Carrnage
Human
- Location
- New Zealand
oh that charm, IIRC it's just for hostility to yourself or your motivation, normal intimacies don't count.
General Exalted Thread
It's still pretty broken and wouldn't fit in EX3 with the new lack of Motivation.
azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
Hostile to a country you have an intimacy toward? No, wouldn't apply. Hostile to your loyalty/love/hatred/[whatever the intimacy is]? Yes, that's hostile to you. Your intimacies are part of you. That's like saying something hostile to your arm isn't hostile to you.
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
No, that's an absurd and exploitative reading. It would have included Intimacies if it meant for Intimacies to count, seeing as it calls out the Motivation specifically as distinct from the Exalt.
Carrnage
Human
- Location
- New Zealand
that makes perfect sense if you're a first age solar.
azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
Then what the fuck do you think a social attack that's hostile to someone but not hostile to their motivation is?
...Nasu really dropped the ball with Saber, didn't he. At least I now know why the fuck was Excalibur invisible half the time.
But what if I want to see combat vs Solars to be a crazy series of clash attacks?
Are you saying you now know why Invisible Air existed, or did you actually have no idea what was going on?
He at least aknowledged that according to some stories, Caliburn and Excalibur were two different swords, so...
King Arthur, IIRC, is pretty hard to translate, mostly because there are so many different stories about him- some which are, if I remember, mutually exclusive.
The thing is, you don't lose all your combat capabilities when you switch weapons, unless you've been building your character exclusively with Evocations. So, you can still represent that your hero uses a secondary weapon for whatever reason, but still, when a hero loses his weapons in myths, it's generally not an insignificant thing.
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Huh? What, are you having trouble thinking of examples, or am I missing something?
Saber in Fate/Zero and Fate/Stay Night isn't a proper Heroic Spirit, and thus doesn't have her full panoply. She just has what she had on that hill - Excalibur. Heroic Spirit Arturia would have all of those weapons and powers, class permitting (and probably a few more, knowing Nasu).
Fortuna
Graceful Topiary Artist
- Pronouns
- She/Her
A social attack that's trying to put you into a physically dangerous situation?
Reading the leak, the social influence system bugs me in a few ways.
I. Transactions
Most actions should be Bargaining, yet nobody notes that. Seriously, think of your social interactions and how you tend to convince people. "Look, we both benefit if I do this and you do this." There's a lot of give-and-take that the social system can in theory simulate, but at least on paper fails to. A lot of social influence, especially in the halls of power, is giving up something to get something, not discovering someone's preferences and wearing them down by beating on them.
The system doesn't actually note this, nor does it provide heavy support for this. It doesn't mention, for example, implicit favor-trading as a thing that happens (which is often a thing that happens) nor does it ever mention calling in implicit markers (which is again, a thing that often happens). It doesn't really support the situation where two parties are playing for a better deal but both actually want the deal to go through by RAW.
II. The Nature of Argument
Look at @EarthScorpion and @Omicron fencing at each other in this thread, for example. You can recontextualize that ("two people who disagree argue at each other") in a lot of places. A trial, an impassioned debate, simple argument.
Neither of them are convinced and if we statted both of them up in Ex3e (because they aren't trained spies and probably have 0 Integrity, Wits 2, and Charisma 2 and probably 1 dot of convincing people) what would be happening is that they keep convincing each other of this (relatively unimportant) issue. We can assume that both of them have intimacies defending against this but then we start getting into territory where you basically have to use the intimacy system to paper over the issue by assuming that everyone has tons of intimacies that change at the drop of a hat. Alternatively, you can take the other stance which is that neither of them were attempting to convince the other but rather to convince the crowd. This also works.
Either of these solutions is, broadly speaking, okay. Except both need to be explicitly stated. I expect that if I put in broadly realistic scenarios in Exalted that Exalted is intended to simulate, it gives me broadly plausible outcomes. And "two guys arguing against each other" is definitely it.
