Martial Arts are self-contained yet cross-compatible toolkits that encompass more than one vector of combat. A character who invests 20 Charms in Brawl will have an extremely powerful offense, but will require investment in a second, different ability in order to obtain any defensive capability. A character who instes 10 Charms in Brawl and 10 Charms in Dodge is covering offense and one of his vectors of defense, and is paying two different abilities to do so. Similarly, a martial artist whose investment covers 20 Charms - about two complete styles - will cover both offense and defense, and pay two abilities for that price. He will in fact pay more (the Merit) because the right choices of MA can cover multiple vectors and styles of attack and defense (like say, both Parry and soak), and the new rules on Form Charms make it convenient to swap strategies mid-fight.
This, @Imrix. Not all MAs are equal, not all MAs have the same uses. Buying up Martial Arts once and applying it to every Style is pretty much analogous to buying up Dawn Caste 5 and apply that as your prereqs for Dawn Abilities.

I'd also like to note this:
You are also not necessarily meant to, you know, get perfectly even returns on mastering five different martial arts. I'm pretty sure someone who masters Single Point and Crane Style and Black Claw and Righteous Devil aren't necessarily gonna have the same sort of synergy and power as the guy who mastered Snake and Tiger Style.. You spent more experience mastering four styles, sure, but you weren't picking styles that complement each other, so you have a wide tool kit but not necessarily one that works super well together.
 
Martial Arts are self-contained yet cross-compatible toolkits that encompass more than one vector of combat. A character who invests 20 Charms in Brawl will have an extremely powerful offense, but will require investment in a second, different ability in order to obtain any defensive capability.
... And other Abilities don't? Axiomatically? Because I remember talk of Melee still being a pretty sweet generalist toolkit, and I see no particular reason a Brawler shouldn't be able to invent some Brawl-centric defensive charmtech for themselves. You might say the corebook shouldn't balance for homebrew, except 3e is supposed to be the most homebrew-friendly Exalted edition yet, and inventing new Martial Art styles is a long-standing tradition. So, no, I don't think this is valid.
 
... And other Abilities don't? Axiomatically? Because I remember talk of Melee still being a pretty sweet generalist toolkit, and I see no particular reason a Brawler shouldn't be able to invent some Brawl-centric defensive charmtech for themselves. You might say the corebook shouldn't balance for homebrew, except 3e is supposed to be the most homebrew-friendly Exalted edition yet, and inventing new Martial Art styles is a long-standing tradition. So, no, I don't think this is valid.
A few months ago I'd have agreed, but since then I have seen Melee build after Melee build fall to characters who'd actually spread their Charms over several abilities. Melee is a very strong ability that stands alone better than, say, Brawl or Dodge or Resistance, but its generic does-it-all approach fails against specific cross-ability builds that aim for a dedicated strategy (like martial artists), unless you back it up with other abilities or focus on some of its specific non-generic strategy.

And if you give Brawl its own Fivefold Bulwark Stance, then you only have yourself to blame for unbalance. Exalted is a homebrew-friendly game, but if you're not capable of realizing that each Ability has a strategic and thematic focus and that stepping out of it will do weird (bad) things to game balance, you probably weren't going to homebrew well in the first place no matter how friendly the game.
 
...I really want to avoid the whole 'enlightened mortal martial artist' thing. That's a thing people genuinely like, but I don't like what the mindset that caused did, and I don't want mortals with combat Charms being a thing.

I don't really think it's a good idea to worry about the effects of mindsets. It's an easy way to justify doing stupid stuff.

On the master of multiple MAs, while I've yet to actually play a master of multiple styles outside a test fight (which was also testing homebrewed Sidereal Charms, so I don't think it really counts), no I don't think someone who mastered five styles would be literally five times as powerful as someone with one, I don't think they're meant to scale up quite like that. But there's gonna be some crazy ass synergy. Particularly what I've noticed is that a Wood/Earth Dragon Styleist would be really crazy deadly. Tiger and Snake Style are also utterly terrifying when paired together, seriously, it's nuts. It doesn't break anything, but here's the thing. I actually like that being a master martial artist is genuinely difficult to do!

