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General Exalted Thread

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rogthnor said:
I don't think I understand what you are saying here. If the tight-coupling you are talking about is how spending WP to resist social makes you weaker in combat, then sorta?
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Yes, precisely that. In 2E, spending WP to resist social makes you weaker in combat (to the point of dead-man-walking at 0), and you therefore react to situations where you're being forced to spend WP differently to what you would otherwise do. The incentive structure the game is giving you is encouraging you to do things that don't make narrative or real-life sense.

Like, let's take your example about being pitched at to invest into things, being run out of WP then promptly being killed in battle. You assume this won't happen, but think about this from a perspective where the GM isn't going to proactively ensure that it doesn't, and that issue can and will happen - we are letting whatever is system-legal happen. Do you treat the badgering about investment into people's trading caravans differently given this knowledge? That coupling makes "Situation in which I am being convinced but resisting with my willpower" logically equivalent to "Situation in which I am being drained of my combat lifebar".

There's also "Situation in which I am being drained of the ability to resist any social orders at all from anyone telling me to do anything", which is related. Eg, you get drained to zero in the investor meeting, walk out, and until you get your WP back, anyone can talk you into doing almost anything.
 
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For what it's worth, note that 3e ultimately sided with Chung and both a) axed the need for Willpower as a crucial combat resource, so that spending it to resist social influence is no longer such a worrying prospect, and b) set hard limits on the behaviour you can compel people to perform, gated by their Intimacies, so that you cannot make free social rolls to convince people to perform abhorrent actions. So like, there was enough of a consensus on these being valid issues that they warranted addressing in the new edition.
 
HamSandLich said:
More Deathknight
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We need a "love" rating.

Oh god, the eyes are bleeding and yet they are feathers at the same time. (I mean, they're not feathers, and they're not bleeding, but they give both impressions and it's blended magnificently.

For all my love of well-done infernals, abyssals were the villainous splat first... and HSL, I will say this: You remind us why. Thank you.
 
Imrix said:
For what it's worth, note that 3e ultimately sided with Chung and both a) axed the need for Willpower as a crucial combat resource, so that spending it to resist social influence is no longer such a worrying prospect, and b) set hard limits on the behaviour you can compel people to perform, gated by their Intimacies, so that you cannot make free social rolls to convince people to perform abhorrent actions. So like, there was enough of a consensus on these being valid issues that they warranted addressing in the new edition.
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Yeah, EX3 may have lots of issues, but the basic combat and social sistems are far more functional.

Not wholly functional, but they have filled most of the problems. (And caused some more, woops.) Also, wasn't Willpower a potential cost for Charms? Not at the level of literally necessary to use multiple charms, but some have WP costs.
 
rogthnor said:
I will admit that this leads to some inevitable garbage output, such as badgering someone to give you wealth for five minutes before shanking them in the ribs as an assassination technique,
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Ninja shows up in somebody's bedroom on a silent moonlit night, but it turns out the target's not actually asleep. The two of them briefly discuss possibilities of reneging on a presumed contract with the ninja's current employer, whether by fraud or simple early retirement (e.g. "whatever they're paying you, I'll double it,") but the ninja ultimately concludes the debate with something along the lines of "Alas, honor compels me to refuse," and murder resumes as previously scheduled.

Doesn't sound particularly genre-inappropriate to me.

Grittier, less melodramatic version simply re-derives fundamental strategies of, say, a mugging, or kidnapping: set up a trap with some actual bait, so the victim either willingly walks in to a position that would be more tactically convenient for you (under an impression that doing so is actually a safer/more beneficial option for them, ideally right up until it's too late), or eventually exhausts and isolates themselves through hypervigilant paranoia.
 
strange_person said:
Ninja shows up in somebody's bedroom on a silent moonlit night, but it turns out the target's not actually asleep. The two of them briefly discuss possibilities of reneging on a presumed contract with the ninja's current employer, whether by fraud or simple early retirement (e.g. "whatever they're paying you, I'll double it,") but the ninja ultimately concludes the debate with something along the lines of "Alas, honor compels me to refuse," and murder resumes as previously scheduled.

Doesn't sound particularly genre-inappropriate to me.

Grittier, less melodramatic version simply re-derives fundamental strategies of, say, a mugging, or kidnapping: set up a trap with some actual bait, so the victim either willingly walks in to a position that would be more tactically convenient for you (under an impression that doing so is actually a safer/more beneficial option for them, ideally right up until it's too late), or eventually exhausts and isolates themselves through hypervigilant paranoia.
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Do you think a) "get one shot in combat right after participating in completely unrelated social event because they treated their WP lightly like it wasn't their combat lifebar even though it actually is" or b) "acts like a paranoid murderhobo because they're rightfully treating their WP bar as their combat lifebar and behave towards social events like they do paranoia combat duels" are appropriate things for players to do? Because I, the GM, do not particularly want players to get turned into giblets because they didn't pay attention to the tight coupling or act like murderhobos because they did. Both generate more work for me and increase my spite levels.

