- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
... oh, right. I'm the OP. Is it pinging people with alerts when I reply with lots of words?
General Exalted Thread
It depends on the settings you use. More likely, it's the fact that 100thlurker was pinged a few times using the @username command because if the firearms question.
Because you know muskets and nobody else does?
Yeah, that would be my bad. I asked for some help with a setting I'm making and Muskets came up. Apparently you're the resident expert here.
Carrnage
Human
- Location
- New Zealand
People are talking about the impact of gunpowder on a fantasy setting.
BELDERIVER (Soulsteel and Red Jade Daiklave, Artifact 5, with the Evocation potential of a 4 dot Artifact owing to its mighty inherent effect?)
Red jade forms the point and edges of this soulsteel sword. Turning its hunger upon its master rather than his enemies, the nature of the Belderiver is to consume its master in return for power. The soulsteel was alloyed with the ghosts of zealots and berserkers who died fighting for their causes or passions. The red jade was tempered in the unhallowed, obliviating flames of the Underworld's ghostly fires. Evocations can expand upon the ways in which the user burns himself up for power, or provide avenues for turning Belderiver's hunger outwards and towards his foes.
As a miscellaneous action which cannot be flurried, the wielder can invoke the Black Form, a temporary transformation that greatly increases his power at the risk of his life. His body bursts into ghostly black flames that produce no heat or smoke, and his eyes blaze with an unholy red light as Belderiver immolates his body and soul. This display is completely separate from the user's anima banner, should he have one.
While the wielder remains transformed, he does not respire the usual 5 motes per round. In return, he may double up to (Strength) extra successes when calculating the raw damage of withering attacks, add up to (Strength) extra successes to the raw damage of decisive attacks, add (Essence) dice to his movement actions, doubles his Stamina for the purposes of determining her natural soak, and ignores all wound penalites.
This power is not without limit. The Belderiver's master gains a pool of Endurance points equal to his (Stamina + Resistance) total. Each turn spent transformed (including the turn in which he transformed) spends one Endurance. Each turn spent outside of the Black Form recovers one Endurance, but the master's Endurance maximum pool is reduced by one for each transformation the master has invoked that day, until he experiences a full and restful sleep. The master may reflexively revert to normal at any time; doing so before his turn in a round avoids spending an Endurance point, unless he deliberately delays his action.
After exhausting his Endurance points, the master immediately suffers a level of bashing damage and reverts to normal, and then spends the remainder of that round and the whole of the next round dazed and weakened, unable to move, attack, defend himself or even speak. That whole round spent completely helpless still counts towards recovering Endurance.
Worse, if that bashing damage would fill a -4 wound level, or if the master suffers any damage (even bashing) to any -4 health level while still in the Black Form, she loses the strength necessary to resist Belderiver's consuming hunger. The sword utterly obliviates his body and higher soul, leaving only his moaning hungry ghost to mindlessly roam the world. Attempting to assume the Black Form while so injured results in the same fate. If the user is a spirit, they leave nothing behind and are utterly destroyed, without any possibility of resurrection.
Any effect that would render the character mentally incapable of acting, such as falling unconscious, automatically reverts the character to normal. Effects that freeze the character in a form of suspended animation where he does not physically experience the passage of time may or may not leave him frozen in the Black Form, as dramatically appropriate.
Evocation Ideas: Consume your self-control, falling into a blind, berserker rage. Consume your Endurance points for bursts of power. Consume your Intimacies, Willpower dots, health levels, body parts (accepting Crippling flaws), and levels of anima banner display for bursts of power or more Endurance. Consume corpses, the lifeforce stolen from victims through health track damage, the souls of victims slain with attacks, and the anima banners of victims injured with attacks.
Odin Sphere rules, and Oswald was my one of favorite characters to play.
I have no idea how balanced this sword is. Please offer criticism.
Red jade forms the point and edges of this soulsteel sword. Turning its hunger upon its master rather than his enemies, the nature of the Belderiver is to consume its master in return for power. The soulsteel was alloyed with the ghosts of zealots and berserkers who died fighting for their causes or passions. The red jade was tempered in the unhallowed, obliviating flames of the Underworld's ghostly fires. Evocations can expand upon the ways in which the user burns himself up for power, or provide avenues for turning Belderiver's hunger outwards and towards his foes.
As a miscellaneous action which cannot be flurried, the wielder can invoke the Black Form, a temporary transformation that greatly increases his power at the risk of his life. His body bursts into ghostly black flames that produce no heat or smoke, and his eyes blaze with an unholy red light as Belderiver immolates his body and soul. This display is completely separate from the user's anima banner, should he have one.
While the wielder remains transformed, he does not respire the usual 5 motes per round. In return, he may double up to (Strength) extra successes when calculating the raw damage of withering attacks, add up to (Strength) extra successes to the raw damage of decisive attacks, add (Essence) dice to his movement actions, doubles his Stamina for the purposes of determining her natural soak, and ignores all wound penalites.
This power is not without limit. The Belderiver's master gains a pool of Endurance points equal to his (Stamina + Resistance) total. Each turn spent transformed (including the turn in which he transformed) spends one Endurance. Each turn spent outside of the Black Form recovers one Endurance, but the master's Endurance maximum pool is reduced by one for each transformation the master has invoked that day, until he experiences a full and restful sleep. The master may reflexively revert to normal at any time; doing so before his turn in a round avoids spending an Endurance point, unless he deliberately delays his action.
After exhausting his Endurance points, the master immediately suffers a level of bashing damage and reverts to normal, and then spends the remainder of that round and the whole of the next round dazed and weakened, unable to move, attack, defend himself or even speak. That whole round spent completely helpless still counts towards recovering Endurance.
Worse, if that bashing damage would fill a -4 wound level, or if the master suffers any damage (even bashing) to any -4 health level while still in the Black Form, she loses the strength necessary to resist Belderiver's consuming hunger. The sword utterly obliviates his body and higher soul, leaving only his moaning hungry ghost to mindlessly roam the world. Attempting to assume the Black Form while so injured results in the same fate. If the user is a spirit, they leave nothing behind and are utterly destroyed, without any possibility of resurrection.
Any effect that would render the character mentally incapable of acting, such as falling unconscious, automatically reverts the character to normal. Effects that freeze the character in a form of suspended animation where he does not physically experience the passage of time may or may not leave him frozen in the Black Form, as dramatically appropriate.
Evocation Ideas: Consume your self-control, falling into a blind, berserker rage. Consume your Endurance points for bursts of power. Consume your Intimacies, Willpower dots, health levels, body parts (accepting Crippling flaws), and levels of anima banner display for bursts of power or more Endurance. Consume corpses, the lifeforce stolen from victims through health track damage, the souls of victims slain with attacks, and the anima banners of victims injured with attacks.
Odin Sphere rules, and Oswald was my one of favorite characters to play.
I have no idea how balanced this sword is. Please offer criticism.
FaeGlade Plural
Semper Legens
- Location
- Land of Bureaucracy
- Pronouns
- Plural/They
Weapon&Armor Artifacts in 3E really don't come with innate powers like that.
I could see an extra tag on them maybe, if they are of unusual construction. But mostly I highly doubt artifacts in 3E will get things like that.
And really, there is no reason not to make these powers into Evocations.
Start with a simple-action Emerald Invocation for the transformation. Give it some basic effects (don't make it as frontloaded as it is now!) and add on more effects via additional Evocations. Create some reflexive Evocations that branch off the permanent upgrades and intimidate or the like.
For the drawback, I would pick "when Initiative crashed" as its trigger. Make it progressively worse the more you upgrade the transformation. S
tart with ending the transformation (it costs a simple action to re-activate), which is easily achieved with the Perilous keyword. Then add on the bashing damage, then penalties to movement, defense or attacks while Initiative crashed. Hold the "killed by hungering sword" for the highest upgrade, and make that upgrade something that is optional to activate - an Exalt should have the strength to hold back a sword like this!
I could see an extra tag on them maybe, if they are of unusual construction. But mostly I highly doubt artifacts in 3E will get things like that.
It's WAY too frontloaded.
For the reasonable cost of a 5-dot artifact (that costs 5 of your ten background points at character creation, or as many bonus points) you gain what amounts to 4-5 charms. The damage-doubling is already worth one or two charms, the enhanced movement is worth one charm, the enhanced soak another, ignoring wound penalties another.
Not respiring motes does not actually balance this out. The enhanced damage alone is already worth 5 motes per turn easily, when compared to similar effects (Falling Scythe Slash doubles strength for withering damage and adds half strength to decisive damage, for 5 motes).
The Endurance-point mechanic seems needlessly complicated and just adds another thing to keep track off. It's only a drawback in prolonged fights or if you fight many times each day, too.
For the reasonable cost of a 5-dot artifact (that costs 5 of your ten background points at character creation, or as many bonus points) you gain what amounts to 4-5 charms. The damage-doubling is already worth one or two charms, the enhanced movement is worth one charm, the enhanced soak another, ignoring wound penalties another.
Not respiring motes does not actually balance this out. The enhanced damage alone is already worth 5 motes per turn easily, when compared to similar effects (Falling Scythe Slash doubles strength for withering damage and adds half strength to decisive damage, for 5 motes).
The Endurance-point mechanic seems needlessly complicated and just adds another thing to keep track off. It's only a drawback in prolonged fights or if you fight many times each day, too.
And really, there is no reason not to make these powers into Evocations.
Start with a simple-action Emerald Invocation for the transformation. Give it some basic effects (don't make it as frontloaded as it is now!) and add on more effects via additional Evocations. Create some reflexive Evocations that branch off the permanent upgrades and intimidate or the like.
