General Exalted Thread

[vicky_molokh]

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.

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I do have to agree that the fact that the fandom is divided on What Exalted Should Be means that the fandom as a whole will never be happy with whatever Ex4e becomes; at best, a majority of the fandom might be.

For instance, there seem to be some strong opinions about the concept of storytelling-oriented as opposed to mechanics-oriented mechanics. Like this:

You're confusing what is essentially a combat mechanic with that of a narrative one. [...] Now, amusingly, we have an example of such a power done correctly- or at least better than Dual Magnus Prana: Avoidance Kata from Sidereals.

Avoidance Kata has clearly defined limitations (two actions from time of battle starting), and obfuscates the Sidereal's teleportation as a form of Illusion Effect. (The illusion, iirc, prevents the witnesses from understanding they were fighting someone, not the escape itself.)

Avoidance Kata is overall better for the game line as a whole- healthier, because it says something about Sidereals. Dual Magnus Prana is 'You need a 1up in this game, so have an arbitrary 1up'.

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And here's a thing: people seem to be quoting the 2e version of Avoidance Kata. But the original vision of 1e didn't have any Illusion Effects, but rather was a retroactive trick:

Avoidance Kata is kind of an odd duck. (*cough*) Note that it doesn't actually change the past—-fate doesn't do that. What Avoidance Kata is is a message to the Loom of Fate in the *now* saying, "Oh, by the way, I foresaw this, and I'm not here."

And it's true.

As far as anyone can prove. (See "On Memory", p. 131.)

The demon, if high enough rank to be outside of fate, will remember the first few seconds of the fight. It will be aware- if intelligent enough to grasp the idea- that the Sidereal decided retroactively that she was never there.

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It's up to the Storyteller.

I recommend erasing mundane evidence and things done by or to the Sidereal on the turn the Charm is invoked.

Thus:

Turn 1

SIDEREAL: I get initiative. I throw some knives and enhance them with a Charm.
ABYSSAL: I cut off the Sidereal's arm.

Turn 2

ABYSSAL: I get initiative and cut off the Sidereal's other arm.
SIDEREAL: Er. Suckweasel. Um.
ABYSSAL: Um?
SIDEREAL: I'm not here.

The ABYSSAL: hurt by some knives. Who hurt him? He's not sure. Maybe he just burst into cuts. That happens sometimes.

The SIDEREAL: in the woods somewhere, looking blankly at a bear that has just torn off her arm. But at least she still has *one*.

Turn 3

SIDEREAL: Why am I fighting a bear?
STORYTELLER: For my amusement.
SIDEREAL: Er.
STORYTELLER: You're trying to demonstrate your l33t sk1llz to that wind spirit you've been flirting with. So far, it's not going very well.

THE KNIVES: Back on the Sidereal's belt.

And, yes, the Siddy's going to beat the bear. Having to repeat Avoidance Kata several times is just silly.

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It may help not to think of it as deception or mind control. It's information.

When you say "You suddenly realize that the Sidereal was never here," you're not lying to the PCs and asking them to swallow that lie. You're giving them data. It's not data they completely understand, it's just an instinct, but that happens a lot with weird supernatural effects—-you realize something, but not necessarily the whole picture.

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And as a note, in 1e it indeed simply said

Sometimes, the best answer to trouble is not being there at all. In the first two turns of combat or the first minute of a social encounter, the Sidereal's player can declare, "I'm not there." It turns out - at least as far as anyone can prove - that the Exalt anticipated the situation prophetically and was somewhere else, of the Storyteller's choosing, all along.
For this Charm's purposes, the first minute of a social encounter begins at the last chance the Exalt had to conveniently leave. If the character is chatting with a friend and Lilith shows up, a new social encounter has begun. The Sidereal can use this Charm, retroactively making her excuses and ducking out sometime beforehand. If the character is chatting with Lilith and a friend shows up, however, she's still in the encounter with Lilith.

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So sorry, but saying "The original vision of Exalted disallowed retroactive storytelling tricks" is . . . in contradiction of what Borgstrom said about such tricks. And saying "then 2e came and they made up lots of Charms that run counter to the original principles of the setting!" is not applicable either, for the same reason (I'm mostly saying this pre-emptively). Perhaps 3e gives more focus to such tricks, and yet it seems to be criticised for being the one to 'bring' such tricks into Exalted, despite them already being there.

Side thought: would Foot-Trapping Counter prevent escape with DMP like it does with Avoidance Kata? ^_^

The grandest irony though, is that Steps 4 and 6 existed entirely to take advantage of Third Excellency, and this edition has possibly ten times as much rerolling effects, if not more, with no solid grounding for where it actually occurs in the resolution. It is mind-bogglingly backwards.

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Didn't they also exist to enable various Martial Arts tricks, like Mantis' ability to take away enemy attack successes with a roll, or some Violet Bier stuff?

To repeat: One side of the argument was people going, "uhh, this is skeevy as hell, can this get fixed please?" and Holden's answer was to declare that the fault was on us for noticing that. "Inappropriately rude" does not begin to cover it.

