OK, @Hazard ? I haven't commented because I've been too busy laughing at the arguments in favor of the charms, but your argument for point number two is one they will probably focus on as false. Counting "a region" as something other than "the target reason" is, from what I can tell, basically universally called out as the kind of deliberate misinterpretation they're saying all your arguments are. A better point is that nothing says the studying of the region can't be done from books from another country, or from reports from your spies who are looking for things no-one will ever try to hide, because it's too broad and they don't have to do any searching, just record what they see passively by traveling through. Either of those can be done safely from in a bunker.
General Exalted Thread
I deliberately went for the most exploitable possible interpretation that's legal by RAW. Because a ruleset should be clear, and the rules as written clearly state 'a region.' Ruleslawyers and munchkins will try to use this, and not every ST has the social skills necessary to keep that kind of abuse of the rules in check.
It's even a loophole that can be covered by inserting a single word in the sentence, although as you note that still leaves several major loopholes. I would've pointed them out in a later post.
I'll note I hold the opinion that RPG rulebooks should be sufficiently massive that they can be thrown with enough force to inflict Bashing damage for dealing with exactly this kind of ruleslawyering shenanigans. And that's not hyperbole...
Wakka
Shadow Cabal Man in Black
- Location
- California
Given that Exalted is at least partly about the consequences of ill-thought out courses of action using large amounts of power, the ST should probably just say 'yes.' Of course, annihilating the Blessed Isle with a falling star then causes all kinds of fun things to happen. A giant Shadowlands, a second Balorian invasion, the ire of Heaven directed at Solars in general, martial law as invoked by Ketchup Carjack and backed by basically everyone. For example. I'm sure that people more familiar with Exalted lore could deliver further levels of amusing consequences.
Can the party get out of it? Yeah, probably. PCs are generally good at surviving. But the game is going to be more about surviving the horrifying cataclysm nBSG style than making Creation beautiful again.
EDIT: I'm sure the group would definitely feel like heroes for a little while, though.
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And this time, you're playing the Cylons.
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Wakka
Shadow Cabal Man in Black
- Location
- California
Kind of. If the Cylons had created a few nukes with jump drives on them and then turned Caprica into a wasteland and suddenly there were a bajillion angry Battlestars coming to murder their faces.
That's not necessary. There are, I think, three levels of scrutiny that need to be talked about.
The strictest is absolute strict legalism. If something is vague you can just take it to be as potentially game-breaking as possible. If it says "destroys a city" you look at the largest city in the world and flattens it entirely. This is only what you want to do for some extremely mechanically sensitive charms. This is not actually a great standard to use for RPGs because of wordcount. Legal writing uses it all the time but legal writing has the advantage of everyone already knowing the legal terms of art, which are legal terms of art so we can work under this standard where you say exactly what you mean.
Less strict is the Chungian interpretation-"the rules say exactly what they say, nothing more. A rules question is interpreted by looking at the strict text of the rule and the minimum necessary to comprehend it." We'll call this the textualist interpretation, because it's most analogous to the textualist method judges sometimes use to talk about law. This is actually a rather common way of looking at the rules, from what I see. People don't like having to think about hundreds of pages of other content to inform what a single charm does.
You then have the contextualist interpretation-"the rules say what they say, which is informed by the setting-we interpret the rules in a way which maximizes setting verisimilitude when there is ever a question of rules." If you keep repeating that your game mechanics are divorced from your setting, it makes this argument much harder. The most obvious argument against a Solar WMD Charm letting you do unstoppable untraceable stealth nukes is that the Blessed Isle is not covered in blast craters from radioactive meteors and is not called the "Blessed Isle" because you will very rapidly be blessed by a lethal radiation count if you step on it without the right Survival charms. This is what I think Exalted 3E's wrong lesson is about Jon Chung's criticisms. Having your mechanics closely reflect the realities and assumptions of the setting make it much easier to comprehend what the limits might be. If a big plot point was that a bunch of paranoid ubermensch were stabbed to death, it tells you that 'immunity to stabbings' is probably not a power available, and this is just an example.