There's also a lot of really weird interactions with how argument actually works. It seems way too easy to erase Defining Intimacies. Assume a hypothetical martyr who has regular human stats but a defining Intimacy of (His Chosen Cause). You just need to find a major Intimacy and you can erode it in one 'action' which people are likely to interpret as simply one scene. Presumably our hypothetical martyr is human and has a major Intimacy towards keeping his four limbs. It's actually effectively a net +1 difficulty to convince him to give up being a martyr for his chosen cause. This is pretty obviously an edge case but it seems like it's a lot easier to break fanatics than it should be?
EDIT: Yes, yes, willpower, but the rules also say most people will simply not spend WP most of the time.
Explicitly having a separate 'intimidate' action seems redundant because intimidation IRL is playing off of something someone cares about, and thus should be playing off an Intimacy (like "I would prefer to keep all of my limbs in working order"). The Intimidate action creates negative intimacies as collateral but this is not a problem because;
Creating Intimacies as collateral is something that should be happening all the time. I have made arguments which were likely to alienate some people simply because I figured I couldn't get them on-side anyhow. What you are doing should have effects on people on earshot. If I try to convince @Omicron, it should be causing collateral influence to everyone else who is witnessing the action. If I threaten to throw @Omicron's pet dog (we will assume that he has a pet dog for this) into a woodchipper unless he admits Exalted 3E is a shit system made by shit people and everyone who supports it is a terrible person who is worse than Hitler, everyone witnessing it should probably think "That @MJ12 Commando guy is horrible" and gain a major intimacy of MJ12 Commando (Is A Horrible Dick). By RAW, this doesn't happen. In fact, because Intimidate is the only action which explicitly says it does that, and only mentions the target, people may end up believing that other actions don't normally do that.
(I can actually talk about how in law, what the laws don't say is often just as important as what the laws do say because it's relevant here but that'd be tangential).
III. Manipulation versus Charisma
Yeah yeah, legacy problem, okay. Manipulation and Charisma still do almost the same things. Guile was a good start, but still eh. Imagine if you had Dexterity and Agility as two of your physical stats and they do the same thing. Boring, right? Yep!
You don't lie/tell half-truths/dissemble to directly convince someone to do something, most of the time. You lie to hide an inconvenient fact or get someone to disregard evidence. I don't tell someone "I totally am an awesome investor" because I want to directly convince them of that. I tell them that because I want them to give me their money. And yes, you could argue that I'm taking two actions here, one to create an Intimacy and another to persuade someone to Do Something and you'd be right but especially since the timing and scope of a social attack is relatively loosely defined a lot of people might see it as one single social attack. In which case the guy who has a great poker face but can't convince people is equally potent as the guy who can ENTHUSIASM his way into the job.
This seems to be odd, especially since con men are pretty goddamn charismatic (it's short for "Confidence Men," remember) and in this system it's perfectly possible to simulate con men with Manip 5 Charisma 1.
This I think is a problem with having a robust combat system with fiddly bits versus a fairly streamlined social system with no fiddly bits. In a more complex system you could probably use Manipulation to cover up factual evidence or try to twist someone's Intimacies to support something that they don't quite support in the real situation. Have Charisma and Manipulation play meaningfully different roles instead of the largely interchangeable "Loud Convincing" and "Shady Convincing."
Alternatively, maybe a couple of good examples of social influence in action would help but too many words already.
IV. Miscellaneous Silliness
I'm not really holding this against them but it's still funny.
There are example penalties for things being supported only by fake evidence, but no example benefits. This is amusing because it means, continuing that scenario, @Omicron gets no bonuses to convince people with a screenshot of me threatening to murder his puppy, only that if he manages to make it stick other people will have difficulties convincing someone who has been convinced by @Omicron.
V. Conclusion
My conclusion is that it's a decent system to simulate being Phoenix Wright, but kind of has to be carefully massaged in a lot of other situations. It doesn't fall apart at a glance like Ex2E social combat, though, which is good, but I'm not really convinced that it's better than just saying "wing it?" in terms f creating structure.
I. Transactions
Most actions should be Bargaining, yet nobody notes that. Seriously, think of your social interactions and how you tend to convince people. "Look, we both benefit if I do this and you do this." There's a lot of give-and-take that the social system can in theory simulate, but at least on paper fails to. A lot of social influence, especially in the halls of power, is giving up something to get something, not discovering someone's preferences and wearing them down by beating on them.
