General Exalted Thread

[TheLastOne]

What irritates me the most about this is that they could totally have seen this coming. Unclear rules with poor logic were a pain in the proverbial ass throughout 2E, why would they do it again, deliberately? And with the mass combat system too, where the single largest problem was the inability to handle what happened when you used single target magic powers on blob units!

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I'm sort of getting the feeling that while both developers and players knew 2E was broken, their ideas of how it was broken were fundamentally different.

The developers seem to be moving towards 'natural language'/'off-the-cuff rulings' - they saw the problem with 2E as it was too formal, which created a system you could solve rather then a game you could play. They're solving for that by making the system softer, more Narrativism, and less formal.

You, and others here, see the problem as poorly thought out interactions which lead to One True Path gameplay and lots of confusion on how basic aspects of the game fit together. You would solve this by having a more formal, more laid out system, tilting toward the Simulationism axis.

 

[Jon Chung]

I'm sort of getting the feeling that while both developers and players knew 2E was broken, their ideas of how it was broken were fundamentally different.

The developers seem to be moving towards 'natural language'/'off-the-cuff rulings' - they saw the problem with 2E as it was too formal, which created a system you could solve rather then a game you could play. They're solving for that by making the system softer, more Narrativism, and less formal.

You, and others here, see the problem as poorly thought out interactions which lead to One True Path gameplay and lots of confusion on how basic aspects of the game fit together. You would solve this by having a more formal, more laid out system, tilting toward the Simulationism axis.

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There's absolutely nothing wrong with a loose, rules-light game which revolves around collaborative consensus and so on. The problem here is that you have a system that is, as far as I can tell, heavier than 2E, with more moving parts, more rules, more exceptions to those rules, more subsystems, much more wordcount, etc, etc.

These things are not free, either in development time cost or in learning time cost for new players, or in trap cost for groups. If the intention is to handwave everything in the first place, you could have released this thing two years earlier and with one tenth the wordcount deliberately going as system-light as possible.

Basically, my problem is that it looks like they pay the costs for a system-heavy, crunchy game, and they expect anyone who picks this up to pay the associated system-heavy game buyin cost as well, but the expected benefit of a system-heavy, crunchy game is not delivered if it relies on ad-hoc GM fiat rulings to function (the system is superfluous to the actual resolution mechanism, which requires no system), so why pay the buyin if you don't get the payoff?

 

[Fortuna]

I'm sort of getting the feeling that while both developers and players knew 2E was broken, their ideas of how it was broken were fundamentally different.

The developers seem to be moving towards 'natural language'/'off-the-cuff rulings' - they saw the problem with 2E as it was too formal, which created a system you could solve rather then a game you could play. They're solving for that by making the system softer, more Narrativism, and less formal.

You, and others here, see the problem as poorly thought out interactions which lead to One True Path gameplay and lots of confusion on how basic aspects of the game fit together. You would solve this by having a more formal, more laid out system, tilting toward the Simulationism axis.

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The argument which immediately occurs to me against this is the absurd proliferation of dice trick Charms, which encourage (deliberately or not) optimization and system-solving behaviour.

 

[notthepenguins]

The argument which immediately occurs to me against this is the absurd proliferation of dice trick Charms, which encourage (deliberately or not) optimization and system-solving behaviour.

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I dunno, I think a bunch of insane dice trick charms fit as some ill-advised attempt to make optimizing too much of a hassle for people to do.

 

[Sucal]

I'm not talking about blasting things, nor even necessarily for using spells in combat (where they can be counterspelled). I'm talking about summoning a murdoblendo instead of being one (or summoning several). Of using a single spell to solve strategic travel for you and two passengers, and another one to solve (slower) strategic travel for you and a small army (instead of investing into whole skills with trees to vaguely cover said travel). Of having infinite free familiars built to the tasks required instead of painstakingly getting and using Survival charms to train a single familiar. I'm talking about summoning armies of superhuman combatants instead of slowly tigerwarriortraining them from humans.

Maybe some Essence-6 specs of Solars are better than Sorceror Spells, with infinite XP etc. etc. But for a finite budget, Cirrus Skiff is just a better utility thing than Eagle Wing Style or Sometimes Horses Fly, and the cost of branching into Ride is way way more (easily over 50XP) than the cost of branching into Cirrus Skiff (8-10XP). And that's just one example.

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The Solar Charm version of Circus Skiff isn't some ride charm or Eagle Wing Style.

