General Exalted Thread

[FaeGlade Plural]

The Distract-Gambit is also pretty important - with the help of an ally - even a weaker one - you can much more easily get of smaller decisive attacks with it. Basically, it allows you to use up to 6 of your initiative to harm the enemy, as long as you have an ally who can land a decisive attack.
This can look like this: A makes a decisive attack and is reset to base initiative, while B makes a withering attack. In the next round, B uses a distract gambit to benefit A, A makes another decisive attack - but with 9 damage dice instead of the 3 (As initiative from being reset to base initiative). This has a reasonable chance of landing and significantly hurting the enemy, it's certainly enough to get through most hardness.


On the other hand, the infamous example of pummeling an enemy in initiative crash to amass a ton of initiative can go very wrong too, because of initiative reset.
Because even if you drive the enemy down to -50 initiative or something - after three rounds of initiative crash, they'll be reset to 3 initiative. So in this case, they'd get 53 initiative - sure, you leeched as much from them too, and their initiative is still low. But you'd have been better off leeching that initiative off other opponents, who were not in initiative crash and could actually hurt you.

 

[SerGregness]

The Distract-Gambit is also pretty important - with the help of an ally - even a weaker one - you can much more easily get of smaller decisive attacks with it. Basically, it allows you to use up to 6 of your initiative to harm the enemy, as long as you have an ally who can land a decisive attack.
This can look like this: A makes a decisive attack and is reset to base initiative, while B makes a withering attack. In the next round, B uses a distract gambit to benefit A, A makes another decisive attack - but with 9 damage dice instead of the 3 (As initiative from being reset to base initiative). This has a reasonable chance of landing and significantly hurting the enemy, it's certainly enough to get through most hardness.


On the other hand, the infamous example of pummeling an enemy in initiative crash to amass a ton of initiative can go very wrong too, because of initiative reset.
Because even if you drive the enemy down to -50 initiative or something - after three rounds of initiative crash, they'll be reset to 3 initiative. So in this case, they'd get 53 initiative - sure, you leeched as much from them too, and their initiative is still low. But you'd have been better off leeching that initiative off other opponents, who were not in initiative crash and could actually hurt you.

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but that'd also rack up onslaught penalties as well seeing as how to use a gambit you technically must make an attack, right?

More generally, I ran into the question of 'for which purposes do gambits count as 'attacks'?' a while back doing a test combat with @Vanigo I think it was. The fire Shikari's Fiery Blade Attack "[Ignites] a bonfire (p. 230) around an enemy upon successfully landing a decisive attack." and it seemed logical to me that I should be able to activate it after landing a disarm gambit.

 

[vicky_molokh]

Uh, what. It's an extremely large conceptual jump from "I can get a +2 dice bonus and resources if I make a description involving the scene or actors in a scene and do not repeat myself" to "Nothing at all needs to make sense, we shall completely throw out any pretense of making a working state of suspension of disbelief, despite how actually important this concept is to an immersive fiction experience."

The stunt rule is there to encourage players to get involved in a scene and interact/riff off stuff the other players and the GM are describing by providing extremely strong incentives to do so on the system mechanical layer, not an instruction to reject logic.

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I'm focusing not so much on the +2 dice as on the fact that a Stunt both enables the impossible and completely negates the penalty/Difficulty Increase for doing the impossible. That seems very logic-rejecting to me. Both seems to be based around the guideline of 'if it looks awesome/etc., then it is okay to ignore the normal consequences in favour of awesomeness'. This is why many alternate history settings tend to have zeppelins in modern times/alongside modern tech, actually (TimeShift, Red Alert 2 & 3, IIRC Gernsback, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Iron Sky, Equilibrium &c.).

Yes, that works if the details aren't inherently contradictory. It doesn't work if the details provided by the setting are completely incoherent, as this form of deduction only applies if the information is actually sound and all participants agree that published information is true and can be acted upon in game.

For example, the "places of sin" shit in Scroll of Heroes, being incompatible with the operation of Exalted demons in all other sources. If you act upon that and assume it to be true, and your GM has thrown it out because it's incompatible with Games of Divinity's core concept of Exalted demons (and was written by a dude who wrote things for the wrong bloody edition and had them published...), you're going to have a problem interacting with demons.

Similarly, if you read Scroll of the Monk and come to the obvious conclusion that elder Exalts can teleport across Creation for one mote, tank infinite attacks with infinite motes and kick every living thing to death in one tick from the peak of the Imperial Mountain, which is inescapable if you actually treat Scroll of the Monk seriously, you're going to have a problem if you get into a game and attempt to acquire those capabilities when the GM has tossed the book in the closest available incinerator because said capabilities are incompatible with the entire setting's continued existence.

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'Assumed to be true; the GM did not' is precisely why I'm leery of undocumented headcanon changes. They make complex interactions prone to a chance of failure through no fault on the player's part. Outright contradiction between explicit parts of the setting definitely cause problems of a similar type on their own. Hoever, an explicit bit of the setting contradicting an implicit part of the setting (e.g. it's AFAIK not stated anywhere that all paths from Malfeas to Creation take one day, though it does say that going through Cecelyne does; fast path contradict the implied but not the explicit bit) don't seem to cause this type of problem. Instead, they produce a mystery that one can explore, finding hidden reasons for an unexpected phenomenon(-na).

Now, SMAs in Monk are . . . yeah.

This is the sort of situation that has produced the group-by-group "this set of material is what exists and this is what does not" approach that has evolved to work around this problem, and the reason why nobody takes everything published as true. You can still do what you do with regard to setting details, but usually, this is done after the banlist is set so everyone is on the same page, and every group has a different list.