The system doesn't actually note this, nor does it provide heavy support for this. It doesn't mention, for example, implicit favor-trading as a thing that happens (which is often a thing that happens) nor does it ever mention calling in implicit markers (which is again, a thing that often happens). It doesn't really support the situation where two parties are playing for a better deal but both actually want the deal to go through by RAW.
II. The Nature of Argument
Look at @EarthScorpion and @Omicron fencing at each other in this thread, for example. You can recontextualize that ("two people who disagree argue at each other") in a lot of places. A trial, an impassioned debate, simple argument.
Neither of them are convinced and if we statted both of them up in Ex3e (because they aren't trained spies and probably have 0 Integrity, Wits 2, and Charisma 2 and probably 1 dot of convincing people) what would be happening is that they keep convincing each other of this (relatively unimportant) issue. We can assume that both of them have intimacies defending against this but then we start getting into territory where you basically have to use the intimacy system to paper over the issue by assuming that everyone has tons of intimacies that change at the drop of a hat. Alternatively, you can take the other stance which is that neither of them were attempting to convince the other but rather to convince the crowd. This also works.
Either of these solutions is, broadly speaking, okay. Except both need to be explicitly stated. I expect that if I put in broadly realistic scenarios in Exalted that Exalted is intended to simulate, it gives me broadly plausible outcomes. And "two guys arguing against each other" is definitely it.
There's also a lot of really weird interactions with how argument actually works. It seems way too easy to erase Defining Intimacies. Assume a hypothetical martyr who has regular human stats but a defining Intimacy of (His Chosen Cause). You just need to find a major Intimacy and you can erode it in one 'action' which people are likely to interpret as simply one scene. Presumably our hypothetical martyr is human and has a major Intimacy towards keeping his four limbs. It's actually effectively a net +1 difficulty to convince him to give up being a martyr for his chosen cause. This is pretty obviously an edge case but it seems like it's a lot easier to break fanatics than it should be?
EDIT: Yes, yes, willpower, but the rules also say most people will simply not spend WP most of the time.
Explicitly having a separate 'intimidate' action seems redundant because intimidation IRL is playing off of something someone cares about, and thus should be playing off an Intimacy (like "I would prefer to keep all of my limbs in working order"). The Intimidate action creates negative intimacies as collateral but this is not a problem because;
Creating Intimacies as collateral is something that should be happening all the time. I have made arguments which were likely to alienate some people simply because I figured I couldn't get them on-side anyhow. What you are doing should have effects on people on earshot. If I try to convince @Omicron, it should be causing collateral influence to everyone else who is witnessing the action. If I threaten to throw @Omicron's pet dog (we will assume that he has a pet dog for this) into a woodchipper unless he admits Exalted 3E is a shit system made by shit people and everyone who supports it is a terrible person who is worse than Hitler, everyone witnessing it should probably think "That @MJ12 Commando guy is horrible" and gain a major intimacy of MJ12 Commando (Is A Horrible Dick). By RAW, this doesn't happen. In fact, because Intimidate is the only action which explicitly says it does that, and only mentions the target, people may end up believing that other actions don't normally do that.
(I can actually talk about how in law, what the laws don't say is often just as important as what the laws do say because it's relevant here but that'd be tangential).
III. Manipulation versus Charisma
Yeah yeah, legacy problem, okay. Manipulation and Charisma still do almost the same things. Guile was a good start, but still eh. Imagine if you had Dexterity and Agility as two of your physical stats and they do the same thing. Boring, right? Yep!
You don't lie/tell half-truths/dissemble to directly convince someone to do something, most of the time. You lie to hide an inconvenient fact or get someone to disregard evidence. I don't tell someone "I totally am an awesome investor" because I want to directly convince them of that. I tell them that because I want them to give me their money. And yes, you could argue that I'm taking two actions here, one to create an Intimacy and another to persuade someone to Do Something and you'd be right but especially since the timing and scope of a social attack is relatively loosely defined a lot of people might see it as one single social attack. In which case the guy who has a great poker face but can't convince people is equally potent as the guy who can ENTHUSIASM his way into the job.
This seems to be odd, especially since con men are pretty goddamn charismatic (it's short for "Confidence Men," remember) and in this system it's perfectly possible to simulate con men with Manip 5 Charisma 1.
