General Exalted Thread

[vicky_molokh]

Think of it like targeting a weak save in D&D. If your opponent is a master swordsman but not that perceptive you are better off going for a back stab. Since the opponents parry modifiers don't apply this means you don't care if he's carrying around a high defense weapon and a large shield as well. It also helps if you are a sneaky assassin trained in assassiny stuff rather than a soldier trained in soldiery stuff; your Dex + Stealth is going to be higher than your Dex + Melee in that case. You can probably also arrange some penalties to your targets Perception + Awareness by doing stuff like attacking them in the dark, from cover, while they are distracted and so on.

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I'm still quite puzzled by what is the in-game justification that some mortals (with Dex1 Dodge0 but Per3 Awareness3) consistently defending better against unseen snipers ambushing them than against the same sniper shooting from a visible position (assuming a sniper's Stealth and shooty skill are at the same level).

What does it represent within the game world, for a mortal character without any supernatural senses?

 

[Aaron Peori]

I'm still quite puzzled by what is the in-game justification that some mortals (with Dex1 Dodge0 but Per3 Awareness3) consistently defending better against unseen snipers ambushing them than against the same sniper shooting from a visible position (assuming a sniper's Stealth and shooty skill are at the same level).

What does it represent within the game world, for a mortal character without any supernatural senses?

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Think of it less as the defender succeeding as the attacker failing. If you fail to defeat their perception defense something you do cause you to give yourself away with enough time for the opponent to defend themselves successfully. It's less them Matrix dodging at the last moment and more you stepping on a twig or revealing yourself in some other manner that your careful sniper shot becomes obvious to them but not to you so they can react before you attack.

So its less that the mortal with Per 3 Awa 3 will be defending better against unseen snipers as he will stop two steps short of the kill zone and hide behind a tree before you can draw a bead.

 

[vicky_molokh]

Think of it less as the defender succeeding as the attacker failing. If you fail to defeat their perception defense something you do cause you to give yourself away with enough time for the opponent to defend themselves successfully. It's less them Matrix dodging at the last moment and more you stepping on a twig or revealing yourself in some other manner that your careful sniper shot becomes obvious to them but not to you so they can react before you attack.

So its less that the mortal with Per 3 Awa 3 will be defending better against unseen snipers as he will stop two steps short of the kill zone and hide behind a tree before you can draw a bead.

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That seems to automagically let a PerAwa3+3 mortal make the competent sniper less competent (more stepping on twigs).

The second paragraph is slightly better, but can have issues when combined with the idea that the Awa check is also used as a Defence.

 

[Aaron Peori]

That seems to automagically let a PerAwa3+3 mortal make the competent sniper less competent (more stepping on twigs).

The second paragraph is slightly better, but can have issues when combined with the idea that the Awa check is also used as a Defence.

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No, the sniper doesn't step on more twigs. He steps on the same number. The Per 3 Awa 3 mortal just notices.

 

[vicky_molokh]

No, the sniper doesn't step on more twigs. He steps on the same number. The Per 3 Awa 3 mortal just notices.

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Situation A: sniper patiently and quietly aims for three seconds, then shoots. Target dodges quite well with his power of awareness.
Situation B: sniper patiently aims for three seconds, then shoots. Target's dodge becomes useless.

This isn't normal. Your Awareness shouldn't make you better at dodging hard-to-dodge attacks than it is for you to dodge normal-to-dodge attacks. Not unless it's some tricky Charm. Otherwise you let Awareness step on the toes of Dodge in some circumstances, and it becomes illogical within the game world to boot.

 

[Aaron Peori]

Situation A: sniper patiently and quietly aims for three seconds, then shoots. Target dodges quite well with his power of awareness.
Situation B: sniper patiently aims for three seconds, then shoots. Target's dodge becomes useless.

This isn't normal. Your Awareness shouldn't make you better at dodging hard-to-dodge attacks than it is for you to dodge normal-to-dodge attacks. Not unless it's some tricky Charm. Otherwise you let Awareness step on the toes of Dodge in some circumstances, and it becomes illogical within the game world to boot.

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In situation A the target notices the sniper the moment he starts aiming and thus evades, spoiling the sniper's aim. In situation B he doesn't and thus all his mad kung fu dodge skills are useless.

