General Exalted Thread

[greensun]

I... Really couldn't find myself caring less about these huge rules debates, so instead of just moping and waiting for something more interesting to happen, I'm going to do some writing myself.

Joyful-Jive Charity.

Once upon a time, the King of all Kings was charitable, but those times have past. His mutilation at the hands of the Exalted host having scourged any of his former magnanimity.

As it all rules though, there is always an exception.

Malfeas cannot abide by any kind of poor performance, and more often than not his reaction to such insulting displays is to kill the sinner, and just about everyone in hundred mile radius around them. But sometimes he is more forgiving, and instead of simply atomizing the dancers, he will instead instruct them in the secret arts of the dance. Which he is the undisputed master.

When ever an Infernal Activates this charm leading a group in a performance that includes dancing as the main component while the effects of Beauty Without Malice in effect, a musical, a couple dancing in sync or anything else in the like, the group's teamwork bonus dice are turned into success as the power of the King of All Kings suffuses their every movement; every step and made impossibly graceful.

Such an experience instills all members of the unit and the audience with a intimacy of Joyful Love towards dancing and the Infernal himself as a unnatural emotion effect. None cannot help but be moved by the dances of the Holy Tyrant.

I'm still working on the keywording and the like, so I'll probably come back and update it later.

 

[Cosar]

I think you're misunderstanding the complaint. It isn't "the DVs are too high", it's a specialty being ignored on the rare occasion it's plot-relevant because the GM wants to do a certain thing.

To break this down (as I understand it), @Darmani is saying that Medicine gets fucked over by stereotypical quest plots, because most parties don't have a super-doctor on hand (which Exalted easily can). This means most plots involve searching for a magical easy cure, rather than one character buckling down and figuring out how to save the town from the disease.
It's just... worded poorly.

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If that is his point(which the most recent post brings into doubt), I understood it perfectly well. Look at what I actually wrote:

Just like if the enemies you fight always have DV's that are a bit too high for you to hit(or high enough that you can't hit them enough).

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Note the word always in there. I am simply reframing the issue from one area to another, to better illustrate what I think the actually problem is: the problem isn't about a charm being able to do something or not. The issue is bad STing that always frames things in a way that your specialty is useless(and otherwise never allowing your specialty to be useful).

Having every opponent you face being essentially untouchable in straight combat is bad. Having one opponent you face being essentially untouchable in straight combat isn't, because while you cannot exercise your specialty in combat well against that opponent, you can do so against the other ones(and other specialties can be used against this one).

Moreover, the solution to the problem where a specialty is being ignored or suppressed isn't to write charms/systems that have no weaknesses and are very broad, because that tends to just make those specialties less relevant: if an ST would normally have a story where you have to get the mountain lotus to stop a plague, but you have Stop-plague-Prana, they're not going to have the same story. They're more likely to just not have you encounter any plagues, meaning that your specialty is still basically useless, because it never is used.

 

[Shyft]

I cannot work out which orthography I should be using to turn that word into sounds. Latin (but eww, 'k')? Generic Slavic? Turkish? Hanyu pinyin?

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It's based on Hungarian if I remember correctly- and is a pun on Oxidation. I pronounce it Ock-i-da-si myself, but that's probably wrong.

 

[MJ12 Commando]

Note the word always in there. I am simply reframing the issue from one area to another, to better illustrate what I think the actually problem is: the problem isn't about a charm being able to do something or not. The issue is bad STing that always frames things in a way that your specialty is useless(and otherwise never allowing your specialty to be useful).

Having every opponent you face being essentially untouchable in straight combat is bad. Having one opponent you face being essentially untouchable in straight combat isn't, because while you cannot exercise your specialty in combat well against that opponent, you can do so against the other ones(and other specialties can be used against this one).

Moreover, the solution to the problem where a specialty is being ignored or suppressed isn't to write charms/systems that have no weaknesses and are very broad, because that tends to just make those specialties less relevant: if an ST would normally have a story where you have to get the mountain lotus to stop a plague, but you have Stop-plague-Prana, they're not going to have the same story. They're more likely to just not have you encounter any plagues, meaning that your specialty is still basically useless, because it never is used.

