My point was that without the charm the character would be dead. Therefore, acting as if the abandonment is a huge cost is extremely dishonest, because if you're dead then you've abandoned them permanently. This charm lessens the abandonment from forever to possibly much shorter. The character feeling bad about it doesn't mean anything.
General Exalted Thread
It's also, you know, not leaving you in an advantageous position. It's not a free respawn. It's 'holy shit. If I hadn't been using my simulacrum I would be dead.' That was my point.
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
That's... a free respawn.
Because you didn't need to be using your simulacrum. You just need to retroactively declare that you were using it. There is no "Oh man good thing I was paranoid," it's just bam, done, retroactively just paranoid enough.
When you're out of motes and getting your ass kicked, "somewhere not here" is an advantageous position. Alternatively, if you're using it offensively, "somewhere not here" is also an advantageous position after you've blown all your motes and willpower going "WITNESS ME" and respawning without ever seeing Valhalla while being shiny and chrome.
Jon Chung
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Look, you could easily use it like this: "Kekeke. I have enough XP such that I can get out of death free, so I'm going to pull the equivalent of a balls-out screaming kamikaze suicide bomber attack. If I lose and die, I don't care, I was a doombot in the first place. If I win, great!"
Also, address the post about Rule Zero I directed at you.
notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
But the alternative is dying for real, in which case... you also abandoned them to fight on alone, only this time you can't hop out from behind a bush fully rested.
Yes, that is a valid use of the Charm. I would completely allow that. Being a master craftsman with huge reserves of white experience points has it's advantages. Mind, under me, you'd also have to be relatively close because fuck splitting the party across Creation, but yeah. If you can get the setup and have the points to spare, I'd have zero problem with that.
Jon Chung
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This is a broken capability that should not be allowed anymore than dropping strategic nukes on cities you don't like from anywhere in Creation with no traceback. You-Actual, the Solar Exalt, are never exposed to risk. You cannot be threatened with death. You can act as you please and if anyone manages to kill you, that wasn't you, that was your doombot.
The only way to kill you is to, as I pointed out above, kill your doombot, then hunt you down (somewhere in the whole of Creation) and kill your backup doombot. And do it again and again until you run out of crafting XP and before you can spamcraft your way back to the point where you can use it again after you died the last time. There is no way to find out where the actual Solar Exalt is because until you activate the Charm and retroactively declare yourself a doombot, there is no doombot and no "real you".
Keep in mind the size of Creation. Do you think this is balanced? I sure as fuck don't.
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Except it is? You're both not dead and somewhere else entirely, despite being in a position where you should have died. And you didn't need to do prepwork beyond a lot of crafting to do so. That's a pretty big positive. So I understand your point. I'm just arguing against it, because it's pretty stupid.
You can, of course, choose to allow a player the extremely beneficial and textually unsupported position of 'motes spent with Dual Magnus Prana are not spent by the real body'. I, personally, would not.
I, personally, do not find 'anywhere in all Creation' a plausible place for you to have actually been (This is, by the way, a thing in the charm text, the storyteller has to find your real position plausible), so I wouldn't run into that problem. What I consider plausible is more 'within a mile, tops'. And you have lost everything you lost in combat except the health levels. You do not have the equipment on your body, that is lost unless someone helps you recover it. This is what I, as the storyteller, find most plausible. I have known storytellers who would be both more generous and more punishing, depending on the individual making the call. But this is the one I like best.
Replying since I saw you demanded it. I felt Omicron covered this just fine, but okay. For one thing, where in God-King's Shrike does it say it is untraceable? Nowhere. If a player uses it, Heaven freaks out, and the next arc will involve Sidereals and gods alike searching hard for who just fucked everything up. Depending on how good the roll was, there are also likely to be cascading disasters, or, if the roll was really good, I would go pull up Omicron's Seven Dooms of Elysion. You can summon disasters. It has nothing saying its undetectable, that was your assumption. I would be a pretty shitty storyteller if I passed up a storytelling opportunity like that. I also don't agree that DMP is broken and undesirable, and the cost is greater than you seem to think. It's not that spammable except with certain builds/insane XP, and a player who can spam Dual Magnus Prana is, for most of the game, not really that intimidating of a combatant. So, no, I don't agree with your points. I don't agree that these things don't have a place in Exalted, and I look forward to such Charms becoming relevant in my game, I think it will be a lot of fun.
