Carrnage
Human
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- New Zealand
yeah sure spirit killing charms only kill spirits, now the amount of things that don't have a spiritual organ that's required for them to live, is... A handful of sapient artifacts?
General Exalted Thread
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I think it's pretty important to establish what Ghost-Eating Technique actually does before arguing what it should apply to, given it's, uh, history.
azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
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Bluntly?
Refer back to this:
Then very carefully reread the post you were responding to, and please this time notice that it's a proposed fix for the charm, not a statement about it what it does as currently written.
So, you do realise that wrong there. The closest mechanic to the Doombot existing in previous mechanics is Immortal Malevolence Enslavement, in the 2e Abyssals Charmset. With that, if the Abyssal suffers something that would kill them, they instead reform by the Well of Oblivion. This does not happen if they are killed with a spirit-killing Charm and they die properly, despite not being a spirit.
So, yeah. Strangely enough, I think the previous "If you're killed, you don't really die and instead can remain active, your real body winding up somewhere far away from the site of your death" Charm that existed and was stopped by spirit-killing Charms is in fact entirely pertinent information when talking about a charm which means you don't really die, but can instead remain active and your real body turns out to be somewhere far away from the site of your death.
Bursting Eagerness Soul
Threadwalking Rating Machine
- Location
- Wisconsin
I think there's been a bit of a miscommunication here. Ghost-Eating Technique (and its equivalents) requires you to kill something, and serves to make the death stick when it normally wouldn't. EarthScorpion was saying that allowing GET to expand into a counter to DMP would be a reasonable solution to the latter being overpowered.
Edit: Ninja'd with better explanation
Edit: Ninja'd with better explanation
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Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
Important question. Have there been any published methods of 'immortality' that are both a) not susceptible to Ghost-Eating Technique and b) generally (as in by the wider community, not just the people discussing DMP here) regarded as well-written?
All I can think of is the Deathlords and their secret weaknesses (widely regarded as unfun bullshit bound up in that whole "Falafel solo's Creation" meme) and I think the Mountain Folk have a clause in there somewhere, because the Scroll of Fallen Races wasn't the best written supplement, for all that it doesn't cop much flak because it's little-known and easy to ignore, or just plain forget about.
"GET only kills spirits" is technically true if you only look at GET's text, but if every method of immortality worth talking about has a clause that it counts as a spirit for the purposes of GET, that's also worth taking into account.
All I can think of is the Deathlords and their secret weaknesses (widely regarded as unfun bullshit bound up in that whole "Falafel solo's Creation" meme) and I think the Mountain Folk have a clause in there somewhere, because the Scroll of Fallen Races wasn't the best written supplement, for all that it doesn't cop much flak because it's little-known and easy to ignore, or just plain forget about.
"GET only kills spirits" is technically true if you only look at GET's text, but if every method of immortality worth talking about has a clause that it counts as a spirit for the purposes of GET, that's also worth taking into account.
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notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
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- He/She/They
There's that one Solar Charm in GotMH: Sol, but it eats a dot of permanent essence and iirc can't be used more than once per year.
Edit: I checked. It's per season.
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It also puts you right back in the action, which is a pretty huge disadvantage because it means the person who just killed you is still there and ready to finish the job.
Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
Your Welcome.
As for the change to Living Shield you put forward the problem with simply making it reflexive is that generally speaking it seems to me that if a character has this style they will not be doing a whole lot of attacking or anything other than defend other due to the DV penalty from doing so making the defend other action which seems to be the core point of this style less effective.
Meanwhile with the two shield users one can always be defend othering with no DV penalty while the other attacks with whatever weapon they are wielding along with the shield, which would be slightly better.
So to get around this problem perhaps you should have Living Shield technique eliminate or reduce DV penalties from onslaught or coordinated attacks when the Falling Petal Stylist is using a defend other action on the target they declared. This is something that the two Shield users cannot replicate and provides enough of an edge that it should balance out the increased cost of having to acquire the style in the first place.
I hope this helps.
Balancing Living Shield Technique is hard. I don't want to make it two powerful because, in the end, its a two dot artifact. And you could potentially have dozens of them hanging around. So giving it a capability equal to a Celestial Charm is right out, and thus it is not going to ignore Onslaught or Coordinated Attacks.
Thank you.
