Which is sort of how they work in One Piece, considering the fruit's regrow somewhere in the world after it's former weilder kicks the bucket. Much like how Exaltation goes on to find someone else to host them.
That's actually quite fitting for One Piece, since the many and varied techniques of Devil Fruit users are, well, techniques. They've got to be learned, and most of them haev cool / goofy names.
True, but if your Devil Fruit powers are tailored and bespoke individual Charms, there's not a lot of room to improvise. If I want to have a rubberized character and I'm in a fight with an Air Aspect, there's no way to capitalize on rubber's insulating anti-electricity properties without cooking up and buying this rather niche Charm in advanced.
Gum-Gum Cannon or what have you can be a Charm, perhaps, but if every individual little facet of the fruit's power needs to be a Charm then you need to anticipate basically every usage and make a Charm for all of them. And this leads to the problem of...
If Luffy's got all his charms in his "I'm rubber" tree, there's no room for his Sail charms, his Nakama charms, and his Haki charms. You've got this very versatile power, but instead of a flexible system it's represented by subdividing it into infinite little baubles. It also makes something that's very simple and easy to understand ("he stretchy") a bear to conceptualize in gameplay as anything other than a spiderweb of unfolding charm cascades. It should be way easier to give an Earth Aspect or an Ascendant Infernal a power like Crocodile's "I turn into sand" thing without having to create one thing for all the ways that could possibly interact with the game's mechanics.
... Well, yeah, the shapeshifting fruit gives the power to shapeshift. It's rather explicit that Zoan-types (Smile fruits excluded) have 3 forms (original form, beast, and half-beast). Hell, Chopper uses drugs to increase that number as his primary fighting style.
While, true, the most recent chapter demonstrates rather more capabilities than merely switching between three forms.
Spoiler for the most recent chapter but...
Well, a triceratops Zoan flies by spinning his frill thing like a helicopter blade. It could be that that is just how triceratops work in One Piece, but given how giraffes worked in Enis Lobby, I am begining to suspect that Zoan's give more control over the forms than most realize.
That's actually quite fitting for One Piece, since the many and varied techniques of Devil Fruit users are, well, techniques. They've got to be learned, and most of them haev cool / goofy names.
Heck, Luffy couldn't even make long-range punches until rather a lot of hard training with his fruit. "The Fruit can do that, but you haven't learned that move yet" is 100% appropriate for One Piece. Basically necessary, in fact, when "I'm made of lightning" can mean "craftsman needs no tools" and "I'm made of rubber" can mean "I activate a super mode by pumping my blood super hard".
Most Fruit users in OP are at least a dozen Charms deep in their metaphorical Evocation tree.
True, but if your Devil Fruit powers are tailored and bespoke individual Charms, there's not a lot of room to improvise. If I want to have a rubberized character and I'm in a fight with an Air Aspect, there's no way to capitalize on rubber's insulating anti-electricity properties without cooking up and buying this rather niche Charm in advanced.
Gum-Gum Cannon or what have you can be a Charm, perhaps, but if every individual little facet of the fruit's power needs to be a Charm then you need to anticipate basically every usage and make a Charm for all of them. And this leads to the problem of...
If Luffy's got all his charms in his "I'm rubber" tree, there's no room for his Sail charms, his Nakama charms, and his Haki charms. You've got this very versatile power, but instead of a flexible system it's represented by subdividing it into infinite little baubles. It also makes something that's very simple and easy to understand ("he stretchy") a bear to conceptualize in gameplay as anything other than a spiderweb of unfolding charm cascades. It should be way easier to give an Earth Aspect or an Ascendant Infernal a power like Crocodile's "I turn into sand" thing without having to create one thing for all the ways that could possibly interact with the game's mechanics.
Yeah, so the question of "Should DFs be basically exaltations" is something I struggled with quite a bit. Because, obviously Luffy's various techniques are charms (they serve the same narrative purpose of being powerful named attacks) and so are most of the other abilities we see DFs do.
On the other hand, if every fruit is an exaltation, then a lot of the lower level DF users don't really work. Foxy is cool and all, but its hard to make an argument that he's strong enough to be exalted in any way, shape or form.