Its to use Craft Charms to build yourself one or more Haslenti Skyships that last forever. Hell, while your at it, attach some siege weapons and outdo all but the solar circle sorcerer to

Or to use theft charms to steal yourself a fleet of ships to use for future occasions, with a high level sail charm to keep them in your anima or to send you half way across the country without having to worry about it. When I was planning a Sail based Infernal, half my problem was forcing myself to take an old fashioned artifact ship rather then skyship, purely so I would actually have to leave the thing on Occasion (rather then floating ominiously above the nobles castle and demanding the return of my circle mates).

Then again that had a bit of artifact ship construction involved. Do wish that game didn't die though.

And anyone that thinks that armies of demons aren't a pain in the ass for non Infernals to use hasn't had to deal with five armies turning up on their door step asking where their babies went.

 

[vicky_molokh]

The Solar Charm version of Circus Skiff isn't some ride charm or Eagle Wing Style.

Its to use Craft Charms to build yourself one or more Haslenti Skyships that last forever. Hell, while your at it, attach some siege weapons and outdo all but the solar circle sorcerer to

Or to use theft charms to steal yourself a fleet of ships to use for future occasions, with a high level sail charm to keep them in your anima or to send you half way across the country without having to worry about it. When I was planning a Sail based Infernal, half my problem was forcing myself to take an old fashioned artifact ship rather then skyship, purely so I would actually have to leave the thing on Occasion (rather then floating ominiously above the nobles castle and demanding the return of my circle mates).

Then again that had a bit of artifact ship construction involved. Do wish that game didn't die though.

And anyone that thinks that armies of demons aren't a pain in the ass for non Infernals to use hasn't had to deal with five armies turning up on their door step asking where their babies went.

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But the Cirrus Skiff isn't competing with fleets of such ships. It's competing with personal or semi-personal mobility charms. Let's compare personal convenience cars to personal convenience cars, not to trucks, trains and space shuttles. In the 'take a 8-10xp detour from your primary path' budget, a sorcerer (a primary path that is very versatile already) taking a detour to get one transportation spell is way more economical than anybody else taking a detour into Ride (a skill that is all about personal transportation). The ability to have a single spell essentially obsolete a whole charm tree (okay, let's say half of said charm tree) is a problem.

 

[FaeGlade Plural]

So, the most straight-forward (if maybe not best) method to get rid of the dot-based character creation and all the problems it creates is to give players bonus points instead of experience during play. That generally seems to be 1 BP=4 XP. So call it 2 BP per session, with a third as a reward for an especially good session if that's something you want.


The more elaboreate method would be to calcualate what's the "best" accocation in term of XP is, then to check how much it'd cost to buy that with XP and give players that much XP for each category.

So for example, the best way (in terms of XP saved in the long run) to assign your primary attributes is 5/5/1. To buy an attribute from 1 to 5 costs 40 XP, so the primary attribute category is worth 80 XP. Secondaries would be 5/3/1, which would be 52 points but I'd actually round that up to 60, because tertiary attributes are worth 40 points.

Bonus points seem to be valued at 4 XP per point, with some outliers. Which would be 60 XP, but I'm going to make it 70 because then you end up with a total of 550 XP at character creation, and I like that number better than 540 XP (also, it gives a bit more room to purchase merits and such).


What I have then is the following character creation rules:
- You get 180 XP for attributes. At least 40 XP must be spent on Physical, Mental and Social attributes respectively.
- You get 210 XP for abilities. Favorite abilities must have at least rating 1, no ability may be bought higher than 3 with these XP, but free XP can buy it higher than that.
- You get 10 dots of merits to spend on story or innate merits. (no real need to go for XP here)
- You get 150 XP worth of charms
- You get 70 free XP which can be spent (in combination with category XP where applicable) on anything you want.
- After you are done, tally all your unspent XP. Up to 10 XP can be turned into Solar XP and taken into character creation, but anything beyond that is lost (gotta draw a line somewhere).


So, does anyone see any issues with that?
If not, I'll throw it into my houserule compendium (which so far consists of "martial arts styles are specialities, not different abilities", "artifacts are made using the system for sorcerous workings, though you don't have to be a sorcerer to make one", "craft is a single ability with categories similar to lore specializations" and of course "crafting mundane objects is a single roll and a matter of resources").

 

[Peanuckle]

I wanted to add the Hegra charms from here.

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See the spoiler text in my post you quoted. The instructions are there. If you want more detailed help, start a PM with me because I don't wanna fill the thread with technical details.