Like, you keep saying it makes no sense but I don't see how. In the real world you don't dodge arrows. It's not a thing that happens. You get behind cover. I fail to see why "I see the attack coming three seconds in advance" would not help you do that.

 

[Sucal]

My problem with exalted third edition is the same that its always been. Its an excellent system for running a mortal or heroic mortal game (at least once you give them a small mote pool so they can learn martial arts). Its only when you bring in the feats and powers of the exalted that everything starts to break down.

 

[Aleph]

In situation A the target notices the sniper the moment he starts aiming and thus evades, spoiling the sniper's aim. In situation B he doesn't and thus all his mad kung fu dodge skills are useless.

Like, you keep saying it makes no sense but I don't see how. In the real world you don't dodge arrows. It's not a thing that happens. You get behind cover. I fail to see why "I see the attack coming three seconds in advance" would not help you do that.

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I believe the situation being presented is thus:

Alicia the Archer wants to kill Charlie the Chef, because he gave her a nasty case of food poisoning when she patronised his restaurant a couple of weeks ago that she's only just got over. She has some pretty strong views on culinary standards, does Alicia. Charlie has a Dex+Dodge pool of 2, and a Perception+Awareness pool of 5.

If Alicia stands in plain view of Charlie and shoots an arrow at his face when he can see her, he is unlikely to be able to dodge behind cover in time.

If Alicia stands directly behind Charlie and shoots an arrow at the back of his head, then even if he is in the exact same spot with equivalent nearby cover, etc; his higher pool means he is more likely to evade her attack, despite all logic and reason and real-life examples saying that the polar opposite should occur.

This does not make sense.

 

[Shyft]

Uh, not to muddy the waters @Aleph, but an attack from behind counts as 'Invisible', so -2 External Penalty applies. Hope that helps!

 

[Aleph]

Yeah, I'm replying to this:

A stealth attack should basically be a normal attack except you roll Stealth and the opponent defends with Awareness.

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[Giygas]

Yeah, I'm replying to this:

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Maybe there can be a cap on the dice roll? No wait, stupid idea, the example i was writing was awful and without any mechanical use, only complicating things.

A way it could be refluffed could be that the Chef realized that the Archer wanted to kill her even before the Archer attacked, and thus was already prepared to dodge? Maybe not with the full Awareness+Perception, but addittional success die or something else?

 

[The Sandman]

Uh, not to muddy the waters @Aleph, but an attack from behind counts as 'Invisible', so -2 External Penalty applies. Hope that helps!

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You should probably also stack another penalty for 'Unexpected', unless the chef is used to customers trying to assassinate him.

 

[vicky_molokh]

Maybe there can be a cap on the dice roll? No wait, stupid idea, the example i was writing was awful and without any mechanical use, only complicating things.

A way it could be refluffed could be that the Chef realized that the Archer wanted to kill her even before the Archer attacked, and thus was already prepared to dodge? Maybe not with the full Awareness+Perception, but addittional success die or something else?

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And if the sniper doesn't even try to hide, then the chef also realises there's an attack in store even before Archer attacks. That's the problem. An unexpected attack should never be easier to defend against than the expected one, other things being reasonably equal. Notice that only in situation A the sniper tries to be stealthy:

Situation A: sniper patiently and quietly aims for three seconds, then shoots. Target dodges quite well with his power of awareness.
Situation B: sniper patiently aims for three seconds, then shoots. Target's dodge becomes useless.

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In situation A the target notices the sniper the moment he starts aiming and thus evades, spoiling the sniper's aim. In situation B he doesn't and thus all his mad kung fu dodge skills are useless.

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Yet @Aaron Peori's reply is that situation B (straightforward) should leave the target unaware of the attack, not situation A (stealthy).

 

[Aaron Peori]

I believe the situation being presented is thus:

Alicia the Archer wants to kill Charlie the Chef, because he gave her a nasty case of food poisoning when she patronised his restaurant a couple of weeks ago that she's only just got over. She has some pretty strong views on culinary standards, does Alicia. Charlie has a Dex+Dodge pool of 2, and a Perception+Awareness pool of 5.

