- Location
- my house
I guess I'm not seeing what the flaw is? Like, yes, you're paying XP for each new ability?
General Exalted Thread
- Location
- The North
Maybe flaw isn't the right word. What I'm saying is that stunts are not, IMO, sufficient to cover those edge-cases where your DF effect or other weird superpower has some interaction that seems totally plausible in the fiction, but has no accompanying Charm to represent the interaction mechanically. Sometimes some extra dice and a free Willpower don't quite cover situations where you want to hook your stretchy arms and legs around two tall buildings at let your long-nosed sniper buddy use you as an improvised slingshot to launch some massive payload at an escaping airship.
But also, this is a huge digression. Red Orion, I respect your chutzpah to try and stat up Devil Fruits in Exalted. It's not an easy task, especially considering just how god-damn many of the things there are, and how each of the superpowers they grant function on totally different rulesets (could you imagine trying to stat up Sugar's DF in Exalted? That would be absolute hell), but honestly, from somebody who did their damnedest to stat up the Sharingan in the 3e ruleset, I salute you.
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Eh, I don't mind the digression, it's a fun convo
I guess to your point, I just don't see how a system could model these sorts of freeform interactions. Like, if you make it too strong it basically (as you yourself said) obviates the needs for charms, but too weak and it doesn't feel mechanically interesting.
Honestly, I guess it comes down to what you're trying to model with any given example. Cause if it's just using your stretchy body to have a friend shoot far then stunts are fine, but if you're, say, trying to get around not having the proper tools then you're right that the stunts don't cover that.
Going back to the original write-up, this does make me wonder if every DF should have a Mythos Exultant equivalent or maybe Stunts should be altered to allow that sort of dramatic scene editing as standard fare
- Location
- Ottawa
I don't think any existing logia has anywhere near the level of flexible object creation that Charm provides. Enel can just reshape metal; that's about all the object-creation I can remember form him. And I don't believe Aokiji ever makes anything more complicated than a sword. The Charm has creating a rope to swing from as its most basic example application, but I'm honestly not sure there's any logia who can do that. And things get even weirder with higher-level stunts.
In your place I'd skip all the stunt stuff and have a Charm that turns motes into a shaped mass of the appropriate material. Walls and crude melee weapons could easily be made that way, but ropes and telescopes and the like couldn't be.
I'm pretty sure I'm responding to your actual argument here. You're saying that fruit-users and similar shouldn't have to buy and pay for every ability they have; I'm saying that they should.
If you didn't spend xp on electricity resistance, you don't get to resist electricity. Period.
That depends somewhat on the edition, splat, and Charm, I should note.
Robin literally has a separate named technique for each different application of arm-sprouting, and she usually says the names while she uses them. One of the major ways she's grown stronger over time is by adding new named techniques to her repertoire.
Her moveset is actually more granular than the usual Exalted moveset, believe it or not.
- Location
- The North
See, discussing things on the internet is very fraught, because people won't engage with your points and will instead 'well actually' any examples you provide to illustrate them*. Yes, I'm aware of how Robin's powerset works. I'm aware that she has a vast (and unfortunately underutilized) repertoire of named techniques. My point still stands, because Exalted would look at a power like her's and be like "so I know her power is to make arms sprout from things, and typically you'd expect that you can use those arms to do... y'know, everything arms can do, but you're gonna have to buy Charms for using your arms to punch people, using your arms to grapple people, using your arms to make special bendy-twisty grappling attacks, using your arms to cover people's eyes and mouths to make special debilitating attacks against them, summoning arms on another person to catch an attack aimed at them or push them out of the way, sprouting arms from another person to help them lift something or wield a weapon extra good (these would probably be separate Charms), daisy-chaining your arms together to reach places or to snare people (which Syz' example of Kraken-Arm Lash illustrates would require 2+ separate Charm purchases, because a Charm that turns your arm into a tentacle can only be used for attacking people/pulling them towards you), etc."