 

[beowolf]

Ok, so, I've finally found someone who is DMing a game of Exalted I can attend IRL, but while they are an experienced dm of DnD, they are not as familiar with Exalted, and will not accept homebrew charms from the internet, even if their author is the person who made some of the hacks he's using.
Which books have Infernal Charms? I currently only know of MOEP:I, BWC, RotSE, and Shards, with the latter two being ones I haven't read yet, but are probably irrelevant to the game I'll be in, from what I've heard of them. Are there any others?

 

[Peanuckle]

Ok, so, I've finally found someone who is DMing a game of Exalted I can attend IRL, but while they are an experienced dm of DnD, they are not as familiar with Exalted, and will not accept homebrew charms from the internet, even if their author is the person who made some of the hacks he's using.
Which books have Infernal Charms? I currently only know of MOEP:I, BWC, RotSE, and Shards, with the latter two being ones I haven't read yet, but are probably irrelevant to the game I'll be in, from what I've heard of them. Are there any others?

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Ink Monkey's have some, though I don't know if those are considered canon or not, because some of them are crazy.

Have fun with your game!

 

[Cosar]

Ok, so, I've finally found someone who is DMing a game of Exalted I can attend IRL, but while they are an experienced dm of DnD, they are not as familiar with Exalted, and will not accept homebrew charms from the internet, even if their author is the person who made some of the hacks he's using.
Which books have Infernal Charms? I currently only know of MOEP:I, BWC, RotSE, and Shards, with the latter two being ones I haven't read yet, but are probably irrelevant to the game I'll be in, from what I've heard of them. Are there any others?

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There are charms from the ink monkey's blog. That should be it.

Ink Monkey's have some, though I don't know if those are considered canon or not, because some of them are crazy.

Have fun with your game!

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They are published charms from white wolf, no different than stuff from books.

 

[beowolf]

Grrreeaaat...

Well, thanks for answering, even if the answer is disappointing. I'll still have fun, but there are things I'm definitely going to miss from the lack of ES' and Revlid's charms, so I was hoping I could find ones that were new to me to make up for it.

 

[vicky_molokh]

Ink Monkey's have some, though I don't know if those are considered canon or not, because some of them are crazy.

Have fun with your game!

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Can people tell their overall experience with Ink Monkeys? In the campaign I'm in, this book is currently not included in the list of acceptable Charm sources, and one of the players is highly leery of the book (okay, collection) as a whole. And yet it seems to have Charms that fill niches not available with the corebook.

 

[TheLastOne]

There's absolutely nothing wrong with a loose, rules-light game which revolves around collaborative consensus and so on. The problem here is that you have a system that is, as far as I can tell, heavier than 2E, with more moving parts, more rules, more exceptions to those rules, more subsystems, much more wordcount, etc, etc.

These things are not free, either in development time cost or in learning time cost for new players, or in trap cost for groups. If the intention is to handwave everything in the first place, you could have released this thing two years earlier and with one tenth the wordcount deliberately going as system-light as possible.

Basically, my problem is that it looks like they pay the costs for a system-heavy, crunchy game, and they expect anyone who picks this up to pay the associated system-heavy game buyin cost as well, but the expected benefit of a system-heavy, crunchy game is not delivered if it relies on ad-hoc GM fiat rulings to function (the system is superfluous to the actual resolution mechanism, which requires no system), so why pay the buyin if you don't get the payoff?

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Oh, I agree with you. I keep thinking about retooling Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, and using that to run a Exalted game. It would take a bit of work - Chuubo's is one of the heaviest diceless "rules-lite" game systems ever, but I think it would actually tell the kind of stories Exalted wants better, and it's a better system.

 

[azoicennead]

Can people tell their overall experience with Ink Monkeys? In the campaign I'm in, this book is currently not included in the list of acceptable Charm sources, and one of the players is highly leery of the book (okay, collection) as a whole. And yet it seems to have Charms that fill niches not available with the corebook.

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There are some doozies of charms in there. Checking the errata is very important, because otherwise you get things like Lightspeed Body Dynamics, where you gain motes for dodging.
And there's Panoptic Fusion Discipline, which is a charm that costs 4m for a scene-long +3 to all your attacks that isn't dice from a charm (because the charm makes you count as always having spent 3 ticks aiming) and a +1 to your DVs*.

On the other side of things, you have Arrow Pennant Aegis. Words cannot describe how badly I want this charm to be good, but I just can't figure out how to make that happen. You get more benefit from a three-die Specialty than you do that charm - and using a ranged weapon makes it completely fucking useless.

