Yeah, cool idea, but it was badly implemented. The easiest way to fix it is paying for Evocations slots, so swapping for a different weapon would simply grant you different usable evocations(Maybe with a training time without an XP cost, to signify that you need to familiarize with the new weapon.).
Also, marginally correlated, i found a decent way to "Fix" the Martial Arts problem of having a XP sink attached to them: instead of buying a general Merit and then Martial arts dots for every martial art, why not have different "Range of dots" merits(To be clear, the ones which can be bought only partially) for every one of them?
So if you want only the first charms of a given martial art, you buy only the first dot of merit and ignore the others.
This could even be fused with the Style method of ES, thus allowing even mortals to wield something with a martial art, and substituing the lost evocations.
See, I can see Evocations as a thing. The problem I have is that Evocations are... not a good system for what they want. The problem is that they've basically created a system wherein you have to homebrew dozens, possibly hundreds of new Charms, then balance them against all the other potential Charms the PC has access to.
Your standard GM is not equipped for this. Making Evocations unique to the artifact is insane.
See, I can see Evocations as a thing. The problem I have is that Evocations are... not a good system for what they want. The problem is that they've basically created a system wherein you have to homebrew dozens, possibly hundreds of new Charms, then balance them against all the other potential Charms the PC has access to.
Your standard GM is not equipped for this. Making Evocations unique to the artifact is insane.
Without investing additional xp into an artifact, all your doing is paying merit dots for a stat stick that is completely identical to every other stat stick that people purchased with Merit dots. You need to dump additional resources before there is any real 'difference' between the weapons... which for the edition that was meant to make artifacts more special and unique seems more counter intitutive!
(reminds me... next game I'm gonna see if I can get an artifact for two merit dots because it has no possible evocations! Its totally a mass produced one of a thousand set of first age daiklaives and thus the dot reducing downside is totally loresome!)
Without investing additional xp into an artifact, all your doing is paying merit dots for a stat stick that is completely identical to every other stat stick that people purchased with Merit dots.
Except he's got a grimcleaver, and I got a goremaul. Chopping versus Smashing are very different mechanical widgets, on top of the flavor differences.
Or, if he got a grimcleaver, and I want a grimcleaver too, I now have a grimcleaver like I wanted. What do I have to complain about?
You need to dump additional resources before there is any real 'difference' between the weapons... which for the edition that was meant to make artifacts more special and unique seems more counter intitutive!
The trick with Martial Arts is that I can justify using the same martial art multiple times. In fact, its trivially easy to do so. Martial Arts are a thing you teach people. So multiple people can learn it, thus I can use them again and again and again.
Artifacts and evocations? Not so much. Artifacts are meant to be unique and powerful with their own personality. A Fire aspected Dragonblooded and a No Moon Lunar would have very different artifacts, built on different principles from the ground up. You can't really mass produce an artifact.
So I have to design a unique Evocation tree for every artifact I introduce.
Martial Arts is meant to reduce work flow for the GM. It is designed both as a game concept and as a in world concept to reduce diversity. You want players to know Violet Bier of Sorrows style or Fire Dragon Style. Players are not really encouraged to build them (they can) so much as they are to find teachers to justify getting existing ones.
Artifacts are meant to do the opposite, their supposed to be very individual and unique, something players are supposed to be making up themselves.
Forcing the average gaming group to house rule up an entire Martial Arts style for every opponent would be crazy, but that is apparently what they want you to do with artifacts.
This is also why I hate Exigents, by the way. Don't give the players a complex exception driven carefully balanced game system and then say "Yeah, for these guys, just wing it."
Artifacts and evocations? Not so much. Artifacts are meant to be unique and powerful with their own personality. A Fire aspected Dragonblooded and a No Moon Lunar would have very different artifacts, built on different principles from the ground up. You can't really mass produce an artifact.
So I have to design a unique Evocation tree for every artifact I introduce.
Isn't it even worse than that? I thought two different Solars were meant to have different Evocation trees for the same artifact. Did they compromise their insane and impractical vision with tabletop realities a little here?
The objection is that the other guy bought an Artifact 3 grimcleaver, while you bought an Artifact 5 one; his has no Evocations, while yours summons thunderstorms and volcanoes and goodness knows what. Clearly yours is the better weapon!
Except that, until you pump at least another 8 xp into yours - XP that could have gone to raising your stats, or to MA Charms, or sorcery, or etc. - your grimcleaver is identical to his. Having a fancy Art5 tool gives you access to a new way to spend XP; what it doesn't do is give you a weapon that works inherently better than any other weapon of its type.
If it's really that bothersome, simply make a houserule that auto-unlocks an Evocation on an Artifact purchased on character creation.
If you want to differentiate more between Artifact 3 and Artifact 5, have Artifact 5 unlock an extra Evocation. Or even one extra for Artifact 4, two extra for Artifact 5.
To be quite frank, if you want each and every Artifact weapon to be unique, you're limited in what you can do without requiring a significant amount of homebrew.
To be quite frank, if you want each and every Artifact weapon to be unique, you're limited in what you can do without requiring a significant amount of homebrew.