In the end, I decided that (for Paramecia)* most DFs are best modeled as mutations (The Pierce-Pierce Fruit lets you produce spears, the Gum-Gum fruit gives you reach, etc) and/or a short evocation tree**. Eating a paramecia is more like getting access to a unique martial art or an artifacts evocation tree, rather than a whole exaltation's worth of abilities. The idea here is that a paramecia provides a small, focused set of abilities, to better represent how they work in One Piece.***
Of course, focused does not mean weak. While the Gum-Gum fruit might "only" provide reach to your melee attacks and a PD against non-magical blunt force and lighting, the Gura-Gura No Mi provides you with a spell which rivals Rain of Doom for destructive power, and which can be cast significantly more quickly. If you can pay the mote cost anyway.
As for Luffy, well in n the end I decided that Luffy is a Solar who happens to have the Gum-Gum fruit, rather than some sort of Exigent of Rubber. Narratively, Luffy fills the Solar role to a T (powerful fighter and charismatic leader, grows exponentially in power until he overtakes people who started strong than him, etc). His narrative role doesn't really change all that much if he becomes a solar anyway, and most of his attacks are easy to read as Solar charms being expressed through a body made of rubber. Gum-Gum Gatling is simply a Solar Flurry charm which takes advantage of his charm granting him extra reach. The gears are a little harder to model in this version, but I feel like that is a small price to pay to keep the DFs from completely overturning the setting.
*Zoans, by contrast are primarily useful for how they act as a free, permanent, stat buff. If you have a zoan you basically have free XP you can spend elsewhere. Plus some zoan's have evocation trees based around being mythical creatures, and these tend to be pretty strong.
Logia's do a ton of stuff. Their mythos exultant lets you dramatically edit the scene in a way which makes sense for your element, you get an always on PD against non-essence users, and you get access to a bunch of Infernal World Body charms which grants you lots of AOE effects, something exalts tend to lack. Plus they're the only DFs to give awaken your essence and give you motes which is pretty big.
**Technically you can model every DF as giving a evocation tree, but honestly I didn't want to put that much work in, and for many of the "weaker" DFs it didn't seem worth it.
*** I made the deliberate choice here to not have paramecia's awaken a character's essence. That way a player could make the argument "The pierce-pierce fruit doesn't show any charms in canon because the user didn't awaken their essence. But really it should have all these charms that I wrote up!" Basically, if you like a fruit enough to write evocations for it, there's no reason it can't have an evocation tree, but if you just want some cool mutations or a singular power then you can do that to.
An issue I've always run into when it comes to representing Devil Fruits and other kind of complex superpowers in Exalted is that the Charm system makes things a slog at every turn.
Like, you can't do interesting improvisations of your powerset and create fun interactions with pieces of the environment and other characters' powersets, because Charms are required to model the mechanical effects of your powers.
For instance, you can't have a character whose deal is just "he's made-uh rubbuh!" and expect that to have any mechanical weight unless you brew up Charms for every little granular piece of that powerset, from your rubber-ness inoculating you against bludgeoning attacks and certain environmental hazards, to your ability to stretch your limbs to make attacks at a distance, to your ability to stretch your limbs to swing and catapult yourself from pieces of scenery (probably separate Charms, because Exalted loves making jumping/balancing/gliding/running all things you have to spend XP for, separately), to your ability to bounce ranged attacks off yoru body, to your ability to coil up your limbs for added power, to your ability to stretch in weird ways to avoid attacks, I could go on and on.
Sure, you can go the effort of describing how you use your Chestnut-Chestnut Fruit powers in combination with your buddy's Two Axes Open Fire Style to explode off your hard superheated shell to blast back an entire battlegroup of mooks, but unless you've got a Charm for it you're not getting anything more concrete than a stunt-bonus.
This is actually why I modeled "always on" powers as mutations. Luffy being able to stretch up to (Brawl x 3) yards is just something he can do at all times, no special charm required. Which means if you want to swing like spider man, or grab something far away or punch someone far away you can just do that.
Admittedly, he can't do everything without charms (Sling-shotting himself between buildings and bouncing ranged attacks honestly should be charms) but in the end a game needs concrete mechanics to build off of.
True, but if your Devil Fruit powers are tailored and bespoke individual Charms, there's not a lot of room to improvise. If I want to have a rubberized character and I'm in a fight with an Air Aspect, there's no way to capitalize on rubber's insulating anti-electricity properties without cooking up and buying this rather niche Charm in advanced.