For the drawback, I would pick "when Initiative crashed" as its trigger. Make it progressively worse the more you upgrade the transformation. S
tart with ending the transformation (it costs a simple action to re-activate), which is easily achieved with the Perilous keyword. Then add on the bashing damage, then penalties to movement, defense or attacks while Initiative crashed. Hold the "killed by hungering sword" for the highest upgrade, and make that upgrade something that is optional to activate - an Exalt should have the strength to hold back a sword like this!
Arms of the Chosen will feature such weapons.
We know they've written up an Orichalcum daiklave named Stormcaller, which summons a storm simply by being unsheathed; you need Evocations based around that front-loaded power to use the storm up and deplete its power before you can safely sheath the sword.
The Demented One has also explicitly told us that some Artifacts DO sacrifice Evocation potential for frontloaded power. I think the developers have even said that's their current plan for Autocthonian-style artifacts, as they currently do not plan for Alchemicals to have much or any potential for Evocations.
Hmm. It was based on Tiger Style's form and form-enhancing capstone, but come to think of it, the Black Form is not mutually exclusive with a Form Charm.
So yeah, that can stand to be toned down. The full wound-penalty negation stays, but perhaps simply add the lower of (Essence) or 3 dice to all physical Attribute ratings and derived values?
I don't mind adding a committed mote cost. Though that would seem to make Endurance too complicated.
The separate Initiative tracks created by Shining Point and Steel Devil Styles could also be called needlessly complicated and just adding another thing to track.
In Odin Sphere, characters have a Stamina gauge like in From Software's Souls and Bloodborne games, which depletes with every attack you make. The Black Form steadily drains Stamina even when you're doing nothing. And the story of the Belderiver is based entirely around how recklessly a master is willing to burn themselves up for power -- in one Bad End, Oswald kills himself for reaching too far (just trying to activate the form again while on the losing end of a fight), and his ghost (hungry ghost?) shambles away from the battlefield, moaning the name of his wife.
Cutting off mote respiration handily covers how exhausting the Black Form is in the immediate sense, since you can be assumed to quickly run out of motes in combat without it. But I didn't think it prudent to design around the idea that a player might remain in the form to the point of running absolutely dry on motes.
There sure is. Evocations offer multiple paths, but the Black Form is meant to be THE power of the Belderiver; the center from which all else derives. Any other powers are unnecessary and extraneous to its story. They're just there because Artifacts CAN have Evocations, and because the Belderiver canonically had a number of powers Oswald could unlock (though few to none of them work as Evocations for its materials or nature).
And I'm too tired and short on time to properly answer the rest of your points. Sorry.
I will keep considering your position, though.
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
and it's TIME for another ESSAY. The Tick System, Vision and Solar Awareness!
Welcome to the essay on the Tick System,
The Tick System
Historically, the tick system as devised in the ST system was intended to create a tactically crunch combat environment that could play fast and loose with actual positional information- basically you exchanged timing gameplay for location gameplay. DnD and similar games all used battle maps and such to create tactical environments, whereas Whitewolf and the ST system tried to use relative positions in time.
As we all are aware, this was a mixed bag.
Big Action and little action
This is a very frustrating bit of terminology that is as much an inheritance of 1e as well as anything else, but here's something to keep in mind.
Your Acting tick is often also called your Action. Inside your Action, you may take 1 or more actions, if you can flurry or not.
For the sake of clarity, I suggest you describe 'Action' as 'Your DV refreshes' or 'Your Player Turn'.
Splitting your Dice Pool
You'll see references to this in the 2e corebook every so often, and it is another 1e-ism. Back in 1e, characters would have to decide how many dice to assign to any given action- including defenses. Defenses were also rolled instead of abstracted into a Defense Value/static rating.
So if you had 20 dice between [Dexterity+Melee], you would declare a the start of your action that you'd attack with 10 and defend with 10. Charms would later give you enduring scene-long defense pools that made you largely unassailable.
What Splitting your pool means in 2e is a Flurry.
Action Speeds and You
For those of you who haven't had experience with tick-based systems, here's the rough of it- after determining your initiative order (who goes first across the initial span of ticks), you advance 1 tick through the count at a time.
Each time a person's acting tick come up, they may take actions, which include but are not limited to attacking, guarding, aiming, dashing, jumping, and attacking.
Actions have Speeds, which determine how many ticks a character spends recovering between actions. As mentioned in the previous essay, all actions in a flurry are resolved on your Acting Tick, even if you flurry multiple actions. Also all actions are resolved simultaneously across every tick, with caveats for further Storyteller control.
So you take an action, and you advance yourself through the tick counter, moving ahead X spaces. As the battle progresses, your acting tick will come up again.
Now here's the funny part: There are multiple action speeds.
It was quickly errata'd to cap the minimum speed of any action at 3 ticks, and here's why.
Starting on Tick 0, I have a Speed 6 attack. I swing once and wait 6 ticks.
Tick 6: I swing again. Tick 12: I swing again. Tick 18: and this is my third swing.
That was me acting 4 times over 20 ticks. What if I had speed 5?
Tick 0: Attacking once. Tick 5: Attacking again Tick 10: Attacking again Tick 15: Attacking again Tick 20: attacking for the last time.
I got to swing 5 times! Speed is great! What about Speed 4?
Tick 0: Tick 4: Tick 8: Tick 12: Tick 16: Tick 20:
Six times that time… Speed 3?
Tick 0: Tick 3: Tick 6: Tick 9: Tick 12: Tick 15: Tick 18:
Speed 2? Well I won't even need to rough that one out, you get to act 10 times at Speed 2, and 20 times at Speed 1!
Why is this broken? Because if those were normal actions, they all would refresh your DV- you'd get to act more times than everyone else, refresh your charm use faster, and generally do more during any given engagement than not.
But, what if… how could we maybe rescue some of this?
Editorial Mode engaged!
Attacks, at the core, should never casually get below Speed 4. Even at Essence 6+, Speed 3 attacks distort the game around them too much. Paying per-attack? I can buy that, but not a permanent static effect.
But other actions can be Speed 3- Dashing is fine as a Speed 3 action, Guarding and Aiming are both variable speed actions. Charms could modify Miscellaneous Actions to Speed 3.
As a further knob for custom charm design, consider borrowing from how Guard and Aim work- neither of them actually refresh your DV. Actions with a speed of 1 or 2 could have that as a clause of 'Too fast to refresh your DV', so you essentially attach them to a longer action later on. Guarding for 2 ticks then Attacking at Speed 5 is essentially a speed 7 action for the purposes of DV refresh. You could keep your charm use held in reserve until you started swinging, or had a combo that was designed to supplement this strategy.
Very little is going to break if you allow someone to Dash at Speed 1 and perform a Medicine Roll at the same time. Further, Dashing+ Attack with the implied Speed 4 soft cap, or high-cost speed 3 hard-cap means that attacks have a minimum speed they must be balanced around.
Short version: Actions that don't refresh your DV can for purposes of system-enrichment be shorter than 3 ticks. Actions that do refresh your DV should be a minimum of 3 ticks. Attacks and other win-condition Actions shouldn't get much faster than 4 ticks unless you're paying up front per attack for Speed 3.
Your mileage may vary of course. When in doubt, Attacks and DV refreshes should happen less often, in order to get a lot more mileage out of the Tick System's tactical potential.
An Addendum to Per-Tick Movement: Simultaneous Actions!
Even a Reflexive Move action is still an action for the purposes of resolving them, so they fall into these rules here.
I plan on doing a custom charm essay during the wrap-up phase of this whole project, and I think these rules will figure in closely as an example.
Join Battle, Ambushes, First Actions and Unexpected
Described on Page 141 2e Corebook, we have the introduction to Join Battle. It's complicated, so bear with me.
Now here's what a lot of people tend to forget, or don't realize. Fights don't always start with just Join Battle.
By the strictest definition, the Join Battle Action is the result of a player declaring they want to do something that requires Combat Time (ticks). It is usually hostile in nature, like drawing your sword or openly declaring a challenge.
Once this action is declared, the initiating player and everyone in the scene who chooses to Join Battle may roll [Wits+Awareness] to decide the initiative order. Not everyone who is in the scene will join battle, and it is a voluntary response. random civilians don't get involved in a big fight, after all.
The highest result among all characters who took Join Battle Actions is set aside as the Reaction Count. Any character with the highest or tied-for-highest result goes automatically on Tick 0.
In context, this is basically the depiction of the Fastest Characters in the scene- they are so alert and effective that they simply get to act immediately in combat time.
A critical, important note: The Join Battle Action straddles the line between Dramatic Actions and Combat Actions, and the latter includes DV refreshes. Joining Battle on Tick 0 is the same as having a speed 0 Join Battle Action, and your DV refreshes, including your Charm Use. This is why Join Battle supplementals work the way they do- if you manage to go or tie for tick zero, your charm use is free. This means you don't need to always stick a lot of Join Battle modifiers into an oft-used combo.
Every other character subtracts their Rolled Successes from the Reaction Count. The number left over is tick they begin on. Any result greater than 6 is flattened to 6. Whatever tick you end up on is termed your First Action, in the system terminology.
An interesting, and often ignored note: Join Battle is Difficulty 1, so you can fail it. (which essentially means you go on tick 6 automatically). Botches automatically force you to start on tick 6 as well. Of note for Storytellers, the action is written as caring about the rolled successes, not the threshold successes. Depending on your interpretation, this could mean a 1 tick difference in all your results, if you do or don't subtract 1 success from the result accounting for that difficulty.
Most players and Storytellers don't even remember, mind.
This concludes the basic Join Battle scenario of someone starting a fight by taking a hostile, perceptible action.
Let's try something a little more exotic. What if you want to suckerpunch someone?
That is modeled as an Unexpected attack. Note that this is not a flurry yet. The order of events is as follows:
Here's something to keep in mind- this suckerpunch or Ambush as the system describe is distinct from being hidden or otherwise being under Stealth.
Join Battle and Action Speed
Join Battle is also a Miscellaneous Action, by system-terms. It has a variable speed based on the Reaction count- and if it wasn't clear yet, you're intended to save that number for the duration of the entire combat.
