I'll admit, Craft is questionable. It functions but it's inelegant and difficult to work with. Even so, it's still better than what we got than 2E though, and it's still a decent system even if the emphasis is placed firmly on wringing as many successes out of as few dice as possible.
It is better than Exalted 2E, but I don't think it's a decent system.
The Martial Arts divide is fine, really, because they are worth the investment they require. Pound for pound, Single Point Shining in the Void is superior to conventional Solar Melee, especially when we factor in Mastery.
'Take this merit that does nothing for you so you can get good stuff' is not a good way to do that. It's a practice that's been consistently condemned in RPG design for good reason. "MA is just that good"
is an argument for increased costs/barriers to entry, but is not an argument for those barriers to entry being
literal experience sinks. "Buy a thing so you can buy things that actually do stuff" is just
ugh.
The skill curve has most of the ability reqs at 5, but during charmbuy at Chargen the max your ability scores are at are 3, and you will more than know that you need abilities at 5 to get the rest of the charms further down the list.
3
unless you spend BP unless we're looking at different versions of the book. In addition, Abilities are on an exponential scale for experience use again, meaning it's more efficient to raise Abilities you know you want to 5 instead of raising them later. The top-heavy charms exacerbate this, as there's significant incentive to hit Ability 5 in a few Abilities to maximize your early charm-purchasing potential.
In addition, raising an ability from 3 to 5 with BP is
incredibly efficient. It's 2 points for Caste/Favored and 4 for non-Caste/Favored. The Exp cost for this is 12 (Caste/Favored) or 14 (Non-Caste/Favored). This is 6:1 conversion for buying a Caste Ability and 3.5:1 for Non-Caste.
Buying Charms, Evocations and the like, meanwhile, trades at 2:1. (4/5 BP, 8/10 Exp, depending.)
(This efficiency exists elsewhere. 4:1 exchange for Willpower, for example, 4:1 to buy the fifth dot of a Primary/Secondary Attribute, 3:1 to buy the fourth dot of same, 5.3:1 for the fifth dot of a Tertiary attribute, 4:1 to buy the fourth)
You are
massively incentivized to buy some of your Caste/Favored Abilities to 5 instead of raising them with experience which, once again, turns chargen into a game you can 'lose', entering the game at an effective experience disadvantage.
They're called Evocations and I'd really like to know what the problems are.
The way Innate works and the way they tie to artifacts has negative incentives and penalizes you massively for plots wherein your artifact is stolen/unavailable. It also disincentivizes using new weapons that you've forged or found.
I will admit that I'm terrible at names.
Homebrew is sometimes less about compensating for difficulties and more about matching to your personal preferences: see also the people who tried desperately to get Fighters worth a damn in 3E while everyone else insisted that this is how it's meant to be.
...Getting fighters worth a damn was about trying to fix a broken system, I think you might want an example about variant magic systems instead?
As for Hundred Faced Stranger, much like differences over the Doombot charm, that's just, like, your opinion man.
Yes, and your opinion on the matter is
wrong.
(More seriously, you asked for everything I didn't like. I think it has pretty shitty incentives and does not, to me, fit the Solar theme of human excellence. As such I don't like it and don't think it should stick around. Same with Doombot.)
It's really only bloat when the Charms in question are purposeless filler. Charm bloat is caused BY having a few too-big Charms that swallow too much design space, resulting in all the remaining Charms being irrelevant trash that nobody wants to take.
The absurd amount of situational dice adders (Or effective dice adders, in the form of reroll cascades and stuff) certainly counts as Charm bloat. They could have, without issue, been folded into fewer charms, or been simplified into a smaller set with a less annoying to read probability curve. I support simplification, as it makes it easier for new blood to join the game, and helps keep new people involved once they do join. It also makes it easier to balance shit and do mathematical analysis.
I'm posting the DnD stuff in the DnD thread to make sure we don't derail. I'll quote you there when the post's up, so you'll get an alert. (I've folded in the thing about the contractors there, but can edit it in here if you'd like)