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Heavy buy-in into a niche says three things:

1. I want to be good in my niche.
2. I want to be challenged in this niche.
3. I want to have stories where this niche is important.

It's why broadly interpreted automatic success effects can easily be counterproductive. It's why paranoia combat resulting in untouchable PCs is bad. It's why having exceptions to your auto-win powers that can be reasonably invoked is good. It's why invoking them all the time is horrible. If your concept is 'super expert doctor' you only have drama when you're not guaranteed success. If you want to crack codes, there's only drama if you can't just crack the code. If you want to fight, there's only drama if you can't instantly beat everyone else.

 

[azoicennead]

If you want to crack codes, there's only drama if you can't just crack the code.

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... Or when the code you broke tells you something dramatic is happening, in which case not only were you vital to the plot, the rest of your circle has a chance to use their specialties (should they apply).

 

[Chloe Sullivan]

I... Really couldn't find myself caring less about these huge rules debates, so instead of just moping and waiting for something more interesting to happen, I'm going to do some writing myself.

Joyful-Jive Charity.

Once upon a time, the King of all Kings was charitable, but those times have past. His mutilation at the hands of the Exalted host having scourged any of his former magnanimity.

As it all rules though, there is always an exception.

Malfeas cannot abide by any kind of poor performance, and more often than not his reaction to such insulting displays is to kill the sinner, and just about everyone in hundred mile radius around them. But sometimes he is more forgiving, and instead of simply atomizing the dancers, he will instead instruct them in the secret arts of the dance. Which he is the undisputed master.

When ever an Infernal Activates this charm leading a group in a performance that includes dancing as the main component while the effects of Beauty Without Malice in effect, a musical, a couple dancing in sync or anything else in the like, the group's teamwork bonus dice are turned into success as the power of the King of All Kings suffuses their every movement; every step and made impossibly graceful.

Such an experience instills all members of the unit and the audience with a intimacy of Joyful Love towards dancing and the Infernal himself as a unnatural emotion effect. None cannot help but be moved by the dances of the Holy Tyrant.

I'm still working on the keywording and the like, so I'll probably come back and update it later.

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Highschool Musical, the charm?

 

[MJ12 Commando]

... Or when the code you broke tells you something dramatic is happening, in which case not only were you vital to the plot, the rest of your circle has a chance to use their specialties (should they apply).

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And then the codebreaking wasn't dramatic. That's not a problem in and of itself-sometimes your use of your specialty shouldn't be dramatic. The combat monster super cyborg should be allowed to just walk through a wall of bullets and shoot everyone in the leg once in a while, so that when something happens that doesn't let her do that, the stakes are automatically higher.

But sometimes the story should revolve around the character's schtick, not the result of the character's shtick, and to do that in a dramatic fashion it has to be possible that the character can fail in the use of that schtick.

 

[Walker of the Yellow Path]

Because we just finished a big argument about one of Shyft's Essays, I'll repost the newly updated index of his prior ones.

So a while back, I tracked done every one of Shyft's Exalted Essays that I could find, both here and on SB. Without further ado, here are the links:

Solars
Solar Melee and Martial Arts
Solar Archery and Thrown
Solar War
The Solar Excellency
Solars and Social Combat
Solar Integrity
Solar Performance and Presence
Solar Resistance and Survival
Twilight's and Craft
Solar Investigation and Lore
Solar Medicine
Solar Occult
The Night Caste, Movement, and Solar Athletics
The Tick System, Vision, and Solar Awareness
[URL=http://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/general-exalted-thread.44/page-359#post-3313515]Dodge, Solar Dodge, Counterattacks, and Creation-Slaying Oblivion Kick
Solar Larceny or - Moral Relativism and the Chosen Of the Sun!
Solar Stealth
Eclipses, Wide Angle, Close Up and Solar Bureaucracy
Linguistics the Ability

Essence
Movement in the Storyteller System
Homebrew Bureacracy System


I'm planning on updating this as time goes on, so if I missed any, please tell me and link me to it.[/URL]

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[horngeek]

And then the codebreaking wasn't dramatic. That's not a problem in and of itself-sometimes your use of your specialty shouldn't be dramatic. The combat monster super cyborg should be allowed to just walk through a wall of bullets and shoot everyone in the leg once in a while, so that when something happens that doesn't let her do that, the stakes are automatically higher.