The reason for this is again, due to the Battlewheel and the limit of Ticks 0-6 for purposes of deciding when people act.
Anyway, a new character wants to join battle after it's started. They roll [Wits+Awareness] and subtract their result from the Reaction Count. The difference left over is what tick they start on, minimum 6.
Strictly speaking, Join Battle has a maximum speed of 6, and a minimum speed of 0. If you roll Join Battle equal to or excess of the initial Reaction count, you act immediately, refreshing your DV and so on.
The Tick Six Clusterfuck
Under the 2e rules, the absolute slowest any character can be on Join Battle is Tick 6. This is because all players subtract their result from the highest result in the reaction count. The number left over is their starting tick. If the difference is greater than 6, the character goes on tick 6.
Why does is Join Battle capped at Tick 6? Because of the Battle Wheel.
For those who don't know, the Battlewheel is a circle divided into pie slices, usually numbered 1-6. (The people who act on Tick 0 are held off for the moment and go first anyway). You have little icons or beads marking out who is who, and place them on their appropriate ticks-slices.
As characters take actions, they advance themselves by 1 tick, or by the speed of their action, depending on the player's preferences and their understanding of the game. Since the Battlewheel has limited numbers, I think it's safe to assume that every action is resolved in the order of 'Characters on the lowest numbered slice first' You just can't lap yourself like with a Speed 7 action.
Anyway, the point is, the battle wheel locked Join Battle math into 'tick 6 or less', or the 6 or less rule lead to the creation of the Battlewheel. In any event, that's the clusterfuck.
Editorial: Some random solutions
I'm not going to list out all the nitty gritty terms of the actions except where the Borgstromancy is thick, mostly because if I dedicated too much more detail, I'd essentially be rewriting the core book into a new snarkier form.
At a system level, 'Doing Nothing' is an action, be it Guarding, paralyzed with indecision, or anything else. You will have an action speed and advance through the tick count, by hook or crook.
Your action options include, but are not limited to:
For good or ill, Exalted 2e combat was intended to be a very crunchy, timing-based tactical system with lots of granularity and room for sudden switches in fortune and efficacy. You are as players and storytellers, expected to be methodical in how you resolved combat, even in simple situations. You check ranges, you check penalties and conditions, and so on.
I think we all can agree that quite a few people who run Exalted weren't interested in that granularity. They wanted something faster, sleeker. This is not a bad thing, though it is a source of conflict between people who want a crunchy combat engine and a looser, freewheeling stylish one.
That is really the issue with Exalted: People want to play what they were sold on, not what the game actually is. This isn't wrong, but this fundamental miscommunication has lead to so much strife in the community that here we are.
I think that concludes the Tick System, for now!
Vision and Ranged Range
It's buried in the book in multiple places, and relies strongly on ST arbitration between the myriad rules, but here goes. The two places you want to look are Vision (Awareness) Page 135 2e Corebook, and Step Five: Subtract External Penalties/Apply Special Defenses, Page 148 2e corebook.
First, Vision. Vision basically describes how far your character can see under ideal conditions, and not-ideal conditions. In an ideal situation- a bright sunny day with no cloud cover for example, characters can see approaching ships or people as dots on the horizon. (Do remember that Creation is actually flat, though it does have hills, valleys, etc).
There's a chart that corebook provides, which is useful, but a little difficult to understand at first. Basically, you have a Light Source, like a bonfire or torch, and it creates a bubble of Clear Vision (No penalties).
Then, anything outside of that bubble is subject to the Poor Visibility Penalty (-1 external, subtracts 1 success from all rolls focused at targets at that range.
In the Bonfire example, it gives you a 10 yard radius of clear vision, and then another 10 yards of murky vision outside of that one. Trying to take any vision-based roll focused inside of this Murky vision range incurs a -2 External Penalty, and is, systematically, the Invisibility State. That'll come up again later.
The book goes on to explain that without charms or stunts, characters cannot make ranged attacks at a distance greater than twice the 'murky vision' radius. 10x2 yards in the case of the Bonfire example. The attacker takes -2 successes to their attack roll on any action within that 20 yards circular donut-shaped area however.
Further, Exalted actually models light source priority. If the light source is a Full Moon, it gives you X yards of visibility within its two range bands. But if you're carrying a torch, the open flame has priority, giving you much better light within its ranges.
Of note, the Exalted Anima (Solars especially) are basically built-in supertorches. Food for thought.
Amusingly, the book also points out that holding torches or other light sources means you're likely visible for miles (Remember, huge swaths of undeveloped wilderness, with almost zero light pollution overall). Characters holding light sources instead count as if they were in poor lighting, for the purposes of ranged attacks (-1 external penalty).
Lastly, vision penalties do not apply to blind characters, though this was one of the earliest errata'd elements of the 2nd edition corebook. Originally being blind was an internal penalty, but it was later revised as being External. Being blind incurs a -4 External Penalty on all attack and vision-based awareness rolls.
For characters with functioning eyes, as a sort of catch-all penalty, 'Can't see clearly' is a -2 penalty (which is essentially the same as the murky distance penalty above), and true, all-consuming denial of vision is -4 penalty. You're not supposed to stack these with the murky vision penalties though.
So quick summary:
The other factor related to this is your Weapon Range.
Fortunately, it's much simpler. Assuming you can see your target (which is the first step), you can aim and shoot at it with a Ranged Weapon. Ranged weapons have a ranged trait, for obvious reasons.
The listed range of a weapon is it's Ideal Range. (not a system term, just one I'm using). Any attacks within that range suffer no range-related penalties. If you can shoot an arrow 100 yards, any target inside of 100 yards is fine.
You can also shoot twice as far as you listed range, at -1 external penalty. 100 yards becomes 200 yards. You can triple your range for a mere -2 external penalty as well! So really, a bow with a 100 yard range is really a 300 yard range, with the caveat that the defender will have an easier time blocking or dodging your shot.
What's the Point?
Well, the point is, between all of that, the book never says what you do if you can't see your target. At a system level, 'Invisible' is not the same as 'Can't be seen'.
If a character is behind a wall and I have no way of detecting them, I cannot make an attack roll against them. This is actually the first and best defense against Ranged Attackers. This also applies to PCs and NPCs fairly equally.
Now, Exalted is full of superhuman feats and magic that let you do amazing things like target someone by their heartbeat, but those are meant to be meaningful exceptions, not standard assumptions.
Here's an important note however: A character who is not seen and not applicable for targets is also not establishing surprise. The aforementioned character behind a wall does not automatically gain ninja-like abilities because he was lucky enough to simply be out of sight when an archer was taking aim.
Instead, someone being hidden behind a wall may attempt to establish surprise without a stunt or charm, but they are not automatically established by dint of being currently unseen.
See the Invisible (Row Row)
In Exalted, being Invisible is a state or situational bonus that provides a significant boon to anyone who can attain it.
That about covers Vision and Invisibility, time for…
An Introduction to Solar Awareness
Like with the rest of the Solar Charm trees, Solar Awareness is all about superhuman skill. Amusingly, the Charms are actually surprisingly magical despite their low Essence ratings. I think it helps if you look at it like 'you are enhancing your ability to notice detail', not 'making your eyes physically or anatomically better'.
Awareness the Ability
This ability covers actions like Join Battle, Noticing Details (but not drawing conclusions- that's Investigation), and generally finding out information in the scene that is meant to be 'stand alone'. It's the "Look for a potential avenue of escape" or "Find the hidden attacker."
In context of games, the person with High awareness can be the one who notices the enemy's secret weakness (though not a PD flaw, those are system-opaque). I don't want to encourage a 'paranoia' style of constant vigilance, but being able to perceive so much extra information is a great asset for any group.
Using Investigation and Awareness Together
One thing that's bothered me about 2e for a while is that the various Keen Sense Charms don't interact with Investigation actions that well. If you have superhuman vision, you should ostensibly be able to perceive clues better, right?
Well, Storytellers have a few options- these are largely houserules and off the cuff suggestions, not statements on Exalted 2e.
First, allow players to apply Keen Sense/Unsurpassed Sense bonus successes to Investigation rolls with the appropriate rationale. You can't hear text on a book, but you can see that a given brush stroke was made under duress.
Alternatively, and this is a more nuanced approach, the Storyteller can, behind the scenes, increase how applicable finding a clue is based on the player's senses. If you don't have microscopic vision or a microscope, infinite Investigation Successes won't let you find microscopic clues. I'll get more into this as I describe the Charms.
And now without further ado…
Solar Awareness
It has four non-excellency charms, though two of them have three variants. This'll go quick.
Keen (Sense) Technique
Awareness 3, Essence 2
Requiring a degree of skill equal to a professional in some trade (a sentry or guard, etc), Keen Sense Technique is actually a cluster of three charms that all must purchase separately. They all require an Excellency as a prerequisite. It's a 3 mote Reflexive Charm that lasts for the Scene, and it's Combo-OK. You can put it into a good join-battle combo or danger-sense combo without much trouble!
As for what it does, Keen Sense adds 2 bonus successes to all Awareness Rolls based on whatever sensory package you picked. Sight, Hearing/Touch, and Smell/Taste, respectively.
More importantly, each charm gives you examples of feats that are now Applicable for Awareness Actions. It's described in the book as 'sensory impressions that are normally too faint for human senses to validly observe at all.'
Sight:
You can see the detail on a badge or piece of paper 500 yards away, at night. You can count the threads of a shirt, or with a Legendary Success (Threshold 5+) make out the movement of mites and similar small creatures on another person's eyebrows.
Hearing/Touch:
You can gauge fabric quality by running your hands over it. You can pull Daredevil feats, reducing the external penalty on fighting invisible opponents to -1, and reducing the Blindness external Penalty to -2. (Remember, blindness got errata'd pretty early). Note that these penalty reductions are in addition to the bonus successes granted by the charm.