If Alicia stands in plain view of Charlie and shoots an arrow at his face when he can see her, he is unlikely to be able to dodge behind cover in time.

If Alicia stands directly behind Charlie and shoots an arrow at the back of his head, then even if he is in the exact same spot with equivalent nearby cover, etc; his higher pool means he is more likely to evade her attack, despite all logic and reason and real-life examples saying that the polar opposite should occur.

This does not make sense.

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In scenario 2 Charlie would notice her before she got into position to shot him. She would never be standing directly behind him with her bow drawn and aimed at his head. Charlie would either hear her stepping into position, hear her pull an arrow from her quiver, notch it or draw the bow. Or he'd see her out of the corner of his eye, or see her shadow or see her reflection in his soup laddle. This would give him time to react before she had a chance to attack. The problem you and vicky are having is you are assuming the person making the Stealth Attack has acheived everything up to the pulling of the metaphorical trigger as a fait accompli and this is simply not the case. If you fail to beat their defense on your Stealth roll you never achieved an ambush position and thus can not ambush.

Let's rephrase this so that I can make frontal melee attack make no sense. "In scenario A Liz is five feet from Paul so she steps forward and tries to Stab him. In scenario B Liz has her knife shoved into Paul's kidneys and tries to twist the blade. Obviously Paul can't parry her in scenario B, right?" Well yeah. But we don't assume that Liz has successfully stabbed Paul until she exceeds his defense with her attack roll. In the same manner, we do not assume that the assassin has set up an opportunity to complete their attack unless they beat the target's perception defense.

If you do succeed on the Stealth Attack roll we just skip the normal attack roll. The attack is a fait accompli if the opponent can not defend because they are unaware of it (barring Charms, of course).

The way it works is as follows:

When you're attacking in the normal manner you're doing so as quickly as possible to retain accuracy. In this way you make no effort to conceal your attack and thus the determining factor is how quickly the opponent can react to your action. In a stealth attack you aren't trying to act as quickly as possible, you're trying to be as undetectable as possible. You move slowly and quietly. In this way, if the opponent knows you are moving it is much easier for them to evade your attack or otherwise respond before you act.

In effect, you attempt at a Stealth Attack failed. If you decide to proceed with a normal attack you can, but at that point its Join Battle and your opponent has a chance to beat you on the roll for initiative and cave in your head with a soup laddle before you can fire.

 

[Kaiya]

My problem with exalted third edition is the same that its always been. Its an excellent system for running a mortal or heroic mortal game (at least once you give them a small mote pool so they can learn martial arts). Its only when you bring in the feats and powers of the exalted that everything starts to break down.

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Do you have any logical support for this statement.

 

[Walker of the Yellow Path]

Do you have any logical support for this statement.

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Everyone's already stated the reasons:

Starting characters have too many similar dice trick charms to reasonably keep track of, which gets worse as they grow in EXP. It's impossible to determine difficulty if you don't want to deal with complex mathematics to figure out the average number of successes a roll is likely to get due to how Charms muck with it (Whereas Mortals have an average of a little less than half the dice they roll will be successes). A lot of the Charms have unclear interactions which require GM arbitration to figure out. Evocations and Martial Arts are going to create a lot of combinatorial hell once other books come out and splats have to be balanced not just against their own charms, but also against Martial Arts Charms and Evocations.

 

[Aleph]

If you do succeed on the Stealth Attack roll we just skip the normal attack roll. The attack is a fait accompli if the opponent can not defend because they are unaware of it (barring Charms, of course).

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Yeah, see, this is the main thing I'm objecting to. Because this means that if I'm Archery 1 Stealth 5, I can alpha-strike people despite barely being able to use a bow. Hell, if I'm Archery 0 Stealth 5 I can do so. If I'm Dex 1, Dodge 0, Athletics 0, Awareness 5, I can barely walk in a straight line and yet am able to infallibly get out of the way of a crossbow bolt if it's fired at me from behind in the middle of an open field with no cover.

I much prefer the interpretation where, if you want to be able to shoot, you need to actually be able to shoot. Where if you want to be able to dodge, you need to actually be athletic. You can get around it to some extent by saying "well he hadn't set up to fire yet", but that only goes so far, especially if there's no cover nearby for you to dive behind. Abilities do things. Reducing the number of necessary rolls is a nice concept, but I don't think it's worth making Stealth do Archery or Melee things and Awareness do Dodge or Parry things.