But sometimes the story should revolve around the character's schtick, not the result of the character's shtick, and to do that in a dramatic fashion it has to be possible that the character can fail in the use of that schtick.

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Which is why I like that 3e got rid of a lot of the 'I can ignore codes', 'I can always tell if someone is lying or not', those kinds of Charms.

 

[Carrnage]

Which is why I like that 3e got rid of a lot of the 'I can ignore codes', 'I can always tell if someone is lying or not', those kinds of Charms.

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is the book released?

 

[horngeek]

Even if the leak hadn't happened, I know the devs specifically called out those kinds of Charms as the sort of thing they were toning down.

 

[Giygas]

So we lack Ride, Sail and Socialize.

Luckily Socialize, Ride and Sail are divisional abilties of the first three Divisions of discordians(Which means that my plan of starting from the ending is paying up)
Unlucky Socialize is a divisional ability of the third Division, and it is the last solar ability. This means that my plan of starting from the ending was less clever than expected.

 

[Shyft]

Even if the leak hadn't happened, I know the devs specifically called out those kinds of Charms as the sort of thing they were toning down.

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Unfortunately, that makes Exalted 3e more like 'Every other game' out there. Where you have to do fussy makework to get to the Fun Part. Exalted 2e actually takes a few places and does the exact opposite, putting a lot of work ahead of something to justify how important it is (crafting), though it obviously doesn't do it very well.

At the core, the point I've been trying to get across with my analysis Essays is two-fold, which ties into what @MJ12 Commando said a couple posts up- Drama is proportional to challenge.

To make the 2e model of Solars work, you need the following:

1. Understanding that by buying Charms, you are deliberately saying "I don't want to play [Trope] gameplay all the time. My charms blow through that stuff and get to the meaty parts where we get to Take Action."
   I mean in terms of like- you don't play a police procedural with Solar Investigation. you play Sherlock Holmes. (Ish).
2. A grasp of the system that lets you understand when and how to contest the above point: Perfect Lying versus Judge's Ear leads to Charm Roll off. That is a consistent, understandable method of progression.
3. Tying back into point 1- by investing in a given ability or set of charms, you tell the Storyteller "I want to see this happen in game. I want my purchases and niche to feel useful."

At the core, Solar Charms are all about pushing gameplay towards Actions- more specifically, towards Decisions. What do you do with Information?.
I do 100% agree that you can defeat Solar Charms, not just with UFIO, but with clever roleplay. I do not agree that Solar Charms should be defeated by fussy makework.
Epic, long-term, multi-stage challenges? Totally legit. Part of 2e's problem is that it doesn't teach storytellers how to do that. It doesn't teach you how to make a medicine plot fun without Solar Charms or With Solar Charms. It relies on you reading between the lines- and that's hard!

Short version: Challenge is hard, and the books did a poor job of articulating it. Related to this is that 'satisfactory experience' varies from player to player. As a game designer, I myself must be aware of this at all times.

 

[Anasurimbor]

Which is why I like that 3e got rid of a lot of the 'I can ignore codes', 'I can always tell if someone is lying or not', those kinds of Charms.

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While they got rid of a lot of the charms like that, Judge's Ear Technique is still very much a thing. Thankfully it's instant, so you can't always use it. On the other hand, it will now tell you which part of a half-truth is false.

That said, very few mortals can successfully lie to someone with maxed Perception + Investigation.

 

[Giygas]

I should finish reading the leak, but, whilst Exa3 seem to not cut away completely the fussy makework, it does at least make it significantly shorter, cutting it away almost completely in certain cases(See the anti shaping charms, which at high essence say: "Screw the shaping, you are only gaining a temporary penalty for this turn").

Excpet for Craft. Screw the Silver points, they ruined the craft!!!!!

 

[EarthScorpion]

Understanding that by buying Charms, you are deliberately saying "I don't want to play [Trope] gameplay all the time. My charms blow through that stuff and get to the meaty parts where we get to Take Action."