It already costs 168 xp for 21 Charms, 12 xp for a Merit, and 19xp for an ability at 5. So 199xp overall. And that's if you favour MA. If you don't, add 46 xp to that total.

Does that not seem genuinely difficult to you? And if not, do you really think adding another 19xp to the cost is gonna make a big difference?

And the synergies look solid, but no more so than the synergies between combat trees in general. Maybe I'll change my mind if and when I get a player with multiple MAs, but I doubt it.

Solar XP = best mechanic.

Never really seen the appeal myself.

The first and second, and a bit of the third. While the attempt towards clarity isn't bad, I feel the way it was done and the removal of the flavor text results in an incredibly boring read. My issue with the mechanical changes is hard to describe. They basically seem different, not better to me, I guess? I didn't read it all the way through, so I don't think I can give a fair critique on those, which is why I say the first and second were my real problem.

I actually agree that the lack of fluff makes it less pleasant to read. Might refluff it when it's done. (Not with the original text; some of that stuff was just awful.)

I think the mechanical changes are fixing important problems, though. I don't much care how it reads at the moment, so if your only objection to the mechanical side is that you don't understand the point then I'm not concerned.

I'm glad it wasn't as insulting as I feared!

I am much harder to offend than you seem to think.
 
A few months ago I'd have agreed, but since then I have seen Melee build after Melee build fall to characters who'd actually spread their Charms over several abilities. Melee is a very strong ability that stands alone better than, say, Brawl or Dodge or Resistance, but its generic does-it-all approach fails against specific cross-ability builds that aim for a dedicated strategy (like martial artists), unless you back it up with other abilities or focus on some of its specific non-generic strategy.
Then from my perspective, Martial Arts is a casualty of a fundamental disagreement with the design ethos behind 3e's combat charms, because this just seems fucking stupid to me. What about the berserker with a greataxe who scorns defense to lash out with terrible force? What about the pugilist playing the defensive game, slapping aside fists and knives until he makes a counterstroke?

These are not small ideas or niche character concepts, and while I could understand Ex3 not offering them support (they've squandered enough wordcount already, hell if I'll ask them to add more stuff), for it to deny they have a place is just... No, that's absurd.
 
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What about the berserker with a greataxe who scorns defense to lash out with terrible force?
Textbook Melee+Resistance (with a possible dash of Athletics).
What about the pugilist playing the defensive game, slapping aside fists and knives until he makes a counterstroke?
That kind of approach seems more suited to Martial Arts; Snake Style would be very good at it.
 
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Textbook Melee+Resistance (with a possible dash of Athletics).
Okay, fair, berserker stuff is in Resistance. Even so, you've gotta admit that "dude with a giant weapon who deals huge damage" is a pretty common well to draw from for melee. Like, this is the game where magic shields are considered a great rarity because most combat is too destructive for them to be useful, but melee is locked into the generalist combat style?
That kind of approach seems more suited to Martial Arts; Snake Style would be very good at it.
Why? Because, what, it takes a refined fighting style to block?

I mean, bluntly, an RPG book is supposed to give me tools to make my own characters and tell my own stories. If the book says, "so you want to brawl? Okay, this is how you fight," then I think it's a reasonable assertion that the book is overstepping its mandate. I don't expect the book to give support to every niche concept, and some ideas are simply unfitting, but you can't even see those lines from here.
 
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If you've seen the circulating list of requirements for becoming an Ex3E freelancer, I'm surprised they have a drop-out rate to speak of because you'd have to be a very dedicated fan to get in. Like, that's the kind of stuff you ask during an interview for a job that pays twenty times as much as freelancing. :V

Would be interested in seeing that list.

Who left? I know plauge of hats and Stephenls did, but did more people leave?

