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General Exalted Thread

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azoicennead said:
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.
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Well, that's why it's called 'speedbump' and not 'threat', isn't it?

SerGregness said:
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.
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Omicron said:
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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SerGregness said:
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.
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Hmmm.
verisimilitude /ˌvɛrɪsɪˈmɪlɪtjuːd/, noun: the appearance of being true or real.
realism /ˈrɪəlɪz(ə)m/, noun: an artistic or literary movement or style characterized by the representation of people or things as they actually are; synonyms: authenticity, fidelity, verisimilitude, truthfulness, faithfulness, naturalism.
If anything, it seems like verisimilitude can be the 'weaker' of the two synonyms, the 'appearance of realism', so to speak. That actually sounds like the way I've seen the word used.

SerGregness said:
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.
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That's not quite what I meant. I'm observing that blame of laid on Chambers & Co. for making mistakes or not caring to do things the right way. But maybe there isn't a right way to do it, because no matter how it would be done, no matter who were in place of Chambers, no matter what decisions would've been made, there would still be accusations of ruining it.
Didn't the community itself admit that as awesome as the TAW fix is, it still is accepted by some and dismissed by others?
I'm trying to figure if peoples' ideas of 'non-f***ed' are such that no single state of the game will be seen by an overwhelming majority as 'non-f***ed'. If that worry is true, then Exalted will always be 'f***ed'. Maybe less than 2e was, but still.
That's why I mentioned the possibility of it being a case of BrokenBase/UnpleasableFanbase. I do hope the worry is unfounded.
 
vicky_molokh said:
I'm trying to figure if peoples' ideas of 'non-f***ed' are such that no single state of the game will be seen by an overwhelming majority as 'non-f***ed'. If that worry is true, then Exalted will always be 'f***ed'. Maybe less than 2e was, but still.
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Probably. Everybody plays in his own Creation.

(Sometimes i have trouble when playing in online games since i tend to forget that a lot of things i have internalized about the setting just aren't true to other people. But at my own table there isn't any, since all knowledge my players have of Exalted comes from me)
 
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vicky_molokh said:
Well, that's why it's called 'speedbump' and not 'threat', isn't it?
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Your "softeners" would be the things used in a speedbump encounter.
What you described as speedbumps are things that would just be "roll to see how easily you win", unless I want to exhaust my players by throwing hordes of boring, repetitive, danger-free encounters at them. There's no other reason to throw enemies that can't get a pool high enough above their DV to have a chance of actually forcing resource expenditure. An encounter filled with your "speedbumps" would be something I only ever throw at my players to let them fill their mote pools back up.
 
azoicennead said:
Your "softeners" would be the things used in a speedbump encounter.
What you described as speedbumps are things that would just be "roll to see how easily you win", unless I want to exhaust my players by throwing hordes of boring, repetitive, danger-free encounters at them. There's no other reason to throw enemies that can't get a pool high enough above their DV to have a chance of actually forcing resource expenditure. An encounter filled with your "speedbumps" would be something I only ever throw at my players to let them fill their mote pools back up.
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I thought the purpose of speedbumps is to reduce the speed with which the PCs are moving forward . . . e.g. slowing their attempt to reach and rescue someone before a sacrifice.
 
vicky_molokh said:
I thought the purpose of speedbumps is to reduce the speed with which the PCs are moving forward . . . e.g. slowing their attempt to reach and rescue someone before a sacrifice.
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No, speedbumps are bad game design.

They should not ever be only for bogging down the players and especially not for slowing down the game. Which is what your speedbumps do.

A good speedbump forces players to choose between taking the confrontation (with all the attendant risk) or finding a path around it. The point is to make plot happen. If you want a speedbump encounter to work as an encounter itself you need to have already established the press for time, and you need tactics that reflect that need of the encounter to slow the player characters.

Which means things like hamstringing, taking potentially ill advised actions to injure, just falling back to new, defensible positions that are still in the way or even just being present and forcing PCs to slow down or get ambushed.

A simple 'here's a bunch of dudes, now fight' encounter is for the opening gambit.
 
Hazard said:
No, speedbumps are bad game design.

They should not ever be only for bogging down the players and especially not for slowing down the game. Which is what your speedbumps do.

A good speedbump forces players to choose between taking the confrontation (with all the attendant risk) or finding a path around it. The point is to make plot happen. If you want a speedbump encounter to work as an encounter itself you need to have already established the press for time, and you need tactics that reflect that need of the encounter to slow the player characters.

Which means things like hamstringing, taking potentially ill advised actions to injure, just falling back to new, defensible positions that are still in the way or even just being present and forcing PCs to slow down or get ambushed.

A simple 'here's a bunch of dudes, now fight' encounter is for the opening gambit.
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Well, if there's a genuine risk, then they're a threat of some sort (at minimum a softening-up one).
 
vicky_molokh said:
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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Five extras with a dicepool of 6 and a base damage of 5L can be expected to seriously fuck up a single Solar Exalt who does not have a surprise negator, even if the Solars base DV is 22.