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Well, yeah, after researching an explicit list regarding what is untrue. Of course, I can't mind-read those lists, and it takes very long to actually read a bit-by-bit list for the whole setting even if one exists for a given poster.

Yeah, no. Did you even read my examples when I told you about this before?

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Uh, I did. But we seem to have a certain difference of premises. Notably, you expect a total newbie GM going all-out. I'm expecting a GM who has some experience with RPG systems in general, and who is not aiming to TPK.
If one pits two equal opponents in a life-and-death combat, then there is 50% chance that one of them will die. When one pits two equal groups, things get complicated, but the chance of at least one side losing one member is still high (50% unless there are some weird mechanics that allow one to tone down life-and-death'ness in group combats). So I don't expect confrontations with fully equal opposition to be routine and/or don't expect confrontations with high-power opposition to be life-and-death.
You seem to expect that all NPCs are built as optimal powergamers, and go all-out. The consensus at the table is that real people (PC and NPC alike) normally aren't optimal.
You have posted displays of the death spiral as a dangerous thing. I'm saying that it is not necessarily the case that the path between the beginning of the death spiral is a white room, and that some sort of unforeseen factor may save the PCs in an over-the-top Indiana-Jonesey manner.
Or maybe I'm misunderstanding and you're pointing out something different?

 

[Jon Chung]

I'm focusing not so much on the +2 dice as on the fact that a Stunt both enables the impossible and completely negates the penalty/Difficulty Increase for doing the impossible. That seems very logic-rejecting to me. Both seems to be based around the guideline of 'if it looks awesome/etc., then it is okay to ignore the normal consequences in favour of awesomeness'. This is why many alternate history settings tend to have zeppelins in modern times/alongside modern tech, actually (TimeShift, Red Alert 2 & 3, IIRC Gernsback, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Iron Sky, Equilibrium &c.).

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Uh, no. Again, we know what the stunt rule is for, I just told you. It's there to get players invested in a scene and actively describing their actions. For incentives, it provides a +2 dice bonus and 4 motes or 1 willpower, and also protects you from the GM being a vindictive little prick and screwing you over for attempting to do something interesting, so there are no downsides and plenty of upsides, describe away, do cool wuxia stunts, copy your favourite chanbara film, whatever.

Why in the world would you take that and extrapolate it into a blanket assumption that nothing in the setting is supposed to make sense, from "what ships work in what weather conditions" up to "humans act like humans"?

'Assumed to be true; the GM did not' is precisely why I'm leery of undocumented headcanon changes. They make complex interactions prone to a chance of failure through no fault on the player's part.

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Yes, well, "every group has their own canon list and set of books that don't exist" is not an abstract proposal, it's how the game is actually played. Because global consensus does not exist and it is impossible to do RAW, unfortunately. Therefore, if you want to try popping into just about any Exalted discussion on the interwebs and start insisting that everyone stick purely to exact published canon, you're likely not gonna have a good time.

Outright contradiction between explicit parts of the setting definitely cause problems of a similar type on their own. Hoever, an explicit bit of the setting contradicting an implicit part of the setting (e.g. it's AFAIK not stated anywhere that all paths from Malfeas to Creation take one day, though it does say that going through Cecelyne does; fast path contradict the implied but not the explicit bit) don't seem to cause this type of problem. Instead, they produce a mystery that one can explore, finding hidden reasons for an unexpected phenomenon(-na).

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Five days, and we know the reason why because Borgstrom actually came out and talked about it. Some random freelancer writing something that ignores it is a case of... some random freelancer not knowing what he was doing. Because people like the five-day lag and agree with the reasoning behind it.

You can certainly make something interesting out of it in your own game by introducing an instant Hell Portal and nobody will stop you, but trying to get others to go along with it in the form of "okay, that in fact should exist, screw the five day lag, the freelancer was absolutely right!", that's... probably not gonna happen.

Now, SMAs in Monk are . . . yeah.

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And people reject those because they're contradictory with, well, just about everything else. Are you going to quixotically insist that everyone talking to you treats those bits of setting information as definitionally good by virtue of being published too? No, yes? I gather you, too, agree with banning Obsidian Shards of Infinity. What makes this particular contradiction unacceptable while all others seem to be something you, hm, actively like?

Well, yeah, after researching an explicit list regarding what is untrue. Of course, I can't mind-read those lists, and it takes very long to actually read a bit-by-bit list for the whole setting even if one exists for a given poster.

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Except it doesn't matter in the slightest if you're talking to some random on the internet, it only matters when you're playing a game, at which point your group sets its own list and you have local consensus. If you're looking for some kind of globally agreed on list to stick to when interacting with other people online, I can only point out, again, that there isn't one, and trying to insist on "everything published exactly as written" as said list will not work.

Example of a discussion I remember seeing a while ago, truncated and paraphrased.
Poster A: So guys, how do I best use Violet Bier of Sorrows Style?
Poster B: Ha ha ha, no such thing exists!
Poster C: Nonsense, Violet Bier of Sorrows Style is perfectly balanced, and Poster A should teach Blade of the Battle Maiden to his entire circle.
Poster D: Here's a link to a rewritten version that isn't broken!
Poster B: That doesn't fix all the problems!
Poster C: It doesn't need fixing!

Etc, etc. The scenario where all four posters stop talking about whether Violet Bier of Sorrows should exist and instead start discussing the merits of the published material as written is a nonstarter, it basically won't happen.