Contextualist and Textualist interpretations of RPG rules are incredibly common. Denying that they're a valid way to see your game, especially when you think homebrew is going to play a major part of your game (Exigents, Evocations, etc.) is not a very good idea. People are confusing "we aren't writing a legal brief" with "the game doesn't need to hold together with a textualist interpretation."
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Because it is their bread and butter that is being fucked with, damn it! It's a simple enough deal: if the volcano god is getting angry, you dump some prisoners inside and get him to quiet down. It's the foundation of much of the West's legal code, and it's enough of a benefit for these gods that the relationship has lasted for more than a few centuries, instead of them blowing their top and wiping out anyone nearby. Just because it's a protection racket doesn't mean that they are okay with someone else killing off the goose that laid the golden egg. I mean, yeah, you can stamp your feet and say no, this charm exists solely within the bounds of my white room scenario and attempting to bring in stuff outside of the charm's scope is cheating. But claiming that 'well obviously the gods don't care about all their worshipers getting killed off' is a laughable stretch. You're doing that thing where you're twisting yourself into a pretzel to maintain the purity of your original argument.
It's still pretty rich how you're acting like it's such a big no-no to consider how a Charm might work in the greater context of the setting instead of just on paper, when last year you gave us reams of words about how it's only logical that the Realm would resort to stuff like Female Genital Mutilation for its citizens just to offset the greater narrative impact of Celestial Bliss Trick?
Oh let's not wander too far away from what's actually in the description of the Charm versus what's going in your head! What's written on the tin of the charm is a disaster happens as determined by your ST. What's not written down is "this charm is pretty much Glorious Starfall Nuking, and once put into action is simply an autonomous process that can never be stopped."
Oh no, not or anyone else. Just you. You specifically. I get that you don't see your reading of God King's Shrike as a Good Thing, but I also believe that you'll disagree with any argument that might say something different because you're really invested in being correct.
Stop. We've already been told that Exalted 3E is not meant to model the Usurpation, the Primordial War, or whatever. It's meant to emulate a game set in the Age of Sorrows. If they wanted to run a game set during either of those two eras, they wouldn't use the 3E rules to model it, they'd make up a different system.
Yes? I don't know where you're getting that I argued that, but I'm getting exasperated that there seems to be such a disconnect between what I'm saying and what you're reading.
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Fortuna
Court Astrologonomomancer
The apparent contradiction goes away when you realize that he's arguing that it's important for a Charm to work from both perspectives. Which is a reasonable position and one I agree with.
...yes. That was his point. 'This argument does not work because of this assumption about the game system, which I disagree with' is a contention about that assumption, not about this Charm in particular - although it does mean that contextual assumptions about how this Charm works based on the setting are less powerful, that doesn't seem to be your root argument anyway.[/QUOTE]
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
If you think he's debating in bad faith, there are mechanisms in place on SV to deal with that.
If you choose not to use those, stop using the assertion that he's debating in bad faith like this. It looks a hell of a lot like a convenient excuse for you to not provide evidence right now.
I'd like to think I am arguing against his points, it's just that I'm pretty certain it won't sway him. He argued there was no supernatural intervention that could predict the disaster in time, I mentioned that we're in a setting where supernatural intervention is extremely ubiquitous, he argued 'well the powers that be just won't intervene on the behalf of their worshippers,' ignoring the fact that worship has yielded tangible benefits from deities all the time. Because even if they don't like the mortals, they certainly like what the mortals are giving them. It's not something shocking, it's something that's been made clear in the setting many, many times.
I'm pretty sure the response will just be more attempts to justify why a god could not or would not intervene, or else he'll continue to maintain that, because it's not covered in the scope of the charm then it simply cannot happen period.