So all you need to do to kill a party not prepared for paranoia combat is to put in (Soldiers Exalt can kill in one action) + 5. For a starting Solar, that amount is about 10 or so.
 
vicky_molokh said:
I thought the purpose of speedbumps is to reduce the speed with which the PCs are moving forward . . . e.g. slowing their attempt to reach and rescue someone before a sacrifice.
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azoicennead said:
unless I want to exhaust my players by throwing hordes of boring, repetitive, danger-free encounters at them. There's no other reason to throw enemies that can't get a pool high enough above their DV to have a chance of actually forcing resource expenditure.
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I am perfectly willing to chew out a GM for intentionally wasting my time with boring encounters that exist purely to waste our time. If I was a player in your game and you did that, after the session I would explain why you should never do that again (i.e. it's boring, it's a waste of time, and it makes me want to not keep playing - basically the opposite of what an encounter should inspire in me).

This doesn't mean everything we encounter has to be a legitimate threat, mind you. It just means that when we encounter things that can't actually do anything against us, you don't say "roll Join Battle", you say "these guys aren't a threat; how do you take them down?", and we make an appropriate roll* and in less than 5 minutes we're moving on.

* e.g. "I dash forward silently and cut them all down in a whirlwind of metal." "Okay, roll Dexterity+Melee, Difficulty 4. One die stunt." "I got a 6." "Okay, they're dead."
 
Yo, someone point me towards those Earthscorpion charms that build off of Countless Cities Cloting, you know, the Malfean Terraforming ones?
 
greensun said:
Yo, someone point me towards those Earthscorpion charms that build off of Countless Cities Cloting, you know, the Malfean Terraforming ones?
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You know, you can just do "search: 'Countless Cities Clotting' by poster 'EarthScorpion' in 'this thread'" using the search bar at the top right of the page. Same goes for anyone else who asks where so-and-so homebrew by someone who posts most of their homebrew in this thread is located. Nobody is stopping you from searching the thread before asking. We won't feel neglected, honest.
 
Broken25 said:
Look, the problem with Exalted rules is that the interval from "Completely harmless" to "Lethal threat" is razor thin. Which makes balancing encounters (And specially making them interesting) an excercise of frustration.
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Oh, that is true. But isn't this normal? Different people can be either completely unfazed or totally killed by a seemingly similar blow to the head, for example . . . occasionally same people too.

Aaron Peori said:
Five extras with a dicepool of 6 and a base damage of 5L can be expected to seriously fuck up a single Solar Exalt who does not have a surprise negator, even if the Solars base DV is 22.

So all you need to do to kill a party not prepared for paranoia combat is to put in (Soldiers Exalt can kill in one action) + 5. For a starting Solar, that amount is about 10 or so.
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I said in a non-ambush situation. Ambushes are kinda lethal-like, of course. I mean, if someone successfully ambushes even Batman and shoots him in the eye with a sniper rifle, what is the expected outcome?

azoicennead said:
I am perfectly willing to chew out a GM for intentionally wasting my time with boring encounters that exist purely to waste our time. If I was a player in your game and you did that, after the session I would explain why you should never do that again (i.e. it's boring, it's a waste of time, and it makes me want to not keep playing - basically the opposite of what an encounter should inspire in me).

This doesn't mean everything we encounter has to be a legitimate threat, mind you. It just means that when we encounter things that can't actually do anything against us, you don't say "roll Join Battle", you say "these guys aren't a threat; how do you take them down?", and we make an appropriate roll* and in less than 5 minutes we're moving on.

* e.g. "I dash forward silently and cut them all down in a whirlwind of metal." "Okay, roll Dexterity+Melee, Difficulty 4. One die stunt." "I got a 6." "Okay, they're dead."
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And that is the reason why the concept of a speed bump as something to be played out is often unwelcome, or at least unwelcome if it occurs too often.
(I still consider 'see if you can get past these 20 enemies in time' to be a gimmick that can be of interest if used once or twice. Hmm. I suppose the other case where speedbumps can be desirable is when the players are in the mood to show off for a bit.)

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So to put this all together:
Exalted does seem kinda lethal compared to Ablative-HP-shield Systems (e.g. my impression of D20 Modern was precisely that, with guns doing a couple of dice of damage and people having about 5 HP per level) . . . until one purchases Ablative-Mote-Shield Charms, at which point everything is safe . . . until the mote pool is empty. It certainly lacks stuff like a ×4 damage multiplier for targetting the brain (like some other systems), though its ambushes seem to provide a roughly up to ×2 damage expectations due to extra successes. Combat against actual threats involves actual threats and should be treated with the appropriate respect and carefulness by the GM and the players. Exalted RAW does not have a guaranteed safety-after-failing-in-combat mechanism like FATE or 7th Sea does, because it's meant to be grittier than that (or at least people say that's part of the consequences-emphasising paradigm of Exalted).

IOW, it seems to be on the lethal side, but it seems like making it less lethal than it currently is runs the risk of reducing the grittiness that people seem to appreciate about Exalted. Maybe the 3e Initiative Combat is a solution that combines the best of both worlds?
 
