Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
- Location
- Bottom of the barrel
Its only taken them almost as long to make it as the entire First Edition Line!
General Exalted Thread
Its only taken them almost as long to make it as the entire First Edition Line!
Dynamesmouse
Bzzzzzz
I'm only hugging this post because there isn't a crying response. Alternatively, I'm the one that needs a hug.
I haven't been following the development, but seriously, Exalted has had a very screwed up development process. What happened?
- Location
- Aurora, Ontario
You know an RPG is going to be good when it took roughly as much time as Infinite Jest and has a similar wordcount.
*shugs*
I think there was at least one point where they scrapped everything and did a rewrite. And I'll admit, if this sort of thing maintains itself over the course of the line, that's... not sustainable, but hopefully it won't.
Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
- Location
- Bottom of the barrel
Fucked if I know, but they've currently got as much chance of getting my money for any kickstarter they do as EA or Ubisoft does.
Theres unprofessional, theres nontransparent and then theres exalted third edition.
If they have their shit together for the next few projects, I may become a backer for the dragonblooded book, but for now I'll just buy the print releases.
Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
- Location
- Bottom of the barrel
Another thing, to distract myself from my annoyance.
Why do some Solar players/fans get so annoyed at people wanting 'niche protection'.
Such as daring to suggest that Lunar Shapeshifting should be better then Solar Disguise, or that Sidereals might have an advantage at Martial Arts, or that Infernals might be cooler sorcerors. Or hell, even that Dragonblooded should be better with 'elemental things' like their Immaculate styles.
I'm surprised there aren't complaints about Abyssals being the only Void Necromancers honestly.
Why do some Solar players/fans get so annoyed at people wanting 'niche protection'.
Such as daring to suggest that Lunar Shapeshifting should be better then Solar Disguise, or that Sidereals might have an advantage at Martial Arts, or that Infernals might be cooler sorcerors. Or hell, even that Dragonblooded should be better with 'elemental things' like their Immaculate styles.
I'm surprised there aren't complaints about Abyssals being the only Void Necromancers honestly.
As a Solar fan myself... excessive Solar fanboyism.
I literally saw someone say the setting falls apart if Solars aren't the best at everything. It was pretty funny/irritating.
Scrapping large sections repeatedly. Also, I think the 'basic' formatting has taken about 6 months. So, absolutely insane amounts of mismanagement and misinformation.
Eukie
Powered by furious Canadian redheads
If they're actually saying two days then it's likely it'll be out then... but I'm reminded of the time Holden said it was only two weeks away. In March. Of 2015.
At least for the middle two, I have some sympathy. Largely because of the utterly insane implementation of SMA's, and for a long time the lack of high essence charms comparable to them. It warps people's view, so if Sidereals are actually better than Solars at SMA then obviously they're better than Solars at combat in general. Yes, there's homebrew, but what's printed really does shape how people view the game.
As for the latter, it's due to Sorcery one of the things that people key on as something Solars don't share, and wanting that as their niche. Yeah, solars are more powerful, but generally it's in areas where other splats can function, simply not as well. But the third circle? That's theirs. They don't want to be demoted to second best in that area.
azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
Why? Like, what purpose does making it better than disguises serve? Why are you using it as a benchmark for a mechanic that covers disguise, combat, movement, and stealth?
Why are you using a screwdriver as the comparison for a multi-tool?
Why?
Like, straight-up, why should they have an innate advantage? They have an infrastructural advantage already, built into the setting.
This is opinion, not a niche. Of course people have different opinions.
- Location
- Ottawa
Whenever people discuss the relative strengths of the splats, I get an urge to homebrew up the Better Exalted. I already have a bunch of their Charms half-written in my mind, like Deadlier Beastman Transformation and Triple Magus Prana.
So if this approach works for differentiating an axe-man and a knife fighter, why wouldn't it work for differentiating a brawler and a knife fighter?
Fists and knives are probably more similar in use than knives and axes, when you get right down to it.
So if this approach works for differentiating an axe-man and a knife fighter, why wouldn't it work for differentiating a brawler and a knife fighter?
Fists and knives are probably more similar in use than knives and axes, when you get right down to it.
I think this is best explained in oWoD terms, actually, to get away from Exalted baggage.
Imagine an oWoD group. They make a cross-splat game because ??? why would you do this I don't know but they do.
One guy goes "I'll play a vampire! A social butterfly Toreador."
Another guy goes "I'll play a big huge ass-beating werewolf!"
Yet another guy goes "I'll play a changeling to do weird mystic things!"
And then That Guy, who is both a gigantic minmaxer and a jerk, goes "Well okay, I'm playing a Void Engineer with exomuscle and Life/Mind 3, so I'm a better fighter than the werewolf, can do tons of mystic bullshit, and can social better than the vampire." And then everyone pelts him with fruit.
Except in Exalted, That Guy isn't automatically a powergaming jerk because Solar superiority in all areas is baked into everything and very hard to house rule. Like, that's why Solar Superiority in everything rankles people so much-it basically means that in mixed splat play there's no point in taking a niche that a Solar player might end up doing more than dabbling a bit in and thus you need a pretty good social contract. And for some splats, maybe even areas the Solar just dabbles in. And it's just kinda annoying because oftentimes things were defined by "what your splat can't do, but maybe the Solars can..." which is kind of galling.
Like, imagine if a D&D book about fighters kept telling you of all the things fighters can't do but wizards could, with the subtext being "WIZARDS ARE THE BEST PLAY A WIZARD."