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I don't remember all the details of the conversation (it's been a while), but it gave me a vibe for more like "uhh, this is skeevy as hell, can this get fixed please?" and Holden's reaction to their reaction being more like "uhh, the fact that people think in such directions when reading it is skeevy as hell, maybe I should avoid people with such skeevy thought-paths". I've seen such exchanges between many other people, where someone says something with no subtext implied, the other points out an accidental innuendo or the like, and the first replies with an "eww, you have a dirty mind".

I do have to agree that Holden delivered it in an awkward and potentially insulting way. I do wonder if perhaps such abrasiveness was a result of what was described (IIRC by @Omicron) as a 'tribal shouting skirmish'; if so, I have no idea what can be done in order to make both sides become less scornful of each other and more inclined to communicate constructively and hold expectations of saying things in good faith. (And I admit that I wasn't exactly good at practicing what I preach either; I'll try to get better.)

 

[Jon Chung]

Perhaps 3e gives more focus to such tricks, and yet it seems to be criticised for being the one to 'bring' such tricks into Exalted, despite them already being there.

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Avoidance Kata is in-setting retroactive and mechanically anticipatory: your Sidereal was never there, but your player had to hit AK before the two-round time limit was up, and you had to hit it in anticipation that you would need to get out of the scene / never be there. It was entirely possible to kill a Sidereal with Avoidance Kata by baiting him into staying longer than two rounds in a scene (via stealth/disguise or hostage-taking or whatever other strategies) then proceeding to stab him to death.

Dual Magnus is in-setting anticipatory and mechanically retroactive: you the player activate it after you die, saying "Oh, I thought this would happen, so I built a doombot and sent it out instead of going myself! I planned ahead!". This makes counterplay a bit of a farce, since until you make that retroactive declaration, you don't have a doombot and you are actually present - it's impossible to discover your doombot is a doombot or where you're hiding, and there's no way to prevent it from working.

 

[Aaron Peori]

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.

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Thank you.

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.

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Hmm. I'd forgotten about the change to how Shields work. With that in mind I suspect this would be a good change:

Living Shield Technique: When the Martial Artists rolls Join Battle he may spend 1wp to designate one ally as his protected target for the remainder of the combat. For the remainder of the combat the Stylist may use the Defend Other action on that ally as a Reflexive action on his turn, but he may not use Defend Other on any other ally until he again makes a Join Battle roll. If the Stylist has a positive Intimacy towards his designated target he gains +1 Parry DV for the remainder of the combat.

 

[notthepenguins]

And here's a thing: people seem to be quoting the 2e version of Avoidance Kata. But the original vision of 1e didn't have any Illusion Effects, but rather was a retroactive trick:

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Uh....

The demon, if high enough rank to be outside of fate, will remember the first few seconds of the fight. It will be aware- if intelligent enough to grasp the idea- that the Sidereal decided retroactively that she was never there.

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It quite clearly is illusory, since said illusion fails against anything running off its own causality.

 

[Shyft]

And here's a thing: people seem to be quoting the 2e version of Avoidance Kata. But the original vision of 1e didn't have any Illusion Effects, but rather was a retroactive trick:

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This is very accurate! And it's tangential to my point, so I will try to clarify:

The issue with DMP is that it is an unhealthy charm for the game and setting, with poorly articulated and woefully unlimited mechanics- not that it's a retroactive trick.

Avoidance Kata 1e existed before the keyword system, so they had to do a lot of handwaving and such (which worked, and Borgstrom was very good at creating wonderful fluff out of these situations), but it was still handwaving.

Avoidance Kata 2e was, arguably, a mechanically more rigorous Charm. This is imo a good thing but how Sidereals were ported from 1e to 2e is another issue entirely. I can tell you though that the idea of 'Illusion' being Information/Memory/Belief, is sourced from Borgstrom.

The problem with DMP has always been that you cannot interact with it prior to it being invoked. Plus what Jon has been describing about it's anticipatory nature. Avoidance Kata can be gamed by people in the combat scene, instead of outside of it.

 

[vicky_molokh]

Avoidance Kata is in-setting retroactive and mechanically anticipatory: your Sidereal was never there, but your player had to hit AK before the two-round time limit was up, and you had to hit it in anticipation that you would need to get out of the scene / never be there. It was entirely possible to kill a Sidereal with Avoidance Kata by baiting him into staying longer than two rounds in a scene (via stealth/disguise or hostage-taking or whatever other strategies) then proceeding to stab him to death.

Dual Magnus is in-setting anticipatory and mechanically retroactive: you the player activate it after you die, saying "Oh, I thought this would happen, so I built a doombot and sent it out instead of going myself! I planned ahead!". This makes counterplay a bit of a farce, since until you make that retroactive declaration, you don't have a doombot and you are actually present - it's impossible to discover your doombot is a doombot or where you're hiding, and there's no way to prevent it from working.

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There seem to be two nuances here, and I'd like to make sure we're on the same page.

