damage, encumbrance, was about having some task or behavior imposed on you.

 

[BossFight]

You're not the first person to get this impression, and honestly its largely a result of multiple factors where what things are truly distinctive and cool about the Solar Exalted are relentlessly downplayed and sidelined because they stand in the way of being The Corebook Hero. By which I mean they are saddled with the unfortunate confluence of PC demands where they must include the archetype for every possible blend of aspirant hero you could imagine, as everything to everyone, but also be the de-facto Strongest, Fastest, the Most-Deserving, Virtuous, Notable, and so on, even where these things only serve as a detriment to the underlying setting and its primary actors. The Solar Exalted, taken together, are shown as existing at the End of a meaningful character arc rather than the beginnings of one, with no future goal or meaning beyond that which you've put in the personal effort to assign on an individual level.

The game is obsessed with telling Solar players in no uncertain terms, despite a long list of historic failures and drawbacks, they will ultimately win and how there is no avoiding this outcome without refusing to play the game at all, whether this feels narratively-justified or not. It is you against the world, and this is portrayed as a fair fight. And that lack of implicit struggle can admittedly feel really confining, particularly when the setting sets up the Solar Condition as that of returning heroes and plucky underdogs, so any genuine success you can make feels as though it were a given, prescripted affair, or just handed to you on a platter for the sake of being the Biggest and Strongest. The worst of the excesses on Solar boosterism makes you wonder if you're not simply going through the motions when playing a Solar character, and the stops the ST is required to pull out to upgrade this to any legitimate challenge often results in huge jumps in threat-scale which can easily lose sight of the dirt-and-grit bedrock where all the most interesting and personable characterization happens. To meaningfully play a Solar, the culture around the game wants to pit your rebellious farmboy against Galactus and his Heralds, not the injustices plaguing his backwoods township.

But there are some good and workable parts to the Solar concept which don't require being everything to everyone or vindictively punching down at every other weight-class. Foremost is the Returning Hero aspect, which is usually folded away into the natural assumptions of "being a Celestial Exalt," but the real factor here is that the majority of the sympathetic memory gifted to Solars by their Exaltation is only that of a long-lost time when things where Better than now. Every Celestial Exalt has had something of a contiguous series of lives extending back to the First Age, but Solars don't, because their essences were locked away during the intervening time. They are the Old Souls who can stand against ancient forces because they knew them when they were yet still young, and without them the world has changed in ways that don't rightly correlate together.

A Lunar may be reborn with with memories of political intrigues a mere 30 years prior, but for a Solar this means jumping back behind two world-shattering apocalypses, to places and cultures blasted to dust which no mere mortal knows existed. Comparisons are inevitable between the ruined and disparate state of the Second Age and what glories they know the world once held, and what it yet could again, leading the average Solar to either embrace wild-eyed idealism and shoot for impossible goals to put things right again, or ultimately consign themselves to what Creation has become as unavoidable and irreparable, using the flaws of the world as an excuse to exercise personal vices and vendettas because everything sucks now and its not as though their efforts could make things worse. Either direction leads towards trying to take on too much, too quickly, which causes the setting to respond in kind. Hubris at undertaking these pursuits regularly destroys them, one way or another.

Which leads into the second part, where Solars are Wildcards. Recorded history has largely forgotten the Solar Exalted as anything save grandiose tyrants, golden demons and architects of misrule, while every other form of Exalt has their "place in the world" which they have either had built for themselves or personally carved out over the centuries. A new Solar has no comparable history to this, all of it having been destroyed or lost to time, and rather than being rootless and disconnected for the absence, calls directly back to the First Age for any who are either well-read or long-lived enough to recognize and make assumptions about her character. A living Solar is an example of the past coming back to haunt the present, and no one from that time can be entirely sure what form this will take.

Rather than being placed in context of the unruly Now, a Solar's actions are presented against that ancient backdrop of What A Solar Was Then, the imperious sorcerer-queens with demonic legions, unseen thieves who stole thunder from the clouds to till the earth, the bloody-handed generals seated on thrones sculpted from the teeth of a beast bigger than time. Whether the Solar will act in accordance with this, and reaffirm the legends everyone is certain to be true, or defy those expectations and strive to put that unwelcome past to rest is anyone's guess. They are heroes saddled with the reputations of monsters, and what they do with that is left entirely to chance.

