Mind, they still need to have answers to Solar Melee multi action+defense spam, soooo fingers crossed!
General Exalted Thread
AmineHsu
A worm, not a man, scorned and despised.
- Location
- NoVA
I've searched for this and can't seem to find it, do you know where you heard it?
The Lunar die-cap and their number of Charms are meaningless metrics to gauge the competency of the splat, because the question has never been whether they can throw as many dice as Solars, but will they be able to rack up as many successes as quickly and with an equal or fewer amount of investment towards doing so. Because for all Exalted likes to posture about increasing die pools and rolling a bunch of dice, most of those results don't mean a thing unless they Hit, and things won't Hit unless you buy into the things which allow you too. If anything, the concession to make the Lunar cap more like the Solar one speaks to an overall homogenization of the mechanics they are working with, as though they don't imagine they can make something work and be comparably powerful as an outlandishly-inflated Solar die-pool.
For the sake of argument, let us assume a maxed-out normal pool here, 23 dice discounting equipment or external bonuses, Solar and Lunar alike. Rolling this many dice on average, anything at 5 successes or below might as well be a given, automatic pass, and anything above 12 successes is a 50% which rapidly diminishes at ~10% toward automatic-failure for each additional success above that. Which gives us a flexible area between 6 and 11 success where there's a spectrum of possible results:
97% Chance to hit DV 6
94% Chance to hit DV 7
89% Chance to hit DV 8
82% Chance to hit DV 9
72% Chance to hit DV 10
60% Chance to hit DV 11
In 1e, Lunars had no adders whatsoever, but instead their own dice trick of converting Dice from a roll into Successes post-roll, up to (Attribute) dice. The parallel to these results happens at 14 dice (pool of 9 after converting). Assuming a maxed Attribute of 5 for 5 automatic successes, like the previous example a 5-or-below being automatically-successful (in this case Literally):
98% Chance to hit DV 6
94% Chance to hit DV 7
83% Chance to hit DV 8
67% Chance to hit DV 9
47% Chance to hit DV 10
29% Chance to hit DV 11
And you get a fairly-close approximation of the low-end without having to inflate the base-math very much, do funny things with the die-results, or even expand Lunars beyond their listed 5-cap trait ratings. The Success-Converting versions trail off more quickly due to the success-curve on low numbers of dice, and but given how Ex3 is so fond of adding miscellaneous dice-trick riders and such to various effects, that's not an impossible thing to overcome and level out in particular areas of focus if you're diligent enough to push for a completely different form of gameplay than what Solars are advancing. And this is just me noodling a 5 minute thought experiment, there's probably even more simpler ways to do this, but working from precedence is never a bad example.
But the matter of the fact is, they don't Want to do this kind of shit. Making everything Big Dice is easier for them to write, takes less time, and doesn't require them actually hash out the kinds of mechanics they are putting in the book. They can just assume it will work the same as anyother Charm, and plunk it in a tree somewhere behind a number of prereqs they aren't counting. And that's the real problem here, the unclear degree by which Lunars will be forced to deep-dive into a Charm tree to remotely get comparable (not even necessarily identical) options as Solars gain.
Which brings me to the problem of the Protean keyword, which is actually more of a Restriction painted as a bonus. You not only have to be in animal form, but you have to have a given set of traits for the full power of the Charm to be available, otherwise you're always using a strictly-worse version of it. There is Zero incentive to buy into a Protean Charm unless you can maximize your usage of it immediately, but even when you can, you're working from animal form limitations (no weapons/tools, incapable of human speech, for starters) and the purpose of that bonus isn't Enhancing what you got, since most animals aren't an upgrade to begin with, but serving entirely to bring you back up to parity of what options you started at.