And then there's the horror of the reflexive attack charms**. What's so horrifying about them? Well, aside from the chance to freely wail on your opponent (which is a huge advantage, because it can force defensive mote usage at no cost), can they be part of a flurry? How many can you make in one tick? How do they interact with the rules?

So, in general, the charms vary between "way too powerful" and "why would you take this".

*It's one of the significant pieces of Dr. Murderblender, and I'd be down to 19 (how horrifying!) dice pre-excellency without it (also would have to work more to come up with stunts, because "Matrix slow motion!" is great stunt fodder).

** Part 2 of Dr. Murderblender! The part that really puts the "blender" in "Murderblender".

 

[Cosar]

Can people tell their overall experience with Ink Monkeys? In the campaign I'm in, this book is currently not included in the list of acceptable Charm sources, and one of the players is highly leery of the book (okay, collection) as a whole. And yet it seems to have Charms that fill niches not available with the corebook.

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Variable. There's stuff there that's ok, bad, and op. The issue is mainly that it almost all focuses on Solars/Infernals, and on narrow slices of those.

 

[Chloe Sullivan]

I dunno, I think a bunch of insane dice trick charms fit as some ill-advised attempt to make optimizing too much of a hassle for people to do.

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If the OP devs thought that, it only reinforces the idea that they are totally out of sync with the players.

People have been making absurd statistical charts for RPG play since like AD&D at least.

 

[Anasurimbor]

But the Cirrus Skiff isn't competing with fleets of such ships. It's competing with personal or semi-personal mobility charms. Let's compare personal convenience cars to personal convenience cars, not to trucks, trains and space shuttles. In the 'take a 8-10xp detour from your primary path' budget, a sorcerer (a primary path that is very versatile already) taking a detour to get one transportation spell is way more economical than anybody else taking a detour into Ride (a skill that is all about personal transportation). The ability to have a single spell essentially obsolete a whole charm tree (okay, let's say half of said charm tree) is a problem.

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While there are a couple spells that are simply way too good, it's very intentional that sorcery is pretty much unbeatable for fast long-range travel. You get speed and endurance, but at the cost of subtlety and control. The ultimate example of this is Chariot of the Blazing Sun.

While Solar Ride is more about combat maneuverability, it only takes one charm to turn any horse into a tireless steed as fast as an agatae. Not that any Solar heavily invested in Ride would be using a mortal horse when they could easily have a god-blooded stallion or even a tyrant lizard. With familiar-enhancing charms, of course.

A sorcerer traveling through the sky at 200mph using Conjure the Azure Chariot is an awesome sight. A 20 ton apex predator effortlessly chasing it down and swallowing it whole is something else entirely.

 

[vicky_molokh]

While there are a couple spells that are simply way too good, it's very intentional that sorcery is pretty much unbeatable for fast long-range travel. You get speed and endurance, but at the cost of subtlety and control. The ultimate example of this is Chariot of the Blazing Sun.

While Solar Ride is more about combat maneuverability, it only takes one charm to turn any horse into a tireless steed as fast as an agatae. Not that any Solar heavily invested in Ride would be using a mortal horse when they could easily have a god-blooded stallion or even a tyrant lizard. With familiar-enhancing charms, of course.

A sorcerer traveling through the sky at 200mph using Conjure the Azure Chariot is an awesome sight. A 20 ton apex predator effortlessly chasing it down and swallowing it whole is something else entirely.

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45 yards per tick is good combat manoeuvrability, and I'm having trouble finding how to match it with a single or even with a couple of Charms by non-sorcery. The one idea I've had so far is to get a Peregrine Falcon (very much preferably a Familiar) and use Graceful Crane Stance to make it possible for me to balance on its back without hurting the little bird. And even then I would get something like 30 yards/tick of horizontal flight, and only beat the sorceror's velocity when diving.

Also, a I wouldn't say that a perfectly responsive stable platform that doesn't have a control rating and travels at one's direction is a case of bad controllability. To the contrary, it's perfect for someone who didn't even bother to invest in Ride.

 

[Hazard]

Let's compare personal convenience cars to personal convenience cars.

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Okay, comparison point 1:
Personal convenience cars don't exist in Exalted. Neither does any form of transportation that has a long range movement faster than a good jog.

This is deliberate. It hearkens to that time long ago where most of the population lived in scattered villages and worked in places no more than a kilometer away from where they lived, when a trip of more than 30 kilometers took multiple days and was far from safe.