There are certainly Martial Arts styles that improve Soak, some do it on an ado hoc basis like Snake Style and others will do it more generally. You have the be careful about the balance here; a Martial Art is equivalent to an artifact Unarmed attack. If you're going to give a permanent passive soak boost it would be the equivalent to a artifact unarmored soak; artifacts that give both soak and attack boosts are rare especially in the 1~3 dot range. So you'd probably have a style like First Pulse Style that has a lackluster combat statline but gives you equivalent of three point of soak instead.
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There is certainly none that has been specifically held up as a positive, but that's because of the nature of online discussions - people bring up the shit they feel strongly about, so a ton of more-or-less obscure material gets left aside from the discussion and eventually people don't even know they exist.
So, A), definitely. B), I don't know, because I have no idea what the wider community thinks of them.
Among other things:
Ocean Father, a powerful god, can only be killed by someone with Black Depths Foretold, an Artifact weapon prophesized to kill him; if you don't have it, no amount of damage can put him past incapacitated (or maybe -4?) and so GET does not trigger.
Oliphem, the colossal watcher of the seas, in 1e (2e changed that) simply could not be killed period until "the gods" (it's never said which ones) decreed that his task was over.
Mother Bog shattered her heart into four parts and hid them all across Creation; in order to slay her permanently one must gather her heart, make it whole and then destroy it. Even so, it is said that Mother Bog is tied to Creation in such a way that she would eventually reform after thousands of years, being more of an inherent manifestation of nature than a discrete being.
There are generally more of this stuff in 1e than in 2e. I have no idea how they were received at the time.
Oh, and there's another one: Mist, the Eternal Revolutionary, is an Ex3 creation. He's a human twisted by the Wyld; if he would die "under circumstances where his death can't be verified," he survives by an inexplicable stroke of luck. This one is a lot weaker than most immortalities, but it does not interact with GET at any point.
Unfortunately I can't tell you how he was received since he's the victim of the unfortunate layout mishap that resulted in half his write-up being overlaid with a picture of the fogshark
I also wrote two SMAs that grant their users immortality but they're random homebrew shit and obviously have no wide reception anywhere. They're probably a bit overkill, because they're tailored to the standards of a game I'm in and I would probably have to weaken their immortality for wider use.
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- Pronouns
- They/Them
There is certainly none that has been specifically held up as a positive, but that's because of the nature of online discussions - people bring up the shit they feel strongly about, so a ton of more-or-less obscure material gets left aside from the discussion and eventually people don't even know they exist.
So, A), definitely. B), I don't know, because I have no idea what the wider community thinks of them.
Among other things:
Ocean Father, a powerful god, can only be killed by someone with Black Depths Foretold, an Artifact weapon prophesized to kill him; if you don't have it, no amount of damage can put him past incapacitated (or maybe -4?) and so GET does not trigger.
Oliphem, the colossal watcher of the seas, in 1e (2e changed that) simply could not be killed period until "the gods" (it's never said which ones) decreed that his task was over.
Mother Bog shattered her heart into four parts and hid them all across Creation; in order to slay her permanently one must gather her heart, make it whole and then destroy it. Even so, it is said that Mother Bog is tied to Creation in such a way that she would eventually reform after thousands of years, being more of an inherent manifestation of nature than a discrete being.
There are generally more of this stuff in 1e than in 2e. I have no idea how they were received at the time.
Oh, and there's another one: Mist, the Eternal Revolutionary, is an Ex3 creation. He's a human twisted by the Wyld; if he would die "under circumstances where his death can't be verified," he survives by an inexplicable stroke of luck. This one is a lot weaker than most immortalities, but it does not interact with GET at any point.
Unfortunately I can't tell you how he was received since he's the victim of the unfortunate layout mishap that resulted in half his write-up being overlaid with a picture of the fogshark
I also wrote two SMAs that grant their users immortality but that's not canon and obviously has no wide reception anywhere. They're probably a bit overkill, because they're tailored to the standards of a game I'm in and I would probably have to weaken their immortality for wider use.
I...that sounds halfway to a Mistborn reference.
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- Brittany, France
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- He/Him
He's a man who made himself into a living narrative trope. The comparison with Kelsier writes itself.
I would like to point out that I said "eliminate or reduce" not straight up eliminate which I will admit I probably should have worded differently so that my intent was clearer. Regardless the point is it means that you can have it reduce penalties however much you feel is balanced such as oh maybe one or two points. This is weaker than just providing a higher DV bonus but still avoids the problem that given the costs of the style just getting two mortals with tower shields seems like it would be more effective.
Alternatively make the style a bit cheaper by making it only count as one follower or drop it down to one dot so that it is competitive with two random people with tower shields in terms of cost effectiveness.