The fact of the matter is that having to specifically model the mechanical effects of each of her powers takes a way a lot from the unique versatility of her powers, and from powers similar to hers. I understand that Exalted uses a Charm-based model for representing character abilities, and I think that the Charm system has a lot of strengths, but I think that it also creates some tension with hyper-versatile abilities that are meant to enable creative and fun uses in its current interaction. For instance, I don't think this tension would really exist if Exalted wasn't so darn tied to effects-based simulation of characters powers, and instead focused on ways of representing powers that put novel and creative usage of your characters abilities and magical tricks at the forefront. Like, if Exalted was the sort of ttrpg where a character's Charms could be written like this...
- One Weapon, Two Blows: The Solar knows a special sword technique. With focus, a single stroke of their weapon inflicts blows as though they'd struck twice. Against foes without the proper countermeasures, this is a highly lethal technique.
- Ten Ox Meditation: The Solar knows a special meditation. So long as they maintain the proper state of mind and keep their breathing even, their physical strength is multiplied many times over, granting them the strength to hurl men bodily with their bare hands or out-pull a team of oxen.
- Call the Blade: The Solar has achieved a special bond with their sword. They can call it to their hand from any distance, and its unerring flight cannot be stopped. If the weapon is in the same locale it flies through the air to their hand, and if it is more distant it simply vanishes and reappears held in their grip.
- Durability of Oak Mediation: The Solar knows a special mediation. So long as they maintain the proper state of mind and keep their breathing even, their flesh hardens to the strength of a mighty tree. Blunt weapons will be deflected harmlessly, and sharp weapons may cut or pierce them, but never deep enough to inflict lasting harm.
- Integrity-Protecting Breath: The Solar has trained their focus to the point where they can fuse their breathing techniques together. They can maintain a number of simultaneous meditations at one time equal to their Essence (or two, whichever is higher). However, this Charm is especially strenuous. Should their breathing slip while maintaining more than one meditation, they become exhausted as a minor wound.
Honestly, I might have to write that. Writing up these little baby Charms was pretty fun!
* Also, the style in One Piece is that even unique improvised techniques that characters just made up on the spot get names, so of course every on-screen usage of Robin's powers would have its own fun name. That's just a convention of the genre. Unless you're suggesting that summoning six arms to bend somebody's spine backwards (Seis Fluer - Clutch) and summoning six arms to wring somebody like a towel (Seis Fluer - Twist) should be separate Charms, because oof. You'd really have your work cut out for you.
See, discussing things on the internet is very fraught because people will take basic disagreement over a position as bad faith arguments and start throwing insults out over it.
The point Sanctaphrax made is that here power set as shown in the work appears to actually be super granular, even moreso than Exalted usually is(which also answers your footnote: something being more granular than exalted normally is would imply that if you are porting it to exalted you can tone that aspect down). Which runs somewhat counter to the argument that granular techniques are a poor fit to represent what we see.
- Location
- The North
Sorry about that! I was being rude unnecessarily. I was annoyed because I felt like the points that I was making weren't actually being engaged with, and I wrote up a big rant at the end of the day. Never post while tired, I guess. That's my bad.
I'm giving that wiki page that Sanctaphrax posted another look, and I don't think it actually runs counter to my argument at all. Where it seems that you and Sanctaphrax look at that list and see a character sheet of dozens of granular, specific techniques, I look at that list and see a well-maintained (and well-cited) log of everything this character has ever used her powers to do - and a good percentage of them are abilities she's only ever used once, as one-off improvisations and then never repeated in the manga's 20+ year run. I think that alone illustrates a place where Charm-based design falls short. If one of my players wanted to try out some neat trick that fit with the fiction of their powers but didn't have a Charm facilitating, say, summoning giant arms to avoid a naval hazard, or weaving together dozens of hands holding sunflowers to make a gigantic tree overhead to protect from some aerial bombardment, using their rubber body to become an improvised slingshot, etc, I wouldn't want to veto something cool like that purely on the grounds that they 'should have to pay for everything they get to do.' If one of my players is gonna do a neat trick one time in a 20+ session campaign, I'm not gonna demand they have a Charm for that. I don't think you should need a Charm for everything you do. Like, my players aren't conniving rules-lawyers trying to weasel their way into mechanical bonuses they didn't pay for, they're my friends getting excited, thinking about the story of our game, being immersed in the fiction, and trying out new things. Including their ideas will only make the game better for all of us.