There's more, but that's probably enough for now. The folks who articulate Solars as simply being a hollow expression of power to reskin with any available concept and nothing more are selling them incredibly short, and the books rarely give reason to think otherwise.

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Please do a sijmilar post on the Infernals. They are my favorite.

 

[Shyft]

I don't think this makes a lot of difference here. Even if the only time you ever pull out the system is when you're trying to have a debate with your Dragon-Blooded nemesis over the fate of the kingdom, the fact that it doesn't actually work will immediately make itself known when you start rolling dice. Like, the fact that you can force him to do whatever you want (except kill himself or throw his life goals) once you run him out of willpower isn't going anywhere, so all the incentives present for his player to immediately call Join Battle once he sees your Presence pool is bigger than his apply.

The only way to dodge that is to not roll dice and resolve every social interaction with roleplaying, which leads us to question our life choices in paying for things that don't work.

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While true and accurate, my point was again focused on the mechanical intent, or at least what I could determine was intent. I agree that the system creates garbage output, which in practice means any of the potential intent will almost never happen- but here's the problem with regurgitating the 'it's broken' argument-

You, specifically you, stop people from asking questions about what they want out of a mechanic or gameplay experience, or figuring out what they expect. It's good to tell people that something is broken and that it can cause problems- that's being informative. But by deliberately taking the time to only remind people of that, you maintain the self-perpetuating 'Nothing good is possible' culture that surrounds any game system or subject of conversation.

"It doesn't work, ignore it, replace it' And the implicit 'No I won't fix it for you' statement helps no one. That being said, I completely understand your personal desire not to do it, because it's not your job and you're not being paid for it.

 

[AmineHsu]

Not really?

Like, certain charms that-shall-not-be-named aside, it's hard to make a character do something they don't want to in Ex3. At the same time, you've put what your character wants to do on your sheet- that's Intimacies.

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Of particular note here is Fulminating Word, which is incredibly powerful and Soul-Firing performance which is basically a re-try of a Decision Point without a need to fulfill the retry condition, Master of Small Manners which is a hook for doing everything else and Indecent Proposal Method, which is a powerful defense against contextual issues that would normally hinder attempting to wear down a target with a lengthy debate.

Given, all of that is small potatoes to aforementioned charms-that-shall-not-be-named and only seem truly OP when combined with such...

On the defensive side there is Steel Heart Stance which is... meh, I mean it's good, it lets you reuse a Intimacy in a Decision point, but it's once a story and only against "Major or Defining course of action" (I assume this to mean Serious or Life Changing Tasks) and Righteous Lion Defense, which is quite good expanding the scope of Unacceptable Influence granted by a defining Principle from 'a course of action that would cause you to abandon it' to 'anything that would cause you to act against it'. Unhesitating Dedication isn't bad, but it only effects instill actions to weaken a Defining Intimacy not enhanced by Righteous Lion Defense cause the roll to... Have either [Essence] 1s counts as -1 successes or forces [Essence] successes to be rerolled. This is pretty good but is once per a story (per an Intimacy) which feels restrictive And.... that's it really, there is a charm that lets you buy an extra willpower with motes, which is good but the rest are basically just discounts on you Integrity excellency. Which is going to leave you with a max of 10 resolve (9 after a certain offensive charm) and the offensive side is getting non-charm dice from Appearance and other charms as well as Double 9s and rerolling 1s and etc Making 9, which...tricky, definitely not impossible or really even difficult.

Anyways, I'm leaving a lot out skirting around sensitive topics, but the 'Resisting Social Influence' charms feel kinda minor with a lot of the better effects being weirdly restricted to once a story. I really feel like it could do with a few more charms giving it some more oomph.