Avoidance Kata is activated reflexively, as is DMP. The conditions of activation are restricted: for AK, it's the first two rounds of a combat; for DMP, it's upon meeting the condition to die. In both cases, the explanation was "The character anticipated this, and so used a trick to never be there in the first place". AK retroactively undoes stuff that was done (the "KNIVES: back on the Sidereal's belt"); DMP does not undo anything that happened, but adds new details to the scene retroactively.

I don't think I understand what you mean by saying that Avoidance Kata is in-setting retroactive. In-setting, it's "the Exalt anticipated the situation prophetically and was somewhere else". Not the Exalt's player. The whole 'retroactive' bit only shows up on the meta-fictional level, because we as players know that the first two rounds of a combat were actually played by the group and not merely fortold by the GM to the player as a possible future. Meanwhile, the character (Exalt) anticipated it prophetically and decided to go somewhere else.

It quite clearly is illusory, since said illusion fails against anything running off its own causality.

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Uh, the author Moran advised not to see it as 'deception or mind control'. Which seems to mean that whatever the demon saw was not illusory. Because illusions are a type of deception and/or mind control.

This is very accurate! And it's tangential to my point, so I will try to clarify:

The issue with DMP is that it is an unhealthy charm for the game and setting, with poorly articulated and woefully unlimited mechanics- not that it's a retroactive trick.

Avoidance Kata 1e existed before the keyword system, so they had to do a lot of handwaving and such (which worked, and Borgstrom was very good at creating wonderful fluff out of these situations), but it was still handwaving.

Avoidance Kata 2e was, arguably, a mechanically more rigorous Charm. This is imo a good thing but how Sidereals were ported from 1e to 2e is another issue entirely. I can tell you though that the idea of 'Illusion' being Information/Memory/Belief, is sourced from Borgstrom.

The problem with DMP has always been that you cannot interact with it prior to it being invoked. Plus what Jon has been describing about it's anticipatory nature. Avoidance Kata can be gamed by people in the combat scene, instead of outside of it.

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Oh, I agree that DMP seems to be on the overpowered side, at least if combined with a reliable way of grinding lots of craft XP. I just don't agree that it's fair to say that DMP (or 2e) brought takebacks into Exalted, when AK in its original vision is exactly the sort of thing that enables takebacks, albeit restricted ones (then again, AK is not an apex Charm that requires two Abilities to learn and is apparently considered a very rare secret for PCs to discover).

As for not allowing a bypass, I think that has to do with the intent of the Charm being to provide a result. Like many other borgstromantic results. The Solar finds food for his whole Unit; even if in 'middle' of Cecelyne. The Solar disguises herself as the Scarlet Empress; even if given nothing to use as tools, and it's not an illusion nor shapeshifting. The Solar opens the lock, period, no matter what. These Charms don't provide tools to overcome difficulties in overcoming an obstacle; they ensure results of overcoming the obstacle.

Now, many people consider the availability of this specific result to be undesirable. On that account, I can understand that there are reasons to join either the pro or the con camp. I just don't agree that 3e ruined the vision by adding retroactivity and/or results-oriented powers to the setting, because those things clearly were a thing back when Moran wrote them.

 

[Dif]

Didn't they also exist to enable various Martial Arts tricks, like Mantis' ability to take away enemy attack successes with a roll, or some Violet Bier stuff?

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The Mantis example was a badly ported Counterattack which should actually be occurring in Step 9, which also goes for Den Mother Method in Lunars and Flaming River Burns The Boat from Golden Exhalation Style, and stems from the same early-2e misunderstandings of what the Counterattack keyword entails vs the Counterattack Step. Step 4 only comes into play with an attack-abort in White Veil style, which replaces reroll Charms by name so it cannot interact with them, Flashing Leaves Evasion in Crystal Chameleon which calls out rerolled attacks in Step 4 as its direct counter-effect, and Impeding The Flow in Sidereals so it can reduce both attack successes and rerolled successes sourced from the same attack.

Steps 4/6 aren't called out anywhere else in the books besides Third Excellency, its pretty consistent about that.

 

[notthepenguins]

Avoidance Kata is activated reflexively, as is DMP. The conditions of activation are restricted: for AK, it's the first two rounds of a combat; for DMP, it's upon meeting the condition to die. In both cases, the explanation was "The character anticipated this, and so used a trick to never be there in the first place". AK retroactively undoes stuff that was done (the "KNIVES: back on the Sidereal's belt"); DMP does not undo anything that happened, but adds new details to the scene retroactively.

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First, AK does not undo any damage done. Just the details.

Second, conflating the restrictions of DMP and AK is an impressive exercise in sophistry, given how immensely different they are.

Third, DMP adds new details to the scene retroactively, in a way that chumps everyone else. It says "Actually I was a robot all along," while its out-of-setting retroactive nature prevents it from being opposed. You were actually a doombot all along, okay, why did no one notice when the Solar Doctor used Perfect Biological Detection Technique? Why did that dude who popped Eyes of the Unconquered Sun fail to even get any chance to detect the effect?

Because "I retcon myself as having successfully done something" is stupid bullshit even without the "lol I can do whatever with no risk suck it enemies" it creates.

Meanwhile, the character (Exalt) anticipated it prophetically and decided to go somewhere else.

