A two handed sword gives like, a +5 bonus to your attack, so it is mechanically optimal for Str 1 Ol' Granny to wield a two handed sword to threaten muggers with, I believe.
General Exalted Thread
A two handed sword gives like, a +5 bonus to your attack, so it is mechanically optimal for Str 1 Ol' Granny to wield a two handed sword to threaten muggers with, I believe.
- Location
- Virginia
I've said above that if (third person) you've done the sort of homebrew that (second person) you have done, then sure, stick with your rewritten 2E.
I also think you overestimate the degree to which other people homebrew in things like a quick character systems. Or any of the other "fan fixes". And if your answer is "you should play neither 2e nor 3e, but instead this fan rewrite of 2e" - well it'd be handy if you could point to such a thing. But my impression is that yours only covers Infernals, with a loose guide to how it might be applied to other splats?
I care about literally none of this; it isn't relevant to any of the things I've been saying.
Again, I'll offer you a deal: I will forever concede the idea that Ex3 suffers every single one of the above defects (plus any others you care to add, like Holden being a serial killer or 100% of the art being plagiarized) if you promise to never respond to claims of the form "Ex3 is fun to play / more fun to play than Ex2" with them.
You're right, I shouldn't have written that. I apologize.
Yes, you're right; I'd assumed you had a pretty significant desire to play some form of Exalted that "don't play at all" was a worse option than either.
This is true, although I think Ex3 tries to lean harder on the point that most opponents shouldn't actually be Exalts.
I absolutely understand the frustration and sympathize with it; I'm frustrated too about most of the same things. I feel more positively about the good parts of Ex3 than you, and am less frustrated / more willing to homebrew out the bad parts, but your response is also reasonable and makes sense. Sorry for misreading you.
I asked about this on the official Exalted forum. My take was that this effort would laughable since even you aren't good at math, it should be trivially easy to find some basic guide to dice trick probabilities online.
They denied that it was to obfuscate probability curves, but was rather to allow Solars to pile on powers to make one attack super strong, and because people like dice tricks since it makes them feel like they're in a casino.
You mean like they are getting fleeced of all their cash in the hopes of getting that big payoff that's never going to come if the house as anything to say about it?
Walker of the Yellow Path
Ho There!
- Location
- The Land of Memes
Can we get off the Exalted 3E debate? It's been going on for multiple pages, and everyone (including me) has just been bringing up the same points again and again without anyone bringing up any new criticism or defense.
None of you guys are going to budge on your stances, no one is going to be able to convince the others that their stance is correct.
So please stop trying. It's making the thread not fun to read, or participate in.
None of you guys are going to budge on your stances, no one is going to be able to convince the others that their stance is correct.
So please stop trying. It's making the thread not fun to read, or participate in.
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Shouldn't be Exalts, sure.
Shouldn't have Charms, on the other hand...
Just like (the Edition of Exalted you like)!
#shotsfired
All right fine. Sooo, how 'bout that Ravana Quest?
Jon Chung
=][=
This is my position:
a) Exalted has a cool concept. I rather like its realpolitik approach to fantasy and its take on post-post-apocalyptic settings. It appears to work very well with my preferred style of sandbox play, and therefore appears to be inherently worth playing.
b) I got pulled into getting Exalted 1E by point a), only to find that it was a ridiculously bad system, which is arguably of negative utility. I spent resources (cash, effort, time) to learn the system and give it a chance in play, and my investment was not returned. I achieve absolute system mastery as a side effect.
c) I grabbed Exalted 2E because "play Exalted, but with a better, cleaner, tighter system!" sounded like a good idea, only to find that it was a ridiculously bad system, which is arguably of negative utility. I spent resources (cash, effort, time) to learn the system and give it a chance in play, and my investment was not returned. I achieve absolute system mastery as a side effect.
d) I stop playing Exalted with Exalted systems, because Exalted systems have negative utility - the amount of annoyance at the effort I need to put into them to make them not fail miserably at their purpose more than cancels out any fun I might get from point a).
This is what your position looks like from this vantage point (feel free to correct this): "You should spend resources (cash, effort, time) to learn the system and give it a chance in play, it's better than 2E! Even though it refuses to fix a whole lot of bullshit from the two prior failed editions and explicitly makes things worse in many aspects! I promise the combat system doesn't turn into paranoia combat though, that's worth it right?"