Gum-Gum Cannon or what have you can be a Charm, perhaps, but if every individual little facet of the fruit's power needs to be a Charm then you need to anticipate basically every usage and make a Charm for all of them. And this leads to the problem of...
If Luffy's got all his charms in his "I'm rubber" tree, there's no room for his Sail charms, his Nakama charms, and his Haki charms. You've got this very versatile power, but instead of a flexible system it's represented by subdividing it into infinite little baubles. It also makes something that's very simple and easy to understand ("he stretchy") a bear to conceptualize in gameplay as anything other than a spiderweb of unfolding charm cascades. It should be way easier to give an Earth Aspect or an Ascendant Infernal a power like Crocodile's "I turn into sand" thing without having to create one thing for all the ways that could possibly interact with the game's mechanics.
Not every aspect of the power is a unique charm though, and the 'I'm immune to electricity' is probably part of his root charm in the durability tree (or if immunity is too strong early it's an addendum to several charms which start out giving resistance and eventually reach to immunity). Hell, it might not even be a charm: you can have things that are essentially given just as part having this power. And he probably doesn't have all of the 'i'm a rubber' tree? Or, at least, over the course of the story he gets more as he learns new abilities. And having a bunch of different areas to spend xp isn't really a flaw in the system.
Now, you're correct in identifying that the system does need you to spell things out, but that's due to the underlying structure of the game. Exalted is a pretty rules heavy system, with a bunch of fiddly bits. Though, I think you're underselling how simple and easy to understand 'he's stretchy' is, at least as far as it explains a bunch of Luffy's abilities.
. Basically necessary, in fact, when "I'm made of lightning" can mean "craftsman needs no tools" and "I'm made of rubber" can mean "I activate a super mode by pumping my blood super hard".
Most Fruit users in OP are at least a dozen Charms deep in their metaphorical Evocation tree.
Just wanted to call this out here, but under this system Enel would be using "Lightning Mythos Exultant". That charm was chosen because it obviates the need of getting a hundred individual charms to cover everything a Logia can do.
Hell, it might not even be a charm: you can have things that are essentially given just as part having this power. And he probably doesn't have all of the 'i'm a rubber' tree? Or, at least, over the course of the story he gets more as he learns new abilities. And having a bunch of different areas to spend xp isn't really a flaw in the system.
I mean, that's why under the Gum-Gum fruit write-up it lists him as having a PD against non-essence (haki) lighting sources? Its just a thing he has, which is how many of the things which aren't charms are fit into the system.
As to being deep into the rubber tree, I honestly feel like most of what Luffy does can be just as well modeled as Solar Brawl charms which are expressed differently because he is taking advantage of his rubber body. Like, Gattling and Axe and Pistol and canon, etc are all basically Solar Brawl Charms (and some are not even charms, just regular flurries and the like).
I mean, that's why under the Gum-Gum fruit write-up it lists him as having a PD against non-essence (haki) lighting sources? Its just a thing he has, which is how many of the things which aren't charms are fit into the system.
As to being deep into the rubber tree, I honestly feel like most of what Luffy does can be just as well modeled as Solar Brawl charms which are expressed differently because he is taking advantage of his rubber body. Like, Gattling and Axe and Pistol and canon, etc are all basically Solar Brawl Charms (and some are not even charms, just regular flurries and the like).
Yeah, I was speaking more if you were intending to turn Fruit into something much more separate. If the intention is that most of the very strong Fruit users are also exalted or something then you don't need to have quite so elaborate trees, since most of that can be done with native charms, martial arts, etc.
Kind of, but there are "heroic mortals" in One Piece who can one-shot "Exalts" with contemptuous ease. Devil Fruits just give you a new Charm tree, so to speak; they don't make you a stronger class of being.
True, but if your Devil Fruit powers are tailored and bespoke individual Charms, there's not a lot of room to improvise. If I want to have a rubberized character and I'm in a fight with an Air Aspect, there's no way to capitalize on rubber's insulating anti-electricity properties without cooking up and buying this rather niche Charm in advanced.
If you want to no-sell someone's main method of attack, you need to actually buy and pay for that ability in advance. You can't just declare that you have it on the grounds that it kinds sorta makes sense. (It doesn't really, rubber is not lightning-proof, but that's beside the point.)