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Read the damn quotes you use, dude.

It will be aware- if intelligent enough to grasp the idea- that the Sidereal decided retroactively that she was never there.

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Deliberate, in-setting choice.

But the author Moran said it's not a lie. Which seems to mean that whatever the demon saw was not illusory.

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Because she rewrote reality to make it true. Not because the initial stage of the combat actually never happened; it's just that you need to be outside the causality the Sidereal rewrote to perceive what happened, or you're affected by the retcon.

 

[Ishem]

I don't think DMP is supposed to vary from ST to ST, I think it's supposed to vary from situation to situation. Like one mile radius is fine. But if the whole circle gets teleported to Malfeas and lead in chains to their execution than the charm doesn't become inapplicable, it just means the plausible places change from "somewhere around where you died." To "somewhere around where you got teleported from. Same goes for the whole party falling down a ten mile deep hole or something. It doesn't have a hard-set radius because some circumstances change when you'd have to have made the switch out.

If there's no good explanation for how and why the Solar is halfway across creation, then he's not. The counter play to it is the same counter play to your ST saying that while you weren't looking the big bad hijacked the Daystar and is nuking you from orbit. That's just stupid and implausible. Absolutely nothing in the rules anywhere ever says that your abyssal enemy can't just go hijack the Sun, but that's not a game flaw.

It'd be like having a static game mechanic for distance traveled by a rumour, let's say 10km per day. Sorcerers and DBs and spirits can drastically speed that up, being in an isolated community in the middle of nowhere makes it stop. It's just whatever makes sense.



God-King shrike though is pretty broken. The repercussions of not killing a random twilight that one time are way way less than the repercussions of destroying a whole nation, especially if a PC is doing it. If you try to kill somebody and he DMPs instead, you can track him down and kill him again. You can just un-destroy a city. What GKS should require is you standing in the streets loudly proclaiming the doom of a city. That way you might get one freebie and then when the word gets out that a prophet proclaiming doom was right and then the second you start using that charm in a new city you get stabbed to death.

 

[Jon Chung]

There seem to be two nuances here, and I'd like to make sure we're on the same page.

Avoidance Kata is activated reflexively, as is DMP. The conditions of activation are restricted: for AK, it's the first two rounds of a combat; for DMP, it's upon meeting the condition to die. In both cases, the explanation was "The character anticipated this, and so used a trick to never be there in the first place". AK retroactively undoes stuff that was done (the "KNIVES: back on the Sidereal's belt"); DMP does not undo anything that happened, but adds new details to the scene retroactively.

I don't think I understand what you mean by saying that Avoidance Kata is in-setting retroactive. In-setting, it's "the Exalt anticipated the situation prophetically and was somewhere else". Not the Exalt's player. The whole 'retroactive' bit only shows up on the meta-fictional level, because we as players know that the first two rounds of a combat were actually played by the group and not merely fortold by the GM to the player as a possible future. Meanwhile, the character (Exalt) anticipated it prophetically and decided to go somewhere else.

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Whatever you're thinking regarding the fluff about "your character was never here", it really doesn't matter. Mechanically, yes you were, and you the player need to activate Avoidance Kata before anything bad happens to you if you think that remaining in the scene beyond the first two rounds is going to be a bad idea. This is an escape effect you punch if you the player think you're going to be in trouble. There are a bunch of ways to get around this if you need to kill someone with such an effect, starting with the incredibly simple "don't reveal yourself until the time limit has passed", so the charm is not broken.

You activate Dual Magnus after you die, declaring that you were a doombot all along. The player does not need to think they were possibly going to be in trouble, so they could stay in a particular safe location and activate their remote telepresence droid to enter the risky situation instead of going in person. If they did have to do this, it would allow for, say, someone to find and assassinate them while they are piloting the remote telepresence droid or discover that the droid is a droid, etc, etc.

Instead, they simply go forth and act with total impunity, trusting that their stupid charm will ensure that they're actually taking no risks at all - simply knowing the charm is enough to ensure this. To kill someone who knows it, you need to play whack-a-mole with their doombots such that your rate of finding, tracking, hunting down and killing doombots exceeds their rate of crafting XP gain such that they cannot doombot again after you hunt them down and cut their head off. As I point out above: good luck, lol.

These are not the same thing, and conflating them is stupid.

 

[vicky_molokh]

First, AK does not undo any damage done. Just the details.

Second, conflating the restrictions of DMP and AK is an impressive exercise in sophistry, given how immensely different they are.

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Me 'conflating' the two restrictions was not an attempt to say that they're equally limiting. It was me pointing out that the concept of retroactivity being a thing back in 1e, but employed with different restrictions.

Third, DMP adds new details to the scene retroactively, in a way that chumps everyone else. It says "Actually I was a robot all along," while its out-of-setting retroactive nature prevents it from being opposed. You were actually a doombot all along, okay, why did no one notice when the Solar Doctor used Perfect Biological Detection Technique? Why did that dude who popped Eyes of the Unconquered Sun fail to even get any chance to detect the effect?