I can tell you that this isn't convincing, in the sense that this does not look at all attractive compared to, for example, "houserule the fuck out of Exalted 2 because I have absolute system mastery already as a side-effect and know exactly where all the open pit spike traps and minefields are" (because I have already paid for my system mastery, while I must pay again for E3), "play a rules-light system in the Exalted setting" (does not require payment for system mastery, in exchange for no fun on the system layer but no negative either) or "play Starcraft II instead" (kekekeke).
What would have worked (as in, gotten me to spend resources on Exalted 3) is "We finally managed to get something which looks like it will not have negative utility. It is superior in every single way to 2E. You may actually conclude that this is not terrible." This is not achieved, so E3 is a no-go - I have no desire to spend resources and get burned a third time. Logical?
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Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
I am... Really, really tired of reading this, Fenrir, so I'm going to be blunt and simply demand something, anything at all, to articulate and explain this position that you hold.
You keep repeating that you think the devs had other goals and priorities, fine, what goals? What priorities? You keep repeating that they made tradeoffs, fine, tradeoffs for what?
Walker of the Yellow Path
Ho There!
- Location
- The Land of Memes
What is Ravana Quest? I've seen it while browsing the forums, but I have no clue about anything on it except that it's exalted?All right fine. Sooo, how 'bout that Ravana Quest?
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
It's a Heavens Reach quest run by Havocfett. It basically started with an Exalted!Redline race to save the main characters brother. Then it turned into Exalted!Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. Now it's I don't even know, but there are warstriders, it's pretty great.
It was actually Aberrant!Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, since it takes very heavily from the Aberrant fan-revision I did and Chandra is a nova.
BTW: Mega-Attributes are still like the 4th Augmentation if the 4th Augmentation GAINED SAPIENCE and took EXCESSIVE AMOUNTS OF STEROIDS and DECIDED TO PUNCH EVERY OTHER EXCELLENCY TYPE IN THEIR SKINNY NERD FACE
- Location
- Virginia
Sure. My counterpoint would be that, unless there a huge set of houserules out there I don't know about (possible!), 2E combat even when "fixed" just isn't very good. And 2E social combat isn't fixable period without deleting the entire system and rewriting it from scratch - including charms - and I don't know that anyone's really done that either (since AFAIK ES has only redone Infernal charms).
So even applying all of the system knowledge you have produces something that's really not that amazing.
In my opinion, though, Ex3's combat and social systems are so much better and have charm support that they are worth playing with and are actually fun. And in my opinion, the charm bloat and dice tricks aren't actually that expensive (in terms of cognitive resources) to deal with. The weird dice tricks are basically all concentrated in Craft (which I would raze to the ground anyway). This latter is very YMMV; I spend all day at my job dealing with spreadsheets and probability, so I just don't really mind the math.
Ex3 combat is also built in such a way that it fails a lot more softly. The "traps" are naturally less trap-y.
But I'm not especially bothered if you still look at that and say "eh, don't wanna". Play what you like!
Jon Chung
=][=
That, uh, isn't a counterpoint, it's a subjective preference for a particular style of system. For example, I could say "I don't really care if the combat system is inherently time-consuming and full of fiddly bits that need constant attention, this provides me no utility. Instead, I want it to spit out an accurate result of action resolution as quickly as possible without blowing up in my face and then get out of the way, ideally without a totally degenerate metagame." Something that would satisfy this requirement would not satisfy the requirements of someone who would like E3's massive array of dice tricks, and vice versa.
If you want to talk about rules quality in terms of "good" or "bad" rather than the systemic style, I'm going to point out the "natural language" thing, cite God-King's Shrike/Dual Magnus Prana and shrug.
Sure. Remember though, this is a package deal. Is the aggregate utility score positive? Let's say for the purposes of this post E3 has a good social system (why not): nice plus. I'm going to have to rip out and burn the craft system to ashes then create a whole new one in its place: nasty minus. Call that a neutral and stack that next to the rest of the minuses... no.
Let me put it this way, the attraction factor of E3 thus far has been insufficient to make me want to even seek out the leaked playtest file over zerg rushing a few more people on ladder or making zero-effort posts in this thread. "Download a file" is a considerably lower resource-expenditure bar to cross than, for example "Buy a $100 book", and it can't even manage that.
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Amusingly, nWoD has at least somewhat mitigated that. A Zweihander is Size 4, so the Granny is at -3 penalty to use it. That reduces the +4 it gives to a +1. By contrast, a Bowie Knife is Size 1 and 2(L), so she's at +2 when using it.