Because of this, a Cirrus Skiff, which lets a Sorceror move as the crow flies is an awe inspiring spell. I mean, it gives a Sorceror the ability to cross an amount of ground in a few hours what would take most people a full day or more, and this speed only grows as the power of the Sorceror does.

To get anything even close to this level of long range mobility in Exalted you need either a sizable support system (a horse relay system or similar) or, well, an artifact whose main power is invested in moving a single person through the air.

 

[Vanigo]

Did they change it after the leak? Because it doesn't specify that in the leak, it just limits how far other targets can be from the primary target.

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It's always been multiple-targets-only. "With this attack, the Solar unleashes a barrage of arrows around a focus, striking up to (Essence * 3) targets up to medium range from her initial target." You don't make ten attacks and select targets for them, you select ten targets and attack each of them.

"Roll a single attack against the defenses of every target"
Gee, I wonder how I reached that conclusion.

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And then the very next sentence starts "These extra decisive attacks" (note the plural). Plus, that could also be read as "for every target, roll a single attack against the defenses of that target." Which would be a perfectly reasonable way to do it if it weren't so time-consuming. The intent is clearly "To save time, all these attacks use the same attack roll," but if you want to go as literally as possible... you're still wrong. And you're clearly wrong in the sense that getting 90 free motes worth of charms is total bullshit.

Plus, this reinforces the interpretation that you can't attack the same target multiple times.

Edit:

"Unless the GM decides they don't want it to" doesn't change what the Charm says it does, lol.

Rule Zero is not any more a defense when you write it out multiple times.

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Normally I'd agree, but in this case the second time explicitly calls it out as a situation where the ST should use his judgement. At that point, it is more of a defense.


Unrelated subject!

What I have then is the following character creation rules:
- You get 180 XP for attributes. At least 40 XP must be spent on Physical, Mental and Social attributes respectively.
- You get 210 XP for abilities. Favorite abilities must have at least rating 1, no ability may be bought higher than 3 with these XP, but free XP can buy it higher than that.
- You get 10 dots of merits to spend on story or innate merits. (no real need to go for XP here)
- You get 150 XP worth of charms
- You get 70 free XP which can be spent (in combination with category XP where applicable) on anything you want.
- After you are done, tally all your unspent XP. Up to 10 XP can be turned into Solar XP and taken into character creation, but anything beyond that is lost (gotta draw a line somewhere).

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Some of these numbers seem too high. It's way too much experience for abilities; 210 xp is enough to buy every ability up to 3. (3+1+3=7 * 10 favored abilities, plus 3+2+4=9 xp * 15 unfavored abilities comes to 205 xp). An optimized 5/5/1 5/3/1 5/1/1 ability spread costs only 172 experience, and honestly you probably don't want to give even that much. (180 is enough for six 4s and three 3s.) Charm experience should probably be somewhere between 8*15=120 experience and 150; enough for some unfavored charms, but three extra charms at chargen seems bad.

 

[vicky_molokh]

Okay, comparison point 1:
Personal convenience cars don't exist in Exalted. Neither does any form of transportation that has a long range movement faster than a good jog.

This is deliberate. It hearkens to that time long ago where most of the population lived in scattered villages and worked in places no more than a kilometer away from where they lived, when a trip of more than 30 kilometers took multiple days and was far from safe.

Because of this, a Cirrus Skiff, which lets a Sorceror move as the crow flies is an awe inspiring spell. I mean, it gives a Sorceror the ability to cross an amount of ground in a few hours what would take most people a full day or more, and this speed only grows as the power of the Sorceror does.

To get anything even close to this level of long range mobility in Exalted you need either a sizable support system (a horse relay system or similar) or, well, an artifact whose main power is invested in moving a single person through the air.

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I'm guessing the metaphor got lost somewhere along the way. I'll try to rephrase in order to clear this misunderstanding. There are no 'personal convenience cars' for non-Essence-using mortals. So of course we're comparing Sorcery to normal Charms.
The Skiff is a personal convenience [flying] car. The Phantom Steed is a personal convenience car. The Sometimes Horses Fly Approach is the flying engine upgrade for the personal convenience car (that happens to work on any mount, but does not work without a mount).
Phantom Steed is a second charm in the chain, also requiring Essence 3 and Ride 5.
SHFA is a fifth charm in a different chain, which also requires Essence 4 and Ride 5.
So you need to invest into having a level 5 travel skill (Ride), level 4 Essence, and seven charms to be able to summon a flying personal convenience mount.