So stepping away from the 3e debate redux part infinity...
I was thinking about Martial Arts. Specifically how it would be best to represent Martial Arts in Exalted. There are a number of factors which interact with Martial Arts and why I like them and why they are extremely problematic for the gameline. I will cover these in brief.
Pros:
* Martial arts are universal, this means creating a Martial Art expands the combat options for most splats rather than just one. This is good because it means that a crafted martial art is useful in most games and can be used by most antagonists.
* Martial arts are self contained fighting styles. This makes it easier to stat up combatants by adding a martial arts style since it makes that combatants fighting style instantly predefined.
* Martial arts are aesthetically pleasing. There are certain types of people who like playing up the wuxia/anime inspirations of Exalted, who like talking about Poetically Titled Combat Style and who find the idea of martial arts being this thing you can find dojos for in every part of the setting including hell, the underworld and the steampunk-communist-dystopia-dyson sphere really entertaining. They like the idea of dedicated tournaments for martial arts all over Creation and beyond.
Cons:
* Martial arts are universal. This means that they increase charmshare which means that they must be balanced not only within the style, and the style within the set of all martial arts but also the style within the set of all martial arts and all other charms everywhere ever. This is, to say the least, a lot of work that is really not worth doing.
* Martial arts are complex. Even the simplest style often has eight Charms, often divided across 4 ranks of Ability requirements and 2 or 3 Essence levels meaning that learning and developing a single style is often a major investment of character resources. Their utility is often obfuscated between in-style synergy effects that are not spelled out explicitly and require system mastery to grok. These factors disincentivize players from investing in them rather than the low hanging fruit of basic in-splat combat Charms with straightforward effect. The only reason to get them is because:
* They are too powerful and create single ability builds. Martial arts often grant access to higher tier combat powers that the splat normally can't access (mortals, dragonblooded, Sidereals) or grant access to effects outside the purview of Martial Arts and that step on other abilities toes such as bonuses to Dodge, Soak, movement speed and modes of movement and in the most egregious cases social and intellectual skills.
So how do you preserve the Pros and ditch the Cons? One way would be to use @EarthScorpion's Style system. Which if your goal is a rules lite approach, I would recommend. This is unsatisfactory to me for much the same reason moving Exalted over to FATE or replacing Charms with FATE-esque Aspects would be. I want Martial Arts to be a unique mechanical widget that you can balance with the other unique mechanical widgets of the game without introducing to much in the way of "argue with the GM that of course my Auspicious Legalist Courtier style applies when trying to bargain for the cost of caravan supplies because I can quote The Essential Implications of the Six Houses of Thought." I don't like 'justify this mechanical widget through argument with the GM mechanics' because it gives an unfair advantage to people who are more creative, flexible and charismatic in the real world.
So I was left looking for a way to incorporate Martial Arts in the game without being too handwavey and without being as complex as multi-Charm Styles. I decided that having Martial Arts be Charms is Right Out. There is simply no way of creating an easy-to-balance system when I have five to ten Charms per style that have to be balanced with all other styles and then with all other Charms everywhere ever. Combonotorial Hell is the term coined to describe this for a reason. Further, I realized as I was leafing through Martial Arts styles that I like that in most cases the styles were often filled with useless cruft and waste of wordcount Charms. Many styles, because they have to be self-contained Charm based combat styles, often spend a lot of their wordcount reinventing the wheel over and over. There are a ridiculous number of "this Charm gives you a bonus to parry, or this Charm gives you a bonus to attack" Charms that, frankly, are not required. The really interesting components of most Styles consist of at most three cool effects. These effects were often scattered into clumps of Charms that build off of or amplify each other but had to be broken down into smaller Charm-sized units for balance; after all you can't buy an entire combat style for 8xp so you have to hide the good effects behind five or six 8xp sized speedbumps. You couldn't even make these speedbumps basic charmtech since the nature of Styles meant that you could not count on every user having access to, say, First Martial Arts Excellency or Fire and Stones Strike or Words of Power. You had to include speedbumps in every. Single. Style.
So Martial Arts as Charms is Not Working. This leaves me with two options; I can steal from another mechanical subsystem already int he game or I can create a new one like the aforementioned Style System. I don't want to do the latter for reasons explained plus I don't want to reinvent the wheel too much. Creating an entirely new mechanical subsystem strikes me as a shitload of work for relatively little gain. That leaves the former option; stealing from an existing subsystem. There are basically three magical ability subsystems in Exalted aside from Charms; sorcery, thaumaturgy and artifacts/crafting.