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Jon Chung
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/facepalm
Where in the Charm does it specify that controlling doombots has a one mile range, or that "plausible" implies a tight distance-based limitation? See, if it did have a one mile range in the text, okay! That's a mitigating factor to its use: if I kill a Solar with this Charm, I know his actual self is within one mile and can attempt to kill him again. As is, however, it does not, and you are using Rule Zero to add one.
If you then proceed to use your Rule Zero'd version of the Charm as evidence the Charm is not broken, see Rule Zero Fallacy: that doesn't work, mate.
Charms do what they say they do. In this case: you roll dice, a disaster happens, one season cooldown. No range limitation, no signifiers to trace back, nothing. If you add on an additional complication along the lines of "The Loom of Fate lights up with a fuckton of blazing red arrows pointing to your location with your name on them! Ketchup Carjack gets an emergency message with your exact coordinates!", this is, again, not in the Charm. You added it. Because a Charm which lets you drop strategic nukes anywhere in Creation with perfect stealth would be broken.
That alarm effect certainly should be stated in the charm text, yes? Much like how Dual Magnus should have a range limitation in the charm text, yes?
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Thank you, the examples are very informative and I enjoyed looking them over. My initial impression of the Styles you posted is that with the exception of Falling Petal style the special effects and base stats of the styles seem reasonable for their costs.
On the point of Falling Petal style the effects seem rather anemic given the costs involved, even taking into account that it seems meant for followers rather than NPC's.This is the case because having two followers with tower shields watching my back would probably be more useful, as they can defend other just as effectively due to the high defense value of the tower shields in 2.5 and can negate the surprise attack from being surrounded by simply making sure that my characters back is always towards one of the followers instead of an enemy. Similarly the advantage of Verse of the Martyr is the stylist lasting maybe two or three more rounds before dying, assuming that they are not splatted immediately in exalted's highly lethal combat. This is a problem because the two followers with shields generally cannot be splattered in a single attack and are likely to last longer in a fight because the aggregate health levels of the two followers before they hit incapacitated are probably more than the total normal plus dying health levels of the Falling Petal stylist, assuming all involved are heroic mortals. This is bad because the two mortals with tower shields costs the same number of follower's as the Falling Petal stylist but do not involve having to pay either background points or in game time getting the martial art training itself, which should make them moderately cheaper. Accordingly a slight buff to the special abilities of the style or reducing its costs is probably a good idea.
Hope this helps.
I am using the Charm as written:
"With this Charm, the Solar's player may retroactively describe the process by which the Lawgiver created a perfect simulacrum of herself through an elaborate sorcerous project. This description occurs the moment the Solar's incapacitated health level is checked off; instead of dying, the slain character is revealed to be a perfect double of the Solar. The real Solar may then be located anywhere the player chooses, so long as the Storyteller deems it plausible."
This Charm is supposed to, by design, vary from ST to ST depending on personal preferences. What I find plausible isn't what you find plausible isn't what Omicron finds plausible. This is something 3E does that you don't like that I really do like. The range is what I find plausible. What I find plausible is a mile. In your game (not that you'd allow it, I know, this is just an example), maybe you don't like it being that far away, maybe your range limit is more like a hundred yards. Both are equally valid, this is the Charm working as intended, it's meant to be different according to ST preference.