If Luffy's got all his charms in his "I'm rubber" tree, there's no room for his Sail charms, his Nakama charms, and his Haki charms. You've got this very versatile power, but instead of a flexible system it's represented by subdividing it into infinite little baubles. It also makes something that's very simple and easy to understand ("he stretchy") a bear to conceptualize in gameplay as anything other than a spiderweb of unfolding charm cascades. It should be way easier to give an Earth Aspect or an Ascendant Infernal a power like Crocodile's "I turn into sand" thing without having to create one thing for all the ways that could possibly interact with the game's mechanics.
Luffy doesn't have Sail Charms. He's hilariously incompetent at almost everything. Incredible strength, loads of charisma, superpowers, nothing else.
It's a good thing that Exalted-Luffy is strapped for xp; if he wasn't, he could easily stop being Luffy.
Similarly, you want to be able to do the frankly ridiculous variety of things Crocodile can do, you had damn well better pay for each of them. Game balance goes out the window otherwise. And if you don't need the full Crocodile package, if you want a more restrained version of turning into sand, it's pretty easy to write as a single Charm purchase.
Well, a triceratops Zoan flies by spinning his frill thing like a helicopter blade. It could be that that is just how triceratops work in One Piece, but given how giraffes worked in Enis Lobby, I am begining to suspect that Zoan's give more control over the forms than most realize.
Just wanted to call this out here, but under this system Enel would be using "Lightning Mythos Exultant". That charm was chosen because it obviates the need of getting a hundred individual charms to cover everything a Logia can do.
I'm not super keen on that Charm, either as a representation of Logia tricks in general or as a specific representation of Enel's luminous forge. Seems over-broad.
Yeah, I was speaking more if you were intending to turn Fruit into something much more separate. If the intention is that most of the very strong Fruit users are also exalted or something then you don't need to have quite so elaborate trees, since most of that can be done with native charms, martial arts, etc.
That's fair. I did consider treating DFs as exalatation packages, but I felt their was too much variation in power between various fruits. While a Logia could pretty easily be argued to grant its user an exaltation, its hard to argue the same for the Slow-Slow Fruit.
Yeah, I mostly wanted an excuse to post what happened cause its bullshit (in a good way). Though I wouldn't be surprised to find out triceratops can do that in OP.
I'm not super keen on that Charm, either as a representation of Logia tricks in general or as a specific representation of Enel's luminous forge. Seems over-broad.
I agree that it is very broad, but I feel like it has to be in order to capture all the miscellaneous powers Logia's grant their users which are not in and of themselves strong enough to justify a charm. If Aokiji wants to create a mirror of ice, or fire-fist Ace can light a room on fire, and neither of those are really powerful enough to justify a charm purchase.
Now, you could make an Ice-based object creation charm, but that doesn't solve the issue of Logia's needing something to represent their incidental control of the elements, and this is the best I could come up with (or rather, steal). The idea here is that a Logia allows for dramatic stunt editing in a way which feels appropriate to a Logia.
Anyway, all this is my way of saying I'd love to hear more of your feedback, so I can try to improve the Logia writeup (or the DF writeup in general).
That's fair. I did consider treating DFs as exalatation packages, but I felt their was too much variation in power between various fruits. While a Logia could pretty easily be argued to grant its user an exaltation, its hard to argue the same for the Slow-Slow Fruit.
Theoretically you could have this represented more by the user being relatively inexperienced(and thus has limited abilities), but this largely runs into the issue of needing to make, what, scores of unique Yozi-ish charm trees? Your way is probably better as a method to have any DF power, as opposed to something that is occasionally present (kinda like how huge evocation trees are fine for super rare and impressive artifacts, but become very hard to make if it's the expectation for each and every artifact that any given exalt has).
Similarly, you want to be able to do the frankly ridiculous variety of things Crocodile can do, you had damn well better pay for each of them. Game balance goes out the window otherwise.
I'm not making a point that any given Charm should be an omnitool. Rather, let's take the Essence charm Kraken-Arm Lash. It lets you extend your arm into an octopus tentacle. RAW, it's only good for two things: making a grapple a range band out or making a Pull gambit. Within the rules it gives us, the assumption is that it will only be used in combat; you aren't going to be using it to pull yourself up a building like a grappling hook or what have you.