I think that these are edge cases, definitely, but IMO just stunting and Excellencies and the Orichalcum Rule don't really cover it. I've pointed out above why I don't feel like stunting is sufficient - it's a mechanical bonus for describing your action in a cool way, not as a means of expanding what you're capable of. Like, they're what Exalted, as it exists currently, gives us to adjudicate these kinds of situations, but I know that better is possible. Because Chuubos, because Tianxia, because Masks: A New Generation. All three of these are games where character concepts like "I'm a Devil Fruit User" are literally plug and play. All three of these are games where wild and crazy superpowers are the order of the day, and all of them provide you with tools for resolving fun and dynamic improvisations, for riffing endlessly off of interactions between powersets, or powersets and the environment, for resolving what happens when two powersets collide in conflict. I think Exalted could benefit a lot from implementing some tools like this.
And I might just go and do that. At any rate, I'm not always the best and presenting my arguments clearly, so I hope that this post is better in that regard.
I'm giving that wiki page that Sanctaphrax posted another look, and I don't think it actually runs counter to my argument at all. Where it seems that you and Sanctaphrax look at that list and see a character sheet of dozens of granular, specific techniques, I look at that list and see a well-maintained (and well-cited) log of everything this character has ever used her powers to do - and a good percentage of them are abilities she's only ever used once, as one-off improvisations and then never repeated in the manga's 20+ year run. I think that alone illustrates a place where Charm-based design falls short. If one of my players wanted to try out some neat trick that fit with the fiction of their powers but didn't have a Charm facilitating, say, summoning giant arms to avoid a naval hazard, or weaving together dozens of hands holding sunflowers to make a gigantic tree overhead to protect from some aerial bombardment, using their rubber body to become an improvised slingshot, etc, I wouldn't want to veto something cool like that purely on the grounds that they 'should have to pay for everything they get to do.' If one of my players is gonna do a neat trick one time in a 20+ session campaign, I'm not gonna demand they have a Charm for that. I don't think you should need a Charm for everything you do. Like, my players aren't conniving rules-lawyers trying to weasel their way into mechanical bonuses they didn't pay for, they're my friends getting excited, thinking about the story of our game, being immersed in the fiction, and trying out new things. Including their ideas will only make the game better for all of us.
I think that these are edge cases, definitely, but IMO just stunting and Excellencies and the Orichalcum Rule don't really cover it. I've pointed out above why I don't feel like stunting is sufficient - it's a mechanical bonus for describing your action in a cool way, not as a means of expanding what you're capable of. Like, they're what Exalted, as it exists currently, gives us to adjudicate these kinds of situations, but I know that better is possible. Because Chuubos, because Tianxia, because Masks: A New Generation. All three of these are games where character concepts like "I'm a Devil Fruit User" are literally plug and play. All three of these are games where wild and crazy superpowers are the order of the day, and all of them provide you with tools for resolving fun and dynamic improvisations, for riffing endlessly off of interactions between powersets, or powersets and the environment, for resolving what happens when two powersets collide in conflict. I think Exalted could benefit a lot from implementing some tools like this.
And I might just go and do that. At any rate, I'm not always the best and presenting my arguments clearly, so I hope that this post is better in that regard.
- Location
- my house
So, there's a couple of points you make here, and I'd like to address them individually because there are some areas where we disagree, some where we agree but I don't have a good solution and some where it looks like my wording isn't clear in the original charm (and so I could use some help rewording said charm).