Considering thaumaturgy I decide to avoid it right away. Thaumaturgy is, frankly, too weak to consider for what I want and the methods behind it are balanced around long, expensive process for transient effects. Hacking that into a martial arts subsystem would be basically equivalent to creating a new subsystem from scratch.
Sorcery, at first, seems to be a perfect fit. First off, it has a lot of thematic similarities to Martial Arts as balanced. It breaks down into three 'levels' of power; Emerald Circle/Root of the Perfected Lotus, Sapphire Circle/Bulb of the Perfected Lotus, Adamant Circle/Flower of the Perfected Lotus. It also has a lot of self contained units of magical effects and since each Spell is self-contained it avoids reinventing the wheel and speedbumps for the most part. However in the end I don't like it. Like Charms, Spells are limited by the fact that each has to be balanced around the XP cost of a single spell. That is, no spell can be significantly better or worse than a spell of the same Circle which costs 8xp. Spells, especially the complex ones, tend to bloat out a great deal. You can spend an entire page detailing out the effects of a spell that would fit a dozen Charms. If I went with spells I would be not avoiding the complexity-bloat, I would just be hiding it behind in spell wordcount. Further, the aesthetics of Sorcery are very much a unique and interesting part of Exalted and I don't want to water it down with Yet Another Type of Sorcery This Time With Punching (also, endless jokes about "I Cast Fist").
Which leaves us with Artifacts. On the surface this seems absurd. The subsystem for creating interesting unarmed combat styles based on the subsystem for creating magical bling? Yet the more I examine the idea the more I like it. All it takes is a simple perspective shift. The goal of Martial Arts is to turn the user's body into a weapon. In this paradigm of mechanics the Martial Arts Style is not an artifact. The Martial Artist is the artifact. The goal of martial arts training is not to teach you a combat style, it is to transform you into a martial artist of that style. In effect you use the body of the person as a living artifact, forcefully hammering their essence and physical and mental conditioning into a tool you can use to fight. Your sifu doesn't just teach you some essence manipulation tricks, he has you undergo a grueling ritual of transcendence that reforges you. You exit the process as a different kind of being than before, one who has been sculpted into a specific kind of warrior. Martial Arts as transhuman ascendance. I like the idea.
Mechanically its very simple as well. What I want out of martial arts is a set of very simple combat bonuses and one to three unique combat tricks. This is already exactly how Artifacts work in game. They give static bonuses, and then depending on their rating give a small handful of unique combat mechanics. You essentially create the entire Style as a single Artifact, with a rating based on its utility value just like any other Artifact. At the most basic level a one or two dot Style would be the equivalent of an Artifact Weapon for Unarmed Combat; that is it would be slightly higher combat stats. For more complex Styles in the three to five dot range you would grant a handful of combat powers equivalent to what you would grant to a three to five dot artifact weapon.
This eliminates a lot of the complexity of the existing Style system. There is no need to reinvent the wheel a hundred times. You can have players fill in basic combat abilities with their native Charmset just like they would if they picked up a Daiklave or a Powerbow. It severely reduces, but does not eliminate, the combination problems. At the very least the combination problems get reduced down to the set of effects permissible for Artifacts in general and while this is a lot its significantly less than the set of effects in dozens of ten Charm+ styles (Evocations need not be mentioned). If you wanted to reduce this complexity you would have to eliminate Artifacts as well, which is probably a step too far. I also don't see many people complaining that artifacts break the game except for a rare few exceptions.