Charms shouldn't be one size fits all. But if you get an extendable octopus arm, the rules as the book presents should be more accommodating of flexibility in Charms. A reasonable ST would allow you to use Kraken-Arm Lash in a variety of ways, but the official writeup should be supportive of that.
If you want to no-sell someone's main method of attack, you need to actually buy and pay for that ability in advance. You can't just declare that you have it on the grounds that it kinds sorta makes sense. (It doesn't really, rubber is not lightning-proof, but that's beside the point.)
If you're going to imagine I made those arguments, do me the favor of imagining that I responded to your rebuttal also and leave me out of the process entirely next time. The idea that a character with a rubber-form power should be able to capitalize on rubber's extremely well-known insulating properties in a fight against an electricity-user is not the same as suggesting a character should be able to arbitrarily declare themselves immune to all electricity, nor a suggestion that rubber is magically indestructible to lightning.
If you're going to imagine I made those arguments, do me the favor of imagining that I responded to your rebuttal also and leave me out of the process entirely next time. The idea that a character with a rubber-form power should be able to capitalize on rubber's extremely well-known insulating properties in a fight against an electricity-user is not the same as suggesting a character should be able to arbitrarily declare themselves immune to all electricity, nor a suggestion that rubber is magically indestructible to lightning.
Well, based on this either Exalted does have a system for what you're talking about(stunting) or I frankly have no idea what you're talking about. Because as written you appear to be objecting to the idea that you need to buy(in some manner) the idea that the character is super durable, but that's how charm based(or very point based systems) work.
Theoretically you could have this represented more by the user being relatively inexperienced(and thus has limited abilities), but this largely runs into the issue of needing to make, what, scores of unique Yozi-ish charm trees? Your way is probably better as a method to have any DF power, as opposed to something that is occasionally present (kinda like how huge evocation trees are fine for super rare and impressive artifacts, but become very hard to make if it's the expectation for each and every artifact that any given exalt has).
Yeah, that was another big hurdle, I just didn't want to do that much work.
Now, that being said, while the intent is towards small, focused trees, there is nothing stopping someone from creating/learning an exalt's worth of charms from a given DF with my current method. Its just that these charms will by their nature be somewhat more narrow in scope (Even if you learn 100 Pierce-Pierce fruit charms, none of them will be social charms), and the power of them will vary. Plus you won't get all the other cool benefits of exaltation like a bigger mote pool, an anima banner, easy healing, etc.
Still, if you have a powerful fruit (like the Gura-Gura Fruit*) it may be worth it to buy mostly Fruit charms, even for an exalt. After all, the Gura Gura grants powerful combat charms, and even lets you rival the power of Solar Circle Sorcery for sheer destructiveness. Not a lot of social, but if you can destroy an island you don't actually need social charms.
*In my head, White Beard is a powerful (and old) DB, who has invested heavily into his fruit for combat. While he's not lacking in regular DB combat charms or anything (the Gura-Gura hardly does good defense or mobility) it is his Gura-Charms (which rival even Solar Combat charms in potency and power) which make him such a deadly combatant.
Of course, what makes him such a threat to the WG is not his fruit, but his crew. Going back to my earlier post about Solar Kingdoms, a Solar like Luffy can thumb his nose at the WG, flaunting their power as he claims the title of Pirate King and inspiring others to do the same, but he can never make/rule a polity which can go toe-to-toe with the realm. That would require an alliance of several Solar Kingdoms working in concert, and even then their inability to synergize means that the Realm would be stronger pound for pound.
WB isn't like that. He's a powerful DB who has started (effectively) his own dynastic house out in the New World. Not only has he recruited many other DBs to his side (and remember, DBs synergize) but he's developed some form of custom charm which lets him adopt people and give them Breeding equal to his own. While not all of his sons have exalted as DBs, their high breeding, numerous adventures (high XP) and general greatness (their PCs) means that a lot of them have. Admittedly, a lot of them die to the dangers of The New World, but that's what happens when you adventure.
While WB is hardly going to create his own version of the realm anytime soon (though he might if he lives as long as the scarlet), he has created a polity which can fight it, and which has a much better claim (de facto and de jure) to ruling The New World.