1. Enel. You're right that he can only reshape metal (technically he does form his lightning into animals but that's not really relevant). The charms line about "created or changed in accordance with the element of the fruit" bit of the original charm, but it sounds like that was unclear. Do you have any suggestions on how to make it clearer?
2. The bit about complicated, here we sort of agree and disagree? Like, I feel I disagree with your specifics examples ( I don't think any air logia, for instance should be unable to make a telescope from bent air, but I don't think they should be making a car either), I do agree that complicated stuff is out. My hope was the single element nature of the Logia's would prevent that, but I could see how it might not. Might add a clause there. Either way, I think the lawyer point is my charm doesn't seem to be doing what I want it to, seeing how you are conceptualizing it as an item creation charm.
The charm is meant to emulate the large scale terrain altering effects of Logia (such as freezing a lake, melting a frozen lage, creating a palcae out of sand) by giving them the ability to alter or create objects in the scene.
Honestly not sure how else to do this though, and I would welcome feedback
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- my house
If you don't mind me weighing in here, there seem to be two main issues here.
The first is the question of how Robin's techniques should be represented in Exalted, and part and parcel with that, how granular a charm should be.
My personal take is that charms have quite a bit of wiggle room vis a vis how their mechanical effects are represented in game. A charm that lets you, for instance, perform a grapple attack at range doesn't really care about what that grapple looks like. The difference between a rear naked chokehold and an arm bar merely come down to how the player chooses to describe the action.
To this end, Robin's DF is really only needs to be represented by about charm:
Flight Charm (For her arm wings)
Ranged Grapple Charm (for all her various submission holds)
Big Punch Charm (for every time she creates a big part of her body and hits you with it)
Spy Charm (for any charm which lets her grow sensory organs to spy on things)
A charm that grants her reach (for every time she grabs an item or does a melee attack or whatever at range. This covers her creating a train of arms passing objects to her assembly line style, it covers her pickpocketing by growing an arm on your back, it covers her punching you with an arm she just grew from your face, etc).
So a character doesn't (as you seem to be arguing) need a new charm for every one of her grabs for instance. They just need a ranged grapple charm. At least IMO.
The second is the question of improvisation. This is a very valid point, as Exalted does not model improvising new uses of powers very well. That said, I struggle to see how it could be done well in a crunch heavy system like Exalted. The only system I am familiar with that allows for that sort of improvisation is FATE, and it does that by basically turning all power usage into stunts. If you want to avoid the naval hazard, stunting being really good at sailing is not treated meaningfully different from stunting summoning a giant pair of legs to walk across the sea floor.
That said, I am not familiar with the TTRPGs you mentioned as doing this well, and would be interested in hearing how they tackle the problem.
Godbound isn't perfect, but its Miracle widget is tailor made for doing that exact kind of improvisation. You could give these Devil Fruit users some kind of 5m, 2wp: 'Improvise Some Bullshit' universal power to sort of mimic the applicability.
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How's it work in Godbound? I was actually considering taking a similar mechanic from Scion, but it was a little to freeform to feel like it worked in Exalted.
Godbound has Gifts that are roughly equivalent to Charms and their Do Magic pool is called Effort. You commit Effort to do various things with some effects lasting as long as you commit the Effort to it and you get back that Effort when you turn it off and some where the commitment lasts past the effect itself, representing significant expenditure of power. Miracles, in this case, require you to commit Effort for a day.
As for what they do, you can use a Miracle in a lot of ways that's broadly limited by what your GM will let you get away with. You can replicate a Gift you don't have(Gifts that normally commit Effort for a day commit 2 when used via Miracle), suppress another character's Gift offensively(turn off their armor, for example) or defensively(turn off their attacks) if it makes sense for the Word you're using as a Miracle(ie, using Sea to quench Fire or Sun to dispel Night), enhance or create an attack or defense, make something relevant to your Word(use Fertility to create a fruit bearing tree or a trent to beat up people for you), change something in a way that's relevant to your Word, or to solve a problem in a way that makes sense for your Word.