In this regard we can rethink the way we handle martial arts idea. Martial Arts training becomes the equivalent of Crafting Time with much the same effect. "A Style" becomes like "A Daiklave", while a master sifu can know the basic process of training a person in a style each result (each martial artist produced) would be different. They even have their own names.To learn a martial art you would have to find a sifu willing to teach you, and this sifu is going to have to spend a great deal of time and resources on you. The relevant Ability for training Martial Arts is War, which limits the maximum rating in the Style you can create as normal. Thus for most sifu's in the Second Age means you are limited to a Style rating of 3 or below, finding a Sifu who can teach a rank 4 or 5 or N/A style would be... extremely unlikely (unless you are a Sidereal).Training is also an expensive process, you have to house, feed and teach your subject. They have to undergo rituals of purification, eat special diets, engage in daily drills that exclude all other actions, engaging in sparring matches, recover from injuries during training, use training equipment which breaks and wears down over time. This means you have to expend Resources on the student at the equivalent level of an artifact. Also like Artifact you would have to have access to Exotic Training Methods; just like Exotic Ingredients and in the same levels. Unlike artifacts these are unlikely to be physical things and more likely to be the aid of specific beings, exotic locales and so on. "Train on top of Mount Meru" would be a valid Exotic Training Method for Air Dragon Style, for example. "Be trained by a Sidereal Grandmaster" would be a suitable Exotic Training Method as would "Be Teaching an Essence 3+ Solar Exalt" be another. "Have Mara Aid The Training" is an Exotic Training Method for required for Black Claw Style. The possibilities are endless and, like Craft, are meant to encourage players to seek out and secure unique sources of knowledge that can only be done by adventuring. While having your Gold Faction sifu train you in the privacy of the Cult of the Illuminated safehouse may count for two exotic training methods if you want to learn a level 5 Style you're going to have to do stuff like spare with Ligier in the flensing winds of Kalmanka on the border between Cecelyne and Kimbery so you can master Infernal Monster Style. Like Craft there would be War Charms which allow you to "teach above your weight class" so to speak as well as Charms to train people faster, and so on.
Like Artifacts, a Style would not have an explicit XP cost (though GMs can charge 3xp per dot, like an Artifact if they wish). They would be purchased at character creation with Background Dots, just like Artifacts and earned just like Backgrounds, via story methods. In game we would rename Martial Arts to Brawl and move 'native' combat charms back to Brawl cascades. Of course, this raises the question of balance with artifacts. One balancing factor of artifacts is they are Stuff and Stuff can be Lost, Taken or Destroyed. For the most part, you can't lose yourself (Eminem notwithstanding) and if you are taken or destroyed the last problem you have is no access to Martial Arts. So how does Martial Arts balance with other artifacts?
Well first, Martial Arts is mostly incompatible with other artifacts. Weaker styles that only give you an upgraded combat statline can't be used with mundane or artifact weapons for the same reason you can't stack your Punch combat stats on top of your Daiklave combat stats. Martial Arts also don't give Magical Material Bonuses (except for Alchemicals?) because they are designed for flesh, not magical weapons. A Charm which upgraded your Unarmed attacks with your Magical Material Bonus would certainly be something most splats would have access to, of course (for instance, Malfeas would have one branching off Viridian Legend Exoskeleton).
Second, like most other artifacts a Martial Arts Style likely has an Attunement cost. Styles with no Attunement costs are possible, but these are likely to be extremely weak style with one or two dots designed for mortals (like Slayer Khatars, for example).1 Unlike most Artifacts the attunement for a Martial Arts Style can never be removed. You are, in effect, investing a portion of your Essence permanently into your own body to transform it. For the most part a Martial Arts Style can't be 'removed' or 'unlearned'. The level of change required would be the equivalent of permanently maiming your body and similarly unpleasant to undergo; GMs may allow skilled surgeons to mutilate your character (leaving cool scars) or may allow inflicted Mutations to change your Essence sufficiently to justify removing a Martial Art (and its attunement cost) from your character. Exaltation is always a justification for removing Martial Arts, though it does not have to. Even if you remove a Martial Art you can't easily 're-equip' it. The process of learning it is just as difficult the second time around, with the added problem of convincing your Sifu to spend his valuable time since you managed to so monumentally screw up you wasted all his hard work the first time around.
Third, martial arts is not something you can easily 'stack' on the character. Remember that the process of training you to learn martial arts is basically turning you into an artifact human. Learning another style isn't as simple as finding another sifu willing to train you, anymore than turning your Daiklave into a Daiklave of Conquest. If you want to learn another Martial Arts Style you have two options; the first is to reforge your body into a new one suited to the new Style and loose access to the benefits of the old one. This is basically the equivalent of breaking down an Artifact for parts towards forging a new Artifact, you can even count your Style as an Exotic Training Method if the style you are learning is no more than one dot higher than your existing style (ie, if you known Style A a 4 dot style, it counts as an Exotic Training Method for Style B, a 5 dot style). In this way there are Martial Arts with different 'levels' of mastery. For example, the Dragon Styles of the Immaculate Order are broken up into five Coils of Mastery. Monks are trained in the styles in order, using their lesser mastery as an Exotic Training Method for higher mastery and gaining more advanced combat abilities as they advance. Mortal Immaculates can even learn these styles, to the first and (rarely) second coil, though the fourth and fifth coil require 'secret training methods' from disguised Sidereal masters.
