General Exalted Thread
I haven't played recent editions of D&D, but I would dispute level up scaling in D&D as being any less of a linear bonus than Exalted. The exception was for caster classes, but that was the reason that in 3.5 it was a question of "Are you a full caster? Is anyone else in your party a full caster?" XP totals didn't really matter after a certain point for certain answers to that question.
It also seems like saying that buying dots in Exalted is a linear bonus isn't quite right, as in a lot of circumstances what matters most is your peak output, so being able to spike higher is a lot more valuable than 'lol 1 dot' would otherwise suggest.
Matsci
Grash itsh griah! Rwar arr rawrrawrarar!
You can spike 1 more die higher.
It's still not a an exponential power growth.
And, as Imrix pointed out, in Exalted you can pay a scaling XP cost for a flat bonus (traits) or a flat XP cost for a scaling bonus (Charms, etc).
My opinion on the matter- you're not just buying an extra die, you're buying the next level of Charms.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
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- She/Her
Lunars, Alchemicals and Infernals all wave hello and make a sad face.
Meanwhile, Solars, Sidereals and Dragonblooded want to know why the fuck they're paying exponential xp costs for Attributes when they all have Ability Charms and Stamina 5 doesn't give them any more Charms than Stamina 3 does.
Lunars, Alchemicals and Infernals still have all those Abilities they have to pay for, and they're probably wondering why, say, Presence 3 offers them as many Charms as Presence 5.
- Location
- Der Waffle Haus
The main/big one I used during games I ran was using Kasumi/Mengtzu's Lightbringer system for creation and advancement. He lists his goals in his first post, but I mainly used it because I was running a chat based game on a forum where there were limited play slots, but many people waiting to play on the sideline. The plug and play nature of creation/advancement (i.e., if you jump in during session [x] you will have the same number of charms/dots/etc. as everyone else) meant that it was much easier to handle rapid cast turnover (which was necessary both because people were always itching to jump in/exit the game, and I was a relatively bad planner who accidentally splatted characters a few times).
I've been mulling an attempt to try and make a new Lightbringer system for 3E, but I think I'll need some time to play a few games and see how the various pieces compare.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
... yes. That was rather my point. Hence the sad faces. And in the same vein, Attributes don't provide any charms to Ability Exalts.
Ah, reading comprehension, how I can fail at it.
And TBH, Ability Exalts have it both better and worse than Attribute Exalts. Better because even if Attributes are comparatively expensive they're usually applicable to a whole lot of different rolls, and worse because Stamina and Appearance are utterly boring attributes for such Exalts. Atleast Attribute Exalts can hand interesting Charms off those stats.
azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
Does the attack sequence terminate at Step 5 if it misses?
I can't find anywhere that actually says such, and I've been assuming that Steps 6-10 still happened even then (they were just generally irrelevant).
You are correct in the assumption that all steps still happen. That's why you can still trigger a Counter Attack Charm even with a perfect defense providing protection.
azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
That's what I thought.
Kylar
In Training Forever
- Location
- Canada
Uh. Remember when I did the math for this? Its more like a 20xp advantage, tops. 2e had the hundred xp advantage with goddamn fucking willpower.
Speaking of bith this and the general house rules thing, I think the most popular house rule I've used is Willpower 10 at chargen for 2e. I did it because willpower is so important there is no reason not to buy it at chargen. I mean, its your main social defense, its your social health bar, it's what you use to channel virtues, lots of charms key off it for costs and it is cripplingly expensive to buy in play. Basically, if you don't buy it at chargen you crippled yourself. So I removed it as a concern.
I collapsed mote pool calculations to basically their 3e form: a flat number plus another number that is multiplied by your essence. This was mostly because I was running a mixed party of Celestials, and the gap between the Lunars and the Sids was getting a bit nuts. Also, clacing it out for NPCs is a pain in the ass.
I went a bit further then most with free excellencies. Basically, I said if you qualified for them and they did not give trait boosts (Alchemicals) you got them, provided they were caste or favored. This was mostly so I could free players up to buy more interesting things. It was a bit of interesting experience, given someone almost always had an applicable Excellency (Fateful is such bullshit), which tends to make mincemeat out of any difficulty you want to assign.