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Aleph said:
You know, you can just do "search: 'Countless Cities Clotting' by poster 'EarthScorpion' in 'this thread'" using the search bar at the top right of the page. Same goes for anyone else who asks where so-and-so homebrew by someone who posts most of their homebrew in this thread is located. Nobody is stopping you from searching the thread before asking. We won't feel neglected, honest.
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First thing I tried, didn't work for some reason.
 
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Aleph said:
You know, you can just do "search: 'Countless Cities Clotting' by poster 'EarthScorpion' in 'this thread'" using the search bar at the top right of the page. Same goes for anyone else who asks where so-and-so homebrew by someone who posts most of their homebrew in this thread is located. Nobody is stopping you from searching the thread before asking. We won't feel neglected, honest.
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One of the reasons I'm happy ES put together a doc of his demons is because this is remarkably useless in searching for said demons. :V
 
vicky_molokh said:
Oh, that is true. But isn't this normal? Different people can be either completely unfazed or totally killed by a seemingly similar blow to the head, for example . . . occasionally same people too.
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Oh, it is normal. But is not appropiate. This system was created for the WoD, and it worked more or less fine there. But in Exalted, where you are start the game with a Titan-Slaying superweapon, is jarring. Remember, the reason why the disease and bleeding rules are so unforgiving is so that the demigodhood of the Exalts shines more. With these rules, you can't hardly play the kind of epic wuxia duels that you shouls be able to perform.
 
vicky_molokh said:
(I still consider 'see if you can get past these 20 enemies in time' to be a gimmick that can be of interest if used once or twice. Hmm. I suppose the other case where speedbumps can be desirable is when the players are in the mood to show off for a bit.)
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azoicennead said:
This doesn't mean everything we encounter has to be a legitimate threat, mind you. It just means that when we encounter things that can't actually do anything against us, you don't say "roll Join Battle", you say "these guys aren't a threat; how do you take them down?", and we make an appropriate roll* and in less than 5 minutes we're moving on.

* e.g. "I dash forward silently and cut them all down in a whirlwind of metal." "Okay, roll Dexterity+Melee, Difficulty 4. One die stunt." "I got a 6." "Okay, they're dead."
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More successes = faster completion.
Less successes = slower completion.
 
EarthScorpion said:
It's not an ambush situation.

Get surrounded in combat by attackers, and one of them gets a surprise attack on you.
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Can't two PCs defend back-to-back like heroes do in epics and films or something? Or otherwise prevent the enemy from manoeuvring into such a position?
Such a fifth-surprise still seems like a successful tactical gambit to me.
(I did get hit by such a backstab in one of the first major combats of the campaign, but that was my own tactical failure, where I willingly turned my back on a hungry ghost while focusing on a larger and more dangerous brute.)
 
vicky_molokh said:
Can't two PCs defend back-to-back like heroes do in epics and films or something? Or otherwise prevent the enemy from manoeuvring into such a position?
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Nope. In fact, by rules as written that makes it worse. If you have less maneuvering room such that only 4 or 3 or 2 opponents can get to you then one always still gets an unexpected attack against you. It's a reflection of your inability to be facing in two directions at once. The only hope for it is to be in a situation where only one opponent can come at you at a time (say, in a doorway or a narrow bridge). Of course, in such situations you probably can't Dodge so I hope you have a good Parry DV.
 
You know, I usually don't chime in because I don't, well, know Exalted, but GMC nWod (so it's at least published by the same people) has something called Down and Dirty Combat which would fit very well with the 'how do you model fights that are one-sided?' It's a single roll, meant to represent fights that are no more difficult than, say, being able to climb a ledge, or any other action you might only roll once on.

I don't know how it works in play (it partially relies on ST discretion and so on) but it seems like on the whole, something like that would be the only good way to run such a speedbump.

Similar to Azoi's suggestion, but formalized and with a few quick rules.
 
vicky_molokh said:
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.
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Uh, "I like my fiction to be internally consistent" is, let us say, not a rare property to find in players.
 
Jon Chung said:
Uh, "I like my fiction to be internally consistent" is, let us say, not a rare property to find in players.
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Quite.


vicky_molokh said:
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.
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Fantastic and consistent aren't actually opposed. You can have fantastic narrative fueled magic which is perfect consistant, and you can have people behave realistically in response to it.

It's a false dilemma.
 
azoicennead said:
"I dash forward silently and cut them all down in a whirlwind of metal."
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And speaking of Keris, Kerisgame 39! :p In which Keris ignores some Wyld mutants because they make her uncomfortable, learns to disguise her Essence, loses a "come fight me, biyatch" argument with the landscape, responds by setting quite a lot of it on fire and murdering a perfectly innocent two-bodied Wyld giant cyclops, may have been a Dragon King otherkin in her Past Life from how much her aesthetics seem to skew towards "sunlight" and "blood" when she's not concentrating, and makes the second Big Step towards Pirate Queen Keris; one that @EarthScorpion and I have been leading her towards for ages. Yes, that's right - Keris has finally worked out that she needs to grow beyond the murderhobo.
 
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