Well, it's one thing not to trust writers when they say "Everything is ready for release and all errors fixed" . . . but when the authors say "These rules are to do X" (in the book, not in a post-publishing discussion of the book) and then the rules themselves seem to support X but not Y, I find that not trusting the authors and saying the rules were trying to do Y is going for overkill with the mistrust.
I'll be understanding, and remember that English isn't your first language. That's the only reason I can find for your repeated habit of finding text in the rulebooks that doesn't actually say what you claim it does and claiming that supports you and refutes everyone else's points, despite it saying nothing of the sort.
Your quote is as follows:
As a cinematic high-action game, Exalted assumes that
protagonists and major supporting characters will scythe through
legions of minions and flunkies with comparative ease. Within
the combat rules, the concept of extras reinforces this idea. Simply
put, an extra is a nameless, faceless adversary of no particular
consequence, dangerous only in mass numbers. From a narrative
sense, extras serve several functions. First, they provide animate
scenery upon which protagonists can show off their phenomenal
skill and powers. On the reverse side, they slow down the Chosen
and/or force them to waste precious Essence before they can face the
"real" enemies.
Nothing about this refutes the point that Extras exist to be extras, mechanically simplified mook enemies. People have not been arguing that Extras are enemies that matter. People have been arguing that Extras do not matter, and that is why their rules exist - to provide mechanically simplified rules for enemies that do not matter.
That is
not contradicted by your quote. At all. Because people haven't been arguing that extras are meant to not be mooks. Because they are
called Extras.
Let's look at what I said:
Why is that odd?
Extras are a game abstraction. They're not "real people" - they're a tool for the GM to handle unimportant characters more easily. There is, literally, by definition no such thing as an important extra, because if they're important they stop being an extra (even if they're not heroic - there are mortals who are not heroic mortals. A Solar's old mother who she sends shiny loot back to isn't heroic, but she's not an extra). In-universe, there's no such thing as an extra with a reduced number of health levels due to OOC narrative unimportance. It just makes stuff easier for the GM.
Hence, extra Tiger Warriors are sufficiently unimportant that it just matters that the Solar had a training arc lasting a season and now he's got a group of Tiger Warriors who are as good or better than the Realm's foot infantry. If they were more important individually, they wouldn't be extras. And as soon as a PC decides to start metagaming with that, the GM is entitled to hit them in the face with the corebook.
Extras are literally called Extras. I don't think there's a single name you could call them which would more exemplify the idea that they're narratively unimportant background characters.
When other people are saying things like "Extras don't matter, and thus have simplified rules" you are ignoring them when you try to pretend that there's some kind of dramatic dichotomy between "simplification" and "wimpification". There's not. The two facets are co-dependent and co-reliant.
Extras don't matter. Like I said. And so they get a simplified ruleset to represent their narrative unimportance. If they were important, then they wouldn't be extras. Like I said.
Extras are extras in a scene. The clue is kind of in the name.
So I'm going to
say it again and see what way you devise this time to try to dodge the point.
Extras are insignificant characters. Like extras in films. Extras get mowed down en masse by Jackie Chan or Bruce Lee or whoever the hero is. If they were a real challenge for the protagonist, they'd be narratively significant and not extras.
Extras do not matter.
To that end, extras have mechanically simplified rules, because they do not matter. These rules do mechanically simplify them in common use.
Thes Extra rules have the purpose of making extras easier to run, because they do not matter and thus should limit how much brain-power they take up for the GM who has a lot of things to keep track of.
That is why the extra mechanics have the purpose of mechanically simplifying them.
The Mass Combat rules are fucking dumb and bits where extras interact poorly with the Mass Combat rules as you see it is probably a product of the fact that the Mass Combat rules are not worth the paper they're written on. The Mass Combat rules are so bad that you're literally better off without any rules at all.
Shrug. I don't necessarily see that as everyone else being necessarily worse. Not necessarily. For instance, perhaps only Autochthonians and Haslanti know the secrets to convincing the Least Gods of Arc Flexibility And Arrow-Pushing to work the way they do despite not being caressed in a way appropriate of 'traditional' archery. (Or Lesser, or whatever category is appropriate.)
Crossbows do not work that way.
Exalted gods do not work that way.
Exalted physics does not work that way.
You're also totally making up this line of argument with no actual canon support.
So, no, your argument is worthless - as valueless as the D&D handwave that the gods prevent technological progress in certain settings. A crossbow is fundamentally a bow with something to hold back the string until it needs to be released. You cannot stop that from existing without breaking normal bows, because a normal bow relies on someone holding back the string until it needs to be released. You cannot prevent crossbows without preventing bows. And once again you are doing the thing where you devise terrible justifications which fail to account for the ramifications of your argument on the rest of the setting. Arguments which fail to account for their second order consequences are not going to have much traction here.
But I do remember that you I seem to be more accepting of The Road Not Taken than you.
That would be because The Road Not Taken is a Harry Turtledove short story, not actually anything with any value in an argument.
It's a polemic thought experiment, but it doesn't actually examine its own premises at all. Harry Turtledove isn't a great writer and in this case he's not actually writing at all to take a serious look at what would happen in the world he describes. It's an interesting little short story, but that's all it is.
So the fact you keep on citing it and expecting us to take it seriously as a defence of things like "but what if all of human sociology and warfare works differently just because the Mass Combat system is worthless at modelling reality and so says that Death of Obsidian Butterflies is worse at killing tightly packed units than a single arrow from a powerbow" isn't a convincing point.