 

[Shyft]

Of particular note here is Fulminating Word, which is incredibly powerful and Soul-Firing performance which is basically a re-try of a Decision Point without a need to fulfill the retry condition, Master of Small Manners which is a hook for doing everything else and Indecent Proposal Method, which is a powerful defense against contextual issues that would normally hinder attempting to wear down a target with a lengthy debate.

Given, all of that is small potatoes to aforementioned charms-that-shall-not-be-named and only seem truly OP when combined with such...

On the defensive side there is Steel Heart Stance which is... meh, I mean it's good, it lets you reuse a Intimacy in a Decision point, but it's once a story and only against "Major or Defining course of action" (I assume this to mean Serious or Life Changing Tasks) and Righteous Lion Defense, which is quite good expanding the scope of Unacceptable Influence granted by a defining Principle from 'a course of action that would cause you to abandon it' to 'anything that would cause you to act against it'. Unhesitating Dedication isn't bad, but it only effects instill actions to weaken a Defining Intimacy not enhanced by Righteous Lion Defense cause the roll to... Have either [Essence] 1s counts as -1 successes or forces [Essence] successes to be rerolled. This is pretty good but is once per a story (per an Intimacy) which feels restrictive And.... that's it really, there is a charm that lets you buy an extra willpower with motes, which is good but the rest are basically just discounts on you Integrity excellency. Which is going to leave you with a max of 10 resolve (9 after a certain offensive charm) and the offensive side is getting non-charm dice from Appearance and other charms as well as Double 9s and rerolling 1s and etc Making 9, which...tricky, definitely not impossible or really even difficult.

Anyways, I'm leaving a lot out skirting around sensitive topics, but the 'Resisting Social Influence' charms feel kinda minor with a lot of the better effects being weirdly restricted to once a story. I really feel like it could do with a few more charms giving it some more oomph.

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I'd need to give the 3e system a more through read to fully comment, but I definitely feel like they pushed hard back against the 2e model of 'almost sacrosanct' personal defenses. Solars especially could become functionally immune to UMI by design, as the point of their experience was to be nearly impossible to sway from their course by NPCs. The point of Righteous Lion Defense and Elusive Dream Defense was not to be part of a dramatic, give/take social conflict battle, but instead to quickly and decisively convey that No, the Solar cannot be swayed by anything but true human effort or the edge of a blade.

Like, I don't know if 3e is pushing for this at all, but I can safely say from the 2e model that the game was designed with an eye towards forcing conflicts down to something the game engine could represent- see the implicit statement of Shaping Defenses and how all of the 'deprotgonizing' powers were meant to be used against chaff extras and not main characters.

 

[Kylar]

I'd need to give the 3e system a more through read to fully comment, but I definitely feel like they pushed hard back against the 2e model of 'almost sacrosanct' personal defenses. Solars especially could become functionally immune to UMI by design, as the point of their experience was to be nearly impossible to sway from their course by NPCs. The point of Righteous Lion Defense and Elusive Dream Defense was not to be part of a dramatic, give/take social conflict battle, but instead to quickly and decisively convey that No, the Solar cannot be swayed by anything but true human effort or the edge of a blade.

Like, I don't know if 3e is pushing for this at all, but I can safely say from the 2e model that the game was designed with an eye towards forcing conflicts down to something the game engine could represent- see the implicit statement of Shaping Defenses and how all of the 'deprotgonizing' powers were meant to be used against chaff extras and not main characters.

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No, you've pretty much hit the nail on the head- in general they tried to step away from the 'activate charm and your immune' school of charms. A good example is Element-Resisting Prana, Ex3s environmental protection charm, which removes (Resistance) dice of damage from an environmental hazard. So generally that means you ignore 5 dice of damage, which when you look at the listed environmental hazards, means your functionally immune to everything but lava, and your rolling one die of damage for lava.

Which does mean that next to anything mundane is non-worry, while Adorjan ramping her winds up above and beyond what they normally are (4A damage) is.

Of particular note here is Fulminating Word, which is incredibly powerful and Soul-Firing performance which is basically a re-try of a Decision Point without a need to fulfill the retry condition, Master of Small Manners which is a hook for doing everything else and Indecent Proposal Method, which is a powerful defense against contextual issues that would normally hinder attempting to wear down a target with a lengthy debate.