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Roadie
A plate full of blins and a cat nearby.
Well, Yu-Shan is a city.
Arguing that stuff that doesn't currently exist in the rules will keep the rules from happening as currently written is a pretty poor argument that the rules as currently written are good.
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Carrnage
Human
- Location
- New Zealand
Huh.. so out of chargen a solar can essentially decapitate creation?
This may be worse than creation slaying kick.
Well let's be fair, I'm not the one also arguing for stuff that isn't really laid out by the rules one way or another either.
For example.
Except for your argument to work, you must convince people that at all times the gods will care enough to give early warning. As @Hazard and several others have clearly shown, many people think that the gods caring enough is an exception and this is apparently a reading valid enough that multiple people have come to it independently. And you're still attempting to deny that textualist interpretations are valid at all when people are pointing out this is a valid textualist interpretation and claim they're "cheating."
Ah yes I was waiting for you to fail to impeach me. See, that's different. That was "this is a valid reading of the charm supported by the rules. This leads to sex being a bad thing. Therefore, because the Realm is fucking paranoid about Solars, it is likely to engage in actions to suppress the idea of recreational sex to minimize things like this happening." An analogous argument with God King's Shrike is "this charm exists, so either the Wyld Hunt should be absurdly good at predicting and suppressing Solars or Creation should have several cities wrecked because over a thousand years of a couple of Solar shards reincarnating. Therefore, the conclusion is that the Charm should be... rewritten to reflect that Solars are unlikely to be able to manage to do more than light a small town on fire with this or the setting should be rewritten to reflect that 'Solar gets through cracks of Wyld Hunt, drops meteor on major city' should be something people practice to deal with.
Both of which don't actually harm my conclusion. So in fact, bringing that up only reinforces my point. The context of the setting says the Charm as written doesn't make sense. My conclusion is that the Charm should be rewritten to reflect the setting. You should probably stick to actually arguing on the merits-you'd look a lot more dignified and your points wouldn't be any weaker.
Yes, what's not written down is "this charm can be stopped." What's not written down is "this Charm isn't actually that bad and a starting Solar Circle or Sworn Brotherhood should be able to prevent the disaster from happening." Two can play this game, and if we play this game it doesn't help you. It doesn't say "someone can see this Charm activate." It doesn't say "the gods of the disaster are aware of what's happening." Playing the textualist game isn't helpful here.
The charm says "a disaster happens" and gives a valid form of this disaster as "a falling star destroys a city." So it's entirely valid for a Solar (we'll call him Fat Man) to declare that "the Tunguska meteor screams down from the heavens and flattens the city of Gem as it explodes in midair." (With about 10 minutes of warning if that.) This is 'what's going (sic) in (my) head.' I'm just taking a perfectly reasonable reading of what you can do with the charm. Unavailing accusations of lack of reading comprehension also don't strengthen your argument because it only convinces people who are already convinced.
I don't know why you think that. The reason I'm not convinced is because your rebuttals, when they aren't character impeachment, involve saying "this is a perfectly valid alternate scenario" at which point I go "okay, so?" I'm saying that the scenario @Jon Chung posited can happen because it is a reasonable reading of the standalone text. Your argument is that there are plenty of things that can go wrong in between that minimize or mitigate the impact. This is tangential to the point that "what if everything goes as planned without intervention" is still a valid reading. If you want to counter that, you have to show that either the reading is unreasonable or that everything in the book shows that you will definitely have a magical actor who can know about it and will be in position to do something about it with the right abilities to do something about it. You have done neither.
There is a difference between 'not meant to model the Usurpation' and 'the context of the Usurpation and Primordial War are irrelevant.' "Not meant to model" simply means that for one reason or the other, the abstractions made break down when modeling another context. People are using it as a catch-all to go "nothing about the Usurpation or Primordial War should inform the present or the rules" which is absurd and weakens a lot of potential arguments.
