Well, those are her dice adders. Excellencies and Excellency-alikes have never exactly been interesting. The thematic focus helps make them at least a little bit more compelling than a straight "add dice to these Ability rolls" effect.
I... on reading, what was going on with this design?
Or they couldn've given her a social exellency and saved themselves the word count. It's a dice adder, its not going to be interesting.
I'm not sure what you mean; she gets double-8s and +5 dice to seduction attempts.
Once they already have a Tie of love or lust towards her. What does she have to create that tie to begin with, beyond her base dicepool?
wow... so interesting...
Yes, but I noted those, and the Solar and Exigent in question can get them too. Certainly, it means that Mara at least can potentially pull ahead of a heroic mortal with Charisma 5 + Presence 5 + Specialty, but it's still not hugely impressive in the grand scheme of Creation. Is it not meant to be? On average it's +5 successes for 15m, 1wp - equivalent a Solar Presence Excellency that costs an extra five motes and a point of Willpower, and only works on seduction or those already in her thrall. The Solar gets that free and cheaper and far more broadly just for favouring Presence, and then can push past Mara by buying literally any Presence Charm.
Ex3 Core said:
Well, dice-adders have never been tremendously inspiring to begin with. It's not like Mara's on-paper 1e or 2e write-ups were more mechanically interesting, and they didn't have the other, more detailed powers that Ex3 added. Say what you will about Second Circle Demon write-ups (Octavian requires three times as much space as Mara because he's combat-oriented and that system is much more granular than anything else), but they do include rather more immediately evocative powers than they used to.
"Mara doubles 8s on a persuade roll to seduce a character OR any influence roll that exploits a Tie of love or lust towards her, "
And its still boring as fuck. It also absorbs word-count that could have been used on something more intresting, if they'd just given her say a general charm that allowed her to reroll stuff.
I don't give a shit about that, dude. It's not what's being argued here.
Well I'm arguing it, or am I not allowed to comment on the game? Am I not leet enough to point a flaw or weakness in the design of the system?
Oh, I see how you're reading it now. This is really clunkily worded, though; it shouldn't be presenting seduction in contrast to exploiting a Tie of love or lust. Why doesn't it just say "to create or exploit a Tie of love or lust towards her?"
"Fun." Increasing the spikiness and unpredictability of the system, and rolling dice more is more fun, in their minds.
It's just not particularly relevant to the actual topic at hand, which is the raw power/competency available to Second Circle Demons. Whether or not that raw power/competency is represented in an inspiring fashion wasn't actually the question being raised, and without meaning to be rude, you weren't exactly introducing some fresh and dazzling insights through that angle of the conversation.
I read it the same way, actually. Kinda clunky phrasing.
Except that double 8s/double 9s mean rolling fewer dice than an excellency, and require more active processing to figure out what the result is. One of my big objections to 3E, from a "feeling of play" aspect, was how poorly a lot of the new dice tricks convey the sensation of power or dramatic action (for me, at least. One of the folks at my table for the test game we played was into it). Rolling more dice is awesome, especially when it's a rare occurence, because it feels like power: you're having a hard time holding all the dice in your hand, and it sounds great when you roll them and spills over the table, because that's how mighty your character is. The double X mechanic doesn't have that, and needs me to spend a lot more focus adding stuff and actually looking at the numbers on the dice, instead of thinking about the scene going on in combat.
But its fundamentally still a dice adder + reroller with a different title. Save the trouble and word count and give her something interesting.
That strikes me as an uncharitable reading of the statement, although the actual quote may have been more direct. There's a difference between "the dragonblooded know the exact capabilities of a given solar seductrice because they have scrolls that detail all of his Charms" and "the dragonblooded have a vague undestanding of the fact that a given solar seductrice might have inhumanly good seductive ability, but don't know the exact mechanisms by which it works. They can–and probably will–plug their ears with wax... despite the fact that the Solar probably can't seduce them in combat anyway and it hurts their ability to coordinate."
From the Compass of Celestial Direction page 132:
Mara's Charm Section said:
Or, alternatively, a purview-based Excellency system for spirits and demons that you can then use for shorthand with every write-up. Then say "1st Excellency (Seduction)", which get's the idea across pretty damn well, and let's GMs get a really quick understanding of what she's about while flipping through the book.