There's more specific mechanics and a lot of it is predated on you and the GM agreeing that, yeah it makes sense for a God of X to be able to do this thing even if they don't have the specific ability on their sheet, but that's the gist of it.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
There's a free version of Godbound available on DriveThruRPG, too.
It's not got perfect congruence with Exalted. Godbound PCs are more given to going "I have said there are crops in your fields today, so there are crops in your fields today" than the more active efforts of an Exalt. It does approach a lot of things in its own way and can be interesting to consider or play on its own merits.
The Deluxe/paid version has a few more interesting mechanics and suggestions for "themed Godbound" which is 100% a conversion guide for Exalted wearing a false nose and mustache.
It's not got perfect congruence with Exalted. Godbound PCs are more given to going "I have said there are crops in your fields today, so there are crops in your fields today" than the more active efforts of an Exalt. It does approach a lot of things in its own way and can be interesting to consider or play on its own merits.
The Deluxe/paid version has a few more interesting mechanics and suggestions for "themed Godbound" which is 100% a conversion guide for Exalted wearing a false nose and mustache.
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Huh, I can see the appeal, but I'm not sure such a system would really work for something like exalted. Part of the appeal of crunchy games is that they remove the uncertainty from the player and remove the burden of arbitration (to an extent) from the dm. I wouldn't want to worry that my power won't work because I don't sell it well to the DM (which is in sharp contrast to Mage the Ascension where I love worrying about that because it is built into the core gameplay).
Another possible fix is to allow characters to go into XP debt to learn new charms when dramatically important, though as usual it would be limited so you can't sue this ability if you are already in xp debt. That way, as @KymmeSeventh says, you could have a power improvise a power they'd never used before. They would just have to spend time after the fact to learn it, which feels setting appropriate to a game inspired by shonen action.
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- Ottawa
Here's the thing. Robin's fruit could always make clones. Robin herself only learned that move after the timeskip. Because the way Oda writes his fruit-users is very similar to the way you'd play a PC with a list of Charms. There are surprising one-time improvisations, but they're exactly the kind you'd see from an intelligent player using well-written and moderately broad Charms.
Every fruit overflows with moves its user doesn't know. The Gears were always possible; Luffy just didn't know 'em. Charmsets actually do a beautiful job of representing the way fruit-users gradually grow their bags of tricks, while generally relying on the same staple moves.
A more free-flowing approach might actually require you to be more restrained, since many of the most powerful fruit applications are not things you could reasonably just declare on the fly. Take the Enel vs Luffy example from upthread. Luffy's player couldn't just say "doesn't work, I'm lightning-proof" when the main villain unloads on him. But if he bought the Charm beforehand...
...air Logia? Is there one of those?
I guess there's Ceasar, but I don't think we ever see him do anything even similar to that. In any case, a lens is not a telescope.
I wouldn't try to make one Charm for every Logia. Aokiji can freeze any nearby water into a solid object, on scales sufficient to turn ten islands into one for a week. He can also create crude objects made of ice. Enel, meanwhile, can reforge metallic objects into new shapes. That's three different abilities; they basically have nothing in common with each other. Should be three Charms.
Also the ability to make giant-sized feats of strength, the ability to grapple ridiculously large characters, the ability to grapple multiple characters at once, the ability to make arm shields to protect others with, the the ability to make feet to use as footholds, and the ability to make clones.
At least a dozen Charms, all in all. But not an unmanageable list.
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- Pittsburgh, PA
My reaction to the Getimian discussion from several pages back 
"Greetings, Dynasts. I am Kwang Kon Q'er, First Citizen of the New Deshani Republic. I have come to deliver a message to House Mnemon."
"Greetings, Dynasts. I am Kwang Kon Q'er, First Citizen of the New Deshani Republic. I have come to deliver a message to House Mnemon."