As systems go, it's far from robust. Stunting falls short of what I'm describing in the same way that Double 9s Prana Iteration #5,000,000 isn't a good replacement for a more interesting Charm.
The hypothetical is nothing more than a single example of how player improvisation involving a setpiece might not be accommodated within the system. The general idea is in line with what Kymme said: the system could stand to be more accommodating of certain superpowers without requiring they be subdivided into a Charm for each individual thing they can do. And that's bad.
As systems go, it's far from robust. Stunting falls short of what I'm describing in the same way that Double 9s Prana Iteration #5,000,000 isn't a good replacement for a more interesting Charm.
The hypothetical is nothing more than a single example of how player improvisation involving a setpiece might not be accommodated within the system. The general idea is in line with what Kymme said: the system could stand to be more accommodating of certain superpowers without requiring they be subdivided into a Charm for each individual thing they can do. And that's bad.
Yes. This is a critique of that system. The system stand to be more flexible.
The point of stunting isn't to be robust. That's what the charm system is for, so having stunting be a robust system would be redundant and overcomplicate things. Your hypothetical fails to acknowledge how the system works though: yes, you have to buy charms and do so ahead of time, but they don't have to be as narrow as you put forward. Exalted has charms that have several related(or even not so related) bonuses. The ability to cheaply buy add ons or upgrades for charms. Spending a charms worth of XP for immunity to non-essence lighting may be a niche waste, but that doesn't have to be the charm in it's entirety. Additionally, you sabotaged your hypothetical by at least implicitly making it so extreme.
Now, a more flexible system can exist: there are a number of more flexible systems out there, and some even have Exalted hacks. But they do fundamentally change how things function, and in general even they wouldn't let you be casually invulnerable to a substantial foe without also prebuying that ability. It would just be in a more singular chunk(and likely needing other resources to fuel it, depending on the system) as opposed to how Exalted works.
Though, frankly, if this is what you meant then I'm not certain why you were so hostile regarding Sanctaphrax, since he's not misunderstanding you in any substantial way like you accused him of being. He doesn't agree with your premises or conclusions, but that's a very different thing than bad faith, though failing to address that is.
I'm not making a point that any given Charm should be an omnitool. Rather, let's take the Essence charm Kraken-Arm Lash. It lets you extend your arm into an octopus tentacle. RAW, it's only good for two things: making a grapple a range band out or making a Pull gambit. Within the rules it gives us, the assumption is that it will only be used in combat; you aren't going to be using it to pull yourself up a building like a grappling hook or what have you.
Charms shouldn't be one size fits all. But if you get an extendable octopus arm, the rules as the book presents should be more accommodating of flexibility in Charms. A reasonable ST would allow you to use Kraken-Arm Lash in a variety of ways, but the official writeup should be supportive of that.
If you're going to imagine I made those arguments, do me the favor of imagining that I responded to your rebuttal also and leave me out of the process entirely next time. The idea that a character with a rubber-form power should be able to capitalize on rubber's extremely well-known insulating properties in a fight against an electricity-user is not the same as suggesting a character should be able to arbitrarily declare themselves immune to all electricity, nor a suggestion that rubber is magically indestructible to lightning.
It might be helpful to think of charms less as powers and more as techniques. Because in the end, they are meant to model named martial arts techniques like the Kamehameha or the Wushu-finger hold rather than a universally applicable capability. When you turn your arm into a tentacle, it represents a specific expression of essence, a specific special move.
Now, this does run into the issue that it doesn't model Lunar Shapeshifting super well (after all, if I can turn my arm into a tentacle to attack something, then why can't I do so grab something), but that is because the system has sort of grown beyond what it was originally meant to emulate.
In 2e, this was solved by a combination of Permanent charms and stunting. You might get a permanent charm which says "You mutate your arm into a tentacle, it is treated as a DaiWhip for combat purposes, has a range of X and is as flexible as an arm" and then for anything special you just stunt it and add 3 dice to show how the tentacle is better suited for this task than a regular arm. Not a perfect solution, but a good enough one in my eyes.
And honestly, I think its about as good as you can get in a point buy system. Theoretically, you could get more granular, but I think that charms are at a good point (as of essence and 2e) right now, where each purchase feels meaningful and distinct. Splitting them up or making them more granular runs the risk of making them boring.