So like most attempt to mechanicize shapeshifting, what its primarily doing isn't giving you a toolset to work from, but meant to hedge you into One Specific Hulk-out Form which exclusively benefits from every Charm you can suddenly use far more capably than before. They tested out something similar in the Alchemicals 2e book, using a restriction that demanded installing certain Mutations to increase the effectiveness of other Charms that way, and it failed just as hard by overcosting the buy-in (a Charm-slot) compared to what you would be getting out of it (a mote-cost reduction from 10m to 5m). Buying Protean effects for more shapes beyond the best dilutes your options rather than broadens them, because now you're just being several animals only Slightly better than normal, rather than one Really Buff form. This isn't helped by the fact the only Protean Charms we have seen are all activated effects, meaning you're not even getting these benefits immediately on shifting forms. You have to be in the right form, then use the Charm, and hopefully this makes you a peer-level opponent to someone else not juggling this baggage who is also using the Best version of their Charms all the time rather than selectively.
Its a critical drawback, and most Charms which push shapeshifting tend to lock effects behind it this way, and hyperfocus them into particular forms, as a method of punishing most attempts to generally use normal abilities like mobility-boosts, damage-adders and similar stuff together which is otherwise totally available to everyone else who Doesn't have to deal with shapeshifting. What if you want to look like another person, the most basic of all disguise powers? You can't use something utility-use like Perfect Mirror, you have to shapeshift because Shapeshifting is the Lunar Deal. Which means you either have to brutally murder them in a conspicuous Sacred Hunt way, or you need a narrow third-option Charm like the one in the preview which forces your character concept into a lascivious lech instead.
Solars and Lunars will never be Peers so long as they're fighting Solars in the methods Solars succeed best at, and when Shapeshifting is used as a noose to choke concepts down into using half their abilities well and the other half badly.
For the sake of argument, let us assume a maxed-out normal pool here, 23 dice discounting equipment or external bonuses, Solar and Lunar alike. Rolling this many dice on average, anything at 5 successes or below might as well be a given, automatic pass, and anything above 12 successes is a 50% which rapidly diminishes at ~10% toward automatic-failure for each additional success above that. Which gives us a flexible area between 6 and 11 success where there's a spectrum of possible results:
97% Chance to hit DV 6
94% Chance to hit DV 7
89% Chance to hit DV 8
82% Chance to hit DV 9
72% Chance to hit DV 10
60% Chance to hit DV 11
In 1e, Lunars had no adders whatsoever, but instead their own dice trick of converting Dice from a roll into Successes post-roll, up to (Attribute) dice. The parallel to these results happens at 14 dice (pool of 9 after converting). Assuming a maxed Attribute of 5 for 5 automatic successes, like the previous example a 5-or-below being automatically-successful (in this case Literally):
98% Chance to hit DV 6
94% Chance to hit DV 7
83% Chance to hit DV 8
67% Chance to hit DV 9
47% Chance to hit DV 10
29% Chance to hit DV 11
And you get a fairly-close approximation of the low-end without having to inflate the base-math very much, do funny things with the die-results, or even expand Lunars beyond their listed 5-cap trait ratings. The Success-Converting versions trail off more quickly due to the success-curve on low numbers of dice, and but given how Ex3 is so fond of adding miscellaneous dice-trick riders and such to various effects, that's not an impossible thing to overcome and level out in particular areas of focus if you're diligent enough to push for a completely different form of gameplay than what Solars are advancing. And this is just me noodling a 5 minute thought experiment, there's probably even more simpler ways to do this, but working from precedence is never a bad example.
But the matter of the fact is, they don't Want to do this kind of shit. Making everything Big Dice is easier for them to write, takes less time, and doesn't require them actually hash out the kinds of mechanics they are putting in the book. They can just assume it will work the same as anyother Charm, and plunk it in a tree somewhere behind a number of prereqs they aren't counting. And that's the real problem here, the unclear degree by which Lunars will be forced to deep-dive into a Charm tree to remotely get comparable (not even necessarily identical) options as Solars gain.