This is why 2.5 patched away this whole problem with the social combat and combo usage changes, severing the coupling. No more WP-is-your-lifebar, and no more WP-to-zero on top. Landmines defused. No bad incentives (at least here, kek). The whole errata's hit or miss, but that bit was a definite hit. I was running similar houserules for months before that, for the same reasons and to accomplish the same goals. Sometimes you just have to delete things, it is the ideal course of action to solve problems in a lot of cases. You should internalize this concept, it'll save you a lot of future work. Not everything is salvageable. Not every bad idea is worth trying to rescue at great effort.
 
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strange_person said:
The two of them briefly discuss possibilities of reneging on a presumed contract with the ninja's current employer, whether by fraud or simple early retirement
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Never happens, because both of them are aware that whoever's worse at talking is actively reducing their ability to fight the upcoming combat.

They maybe get one social attack in, if both parties are confident enough in their speaking ability that they don't start the encounter sure that they'll be the loser of the debate; failing that, you don't get a conversation at all.
 
Third Edition's system is just flatly superior in every way, lol. It should never take resources to refuse someone asking you to do something when they don't have an actual hook. Intimacies give hooks for people to work with, and they give you ways to resist, it's a delightful back and forth that gives more nuance to these interactions than "submit, spend significant effort refusing to do something it should be trivial to refuse, or punch in the face."

If I have to spend willpower to refuse a character's influence, I want it to be because they're actively playing into some vulnerability in my character's...well, character. Like their pride or lust for revenge or whatever. You know, actually engaging with the role I'm playing? Playing an interesting dialogue where people have actual goals, beliefs and motivations that deflect casual attempts at persuasion but also provide levers a canny socialite can use? Not just because they arbitrarily rolled over a certain amount like we're playing D&D or something, so now they magically get to order you about unless you pony up. Even if it didn't have adverse effects on combat incentives, it's just dumb, lame and deeply athematic.
 
Maybe we can move the topic on from this to something more productive? Like, what's folks' favorite Directions? Mine's the Southeast, specifically Dreaming Sea; I'm a sucker for weird fantasy stuff.
 
I can agree with that Mothematics. Years back with the old map I latched onto the deep Southwest, blank slate but with the ability to tie into Gem and An'Teng. For the last like four years though, it's been all Southeast. I really like filling in missing parts of the map. Playing up the tension between Prasad and the Realm. The probing attacks of the Ysyr sorcerer-captains as they raid ships and islands leaving nothing behind. Being able to make these knew places my own for my old 2e players, kinda nice not having direction books for the corners of the world.
 
I've been having an absolute blast writing out The Nameless Lair of Ma-Ha-Suchi. My solar group had some wonderful interactions with him. Enough so they are trying to currently steal a warstrider (and currently succeeding) from the realm. And hand it over to the silverpact as a present. Even though them just rolling up on his lands and lair almost caused a massive cluster fuck. As they were able to travel pretty incognito. So the entire solar circle quite suddenly showed up on his doorstep. Liable to be make anyone nervous really.

Basically all the Lunar dominions and characters introduced in the new Lunar book has been great so far. One day I'll get to write stuff out at Sunken Luthe, my favorite dominion by far.
 
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O awesome MircaleGrow. One of the main locals for my game is the expanse of the Nameless Lair. Ma-Ha-Suchi is actually probably the principle npc. He has some quirks like both yearning for the lost glories of the First Age and dreading how he lived back then. He has museums and his children perform various arts from the old world even as he buries his own past from other Lunars and allies. The Lair itself is a massive palace loosely styled after the Palace of Versailles with countless gardens, mazes, and vineyards. The interior is largely worked by goat beastmen who are social harpies and plotters working jobs in service to the lord such as gardner even as the Elders territory charms do almost all the work, to the point there is no winter and the apple trees offer up their bounties unbidden to the "pickers". All of this freetime allows the Lair to have a vibrant culture of spilling tea and pursuit of the arts, though only the best are able to do that as an occupation (one of the named npcs is a restorer of paintings).

Beyond that is the Grey Wood, a kind of cultivated forest, extremely thinned. Here the dead are buried in a form of perfect repose. The Wolflord does not allow decay spirits to enter his territory, so only during Calibrations do odd events such as the browning of apples and falling of leaves occur. This is a fearsome place to many of the goatmen, a place of death and remembrance, but for the wolf beastmen, it is the place of their retirement. When they go lame or, lord forbid, age out of military service - they are made to live out their lives here without purpose.