It is not specified to be untraceable, therefore, how generously I read it is up to me. If I was a super-generous ST, I probably would read it like that. But that is not good for the stories I want this Charm to tell. So, I will interpret it in the ways that are best for my game. This is, same as above, the Charm working as intended. This is a design principle you dislike and think is dumb. But it's a valid one. As the ST, I will read ambiguous Charms in the way that is best for my story. Generally, this means I will extrapolate consequences based on how I feel such a thing should result. If God-King Shrike called itself out as being undetectable, I would call it a stupid Charm and either make it traceable or disallow it period, depending on how annoyed I was at the time. But it doesn't. So, I can infer consequences all I like. Because that is what works best for me. That is how Charms like this work in Exalted Third Edition.
Jon Chung
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I could type up an essay about how undefined terms in game mechanics are a terrible idea because that means their strength is undefined and the game developer cannot balance other things against items of undefined power, but, instead...
ITT: the best anti-marketing campaign for Exalted 3 on the interwebs. Congratulations, Fenrir. You have managed to make it look even worse than I thought it was.
ITT: the best anti-marketing campaign for Exalted 3 on the interwebs. Congratulations, Fenrir. You have managed to make it look even worse than I thought it was.
I'm sure glad we've reached the point in Charm-mechanics debates where the Charms are finally capable of shifting their own goalposts without even any effort paid on the part of those arguing about them.
"This Charm does whatever anyone decides it does! Except when it doesn't, all or none of which may or may not be written in the text itself either." is truly the next level in Charm technology.
"This Charm does whatever anyone decides it does! Except when it doesn't, all or none of which may or may not be written in the text itself either." is truly the next level in Charm technology.
There is nothing that can be balanced against God-King's Shrike or Dual-Magnus Prana. They are each the pinnacle of what can be accomplished with them. They are potent narrative powers, not mechanical crunch that might break the game if you buy the wrong Evocations. Again. None of these things are written with people like you in mind. Some people have fun with more vague narrative play that allows for individual nuance. You don't, that's fine. But that doesn't make the Charms invalid. Surprisingly, your feelings and preferences are not objective mathematical fact than can be equally applied to all games and circumstances.
The Charm can have limits and consequences which do not revoke the actual text according to what the individual ST feels is best for their game. This is wildly different from 'the Charm does whatever unless it doesn't'.
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Jon Chung
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Yes, very cute, you hate things that aren't exactly perfectly spelled out so nothing can possibly ever be out of place. You're very funny.
notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
Yes they can. If a capstone has 'destroy any city in Creation 1/year,' you can assume that an Archery capstone that lets you shoot a giant arrow made of sunlight to destroy any one area in Creation is balanced. Or a Melee capstone that lets you sword so much you destroy a city in one slash. If a Craft capstone lets you come back from the dead once for every days work you do (roughly) a Stealth capstone that lets you teleport away from battle with a couple of minor restrictions is balanced.
On the other hand, a Resistance capstone that you can activate for 10 Essence 1 3 WP to remain at 1hl when you should be dead is not balanced, because it's much worse than other comparable capstones.
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Except, no, because Archery does not get the same mystical potency bullshit Lore does, and Stealth...well, yeah, I'd probably allow a teleport at E5/A5, if it had either proper mechanical restrictions or similiar open-ended 'teleport where the ST thinks it's plausible'. But no, I'd not allow Archery to do the same mass destruction as God-King's Shrike. There's a reason God-King's Shrike is in Lore and the other E5 capstones don't do similiar stuff. We have examples of E5 archery charms. They're, surprisingly enough, not just a refluffed God-King's Shrike.
Again. This is a product of a style of play that appreciates more open-ended stuff where exact restrictions are group by group. It is not the style of play you like. But surely you can comprehend that maybe, just maybe, this kind of thing works for other people, yes? That your preferences are not universal, that things can be written with goals contrary to the ones you find most important and other people can enjoy and have fun and make good stories. Especially when these things are incredibly optional high-end things that are in no way keystones of the game and can therefore be ignored or included as the ST desires.
Again. This is not rule zero fallacy. This is me saying that people like different things and that is perfectly okay. You think it's bad! That's fine. That doesn't mean it shouldn't exist, though! I love the Charms, I love the narrative space they open up, and I look forward to seeing them in use. I respect your misgivings with the Charm, and were I to end up in your game, I would 100% respect the boundaries you set on what Charms are and aren't okay. But that doesn't mean all games should work like that! Variety is the spice of life, and Exalted Third Edition can be played in different ways by design!