I don't think Stephenls did.

But if hearsay and scuttlebutt are to be believed, Neall Raemonn Price and Dean Shomshak left the game on bad terms.

Haven't seen much of Elizabeth Grushcow either, though that may not mean anything.

Essentially, after she worked for years on Chuubo's Magical Wish-Granting Engine, when the files were at last ready to print, her publisher just... disappeared. With the Kickstarter money. And I don't even mean 'yeah it's coming out aaaany day now,' I mean straight-up stopped talking to her or custommers. Eventually there was an anonymous donation for the printing of the books to start independently; otherwise there would be no printed Chuubo. As far as I know (been a while since I looked it up), Eos still has the money.

Also they had her move to China or something? I don't remember the details of that part, only that it started out like a pretty great move and then it was awful. I guess moving to a different continent at the behest of someone who just takes the money and runs will do that.

More backstory.

...f you're not capable of realizing that each Ability has a strategic and thematic focus and that stepping out of it will do weird (bad) things to game balance, you probably weren't going to homebrew well in the first place no matter how friendly the game.

I'm well capable of seeing that. I don't think it was a good decision. The theme of Solar Brawl is being a Solar and using Brawl.

That kind of approach seems more suited to Martial Arts...

No.
 
Okay, fair, berserker stuff is in Resistance. Even so, you've gotta admit that "dude with a giant weapon who deals huge damage" is a pretty common well to draw from for melee. Like, this is the game where magic shields are considered a great rarity because most combat is too destructive for them to be useful, but melee is locked into the generalist combat style?
Not at all. There are a ton of damage-boosters in Melee. It is absolutely possible to be a destructive heavy weapon fighter who smashes through all opposition, rather than using Melee as a well-rounded fighting style that covers most of your bases; you just grab your defense somewhere else. No one has the xp to purchase the entire Melee tree, after all. What exactly are you asking?
Why? Because, what, it takes a refined fighting style to block?
Yeah? If you try to block blades with your hands you will die. A Solar won't, but a Solar is working from that raw human baseline brought to divine proportions, so the way he first manifests his unarmed combat skill in god-slaying fashion is with grappling and hitting them really hard before they can stab you. Then the rest of the tree builds up from there into the kaioken.

Unless he's learned a careful defensive fighting style like what martial arts represent. Then he does aikido if he wants to.

Ability sets have specific aesthetic and thematic focuses because (in the mind of the developers, I agree not everyone does, yada yada let's skip that part) it makes choices of abilities more meaningful and makes the game more tactical and characterful.

Of course, what I'm saying here should be nuanced by the fact that this design isn't stupidly over-focused. There are defensive Brawl Charms. What do they do? Iron Battle Focus activates after an attack and makes you immune to further onslaught until your next turn; it's basically a bar-room brawl/street-fighting 'I'm used to being outnumbered' Charm. Wind and Stones Defense lets you raise your Defense by your opponent's onslaught penalty as long as you have higher Initiative; it synergizes with the rest of Brawl so as to be a Charm that lets you be untouchable as long as you can keep the pressure on your opponent, because they just can't focus enough to hit you. Reckless Fury Discard is the closest to what you want; it sacrifices some Initiative to raise your Defense by the 1s in your opponent's roll. It's potentially quite powerful, but it doesn't work when you're crashed and it has a randomized effect. Solar Cross-Counter lets you react to being hit by hitting back, Force-Rending Strike is a reflexive Clash, Blade-Rebuking Wrath is a nasty disarm effect...

Basically what Brawl defense does is emphasize a risky fighting style where your defense only holds up when you're pushing the opponent, maintaining the pressure and keeping the advantage. It marries well with its attack Charms, which also do the same thing. Of course, such a defense would be too unreliable to be worth it without something backing it up, which is why it has Charms to let you strike back as soon as you're hit, oppose an attack with your own attack when your defense is tanked, and remove people's weapons to force them to fight you on your terms.