 

[Kaiya]

Everyone's already stated the reasons:

Starting characters have too many similar dice trick charms to reasonably keep track of, which gets worse as they grow in EXP. It's impossible to determine difficulty if you don't want to deal with complex mathematics to figure out the average number of successes a roll is likely to get due to how Charms muck with it (Whereas Mortals have an average of a little less than half the dice they roll will be successes). A lot of the Charms have unclear interactions which require GM arbitration to figure out. Evocations and Martial Arts are going to create a lot of combinatorial hell once other books come out and splats have to be balanced not just against their own charms, but also against Martial Arts Charms and Evocations.

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Is it really that important to know the exact way the couple percentage points shift. Evocations and MA, fine, that might turn out to cause issues, I don't think it will, but I can't say for sure it won't, so fine. But, like...seriously? You have to know the exact percentage chance down to the decimal? You have to solve the game mathematically in order for it to be fun and functional?

 

[Aaron Peori]

Yeah, see, this is the main thing I'm objecting to. Because this means that if I'm Archery 1 Stealth 5, I can alpha-strike people despite barely being able to use a bow. Hell, if I'm Archery 0 Stealth 5 I can do so. If I'm Dex 1, Dodge 0, Athletics 0, Awareness 5, I can barely walk in a straight line and yet am able to infallibly get out of the way of a crossbow bolt if it's fired at me from behind in the middle of an open field with no cover.

I much prefer the interpretation where, if you want to be able to shoot, you need to actually be able to shoot. Where if you want to be able to dodge, you need to actually be athletic. You can get around it to some extent by saying "well he hadn't set up to fire yet", but that only goes so far, especially if there's no cover nearby for you to dive behind. Abilities do things. Reducing the number of necessary rolls is a nice concept, but I don't think it's worth making Stealth do Archery or Melee things and Awareness do Dodge or Parry things.

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If you want to reflect that you could cap Stealth at the attack ability rating but I don't see why you should in most scenarios.

Frankly, I think that if a completely untrained marksman gained complete surprise on even the world's best martial arts master they would be able to hit more reliably than a trained marksman trying to hit a running octergenarian.

Like, let's imagine two scenarios. I am standing behind a person with a handgun pointed at their head and they are unaware of me. In the other scenario a police officer is confronting a scared human being at hand to hand combat range.

Which of us do you think is more likely to hit on our first shot? The guy who has basically no training in firearms or the expert who is being actively resisted?

EDiT: And again, being Awareness 5 just means you become aware of the attack. Not that you can dodge a crossbow bolt in a field with no cover. Here, let me be explicit with the mechanics.

Tick 0:
Sniper Mc Snipe: I attempt to ambush Mr Aware.
GM: Roll Stealth.
Sniper Mc Snipe: I rolled 2 successes on my Dex 4 Stealth 0.
Mr Aware: I have DV 3, you fail.
GM: Mr Aware you see Sniper Mc Snipe attempting to attack you, roll Join Battle.
Tick 1
Mr Aware: Thanks to my high Awareness, I win Join Battle!
GM: What do you do?
Mr Aware: What is there around?
GM: Nothing, this is a completely flat featureless grass plane which somehow Sniper Mc Snipe was able to conceal themselves on and attempt to ambush you somehow because that's a thing that happens on featureless grass planes.
Mr Aware: I, uh... run away screaming.
Tick it doesn't matter
Sniper Mc Snipe: I guess I fire my shot normally, I get 4 success on my Dex 4 Archery 4 roll.
Mr Aware: My DV is 0 because I have Dex 1 and Dodge 0 and took a Dash action to run across the featureless flat plane.
GM: You get hit. You are dead.

 

[Aleph]

Is it really that important to know the exact way the couple percentage points shift. Evocations and MA, fine, that might turn out to cause issues, I don't think it will, but I can't say for sure it won't, so fine. But, like...seriously? You have to know the exact percentage chance down to the decimal? You have to solve the game mathematically in order for it to be fun and functional?