The other option is to try to incorporate the two styles. This is a complex process, equivalent to building a complex magitech device with multiple functions like a suit of Ashigura Armor. Using the existing system you suffer a -1 external penalty to your War rolls to teach a Martial Art without destroying any existing one for all the dots of Martial Arts you wish to preserve. Eg; if a person knows a 2 dot Style and a 3 dot Style you suffer a -5 success penalty on every Training roll to preserve those styles. Once you succeed all is not overwhelming power either. First you don't stack the basic combat stats of the styles on top of each other, nor do you get to pick the best of both. Instead if you know more than one Style you can choose which to adopt, called the "Form" you are using. You gain the combat statline of the Form you are using. Switching forms can be done at any time as a Speed 5/DV -1 Miscellaneous action or the equivalent of drawing a new weapon in mid-combat for whatever system you are using. You have normal access to any special abilities granted by the form you are 'in' at the time but limited access to the abilities of other Styles. You can use them, but it costs 1wp per Style per turn/action to access them in addition to normal costs. For example if you know three Styles and are in Style A's Form on your action you can spend 1wp to have access to Style B or C's special effects or 2wp to have access to Style B and C's special effects. (Some Exalts' particularly Sidereals, have native Charms which bypass this cost. Noteably NOT Dragonblooded.)
Finally if you have more than one Style at the same time you gain a dot of Practices or increase your current Practices rating by 1 for each Style beyond the first (to a maximum of 6). What is Practices? I'm glad you asked hypothetical rhetorical device! Practices is the equivalent of a Repair rating for Martial Arts. Practices are a way of 'jury-rigging' martial arts to be better than they should be by creating unstable essence pathways that require constant correction. Practices, like Repair ratings, are a thing that only came into vogue during the Shogunate when the Dragonblooded no longer had access to Celestial Sifu on a regular basis and were forced to kludge together a system for keeping their combat abilities sort of on par at great cost. Practices are a series of special exercises, meditation methods, diets and associated training regimes that must be regularly undergone to keep the Martial Artist in balance. To perform a practice you must have a minimum rating in War, Medicine and Integrity based on the Practices rating (see Wonder of the First Age, Integrity = Lore, Medicine = Occult, War = Craft) or access to a Sifu whose rating equals your Practices rating. You must also expend the listed Resources per month. If you engaged in any combat this increase to per week. This represents special diet, training regimes and so on you must undergo. You must spend the listed time practicing per week, or per day if you engage in any combat that day. Failure to meet these requirements means that one of your Martial Arts chosen at random by the GM ceases to function entirely and you suffer a -1 internal penalty to any combat related roll (but not mental of social rolls) until you undergo a montage of retraining to 'get back into shape' (mechanically identical to repairing a damaged artifact with your Practices - Repair rating). If you know multiple Styles this continues each increment of time you miss until you have access to no more Styles. (Note: This is fairly common for old retired Dragonblooded, while the Coils of the Dragon are designed to be Practice Free many Dragonblooded learn more than one Style in their lifetime and develop a Practices rating because of this; as a result of letting themselves 'get out of shape' this means they are less dangerous in combat than their advanced years, and Essence, would indicate... unless they are gearing up for war and go to the temple for a brief sabbatical that is.) You may also use Practices as an Exotic Training Method for a Style, in which case the Practices rating must be equal to the Style rating.
1: Yes, you can build a mortal designed martial art that drains a mortal's life force like Gunzosha Commando Armor, causing them to age twice as fast. Considering they can't 'unlearn' it this is basically halving their life no matter what so you better be fine with doing that to people. Advising them up front of the drawbacks is also up to you.
I like the cut of your jib, it's a very interesting approach that cuts down significantly on charmcloud issues and retains more of the crunch differential than the Style system, but there are three issues I see. One's a genuine flaw, one's a difference of opinion/taste, and one's more 'Exalted didn't do it but we have room to'.
The genuine flaw is that this only impacts unarmed combat - rather than supplementing weapons, it replaces them entirely. Considering martial arts are frequently weapon-oriented styles, and a sword and spear are just as wuxia as punching someone in the nuts if not more, only actually affecting unarmed traits seems to be a pretty big hole. It even becomes an issue with everything else you can do unarmed, since that statline just replaces the punch and doesn't seem to do anything to kicks and clinches (ia, ia, clinch ftaghn, I can see why you wouldn't want to touch that since anything you do there depends on how you made grappling sane which is an entirely different project itself).