But yeah. It's not the style of a careful master who deflects knives with his hands until he can find the perfect moment to strike. That's martial arts. That's always been martial arts.

I'm well capable of seeing that. I don't think it was a good decision. The theme of Solar Brawl is being a Solar and using Brawl.

No.
You may think the way you have of grabbing quotes by someone in a conversation and posting curt one-liner answers is cute, but it isn't. From the OPP boards to here, it just makes you easy to dismiss, since you have nothing to actually say.
 
And if you give Brawl its own Fivefold Bulwark Stance, then you only have yourself to blame for unbalance. Exalted is a homebrew-friendly game, but if you're not capable of realizing that each Ability has a strategic and thematic focus and that stepping out of it will do weird (bad) things to game balance, you probably weren't going to homebrew well in the first place no matter how friendly the game.
It never says this anywhere. If you stick with implying implications, then people are going to miss the implications, or ignore them.
 
Yeah? If you try to block blades with your hands you will die. A Solar won't, but a Solar is working from that raw human baseline brought to divine proportions, so the way he first manifests his unarmed combat skill in god-slaying fashion is with grappling and hitting them really hard before they can stab you. Then the rest of the tree builds up from there into the kaioken.

Unless he's learned a careful defensive fighting style like what martial arts represent. Then he does aikido if he wants to.

Ability sets have specific aesthetic and thematic focuses because (in the mind of the developers, I agree not everyone does, yada yada let's skip that part) it makes choices of abilities more meaningful and makes the game more tactical and characterful.

We shouldn't skip that part, because that part is the core of the conversation. Should abilities have specific thematic focuses?

I think not.

Every unarmed Solar fighter uses Solar Brawl unless they've been trained in a specific system, so Solar Brawl should accommodate the concepts of Solars who fight unarmed in general.

(Worth mentioning, by the way, that unarmed attacks are about as worthless as unarmed defenses in reality. Unarmed combat sucks.)

You may think the way you have of grabbing quotes by someone in a conversation and posting curt one-liner answers is cute, but it isn't. From the OPP boards to here, it just makes you easy to dismiss, since you have nothing to actually say.

I don't think it's cute. I'm trying to argue the way I'd like people to argue with me, and that's with as few words as possible.

We're all busy, and you don't need me wasting your time with 200 words that boil down to "I disagree". Better just to say no when I mean no. Makes me easier to dismiss, but I don't want to win arguments by pretending to have more to say than I actually do.

That whole mini-essay you wrote to Imrix would've had exactly the same amount of non-obvious content if you cut it down to "Brawl's not the style of a careful master who deflects knives with his hands until he can find the perfect moment to strike. That's martial arts. That's always been martial arts."
 
Remember that Martial Arts do not actually represent martial arts. If your character knows jiujitsu, that's Brawl 5 (jiujitsu 1). Or if you're using the Style system, Brawl 3 with Fists as Soft as Heshiesh's Breath Style.

So yes, Brawl should totally have defensive maneuvers. And recover-initiative maneuvers, and trips, and feints, and everything else. Because all of that is mundane.

You don't need Charms unless you're breaking the laws of physics. Break a boulder or a city wall or a soul, if you're going to spend essence.
 
Remember that Martial Arts do not actually represent martial arts. If your character knows jiujitsu, that's Brawl 5 (jiujitsu 1). Or if you're using the Style system, Brawl 3 with Fists as Soft as Heshiesh's Breath Style.

So yes, Brawl should totally have defensive maneuvers. And recover-initiative maneuvers, and trips, and feints, and everything else. Because all of that is mundane.

You don't need Charms unless you're breaking the laws of physics. Break a boulder or a city wall or a soul, if you're going to spend essence.
What? No, that's not how it works, not in Third Edition, at least. Brawl is street fighting self-trained stuff. Jiujutsu would be Martial Arts: Jiujutsu. Same as Martial Arts: Ebon Shadow or Martial Arts: Black Claw. You can be a mortal Martial Artist with no Charms using Ebon Shadow Style. The Charms are how the fighting style expresses itself. If you are an Akido master who Exalts, you're gonna be manifest Akido Charms. Martial Art Charms are supernatural expressions of the given martial art.
 