HalfTangible
Only half sane (it's less cringe)
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- Valkyrie, Primus
"The message starts with a G and ends with a O FUCK YOURSELVES!!" *fire*
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- They/Them
...huh. My 'nuts sorcerer whose head-over-heels for Mnemon and will bring Creation crashing down to woo her' character concept could be made into a Getimian now that I think about it... 'person who gentles a powerful person's heart' in the unmade reality would be totally valid.My reaction to the Getimian discussion from several pages back
"Greetings, Dynasts. I am Kwang Kon Q'er, First Citizen of the New Deshani Republic. I have come to deliver a message to House Mnemon."
...
...
Oh god I can just make an old mentor who taught Peleps Deled peace and acceptance in his own world and is now horrified to see what he became without him. Getimian!Iroh, lmao.
HalfTangible
Only half sane (it's less cringe)
- Location
- Valkyrie, Primus
An interesting note re:Getimians is that their very existence implies their motivation as well. For Shane's "succesfully wooed Mnemon" character, you would expect them to at least try and woo her again. Not because "I want to bring my world back", but because they care about Mnemon (or just cuz the sex was really good. Depends on the character). It turns a very esoteric and non-specific idea into a concrete goal for the character to work towards, and that goal is baked into their very concept. Very nice.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Tianxia is a wuxia game that runs off the FATE system that I've not played. Chuubo's Marvellous Wish-Granting Engine is a game by Jenna Moran of Nobilis fame, I've not played it and it's hard to explain but perhaps someone here with experience might be able to cast light on it. It runs off a diceless system.
Masks is a Powered by the Apocalypse game about teen superheroes - very Young Justice, very Teen Titans. I've played in several campaigns of Masks and in general have found the system to be extremely solid and flexible; the basic way of understanding superpowers in Masks is that they're less specific mechanical abilities than the boundaries that determine what is and isn't narratively possible. If a character can fly, they can fly - that's not a move in of itself, but it has a strong impact on how you can go about doing things.
Coincidentally I have just been rereading Chuubo's. It's... very unorthodox, but I'll try to explain anyway? To the best of my knowledge.
- Everyone has a list of ranked skills, that can be anything from standard "Larceny" to weird things like "Kung Fu" or even a philosophical position like "Birds are inherently untrustworthy." You add your rank in a skill with a certain amount of "Will" to create an intention. The rank of the intention is compared to obstacles and edge and stuff, and whatever has the highest intention takes precedence. So if I have an intention 4 "punch you in the face" and you have intention 2 "Not get punched in face", mine takes precedence. Skills broaden out with application, so with a good enough cooking skill, you can try to blow up the earth (though success is not guaranteed).
- This gets surpassed by "miraculous actions." Miraculous actions require spending "MP", but in exchange you basically just get to do the thing. If you have miraculous ability "I can turn cement into pudding" then you just do it, no questions asked. And miraculous actions always trump mundane actions, without a contest. Conflicts between miracles are resolved in their own way, with Auctoritas and Strikes.
- You also have bonds and afflictions, which are personal traits that are phrased as something that you Must, Cannot, or are Driven to do. You can use them to strengthen actions and strikes that are connected to one of these traits (For example, my Bond of "I must eat all bread I find" will supplement my intention of "I will eat all the bread in the castle of bread."). Afflictions are cosmically enforced, so they kinda happen automatically - An affliction of "I must know everyone's names" means that you do know the names of everyone, or an affliction of "I Cannot drown" means that you straight up just don't drown. Different locations and even narratives can have bonds and afflictions of their own.
- Advancement takes place through character arcs. A character ranks up a particular arc by doing a related quest, and then gets benefits from it which are very broad. They're divided between Mortal and Miraculous arcs, the latter of which is not necessarily stronger but works differently - for example they have quest miracles that are carried out over the course of the quest and get stronger as the arc nears its conclusion, and they also get some particular unique perks exclusive to them.
- The game encourages a lot of rules-lawyering on part of everyone involved also.