Uh, I did. But we seem to have a certain difference of premises. Notably, you expect a total newbie GM going all-out. I'm expecting a GM who has some experience with RPG systems in general, and who is not aiming to TPK.
If one pits two equal opponents in a life-and-death combat, then there is 50% chance that one of them will die. When one pits two equal groups, things get complicated, but the chance of at least one side losing one member is still high (50% unless there are some weird mechanics that allow one to tone down life-and-death'ness in group combats). So I don't expect confrontations with fully equal opposition to be routine and/or don't expect confrontations with high-power opposition to be life-and-death.
You seem to expect that all NPCs are built as optimal powergamers, and go all-out. The consensus at the table is that real people (PC and NPC alike) normally aren't optimal.
You have posted displays of the death spiral as a dangerous thing. I'm saying that it is not necessarily the case that the path between the beginning of the death spiral is a white room, and that some sort of unforeseen factor may save the PCs in an over-the-top Indiana-Jonesey manner.
Or maybe I'm misunderstanding and you're pointing out something different?

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/facepalm

 

[vicky_molokh]

Uh, no. Again, we know what the stunt rule is for, I just told you. It's there to get players invested in a scene and actively describing their actions. For incentives, it provides a +2 dice bonus and 4 motes or 1 willpower, and also protects you from the GM being a vindictive little prick and screwing you over for attempting to do something interesting, so there are no downsides and plenty of upsides, describe away, do cool wuxia stunts, copy your favourite chanbara film, whatever.

Why in the world would you take that and extrapolate it into a blanket assumption that nothing in the setting is supposed to make sense, from "what ships work in what weather conditions" up to "humans act like humans"?

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I agree on the concept of "more detailed description -> more dice and some resource payback". That's indeed very along the lines of scene-investment.

But I find the idea that a short-term rule can protect someone from a vindictive prick GM to be dubious. OTOH, the whole "make an over-the-top description -> get out of jail free regarding the logical negative consequences of said over-the-top description" seems like a very specific application of the following rule, and is in fact enabled (given a pass) because of the following dramatic rule: "The limit of the Willing Suspension of Disbelief for a given element is directly proportional to the element's awesomeness". Example: The Death Star is not strategically sound - a small fleet of stardestroyers can glass the surface of a planet way cheaper - but it's part of the SW setting because ominously huge and gives the grand option of outright destroying planets with its glorious solar superlaser.

Five days, and again, that's there for a reason, we know this because Borgstrom actually came out and talked about it. Some random moron freelancer writing something that ignores it is a case of... some random moron freelancer not knowing what he was doing. Because people like the five-day lag and agree with the reasoning behind it.

You can certainly make something interesting out of it in your own game by introducing an instant Hell Portal and nobody will stop you, but trying to get others to go along with it in the form of "okay, that in fact should exist, screw the five day lag, the freelancer was absolutely right!", that's... probably not gonna happen.

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I haven't seen the reason anywhere in the books, and IIRC nobody linked to this reason/talk/etc. either. This is why I talk about explicit versus implicit parts of the canon.

And people reject those because they're contradictory with, well, just about everything else. Are you going to quixotically insist that everyone talking to you treats those bits of setting information as definitionally good by virtue of being published too? No, yes? I gather you, too, agree with banning Obsidian Shards of Infinity on general principle. Why should we do such a thing?

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The primary reason for rejection seems to be the fact that they're mechanically broken.

Except it doesn't matter in the slightest if you're talking to some random on the internet, it only matters when you're playing a game, at which point your group sets its own list and you have local consensus. If you're looking for some kind of globally agreed on list to stick to when interacting with other people online, I can only point out, again, that there isn't one, and trying to insist on "everything published exactly as written" as said list will not work.

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Okay, how do I discuss Exalted-the-setting on the Internet without having it always turn into discussion (or arguing) of what is and isn't in the headcanons of you, me, and anyone else invovled? Having a global unifying vision of a setting is actually what makes easy and non-misleading discussions on the Internet possible, where someone in New Guinea says 'We took over the Guild yesterday!' and someone in Quebec goes 'Whoa, impressive!'.
This isn't a rhetorical question in an attempt to prove you wrong - this is an actual question about how to re-achieve this goal as applied to Exalted gaming.

/facepalm

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Speaking of Moran's explanations, I don't have a link either, and in fact I don't recall reading the original quote. But I've read a claim attributed to Moran, the claim being something like:
Sidereal Charms can be very powerful when applied by Sidereals sitting in Yu-Shan to a bunch of Solar PCs running in Creation, quickly ending their adventures. But the Charmsets were written with the assumption that the best Charms in the book are not ubiquitously available to, and liberally used by, the NPCs, against the PCs.

Is there any direct information that such a statement is real? If it is real, am I correct to understand that you find this approach unacceptable?

 

[Jon Chung]

I agree on the concept of "more detailed description -> more dice and some resource payback". That's indeed very along the lines of scene-investment.

But I find the idea that a short-term rule can protect someone from a vindictive prick GM to be dubious.

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It is an instruction to the GM to not penalize players for trying to do cool descriptions. There is a non-trivial chance that a GM not so instructed would inadvertently screw over the player for doing something nonstandard by, for example, imposing additional rolls and/or raising the difficulty of the action. The rule is for the purposes of ensuring this doesn't happen.

OTOH, the whole "make an over-the-top description -> get out of jail free regarding the logical negative consequences of said over-the-top description" seems like a very specific application of the following rule, and is in fact enabled (given a pass) because of the following dramatic rule: "The limit of the Willing Suspension of Disbelief for a given element is directly proportional to the element's awesomeness". Example: The Death Star is not strategically sound - a small fleet of stardestroyers can glass the surface of a planet way cheaper - but it's part of the SW setting because ominously huge and gives the grand option of outright destroying planets with its glorious solar superlaser.