While in combat, you still have to deal with the reduced -2 blindness penalty, Awareness Actions are taken at effectively no penalty
-4 reduced to 2, offset by +2 automatic successes).
Smell/Taste:
You can go full bloodhound, recognizing people by scent and getting an idea of what they've been doing by just how they smell. You can track by scent, gaining another bonus success (in addition to the +2 from the base charm) to tracking rolls against things that have scents. Mind you that the scent-bonus applies to tracking actions and awareness actions, but tracking actions are Survival, not Awareness. Something to keep in mind.
You can identify spices and poisons by taste- with a legendary success, you could detect an odorless, tasteless poison in wine, because it's presence dilutes the wine.
Lastly, this charm grants Bonus successes, not Dice from Charms. You can still use an excellency in addition to Keen Sense.
So what does this say about Solars? It's another example of mythic, superhuman feats that are still resoundingly human. "I see more, so much more than you." Waiving the need for tools like magnifying glasses or microscopes, etc.
A note about Dice and Successes
After a certain point, the number of successes you roll on a given action are irrelevant. This is explicit in the text of Keen Sense, and implicit in the system as a whole- certain actions, or results within actions, may or may not be applicable.
A Solar with a Charm that says "I generate infinite successes on an Awareness roll" is not going to get any more information than a mortal who had the same effect applied to them, because both the Solar and the Mortal quickly run into the problem of "I've run out of things I am capable of seeing."
Without tools or magic, you cannot see microscopic things. No amount of rolled successes are going to let you do that unless your Storyteller allows you to. Maybe they will, but they don't have to. Awareness Actions against microscopic targets are usually Inapplicable.
Keen Sense and Unsurpassed Sense Discipline make microscopic targets and other superhuman feats of sensory mojo valid for Awareness Actions, or Applicable.
Unsurpassed (Sense) Discipline
Awareness 5, Essence 2
Another cluster of Awareness Charms, these are the same in format to Keen Sense, save that they cost 2 motes to activate for the Scene and require the appropriate precursor charm to learn. Keen Sight Technique leads to Unsurpassed Sight Discipline, etc.
Regarding what the charm does- it doubles your successes on an Awareness roll before subtracting any External Penalties. Having looked up the Order of Modifiers (Page 124 2e Corebook), that doubling happens in Step 1 or 3. (Step 2 and 4 are subtract mundane/magical penalties, but it doesn't specify if they are internal or external.)
The reason this gets muddy is because Step 3 is 'Add Magical Bonuses', which include Dice by Charms. 1st Excellency is very straight forward, adding dice to the pool. 2nd excellency counts 1 success as 2 dice, so do they mean apply the automatic successes here, or in step 6?
Regardless, you activate Unsurpassed Sight and Keen Sight together. You define your [Attribute+Awareness] pool as per the order of modifiers, and you hold any Automatic/Bonus successes aside until step 6 of modifier resolution.
So a roll of 12 dice +7 successes; I roll the 12d and get 4. Unsurpassed Sense Discipline doubles it to 8, and then we add 7 automatic success for a result of 15!
Now mechanically, this fits in very neatly at Essence 2 as a Doubler, even if it's an awkwardly worded one. It has no actual magical component though- it's primarily an enhancement to Keen Sense; ensuring you'll consistently get Legendary or greater Threshold Successes.
Surprise Anticipation Method
Awareness 5, Essence 2
This is the Indiana Jones Charm. The "I have a bad feeling about this." Charm. It's that Charm you get when you want your character to have a prickling sensation on the back of their neck just before you step on a trap or get shot at by a blowgun.
It requires Awareness 5, but needs no prerequisites. It's high ability minimum reflects the multiple conditions in which it works. The charm lets you respond to mortally dangerous situations. This among other things removes the Unexpected Tag from about 70% of the effects that grant it. The other 30% being the problematic ones.
For one, SAM activates itself automatically as long as you have motes. Even when you're Inactive (asleep). The exception to this is any kind of inactive state the character cannot escape from, like Clinches, or a magically induced coma.
Secondly, if SAM is in a combo, you can activate that entire combo because SAM triggers within it. This is of course assuming you have an open charm use that action.
These are the conditions in which SAM fails:
What that basically means is that SAM will work in any condition where the character could have rolled.
Unfortunately, the charm requires a fairly high degree of system mastery to avert any potential issues on the part of players and storytellers.
Take the charm Ebon Lightning Prana from MoEP Abyssals. It creates an Unexpected Attack and generates a difficulty for the defender to see the attack coming with an Awareness roll. SAM would auto-invoke itself in response to Ebon Lightning Prana and negate the Unexpected aspect.
Impossible Unseen Strike from Even Blade Style sets an attack to Unexpected, and does not give a difficulty to see through it. By the strictest reading of the text, it requires a dedicated surprise negator, which SAM is not.
Now a fairly easy way to address this problem is to simply assign a difficulty to unclear surprise-granting charms. Impossible Unseen Strike could easily have a difficulty equal to the charm's Essence Minimum (4), or some other value. That would allow SAM to work against it perfectly. Saying that however is a house rule, and nothing more. Effective, but maybe not at every table.
Anyway, Surprise Anticipation Method exists to be a 'Defend against Traps and Ambushes!' charm, not a dedicated surprise negator like Reflex Sidestep. It covers about 80% of the situations the game expected a player to encounter, but the 20% left over are for the things that can accidentally end i a player dying because the storyteller misread how deadly a given thing is.
Eye of the Unconquered Sun
Awareness 5, Essence 5
The Big One. The measuring stick against which all disguises, deception effects, Illusions, Compulsions, and other effects are measured against.
This charm cost 10m+wp, requires Unsurpassed Sight Discipline, and is Obvious. So obvious that when you activate it, it flares your Anima to the 16m+ level for the remainder of the scene. I leave it up to Storytellers if you want to allow the Night anima to mute this Anima Flare, as it's normally just part of the Obvious keyword and one of the rare cases where the charm has an explicit description of what it looks like.
Now for what it does: All forms of mundane and magical deception are now rendered Obvious and Inapplicable to the Solar. Anyone who's trying to hide, the Solar can see automatically as a perfect, succeed-by-zero effect. This charm does not turn off those disguises or deceptions, but the Solar using this charm can ignore their effect.
Further, it relies on deception, not 'perception'. This charm does not reveal characters you can't see- only characters who are trying to hide or lie.
Now, this charm explicitly, as part of the illustration of Solar's Overwhelming Power, trumps every known method of disguise and subterfuge. It sees through Lunar Shapeshfting, a Sidereal's Resplendent Destinies, mundane disguises, magical disguises, Shaping Effects to hide, and so on. This also denies Illusions and Compulsion Effects to make the Solar deny reality- Solar Stealth for example is completely no-sold by this Charm, except for one. Further, it identifies lies when they're spoken to the Solar, (but it doesn't tell you what they actually meant either).
Additionally, Eye of the Unconquered Sun is a perfect effect- automatically successful. In the event that it's countered by another perfect effect, the Solar makes the Charm or Ability roll-off with [Permanent Essence x2] bonus successes added to the roll- yet another example of the Solar's biased rolloff mechanic.
Lastly, Eye of the Unconquered Sun counts as a Defense for the purposes of incoming Social and Surprise Attacks, which means in terms of Unstoppable Force/Immovable Object, the Solar with EotUCS active 'wins' any perfect attack vs perfect defense contest. Note that normally, Establishing surprise and making an Unexpected anything is not an attack in and of itself, so this charm is basically calling out the UFIO rules as an exception in the SOlar's favor.
So what does it say about Solars? It says that for the entire Scene, you cannot be lied to, tricked, deceived, or have the wool pulled over your eyes. That the Solar Exalted are the ones who burn away falsehood and deception. They do not see truth, but instead deny the hook of lies any purchase.
And that concludes Solar Awareness!
Welcome to the essay on the Tick System,
The Tick System
Historically, the tick system as devised in the ST system was intended to create a tactically crunch combat environment that could play fast and loose with actual positional information- basically you exchanged timing gameplay for location gameplay. DnD and similar games all used battle maps and such to create tactical environments, whereas Whitewolf and the ST system tried to use relative positions in time.
As we all are aware, this was a mixed bag.
Big Action and little action
This is a very frustrating bit of terminology that is as much an inheritance of 1e as well as anything else, but here's something to keep in mind.
Your Acting tick is often also called your Action. Inside your Action, you may take 1 or more actions, if you can flurry or not.
For the sake of clarity, I suggest you describe 'Action' as 'Your DV refreshes' or 'Your Player Turn'.
Splitting your Dice Pool
You'll see references to this in the 2e corebook every so often, and it is another 1e-ism. Back in 1e, characters would have to decide how many dice to assign to any given action- including defenses. Defenses were also rolled instead of abstracted into a Defense Value/static rating.
So if you had 20 dice between [Dexterity+Melee], you would declare a the start of your action that you'd attack with 10 and defend with 10. Charms would later give you enduring scene-long defense pools that made you largely unassailable.
What Splitting your pool means in 2e is a Flurry.
Action Speeds and You
For those of you who haven't had experience with tick-based systems, here's the rough of it- after determining your initiative order (who goes first across the initial span of ticks), you advance 1 tick through the count at a time.
Each time a person's acting tick come up, they may take actions, which include but are not limited to attacking, guarding, aiming, dashing, jumping, and attacking.
Actions have Speeds, which determine how many ticks a character spends recovering between actions. As mentioned in the previous essay, all actions in a flurry are resolved on your Acting Tick, even if you flurry multiple actions. Also all actions are resolved simultaneously across every tick, with caveats for further Storyteller control.
So you take an action, and you advance yourself through the tick counter, moving ahead X spaces. As the battle progresses, your acting tick will come up again.
Now here's the funny part: There are multiple action speeds.