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On one hand, I do dislike that it chumps other characters. On another, there are things that chump other characters already in other editions. E.g. Reflex Sidestep Technique will bypass all the Stealth Excellencies and invisibilities and other tricks - no level of sneakiness will help against it. Seven Shadow Evasion will dodge even the infinitely-powerful galaxy-sized energy field flung by SWLiHN. Solar Larceny steals stuff without a chance of being detected until Essence turns after stealing something, no questions asked. Many Exalted powers are built on bypassing applicability or making it irrelevant.

DMP is probably overpowered for what it does, and that is possibly the result of it being the capstone of not one but two Abilities (because "Hey, this is a big investment, gotta make it pay off . . . oops!").

Read the damn quotes you use, dude.

Deliberate, in-setting choice.

Because she rewrote reality to make it true. Not because the initial stage of the combat actually never happened; it's just that you need to be outside the causality the Sidereal rewrote to perceive what happened, or you're affected by the retcon.

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It seems both are true in a way. Reality-hacking is apparently self-contradictory. "The Exalt anticipated the situation prophetically and was somewhere else" and "Note that it doesn't actually change the past—-fate doesn't do that" and "It doesn't actually mean that the past changed, or that it fits all the facts" versus "the Sidereal decided retroactively".

Whatever you're thinking regarding the fluff about "your character was never here", it really doesn't matter. Mechanically, yes you were, and you the player need to activate Avoidance Kata before anything bad happens to you if you think that remaining in the scene beyond the first two rounds is going to be a bad idea. This is an escape effect you punch if you the player think you're going to be in trouble. There are a bunch of ways to get around this if you need to kill someone with such an effect, starting with the incredibly simple "don't reveal yourself until the time limit has passed", so the charm is not broken.

You activate Dual Magnus after you die, declaring that you were a doombot all along. The player does not need to think they were possibly going to be in trouble, so they could stay in a particular safe location and activate their remote telepresence droid to enter the risky situation instead of going in person. If they did have to do this, it would allow for, say, someone to find and assassinate them while they are piloting the remote telepresence droid or discover that the droid is a droid, etc, etc.

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Avoidance Kata has the limitation that if the Sidereal commits to a conflict, it becomes of no use, yes. Though if I understand correctly, AK doesn't restrict itself to any specific Step, so you can activate it in Step 7 or 10 if two actions haven't passed yet.

Anyway, yes, the activation restrictions on AK are nastier than on DMP. DMP is extremely powerful; quite likely OP. In fact, was there a post where I said that the result provided by DMP is weak? I sure hope I didn't post anything like that. I'm comparing the two qualitatively, not their quantitative values of restrictions.

Instead, they simply go forth and act with total impunity, trusting that their stupid charm will ensure that they're actually taking no risks at all - simply knowing the charm is enough to ensure this. To kill someone who knows it, you need to play whack-a-mole with their doombots such that your rate of finding, tracking, hunting down and killing doombots exceeds their rate of crafting XP gain such that they cannot doombot again after you hunt them down and cut their head off. As I point out above: good luck, lol.

These are not the same thing, and conflating them is stupid.

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Well, I wouldn't say total impunity. It doesn't protect your gear. It doesn't protect those close to you. If you want to go into a deadly situation carelessly, you'll easily lose all the things other than your life. In fact, you're more likely to lose them than if you spent all those XPs on Charms that directly improve your combat survivability and/or prowess!
In a way, what you get by having DMP seems very similar to Conceding the Conflict in a certain other system, with the differences being that (a) the Charm can only guarantee saving your life and (b) that the Charm kicks in even after the dice hit the floor, assuming said dice would normally cause the character's death.

Have you played Planescape Torment? Even nearly-infinite immortality doesn't mean you 'win'. It's still an extremely powerful advantage. I'm not denying that it's very powerful. I'm saying there are still many things it doesn't protect against.

 

[Aleph]

On one hand, I do dislike that it chumps other characters. On another, there are things that chump other characters already in other editions.

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Yeah, you may notice that the common theme here is defending against attacks and seeing through disguises wins - because I Stab You While You're Not Expecting It Prana is the ultimate form of killing, and so EotUS must be able to see through all sneakiness, all disguises, all invisibility bar none, period, end of story. It costs a great deal to do so, but it utterly invalidates "I gank you when you're not expecting it"/"I surprise you with something you didn't see".

I have Keris, who can hear the very dancing of the least gods, the blood flowing through your veins, the tug and flex of your muscles where they anchor to bone. She, for some bullshit reason, cannot hear that you are a mechanical doombot. I have Arianna, who pops Eye of the Unconquered Sun and sees the turn of the universe, the patterns of essence in everything down to the tiniest patch of sunlight and the smallest insect. She, for some bullshit reason, does not notice that you are a mechanical doombot. I have a Lunar who can sniff out a hint of blood from a dozen miles away and tell you what a single person in a crowd of hundreds had for breakfast three days ago, and what colour his slippers were at the time. He, for some bullshit reason, is unable to realise that you are a mechanical doombot.