Which brings me to the problem of the Protean keyword, which is actually more of a Restriction painted as a bonus. You not only have to be in animal form, but you have to have a given set of traits for the full power of the Charm to be available, otherwise you're always using a strictly-worse version of it. There is Zero incentive to buy into a Protean Charm unless you can maximize your usage of it immediately, but even when you can, you're working from animal form limitations (no weapons/tools, incapable of human speech, for starters) and the purpose of that bonus isn't Enhancing what you got, since most animals aren't an upgrade to begin with, but serving entirely to bring you back up to parity of what options you started at.
So like most attempt to mechanicize shapeshifting, what its primarily doing isn't giving you a toolset to work from, but meant to hedge you into One Specific Hulk-out Form which exclusively benefits from every Charm you can suddenly use far more capably than before. They tested out something similar in the Alchemicals 2e book, using a restriction that demanded installing certain Mutations to increase the effectiveness of other Charms that way, and it failed just as hard by overcosting the buy-in (a Charm-slot) compared to what you would be getting out of it (a mote-cost reduction from 10m to 5m). Buying Protean effects for more shapes beyond the best dilutes your options rather than broadens them, because now you're just being several animals only Slightly better than normal, rather than one Really Buff form. This isn't helped by the fact the only Protean Charms we have seen are all activated effects, meaning you're not even getting these benefits immediately on shifting forms. You have to be in the right form, then use the Charm, and hopefully this makes you a peer-level opponent to someone else not juggling this baggage who is also using the Best version of their Charms all the time rather than selectively.
Its a critical drawback, and most Charms which push shapeshifting tend to lock effects behind it this way, and hyperfocus them into particular forms, as a method of punishing most attempts to generally use normal abilities like mobility-boosts, damage-adders and similar stuff together which is otherwise totally available to everyone else who Doesn't have to deal with shapeshifting. What if you want to look like another person, the most basic of all disguise powers? You can't use something utility-use like Perfect Mirror, you have to shapeshift because Shapeshifting is the Lunar Deal. Which means you either have to brutally murder them in a conspicuous Sacred Hunt way, or you need a narrow third-option Charm like the one in the preview which forces your character concept into a lascivious lech instead.
Solars and Lunars will never be Peers so long as they're fighting Solars in the methods Solars succeed best at, and when Shapeshifting is used as a noose to choke concepts down into using half their abilities well and the other half badly.
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- Location
- Singapore
Hmm.... A spell idea:
TRANSMUTATION INTO THE IDEAL FORM - TERRESTRIAL CIRCLE SORCERY
Cost: 10m
Duration: Permanent
Things are not the best they could be. The swords are bent. There are cracks in the jar. The painting has blemishes. The smith looks upon the work he has forged, and compares it to a better one, an despairs.
The sorcerer can rectify that.
Speaking the word of the Library of Forms, the space in Yu-Shan which stores the ideal, abstract, form of every single object and substance in Creation. Wave of essence spew from the sorcerer's hands, and wrap around the object or material in question, transmuting it into a greater form. After that, the essence disperses, leaving the transmuted result behind. Lead is transmuted into gold. Quartz into Diamond. Bland scraps into delicacies. A stone knife is transformed into a steel saber. Already adequate weapons are transformed into perfect weapons. There is a limit, however. The spell can only transform things into greater, mundane versions. It can never create artifacts, or things that require sorcery.
TRANSMUTATION INTO THE IDEAL FORM - TERRESTRIAL CIRCLE SORCERY
Cost: 10m
Duration: Permanent
Things are not the best they could be. The swords are bent. There are cracks in the jar. The painting has blemishes. The smith looks upon the work he has forged, and compares it to a better one, an despairs.
The sorcerer can rectify that.
Speaking the word of the Library of Forms, the space in Yu-Shan which stores the ideal, abstract, form of every single object and substance in Creation. Wave of essence spew from the sorcerer's hands, and wrap around the object or material in question, transmuting it into a greater form. After that, the essence disperses, leaving the transmuted result behind. Lead is transmuted into gold. Quartz into Diamond. Bland scraps into delicacies. A stone knife is transformed into a steel saber. Already adequate weapons are transformed into perfect weapons. There is a limit, however. The spell can only transform things into greater, mundane versions. It can never create artifacts, or things that require sorcery.