Given, all of that is small potatoes to aforementioned charms-that-shall-not-be-named and only seem truly OP when combined with such...

On the defensive side there is Steel Heart Stance which is... meh, I mean it's good, it lets you reuse a Intimacy in a Decision point, but it's once a story and only against "Major or Defining course of action" (I assume this to mean Serious or Life Changing Tasks) and Righteous Lion Defense, which is quite good expanding the scope of Unacceptable Influence granted by a defining Principle from 'a course of action that would cause you to abandon it' to 'anything that would cause you to act against it'. Unhesitating Dedication isn't bad, but it only effects instill actions to weaken a Defining Intimacy not enhanced by Righteous Lion Defense cause the roll to... Have either [Essence] 1s counts as -1 successes or forces [Essence] successes to be rerolled. This is pretty good but is once per a story (per an Intimacy) which feels restrictive And.... that's it really, there is a charm that lets you buy an extra willpower with motes, which is good but the rest are basically just discounts on you Integrity excellency. Which is going to leave you with a max of 10 resolve (9 after a certain offensive charm) and the offensive side is getting non-charm dice from Appearance and other charms as well as Double 9s and rerolling 1s and etc Making 9, which...tricky, definitely not impossible or really even difficult.

Anyways, I'm leaving a lot out skirting around sensitive topics, but the 'Resisting Social Influence' charms feel kinda minor with a lot of the better effects being weirdly restricted to once a story. I really feel like it could do with a few more charms giving it some more oomph.

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Uh max resolve is 15 Amine. 6 baseline, 5 from Excellencies/Charms, 4 from an opposed Defining Intimacy. Which dice curve wise is the difference between 'full essence burn means that this will succeed somewhere in the neighborhood of 50-60% of the time' (to lazy to calc exact numbers with the double 9s) and 'full essence burn succeeds >20% of the time'.

(Note the Appearance bonus dice key off the difference between Resolve and Appearance- even with Awakened Carnal Demiurge that's still 9 vs 6 assuming maxed pools and a Defining Intimacy tapped, so no bonus dice/successes.)

This is why Intimacies are really important- their your 'I do not want to do this' buttons. Or your 'I am ok with this being used against me' button- a Defining Intimacy of 'I love food cause it is yummy' is just asking for trouble. Their the core part of your social defense against being made to do things you don't want to. This is why playing a high socialize character centered around 'you can't tell my motives' is viable, particularly with charm tech dedicated to misdirecting what your Intimacies are.

And I don't think your giving the Integrity charm tech quite a fair shake- Steel Heart Stance is once a story, unless you reset it by proving that influence would go against a Defining Principle. In other words, you can't hammer it to go 'I'm going against what I put on my sheet' but you can hammer it for 'I'm being gamed against my best interests'. It also doesn't redo a Decision Point, it straight up no-sells an influence after it goes through- it's a panic button.

So to use the example that I know is your personal bug bear, if you use it to no sell a seduction attempt and one of your Defining Principles is "I'm Asexual", Steel Heart Stance automatically resets. And then as per the retry rules, that's it- they'd need to actually target an Intimacy to get another shot at it (it doesn't become unacceptable, they just can't do it unless they can fulfill the rest conditions) or wait till the next story. There is Soul-Firing Performance Method... which is also once per story, has to contend with a maxed out Resolve, requires actual setup given the timing requirements (the fastest you can get it off requires a 2 minute dance) and if it does work can be no sold by Steel Heart Stance again, triggering the automatic reset, and their down a story reset charm.

Unhesitating Dedication is similar in that it's reset condition is easy to fufill provided your using it against bad faith actors. The reset condition there is 'explore the claims that were used to try and weaken the Intimacy', which in a lot of cases is as simple as asking some questions with Judges Ear Technique. And again, the retry conditions are going to stop spamming without some serious finagling.