It was quickly errata'd to cap the minimum speed of any action at 3 ticks, and here's why.
Starting on Tick 0, I have a Speed 6 attack. I swing once and wait 6 ticks.
Tick 6: I swing again. Tick 12: I swing again. Tick 18: and this is my third swing.
That was me acting 4 times over 20 ticks. What if I had speed 5?
Tick 0: Attacking once. Tick 5: Attacking again Tick 10: Attacking again Tick 15: Attacking again Tick 20: attacking for the last time.
I got to swing 5 times! Speed is great! What about Speed 4?
Tick 0: Tick 4: Tick 8: Tick 12: Tick 16: Tick 20:
Six times that time… Speed 3?
Tick 0: Tick 3: Tick 6: Tick 9: Tick 12: Tick 15: Tick 18:
Speed 2? Well I won't even need to rough that one out, you get to act 10 times at Speed 2, and 20 times at Speed 1!
Why is this broken? Because if those were normal actions, they all would refresh your DV- you'd get to act more times than everyone else, refresh your charm use faster, and generally do more during any given engagement than not.
But, what if… how could we maybe rescue some of this?
Editorial Mode engaged!
Attacks, at the core, should never casually get below Speed 4. Even at Essence 6+, Speed 3 attacks distort the game around them too much. Paying per-attack? I can buy that, but not a permanent static effect.
But other actions can be Speed 3- Dashing is fine as a Speed 3 action, Guarding and Aiming are both variable speed actions. Charms could modify Miscellaneous Actions to Speed 3.
As a further knob for custom charm design, consider borrowing from how Guard and Aim work- neither of them actually refresh your DV. Actions with a speed of 1 or 2 could have that as a clause of 'Too fast to refresh your DV', so you essentially attach them to a longer action later on. Guarding for 2 ticks then Attacking at Speed 5 is essentially a speed 7 action for the purposes of DV refresh. You could keep your charm use held in reserve until you started swinging, or had a combo that was designed to supplement this strategy.
Very little is going to break if you allow someone to Dash at Speed 1 and perform a Medicine Roll at the same time. Further, Dashing+ Attack with the implied Speed 4 soft cap, or high-cost speed 3 hard-cap means that attacks have a minimum speed they must be balanced around.
Short version: Actions that don't refresh your DV can for purposes of system-enrichment be shorter than 3 ticks. Actions that do refresh your DV should be a minimum of 3 ticks. Attacks and other win-condition Actions shouldn't get much faster than 4 ticks unless you're paying up front per attack for Speed 3.
Your mileage may vary of course. When in doubt, Attacks and DV refreshes should happen less often, in order to get a lot more mileage out of the Tick System's tactical potential.
An Addendum to Per-Tick Movement: Simultaneous Actions!
- Having delved further into the matter, I have realized that Exalted 2e accounts for an interesting thing already, but it was stated in a fantastically unclear way.
- You can take a Reflexive (Speed 0) Move Action on any tick, but only one move per tick.
- All choices to make reflexive Move Actions across all characters occur and are resolved simultaneously.
- In the event of Simultaneous Actions, the players and Storyteller have several ways to arbitrate who goes first. This is detailed on page 141 of Exalted 2e core. Summarizing it though as follows:
- All actions on any given tick (Acting or Recovery) are resolved simultaneously and all players agree not to metagame.
- The storyteller arbitrarily decides who declares their actions first in some suitably random manner- in order to keep the players guessing.
- The storyteller gives a minor edge to the faster characters, by having all players declare their actions in order of lowest [Wits+Awareness] pool (not rolled!) to highest. This creates what we call a Late-Mover advantage, where the last player has seen all the previous choices.
- Note that the book says 'declare their actions'. It can be interpreted as 'say what intend to do' and then they all still resolve simultaneously. Or it could mean that they resolve their actions in order- I doubt this is what was intended though, as being so fast to kill an opponent before they acted (go through steps 1-10) was intended to be a Magical Thing via Counterattacks.
- Amusingly, this is a streamlined impression of how 1e initiative worked- the person who went last had the advantage, so everyone was in a race for Tick 6.
- Going the opposite direction, the storyteller allows and encourages metagaming for the maximum cinematic coordination between all players.
Even a Reflexive Move action is still an action for the purposes of resolving them, so they fall into these rules here.
I plan on doing a custom charm essay during the wrap-up phase of this whole project, and I think these rules will figure in closely as an example.
Join Battle, Ambushes, First Actions and Unexpected
Described on Page 141 2e Corebook, we have the introduction to Join Battle. It's complicated, so bear with me.
Now here's what a lot of people tend to forget, or don't realize. Fights don't always start with just Join Battle.
By the strictest definition, the Join Battle Action is the result of a player declaring they want to do something that requires Combat Time (ticks). It is usually hostile in nature, like drawing your sword or openly declaring a challenge.
Once this action is declared, the initiating player and everyone in the scene who chooses to Join Battle may roll [Wits+Awareness] to decide the initiative order. Not everyone who is in the scene will join battle, and it is a voluntary response. random civilians don't get involved in a big fight, after all.
The highest result among all characters who took Join Battle Actions is set aside as the Reaction Count. Any character with the highest or tied-for-highest result goes automatically on Tick 0.
In context, this is basically the depiction of the Fastest Characters in the scene- they are so alert and effective that they simply get to act immediately in combat time.
A critical, important note: The Join Battle Action straddles the line between Dramatic Actions and Combat Actions, and the latter includes DV refreshes. Joining Battle on Tick 0 is the same as having a speed 0 Join Battle Action, and your DV refreshes, including your Charm Use. This is why Join Battle supplementals work the way they do- if you manage to go or tie for tick zero, your charm use is free. This means you don't need to always stick a lot of Join Battle modifiers into an oft-used combo.
Every other character subtracts their Rolled Successes from the Reaction Count. The number left over is tick they begin on. Any result greater than 6 is flattened to 6. Whatever tick you end up on is termed your First Action, in the system terminology.
An interesting, and often ignored note: Join Battle is Difficulty 1, so you can fail it. (which essentially means you go on tick 6 automatically). Botches automatically force you to start on tick 6 as well. Of note for Storytellers, the action is written as caring about the rolled successes, not the threshold successes. Depending on your interpretation, this could mean a 1 tick difference in all your results, if you do or don't subtract 1 success from the result accounting for that difficulty.
Most players and Storytellers don't even remember, mind.
This concludes the basic Join Battle scenario of someone starting a fight by taking a hostile, perceptible action.
Let's try something a little more exotic. What if you want to suckerpunch someone?
That is modeled as an Unexpected attack. Note that this is not a flurry yet. The order of events is as follows:
- Before Join Battle!
- The Hostile Character rolls [Dexterity+Stealth] contested against all relevant observer's Reflexive [Wits+Awareness] actions
- Distraction or being outside of the field of senses incurs a -2 internal penalty on this roll. Add 1 die if the witness is actively wary and suspects danger.
- If the hostile character is trying to set up their sucker punch in plain view, they add +2 difficulty to their Stealth roll, and requires the scene not already be in combat.
- Only the witnesses who beat the stealth roll may take Join Battle Actions, unless one of these characters shouts an alert to other actors in the scene. Characters who have rolled Join Battle in response to an ambush get their DV as normal, but anyone who failed can still be targeted with an Unexpected Attack. This means their Dodge and Parry DV is set to 0/inapplicable, and can only defend with magic that explicitly defeats Unexpected Attacks.
- If the hostile character rolls higher on their stealth action than all witnesses, they automatically act on Tick 0. They still roll Wits+Awareness for Join Battle, but their result becomes the Reaction Count for every other character to check against, instead of the highest result among an equally alert group of combatants.
- This is intended to model the sudden shock of hostilities breaking out without warning.
- Note that if the hidden character's actual Join Battle roll is poor, several other characters reacting to him might actually get to go on Tick 0 as well!
Here's something to keep in mind- this suckerpunch or Ambush as the system describe is distinct from being hidden or otherwise being under Stealth.
Join Battle and Action Speed
Join Battle is also a Miscellaneous Action, by system-terms. It has a variable speed based on the Reaction count- and if it wasn't clear yet, you're intended to save that number for the duration of the entire combat.
The reason for this is again, due to the Battlewheel and the limit of Ticks 0-6 for purposes of deciding when people act.
Anyway, a new character wants to join battle after it's started. They roll [Wits+Awareness] and subtract their result from the Reaction Count. The difference left over is what tick they start on, minimum 6.
Strictly speaking, Join Battle has a maximum speed of 6, and a minimum speed of 0. If you roll Join Battle equal to or excess of the initial Reaction count, you act immediately, refreshing your DV and so on.
The Tick Six Clusterfuck
Under the 2e rules, the absolute slowest any character can be on Join Battle is Tick 6. This is because all players subtract their result from the highest result in the reaction count. The number left over is their starting tick. If the difference is greater than 6, the character goes on tick 6.
- The highest result in an example situation is Peak with 12 successes. Peak goes on tick 0, and all other players join battle based on his results.
- Dawn has 11 successes. She goes on Tick 1. (11-12 = 1).
- Aniruddha has 8 successes, she goes on Tick 4 (8-12 = 4)
- Vigilant has 6 successes, he goes on Tick 6 ( 6-12 = 6)
- Inks has 2 successes, she goes on Tick 6 as well ( 2-12 = 10, flattened out to 6)
Why does is Join Battle capped at Tick 6? Because of the Battle Wheel.
For those who don't know, the Battlewheel is a circle divided into pie slices, usually numbered 1-6. (The people who act on Tick 0 are held off for the moment and go first anyway). You have little icons or beads marking out who is who, and place them on their appropriate ticks-slices.
As characters take actions, they advance themselves by 1 tick, or by the speed of their action, depending on the player's preferences and their understanding of the game. Since the Battlewheel has limited numbers, I think it's safe to assume that every action is resolved in the order of 'Characters on the lowest numbered slice first' You just can't lap yourself like with a Speed 7 action.