This I think is a problem with having a robust combat system with fiddly bits versus a fairly streamlined social system with no fiddly bits. In a more complex system you could probably use Manipulation to cover up factual evidence or try to twist someone's Intimacies to support something that they don't quite support in the real situation. Have Charisma and Manipulation play meaningfully different roles instead of the largely interchangeable "Loud Convincing" and "Shady Convincing."
Alternatively, maybe a couple of good examples of social influence in action would help but too many words already.
IV. Miscellaneous Silliness
I'm not really holding this against them but it's still funny.
There are example penalties for things being supported only by fake evidence, but no example benefits. This is amusing because it means, continuing that scenario, @Omicron gets no bonuses to convince people with a screenshot of me threatening to murder his puppy, only that if he manages to make it stick other people will have difficulties convincing someone who has been convinced by @Omicron.
V. Conclusion
My conclusion is that it's a decent system to simulate being Phoenix Wright, but kind of has to be carefully massaged in a lot of other situations. It doesn't fall apart at a glance like Ex2E social combat, though, which is good, but I'm not really convinced that it's better than just saying "wing it?" in terms f creating structure.
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It doesn't happen because it's not supposed to. Even a 'minor' intimacy is still a profound emotional attachment to a thing or idea. Even if you fly off the handle and throw the most epic of tantrums, I'm likely not to care beyond the few minutes I'm reading the thread. If it becomes a regular occurrance, THEN I might get a minor intimacy of MJ12Commando (unpredictable asshole), and even that's unlikely unless you somehow manage to inflict lasting harm.
The system simply doesn't bother with fleeting passions and distates.
Fortuna
Graceful Topiary Artist
- Pronouns
- She/Her
If true, this seems to raise a further issue with the system - even if you don't form a lasting attachment to the idea that MJ12Commando is an unpredictable arsehole, it's still likely to significantly impact your interactions with him in the same scene (in the vein of 'Why the hell should I listen to you you horrible unpredictable arsehole') if he turns around and tries to convince you of things.
Which is a problem when to have roughly realistic outcomes, the system has to take into account fleeting passions and distastes and people spawning in minor intimacies very quickly because they get mad/etc. Otherwise you get the scenario where two people arguing at each other about something they care a little about but not all that much end up convincing each other (one or the other) a good chunk of the time which is nevertheless not actually very common.
And I would assume that people would actually feel a lot more than 'not caring for a few minutes' if I threatened to brutally murder someone's fucking dog over an internet slapfight.
Honestly? I wouldn't. The internet has done nothing for me if not thickened my skin.
Just, 'woo there goes some asshole assholing it up over some inconsequential bullshit on the internet.'
Honestly? I wouldn't. The internet has done nothing for me if not thickened my skin.
Just, 'woo there goes some asshole assholing it up over some inconsequential bullshit on the internet.'
Which might be a Minor Intimacy on its own, perhaps...
earthboy
(verified ape)
- Location
- NYC
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Maybe something like... scene-duration Intimacies.
You decide if you care enough to get mildly emotionally engaged for the scene. If you do, you get a bonus, and the ST can track "spent a scene feeling angry about elves" which might eventually result in a more permanent Intimacy forming.
Mechanically, it might act like a FATE-system minor consequence, in that it impairs you in some other way for the duration of the scene. If you decide that yes, you feel angry about elves, then you are angry and this reduces your options or capabilities somehow, in trade for helping support your social combat.
In regular combat, maybe this could be a thing too. A way to model "your opponent is me" declarations, or "you shall not pass", or other fleeting but tactically (and narratively) important concerns.
Giygas
Cutest Sawk i could find. Lucario is a nice extra.
I may not understand all the intricancies of the Social System, but i believe that could be represented by what is caused by a weakened Inspire action(weakened becuase normally it gives you effectively a temporary major intimacy).
Kylar
In Training Forever
- Location
- Canada
A lot of this is covered in the Traits chapter, when it talks about forming Intimacies generally. The Omicron's dog into the woodchipper example would be covered under this:
Also, as a side note, the monk stat block has resolve of four, which is probably a good starting point for a mundane fanatic. Even if you can get the bonuses to drop to +1, breaking difficulty 5 is hard for most mortals, if not nigh impossible. Exalts, well, your fucking exalts. Your supposed to be super-humanly good at convincing people.