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Except that's not really true, is it? Because what it actually means is "everything turns into endlessly dragged out combat". With more combat subsystems. And more ways of dragging out combat the more combat charms you have. Exalted 2e systematically strips out every interesting way of challenging the player, leaving only endless combat and word-punching (which is reduced to combat due to the implementation of willpower).

As written, investment in combat works completely unlike any other skill, and investment in it results in time-monopolisation rather than minimalisation.

There is a good reason that in Kerisgame, combat usually literally gets treated as any other activity, and thus there are rolls like "Physique + (lower of Subterfuge and Melee) to murder everyone in this room without anyone outside noticing and raising the alarm". And that is because as someone who is, at heart, a nWoD gamer, holy shit if I want to minimise my time spent doing one thing in Exalted, regardless of whether it's 1e or 2e, it's using the combat system.

 

[azoicennead]

And then the codebreaking wasn't dramatic. That's not a problem in and of itself-sometimes your use of your specialty shouldn't be dramatic. The combat monster super cyborg should be allowed to just walk through a wall of bullets and shoot everyone in the leg once in a while, so that when something happens that doesn't let her do that, the stakes are automatically higher.

But sometimes the story should revolve around the character's schtick, not the result of the character's shtick, and to do that in a dramatic fashion it has to be possible that the character can fail in the use of that schtick.

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If you want the Solar code-breaker to have difficulty breaking a code, give them an opponent that uses code-making magic of some kind. Or create layers so that they have to break the code on one message to find another, etc.

There's more to creating a chance of failure than just "the Difficulty on this roll is high". There's more to drama than "there's a chance I'll fail this roll".

 

[MJ12 Commando]

If you want the Solar code-breaker to have difficulty breaking a code, give them an opponent that uses code-making magic of some kind. Or create layers so that they have to break the code on one message to find another, etc.

There's more to creating a chance of failure than just "the Difficulty on this roll is high". There's more to drama than "there's a chance I'll fail this roll".

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All of these examples you give are a long-winded way of saying "the Solar can fail this task." FYI.

 

[azoicennead]

All of these examples you give are a long-winded way of saying "the Solar can fail this task." FYI.

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Uh, yeah.
Because those examples were ways to create a chance of failure in spite of perfect effects.

If you want the Solar code-breaker to have difficulty breaking a code

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I was kind of explicit about that.

 

[Chloe Sullivan]

If you want the Solar code-breaker to have difficulty breaking a code, give them an opponent that uses code-making magic of some kind. Or create layers so that they have to break the code on one message to find another, etc.

There's more to creating a chance of failure than just "the Difficulty on this roll is high". There's more to drama than "there's a chance I'll fail this roll".

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The solar cracks the code. It says "plan Azure Dragon Force Three-Delta." The ST then tells his players that they have to think about the various clues that have come up in the story so far. if they can nail 3/4/5 significant clues and make goods suggestions (eg stunts) about what they mean, they then get to make a Int + War or Investigation roll to see how much of the plan they can intuit.

Then later, they capture an enemy, and the players can use the stunt "Oh, we know all about plan Azure Dragon force Three-Delta. Did you really think you'd slip that by us" to get bonus dice on interrogating him.

Something like that?

 

[azoicennead]

The solar cracks the code. It says "plan Azure Dragon Force Three-Delta." The ST then tells his players that they have to think about the various clues that have come up in the story so far. if they can nail 3/4/5 significant clues and make goods suggestions (eg stunts) about what they mean, they then get to make a Int + War or Investigation roll to see how much of the plan they can intuit.

Then later, they capture an enemy, and the players can use the stunt "Oh, we know all about plan Azure Dragon force Three-Delta. Did you really think you'd slip that by us" to get bonus dice on interrogating him.

Something like that?

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That's another way, yes. I actually meant more like a series of dead drops that each have coded messages that lead to the next dead drop, and the circle has to hurry to find each so they can put together the information in each drop to figure out what the antagonist's plan is before it actually happens.
(Actually fully planning these out is somewhat optional, if your players regularly come up with better ideas than you.)

 

[MJ12 Commando]

Uh, yeah.
Because those examples were ways to create a chance of failure in spite of perfect effects.

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I wasn't talking about the limitations of Solar perfect effects. I was talking about in general how shtick buy-in works and why exceptions to "I succeed" effects are a good thing.

