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General Exalted Thread

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Roadie said:
Because it says so.

That's it, when it really comes down to it. Because it says so.

It's not a cause-and-effect with a scientific basis, it's a conceptual effect that flatly overrides the normal nature of reality.
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The concept differs depending on the Exalt, though.

The Solar is Just That Good. "How'd I do that? I'm just that wise/skilled/fast/strong/tough/awesome."

The Sidereal is Just That Wise. "How I'd do that? I combined my mastery of swordsmanship/dodging/rolling-with-the-punches with my mastery of the secrets of Fate, and used them together to change the Destiny of the attack, as well as my own Destiny."

We'll have to get back with you on Lunars, who are currently a mystery.
 
Sunder the Gold said:
The concept differs depending on the Exalt, though.

The Solar is Just That Good. "How'd I do that? I'm just that wise/skilled/fast/strong/tough/awesome."

The Sidereal is Just That Wise. "How I'd do that? I combined my mastery of swordsmanship/dodging/rolling-with-the-punches with my mastery of the secrets of Fate, and used them together to change the Destiny of the attack, as well as my own Destiny."

We'll have to get back with you on Lunars, who are currently a mystery.
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Does this fit?

The Lunars are Primal. "How'd I do that? I channeled my inner beast and struck down the attack with unmatched strength!"
 
NotAlwaysFanfic said:
What's FATE?
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Drakeneisen said:
This. A general purpose RPG rules system with a strong narrative focus.
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Basically yeah. A big part of FATE has thematics as part of your character. Like, if in character creation one of my major background traits (as aspect) was "I Got Your Back," because I was backup in a story, and loyal, I could, for a price, throw that at any roll for being back up, making it there in time to save your ass, etc. Very good fit for Excellencies.

The concept versus concept thing looks like it would work well with charms too.
 
Lunars are adaptable. "How did I do that? I changed myself/my environment/the attack itself to overcome it."

(going RAARGH WEREWOLF and brute-forcing it is one option, yes, but Lunars should be far more than just RAGE HULK WEREWOLF SMASH)
 
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I always thought All-Encompassing Earth Sense as "I touch the ground, you touch the ground, you can't surprise me!", but turn out the charm only require the user to touch the ground and he will be immune to all surprise attack, even when the attacker is not on the ground!

It's kinda make the whole "can't use the charm on a higher floor " look pretty......silly.
 
Jen said:
I always thought All-Encompassing Earth Sense as "I touch the ground, you touch the ground, you can't surprise me!", but turn out the charm only require the user to touch the ground and he will be immune to all surprise attack, even when the attacker is not on the ground!

It's kinda make the whole "can't use the charm on a higher floor " look pretty......silly.
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It's just part and parcel of the way a bunch of the Dragon-Blooded Charms were written as "like a Solar Charm, but with smaller bonuses and/or arbitrary limitations".
 
Such as the infamous "PCDM only perfectly defends against what you don't need for perfectly defend against anyway" thing.

PalusAbel said:
Howdy, everyone! I was snooping around for Exalted revisions and rewrites and stumbled across this thread. I am quite satisfied that I did so, and made this account in order to join in the fun. I'm probably in the minority for feeling this way, but I think Exalted 2.5 is still fun to play, even if both the players and the Storytellers have to digest a lot of errata and wave their hands a lot. I've a couple games on the horizon for players that have largely never played any tabletop games before, and I was hoping to get some constructive advice for how to help make the game easier and more enjoyable.

One of the main issues that I've seen come up time and again is the sheer lethality of the combat system. Throwing oceans of dice and destroying foes with a single attack is aesthetically pleasing, but not very fun for player characters on the receiving end. One fix that I want to implement also helps displace some of the emphasis on Dexterity as a god-stat. I'm going to put it under a spoiler tag for brevity.

An attack may gain no more extra successes than the lower of the attacker's Strength or the appropriate Ability for the weapon used. Thus, a swordsman with Strength 3 and Melee 5 could add at most three dice to the raw damage to his attack, even if he rolled more than three extra successes against his opponent's DV. The cap for extra successes is equal to the rating of the relevant Ability for fixed-damage weapons that do not add the wielder's Strength. Crossbow and firewand wielders, for instance, could benefit from no more than (Archery) successes.

Certain effects, such as Solar Hero Form and Hungry Tiger Technique, multiply extra successes' contribution to the raw damage pool. When such effects come into play, the total number of extra successes before the multiplication effect must follow the cap described above. Consider again a swordsman with Strength 3 and Melee 5. If he activates Hungry Tiger Technique to double his extra successes for the purpose of calculating raw damage, he may add two dice to his raw damage with one extra attack success, four dice on two extra successes, or six dice with three or more extra successes.

Along with this, I plan to buff Ox-Body Technique a little bit (the new version is slightly weaker than all three previous options of the old Charm put together), and a few other things here and there. I'll get to those with subsequent posts, so as to keep the focus on the main question. Now, after much banter, I'm eager to hear your feedback.
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Dude, that's not how Hungry Tiger Technique works. HTT doubles your attack successes if your attack would hit without the doubling.

so if you rolled 26 dice against a DV of 15, and you got 17 successes because the dice liked you today... HTT makes it so you roll damage as though you had rolled twice that many, that is, 34, successes. So you add 34-15=19 to your base damage.
 
Another question: does the Godspear actually perform infinite damage? Because if so, why's there a pile of ash left behind after it's used against a target (see: Prince Laashe and Glories of the Most High)?
 
Righteousness said:
Because infinite damage would utterly destroy the target, leaving a pile of nothing behind.
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Dramatic License. 'Rule of Cool' is not precisely a law of physics in Creation/Exalted, but well...