Therefore, Ol' Grannie is better off wielding a Bowie Knife when she gets into vicious fights in the old person's home.
(That, or wielding a Bastard Sword with two hands, which is Size 3 and 4(L) when used like that. I said "mitigated", not fixed.)
See, here's where you lose me. You don't like it. The charms section is not to your tastes, and that's fine! That doesn't objectively convey any of the qualities 'poorly designed', bloated', or 'inefficient'.
You seem to be implying that both systems are equally flawed (though, possibly in different ways) and I just can't see it. I've made no secrets about what I consider to be flaws in this edition, but the flaws there are are far more easily fixed or ignored when compared to the flaws in 2/2.5. Previous Exalted releases had great settings, hamstrung by fundamentally flawed mechanics. 3e has more or less the same setting but with mechanics that are actually good and a few places where the devs went mildly retarded.
I just really don't see how that's even in the same order of magnitude.
I suppose you'd rather go back to bitching about 2e editorial oversight? Cope.
greensun
You shall all burn beneath my light!!!
I agree; this argument has been nothing but circular since it started; everyone has their stance on the subject and no one is backing down. It is endless and I am fed up of it.
So let us go back to what this thread is really about. Glorious, demonic homebrew for my favourite splat.
Demon-Ink Tattoos.
Perroneles
Urge: Loyalty to Lucien!
Stylized eyes along an arm, they move of their own accord.
Sapience *: First Awareness Excellency
Sapience **: As above, plus Second Resistance Excellency and Measure the Wind
Sapience ***: As above, plus Enhanced Sense Pox (Extra eyes), Sheathing the Material Form—May add up to 5L/10B soak, with Hardness: 5L/5B and Shape-Change - may manifest sensory organs anywhere on the wears body.
Sesseljae
Urge: Consume Filth
A unsettlingly large insect on a shoulder blade, occasionally it's legs will twitch
Sapience*: First Medicine Excellency
Sapience**: As above, plus Landscape Travel— Part flesh like it was water with no harm, Second Medicine Excellency
Sapience***: As above, plus Touch of Eternity - can allow a mortal target to resist poison and disease, and rapidly stop bleeding,as an Exalt does. Touch of Grace—The sesselja heals a living or demonic target and Affliction ( Impossible Joints.)
Angyalkae
Urge: Play Music
A beautiful woman with laying seductivly on a thigh, her hair spread out down the leg, said hair occasionally twitches.
Sapience*: First Performance Excellency
Sapience**:Creation of Perfection—Can play the harp without an instrument , Second Performance Excellency
Sapience***:Stoke the Flame—An emotional sense of the passing moments floods the audience, Subtle Whisper—Audiences often don't recognize the music's true effects and the Tentacle Blight (Prehensile hair)
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Advice is appericated, I'm not too sure where a lot of these charms should go in terms of Sapience Rating, the Perroneles Sheathing the Material Form is a very powerful ability, too power I believe to be on the Sapience* version. But on the other hand it is the demon's signature ability and the reason why it is summoned most of the time, so I am a bit stuck in balance and thematic issues.
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Dice tricks are fun for some people, and written with the mindset that rolling dice can be fun. Naturalistic language is written with the mindset that occasional lack of clarity is a fair tradeoff for the book being less dry to read, and from the perspective that different tables ruling different things when conflicts come up is not only okay, but desirable. Celestial Bliss Trick is written from the idea that it's unlikely that someone is going to read it and come to the conclusion that it would be a good idea to use the Charm to go out and rape people into agreeing with them in a group game, and that anyone who actually tries that has problems no game rule is going to fix, so it's not worth trying. Dual-Magnus Prana is written from the idea that being able to create a perfect simulacrum to die in your place is a really cool idea, and if you don't like it just don't allow it in your game, because some people enjoy it and it's them that the Charm is for. God-King's Shrike is written from a similar place to Dual-Magnus Prana, it's an idea some people like and some people don't, and they aren't gonna remove or change it because some people complain about it, since if they don't like it so much, just ignore it.
Third Edition also comes from a strong position of assuming that, ultimately, every group is working together in the name of fun, and that it is not and should not be the game's problem if you're playing with people you can't talk to. It doesn't think that ambiguity is bad, that the table will figure out what works best for them, because some of these conflicts work better when different tables solve them their own way.