- Location
- Wingmaiden's Reach, the Near Roofs, Town
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Everything @Amidatelion just said, more or less; with the elaboration that while mortal arcs are largely freeform, miraculous arcs have very specific sets of miracles they give out, which is super-useful for modeling specific types of esoteric bullshit - for instance, a Solar represented in CMWGE definitely has the miraculous arc "The Ace", because the entire point of The Ace is that a character on that arc just wins.
Like. If they're using a mundane or Superior skill - not magic, and not any miraculous power - they just ... win. That's what the Arc is about. And so rather than having a charm for "I balance so well I can fly" or "I prescribe sugar pills so well that the patient regrows an arm" or "who needs tools I'll work the molten iron with my fingernails", all of that just gets folded into The Ace which just says "yeah, you can't ... really ... lose? in mundane contests; and at higher levels your mundane actions can oppose miracles or do ridiculous impossible bullshit."
Also I have written about Chuubo's in the context of using it for Exalted before, if that's useful to anyone; specifically with an eye to its XP and Quest systems and how those tie into dramatic pacing, character development, and character advancement.
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- Location
- my house
So, these all sound like good systems to emulate exalted (CMWGE in particular sounds really fun, so if you ever run a game @Thelxiope hit me up) but they are also all very rules light systems. And so I don't think you can really integrate their fixes into exalted without using a similarly rules light engine.
And honestly, part of the appeal of exalted's system is the crunch. While I wouldn't be against using those systems, I also don't think I'd want them to be the mainline game either.
And honestly, part of the appeal of exalted's system is the crunch. While I wouldn't be against using those systems, I also don't think I'd want them to be the mainline game either.
- Location
- Wingmaiden's Reach, the Near Roofs, Town
- Pronouns
- She/Her
*looks at the CMWGE main rulebook*
*578 pages long*
'light' rules, yes.
Personally, I would describe Chuubo's as an extremely crunchy, extremely simulationist game which is just simulating shit (i.e. narrative and dramatic structure) most games don't actually care about. I also don't think of it as being particularly "rules light" in ... really any way?
Like, here, let's look at one of The Ace's actual miraculous powers (specifically, the one called The Ace, for which the arc is named; and which I don't feel guilty about sharing verbatim because it's on Jenna's tumblr anyway so)
The Ace
Arc 1+Type: Miraculous Action
Cost:
- 0 MP—starting mid-scene, take 1-2 enhanced actions
- 1 MP—see "Push Yourself," below.
- 2 MP—starting mid-scene, all actions are enhanced
- 4 MP—enhance arbitrarily many actions for a scene.
You probably think of this IC as determination or the fruits of long practice, but from a game standpoint this is "wish power"—the power of your heart molds you into someone more like the person you want to be.
You can invoke The Ace and the mundane Intention it supports as a single action. Alternately, you can invoke the Ace to support an Intention that you already have.
Arc 2. At Arc 2 the bonus from the Ace becomes a +2 Tool.
Arc 3. At Arc 3 you perform the action "perfectly"—it flows from the power of your wishing heart, not from your fallible mortal flesh and brain. The HG may veto perfect execution of Obstacle 5 actions; otherwise, and for Obstacle 0-4 actions, this has the following effects:
- your Intention is executed with perfect timing.
- you may ignore level 1-2 Skill penalties.
- your Intention is faster, more powerful, more graceful, and more skillful than any opposing miracle that loses a conflict with the Ace. More generally, it is better at any fundamentally human quality, if you're human, or, if not, at any fundamental quality of whatever else you may be. If this can provide a halfway plausible (or better) justification, this allows your actions to contend with miracles: incredibly powerful jacks-playing technique, for example, won't stop you from being turned into a bird, but an incredibly fast dive behind cover or an incredibly powerful meditative stabilization technique might.
- if your Intention is in conflict with an Intention enhanced by a miracle, and that miracle loses a conflict with the Ace, your Intention may overcome the miracle's effects. It automatically overcomes any effect that says that it can't win or can't compete; for anything else, it must defeat the opposing Intention.
- you receive a +2 Tool bonus, as above.