You start with a collection of Artifact Powers (evocations or whatever you want to call them). Each of which has a cost in points. Then assign a total point cost to each Artifact based on its level. Bam, huge amounts of diversity.
If you have, say, a hundred powers each of which has between 1 and 5 point cost and an artifact grants say, 1 points at level 1, 4 at level two, 9 at level 3, 16 at level 4 and 25 at level 5 suddenly you have a huge amount of variable artifacts, each with a unique combination of effects.
EDIT: Also, that system comes with a built in way of making Crafting more interesting. You have Craft characters purchase (at some marginable cost like 1xp per point of the power) the various effects to create their combined artifact effects. You could link certain powers to certain exotic ingredients or certain magical materials and so on.
Raksha are infamous for being terribly balanced, full stop.
Their DIY artifact kit is actually one of least exploited parts, largely because so few people can read Graceful Wicked Masques' that far without their eyes glazing over and getting a headache.
You can make a functional artifact creation system that way, yes, but by the time you've got enough distinct powers to make it worthwhile you either wind up with a set of rather dull mechanical bonuses for players to dress up, or such a morass of unique powers that balancing them all against each other, let alone the rest of the game, is very unlikely to work out well.
Raksha are infamous for being terribly balanced, full stop.
Their DIY artifact kit is actually one of least exploited parts, largely because so few people can read Graceful Wicked Masques' that far without their eyes glazing over and getting a headache.
You can make a functional artifact creation system that way, yes, but by the time you've got enough distinct powers to make it worthwhile you either wind up with a set of rather dull mechanical bonuses for players to dress up, or such a morass of unique powers that balancing them all against each other, let alone the rest of the game, is very unlikely to work out well.
The only difference between Aarons proposed system and Evocations is that the latter have no point-cost DIY-kit assigned to them. And of course that a character has to buy Evocations with XP.
You can actually make a lot of good argument for the latter, mind you.
It makes character progression more balanced between artifact-haves and artifact have-nots. Right now, buying an Evocation or buying a Charm is pretty comparable. Okay a charm will likely be better, but that's why you can pay for Evocations with Solar-XP. If you don't have an artifact, you can buy martial arts charms or sorcery spells with them (or just specialties and abilities and so on). The wandering martial artist already has drawbacks from not using artifact weapons and armor, if you front-load artifacts that will only increase for them. Some legends just don't include artifacts.
It also makes a statement about stories. That artifact is so powerful because it is wielded by you, instead of you being powerful because of the artifact. It also fits with stories where the wielder gets more adapt at using an old artifact - many mythic swords (or other items) are not "plug and play" where they are found and instantly used to their full capacity (though those also exist, of course). Mastering The One Ring takes power and personal investment, there are other (and probably better) examples.
And last but not least, it gives artifacts way more powers than you could ever do with a front-loaded system.
Lets take Shining Ice Mirror for example, an Artifact 3 Reaper Daiklave. It has 9 Evocations.
The first allows you to prevent enemy movement by encasing their feet in ice if you parry an attack
The second is a simple attack that inflicts lasting penalties to mobility and feats of strength when it hits an enemy.
The third maxes your dicepool against flame-based attack for a pretty low cost and allows you to extinguish non-magical flames.
The fourth is a supplemental that allows you to move after the attack by gliding over ice.
The fifth combines the former two to turn the ice-slick into hazardous terrain.
The sixth follows up a successful clash-attack with an identical attack by creating an ice-double of the wielder.
The seventh enhances the second and causes the cold to also drain enemy Initiative.
The eight enhances the sixth by also adding the charms and evocations the enemy used to the attack of the ice-double.
The ninth allows you to reflect a successfully parried attack onto the attacker.
Just TRY packing all of that into an artifact. Even if you compress the effects (freezing parry (1), cold-numbing strike (2+7), ice-gliding (3+4+5), ice-double clash (6+8) and rebuking reflection parry (9) ) you still have 5 distinctive effects. I can't recall any 2E artifact weapons with that many effects, those who had multiple effects usually had much less powerful ones too. Okay, maybe 2E artifact weapons could have been done better - but I still see no real way how to make even an Artifact 5 weapon with that many innate, automatically available powers. And this was only based off an Artifact 3 weapon!
Still, I agree that artifacts could use a smidgen more frontloading. Just unlocking the first Evocation for free, at least during character creation, is very attractive. But then again, a complex system for artifacts is something we'll get in Arms of the Chosen, so I hope something is included there.
That's the point. Asking the players to homebrew a huge chunk of the game is not reasonable. The purpose of game designers is to provide player groups with already functional mechanics. That would be the point of creating an artifact creation system like I proposed.
That's the point. Asking the players to homebrew a huge chunk of the game is not reasonable. The purpose of game designers is to provide player groups with already functional mechanics. That would be the point of creating an artifact creation system like I proposed.
But don't you see, the Exalted Playerbase loves writing giant piles of homebrew and fixes to the system, which mean we can ask them to homebrew huge chunks of the Game. [/sarcasm]
Making homebrew an available option is good, and allows players to exercise their creativity and customise their games.
Making homebrew a mandatory option is bad, and forces players to rely on their possibly-tentative grasp of mechanics instead of giving them all the tools they need to play a game.