"The game breaks if you try to have 1000 Dragonbloods and 100 Sidereals assassinate 300 Essence 6+ Solars who were poisoned!" is where you go "the game isn't meant to model the Usurpation."
"This Charm in both fluff and mechanics would have made the Usurpation impossible if the brilliant Solars of the First Age had invented it at any time during their reign" is not.
Because it's an incredibly common defense that keeps being brought up whenever a charm comes up and people question its effects on the setting and gameplay. "Well this is just an example you can't assume PCs or NPCs can get access to it!" It's important to establish what we're actually talking about.
...Yes, because you're creating a scenario that is "this can happen." This is insufficient when the assertion you are contesting is that you can interpret the Charm in a fashion which leads to a starting Solar being able to cripple entire nations they don't like from the word 'go.'
I didn't bring up Yu-Shan or the Imperial Manse in my examples versus "nuking a random kingdom the Solar doesn't like" because those places probably do have people with area-defending perfect defenses and enough supernaturals to detect and deal with any disaster even with minimal or no reaction time. Meanwhile, what I get for that is being accused of making the absolutely most absurd and uncharitable interpretation of the charm because ???
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Carrnage
Human
- Location
- New Zealand
Okay so what in the charm text or in the rules in general contradicts this intepretation?
Hmm, finally got a chance to fully peruse the preliminary 3E document. I'm not sure I'm seeing the problems with the Shrike Charm; it's powerful, yes, but the Solars are intended to be powerful and there are a ton of trade-offs. High prerequisites, high costs, a long ramp-up time, not to mention the indiscriminate nature of the effects in question. Who's to say the shadowland's armies will retreat, instead of turning on new targets? If the behemoth in question isn't slain, where does it go next? What about the knock-on effects of massive environmental disruptions?
Calling upon such power in all but the most dire of circumstances is imprudent, unwise, likely to create more problems than it solves... and wholly in-character for the wrathful reincarnation of a mad god-king woken from his centuries-long imprisonment. If the Solar in question really wants to nuke the Blessed Isle, let him try. The sudden cacophony of alarm bells going off in Yu Shan and astrological pronouncements of doom from everyone with so much as a thimble's worth of divinatory talent are sure to elicit reprisal, and he'll be knee deep in Dragon-Blooded Huntsman before the week is out. It'll turn a hot war even hotter, but the option should be on the table for those who are interested. That type of game is no more or less valid than any other.
Basically, I don't see the issue with Solars doing that kind of thing, so long as they don't do it without consequences. Raw excellence and power are their purview, and I'm frankly happy that Lore got such a cool Charm.
Calling upon such power in all but the most dire of circumstances is imprudent, unwise, likely to create more problems than it solves... and wholly in-character for the wrathful reincarnation of a mad god-king woken from his centuries-long imprisonment. If the Solar in question really wants to nuke the Blessed Isle, let him try. The sudden cacophony of alarm bells going off in Yu Shan and astrological pronouncements of doom from everyone with so much as a thimble's worth of divinatory talent are sure to elicit reprisal, and he'll be knee deep in Dragon-Blooded Huntsman before the week is out. It'll turn a hot war even hotter, but the option should be on the table for those who are interested. That type of game is no more or less valid than any other.
Basically, I don't see the issue with Solars doing that kind of thing, so long as they don't do it without consequences. Raw excellence and power are their purview, and I'm frankly happy that Lore got such a cool Charm.
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Wait, wait, hold the phone. I'm not getting into anything else but: are you now acknowledging that an area with enough supernatural support and defenders can deal with this Charm without it being 'rocks fall everyone dies?'
That's great, because that's what I was arguing for all this time.
A random kingdom of mortals hit by this charm is in fact boned though, not going to lie, but a group of Solars can bone a mundane kingdom in a thousand different ways.
EDIT: Is it wrong to assume that our differences in opinion are oriented around 'how much TIME to do people get to react to the charm?'