I could see two plausible solutions. Either it applies an artifact statline of '-1 to Speed, +2 to Accuracy, +whatever to Damage' to just 'add on' to any weapons appropriate for the martial art (which risks stacking to uncomfortable levels with an actual artifact form weapon unless you use language to prevent this).
Or you go entirely freestyle and casually point out that the powers of the style work fine with actual weapons and you can carry around that as an artifact weapon easily enough - or a lighter version of this where there are specific form weapons that the powers work through and nothing else - which leaves the unarmed statline not getting a whole lot of play, but the core of the style is still available.
A third possibility would simply be 'your 'unarmed' statline is sufficient for being an artifact weapon, a form weapon uses that statline instead, or overlaps with it to take the best of each'.
The 'Exalted didn't do it but we have room to' is the ever-present 'hey maybe there are supernaturally enlightened ways of going about things that aren't punching people in the face?' Social styles (Inextricable Weasel Style), whatever. Covering this is one of the best aspects of the Style System, and mechanically this system should be pretty capable of handling it.
The difference of taste is the difficulty multistyling. Martial arts are a much more unified thing in my opinion - cross-training is one of the most useful tools to improve your understanding even of the art you came from in the first place, by viewing it from another angle.
There's room for specific incompatibilities (one style requires armour, the other doesn't allow it, one style trains in the finest points of curved swords, the other requires crossguard and straight blade, etc etc), but a fundamental incompatibility just via being different styles rubs me a bit the wrong way. They definitely must not stack their damage boosts and the like, but from a game design perspective I think the ability to combine them without it being overdiscouraged is pretty important. To be honest I think attunement costs alone to multiple styles would do all the discouraging from loading up on twenty-five styles necessary - like artifacts you can stack them as high as you like but there's only so much you can use at any given time and the ability to have all of them is cutting into your mote pool so it caps out pretty naturally without needing to make it actively difficult to crosstrain.
Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
If I gave that impression I apologize, but it doesn't replace your unarmed combat options. You can still Punch, Kick and Clinch.
While the styles I wrote focus on unarmed combat there is no reason you can't build one that supplements weapon use. The trick is that it would be int he Special Effects of the style and not the statline. Wood Dragon Style, for example, would have a bunch of Special Effect that read "When making an attack on an opponent with a Wood Dragon Style Attack or a bow..." You won't get stacking bonuses that way and still get some styles that enhance weapon use. Keep in mind that bonuses from Styles don't stack with equipment bonuses, so a straight damage on an artifact weapon won't stack with the Martial Art's damage, even if its a Special Effect (frex in Tiger Style the bonus from Crimson Pouncing Cat Technique would not stack with weapon). You'd be better off thus focusing the Special Effects on Interesting Effects rather than straight bonuses. Spin Shattering Bite, for example, just increase the wound penalty you inflict and Stalking Cat Meditation is a straight bonus to Stealth. There is no reason either can't apply while you have Tiger Claws equipped.
So its a balancing act, you want to make certain that the Style offers some stuff compatible with weapons and some stuff that only works with its unarmed attacks. For example nothing prevents a Snake Stylist from using Essence Fangs and Scales technique while wielding hook swords, but Snake Strikes the Heel specifically calls out that it create a Snake Style Attack and Uncoiling Serpent Prana only create ranged Snake Style attack.
Theoretically there is no reason you can't do this. It would be much harder to balance considering that Exalted seems to consider the sum total of Social artifacts be "It raises your Appearance by X". Also social attacks don't have a statline so you can't assign an "artifact statline" to a social attack. You're probably left with just giving a handful of social Special Effects.
The multistyle penalties are meant explicitly to emulate the way magitech and complex artifacts work. If a single artifact provides a host of benefits its going to require upkeep. Besides, I like the idea of enlightened masters being forced to hoover up resources and time that could be spent on other projects to maintain their combat acumen and their army of martial artists. But in the end it is a raw balance factor with a skin of fluff on it. You want to build an Martial Artists equivalent of a suit of Celestial Battle Armor, you're going to pay through the nose to keep that up and running.
(Also, using this system you can easily build the Eight Devils of Kymon and justify the entire plot of Ninja Scroll which is a massive plus.)
vicky_molokh
Posthuman spidery thingy.
- Location
- Kyïv, Ukraine
Speaking of making themselves into tropes, since the Rakshastan is troperrific, am I the only one thinking that among the list of Mutations, there seems to be a conspicuous lack of those that are about mutating into more narrative-trope-heavy sorts of characters?