If Joe Exalt is fighting a top a spinning water wheel, dueling Dragon-Blooded while holding the high-ground, that is inherently, metaphysically more awesome than the same fight happening on flat empty ground.

It is inherently more awesome to use Graceful Crane Stance to run on grass stalks and the tips of spears than not.
 
Shyft said:
Dramatic License. 'Rule of Cool' is not precisely a law of physics in Creation/Exalted, but well...

If Joe Exalt is fighting a top a spinning water wheel, dueling Dragon-Blooded while holding the high-ground, that is inherently, metaphysically more awesome than the same fight happening on flat empty ground.

It is inherently more awesome to use Graceful Crane Stance to run on grass stalks and the tips of spears than not.
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So because of the Pattern Spiders?
 
You're thinking too physically. You may as well ask why infinite damage doesn't destroy all of existence. It does precisely as intended, no more and no less.

It reduces the target to ash so that all may see that no one escapes the wrath of the Unconquered Sun.
 
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Chloe Sullivan said:
Such as the infamous "PCDM only perfectly defends against what you don't need for perfectly defend against anyway" thing.



Dude, that's not how Hungry Tiger Technique works. HTT doubles your attack successes if your attack would hit without the doubling.

so if you rolled 26 dice against a DV of 15, and you got 17 successes because the dice liked you today... HTT makes it so you roll damage as though you had rolled twice that many, that is, 34, successes. So you add 34-15=19 to your base damage.
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This is wrong.
Hungry Tiger Technique said:
This Charm allows the Solar's player to count extra successes on the attack roll twice for the purposes of determining raw damage.
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In your example the number of extra successes is 17-15 = 2, so you add 2*2 = 4 to your base damage.

Anyway, I don't think he was looking for ways to make Exalted even more hilariously lethal, like having a single mote charm add so much damage dice (and catastrophically more with its upgrades...)
 
Cytokinesis said:
This is wrong.

In your example the number of extra successes is 17-15 = 2, so you add 2*2 = 4 to your base damage.

Anyway, I don't think he was looking for ways to make Exalted even more hilariously lethal, like having a single mote charm add so much damage dice (and catastrophically more with its upgrades...)
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Irony? Solar Hero Form works the way he thought it did: Pay 1 mote in step 7 to take what you rolled, double that, and replace your extra successes past DV when calculating raw damage. This exists purely to facilitate Ox Stunning Blow, Heaven Thunder Hammer and Improvised Weapon use.
 
Shyft said:
Irony? Solar Hero Form works the way he thought it did: Pay 1 mote in step 7 to take what you rolled, double that, and replace your extra successes past DV when calculating raw damage. This exists purely to facilitate Ox Stunning Blow, Heaven Thunder Hammer and Improvised Weapon use.
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Not really, Step 5 is subtracting DVs and other penalties, so the only successes that are left in Step 7 are the extra ones. The difference between the two charms is that you can save motes by only activating Solar Hero Form when you hit, but Hungry Tiger Technique must be activated before you roll.
 
Cytokinesis said:
This is wrong.
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Huh, how is it that the thrice elegant Sakuya tutorial he been wrong about this all this time and no once has commented on this? That thing gets brought up every time someone says they are new to exalted and wants to learn the system, and has been used by like just about everyone;l, as far as I can tell.

it models HTT exactly the way Shyft describes solar hero form as working. So does my ST
 
Chloe Sullivan said:
Huh, how is it that the thrice elegant Sakuya tutorial he been wrong about this all this time and no once has commented on this? That thing gets brought up every time someone says they are new to exalted and wants to learn the system, and has been used by like just about everyone;l, as far as I can tell.

it models HTT exactly the way Shyft describes solar hero form as working. So does my ST
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Hungry Tiger is Extra Successes. I always read Solar Hero as Attack Successes, that are created during step 3.
 
Two more questions (yay!):
1. How do we know concepts blatantly overrides physics? How do we know of perfect defenses conceptual nature that allows them to stick up the middle finger at normal reality and logic? Where does it 'say so'?
2. In regards to this
Anasurimbor said:
Your thinking too physically. You may as well ask why infinite damage doesn't destroy all of existence. It does precisely as intended, no more and no less.

It reduces the target to ash so that all may see that no one escapes the wrath of the Unconquered Sun.
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Is this a theory, or a fact? How do we know this is the UCS's intention?
 
Righteousness said:
Two more questions (yay!):
1. How do we know concepts blatantly overrides physics? How do we know of perfect defenses conceptual nature that allows them to stick up the middle finger at normal reality and logic? Where does it 'say so'?
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Well, you can use a PD to block an attack by the sentient black hole that is Isidoros' Jouten, and I'm pretty sure there are examples of PD's being able to dodge lightspeed attacks, though I can't confirm that as I'm at school, and my books are at home.
 
Righteousness said:
Two more questions (yay!):
1. How do we know concepts blatantly overrides physics? How do we know of perfect defenses conceptual nature that allows them to stick up the middle finger at normal reality and logic? Where does it 'say so'?
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One of the few good things to come out of the Fair Folk book were the Ishvara Shinma. They are creatures which define concepts by embodying their opposite, and were used as building blocks by the Primordials when making creation. For example, The Ishvara Shinma of Separation is what allows things to remain separate, and exists everywhere at the same time.

While PDs do not explicitly reference the Ishvara Shinma, the existence of them does say one thing: The Primordials built the world on concepts, rather than hard logic. The Exalted themselves personify concepts (A Solar, no matter what, will be Excellent in whatever he puts himself to.) It can be infered due to the conceptual nature of creation that Perfects (Which are impossible from a Physics point of view) are mostly conceptual in nature.
 
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That's the Shinma. And from what I recall the original 1st ed Raksha book was better in that regards, with no random Advaita Iraivan as shinma of Separation.
 
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