This is bullshit that fucks over every Awareness-focused character by fiat with no defence and no level of Charm investment that can give them any chance at all at winning the contest, because there is no contest. Especially when, @Fenrir666, your "what I find plausible" is absolutely a Rule Zero fallacy, because that only applies to your own games. A newbie ST? "So this is basically a Doombot thing, right? Okay, I'll have Twilight Dr Doom, who keeps sending doombots to attack my Fantastic Four Five Solar Circle. His empire is in, like, Creation!Latveria or something, but that's on the other side of the world so it's just his doombots they wind up fighting every season." Oh hey look, that's perfectly plausible. He sent the doombot from thousands of miles away, because he made it for the express purpose of being an attacker. When it dies, it's not leaving anything behind; it's done its job perfectly of smashing a bunch of their stuff and possibly killing one or two of them for essentially no risk on his part. And if they travel all the way to Latveria to kill the bastard... well, Doom is the inspiration for this Charm, right? And Doom never dies, so that was another doombot! What you find plausible is not relevant in how the Charm will be used by others.

Just like CBT, this is actually a very easy fix. All you have to do is say that you need to declare it in advance, have it be detectable and say Countermagic and anti-scrying shut it down. Bam, there you go. No longer is it a free "I escape death", no longer does it fuck over Awareness-focused characters, no longer does it force you to play whacka-mole with doombots in a long, drawn-out, difficult fight against a Solar-tier opponent every single time. Now it's just what it purports to be - a "wow, that would have killed me if I hadn't gone in person".

 

[pheonix89]

As I understand what is going on with Avoidance Kata is the following: 1. The Sid teleports out. 2. The Sid hacks reality so that everyone who is effected by such things thinks he wasn't ever there. 3. The sid hacks reality so that events proceed as if he was never there.

Essentially that Illusion he's casting is sufficiently potent that it fools reality.

From another point of view, the past isn't something that exists outside of memories and the like - you can't actually travel to it to check. So editing reality such that things are in the precise state they'd be if the past was different is indistinguishable from changing the past as far as it matters. Under this view Avoidance Kata is basically a teleport plus hacking the world so thoroughly that no one running on LOOM_OF_FATE_PHYSICS.EXE can tell that events were different.

Hence why the illusion effect fails vs beings outside of fate: The sid doesn't have that access privileges to do the hacking/lying.

It's also a statement about the animistic nature of creation: A high enough spec Illusion looks like reality warping as long no one there can no-sell that stuff, because "the local laws of physics" are in fact things that can be deceived.

Edit: The problem with the charm that actual Doombots don't have is that people can generally tell when they've killed a Doombot. Also, comic books have as a core theme "takebacks all the fucking time", not "no backsies". DMP would be a totally narratively appropriate effect in a Marvel or DC game, but not here.

 

[Jon Chung]

Well, I wouldn't say total impunity. It doesn't protect your gear. It doesn't protect those close to you. If you want to go into a deadly situation carelessly, you'll easily lose all the things other than your life. In fact, you're more likely to lose them than if you spent all those XPs on Charms that directly improve your combat survivability and/or prowess!
In a way, what you get by having DMP seems very similar to Conceding the Conflict in a certain other system, with the differences being that (a) the Charm can only guarantee saving your life and (b) that the Charm kicks in even after the dice hit the floor, assuming said dice would normally cause the character's death.

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What you get for having this charm is: while you have crafting XP, you cannot die and are guaranteed a perfect escape from any situation in which you do in fact die. Why, in this case, would your party members be in the risky situation with you (they can die, are they stupid?), and why are you carrying any gear other than burner gear you crafted (you are a crafter and also not stupid, right?) and as much high explosive as you can carry?

Have you played Planescape Torment? Even nearly-infinite immortality doesn't mean you 'win'. It's still an extremely powerful advantage. I'm not denying that it's very powerful. I'm saying there are still many things it doesn't protect against.

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Torment works because it's a single-player game with more in common with a visual novel than anything else. What does it have to do with this?

 

[Imrix]

more newbie support would definitely be a good thing, but I also think that the way Third Edition is designed, in my experience, it's really hard to actually, seriously fuck up. I waffle back and forth on this one because I see both sides of the equations. I think, in most cases, the learning curve is stiffer than it really should be but it's also not, outside of a few pitfalls, bad enough to really fuck a group up unless the group doesn't know each other that well or has pre-existing issues. Most of the confusion is pretty minor, and when it isn't it tends to be high-level enough that it'll be awhile before it comes up. And then there are one or two serious major freaking issues that piss me the hell off but it was a giant project and hopefully it'll be fixed when the final thing comes out.

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Third Edition has far, far more room for unanswered edge cases, and actively goes out of its way to not inform/teach players how to address them. Combat might be ultimately more forgiving, but as far as assessing rules interactions go, no, the idea that it's hard to fuck up is patent nonsense. It seems far more likely to me that your experience grants you a position of incredible privilege and advantage here, because you are personal friends with one of the old 3e playtesters who (still?) chat/ted with the devs, so whenever one of these edge cases turns up you can make the ultimate appeal to authority. Most people don't have that advantage, to say nothing of the years of experience you have with your group.