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See, this is the leap I'm talking about - just because we have rules to encourage scene investment and player description does not mean we suddenly decide to throw out all common sense and accept every single mistake, example of poor research or badly thought out mechanic at face value no matter how ridiculous.

The argument "Stunt protection exists, therefore we cannot point out dumb bits of material that make no sense" is a non-starter argument.

I haven't seen the reason anywhere in the books, and IIRC nobody linked to this reason/talk/etc. either. This is why I talk about explicit versus implicit parts of the canon.

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Yes, well, what should have happened is that the reasoning for the limit was laid out properly to freelancers in the design bible/development package given out with their writing assignments and that said assignment would be checked for adherence to said design bible, but here we run into 2E's perpetual quality control problem again.

The primary reason for rejection seems to be the fact that they're mechanically broken.

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Well, they're mechanically broken in the sense that they are too powerful, rather than, for example, they don't work / do nothing when used. The thing is, we judge this by looking at the effects of what would happen by running them RAW, note that the likely extrapolated result looks like a really terrible idea and therefore conclude that, yes, these things probably should not exist.

How does this logic process differ from the one used on, say, just about any other issue where an assertion is tested against the likely effect it would have if it was true, and rejected because of undesirable side effects?

Okay, how do I discuss Exalted-the-setting on the Internet without having it always turn into discussion (or arguing) of what is and isn't in the headcanons of you, me, and anyone else invovled? Having a global unifying vision of a setting is actually what makes easy and non-misleading discussions on the Internet possible, where someone in New Guinea says 'We took over the Guild yesterday!' and someone in Quebec goes 'Whoa, impressive!'.

This isn't a rhetorical question in an attempt to prove you wrong - this is an actual question about how to re-achieve this goal as applied to Exalted gaming.

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You really can't. That's the problem. It's what I've been trying to point out all this time. 2E is fucked. There is no global unifying vision and you can't impose one, because low quality control ensures that everybody has a bunch of crap they hate and will refuse to allow to exist, and everyone has a different list.

Speaking of Moran's explanations, I don't have a link either, and in fact I don't recall reading the original quote. But I've read a claim attributed to Moran, the claim being something like:
Sidereal Charms can be very powerful when applied by Sidereals sitting in Yu-Shan to a bunch of Solar PCs running in Creation, quickly ending their adventures. But the Charmsets were written with the assumption that the best Charms in the book are not ubiquitously available to, and liberally used by, the NPCs, against the PCs.

Is there any direct information that such a statement is real? If it is real, am I correct to understand that you find this approach unacceptable?

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Sure, here, somebody archived it: link. And I find this approach unacceptable because it puts all the burden of deciding whether or not any particular landmine is going to blow up the gaming group on the GM, who is being asked to parse the second-order consequences of non-obvious system mechanics on the fly.

I can do it, but I've certainly seen people who can't, and it is absolutely not cool to make them do it if they want to, for example, put Sidereals in their game as NPCs and simultaneously not blow up their game.

 

[vicky_molokh]

It is an instruction to the GM to not penalize players for trying to do cool descriptions. There is a non-trivial chance that a GM not so instructed would inadvertently screw over the player for doing something nonstandard by, for example, imposing additional rolls and/or raising the difficulty of the action. The rule is for the purposes of ensuring this doesn't happen.



See, this is the leap I'm talking about - just because we have rules to encourage scene investment and player description does not mean we suddenly decide to throw out all common sense and accept every single mistake, example of poor research or badly thought out mechanic at face value no matter how ridiculous.

The argument "Stunt protection exists, therefore we cannot point out dumb bits of material that make no sense" is a non-starter argument.

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It's not an argument that is based solely on stunt protection. It's also the combined impression of the whole mythic-ness, epic-ness and larger-than-life-ness of the game line. Those traits don't lend themselves well to realism. One does not worry that if Gilgamesh raced the sun on its way through the tunnel from Dusk til Dawn says certain things about the smallness of the world, or what the implications of Þor lowering the Sea Level are for marine trade routes, or just how did young Skywalker have the opportunities to hone his vehicle skills that he brags about upon meeting a Jedi.

Yes, well, what should have happened is that the reasoning for the limit was laid out properly to freelancers in the design bible/development package given out with their writing assignments and that said assignment would be checked for adherence to said design bible, but here we run into 2E's perpetual quality control problem again.

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I do have to wonder why things that are considered fundamental premises that are a selling point of the setting . . . were not made an explicit premise in the published material of the setting. I mean, for example, that Transhuman Space explicitly says that it 'paints an optimistic picture of the future' on page 7 of its corebook (in more words than that), and then follows up on it . . . which doesn't mean that there are zero 'pessimistic' places in the world of 2100, just that the overall trend is optimistic. And people read the corebook, and already they can see which themes are considered fundamental-dominant for the setting, even if they aren't given some secret document once they ascend to being writers or line editors.

Side thought on this whole vector: I've seen @MJ12Commando try to analyse WoD with at least partial usage of Death of the Author. I find it curious that the approach isn't tried in this case, where, well, one could say that the author of the setting is metaphorically dead for the purposes of its further development.

Well, they're mechanically broken in the sense that they are too powerful, rather than, for example, they don't work / do nothing when used. The thing is, we judge this by looking at the effects of what would happen by running them RAW, note that the likely extrapolated result looks like a really terrible idea and therefore conclude that, yes, these things probably should not exist.

How does this logic process differ from the one used on, say, just about any other issue where an assertion is tested against the likely effect it would have if it was true, and rejected because of undesirable side effects?

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Mostly a matter of ruined games. Broken mechanics result in ruining games. But practicing Willing Suspension of Disbelief regarding some merely unrealistic stuff is precisely one of the practices that is meant to prevent ruined games. That's why people engage their WSoD when watching Star Wars, or many animés, or reading myths. Because practice of WSoD increases enjoyment and/or prevent the ruination of enjoyment of over-the-top mythic stories/settings.