Beyond this is the wilder lands, the Dark Wood. Only lightly patrolled by the ~500 or so wolf beastmen, they largely center their responses from four nerve-centers formed at the directional corners of the territory. These border forts forged lesser manses by the elderic territory charms of their Lord, they possess many stolen and salvaged wonders from the fall of the Shogunate. Able to pass images and missives between each other by dragonlines, their small force is able to react to threats quicker than the primitive world could imagine, though the Elders powerful territory perception charms (styled after Grandfather Spider) means their service is mostly redundant and superficial. Something to give their lives meaning or only leaned upon on those rare times the Wolflord leaves his home and its many creature comforts.

The players joke that we could run a whole campaign there. Taking on the roles of the children and playing out their drama-filled, pedestrian lives.
 
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I don't actually put that much focus on the lair itself (Your stuff is cool btw). As they haven't spent much time there. But a quite a lot of it has been interacting with those three tribes introduced in the Lunar book. Though the time spent there was fun to roleplay.

"Man I wish I had a menacing lair to brood in." - Zenith
"... I'm not sure you know what you want." - Ma-Ha-Suchi
 
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Developing some homebrew thing I'm enjoying a lot plotting out. It's essentially a small nation of pirates that travel creation in pursuit of approval from their goddess Captain. Long ago a group of terrestrial gods grew tired of their work and dug up a massive first age ship. They than sailed the seas terrorizing creation with their godly might. Eventually a small horde of ships began following the gods ship. All vying for her approval so that they can join her crew. All doing suicidal acts in raids to win her approval. This turned into a small armada of ships following around this massive golden ship of the first age.

Yes this is literally Mad Max Fury Road boat version. These are my super basic notes, but I'm filling it all out.
 
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Hoping the rules-lite Exalted they're designing doesn't rely on rolling buckets of dice all the time. I'm still unsure as to why that was even an aspect of Exalted 3e to begin with, it's just dull to add up every fucking tiny little thing you get on a roll AND to have numerous re-roll powers that complicate it further. I couldn't imagine playing this shit in real life.
 
SunnySprings said:
Hoping the rules-lite Exalted they're designing doesn't rely on rolling buckets of dice all the time. I'm still unsure as to why that was even an aspect of Exalted 3e to begin with, it's just dull to add up every fucking tiny little thing you get on a roll AND to have numerous re-roll powers that complicate it further. I couldn't imagine playing this shit in real life.
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The buckets of dice are because HoldeMorke never met a sacred cow they didn't adore. The dice tricks... i guess they just really like dice tricks, idk.
 
SunnySprings said:
Hoping the rules-lite Exalted they're designing doesn't rely on rolling buckets of dice all the time. I'm still unsure as to why that was even an aspect of Exalted 3e to begin with, it's just dull to add up every fucking tiny little thing you get on a roll AND to have numerous re-roll powers that complicate it further. I couldn't imagine playing this shit in real life.
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3E began its life as the extensive bundle of houserules Holden/Morke used in their home game(s). There is a great deal of legacy code rather than attempting to build a new system as Scion sort-of did.
 
Many people enjoy rolling buckets of dice, particularly for a game that's supposed to be epic and over-the-top.

And honestly, there's a lot to be said for sacred cows.
 
Sanctaphrax said:
Many people enjoy rolling buckets of dice, particularly for a game that's supposed to be epic and over-the-top.

And honestly, there's a lot to be said for sacred cows.
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Yeah, it's very fun to roll a bucket of dice. I'm convinced that itìs like 90% of the reason pepple play blaster sorcerer/wizard in D&D.
It's not fun to roll 15-20 dies every time I need to do something relevant, especially if it's an extended roll of some sort.
Rolling a bucket of dice for every single damn attack in a combat is downright tedious. If I had wanted to roll a bucket of dice for every action I would have played a tabletop wargame.
 
SunnySprings said:
Hoping the rules-lite Exalted they're designing doesn't rely on rolling buckets of dice all the time. I'm still unsure as to why that was even an aspect of Exalted 3e to begin with, it's just dull to add up every fucking tiny little thing you get on a roll AND to have numerous re-roll powers that complicate it further. I couldn't imagine playing this shit in real life.
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A developer has said they intend to substantially reduce the volume of dice rolled.

edit: Excuse me, I'm putting words in Monica Speca's mouth. She said that they're intending to cap it at around ~20, because SUDDENLY BEEG DICE is rad, but it shouldn't slow things down a ton.
 
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Okay, i have been looking back over Snake style for reasons, and I just realized that it is literally just Cobra Kai. It has several charms about bullying those who are at a disadvantage in a fight, "snake strikes the heel" seems very similar to "sweep the leg." and the capstone requires you to gang up on someone so you can benefit from a distract gambit.
 
Ana once again being the shining example of an Anathema to the immaculte faith.

Art done by Magistelle. Who some of you would recognize from participating, and winning, the Ring of Power K6BD contest. She is great and I high recommend her for art.
 
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