The main mechanical benefit of shapeshifting is....having a different shape, not a slight upgrade to one or two charms you bought. Are you saying a charm to get echolocation is not worth buying just because it gives an extra benefit while you're a bat, because you don't intend your primary combat form to be a bat? And Adder Fang Method even offers you benefits for having poisonous forms even while not in those forms, in that it lets you substitute their poison for the one it generates.
- Location
- my house
I think he's saying the charms are balanced under the assumption you are in the correct form, so if you aren't using that form there is no reason to get that charm
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
As @rogthnor said- basically the criticism is that on paper, the Protean Keyword rewards Wide play: "Look, I have a bunch of forms that work well with my handful of protean keywords charms!"
In practice, it's probably going to be more of a Tall emphasis, much like DBT and RLF were in 2e- "I am going to find the one animal I can that qualifies for all these protean charms, and then I will get to use all of them at once!"
While it may be too soon with only the handful of Protean charms we've seen...I really doubt that's even possible. How many animal forms do you see even fulfilling the criteria for two different Protean charms? Like from what we've seen, there's Protean charms for flying/swimming forms, for forms with echolocation and for poisoned or venomous forms. At most I can see an animal hitting like...two of those at once. I mean sure, if there's a line of 10 charms that all reward bear form and synergise in the same combat style then bear totem lunars will be the one true build.
There are animal forms with C
tl;dr I am assuming nothing can ever change and using ridiculously outdated 2e assumptions on how a completely unreleased splat will work to demonstrate that Lunars will probably suck
Before wasting your time on all this math, you might wanna wait until we like, have any idea at all how Lunar shapeshifting works. Because if they can do something like turn into a hellboar, using all the boar's merits and their own dice pools way beyond what the animal has, and take the animals inflated health levels over their own, they have access to a merit that turns their wound penalties to bonus dice, discounting their Excellency (and the sample Lunars released so far all had a lot of -4 health levels, and damage enhancing powers that are completely mote free, meaning they can focus on their Excellency and accuracy enhancers while smashing you with animal merit assaults.
I have no idea if this will be the case, to be clear, I've got a PDF with a sample Lunar I bought, and have been excitedly digging through the animal merits to see what the best case scenario of Lunar shapeshifting might look like. And it looks completely terrifying. If they have any kind of accuracy enhancement they could easily come out way ahead of the Solars motes. Animals are terrifying, their only limitation that makes them a joke to Exalts is lacking an Excellency. Even a Lunar restricted 100% to the animal's base pools is super dangerous, 'cause they have their Excellency and moteless attack powers.
Shapeshifting is gonna be a trip and a half this time around, unless the devs go out of their way to fuck it over to make Lunars worse than Solars. I could see Holden and Morke doing that!
But not Vance and Minton. Particularly as Vance has said that he sees the gap betwen Lunars and Solars being "much smaller."
My concern for Lunars is that there will be no answer to the Solar capacity to get 4 attacks per round, but Melee is broken what else is new.
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- Location
- my house
The issue isn't that you'll get one form which synergize with a bunch of protean charms, it's that a protean charm which you don't have a charm for is, by design, under powered. So you'll either be behind in so because you got a bunch of forms or functionally locked out of charms because you don't have a form for them.
FYI your canvasing this thread comes off way less supportive than likely you think it is and more shouting "WRONG WRONG WRONG" that anyone dare disagree with you. That's not a good look and I suggest you take a breather for your own sake.
No, you. More seriously, I'm not trying to support anyone. I'm expressing annoyance at the doomsaying based on a completely broken edition, the writers of which have pretty much all been fired/moved on to other projects. Not least, the data points you're using kinda indicate you haven't actually read much of the animals in Ex3, how potent they can be, and that the dice breakdown for more dice in Ex3 really doesn't look like it did in Ex2.