Third Edition also doesn't really care about the weird edge cases that might happen from certain Charms or certain kinds of players, because one of the ideas behind it is that you will never, ever be able to stop all of those things from happening, and that it's better to try to make it as good as you can with how its intended to work, and if some edge cases happen where games fall apart or people get in arguments, well, that was going to happen no matter what.
I agree with a lots of these. I actually like rolling dice, I like dice tricks that show how skilled I am at avoiding failures, I like seeing this roll that almost failed didn't because I rerolled the ones, that I just rolled 7, 8, 9, 10, 10, 10 so I can buy an extra non-Charm die and get three motes back from my tens. I like the idea that one of the absolute greatest expressions of Solar Craftsmanship is a perfect simulacrum that beats any and all detections to figure out if its you, that beats all wards that might reveal it isn't you, I like that having this Charm lets you reveal you were that freaking prepared.
I like God-King's Shrike for being able to look at the world around me, at the flows of Essence, at where everything is heading, knowing I am creating the very disaster I have come to predict, and, if I have the issue of a player insisting he can just sit in the bunker to cast it over and over, I will inform him that I, as the ST, personally feel that he's violating the spirit of the Charm and needs to either adjust his behavior or not use it. If I have an ST that allows it to be used as remote controlled nuke, I'll voice my objections and roll my eyes, but also shrug and accept it because whatever, everyone else seems fine with it, and it's not really that big an issue if they all like that reading.
I like that the book isn't as dry as a lot of more mechanically precise language, and, overall, I think it was a fair tradeoff to have a book that is more enjoyable to just read, because, in general, it's pretty easy to see how it's supposed to go, and if something is vague, it's pretty easy to ask my storyteller! Yeah, if my ST was an asshole, it would suck, but Third Edition has a fair point! Why am I playing with someone I can't talk to? Maybe it'll work out that this was a bad idea, very little will be gained and Third Edition will be remembered the worse for it. But I don't think the potential risks make it not worth trying to make a game that assumes you're all working together in the name of fun and trusting that, ultimately, most groups will end up finding their balance and have a good time.
There are tradeoffs for a lot of this. Natural language can cause misunderstandings. Assholes will misuse Celestial Bliss Trick. People will likely get confused about God-King's Shrike and try to use it in cheesy ways. Some people will get bored by dice tricks or intimidated by Charms. There are always ups and downs to everything, Imrix. I don't think any of these are unambiguously good, but I sure as shit don't think they can be fairly or accurately called an objectively bad decision, and I am optimistic that, ultimately, more good than bad will come of them.
That's the thing that I most get annoyed about in these arguments. I see a lot of complaints where people here don't like stuff, and dismiss it as inherently flawed and bad from the very core. But like...that's just silly. It's one thing to have problems with something's direction, it's one thing to complain or dislike something intensely, I don't mind that. But objectively bad is a pretty extreme position to take, and one I think is very inaccurate and unfair.
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
I'm not. They're both flawed enough that they sit in that category of game; 3E is less shitty, just not enough to change my overall categorization.
2E's combat mechanics lead to atrocious failure states, irritatingly binary resolution, and similar. 2.5 resolves enough of those problems that combat is not a paranoia combat chore, but it still isn't good by any stretch. Safe, non-chorelike, non-lolexplode combat requires extensive system knowledge and a huge amount of experience investment because you need all your keyword defenses, and that also means a lot of the cool powers are pointless and boring to purchase. This is really stupid and unpleasant. You also need the group consensus to actively avoid the most broken bullshit out there.
3E's Charms are fucking godawful. They're amazingly bloated, incredibly lopsided by Ability, all over the place in terms of power, full of fiddly pointless bullshit, thematically scattered and nonsensical, written with baffling and frustrating levels of ambiguity, force you into extremely specific styles of combat play, extremely opaque, and the sheer number of them makes any attempt to balance new ones or evaluate power of a given combination fucking doomed from the start. Supernals are a cool idea hamstrung by shittily lopsided Charmsets, the fact that they force you to pigeonhole to a stupid degree, and all the problems with the above ruleset.
Celestial Bliss Trick, God-King's Shrike, Dual Magnus Prana... they're awful but they're distractions from the fundamental shittiness of the charm design, not actually indicative of its overall failures.
Both systems are shitty; 2.5 is just the shitty I know enough to work with. I wouldn't set out to learn 2.5 from scratch at this point, and I sure as fuck won't do it for 3E.