Arc 4. At Arc 4 you may augment the Ace with:
- the strength of a bear and/or
- the mental speed and precision of a computer.
Arc 5. At Arc 5 you may augment the Ace with the benefits of Legendary Master (which we'll cover next time): a "light foot" technique, perfect body control, and the ability to flexibly exert your full strength through any part of your body (e.g. in a one-finger stand or a wall-breaking sneeze.)
[1] Don't judge me.
Examples
- (Arc 2) a mountain cat wanders into your café while you're having a fun conversation. You give it a look, grabbing a +2 Tool bonus on top of 4 Will (1 + 3 from A Higher Standard) to make this impressively intimidating despite no relevant Skill. It hesitates, then wanders away.
- (Arc 3) you're trying to remember to call your doctor—but the evil parasite in your brain is trying to make you forget! After some stressing and dialogue to get to mid-scene, you invoke the Ace. Your Intention 4 jumps to 6 and gains "perfect timing," meaning that if you do remember it'll be at a moment when you can actually make that call. You ignore any Edge the evil parasite might get from Superior Evil Parasite 1-2, but if it has Superior Evil Parasite 3 it can still overwhelm you with its brain-spike. If the parasite is using a power like Conversion to control you, and you somehow win the miraculous conflict against it, your will to remember is more powerful than its attack, and that control will fail; if it's physically erasing the data from your brain, though, and you're just "trying hard to remember," being "more powerful" won't help and you'll still forget. You'd need to be using mental discipline to move the memory around and constantly associate it with new things, or something like that, to win … even with a higher effective Arc + Strike!
- (Arc 4) You're wrestling Jane Bjornsdottir, who is roughly bear-strength herself. This gives her Edge 3 against most people, which the basic Ace package won't cancel out—but being as strong as a bear, of course, absolutely will!
- (Arc 5) You leave most scenes—specifically, the scenes where there's a roof nearby and you have uses left of the Ace—by jumping away along the roofs.
...
though ...
Hmm. I'll think about how I'd attempt it. Everyone else, carry on
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- Location
- The North
I think the argument could be made that Tianxia and Masks are rules-light, but I think it's a mistake to think that Chuubos is anything other than a very, very crunchy system. A starting Chuubos character can have a character sheet twelve pages long, packed with dense text. In Chuubos, specific descriptions of how your Skills and Perks work is rules text, and that's not even getting into how many moving parts there are when it comes to things like scaling Bonds and Afflictions and Issues.
I don't think that you need to make Exalted into a rules light engine to fit the kinds of rules like Masks 'Unleash Your Powers' move, you just need to make sure that you're putting all the crunch in the right places.
So, 'Unleash Your Powers' is a move that is rolled whenever a character in Masks wants to use their powers to reshape the environment, expand their senses, or overcome an obstacle, and the success or failure of their ability to do so is both in question, and would be narratively interesting. If a character who can casually outrace bullets wants to overcome the obstacle of 'the villain is escaping in a getaway car,' there's probably no need to roll the move - they just catch up and play continues from there. But, when all of these factors align, like if their level of speed is only mildly superhuman, the character rolls some dice and consults this move. The potential results of this move are as follows:
- They do it. Whatever they were trying to do happens. In the case of someone with mildly superhuman speed trying to catch up to a getaway car, they manage to do it. Maybe they've been this fast all along, but just never had cause to push themselves?
- They do it, but there's an issue. Maybe you have to mark a Condition (that's like taking an injury, basically) or they consult the GM, who tells them how their effect is unstable or temporary. Maybe, in the case of someone with mildly superhuman speed, they catch up to the car for a moment, but they can't maintain this level of speed for long.
- The GM decides the outcome. This can mean a lot of things. It can mean that they just fail outright, they succeed at some great cost, they're offered the choice between one of several options, etc. One of the strengths of Masks is that the exact conditions of failure are something that is specified moment to moment. You can even roll a failure and still succeed, but often the GM will use that as an opportunity to twist the knife and make your success a bad thing.
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