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And this is, I think, where you're drawing the wrong conclusion. A charm not giving you 100% of its theoretical maximum doesn't mean it is underpowered. And it definitely isn't so weak as to functionally 'lock you out' because you don't have the form.
I mean, it is of course possible for the devs to miss on the balance and make any kind of charm under or overpowered. But you really shouldn't just assume it is so by default. Sure, a charm could be balanced so that its Protean version is the only way it's worth using while its non-Protean one is a waste of xp. So, do you think that's the case? Do you think the three Protean charms we actually have, the only data we can go on, are all too weak to be worth using without the Protean effect?
- Location
- my house
It's not that it has to be that way, it's that it's a cause for concern and so something to keep an eye on. As for why let's use numbers as a metaphor.
1 is overpowered
0 is perfectly balanced
-1 is underpowered
If a protean charm is a 0 without the correct form, then by definition the correct form must be better, even if only in a small way. This makes it overpowered, though to what extent is in the air.
If a protean charm with out the correct form than is -1 then the protean form will, best case scenario make it a 0.
Now there are ways to avoid these problems. The protean bonuses could be weak or situational enough that it doesn't matter (moving a 0 charm to a 0.0001 doesn't noticeably impact balance) but this means the protean keyword is honestly a waste of time and effort to develop. Or different forms could be easy enough to get that every character fulfills the protean requirements. We don't know .
But that doesn't mean our concerns aren't valid, or that these aren't pitfalls to look out for
An effect is not balanced or overpowered in a vacuum. For example, let's say you're a Lunar that wants to fight. You have two options: Fight in a human/DBT(Deadly Beastman Transformation) form with a sword, or fight in your bear totem form. Let's say that, since you can use an artifact weapon in DBT form, but not in bear form, you have the following abstracted combat strengths:
DBT: 50
Bear: 45
Let's say you now buy a line of combat charms with the protean keyword that are better in bear form than DBT form. Let's say they give +10 in bear form and +5 in DBT form. It means after buying these charms, you have
DBT: 55
Bear: 55
The charms gave the Bear form a larger boost, but is it overpowered to bring the two forms on equal footing?
DBT: 50
Bear: 45
Let's say you now buy a line of combat charms with the protean keyword that are better in bear form than DBT form. Let's say they give +10 in bear form and +5 in DBT form. It means after buying these charms, you have
DBT: 55
Bear: 55
The charms gave the Bear form a larger boost, but is it overpowered to bring the two forms on equal footing?
- Location
- my house
If it requires a bear form for those charms to be equal when using your transformation than only people who chose bear are going to pick those charms, that's the issue.
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- Location
- U.S.
Hmm. Does anybody here play with point-swapping rules at character creation?
Like, sacrifice 3 ability dots for one attribute dot, or one attribute dot for one ability dot, or two attribute dots for one attribute dot in a different category? We've tried that, and I really enjoy it.
Like, sacrifice 3 ability dots for one attribute dot, or one attribute dot for one ability dot, or two attribute dots for one attribute dot in a different category? We've tried that, and I really enjoy it.
Since trying to pull together a proper writing dump has been a week-long exercise in beating my head against the wall, here are the cliff notes versions of a couple of concepts from Geist I liked in particular.
1. The Kereboi: So I liked the Kereboi because they embody that the Underworld and it's laws are alien and inhuman. The Underworld is a place where the human dead go, but it's not a place for the human dead. Dead Dominions, their Kereboi, and the Old Laws they enforce are sort of the point where the human impact and shaping upon the Underworld, and the Underworld's inherent otherness, meet and mix.
2. The Old Laws: The Old Laws were something that I really wanted in Exalted's Underworld. In almost every mythology I can think of, the Underworld/afterlife has rules, that not even the most powerful gods or heroes are exempt from. I recall some thugs being said about not wanting the Underworld to have cosmic justice, but the way Geist portrays the Underworld and the Old Laws made it click for me that just because the Underworld has no justice, doesn't mean it cannot have laws.