Anyway, the point is, the battle wheel locked Join Battle math into 'tick 6 or less', or the 6 or less rule lead to the creation of the Battlewheel. In any event, that's the clusterfuck.
Editorial: Some random solutions
- Allow characters to convert excess Join Battle successes at an agreed-upon ratio into other resources/actions like Miscellaneous; Ready Weapon, etc.
- Declare that a sufficiently high result allows a character to act on tick zero, and their result is removed from the Reaction count. The next highest result becomes the New reaction count, but assigned to Tick 1 instead. So fastest characters/tied for fastest get Tick 0. Next fastest get Tick 1, and all characters subtract their result from that one to get their starting tick.
- Carefully assess how many doublers, adders and multipliers exist or that players are stacking. While you can remove or restrict them, it would be better to give them something they could pour all that extra join-battle juice into.
I'm not going to list out all the nitty gritty terms of the actions except where the Borgstromancy is thick, mostly because if I dedicated too much more detail, I'd essentially be rewriting the core book into a new snarkier form.
At a system level, 'Doing Nothing' is an action, be it Guarding, paralyzed with indecision, or anything else. You will have an action speed and advance through the tick count, by hook or crook.
Your action options include, but are not limited to:
- Attack
- This is the most common action you'll see people taking. Part of the point of this Essay is to get people thinking about the following questions:
- Can you see/perceive your target?
- Can you reach your target in the span of a single tick, with movement or weapon range?
- Move
- As mentioned in the previous Essay, this is an action you're apparently expected to resolve every tick among every character who decides to move. Movement Actions do not suffer flurry penalties.
- Dash
- By taking a Dash action, you replace your Movement Rate with your Dashing Rate, which persists until your DV refreshes. If all you do is the Speed 3 Dash Action, your DV refreshes in 3 ticks and you can take a new action. Dashes do suffer flurry penalties unless otherwise aided by magic.
- Jump
- This is a Miscellaneous Action, and you are limited to 1 jump per DV refresh. As far as I can tell, Jumps can only be attempted on your Acting Tick.
- Aim/Guard
- A variable action with a Speed of 1-3 ticks. Guarding has no DV penalty so you stay at maximum defense for the duration. Aiming DOES have a DV penalty (but it's applied once, not per tick). You cannot flurry Aim or Guard Actions. You can however take reflexive actions including Move Actions during either of them.
- You may abort an Aim or Guard Action on the first or second tick, establishing a new Acting Tick for yourself
- Your DV does not refresh at the conclusion of an Aim or Guard Action.
- Use Charm/Activate Combo
- There's a huge knot of mechanics and restrictions I'm still trying to work out here, but for most people, what matters is this: You get 1 charm use per DV refresh, but you can activate any charms as many times as you like, once-per legally relevant action. As in, you can use Seven Shadow Evasion against all incoming attacks.
- Combos are trickier, so I'd rather wait til another Essay for those.
- Simple Action
- A Simple Action is essentially a self-contained 'chunk' of action you take on your turn. Most of the time Simple Actions are also Simple Charms, so you just activate them, they have an action speed, and you're off.
- You can't flurry a Simple Charm unless you combine it with an Extra Action Charm, and even then, only if the EA charm creates actions that match the Simple Charm and it's abilities/etc. Iron Raptor Technique + Iron Whirlwind is Legal.
- You can declare non-charm actions as Simple Actions, but it's very rare/almost unheard of. You can use that to pace the flow of a scene by forcing a character to dedicate their entire attention to a single thing plus any Reflexive actions they're capable of attempting.
- Flurry
- To flurry is to take a number of multiple actions in sequence. You cannot flurry Simple Actions or Extra Action Charms.
- You may take a number of actions equal to the combined rate of all your wielded weapons, but once your pool is reduced to zero by penalties, the flurry automatically ends. This means that your Punch rate is also technically your 'Free hand to reach into a pocket' rate.
- The formula is as follows: All non-reflexive rolls in a flurry subtract a number of dice equal to the total number of non-reflexive actions. So a 5 attack flurry subtracts 5 dice from every roll.
- Every rolled action after the first subtracts an additional die, so roll 1 is -5, roll 2 is -6, roll 3 is -7, and so on.
- Each individual action applies it's full DV penalty. Remember that early in 2e's draft, DV penalties were supposed to be 2+ on average, not 1-2 like we have now.
- All actions in a flurry are resolved on the Acting Tick unless otherwise stated.
- Attacks are resolved one at a time, not in groups. This is because the defender must selectively choose how to defend against each attack individually and make responses at a given Step in combat resolution. Trying to group al the attack rolls at once gives the defender the advantage, letting them pick and choose what rolls to apply Charm defense to.
- Miscellaneous Action
- A lot of Miscellaneous Actions are unrolled, but they DO count for determining flurry penalties. A flurry of a Dash+Jump incurs a -2 flurry penalty on the dash movement rate, and a -3 penalty on your jump stance before doubling for horizontal movement.
- Jumping is technically a Miscellaneous Action, but you are limited to only one jump per DV refresh.
- Join Battle is a Miscellaneous Action with a speed of 0-6, depending on your roll result.
- Any action that can't be arbitrated into a span of 1-5 seconds can instead be broken up into numerous misc actions. Like it takes 5 actions to input a control code. Misc Actions can be flurried.
For good or ill, Exalted 2e combat was intended to be a very crunchy, timing-based tactical system with lots of granularity and room for sudden switches in fortune and efficacy. You are as players and storytellers, expected to be methodical in how you resolved combat, even in simple situations. You check ranges, you check penalties and conditions, and so on.
I think we all can agree that quite a few people who run Exalted weren't interested in that granularity. They wanted something faster, sleeker. This is not a bad thing, though it is a source of conflict between people who want a crunchy combat engine and a looser, freewheeling stylish one.
That is really the issue with Exalted: People want to play what they were sold on, not what the game actually is. This isn't wrong, but this fundamental miscommunication has lead to so much strife in the community that here we are.
I think that concludes the Tick System, for now!
Vision and Ranged Range
It's buried in the book in multiple places, and relies strongly on ST arbitration between the myriad rules, but here goes. The two places you want to look are Vision (Awareness) Page 135 2e Corebook, and Step Five: Subtract External Penalties/Apply Special Defenses, Page 148 2e corebook.
First, Vision. Vision basically describes how far your character can see under ideal conditions, and not-ideal conditions. In an ideal situation- a bright sunny day with no cloud cover for example, characters can see approaching ships or people as dots on the horizon. (Do remember that Creation is actually flat, though it does have hills, valleys, etc).
There's a chart that corebook provides, which is useful, but a little difficult to understand at first. Basically, you have a Light Source, like a bonfire or torch, and it creates a bubble of Clear Vision (No penalties).
Then, anything outside of that bubble is subject to the Poor Visibility Penalty (-1 external, subtracts 1 success from all rolls focused at targets at that range.
In the Bonfire example, it gives you a 10 yard radius of clear vision, and then another 10 yards of murky vision outside of that one. Trying to take any vision-based roll focused inside of this Murky vision range incurs a -2 External Penalty, and is, systematically, the Invisibility State. That'll come up again later.
The book goes on to explain that without charms or stunts, characters cannot make ranged attacks at a distance greater than twice the 'murky vision' radius. 10x2 yards in the case of the Bonfire example. The attacker takes -2 successes to their attack roll on any action within that 20 yards circular donut-shaped area however.
Further, Exalted actually models light source priority. If the light source is a Full Moon, it gives you X yards of visibility within its two range bands. But if you're carrying a torch, the open flame has priority, giving you much better light within its ranges.
Of note, the Exalted Anima (Solars especially) are basically built-in supertorches. Food for thought.
Amusingly, the book also points out that holding torches or other light sources means you're likely visible for miles (Remember, huge swaths of undeveloped wilderness, with almost zero light pollution overall). Characters holding light sources instead count as if they were in poor lighting, for the purposes of ranged attacks (-1 external penalty).
Lastly, vision penalties do not apply to blind characters, though this was one of the earliest errata'd elements of the 2nd edition corebook. Originally being blind was an internal penalty, but it was later revised as being External. Being blind incurs a -4 External Penalty on all attack and vision-based awareness rolls.
For characters with functioning eyes, as a sort of catch-all penalty, 'Can't see clearly' is a -2 penalty (which is essentially the same as the murky distance penalty above), and true, all-consuming denial of vision is -4 penalty. You're not supposed to stack these with the murky vision penalties though.
So quick summary:
- If lighting is limited-
- you can attack or take Vision-based rolls at no penalty inside the Clear Vision bubble.
- You can attack or take Vision-based rolls at -1 External Penalty outside the Clear Vision bubble, up until Murky Vision Ends.
- You can attack or take Vision-based rolls at -2 External Penalty outside the Murky Vision bubble, up to twice it's range. (If Murky vision ends after 10 yards, you have 20 more yards where you can take actions at -2 External Penalty). Characters outside this extra range can only be targeted with the help of a Stunt or Charm.
- If you don't have a stunt or charm, you cannot take any action
- If a target is holding a light source like a torch, you may treat them as if they were in Poor Visibility range, -1 external penalty. There is no distance limit on this state.
- A good mnemonic is this: Clear; -0/Murky; -1/Murky x2; -2/Beyond; Can't See without Stunt or Charm.
The other factor related to this is your Weapon Range.
Fortunately, it's much simpler. Assuming you can see your target (which is the first step), you can aim and shoot at it with a Ranged Weapon. Ranged weapons have a ranged trait, for obvious reasons.
The listed range of a weapon is it's Ideal Range. (not a system term, just one I'm using). Any attacks within that range suffer no range-related penalties. If you can shoot an arrow 100 yards, any target inside of 100 yards is fine.