You really can't. That's the problem. It's what I've been trying to point out all this time. 2E is fucked. There is no global unifying vision and you can't impose one, because low quality control ensures that everybody has a bunch of crap they hate and will refuse to allow to exist, and everyone has a different list.

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Yeah, 2e was written by a bunch of people with very different ideas, each advancing her own favourite themes and theories. But I have to wonder:
given just how strongly different the list is between members of the community is indication that there is a case of BrokenBase/UnpleasableFanbase. Oh wait . . . looking deeper through the links, an example is actually brought up:

Exalted has a sort of three-way war going on between the "early 2e was the best and the Ink Monkeys have ruined it", "the Ink Monkeys rock and early 2e sucked", and "all of 2e sucks, 1e was the best" factions. There are also sub-wars, especially over whether or not Lunars 1e, Lunars 2e, both, or neither are broken, overpowered, and/or underpowered and in need of rewriting.

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Hmm. At this point, I wonder if having 2e or Exalted in general be 'unf***ed' is possible at all . . . and I suspect not precisely because changing something in one direction will cause a 'they ruined it' reaction from the opposite side of the community.

Sure, here, somebody archived it: link. And I find this approach unacceptable because it puts all the burden of deciding whether or not any particular landmine is going to blow up the gaming group on the GM, who is being asked to parse the second-order consequences of non-obvious system mechanics on the fly.

I can do it, but I've certainly seen people who can't, and it is absolutely not cool to make them do it if they want to, for example, put Sidereals in their game as NPCs and simultaneously not blow up their game.

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Thanks for the link. I agree that it's not something everyone can do.

 

[samdamandias]

I'm focusing not so much on the +2 dice as on the fact that a Stunt both enables the impossible and completely negates the penalty/Difficulty Increase for doing the impossible. That seems very logic-rejecting to me. Both seems to be based around the guideline of 'if it looks awesome/etc., then it is okay to ignore the normal consequences in favour of awesomeness'. This is why many alternate history settings tend to have zeppelins in modern times/alongside modern tech, actually (TimeShift, Red Alert 2 & 3, IIRC Gernsback, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Iron Sky, Equilibrium &c.).

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Stunting doesn't let you do the impossible. Stunting will let an Exalt jump good, but no amount of stunting will let them fly without the appropriate charm. Even if the Exalt can balence on an area the size of a leaf, no amount of stunting will let the leaf support them on a river without the appropriate charm. Stunting in and of itself does not let an Exalt pull weapons and armor out of hammerspace, but charms do, and those charms are prime stunt fodder.

And yes, Gernsback does have airships. IIRC, there's an optional rule in the world generation section of Infinite Worlds that automatically gives the worldline airships when the tech diverges beyond a certain point.

Notably, you expect a total newbie GM going all-out. I'm expecting a GM who has some experience with RPG systems in general, and who is not aiming to TPK.

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Imagine then, a GM who has run other games before but is new to Exalted setting out to make a challenging encounter from which their players might be expected to run.

Hmm. At this point, I wonder if having 2e or Exalted in general be 'unf***ed' is possible at all . . . and I suspect not precisely because changing something in one direction will cause a 'they ruined it' reaction from the opposite side of the community.

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I think if you come out with "Here's my extensive rewrite" people will at least appreciate the effort that you put into it. Of course, this asks whether you're rewriting the setting or the mechanics, or both, and how much effort you're putting in to said rewrite.

 

[Broken25]

Stunting doesn't let you do the impossible.

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This is patently false. For a start, stunts allow to parry lethal damage with your bare hands. It doesn't allow to do most impossible things, but it allows to do some. (You can't use stunts for things that require charms of E2 or more, but they still permit a lot of bullshit)

 

[EarthScorpion]

This is patently false. For a start, stunts allow to parry lethal damage with your bare hands. It doesn't allow to do most impossible things, but it allows to do some. (You can't use stunts for things that require charms of E2 or more, but they still permit a lot of bullshit)

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Only with an appropriate stunt. Like, say, stomping hard on the floor to make a floorboard pop-up, and then catching the blow on the floorboard. Or slapping the flat of the blade away from you.

It's not a universal "you can block lethal damage" thing, it's a "blocking lethal damage can be done with an appropriate stunt". Which isn't the same thing. You can't catch a sword in your bare hand, but you can take the swordblow on your thick metal bracelet so it bounces off.

 

[Broken25]

Only with an appropriate stunt. Like, say, stomping hard on the floor to make a floorboard pop-up, and then catching the blow on the floorboard. Or slapping the flat of the blade away from you.

It's not a universal "you can block lethal damage" thing, it's a "blocking lethal damage can be done with an appropriate stunt". Which isn't the same thing. You can't catch a sword in your bare hand, but you can take the swordblow on your thick metal bracelet so it bounces off.

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Well, of course. But what i said is still true. You can do impossible things with stunts. Not all the time (Charms are for that) but at least in ocassion.

 

[Hazard]

This is patently false. For a start, stunts allow to parry lethal damage with your bare hands. It doesn't allow to do most impossible things, but it allows to do some. (You can't use stunts for things that require charms of E2 or more, but they still permit a lot of bullshit)

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Ehm, no?

They let you explain how you are doing something that shouldn't be possible according to rules as written, but they don't allow you to do factually impossible things. It'll allow you to catch a knife that's being thrown at you, but that contact detonated grenade is still going to explode, doesn't matter if it lands near you or if you catch it on your shield.