Basically, it's hard to get through a Defining Intimacy, and Solar with Steel Heart Stance (easy charm to get, provided your combat focused at all) makes it all but impossible unless you go the Nanoha route on them, or go at them sideways. Which is more or less the intent- your supposed to pay attention to what you put on your sheet Intimacies wise, and Charms support that, as opposed to letting you bypass it in either the defensive or offensive direction. Well, aside from the Charm that-shall-not-be-named, and some capstone Martial Arts techniques that let you impose a Defining level Intimacy when you hit with a Decisive attack.


As an aside, Miracle of the Solar Exalted added a few more social defense charms: Unnerving Solar Presence is actually a Presence Charm building off Threefold Magnetic Ardor, and subtracts (Essence) dice from a social influence from someone that is frightened of or sexually attracted to the Solar. Which makes it one of those rare charms in that cluster that works better when your scaring the shit out of people, as opposed to maximum sexy- it's just more applicable (particularly for Dawns). The other one is Strength from Conviction Stance, which is based in Decision Point- you just need to cite something you have lost in defense of the Principle you used for Resolve, pay 4m, and that's it- your good to go, no Intimacy needed. Story length reset, but the reset condition is successfully repelling influence of the used principle twice more.

 

[Sanctaphrax]

As an aside, Miracle of the Solar Exalted added a few more social defense charms: Unnerving Solar Presence is actually a Presence Charm building off Threefold Magnetic Ardor, and subtracts (Essence) dice from a social influence from someone that is frightened of or sexually attracted to the Solar.

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Fun fact: this is what we got when one of the backers who bought a Charm specifically asked John for a perfect social defence. Apparently he "wasn't able to write one that was balanced" so he wrote something else entirely.

...

I dunno exactly why, but stuff like that has been annoying me a lot more lately. I used to roll my eyes; now I'm actually pretty pissed.

I guess it could be a side effect of the sexual harassment allegations against John. It kinda casts everything he did in a worse light.

Or maybe I was always this cranky, and I've edited my own memories to make myself seem more reasonable.

 

[Kylar]

Fun fact: this is what we got when one of the backers who bought a Charm specifically asked John for a perfect social defence. Apparently he "wasn't able to write one that was balanced" so he wrote something else entirely.

...

I dunno exactly why, but stuff like that has been annoying me a lot more lately. I used to roll my eyes; now I'm actually pretty pissed.

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Being as fair as I can, Ex3 doesn't really do perfect effects by and by large, and the cap out at -5 dice is basically a death sentence for any social influence.

That said, there are much more straightforward ways for even something that just makes you generally harder to influence. Or do something like a Psyche effect nuker, which falls under things I can't believe Solars don't already have and covers most of the really nasty influence options.

For all there are some very cool things in Miracles, there are also quite a few charms that make me go 'uh, are you sure that was a good idea?' And for all I actually kinda like Unnerving Solar Presence (once your about Essence 3 or so and becomes worth the mote cost), I can well and truly agree it only slightly resembles a perfect solar defense against Social Influence.

 

[SerGregness]

Well it's all hypothetical till after Christmas. I just wish I knew someone willing to guide a newbie threw a story. Something "simple." I.E welcome to the new and improved Creation, hears whats new, hears whats old, hears is whats changed, and hear is whats the same.

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There's Tomb of Dreams, the Ex3 Jumpstart. I've run it for various groups of friends of mine 5 or 6 times now, and I feel like it serves quite well as an intro to the system and setting. If we can fill up a group and get the logistics sorted out, I'd be willing to run it.

That's largely because as of right now, lore wise, there reslly isn't anything new. Oh there are promises sure, but until they get printed into official documents it's just hearsay. All there is is the Dreaming Sea which is just a small part of the larger setting.

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There's bits of new setting all over the place in the core. Yes, most of it is returning material, but every direction has a handful of new entries from what I remember.

Of particular note here is Fulminating Word, which is incredibly powerful and Soul-Firing performance which is basically a re-try of a Decision Point without a need to fulfill the retry condition, Master of Small Manners which is a hook for doing everything else and Indecent Proposal Method, which is a powerful defense against contextual issues that would normally hinder attempting to wear down a target with a lengthy debate.

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Kylar covered the defense half of your post fairly well, but for Fulminating Word, it's important to note that you can only actually use it when the influence you're trying lines up with a defining intimacy of yours in some way.