You can also shoot twice as far as you listed range, at -1 external penalty. 100 yards becomes 200 yards. You can triple your range for a mere -2 external penalty as well! So really, a bow with a 100 yard range is really a 300 yard range, with the caveat that the defender will have an easier time blocking or dodging your shot.
What's the Point?
Well, the point is, between all of that, the book never says what you do if you can't see your target. At a system level, 'Invisible' is not the same as 'Can't be seen'.
If a character is behind a wall and I have no way of detecting them, I cannot make an attack roll against them. This is actually the first and best defense against Ranged Attackers. This also applies to PCs and NPCs fairly equally.
Now, Exalted is full of superhuman feats and magic that let you do amazing things like target someone by their heartbeat, but those are meant to be meaningful exceptions, not standard assumptions.
Here's an important note however: A character who is not seen and not applicable for targets is also not establishing surprise. The aforementioned character behind a wall does not automatically gain ninja-like abilities because he was lucky enough to simply be out of sight when an archer was taking aim.
Instead, someone being hidden behind a wall may attempt to establish surprise without a stunt or charm, but they are not automatically established by dint of being currently unseen.
See the Invisible (Row Row)
In Exalted, being Invisible is a state or situational bonus that provides a significant boon to anyone who can attain it.
- Invisible characters may Establish or Reestablish Surprise without a Stunt or Charm.
- Characters who are outside Murky Vision Range as detailed above count as Invisible.
- Characters that are invisible or similarly obscured-from-senses add +2 automatic successes to a stealth roll to reestablish surprise. Sentries and other characters who make the reflexive [Wits+Awareness+2d] roll to catch the character before they hide also suffer the -2 External Penalty on vision-based awareness actions.
- The granularity is fussy here, but surprisingly nuanced. The [Wits+Awareness+2d] roll to detect a character's attempt at hiding uses all possible senses comprehensively, but if one is able to render Hearing, Smell, Touch and Taste Inapplicable, then the reacting characters have to rely on their compromised, penalized eyes.
Of course, at that stage you might as well just use magic to make vision rolls completely inapplicable too. - Attacks made by Invisible characters inflict a -2 External Penalty on the defender's DV. This is not an Unexpected attack, but merely one that is difficult to perceive and defend against.
- You count as Invisible if you are attacking a character from behind, or have otherwise fully masked your presence to all relevant senses.
- If sufficiently masked, the reflexive [Wits+Awareness] roll to see an Unexpected attack coming is at -2 Internal Penalty. Not External.
The reason for this is that the [Wits+Awareness check] is meant to be comprehensive, encompassing all the character's heroic senses. - Being invisible is never an automatic Unexpected Attack before other magic or having taken a proper Stealth Action.
That about covers Vision and Invisibility, time for…
An Introduction to Solar Awareness
Like with the rest of the Solar Charm trees, Solar Awareness is all about superhuman skill. Amusingly, the Charms are actually surprisingly magical despite their low Essence ratings. I think it helps if you look at it like 'you are enhancing your ability to notice detail', not 'making your eyes physically or anatomically better'.
Awareness the Ability
This ability covers actions like Join Battle, Noticing Details (but not drawing conclusions- that's Investigation), and generally finding out information in the scene that is meant to be 'stand alone'. It's the "Look for a potential avenue of escape" or "Find the hidden attacker."
In context of games, the person with High awareness can be the one who notices the enemy's secret weakness (though not a PD flaw, those are system-opaque). I don't want to encourage a 'paranoia' style of constant vigilance, but being able to perceive so much extra information is a great asset for any group.
Using Investigation and Awareness Together
One thing that's bothered me about 2e for a while is that the various Keen Sense Charms don't interact with Investigation actions that well. If you have superhuman vision, you should ostensibly be able to perceive clues better, right?
Well, Storytellers have a few options- these are largely houserules and off the cuff suggestions, not statements on Exalted 2e.
First, allow players to apply Keen Sense/Unsurpassed Sense bonus successes to Investigation rolls with the appropriate rationale. You can't hear text on a book, but you can see that a given brush stroke was made under duress.
Alternatively, and this is a more nuanced approach, the Storyteller can, behind the scenes, increase how applicable finding a clue is based on the player's senses. If you don't have microscopic vision or a microscope, infinite Investigation Successes won't let you find microscopic clues. I'll get more into this as I describe the Charms.
And now without further ado…
Solar Awareness
It has four non-excellency charms, though two of them have three variants. This'll go quick.
Keen (Sense) Technique
Awareness 3, Essence 2
Requiring a degree of skill equal to a professional in some trade (a sentry or guard, etc), Keen Sense Technique is actually a cluster of three charms that all must purchase separately. They all require an Excellency as a prerequisite. It's a 3 mote Reflexive Charm that lasts for the Scene, and it's Combo-OK. You can put it into a good join-battle combo or danger-sense combo without much trouble!
As for what it does, Keen Sense adds 2 bonus successes to all Awareness Rolls based on whatever sensory package you picked. Sight, Hearing/Touch, and Smell/Taste, respectively.
More importantly, each charm gives you examples of feats that are now Applicable for Awareness Actions. It's described in the book as 'sensory impressions that are normally too faint for human senses to validly observe at all.'
Sight:
You can see the detail on a badge or piece of paper 500 yards away, at night. You can count the threads of a shirt, or with a Legendary Success (Threshold 5+) make out the movement of mites and similar small creatures on another person's eyebrows.
Hearing/Touch:
You can gauge fabric quality by running your hands over it. You can pull Daredevil feats, reducing the external penalty on fighting invisible opponents to -1, and reducing the Blindness external Penalty to -2. (Remember, blindness got errata'd pretty early). Note that these penalty reductions are in addition to the bonus successes granted by the charm.
While in combat, you still have to deal with the reduced -2 blindness penalty, Awareness Actions are taken at effectively no penalty
-4 reduced to 2, offset by +2 automatic successes).Smell/Taste:
You can go full bloodhound, recognizing people by scent and getting an idea of what they've been doing by just how they smell. You can track by scent, gaining another bonus success (in addition to the +2 from the base charm) to tracking rolls against things that have scents. Mind you that the scent-bonus applies to tracking actions and awareness actions, but tracking actions are Survival, not Awareness. Something to keep in mind.
You can identify spices and poisons by taste- with a legendary success, you could detect an odorless, tasteless poison in wine, because it's presence dilutes the wine.
Lastly, this charm grants Bonus successes, not Dice from Charms. You can still use an excellency in addition to Keen Sense.
So what does this say about Solars? It's another example of mythic, superhuman feats that are still resoundingly human. "I see more, so much more than you." Waiving the need for tools like magnifying glasses or microscopes, etc.
A note about Dice and Successes
After a certain point, the number of successes you roll on a given action are irrelevant. This is explicit in the text of Keen Sense, and implicit in the system as a whole- certain actions, or results within actions, may or may not be applicable.
A Solar with a Charm that says "I generate infinite successes on an Awareness roll" is not going to get any more information than a mortal who had the same effect applied to them, because both the Solar and the Mortal quickly run into the problem of "I've run out of things I am capable of seeing."
Without tools or magic, you cannot see microscopic things. No amount of rolled successes are going to let you do that unless your Storyteller allows you to. Maybe they will, but they don't have to. Awareness Actions against microscopic targets are usually Inapplicable.
Keen Sense and Unsurpassed Sense Discipline make microscopic targets and other superhuman feats of sensory mojo valid for Awareness Actions, or Applicable.
Unsurpassed (Sense) Discipline
Awareness 5, Essence 2
Another cluster of Awareness Charms, these are the same in format to Keen Sense, save that they cost 2 motes to activate for the Scene and require the appropriate precursor charm to learn. Keen Sight Technique leads to Unsurpassed Sight Discipline, etc.
Regarding what the charm does- it doubles your successes on an Awareness roll before subtracting any External Penalties. Having looked up the Order of Modifiers (Page 124 2e Corebook), that doubling happens in Step 1 or 3. (Step 2 and 4 are subtract mundane/magical penalties, but it doesn't specify if they are internal or external.)
The reason this gets muddy is because Step 3 is 'Add Magical Bonuses', which include Dice by Charms. 1st Excellency is very straight forward, adding dice to the pool. 2nd excellency counts 1 success as 2 dice, so do they mean apply the automatic successes here, or in step 6?
Regardless, you activate Unsurpassed Sight and Keen Sight together. You define your [Attribute+Awareness] pool as per the order of modifiers, and you hold any Automatic/Bonus successes aside until step 6 of modifier resolution.
So a roll of 12 dice +7 successes; I roll the 12d and get 4. Unsurpassed Sense Discipline doubles it to 8, and then we add 7 automatic success for a result of 15!
Now mechanically, this fits in very neatly at Essence 2 as a Doubler, even if it's an awkwardly worded one. It has no actual magical component though- it's primarily an enhancement to Keen Sense; ensuring you'll consistently get Legendary or greater Threshold Successes.
Surprise Anticipation Method
Awareness 5, Essence 2
This is the Indiana Jones Charm. The "I have a bad feeling about this." Charm. It's that Charm you get when you want your character to have a prickling sensation on the back of their neck just before you step on a trap or get shot at by a blowgun.
It requires Awareness 5, but needs no prerequisites. It's high ability minimum reflects the multiple conditions in which it works. The charm lets you respond to mortally dangerous situations. This among other things removes the Unexpected Tag from about 70% of the effects that grant it. The other 30% being the problematic ones.
For one, SAM activates itself automatically as long as you have motes. Even when you're Inactive (asleep). The exception to this is any kind of inactive state the character cannot escape from, like Clinches, or a magically induced coma.
Secondly, if SAM is in a combo, you can activate that entire combo because SAM triggers within it. This is of course assuming you have an open charm use that action.
These are the conditions in which SAM fails:
- An Awareness check that has no difficulty, I.E. is just automatically set at Inapplicable. (Note that not revealing a difficulty is not the same as not having one.)