 

[vicky_molokh]

Stunting doesn't let you do the impossible. Stunting will let an Exalt jump good, but no amount of stunting will let them fly without the appropriate charm. Even if the Exalt can balence on an area the size of a leaf, no amount of stunting will let the leaf support them on a river without the appropriate charm. Stunting in and of itself does not let an Exalt pull weapons and armor out of hammerspace, but charms do, and those charms are prime stunt fodder.

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Stunts canonically allow the following normally impossible actions, and it is implied that the list is non-exhaustive:

• Applying a medical operation that normally takes an hour faster.
• Crafting an items whose Resources value exceeds your Craft skill level.
• running across the heads of people in a crowd,
• Parrying lethal attacks: deflecting a blade or arrow barehanded (i.e. not with a weapon, improvised or not)
• jumping around an enemy and balancing on his hand, automagically score a successful hit against a chandellier and score a hit with the oil from it against said enemy, all in a matter of one action without Flurries (magical or otherwise) as a mere feint before delivering an actual attack.

Imagine then, a GM who has run other games before but is new to Exalted setting out to make a challenging encounter from which their players might be expected to run.

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Yeah, that's exactly the sort of situation I imagine. Which is probably something a GM would want to do after getting a feel of the party's robustness or lack thereof, and would probably have some sort of safety net to ensure the first challenge of this level of danger wouldn't risk a TPK (revisited upon increasing the danger level).

 

[Aleph]

Mostly a matter of ruined games. Broken mechanics result in ruining games. But practicing Willing Suspension of Disbelief regarding some merely unrealistic stuff is precisely one of the practices that is meant to prevent ruined games. That's why people engage their WSoD when watching Star Wars, or many animés, or reading myths. Because practice of WSoD increases enjoyment and/or prevent the ruination of enjoyment of over-the-top mythic stories/settings.

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I would point out that WSoD breaking is a cause of ruined games. What I was saying earlier about how certain groups hew towards certain elements of the line - the loosely associated group that I probably belong to loves the verisimilitude of Exalted, and values it more than the mythic-but-nonsensical stuff, precisely because their WSoD breaks when they see that, for instance, there's a one-day route to Malfeas that bypasses the five-day limit or the Deathlords have immunity to Ghost-Eating Technique save for a single tiny weakness. That's not a case of them not choosing to fire up their WSoD; it's a case of them only being willing to suspend disbelief for certain things, and going "fuck this" when confronted by something that reeks of bullshit to them. Such as a Goldberg's Razor explanation of how the way that the mechanical abstraction of the rule system works means that humans in Creation are completely psychologically alien.

Yeah, that's exactly the sort of situation I imagine.

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You may still be underestimating how horrifyingly easy it is to accidentally kill a character, even if they aren't OHK'd in a single blow, without - again - shattering a bunch of WSoDs as people go "so wait, he had my character completely at his mercy, he had no particular reason to leave me alive after stealing my sword, and yet he did so anyway because why?" Some people don't like being babied like that. Exalted is a game about consequences, and hastily tweaking an encounter to avoid the consequences of screwing up so that you miraculously don't die sort of runs afoul of that. A rule system where it isn't necessary to do it is superior to one that you sometimes need to fudge hastily or introduce contorted justifications into in order to avoid TPKs.

I think @Havocfett can speak up here with a story about how his entire Circle of Exalts in one game got TPKd by like five mortals who were meant to be no more than a speedbump, by accident. Twice, if I recall correctly.

 

[greensun]

I think @Havocfett can speak up here with a story about how his entire Circle of Exalts in one game got TPKd by like five mortals who were meant to be no more than a speedbump, by accident. Twice, if I recall correctly.

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What

Like seriously, how in gods name did that happen?

 

[Revlid]

their WSoD breaks when they see that, for instance, there's a one-day route to Malfeas that bypasses the five-day limit or the Deathlords have immunity to Ghost-Eating Technique save for a single tiny weakness.

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Well, the issue of Deathlord weaknesses isn't really a question of Willing Suspension Of Disbelief.

The Malfeas thing sort of is, because it's a hole in a setting element that allows for sending messages into the past in a way that doesn't actually work with the setting. Assuming such a loophole exists, I can't really believe someone's not going to exploit it, which makes stuff keel over – so at the point you're allowing one-day transfer across Cecelyne, you might as well strip out that five-day limit entirely, because it's gone from a cool setting element to a liability. So, sure, Willing Suspension Of Disbelief has been violated, okay.

The Deathlords being immune to complete destruction (except maybe through a secret weakness – which was a lie made up by gods in 1e, iirc) doesn't break my Willing Suspension Of Disbelief on its own, because, hey, so are the Neverborn, whatever. There are ways to make that work, mainly by shackling them so heavily they're not effective actors in the setting.

It does break Willing Suspension Of Disbelief in 2e, because if my Abyssal asks the Lion why he doesn't just walk to the Blessed Isle and kill everything on it himself, the Lion has no way to answer. Doing so would just mean he'd suffer a one-Willpower surcharge on his perfect defences, which are a) scene long, boo hoo, b) hardly necessary because he has a pre-Excellency dicepool higher than an Essence 10 Dragon-blood at their dice cap, c) unnecessary, because his death means nothing even against Immaculate spirit-killing Charms.

That's more of an emergent property of lots of dumb choices, though. In isolation, the Deathlords being totally untouchable doesn't break Willing Suspension Of Disbelief… it's just kind of unappealing.

 

[Havocfett]

What

Like seriously, how in gods name did that happen?

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None of us had surprise negators, as none of us knew how shite the system was at the time.

We didn't roll well.

TPK in one tick from a bunch of mortals.