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No, but having any idea at all would be nice. Because, you know, being able to roughly evaluate your chances of success rapidly and easily when you use a combination of Charms is the difference between an awesome move where you successfully smash a Greater Dead monster in the face with your burning hammer of sunlight, and being swatted aside and killed because you activated a charm group that only gave you good odds of getting about half the successes you needed. Or of overpowering a combo to ridiculous levels and wasting dozens of motes you badly need, which kills you later when you run out of magic and die.

The devs have explicitly said that their intention with convoluted dice trick mechanics was to obscure success probabilities and make it impossible to know what gives you a good chance at succeeding, what is total overkill and a waste of motes and what is walking into a howitzer fight with a pocket knife. This leads to people dying because they are playing with a deliberate blindfold in place. This leads to them feeling cheated.

This is a problem.

 

[Shyft]

Is it really that important to know the exact way the couple percentage points shift. Evocations and MA, fine, that might turn out to cause issues, I don't think it will, but I can't say for sure it won't, so fine. But, like...seriously? You have to know the exact percentage chance down to the decimal? You have to solve the game mathematically in order for it to be fun and functional?

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To have a crunchy, exception-based game be testable proven and functional, yes. Yes you need to have accurate dice math and probabilities.

More fluid games are totally possible, but they didn't even give us a functional one of those. I'd be less critical if they delivered on some form of minimum viable product, instead of a half-dozen loosely interlocking bits.

The fact is, we have more up-to-date, effective and useful best-practices for design right here in this very thread. We are, collectively and objectively, better writers than a paid 600 page product.

Money supposedly goes where the talent is, but I don't think anyone here's seen a dime.

 

[Aleph]

Like, let's imagine two scenarios. I am standing behind a person with a handgun pointed at their head and they are unaware of me. In the other scenario a police officer is confronting a scared human being at hand to hand combat range.

Which of us do you think is more likely to hit on our first shot? The guy who has basically no training in firearms or the expert who is being actively resisted?

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In a more probable scenario of you standing twenty feet behind from a person with a shortbow (unless you are being perfectly honest in your representation of a Ranged surprise attack taking place at "hold a gun to your head" range, which I doubt) and a trained archer confronting them at similar range; I would say the archer. Overwhelmingly the archer. Completely and hilariously the archer. Speaking as one who has done archery; most people completely new to it are lucky to hit a stationary target twice the width of a human at all on their first few goes, let alone anywhere dangerous.

Ditto with a gun, actually. Despite what movies may tell you, most bullets don't hit anything fleshy, even with someone who has decent aim.

 

[grommile]

Is it really that important to know the exact way the couple percentage points shift. Evocations and MA, fine, that might turn out to cause issues, I don't think it will, but I can't say for sure it won't, so fine. But, like...seriously? You have to know the exact percentage chance down to the decimal? You have to solve the game mathematically in order for it to be fun and functional?

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In 2e, the number of successes typically produced by a dice pool is 0.5N for Exalts, and 0.4N for mortals, with an absolute limit of 2N for exalts and N for mortals. Nice, easy calculation.

Now, tell me: What are the maximum and typical yield of successes from a 10-die pool with multiple 3e dice tricks in play?

 

[Kaiya]

In 2e, the number of successes typically produced by a dice pool is 0.5N for Exalts, and 0.4N for mortals, with an absolute limit of 2N for exalts and N for mortals. Nice, easy calculation.

Now, tell me: What are the maximum and typical yield of successes from a 10-die pool with multiple 3e dice tricks in play?

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Why do I care? Excellent Strike lets me reroll ones and gives an autosux, I'll burn 5m on an Excellency to make it more likely to hit, in general, 10m if they're a Dawn with maximized defense, and if it's a Supernal Dodger I'm basically fucked. I don't really need more than that. 15 dice with Excellent Strike is enough to hit anything that's not a parry-focused Exalt-tier fighter. If they are a parry-focused Exalt tier fighter, spend a few more motes and watch your pool, because ending a fight in a single blow versus an Exalt is generally a bad call/

This tends to work out really well for me. The exact math is not really that important.

 

[grommile]

Why do I care?

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Because you're the storyteller and you're trying to pitch the threat level of an antagonist correctly.