Okay cool then, lemme try the "Ex3 way of Charm writing."
God-Humbling Victory Sword, Cost: 20m, 1wp;
Mins: Melee 5, Essence 5;
Type: Simple
Keywords: Obvious
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: TBA
It is said that the Solar Exalted are peerless, and where they tread the world forges a path towards triumph. The Solar steps back, then brings her weapon forward in a stance that seems to split the very air by its passage. This Charm may be used only during a climactic scene at the beginning of an impending combat, when fate hangs heavy and the balance is easily tipped.
Time briefly stops, and the Solar's unbound destiny radiates out from her in five resonant paths, like the rays of the sun. The Storyteller presents each path in turn, representing possible conclusions to the scene and encompassing the warrior's path she has chosen. She must only choose one by stepping onto it:
- Along the path of Dawn, she has won the immediate conflict, but with difficulty. Shining Dove fought Ligier, the Green Sun, in its human form until the blood of each spattered the demon lord's palace of brass. In the end, the demon bowed his shining head in defeat.
- Along the path of the Noonday sun, she is offered a great joy, but no other gain in battle. Searching the brass palace of the Green Sun for her foe, Shining Dove found her lover, having disappeared a years before, confined within a vault at the demons throne. Unable to believe this good fortune, she smashed it open and took her lost love tenderly in her arms, even as the demon prince escaped.
- Along the path of Twilight, she has suffered a minor loss but gained a greater, long-term victory. Shining Dove knew she could not fight Ligier and his horde of demon minions and win, but for her valor in the attempt, the bargain she struck with the Green Sun at swords-point gave her part of what she needed to extort a great secret from the Yozi Cecelyne on his place.
- Along the path of Night, she loses something dear to her, but one of her greatest enemies is killed or neutralized. Shining Dove saw herself weeping before the open, teetering gates of Malfeas. She had utterly broken her former nemesis, and crippled every one of the lower souls of the Primordial King, but had been forced to sacrifice her Lunar mate to see an end to this battle and reshape the Demon Realm by her will.
- Along the path of the Moon-shrouded sun, she learns something that completely changes her opinion on an important matter. A chance comment by the Green Sun led Shining Dove to realize just how deep the treachery of the Usurpation went. She knew then she could no longer stand by her Lunar mate, who betrayed and abandoned her in that former life to die at the hands of the Dragonblooded and their Sidereal minders. Dropping the mutual plan to fight the demon, Shining Dove strode from the brass palace at the cusp of victory, leaving the stunned Lunar to wage this battle alone.
Though she will remember using God-Humbling Victory Sword at the start of the conflict, the Solar will not be able to recall the outcome of anyother possible path of destiny once she has stepped onto one to follow. No one else will know that the world bent to permit her victory at all.
Wow, think about all that possible player-driven story potential! Sure, it may have irreparably voided an entire climax of possibly a full story or campaign arc, but just imagine all the ways that- oh wait, that is actually a slightly Solar-reflavored Breathing On The Black Mirror from Obsidian Shards of Infinity Style.
My bad.
Yes that is exactly the same as 'roll and maybe destroy a large area depending on the roll with open-ended ways for the ST to decide what exactly follows'. You absolutely know what you're talking about and are completely right and everything you don't like is objectively bad.
See, I can use hyperbole and bullshit to make you look stupid, too.
See, I can use hyperbole and bullshit to make you look stupid, too.
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
That's just sarcasm, dude. Not hyperbole, bullshit, or even good mockery.
Also his example works perfectly for his needs, seeing as you yourself indicated that the Charm can have limits not in the text and that this is appropriate balance. Any result of the Charm that the ST thinks is unreasonable can be handwaved away, rendering a perfect Charm suitable for use at every table.
You're right. I'm too tired to say anything worth saying at this point, so I'll just go do something else.