 

[landcollector]

What

Like seriously, how in gods name did that happen?

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Probably the dice making them their bitches.
Fake edit:
Ah, beaten by the person in question.

 

[vicky_molokh]

I would point out that WSoD breaking is a cause of ruined games. What I was saying earlier about how certain groups hew towards certain elements of the line - the loosely associated group that I probably belong to loves the verisimilitude of Exalted, and values it more than the mythic-but-nonsensical stuff, precisely because their WSoD breaks when they see that, for instance, there's a one-day route to Malfeas that bypasses the five-day limit or the Deathlords have immunity to Ghost-Eating Technique save for a single tiny weakness. That's not a case of them not choosing to fire up their WSoD; it's a case of them only being willing to suspend disbelief for certain things, and going "fuck this" when confronted by something that reeks of bullshit to them. Such as a Goldberg's Razor explanation of how the way that the mechanical abstraction of the rule system works means that humans in Creation are completely psychologically alien.

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A matter of preferring to stick to one genre/style/mode of play/settings, fair enough. I still find it very unexpected that people with such preferences were attracted to Exalted in the first place (because of the long list of things out of 1e Core / Scavenger Sons that I mentioned before heavily tipping the setting to the mythical-but-nonsensical side). It actually reminds me of an opposite very unexpected phenomenon: people coming to the (rather hard-sci-ish, as far as SF settings go) Transhuman Space game line and then seeking ways to change it into something more soft-sci by adding Psionics, FTL, aliens (usually arriving via FTL), souls etc.

You may still be underestimating how horrifyingly easy it is to accidentally kill a character, even if they aren't OHK'd in a single blow, without - again - shattering a bunch of WSoDs as people go "so wait, he had my character completely at his mercy, he had no particular reason to leave me alive after stealing my sword, and yet he did so anyway because why?" Some people don't like being babied like that. Exalted is a game about consequences, and hastily tweaking an encounter to avoid the consequences of screwing up so that you miraculously don't die sort of runs afoul of that. A rule system where it isn't necessary to do it is superior to one that you sometimes need to fudge hastily or introduce contorted justifications into in order to avoid TPKs.

I think @Havocfett can speak up here with a story about how his entire Circle of Exalts in one game got TPKd by like five mortals who were meant to be no more than a speedbump, by accident. Twice, if I recall correctly.

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Maybe I am missing/underestimating things. But in general I wouldn't consider five (non-Extra) mortals to be a mere speedbump.

Also, "so wait, he had my character completely at his mercy, he had no particular reason to leave me alive after stealing my sword, and yet he did so anyway because why?" is one of the reasons why I asked about people running Exalted FATE.

 

[Scia]

Maybe I am missing/underestimating things. But in general I wouldn't consider five (non-Extra) mortals to be a mere speedbump.

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Then what in your oppinion beyond a extra with a combat pool of 3-4 is a speedbumb for you?
Considering how a average, non exemplarly soldier thanks to accuracy has a combat pool of around 6 to 7 depending on there weapon.

 

[vicky_molokh]

Then what in your oppinion beyond a extra with a combat pool of 3-4 is a speedbumb for you?
Considering how a average, non exemplarly soldier thanks to accuracy has a combat pool of around 6 to 7 depending on there weapon.

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A speedbump is someone whose combat pool is equal to or less than the unmodified DV (except for the long-term modifiers that already apply when combat starts) of a target in a vulnerable position (usually meaning 'on the front row' for combats without ranged opponents), in a non-ambush situation.
A softener (mote) is someone who genuinely threatens to score a hit or hits, unless the PCs spend motes. A successful ambush is technically always a softener (mote) at a minimum, because the only way to negate it is to spend a mote, and maybe a softener (HP) depending on lack of Resistance Charms.
A softener (HP) is someone who genuinely threatens to score a hit or hits in such a manner that actual HP loss is a serious worry, but one-shotting is not a possibility. A successful ambush that turns into a speedbump once DVs are up is still a softener.
A potentially lethal threat is someone capable of delivering a fatal amount of HLs past the DV and Soak, whether because nobody has damage mitigation Charms, or due to sheer persistence of mote-emptying the target through hitting and hitting and hitting, in such a manner that it takes no less than two health-level-dealing hits to reach the Dying state.
A potentially one-shotting lethal/fatal threat is someone capable of delivering a fatal amount of HLs past the DV and Soak, whether because nobody has damage mitigation Charms, or due to sheer persistence of mote-emptying the target through hitting and hitting and hitting, in such a way that there is a risk of going all the way from Unhurt to Dying in a single hit.

The extra complication is, of course, that different characters in the party can have different DVs and soaks, and so a speedbump for one can be a potentially fatal threat for another.

 

[SerGregness]

I agree on the concept of "more detailed description -> more dice and some resource payback". That's indeed very along the lines of scene-investment.

But I find the idea that a short-term rule can protect someone from a vindictive prick GM to be dubious. OTOH, the whole "make an over-the-top description -> get out of jail free regarding the logical negative consequences of said over-the-top description" seems like a very specific application of the following rule, and is in fact enabled (given a pass) because of the following dramatic rule: "The limit of the Willing Suspension of Disbelief for a given element is directly proportional to the element's awesomeness". Example: The Death Star is not strategically sound - a small fleet of stardestroyers can glass the surface of a planet way cheaper - but it's part of the SW setting because ominously huge and gives the grand option of outright destroying planets with its glorious solar superlaser.

*snip*

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It is an instruction to the GM to not penalize players for trying to do cool descriptions. There is a non-trivial chance that a GM not so instructed would inadvertently screw over the player for doing something nonstandard by, for example, imposing additional rolls and/or raising the difficulty of the action. The rule is for the purposes of ensuring this doesn't happen.