Of course, you could add stuff from other systems, but I'm struggling to see how they would match what you want. The closest I can think is something like as aspect from Fate, so that you could tag "Aspect: Made of Rubber" to gain advantage against lightning attacks, but iirc that isn't really that different from stunting?
Personally, I think the best solution is to bake the sort of stuff you want into charms, but either to make the charms have wide, freeform effects or cover several related smaller effects. The (Logia) Mythos Exultant is a good example of this, as it is designed to allow the broad, freeform capabilities of logia users, while still allowing for specific, powerful charm effects.
Yeah, unfortunately this is just one of those edge cases where the fusion breaks down. I basically equated essence=haki because those are the closest equivalents to each other, and because it means that an exalt isn't having their attacks no-sold by a cheap and broad immunity (Gum-Gum becomes significantly more powerful if it can just straight up PD all blunt attacks).
I'm not making a point that any given Charm should be an omnitool. Rather, let's take the Essence charm Kraken-Arm Lash. It lets you extend your arm into an octopus tentacle. RAW, it's only good for two things: making a grapple a range band out or making a Pull gambit. Within the rules it gives us, the assumption is that it will only be used in combat; you aren't going to be using it to pull yourself up a building like a grappling hook or what have you.
Charms shouldn't be one size fits all. But if you get an extendable octopus arm, the rules as the book presents should be more accommodating of flexibility in Charms. A reasonable ST would allow you to use Kraken-Arm Lash in a variety of ways, but the official writeup should be supportive of that.
I'm not entirely sure what you're disagreeing with, because this is not actually a thing any version of Exalted has supported. Are you arguing that Graceful Crane Stance should give a bonus to a dance routine because of your perfect balance? You would just like to change it so that it does?
I'm not entirely sure what you're disagreeing with, because this is not actually a thing any version of Exalted has supported. Are you arguing that Graceful Crane Stance should give a bonus to a dance routine because of your perfect balance? You would just like to change it so that it does?
Well, based on this either Exalted does have a system for what you're talking about(stunting) or I frankly have no idea what you're talking about. Because as written you appear to be objecting to the idea that you need to buy(in some manner) the idea that the character is super durable, but that's how charm based(or very point based systems) work.
As I understand it, the argument Syz is making is that charm-based (or other effects-based mechanical widget-heavy) systems are not well suited to modelling characters with unique and specialized powersets, or powersets themed around a single ability and all of its logical extrapolations. They love modelling somewhat granular, parcel-based powersets, where characters slowly gain bespoke, sometimes unrelated abilities, which IMO is not really how powersets like, say, Nico Robin's ability to sprout arms from things. In the fiction it feels very intuitive to use, but translated through Exalted's crunchy crunchy system it means that she'd need separate Charms for every mechanically relevant form of 'sprout arms from person/object/environmental feature.'
In 2e, especially under paradigms like the one Infernals use, where their charms often are bespoke superpowers, it works somewhat better because you can build in a lot of different mechanical functions into one Charm purchase. However, in 3e, where you need separate charm purchases for "i pick up my friend and throw them", "i pick up my enemy and throw them," and "i pick up a rock and throw it" it's frankly a bit of a headache.
Okay sure, but the larger point was that one's Athletics jumping charms don't give you dice for lifting no matter how much 'no seriously, my legs would totally have to be super strong in order to jump 30 feet high' you throw at it.
Okay sure, but the larger point was that one's Athletics jumping charms don't give you dice for lifting no matter how much 'no seriously, my legs would totally have to be super strong in order to jump 30 feet high' you throw at it.
Stunts are limited in that they do not change your fictional positioning or open up the ability to take actions you otherwise would not be able to take. Their mechanical implementation is to reward descriptions with additional dice and temporary resources. If they *did*, wouldn't that obviate the need for Charms?
To use an example: if I want my Solar musician to use their lute playing to lull a storm to calm such that my ship is able to sail to safety, a stunt bonus for my description of that character's musical magic prowess would not allow me to change the weather - surely that is the purview of Charms written for that purpose, like Seventeen Cycles Symphony? If it isn't, and something like that could be accomplished by any stunt-boosted Performance action, then what purpose is there for the Charm to exist at all? If a stunt-boosted Athletics action can let me negate a hazardous landing, or leap twenty feet in the air, then why are Charms like Soaring Crane Leap or Monkey Leap Technique necessary?