Like, you say it's hard to seriously fuck up, I say there is a city-buster available at chargen.

 

[vicky_molokh]

What you get for having this charm is: while you have crafting XP, you cannot die and are guaranteed a perfect escape from any situation in which you do in fact die. Why, in this case, would your party members be in the risky situation with you (they can die, are they stupid?), and why are you carrying any gear other than burner gear you crafted (you are a crafter and also not stupid, right?) and as much high explosive as you can carry?

Torment works because it's a single-player game with more in common with a visual novel than anything else. What does it have to do with this?

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So basically you restrict yourself to never using gear that you can't craft in the time it takes between DMP usages. And you're splitting the party when going into risky situations (which is extra-nasty if you and the rest of the party are surrounded by two coordinated but separate groups of ambushers). These are costs. Perhaps they're too small for what DMP provides in the sorts of campaigns you play/GM, but they're costs. You seem to be pointing out how DMP's benefits are too powerful while saying that it's an argument against allowing benefits of this type. I'm not disputing their quantitative power level; I'm pointing out that qualitatively they're not inherently all that abominable.

Torment has to do with stories in which death isn't the only bad thing that can happen to you, not the only cost one could pay etc. etc.

And I'm not just theorising. I've played in a campaign where my character had backup copies. And in fact could make more backup copies easier than it is to use DMP in Exalted. And I tell you this: it made me feel only slightly safer than the others, and I generally had to worry about lots and lots of things that aren't death. In fact, at times the campaign plunged into horror. Immortality is not a panacea for all the things one can encounter in a campaign.

 

[Jon Chung]

So basically you restrict yourself to never using gear that you can't craft in the time it takes between DMP usages.

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Yes, because you're aggressively using the fact that you can't die in order to do risky things that carry the risk of death without actually risking death. If you are doing this, you obviously don't bring along anything you can't afford to lose on your risky "I could either succeed or die, and if I die I was a doombot so whatever lol" trips. I am assuming the hypothetical you here is not stupid.

And you're splitting the party when going into risky situations (which is extra-nasty if you and the rest of the party are surrounded by two coordinated but separate groups of ambushers).

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Yes, because I can't die and they can. I risk some crafting XP I can spam back up without an issue, they risk permanent character death with no possible takebacks.

These are costs. Perhaps they're too small for what DMP provides in the sorts of campaigns you play/GM, but they're costs. You seem to be pointing out how DMP's benefits are too powerful while saying that it's an argument against allowing benefits of this type. I'm not disputing their quantitative power level; I'm pointing out that qualitatively they're not inherently all that abominable.

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I am pointing out that this is broken, there's no way to counter it and it shouldn't exist. The fact that something like it in a totally different context in a totally different medium works is completely irrelevant.

Torment has to do with stories in which death isn't the only bad thing that can happen to you, not the only cost one could pay etc. etc.

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In a setting where True Resurrection exists, in a game where there is only one player and all interactions are pre-scripted.

And I'm not just theorising. I've played in a campaign where my character had backup copies. And in fact could make more backup copies easier than it is to use DMP in Exalted. And I tell you this: it made me feel only slightly safer than the others, and I generally had to worry about lots and lots of things that aren't death. In fact, at times the campaign plunged into horror. Immortality is not a panacea for all the things one can encounter in a campaign.

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Yes, and my D&D characters gleefully take risks that have potential death on the cards because "potential death" here means "fuck we need to cough up 2000 GP and you need to sleep off the negative level". Do you think this might, let's say, alter the perceived benefit of getting to respawn?

 

[vicky_molokh]

I am pointing out that this is broken, there's no way to counter it and it shouldn't exist. The fact that something like it in a totally different context in a totally different medium works is completely irrelevant.

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As for non-counterability, I think making it directly counterable would defeat the purpose. It's kinda like the issue of Zeal vs. Adamant Skin Technique. I do think a cooldown limit (say, seasonal) and/or a serious permanent cost (like the permanent Essence cost of resurrection in 2e . . . but Essence doesn't work that way in 3e) would tone it down to a more tolerable level.

Yes, and my D&D characters gleefully take risks that have potential death on the cards because "potential death" here means "fuck we need to cough up 2000 GP and you need to sleep off the negative level". Do you think this might, let's say, alter the perceived benefit of getting to respawn?

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If you're saying that the ability to avoid death is more relatively powerful in the context of Exalted than in D&D, then yes, it is. But that's not what I was trying to dispute. I was pointing out that even "sleep off the negative level" can be something that the party cannot afford in the context of the current story, and the cosnequences for such a delay can be dire.

What?

Also, I don't know if you knew this, but Celerity doesn't actually grant multiple attacks in nVamp.

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Fine, make that 'with or without Celerity, Iron Whirlwind, Altered Time Rate etc.' ^_^

 

[Imrix]

I think making it directly counterable would defeat the purpose. It's kinda like the issue of Zeal vs. Adamant Skin Technique.

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Are you sure this is the example you want to use?

 

[vicky_molokh]

Are you sure this is the example you want to use?