I'd need to give the 3e system a more through read to fully comment, but I definitely feel like they pushed hard back against the 2e model of 'almost sacrosanct' personal defenses. Solars especially could become functionally immune to UMI by design, as the point of their experience was to be nearly impossible to sway from their course by NPCs. The point of Righteous Lion Defense and Elusive Dream Defense was not to be part of a dramatic, give/take social conflict battle, but instead to quickly and decisively convey that No, the Solar cannot be swayed by anything but true human effort or the edge of a blade.

Like, I don't know if 3e is pushing for this at all, but I can safely say from the 2e model that the game was designed with an eye towards forcing conflicts down to something the game engine could represent- see the implicit statement of Shaping Defenses and how all of the 'deprotgonizing' powers were meant to be used against chaff extras and not main characters.

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I think some of this is a consequence of how different the social influence system is in Ex3. As a basic part of the system, you can just instantly no-sell any influence that isn't sufficiently compelling for your character (i.e. persuasion leveraging a strong enough intimacy, bargains that are sufficiently tempting, threaten actions that are sufficiently scary), and any influence that would make it impossible to uphold a Defining intimacy (Betraying your Defining loyalty to your king, etc.) is Unacceptable. All that's before any magic gets involved.

Being as fair as I can, Ex3 doesn't really do perfect effects by and by large, and the cap out at -5 dice is basically a death sentence for any social influence.

That said, there are much more straightforward ways for even something that just makes you generally harder to influence. Or do something like a Psyche effect nuker, which falls under things I can't believe Solars don't already have and covers most of the really nasty influence options.

For all there are some very cool things in Miracles, there are also quite a few charms that make me go 'uh, are you sure that was a good idea?' And for all I actually kinda like Unnerving Solar Presence (once your about Essence 3 or so and becomes worth the mote cost), I can well and truly agree it only slightly resembles a perfect solar defense against Social Influence.

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You're right that there are no Integrity charms that specifically call out the psyche keyword, but I'm having a hard time thinking of a psyche effect that wouldn't run afoul of Destiny Manifesting Method, Phoenix Renewal Tactic, or Invincible Solar Aegis. Even if one did stick, Transcendent Hero's Meditation should get you out of it.

 

[Jon Chung]

While true and accurate, my point was again focused on the mechanical intent, or at least what I could determine was intent. I agree that the system creates garbage output, which in practice means any of the potential intent will almost never happen- but here's the problem with regurgitating the 'it's broken' argument-

You, specifically you, stop people from asking questions about what they want out of a mechanic or gameplay experience, or figuring out what they expect. It's good to tell people that something is broken and that it can cause problems- that's being informative. But by deliberately taking the time to only remind people of that, you maintain the self-perpetuating 'Nothing good is possible' culture that surrounds any game system or subject of conversation.

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What people want out of a mechanic or gameplay experience is subjective and extremely variable, but I'm fairly sure a widespread common sentiment can be summed up as "it worked, yay". Good stuff is possible if it is built correctly, even going with as low-tier a definition of "correctly" as "does not output total nonsense". This thing is not built correctly, using it will not produce a good experience. It won't even clear my very low bar here.

Given that you freely admit it is not built correctly, what benefits can we gain by pretending this is not the case and talking about a hypothetical scenario where it did what it was supposed to do? Like, maybe in this alternate universe the lack of guidelines on when to have NPCs use willpower was the most prominent issue someone using the social combat system has to worry about, but that's a bit far down the list of bugs they're going to run into if they try to use the thing as-is, yeah?

"It doesn't work, ignore it, replace it' And the implicit 'No I won't fix it for you' statement helps no one. That being said, I completely understand your personal desire not to do it, because it's not your job and you're not being paid for it.

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I point out what doesn't work and why. Exhaustively. Like, this right here was my very first post on this board. It clearly lays out what the actual problem is with social combat and which rules to alter in order to cause this set of systemic incentives (and the resultant absurd outcome) to no longer apply. Are you suggesting that anybody able to read that post and understand what it says is not able to act on that information? I already did most of the work.