I consider this a flaw of the way Charms are designed in practice, but not necessarily in concept. Again, Infernal Charms in 2e largely avoid this issue by typically being bespoke superpowers.
As I understand it, the argument Syz is making is that charm-based (or other effects-based mechanical widget-heavy) systems are not well suited to modelling characters with unique and specialized powersets, or powersets themed around a single ability and all of its logical extrapolations. They love modelling somewhat granular, parcel-based powersets, where characters slowly gain bespoke, sometimes unrelated abilities, which IMO is not really how powersets like, say, Nico Robin's ability to sprout arms from things. In the fiction it feels very intuitive to use, but translated through Exalted's crunchy crunchy system it means that she'd need separate Charms for every mechanically relevant form of 'sprout arms from person/object/environmental feature.'
In 2e, especially under paradigms like the one Infernals use, where their charms often are bespoke superpowers, it works somewhat better because you can build in a lot of different mechanical functions into one Charm purchase. However, in 3e, where you need separate charm purchases for "i pick up my friend and throw them", "i pick up my enemy and throw them," and "i pick up a rock and throw it" it's frankly a bit of a headache.
So part of that is obviously in line with what he's arguing, and there are a bunch of non-objectionable statements there. Porting characters/concepts from one system to another always needs compromises, especially when they're very different types of systems. And due to their nature most characters from media are essentially in a low rules environment. And even if that's not the case, different systems will have different assumptions. That said, I'm not sold on how much this difficulty is an actual failing per say of the game, and more an unavoidable part of having a mechanics heavy game or one with some very set flavor. Though even stuff like gurps or Hero/champion would have issues with this. Hell, I think it's important to remember that a lot of these abilities are intuitive in fiction because they're limited to what the author decides they can do, and the author is working alone for the most part. More rules light systems are better at representing more nebulous powers like these, but they can have their own issues with doing so and rules light doesn't automatically mean better.
But, you largely misunderstand the post you quoted: the issue was that Syz set up an extremely bad hypothetical that implied a bunch of things that they didn't mean, and got very hostile about people assuming that they meant that Luffy should have immunity to lightning without paying for it when talking about a gum-gum user(ie luffy) getting benefits against a lightning user(which in the story is represented by him being immune to lightning). As opposed to just getting a situational bonus( while also ignoring that there is a well established situational bonus system already in the game).
Stunts are limited in that they do not change your fictional positioning or open up the ability to take actions you otherwise would not be able to take. Their mechanical implementation is to reward descriptions with additional dice and temporary resources. If they *did*, wouldn't that obviate the need for Charms?
To use an example: if I want my Solar musician to use their lute playing to lull a storm to calm such that my ship is able to sail to safety, a stunt bonus for my description of that character's musical magic prowess would not allow me to change the weather - surely that is the purview of Charms written for that purpose, like Seventeen Cycles Symphony? If it isn't, and something like that could be accomplished by any stunt-boosted Performance action, then what purpose is there for the Charm to exist at all? If a stunt-boosted Athletics action can let me negate a hazardous landing, or leap twenty feet in the air, then why are Charms like Soaring Crane Leap or Monkey Leap Technique necessary?
I consider this a flaw of the way Charms are designed in practice, but not necessarily in concept. Again, Infernal Charms in 2e largely avoid this issue by typically being bespoke superpowers.
Sure calming a storm with music is a charm(unless you're getting the attention of someone else who could calm it). But 'I have advantage over someone with lightning powers because I'm made of rubber' is basically a stunt. Plus, not all charm use opens up entirely new areas, sometimes it just makes results more certain or better. Charms would just mean that you don't have to roll or that you can do it even in situations that don't seem reasonable: a good athletics rolls means instead of falling off a horse onto your head you roll and are fine/bruised. A charm can mean a fall off a skyship ends up with you rolling and are fine/bruised. You can still make a strong melee attack without spending charms. You can still tank a blow or dodge without a charm.
This seems less a flaw of the charms and more that you want to cleanly divide stuff into 'charm stuff' and 'non-charm stuff', when those two aren't entirely district.
It's rather explicit that Zoan-types (Smile fruits excluded) have 3 forms (original form, beast, and half-beast). Hell, Chopper uses drugs to increase that number as his primary fighting style.