... Should probably clarify that I mean Martial Arts Charmtrees. There's... really not a lot of point in Martial Arts as an Ability separate from Brawl, though, except as a source of Ability minimums for Charms.
 
Not at all. There are a ton of damage-boosters in Melee. It is absolutely possible to be a destructive heavy weapon fighter who smashes through all opposition, rather than using Melee as a well-rounded fighting style that covers most of your bases; you just grab your defense somewhere else.
But, in doing so, you're penalised compared to the Brawler whose whole tree is focused on offensive power. Why should this be the case?
Yeah? If you try to block blades with your hands you will die. A Solar won't, but a Solar is working from that raw human baseline brought to divine proportions, so the way he first manifests his unarmed combat skill in god-slaying fashion is with grappling and hitting them really hard before they can stab you. Then the rest of the tree builds up from there into the kaioken.
No. Denied. You're assuming "defensive unarmed combat" necessarily means "careful defensive style like aikido", and I reject that. I mean, Yang is pretty clearly not a refined fighter, she's force and fury and big smashing attacks. She's a Brawler with some particularly neat Smashfists (and has probably learned Evocations to use recoil in her fighting style) - but she still does a fair bit of parrying and blocking. Twister takes a measured approach to a fight that relies on a lot of brute power and a fine understanding of the fundamentals - the quintessential boxer, which is in turn pretty solid Solar Brawl inspiration.

Like, yeah, if you try to block a blade with your hands you die, but then if you try to hit a guy in plate armour with your fist you break your hand, so if a Solar can do one there's no obvious reason they can't do the other. Similarly, you talk about 'risky fighting' where 'your defense only holds up when you're pushing the opponent', and to me that sounds like all fighting, particularly in 3e's combat system where you literally shore up your defenses by attacking; realistically, a parry is a strike at your opponent that also wards off one of their own. So, neither statement seems to have any substance, nor do they justify to me why this or that combat ability should be limited to this or that fighting style.

I mean when you say,
Ability sets have specific aesthetic and thematic focuses because (in the mind of the developers, I agree not everyone does, yada yada let's skip that part) it makes choices of abilities more meaningful and makes the game more tactical and characterful.
you are basically saying, "please let me skip the core of this debate." and, no, you don't get to do that when people are objecting to the aesthetic and thematic focuses.
 
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... Should probably clarify that I mean Martial Arts Charmtrees. There's... really not a lot of point in Martial Arts as an Ability separate from Brawl, though, except as a source of Ability minimums for Charms.
Well, there is. It's a single ability that can allow you to use both unarmed attacks and certain weapons, which is useful versatility. It's just that no one thinks that versatility is worth 4 precious Merit dots.
 
If Solar Brawl could do all of the things Solar Melee can do, and Solar Melee could do all of the things Solar Brawl can do, then why would we have two separate combat abilities and charmsets?
 
Reasons why the MA merit exits:

1. MA charms can be bought for Solar xp. This means that while the Solar meleeist is buying his combat charms, the Solar martial artist is buying MA charms AND resistance charms, or MA charms and social charms, or even just double MA charms, or whatever you want. They're just as powerful a combat style, except you double dip.

2. MA charms can be bought for Solar xp. This means that you can bank all your Solar xp as you go up an essence level and instantly (training time allowing) buy every single martial arts charm of that level. So the Solar meleeist has to wait until he's at 58 xp to get his first essence 2 charm, the Solar martial artist gets every single essence 2 charm and 8xp earlier to boot!