See, this is the leap I'm talking about - just because we have rules to encourage scene investment and player description does not mean we suddenly decide to throw out all common sense and accept every single mistake, example of poor research or badly thought out mechanic at face value no matter how ridiculous.

The argument "Stunt protection exists, therefore we cannot point out dumb bits of material that make no sense" is a non-starter argument.
*snip*

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It's not an argument that is based solely on stunt protection. It's also the combined impression of the whole mythic-ness, epic-ness and larger-than-life-ness of the game line. Those traits don't lend themselves well to realism. One does not worry that if Gilgamesh raced the sun on its way through the tunnel from Dusk til Dawn says certain things about the smallness of the world, or what the implications of Þor lowering the Sea Level are for marine trade routes, or just how did young Skywalker have the opportunities to hone his vehicle skills that he brags about upon meeting a Jedi.

I do have to wonder why things that are considered fundamental premises that are a selling point of the setting . . . were not made an explicit premise in the published material of the setting. I mean, for example, that Transhuman Space explicitly says that it 'paints an optimistic picture of the future' on page 7 of its corebook (in more words than that), and then follows up on it . . . which doesn't mean that there are zero 'pessimistic' places in the world of 2100, just that the overall trend is optimistic. And people read the corebook, and already they can see which themes are considered fundamental-dominant for the setting, even if they aren't given some secret document once they ascend to being writers or line editors.

*snip*

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Okay, so the point I was going to make was somewhat sidereal'd by Aleph:

I would point out that WSoD breaking is a cause of ruined games. What I was saying earlier about how certain groups hew towards certain elements of the line - the loosely associated group that I probably belong to loves the verisimilitude of Exalted, and values it more than the mythic-but-nonsensical stuff, precisely because their WSoD breaks when they see that, for instance, there's a one-day route to Malfeas that bypasses the five-day limit or the Deathlords have immunity to Ghost-Eating Technique save for a single tiny weakness. That's not a case of them not choosing to fire up their WSoD; it's a case of them only being willing to suspend disbelief for certain things, and going "fuck this" when confronted by something that reeks of bullshit to them. Such as a Goldberg's Razor explanation of how the way that the mechanical abstraction of the rule system works means that humans in Creation are completely psychologically alien.

*snip*

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I'll expand on this a bit. First, in case you're not familiar with the term, verisimilitude roughly means 'self-consistency' or 'internal consistency'. This approximately equates to 'this seems like it would be true, given the context provided by the rest of the system'. This is a distinct thing from the 'realism' you keep trying to argue for. If some behemoth throws a mountain at Invincible Sword Princess and she parries it, that's not realistic by any reasonable measure, but it has a lot of verisimilitude because she's an Essence 5 solar sword master.

Although, I think I may slightly disagree with Aleph in that I don't think the rule-of-cool and the "mythic-but-nonsensical stuff" are necessarily mutually exclusive with the setting's verisimilitude.

Anyway, the point, vicky, is that you shouldn't worry about stuff like dancing on spear tips or running up walls being 'realistic', because that's the kind of bullshit that supernatural heroes get up to, and the setting actually depends on it in places in order to be coherent. Things like the shortcuts to Malfeas, or the Scroll of the Monk SMA's break the setting's verisimilitude, and should be discarded. None of that is contradictory.

I mean, you even asked yourself if "...having 2e or Exalted in general be 'unf***ed' is possible at all . . . and I suspect not precisely because changing something in one direction will cause a 'they ruined it' reaction from the opposite side of the community." This is exactly what people have been telling you for the last 30 pages or so. The solutions are to either get by with extensive ban lists and gentlemen's agreements, develop your own rules hack/rewrite like ES/Aleph have, or go to the new edition and hope stuff doesn't get as fucked up this time.

 

[azoicennead]

A speedbump is someone whose combat pool is equal to or less than the unmodified DV (except for the long-term modifiers that already apply when combat starts) of a target in a vulnerable position (usually meaning 'on the front row' for combats without ranged opponents), in a non-ambush situation.

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The extra complication is, of course, that different characters in the party can have different DVs and soaks, and so a speedbump for one can be a potentially fatal threat for another.

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So basically by "speedbump" you mean someone that's not an actual combatant, whereas it was being used to mean "an encounter that is easily won but slows down the group a bit" - you know, like a speedbump.

 

[Omicron]

I'll expand on this a bit. First, in case you're not familiar with the term, verisimilitude roughly means 'self-consistency' or 'internal consistency'. This approximately equates to 'this seems like it would be true, given the context provided by the rest of the system'. This is a distinct thing from the 'realism' you keep trying to argue for. If some behemoth throws a mountain at Invincible Sword Princess and she parries it, that's not realistic by any reasonable measure, but it has a lot of verisimilitude because she's an Essence 5 solar sword master.

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Well, no. That's not the actual meaning of verisimilitude, merely the one we assign to it in the Exalted community. One can hardly fault a newcommer or an outsider for being unfamiliar with the meaning we impart on pre-existing world. We as a community need to keep track of that kind of thing or our discussions will grow increasingly more obtuse and closed upon themselves.

 

[SerGregness]

Well, no. That's not the actual meaning of verisimilitude, merely the one we assign to it in the Exalted community. One can hardly fault a newcommer or an outsider for being unfamiliar with the meaning we impart on pre-existing world. We as a community need to keep track of that kind of thing or our discussions will grow increasingly more obtuse and closed upon themselves.

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Sure, the actual definition is more like "the appearance or semblance of truth; likelihood;probability:" but I don't see the difference as being all that substantial. Something appearing to be true doesn't have any logical implications of it being realistic.