- Related to Keen Sense, if you cannot detect something because it's too small/requires superhuman senses, SAM will fail. Therefore keeping Keen Senses up is a good idea.
- Internal Penalties reduce a character's [Attribute+Awareness] pool to zero. Exalted and most other supernaturals have a minimum dice pool of their Permanent Essence, if it would be greater than their normal pool after penalties. Wound penalties and Multiple Action Penalties are the only exceptions to the minimum essence pool rule.
- If they have already used their Charm this action.
- If they would automatically succeed on the Awareness Roll.
What that basically means is that SAM will work in any condition where the character could have rolled.
Unfortunately, the charm requires a fairly high degree of system mastery to avert any potential issues on the part of players and storytellers.
Take the charm Ebon Lightning Prana from MoEP Abyssals. It creates an Unexpected Attack and generates a difficulty for the defender to see the attack coming with an Awareness roll. SAM would auto-invoke itself in response to Ebon Lightning Prana and negate the Unexpected aspect.
Impossible Unseen Strike from Even Blade Style sets an attack to Unexpected, and does not give a difficulty to see through it. By the strictest reading of the text, it requires a dedicated surprise negator, which SAM is not.
Now a fairly easy way to address this problem is to simply assign a difficulty to unclear surprise-granting charms. Impossible Unseen Strike could easily have a difficulty equal to the charm's Essence Minimum (4), or some other value. That would allow SAM to work against it perfectly. Saying that however is a house rule, and nothing more. Effective, but maybe not at every table.
Anyway, Surprise Anticipation Method exists to be a 'Defend against Traps and Ambushes!' charm, not a dedicated surprise negator like Reflex Sidestep. It covers about 80% of the situations the game expected a player to encounter, but the 20% left over are for the things that can accidentally end i a player dying because the storyteller misread how deadly a given thing is.
Eye of the Unconquered Sun
Awareness 5, Essence 5
The Big One. The measuring stick against which all disguises, deception effects, Illusions, Compulsions, and other effects are measured against.
This charm cost 10m+wp, requires Unsurpassed Sight Discipline, and is Obvious. So obvious that when you activate it, it flares your Anima to the 16m+ level for the remainder of the scene. I leave it up to Storytellers if you want to allow the Night anima to mute this Anima Flare, as it's normally just part of the Obvious keyword and one of the rare cases where the charm has an explicit description of what it looks like.
Now for what it does: All forms of mundane and magical deception are now rendered Obvious and Inapplicable to the Solar. Anyone who's trying to hide, the Solar can see automatically as a perfect, succeed-by-zero effect. This charm does not turn off those disguises or deceptions, but the Solar using this charm can ignore their effect.
Further, it relies on deception, not 'perception'. This charm does not reveal characters you can't see- only characters who are trying to hide or lie.
Now, this charm explicitly, as part of the illustration of Solar's Overwhelming Power, trumps every known method of disguise and subterfuge. It sees through Lunar Shapeshfting, a Sidereal's Resplendent Destinies, mundane disguises, magical disguises, Shaping Effects to hide, and so on. This also denies Illusions and Compulsion Effects to make the Solar deny reality- Solar Stealth for example is completely no-sold by this Charm, except for one. Further, it identifies lies when they're spoken to the Solar, (but it doesn't tell you what they actually meant either).
Additionally, Eye of the Unconquered Sun is a perfect effect- automatically successful. In the event that it's countered by another perfect effect, the Solar makes the Charm or Ability roll-off with [Permanent Essence x2] bonus successes added to the roll- yet another example of the Solar's biased rolloff mechanic.
Lastly, Eye of the Unconquered Sun counts as a Defense for the purposes of incoming Social and Surprise Attacks, which means in terms of Unstoppable Force/Immovable Object, the Solar with EotUCS active 'wins' any perfect attack vs perfect defense contest. Note that normally, Establishing surprise and making an Unexpected anything is not an attack in and of itself, so this charm is basically calling out the UFIO rules as an exception in the SOlar's favor.
So what does it say about Solars? It says that for the entire Scene, you cannot be lied to, tricked, deceived, or have the wool pulled over your eyes. That the Solar Exalted are the ones who burn away falsehood and deception. They do not see truth, but instead deny the hook of lies any purchase.
And that concludes Solar Awareness!
azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
Is that how it works? I've never had the charms come up, but I thought it would take the successes from the dice, add the automatic successes, then double it (and then subtract penalties).
The typical way to deal with such effects is to drain initiative, actually. And there's no reason to try and mimic Odin Sphere's mechanics too closely. If every character in Odin Sphere has stamina, why not use something that every character in Exalted has?
I agree that this thing seems way too front-loaded. If the devs have said that artifacts with innate non-Evocation powers are going to be a thing after all, I can see having the Black Form as one, but I'd then have the initial effect be simpler, and have a bunch of evocations that upgrade it.
Golden Lark
The First Fiction User
This is how I read it.
The successes granted from the Second Excellency don't count as 'bonus successes,' they count as 'dice added from charms,' which is explicitly mentioned in the Second Excellency text. Bonus successes from blowing a willpower or granted from other charms (like the first unique awareness charms above) are tacked on at the end of calculations and tend to not get doubled. There is no sound logical reason (borgtromantic, or otherwise) for first excellency dice to get doubled and second excellency successes to NOT be doubled.
azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
Actually, rereading the steps for rolling, I was (sort of) wrong (though I think Shyft was also sort of wrong, depending on where all those successes are coming from).
In my previous reading, it would be:
[12d for 4 successes + 5 successes (2nd Excellency?) + 2 successes (Keen (Sense) Technique)] x 2 = 11 succeses x 2 = 22 successes.
If 2nd Excellency is applied with other dice from charms, it would be:
[12d for 4 successes + 5 successes (2nd Excellency?)] x 2 + 2 successes (KST) = [9 successes] x 2 + 2 successes = 18 successes + 2 successes = 20 successes
Without the Excellency, it would be 10 successes, rather than 12. It's a bigger difference if you have other sources of automatic successes (i.e. willpower).
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
Even if I am wrong, that still inspires discussion and analysis, which is what I'm hoping for!
Doesn't fit. Oswald would be gaining lots of Initiative thanks to the Black Form's attack power, which would offset a drain.
I'm only mimicking the story told by Odin Sphere's mechanics. Very simply, the Black Form is exhausting to use. So much so that it can kill you, at least if you try to use it while badly injured (which Oswald can be presumed to be, after Onyx has beaten him around).
As if that didn't occur to me first?
I could design the Black Form around the idea that the Exalt could reasonably remain transformed until he's utterly exhausted his personal and peripheral mote pools, but that seems like it would take too long even without the mote respiration, and would take too much recovery time afterwards.
I could have the Black Form inflict a level of unsoakable bashing damage over certain intervals, but that would be much too hard to recover from.
I don't want any upgrades that work on the principle of "burn less for more" or otherwise promote "fuel efficiency". Belderiver's hunger is not to be denied, so I think any boosting Evocations should carry commensurately higher costs.
Well, if that's a deal-breaker, you could have the initiative drain increase every round. Like, 5 + number of rounds it's been active - Stamina or something.
That doesn't mean you have to introduce a mechanic that begs the question "why is this one artifact the only thing in the entire game that causes fatigue?"
So don't make any.
(Although if you go with increasing initiative drain, some kind of "don't auto-crash every time you make a decisive attack" effect might be in order. Add a little withering damage after successful decisive attacks, maybe.)
AmineHsu
A worm, not a man, scorned and despised.
- Location
- NoVA
...Which one? I kinda thought it no-sold all of Solar Stealth.
That seems like too much to track.
I'm sure various other things can fatigue characters.
Would you prefer a building sort of "wound penalty"? After every turn in which you were transformed, you take a cumulative -1 penalty, and only spending one turn untransformed would begin to reduce it.
The penalties wouldn't apply as long as you remain in the Black Form, but once they get too high, the transformation reverts and you are hit with the full force of the penalties you've accumulated?
FaeGlade Plural
Semper Legens
- Location
- Land of Bureaucracy
- Pronouns
- Plural/They
Fatigue is simple. Have the user roll (Stamina + Resistance) to avoid a cumulative -1 fatigue penalty. Difficulty increases each round of combat. Have the transformation allow you to ignore fatigue penalties so that it doesn't impede you during the fight, but you drop out of it if the penalty reaches -4 or so.
There are already reasons to keep track of the duration of a fight, some other charms require it (well, at least one Sidereal charm). So it won't be too much additional bookkeeping.
But if you want that, you can also trigger the roll of other things. Getting hit with a withering attack, failing to hit with an attack, not having enemies in range or whatever you want. Get a reasonable difficulty, maybe increase it with later Evocations.
There are already reasons to keep track of the duration of a fight, some other charms require it (well, at least one Sidereal charm). So it won't be too much additional bookkeeping.
But if you want that, you can also trigger the roll of other things. Getting hit with a withering attack, failing to hit with an attack, not having enemies in range or whatever you want. Get a reasonable difficulty, maybe increase it with later Evocations.
It's not half as much as your current system. You have to keep track of one extra number: how long you've been in the Black Form this activation (or maybe this scene). For your Endurance mechanic, you have to keep track of your current endurance, and your current maximum endurance pool, and the latter has to be written down somewhere because it doesn't reset at the end of the scene.
But do they drain the Endurance pool? If no, why not? If so, why have you introduced significant new mechanic to the game as a whole just to model one artifact?
That would work too; Serafina's fatigue penalty implementation sounds reasonable, although I'd still base the difficulties on rounds transformed rather than having it tick up whether you're in the Black Form or not. You could have some Evocations trigger an extra fatigue check as an additional cost, too.
Don't worry, there's a Solar Charm to get yourself or your teammates free Evocations! This fixes the problem, doesn't it?