I grabbed some of the re-done backgrounds done by @Revlid so I had crunchier backgrounds to work with. The ones in the Core are a bit... lacking in that regard. And re-did the Backgrounds section of chargen in general so Sid's weren't swimming in their resources while the Lunars suffered (Modern game, so they all worked for the same group). In retrospect, I gave them to much: they didn't know what to put a lot of the points they had towards! Also speaking of Revlid, I was running using his mutations rules, because they are rather better balanced and I didn't need to hunt through three or four books for them all.
I'm currently using the Hardy rules, after one of my players tried to flurry a DK to death and very nearly killed himself (automatic damage whenever they hit the DK). For those unaware, Hardy basically gives you an ox-body when you buy certain charms.
I'm also using TDO's Essence Crisis Rules, mostly so my players have a panic button if I fuck up and almost kill them. They don't use it much theses days, by virtue of being 650+xp.
I also rewrote basically every weapon in the game to fit 2.5, and to fix the 'diaklaves are the best weapons forever' problem (except the ones in WotLA, because there are almost as many in there as elsewhere combined, and its balance is funky as hell), but that sees less use.
I think if I ran another 2.5 game (haha, no, unless I can get an Alchemicals game going), I'd probably lock raising Essence as something outside players control. The jump in power between E2-3-4 is massive, and unbalances a party like few other things.
Oh, and blanket bans on SotM, SoH, and WotLA. Nothing can be used from there without my express permission, as those books have aweful mechanics, to say the least.
So yeah. Quite a bit all told.
Yeah, out of all the changes from 2e to 3e, this is the one I didn't know was coming but I like anyway.
Yeah, but let's be blunt here. That's complete bupkiss.
The reason Exalted has linear-chargen-geometric-XP is...
*dramatic drum roll*:
... Vampire: the Masquerade 1e did it back in 1991. And that had no Discipline unlock based on Abilities or Attributes at all. Same for all the rest of the oWoD. Like, don't pretend there's some genius made-for-Exalted reason they do it. Just like they functionally use all the same Attributes as Vampire 1e (despite the fact that for literally decades people have been pointing out problems with how Dexterity is implemented), they also use the same XP model. Exalted is riddled with legacy code.
- Location
- Asunción
What do you think of this short story?
I know it's not possible according to canon, but I wanted to explore what would be the worst that could happen if the guild were to be beheaded suddenly.
When the Eclipse known as the Master of the Silver Talent finally managed to behead the Guild, he thought he was striking a blow for all of Creation's peoples. After all, they were at best unscrupulous merchants, willing to haggle the last obol out of the bread for a starving family. At worst, they were willing to topple governments that posed a risk to their investments, and sell slave to the Fair Folk, buying back the mindless husks they returned as cheap labor, with no fear of danger or desire to preserve their own lives.
He had cunningly avoided notice, buying key assets through ghost societies and moving through their accounts with the same calm focus of a master assassin. All transactions seemed to be perfectly normal, the chosen of Sol slowly moving his pieces until the moment came to strike. A few well-placed acquisitions, some strategic mergers and a bit of creative sabotage was all he needed. Despite not killing anyone, the effect was like the executioner's axe. The death wasn't immediate, however, for the Guild was like an enormous behemoth: cut the head off, and the body would keep on moving before realizing it was dead. As the months went by, however, its effects were felt all around Creation, with previously successful merchants going bankrupt, selling their wares and firing their employees to scrap a meager existence where they had known only opulence and splendor.
As the wave hit them, they fell to sadness and despair. More than a few took their own lives, while others were forced into poverty or slavery. As the merchants lost their businesses, the towns that depended on them started to die out, as people abandoned them to go in search for better opportunities.
So it was that the Malady of the Empty Ledgers was created, a Shadowland feeding off not on the deaths in a determined place, but on the death of an idea that had taken hold on the whole of Creation for more than a millennium. Spread out through the Five Directions, it's taken its roots into those who wish to start a new venture, filling them with dreams of luxury and greatness, slowly corrupting them so they turn to the cause of Oblivion.
In striking out an enemy of Creation, the Master of the Silver Talent gave the hosts of the Neverborn a powerful tool.
I know it's not possible according to canon, but I wanted to explore what would be the worst that could happen if the guild were to be beheaded suddenly.