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grommile
nasty-minded old cynic
- Location
- NERV-Mercia
- Pronouns
- Traditional/Animate
I have on my bookshelf a set of ring binders containing proof that constructing a large, complex, internally consistent, rigorous ruleset is, in fact, possible (the result is called the Captain's Edition of Star Fleet Battles, and I freely admit it's not to most gamers' taste). However, doing it requires the designer to engage in frequent and honest two-way communication with players who actively enjoy trying to find inconsistencies, degenerate cases, and other failure modes in the rules.
Okay, good for them!
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Did... you just seriously respond to someone contradicting your assertion that such a thing is impossible, and laying out the steps by which you can make it possible... with "Good for them?"
Are you even trying to actually discuss this in good faith?
I completely misread the point they were making, sorry, I'm just exhausted. I'll edit the response into this post, gimme a minute.
EDIT:
Okay, the thing is, that also requires being willing to compromise and sacrifice some things that might be, you know, actually important to the game they want to make. And you yourself admitted that that system isn't for everyone. I think Third Edition would be worse for trying to account to literally everyone on all the forums, especially when a lot of people's tastes here are in direct conflict. I'll concede that it's not literally impossible on trust that your claim is true because very few things are actually impossible, but I don't think trying it for Exalted ends well. Too many conflicting opinions and priorities. Compromise is often good and useful in life, but in this case, I suspect it would remove ambiguities and remove some of the worst potential edge cases at the cost of making 3E more dry, more technical, and endless headaches when major conflicts come up, like, say, when they refuse outright to even consider removing Dual-Magnus Prana because it does what they want.
I think such a game requires a far more unified fanbase where half of them don't hold the writers in active disdain, and, quite frankly, if I were Holden, I wouldn't even consider the idea, because it seems like way too much trouble.
EDIT2: and, in fairness to you guys, it requires developers to be way more socially skilled than Holden and Morke, who, while I consider them really good writers, their PR skills leave a LOT to be desired.
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samdamandias
Apprentice Plane Wizard
Rolling dice can be fun. Constantly having to figure out which of my umpteen dice tricks can apply isn't. Rolling 30+ dice isn't actually that fun, because it takes so long to count by hand. Sorting through 20+ dice to find out which ones I need to reroll and which ones count different than normal but only for this roll and god help you if some dice behave differently than others.
Naturalistic language for the fluff is absolutely desirable. Naturalistic language for the crunch is what drove Legend to use [Brackets] to denote technical terms for even more precision. (A [round] is the smallest unit of game time, round just means something is curved.) The rules of a game are an algorithm for producing stories given some random input. It is incredibly important that the algorithm be followable and clearly written.
Oh Sol, not this again. Someone pointed out an interpretation of CBT that let the user do that. Other people went, "That does work by RAW, I guess, how can we fix it because that probably wasn't the intent" and then a dev said "It's not broken, it doesn't need fixing, and all of you are horrible people."
This understandably, did not make people on the fence more inclined to favor 3E.
It's a lot harder to take something out than it is to put something in. If a player wants some weird homebrew, they quite possibly expect that I would say no. If a player wants a power from the core book it is incredibly hard to deny them. ("I'm not feeling it" works for homebrew, "Thousand-word essay on how this could damage the campaign and goes against what I feel are core thematic elements" barely squeaks by for denying something in the corebook a character could take by RAW and RAI)
I am going to wait for the actual book to come out and find a way to read it. It might be that I feel about exalted 3E the way I feel about D&D4E (Mechanically superior game, but not the game I want to play), but that seems unlikely.
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I'll be honest I never considered that anyone would ever play Exalted by hand why would you roll that many dice by hand play near a computer or phone with a roller app. Call it one of the tradeoffs.
Holden was horrified that you had that interpretation to begin with and were legit talking about it as a thing that might be done. It's somewhat naive, given how awful people can be, but quite frankly I don't find his reaction to be that ridiculous. Inappropriately rude, admittedly, but given that he was seeing people talking about something incentivizing rape, like, 'Hmm, this seems tactically valueable, people will start raping with this', yeah. I can see why he reacted as he did.
Dude. You are the ST. Anything you don't like is out. Having players bitch at you because you removed a thing you didn't like is not the game's problem, it's yours and your group's. Not all Charms are written to appeal to everyone, and the game is written assuming the ST will remove it if he hates it that much, and let his group know ahead of time that, 'hey, this is a game without Dual-Magnus Prana or God-King's Shrike' or whatever. If that doesn't work for you, well, sucks but that's not a compelling reason to remove a Charm they like from the game.
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