 

[azoicennead]

I wasn't talking about the limitations of Solar perfect effects. I was talking about in general how shtick buy-in works and why exceptions to "I succeed" effects are a good thing.

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Okay, 1) I just said "perfect effects"; you know, charms that say "I succeed".
2)

But sometimes the story should revolve around the character's schtick, not the result of the character's shtick, and to do that in a dramatic fashion it has to be possible that the character can fail in the use of that schtick.

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If your concept is 'super expert doctor' you only have drama when you're not guaranteed success. If you want to crack codes, there's only drama if you can't just crack the code. If you want to fight, there's only drama if you can't instantly beat everyone else.

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Perhaps you should reconsider how you make your points, given that you're claiming to be talking about one thing while repeatedly bringing up the thing I'm disagreeing with you on.

 

[Shyft]

Except that's not really true, is it? Because what it actually means is "everything turns into endlessly dragged out combat". With more combat subsystems. And more ways of dragging out combat the more combat charms you have. Exalted 2e systematically strips out every interesting way of challenging the player, leaving only endless combat and word-punching (which is reduced to combat due to the implementation of willpower).

As written, investment in combat works completely unlike any other skill, and investment in it results in time-monopolisation rather than minimalisation.

There is a good reason that in Kerisgame, combat usually literally gets treated as any other activity, and thus there are rolls like "Physique + (lower of Subterfuge and Melee) to murder everyone in this room without anyone outside noticing and raising the alarm". And that is because as someone who is, at heart, a nWoD gamer, holy shit if I want to minimise my time spent doing one thing in Exalted, regardless of whether it's 1e or 2e, it's using the combat system.

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That's actually a really good point, but at the same time, we shouldn't forget some of the historical biases/tropes of TTRPGs in general. The biggest one being 'most of them inherited from some form of combat adventure system'. Combat is huge because a lot of games started with huge combat systems.

Setting aside things like objectives, Combat in 2e endlessly drags out because there's a lot of binary Yes/No and not a lot of Gradation or 'Things you can do to each other that change the situation'.

Like, if the point of a fight is to fight, (and those can definitely happen), 2e combat drags down for mechanical reasons we've all gone over ad nausuem.

If the point of combat mechanics is to add texture to say, an ongoing chase or some other 'Action Sequence', that's hopefully different. I am not in any way saying Exalted 2e models this neatly or even communicate it effectively, but I will not let these points get washed away without comment.

Okay, so premise: Investment in combat leads to Time Monopolization, because if i'm reading you correctly, it basically becomes the Best Solution to All Problems.

That's a fair critique to the system! Not gonna deny that. I am going to stand by my opinion that non-combat Charms, at least in domains of Medicine and Investigation, exist to enable much faster paced 'adventures'. These abilities exist to, I hesitate to say 'Skip to the fun parts', but definitely try to help players push through what in other systems could be a horrible fun sink.

Don't get me wrong- I'm not arguing against combat being a horrible fun sink in terms of just design.

Anyway, one important thing to remember here, is that interesting challenge varies from player to player. Table to table and game to game. And I think quite a few of us know that Exalted was written with 'Not Dungeons and Dragons' in mind.

That means, among other things, that the 'classic' interesting challenges of DnD were meant to be blown through, as a dramatic 'take that' against the stagnant genre.

I am not making any assertions that anyone has to like the 2e model. If anyone wants to reduce the power of the charms, to adjust their effects or do whatever- that's fine. Go nuts. I'm doing my best to give you all baselines so you can make those adjustment

 

[azoicennead]

Okay, so premise: Investment in combat leads to Time Monopolization, because if i'm reading you correctly, it basically becomes the Best Solution to All Problems.

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I don't see how this is really unique to combat. In 3.5e D&D, investment in Diplomacy makes it the Best Solution. In Exalted, investment in social magic can make it the Best Solution. Investment in crafting can make it the Best Solution. Investment in sneaky shit can make it the Best Solution. Investment in finances can make it the Best Solution.
The difference between all of these and combat is... combat has a bloated system, whereas complex use of the others generally requires making things up. Also, Creation is a setting where you can get away with being an extremely violent person.