Or you can take Essence 3, plus a level 3 in a skill that has nothing to do with travel whatsoever, take a second charm in the chain (the spell), and suddenly you're able to summon personal flying convenience mount. That costs less XP to learn. And costs less motes than a flying phantom steed because it lasts until you disembark and doesn't need to be recast every hour. And is faster than the latter. And doesn't have a Control Rating. Did I mention that the only prerequisite for this spell also happens to be the prerequisite to stuff like summoning murderblenders (and many other useful things), getting a high soak, telecommunicating all over the world very fast, or a Perfect curse that prevents sharing secrets and automatically prevents attempts to ask somebody to countermagic it etc. etc.?

Basically, for utility, Sorcery beats everything else, XP per XP. It may be weaker than some cases of infrastructure-backed charm trees, but those trees require so much XP and so much time spent getting the right backing, that Sorcery is still more useful in the big picture.

 

[notthepenguins]

It's always been multiple-targets-only. "With this attack, the Solar unleashes a barrage of arrows around a focus, striking up to (Essence * 3) targets up to medium range from her initial target." You don't make ten attacks and select targets for them, you select ten targets and attack each of them.

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This you are correct about.

Plus, that could also be read as "for every target, roll a single attack against the defenses of that target." Which would be a perfectly reasonable way to do it if it weren't so time-consuming. The intent is clearly "To save time, all these attacks use the same attack roll," but if you want to go as literally as possible... you're still wrong. And you're clearly wrong in the sense that getting 90 free motes worth of charms is total bullshit.

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Well then they should have been careful with their wording about a Charm that to the vast majority of readers is written so as to be trivially confused with a Charm in the previous edition that filled the same role. That's exactly how Peony Blossom Attack worked - you made one attack roll and enhanced it once with all your charms, then applied it to everyone. This is the problem with "natural language" -- it has room for misinterpretation, and people will interpret it either how is most advantageous to them or whatever seems the most familiar.

Normally I'd agree, but in this case the second time explicitly calls it out as a situation where the ST should use his judgement. At that point, it is more of a defense.

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Even if it were a defense (it's not), its criteria are "does it make sense," and "lighting the survivors on fire" doesn't really make much less sense than "killing hundreds of men with a few arrows" -- your interpretation that it applies to this case is not very strongly supported.

An optimized 5/5/1 5/3/1 5/1/1 ability spread costs only 172 experience, and honestly you probably don't want to give even that much. (180 is enough for six 4s and three 3s.)

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Optimization is rather necessary with Excellencies involved; each point of Dex is 2 points for your maxed-out attack. Looking at how many 4s and 3s you can get is fairly deceptive.

 

[Jon Chung]

Oh, I agree with you. I keep thinking about retooling Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, and using that to run a Exalted game. It would take a bit of work - Chuubo's is one of the heaviest diceless "rules-lite" game systems ever, but I think it would actually tell the kind of stories Exalted wants better, and it's a better system.

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That would work better, yes. This current state of "we'll pretend to have a crunchy game but it's actually made of handwavium, we're not even going to try to make this work properly" is incredibly disappointing. Either go all in on handwavium and save yourself and everyone else the trouble of having to write and/or parse something larger than an MTG set (wtf), or actually produce a good, working system, one which does not rely on the GM having to make judgement calls about unclear bullshit constantly.

 

[Vanigo]

Well then they should have been careful with their wording about a Charm that to the vast majority of readers is written so as to be trivially confused with a Charm in the previous edition that filled the same role. That's exactly how Peony Blossom Attack worked - you made one attack roll and enhanced it once with all your charms, then applied it to everyone. This is the problem with "natural language" -- it has room for misinterpretation, and people will interpret it either how is most advantageous to them or whatever seems the most familiar.

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Yeah, no arguments here.

Even if it were a defense (it's not), its criteria are "does it make sense," and "lighting the survivors on fire" doesn't really make much less sense than "killing hundreds of men with a few arrows" -- your interpretation that it applies to this case is not very strongly supported.

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That's actually addressed. Magnitude damage isn't just killing guys, it's killing a few guys and demoralizing the rest. Killing three guys with a single arrow won't impact a unit of 100 men because three guys are down, it has an impact because holy shit that arrow just went through three guys and oh god it's an anathema. You don't slaughter an army, you scatter it. Which is, incidentally, exactly how medieval armies fought; the vast majority of combat deaths were cavalry cutting down fleeing enemies.

(And yes, the system gets pretty damn screwy when you're looking at a size 5 army with perfect morale.)