3. Martial arts are not only complete combat styles, but they let you do stuff that's outside of what normal Solar charms let you do. For example Crane Style isn't just another way to beat somebody up, like melee or brawl, it lets you knock them out and when they wake up they've changed from a bloodthirsty warlord to a Ghandi-style passive resistance leader. Or Fire Dragon Style, which lets you pretend to be a DB, or Silver Voiced Nightingale, which gives you a free, invisible artifact weapon that can never be taken from you. They're not OP effects, they're just stuff Solars don't get to do otherwise.
 
But, in doing so, you're penalised compared to the Brawler whose whole tree is focused on offensive power. Why should this be the case?
No. Denied. You're assuming "defensive unarmed combat" necessarily means "careful defensive style like aikido", and I reject that. I mean, Yang is pretty clearly not a refined fighter, she's force and fury and big smashing attacks. She's a Brawler with some particularly neat Smashfists (and has probably learned Evocations to use recoil in her fighting style) - but she still does a fair bit of parrying and blocking. Twister takes a measured approach to a fight that relies on a lot of brute power and a fine understanding of the fundamentals - the quintessential boxer, which is in turn pretty solid Solar Brawl inspiration.

Like, yeah, if you try to block a blade with your hands you die, but then if you try to hit a guy in plate armour with your fist you break your hand, so if a Solar can do one there's no obvious reason they can't do the other. Similarly, you talk about 'risky fighting' where 'your defense only holds up when you're pushing the opponent', and to me that sounds like all fighting, particularly in 3e's combat system where you literally shore up your defenses by attacking; realistically, a parry is a strike at your opponent that also wards off one of their own. So, neither statement seems to have any substance, nor do they justify to me why this or that combat ability should be limited to this or that fighting style.
Well, to be honest, this is a case where I'm just being a radical.

What with Initiative being a combat abstraction, you absolutely can make a Solar aikido master with Solar Brawl Charm. It's just that when you make a withering 'attack' against someone, your stunt actually describes parrying, deflecting or dodging in a way that puts them off-balance and throws them off their game, setting them up for the single combat-ending strike (your decisive attack). The grapple mechanics and Charms even allow you to do superpowered aikido throws.

I, personally, feel like it's not appropriate to Solar Brawl, but it works by design.

I mean when you say,
you are basically saying, "please let me skip the core of this debate." and, no, you don't get to do that when people are objecting to the aesthetic and thematic focuses.
Aesthetic and thematic focuses are considerably subjective. It's a debate I want to skip because we've had it over and over and no one is changing their mind because there is no argument that can convince on either side. It's all just "well I think it would be better if..."
 
If you don't want to have that debate, don't have it. Because what you're doing right now is having it.

No shame in posting a curt one-liner and moving on.

If Solar Brawl could do all of the things Solar Melee can do, and Solar Melee could do all of the things Solar Brawl can do, then why would we have two separate combat abilities and charmsets?

Merging the Abilities might be a good idea, actually. Since that's not going to happen, I think focusing on the inherent differences between the abiities might be a good idea. Melee can't be used to grapple, after all, but each Melee weapon presents its own unique advantages.

That's not the route EX3 took, though. And I'm not fussed enough about that to rewrite anything.
 
If Solar Brawl could do all of the things Solar Melee can do, and Solar Melee could do all of the things Solar Brawl can do, then why would we have two separate combat abilities and charmsets?

This is a good question. At least one decent answer is "really they shouldn't be separate." Much like archery and thrown shouldn't be separate either. I've seen some decently solid truncated skill trees, which are like:

Dawn:
Killing people and taking their stuff at close range
Killing people and taking their stuff from a distance
Ordering other people to kill people and take their stuff

Zenith:
Being really tough
Being really stubborn
Convincing dudes

Twilight:
Knowing tons of shit
Discovering tons of shit
Fixing things and/or people

Night:
Being a sneaky motherfucker
Being a nimble motherfucker
Not failing to notice that guard around the corner and having to cheese the entire mission via copious use of reflex mode

Eclipse:
Really getting around (;7)
Being able to hit on people in many different languages and cultures
Being good at politics
 
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