(Semi-related to fanatics: Mist the Revolutionary is an awesome character. Crazy Wyld mutated swordsman that runs around overthrowing authority figures, and who has 'nobody could survive that' as a merit. The other one makes it nigh impossible to convince him to stop.
Antagonists was a neat chapter.)
The more general 'hate x on the internet' would be covered under:Ex3 said:
Just because this popped out at me:Ex3 said:
This probably a Threaten action, and not a Instill one. In which case they usually develop a negative intimacy to you, and you can't generally target their fanaticism Intamacies. You can make them do things, but you can't generally make them believe things. Well, unless your pulling an Itachi 'Hate-Me-And-Kill-Me' stunt. Then it will probably work.
Also, as a side note, the monk stat block has resolve of four, which is probably a good starting point for a mundane fanatic. Even if you can get the bonuses to drop to +1, breaking difficulty 5 is hard for most mortals, if not nigh impossible. Exalts, well, your fucking exalts. Your supposed to be super-humanly good at convincing people.
(Semi-related to fanatics: Mist the Revolutionary is an awesome character. Crazy Wyld mutated swordsman that runs around overthrowing authority figures, and who has 'nobody could survive that' as a merit. The other one makes it nigh impossible to convince him to stop.
Antagonists was a neat chapter.)
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azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
No, I want to know what you think it is.
So, attacks against important aspects of my personality aren't hostile? Someone who is attempting to convince me that I shouldn't care about my friends isn't making an attack I could defend myself against with SRoI, unless they're also trying to get me to follow them into an alley to mug me or something?
- Location
- Cyberspace
See Solar Craft
Part of the cost is "30 white xp", which is pretty valuable crafting stuff.
30wxp is in the range of the amount you'd need to finish (or fail to) a high level artifact. That's very much not a trivial expense to be blown on a one-use double.
My thought on "retcon" charms is that they're an attempt to allow the idea of a hero who anticipates the incoming surprise (which hasn't been revealed or even planned by the storyteller when the preparation takes place). For example, Solar Dave's lieutenant suddenly betrays and kills him with a Soulbreaker Orb equivalent. Mechanically Dave's player invokes this charm and the treachery fails. However, in story-terms, Dave learned that Dastardly Carol the Abyssal had attempted to turn one of his trusted companions, but didn't know which one or how successful it was. In an attempt to draw out the traitor, he spends months laboring over a duplicate in secret and uses that duplicate in his place at particularly dangerous moments.
Or to give the player the capability to pull the Device Ex Machina you see in every other "gadget hero" story, for that matter.
It's an awkward way of accomplishing this, I think, but I don't think there's an elegant way of doing so.
=====
On the lore teaching charms as a way of laundering crafting xp to "normal" xp for circlemates and the like - I'm fairly sure that the teaching process takes time and effort on the part of both teacher and student. If both are solars, that's time that could be spent doing quite a bit of other nifty stuff, like crippling the local satrapy, starting a cult in their own name, forging an artifact weapon for said friend and so on.
Or covering their tracks from the Wyld Hunt monks who are hounding them from district to district.
No? I mean, I could think that the new love of your life is going to ruin you. The motivation that'd show up is "wanting to separate you from your lover". Likewise if your lover is going to protect you from the assassin I hired, the same motivation will show up.
If I bluntly tell you your new love is bad for you or if I hint around their flaws or baggage - you can divine what I want to accomplish with the interaction. Determining the desired outcome of a conversation doesn't answer the *why* I want that outcome.
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True enough, and I do like the idea of having a selfbot (although *insert joke about Exalted decadence in general here* ).
I am concerned about the clunkyness, but there may not be an elegant way to pull that off. It's telling that this is my least favorite part of what I've read, though.
).I am concerned about the clunkyness, but there may not be an elegant way to pull that off. It's telling that this is my least favorite part of what I've read, though.
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Well... not necessarily. "I care about you and want you to stop hanging around those heroin addicts" certainly isn't hostile in intent.