It would probably work? I don't want to fuse abilities, though. It'd be less fun. I don't value simplifying things for its own sake. I enjoy complexity. It'd make the game worse, in my eyes.
The thing about complexity for complexity's sake is that sure, people love that, but it really takes a lot of time and oftentimes what's happening is that the time taken in development is leeching time which could have been used to make other systems fun.
I've talked about Exalted 3E's social system before and I'll say it again-they should have used some of the time they spent making rolls this complex Las Vegas style dice game and made social influence resemble actual social influence a bit more.
I'm not suggesting complexity for complexity's sake. Ex3 is complex for actual reasons. I also thing Ex3's social system isn't that far off from how you influence people. Talk to them, use the things they care about to convince them, explain the things you care about and why they should care about them too, pay attention to them and try to figure out what they care about and why, get them to like you and value your opinion, interact with them extensively over time and slowly change their opinions. Which they can also be doing to you.
I've never felt like I was playing a Vegas style game. I've felt like I was, you know, rolling dice because that's how actions work in Exalted. But in general I need to figure out what they want and build off of that.
azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
Nice tangent, dude.
It almost addressed my post, except you focused on the idea of "Solars are better" and not what I actually said and was responding to.
Jon Chung
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That's, hmm, not the same deal, though. In D&D, there's the built-in expectation that you're playing different classes in an adventuring group, so that the wizard is meant to exist in the same party as the fighter, and so on. In Exalted, this isn't the case, at least not in the original 1E design. A Solar is meant to be played with other Solars, a Sidereal is meant to be played with other Sidereals, a Dragon-Blooded is meant to be played with other Dragon-Blooded.
So within this context, it's not "WIZARDS ARE THE BEST PLAY A WIZARD", it's "WIZARD GAME IS ALL WIZARDS, EVERYONE PLAYS A WIZARD" and the various wizards pick different wizardly builds. Like how nWoD is designed around "if you play Mage, everyone plays a Mage and is equally broken beyond belief", and if you do "Bob plays a Mastigos Mage and Alice plays a Ventrue Vampire" instead, that doesn't work very well.
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Jon Chung
=][=
Such as?
Yes, because the overarching reason @Sucal is making these complaints is "Solars are better" and why should I give specific answers when they actually all boil down to "nobody likes it when there's one splat which is better than you at everything." I am addressing your post, because your questions can all be answered with the same reason. And that reason's a combination of:
1. Solars can easily outweigh other splats' abilities to contribute, which also leads to;
2. In many cases splats were defined by "this is how they are worse than Solars" rather than any unique "this is why the splat is awesome." The biggest offender is probably 2E Lunars in this, because a lot of their charms were basically "like a Solar equivalent but shittier." And then you have shit like the Alchemicals book going "Alchemicals won't be able to cure Autochthon! But a Solar might!" which does not endear Solars to other people.
I suppose within this context it would also involve 'everyone plays a wizard' but the wizard would also be better at beating people up with a sword while wearing heavy armor than a fighter too, to be more accurate.
You're right that like the WoD, Exalted 1E was intended to not have mixed parties. However, because of the design of Exalted for some reason, mixed play was much, much more common than in oWoD-I suspect in part because in oWoD your splats were often fundamentally violently opposed to each other (and implicitly set in different universes) and that discouraged mixed play, whereas in Exalted there's a lot more reasons for a Solar and a Lunar and a couple of DBs to run around with each other. And I think at some point it's time to recognize that mixed-splat play is very common and 3E would probably have been a better product if it spent less time catering to homebrew and more time catering to mixed splat play.
pheonix89
Wants to be Seven Of Nine
- Location
- North American Plaguelands
- Pronouns
- She/Her
There's definitely in some circles a "solars can't be not # 1 at anything" attitide. I've seen people seriously try to argue that Solars have to be BETTER at crafting than Autocthon. This was in the period where most everyone liked the Yozis-as-charms paradigm, mind. As a result this is precisely identical to saying that a solar crafter has to be much better at crafting than an Infernal one, because you aren't getting a better Primordial craft tree that Autobots, and quite a few of the goodies are going to be locked behind the I-Am-Become-Autobot cascade, complete with it's crippling drawbacks, and of course will be hitting you with Autobot's sickness. So yeah, people were saying that Solars have to be better at Crafting than other Solaroids even when those other Solaroids are making major sacrifices.
Jon Chung
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This is, among other reasons, why I went for the Enlightenment / "every charm effect at this power level is roughly on the same tier" setup and put Solar(oid)s at 7-10 and Lunars/Sidereals at 6-9. Catering to Dragon-Blooded in the same bracket would have required a whole new setting, so I left them at 3-6.
With this type of deal, a GM who wants a mixed group of Solars, Lunars and Sidereals just needs to start everybody at 7: a newbie Solar with more experienced friends. The Solar's higher cap is unlikely to matter in the course of gameplay.
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azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
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- He/They
Except the points I made were that he used a bad comparison, asking justification for a "niche" (that's basically the same as "better at Melee" - not really a niche, in my opinion), and pointing out that he wasn't talking about a niche at all.
Literally half his examples were bad examples, and a third I was asking for justification for why a splat should specifically be better at the not-a-niche.
Reread the post, setting aside your assumption that I'm defending Solars. Take what I said, as it is written.
That's what I meant to say. I meant to respond to the quoted sections with those criticisms of the comparisons made.
That is all.
Everything else is you putting words in my mouth.