On (b): is there anything the general community, and not some subset of it, regards as well-written? It seems to me that for anything Exalted-related, the general Exalted community will split into subsets with strongly-held opposite opinions, and never agree on any compromise that would be acceptable to everyone.
What's "Falafel solo's Creation"?
As for GET being the killing tool for spirits while also being the exception to any immortality, that actually seems like a persistent misuse of GET that everyone got used to. At this point it's a question about why 'bother' calling it GET if it's essentially a Bypass Immortality Methodology.
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Yes, we get it, blah blah the Exalted fanbase disagrees about things and it bothers you. This line of complaint is getting pretty damn old.
As-written, the First and Forsaken Lion can climb to the top of the Imperial Mountain and then unleash a doomcombo allowing him to kick everything in Creation, twice, ending the world instantly (aside from those with a paranoia combo, who live slightly longer).
vicky_molokh
Posthuman spidery thingy.
- Location
- Kyïv, Ukraine
In this case it's not a complaint but an observation that trying to get a 'general/wider community' approval isn't an achievable goal (most likely).
(Also, just a disclaimer: I'm not saying that splits like that don't happen in other communities.)
Thanks.
Unique panoply Charms that replicate the Creation-Slaying Kick? Also, why precisely twice?
Probably not, at least on anything important. If you recall our previous discussions on types of rpg players, it follows that the optimal game writing strategy is to makes something that appeals to all players at least some of the time. This seems to work until it doesn't, at which point you get a broken base (much like D&D).
Last and loved cub (lolcat for short) has effective immortality. If he follows the following plan:
- a least path algorithm between his current position and the nearest living thing
- kill nearest living thing
- go to 1
Jon Chung
=][=
You were told this... repeatedly. I couldn't even get consensus on "paranoia combat sucks", good luck with anything less self-evidently true.
Any Deathlord can do that if SMA exists.
Fact: E7 SMA can kill all of Creation. There are two separate ways to do it published right in Sidereals 1E.
Fact: SMA is supposed to be on-tier or slightly worse than Solaroid combat charms at killin' shit.
Fact: Deathlords have every possible Solar/Abyssal charm they qualify for.
Fact: Deathlords qualify for E7 combat charms.
Conclusion: Deathlords can kill all of Creation trivially.
Observation: SMA probably shouldn't fucking exist. WTF, RSB. And neither should the Deathlords in their current state. Cancerous useless writeups.
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notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
No, having all the Charms needed for it. And E9/10 (I can never remember) Solar/Abyssal killing charms to enhance the kick with. And it's twice because that's just how the combo works. I can't be arsed to reassemble it mechanically right now, though.
Yeah; FaFL is used as an example because the book actually gave him the SMA in question, not because he's the only one who should be able to do it as-statted.
I know you're being facetious, but I actually kind of legit like that name for a charm.
Yeah, I'm firmly in the pro-3e camp on most things (as we've seen in this thread), but the amount of time this project has taken is inexcusable. Hell, the backer pdf is nearly identical to the leaked manuscript from a year ago. A year ago. It should not take a fucking year to go through layout.
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
Fun fact, that's the name of a Raksha Charm. The Sword Shaping Excellency, I think.
vicky_molokh
Posthuman spidery thingy.
- Location
- Kyïv, Ukraine
Hmm. I would think that an optimal game writing strategy would aim to appeal to everyone in a given target audience's opinion on the important and general stuff, allowing everyone to take their own pick/preference/change regarding the less important stuff. It's probably also helped if what is general and important in such a work is made glaringly obvious and explicit, ensuring that the authors and the audience are on the same page about it (otherwise things like misaimed fandoms happen, which can cause complications when writing more stuff later).
Uh, I get the "the system does not always lead to paranoia combat" position (more-or-less what I hope is achievable under certain conditions of the gaming group, though I'm not as optimistic as I used to be), but what are the arguments that "a near-endless mote-ablative never-use-cool-attacks one-true-build sort of combat paradigm is good"? O_ò
Unless one is comparing to a truly endless never-ablative one-true-build, of course.
That's because it actually already exists, albeit in a generalized format as a "reduce to one-dimensional NPC" Affliction in the Compass: Wyld 2e book.
Apropos of nothing, there was one other point in time when the Wyld could grant effective immortality, but it was in Dreams of the First Age:
Notably, spirit-killers are both valid and entirely functional towards such creatures.