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Hmm. Should it be vs. SSE/HGD only? My point is that a perfect defence that isn't perfect is not a perfect defence. The point of DMP is to hedge a bet, to get an insurance against needing to make a new character, a way to reduce the constant paranoia by shifting some of the paranoid-preparedness into a storytelling device. For a certain cost (probably too-low a cost). If there are things that can negate the insurance, that produces a very high likelihood that such a negator will show up at the most inappropriate moment for the player.

 

[Pale Wolf]

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.

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That is not a design principle I dislike.

It's not a design principle anyone dislikes, because that is not a design principle at all.

That is 'I didn't bother designing it, ST, do it to your taste' in which case why the fuck am I even buying this if you didn't do the actual job of 'making a system'. The design principle is 'make up your own system', I could do that without shelling out gobs of cash and days worth of hours to read a six-hundred-page prompt for designing my own game.

If I have the ability to make those decisions for my own table in a way that would satisfy me and all my players, I don't need the book, because I can make my own RPG off the top of my head (because that's what I'm doing to make this approach work).

 

[Imrix]

Hmm. Should it be vs. SSE/HGD only? My point is that a perfect defence that isn't perfect is not a perfect defence.

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Oh, apologies, Zeal just leaves a bad taste in the mouth and I thought you were using it differently.

This comes down to differences in combat perfect defences versus DMP though, which loops back around to Shyft's original point here, and the discussion over the undesirable consequences of shifting this degree of paranoia preparedness onto the ST that's been ongoing throughout.

 

[Jon Chung]

Hmm. Should it be vs. SSE/HGD only? My point is that a perfect defence that isn't perfect is not a perfect defence. The point of DMP is to hedge a bet, to get an insurance against needing to make a new character, a way to reduce the constant paranoia by shifting some of the paranoid-preparedness into a storytelling device. For a certain cost (probably too-low a cost). If there are things that can negate the insurance, that produces a very high likelihood that such a negator will show up at the most inappropriate moment for the player.

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You seem to be defending the general idea of an effect that allows you to have some kind of death insurance, as a theoretical concept. That's theoretically possible, sure - in the form of something you activate ahead of time which saves you if you die, for example. But, uh, not in any way resembling the implementation we see here. Dual Magnus is broken conceptually and in effect.

 

[Hazard]

or that "plausible" implies a tight distance-based limitation?

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so long as the Storyteller deems it plausible."

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You know, I, as Storyteller, would deem it plausible that as part of a Solar McCraftyRabbleRouser's plot he prepared for his campaign of rabble rousing Linowan in kicking out the Realm by using his vast resources in his Haltan base to construct a control center for his DoomBot and said DoomBot.

Then he and his friends who make up the rest of his Circle go out into Linowan, cause trouble, rouse rabble up in rebellion and end up getting sworded at by the Wyld Hunt.

Solar McCraftyRabbleRouser, being a Crafty Rabble Rouser has a crap combat investment and gets killed by getting his head sworded off in plain view of everyone. McCraftyRabbleRouser had been prepared for such an eventuality and a couple of days later the Circle gets a message from him that says 'Sorry about that, I'll be right back.'

They may or may not accept this possibility, or they may actually be, you know, very dead because a Wyld Hunt just sworded their heads off. Or maybe the message doesn't get sent and Solar McCraftyRabbleRouser runs off into the sunset.

This is actually really fucking cool as a story concept. It's something that as an author you make a point of showing to have happened every step of the way or at least referenced just so you can use that Chekhov's gun, or otherwise to show just how (justly) cautious McCraftyRabbleRouser is in the face of major danger. Or even just how callous he is of his friends that he would abandon them to their deaths on an effort he knows is doomed.


This isn't what actually happens in play.

What would actually happen in play is that a campaign that started in Halta and has now shifted focus for a while in Linowan for whatever reason runs into a Wyld Hunt, gets into a fight, McCraftRabbleRouser's player makes a bad call or gets jumped and heads roll. Everyone is shocked, dismayed etc. but not too bothered because it was a known possibility, and it was good fun.

Then a pouty player looks at his character sheets and says 'hey, I have Dual Magnus Prana, I didn't actually die.'

Except, no, because Archery does not get the same mystical potency bullshit Lore does,

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Except that, you know, Archery absolutely should be able to pull that same level of devastation with a single Charm at the same level in investment. Not least of which because it's a combat ability.

It needs not be a written Charm, but that design space should be available.

 

[pheonix89]

Except that, you know, Archery absolutely should be able to pull that same level of devastation with a single Charm at the same level in investment. Not least of which because it's a combat ability.

It needs not be a written Charm, but that design space should be available.

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Also because it is the ability for artillery and "normal thing taken up to 11" is absolutely valid solar charm tech to the point that I'd argue that if "fuck that country from extreme range" isn't valid Solar Archery (Artillery) charm-tech it can't be valid charmtech period save for possibly high-end panoply effects because if something as blatantly in-theme as shooting further and bigger with Archery isn't to be allowed to Solar Archery the only valid reason is "nobody gets it".

TLDR: Solar Archery not being top-level at on-demand long-range bombardment is bad and people who think that should feel bad.