When the Eclipse known as the Master of the Silver Talent finally managed to behead the Guild, he thought he was striking a blow for all of Creation's peoples. After all, they were at best unscrupulous merchants, willing to haggle the last obol out of the bread for a starving family. At worst, they were willing to topple governments that posed a risk to their investments, and sell slave to the Fair Folk, buying back the mindless husks they returned as cheap labor, with no fear of danger or desire to preserve their own lives.
He had cunningly avoided notice, buying key assets through ghost societies and moving through their accounts with the same calm focus of a master assassin. All transactions seemed to be perfectly normal, the chosen of Sol slowly moving his pieces until the moment came to strike. A few well-placed acquisitions, some strategic mergers and a bit of creative sabotage was all he needed. Despite not killing anyone, the effect was like the executioner's axe. The death wasn't immediate, however, for the Guild was like an enormous behemoth: cut the head off, and the body would keep on moving before realizing it was dead. As the months went by, however, its effects were felt all around Creation, with previously successful merchants going bankrupt, selling their wares and firing their employees to scrap a meager existence where they had known only opulence and splendor.
As the wave hit them, they fell to sadness and despair. More than a few took their own lives, while others were forced into poverty or slavery. As the merchants lost their businesses, the towns that depended on them started to die out, as people abandoned them to go in search for better opportunities.
So it was that the Malady of the Empty Ledgers was created, a Shadowland feeding off not on the deaths in a determined place, but on the death of an idea that had taken hold on the whole of Creation for more than a millennium. Spread out through the Five Directions, it's taken its roots into those who wish to start a new venture, filling them with dreams of luxury and greatness, slowly corrupting them so they turn to the cause of Oblivion.
In striking out an enemy of Creation, the Master of the Silver Talent gave the hosts of the Neverborn a powerful tool.
I like it. Especially the concepts that Shadowlands and the Underworld are influenced by the death of imaginary constructs too. I've been trying (and actually somewhat succeeding, though it's not finished yet) to put into words a few similar ideas for some time now, though nothing related to the death of businesses, good thinking there.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I'd disagree that the Guild is something you can behead like that. The merchant-kings in the South don't care what the trade routes through Nexus are doing, except maybe that they lose out on a little bit of long-distance trade profit if Nexus suddenly implodes. That certainly wouldn't be enough for them to suddenly sell off all their wares, fire everyone and go bankrupt, though. The concept of the Guild as a single coherent thing... isn't really how actual trade networks function. It should be a lot more like the Silk Road and the Indian Ocean trade networks, where it's mostly just a load of independent traders who produce an emergent web of interactions between them. There is no "head" of the Guild - at most, there are trade hubs where very rich merchants live who handle a lot of the trade passing through their home. But if they die, someone else will take their place.
Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
The problem, of course, is that they named it. If they intended the Guild to just be a loose organization of vaguely affiliated merchants then that's called trade. By making it into something with a name, you make it an organization and an organization can be destroyed.
The Guild isn't a trading company, with a fairly closely monitored structure. It's a trading franchise, where members of the franchise have standardised systems like weight, coinage and language to help make trade between one another easier, but at the same time, if the over arching franchise breaks down that's not going to instantly cause everyone to go bankrupt.
It just means that the traders can no longer depend on the Guild to guarantee their purchases and trade.
It just means that the traders can no longer depend on the Guild to guarantee their purchases and trade.
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While I am not fluent on the technical side of economics, I'd think it might be done by someone who is supernally good at bureaucracy, especially if he has a full circle backing him. The idea of the modern financial crisis (what's the plural? crises?) comes to mind, where loose requisites for loans cause a shock in the real estate market on the US, and also into the banks that hold debt from those institutions, which in turn causes them to have less money to throw around and so on and so forth... Perhaps someone with a supernatural knowledge on how those institutions work and how to make them tick could pull a stunt like I mention?
Please don't kill me for my atrocious grasp of how economies actually work, it's just a way of explaining my reasoning.
For crises of that nature to happen, I'm pretty sure you actually need there to be rapid communications Creation-wide.
The Guild as a Creation-spanning trade behemoth never made much sense anyway, even if you updated Creation to Age of Sail tech- at most, you'd be looking at the East, and even that's a massive feat.
The Guild as a Creation-spanning trade behemoth never made much sense anyway, even if you updated Creation to Age of Sail tech- at most, you'd be looking at the East, and even that's a massive feat.