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- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Uh, I hate to be mean or burst bubbles or whatever, but is there any actual clause in the Charm that says you can't fire it from, say, a shadowland? Or a manse Outside Fate? Or, for that matter, Malfeas? Or the Wyld? Or anywhere else outside of the area the Loom of Fate can see?
Because if not, I can just... sit there and fire it repeatedly without the Sidereals ever being able to find me. They can get all the portents of doom they want, but Sidereals are overworked, there's only so much that Dragonblooded can do to stop a meteor blowing up a city or a behemoth capable of crashing through several cities in a row, and I have effectively no cost for this bar cooldown and can do it unpredictably whenever Heaven is stretched thin dealing with some other disaster.
And if the army of ghosts or the behemoth don't stop rampaging afterwards, then... what do I care? I mean, if the Charm forced me to actually be in the area I might be concerned, but if I'm sitting in my manse Outside Fate on the other side of Creation and firing it at enemy territory, then every day the disasters keep rampaging is just a bonus.
There are plenty of other ways I can bone a mortal or Dragonblooded kingdom, sure, but most of them at least require me to be there and thus be vulnerable to getting my face stabbed in. This one doesn't, so I'm laughing.
Because if not, I can just... sit there and fire it repeatedly without the Sidereals ever being able to find me. They can get all the portents of doom they want, but Sidereals are overworked, there's only so much that Dragonblooded can do to stop a meteor blowing up a city or a behemoth capable of crashing through several cities in a row, and I have effectively no cost for this bar cooldown and can do it unpredictably whenever Heaven is stretched thin dealing with some other disaster.
And if the army of ghosts or the behemoth don't stop rampaging afterwards, then... what do I care? I mean, if the Charm forced me to actually be in the area I might be concerned, but if I'm sitting in my manse Outside Fate on the other side of Creation and firing it at enemy territory, then every day the disasters keep rampaging is just a bonus.
There are plenty of other ways I can bone a mortal or Dragonblooded kingdom, sure, but most of them at least require me to be there and thus be vulnerable to getting my face stabbed in. This one doesn't, so I'm laughing.
Roadie
A plate full of blins and a cat nearby.
The Charm doesn't say there's any warning time at all.
...I've been aware of what you've been arguing for all this time. It's irrelevant because it's utterly orthogonal to the point that I've been arguing-that it can cause massive world-changing effects, without very charitable reading probably requires a lot more than what your average Godbloods or even Dragonbloods can muster to prevent, and people really need to think about whether or not giving starting characters the ability to nuke important cities from literally the word go.
So "some places have enough Celestials with area-effect perfects so that you can't nuke them." is not actually a rebuttal to "a lot of important places are probably not protected sufficiently to do so."
Carrnage
Human
- Location
- New Zealand
does third edition have anything like primacy of defenses that would allow UCS (as an extreme high end of possible people who might object) to parry it?
azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
The problem is that the charm doesn't give any suggestion that there are consequences to its use, or what those consequences should be. It also doesn't give any suggestion that the disasters can be averted, or how to do so. It also doesn't give any suggestion that the disasters can be seen coming, or who might reasonable do so.
No.
It works from everywhere, and it can hit everywhere. There's no limitations whatsoever outside of targeting a foe.
Well, if you're prophesying up a batch of capital-D Doom, it's only logical that you'd have to be interacting with the same system of causality you're attempting to influence, but it's not ever specifically stated in the text of the Charm. You shouldn't be able to directly manipulate fate while outside fate. This is just one of those times you have to apply common sense, otherwise you get silly stuff like nuking Chiaroscuro while you're sitting safely in Malfeas listening to the music of the angyalkae, which is just... bad. It gives the players too much freedom of action. Heaven's Viziers should be able to work to stave off the coming doom while their Dragon-Blooded puppets respected allies kick down the door of the manse the Solar in question is hiding in. The former scenario is just asinine, the latter is compelling.
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