3. Dead Dominions: What I like about the Dead Dominions is that they don't really seem to form around places; rather, they seem to form around events and concepts. For example, the Holy Kingdom of Prester John never existed in the living world, but in the Underworld it arose out of the Black Plague and the flood of Christian dead it brought. The Dominion with the bridges is formed from the concept of societal progress and such.
4. River cities: So I like the river cities because they provide a space for the Underworld to be a dynamic hodgepodge of people, cultures, and ideas, a space for their to be centers of power and influence that can take shape of their own terms to a degree, unlike the Dead Dominions. Given that they practically scream PC Land, I probably should be surprised that I like them.
5. Reapers: Reapers are interesting because they are ultimately servants of the Underworld, the enactors of its agenda and feeders of its hunger, but they are not uniform in their motivations or in their methodology. Reaper-type ghosts would make far better nephwracks /mortwrights/other Oblivion aligned ghosts than the current lot. Reapers are as much fools of the Sin-Eaters as they are foes, which makes them even better imo.
6. Krewes & krewe rules: krewes feel like an unpacked version of Society Paths, so obviously I love them. The rules and mechanics provide an excellent framework for showing the advantages of being a part of a group and the ways in which they can accrue and exert power and influence. In particular, krewes provide this framework for groups which include both mundane and supernatural elements and members. In Exalted this framework could be used for cults of any variety, Occult societies, the entourages of Exalts, departments of Heaven, martial arts schools, even tribes or other medium to small social groups.
- Location
- my house
Well this all sounds really cool, guess I'm getting geist.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I think you have an entirely wrongheaded picture of how people actually play Exalted, dude. As much as I like incentive-based design, people are going to pick the Charms that they find cool, and if there is an extra bonus that they can't get because they don't have a bear form, they'll either chase down a bear to get a bear form or just not care because that's not relevant. The kind of people who actually choose Charms based out of the maximum efficiency they can draw out of them has seemed to be in a vast minority in my experience, and while anecdotal evidence is not evidence, at this point I don't really care. This whole argument is stupid, there is a complete lack of hard data points beyond the most basic and frankly, while I think @Dif makes some good arguments (although out of axioms I may, or may not disagree with) I think this thread could be a whole lot more productive than complaining about a splat that hasn't been done right in two editions, in an edition where they haven't even seen the actual hard rules of it more than like, what? Four Charms?
- Location
- my house
That's true which is why I'm not complaining. I honestly don't even think they'll get it wrong. I'm just saying it's an issue to look out for.
Anyway, a charm. Part of a Malfean Create Warlocks tree I've been thinking of.
Fatalistic Minion Fanatics
Cost: 5-20m, 0-1 wp; Type: Dramatic Action
Duration: Instant
Keywords: Obvious, Shaping
Requirements: Essence 3
Prerequisites: Magnanimous Warning Glyph
The minions of Malfeas work through the pain, because they know it pales in comparison to what there king will do should they fail.
By spending an additional 5 motes when marking someone with Magnanimous Warning Glyph, the infernal may grant them access to By Pain Reforged and Scar Writ Saga Shield. At the end of the scene, all damage taken is upgraded by one level, bashing to lethal, lethal to aggravated, the unholy fires of Malfeas searing the chakra of the target.
If the Infernal knows Fealty Acknolwedging Audience they may choose to spend and additional 1 WP and 20 motes when using that charm to apply the effects of this charm to all who he marks.
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QafianSage
Ascending Ape
- Location
- United Kingdom
You've got a few spelling mistakes in there.
- Location
- my house
Fair, on my phone cause I'm still at work. Will take a second look.
QafianSage
Ascending Ape
- Location
- United Kingdom
Fair enough. I'll give you some proper feedback in the morning - I'm too tired right now.