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General Exalted Thread

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DayDreamer said:
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."
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Sounds like a distinction important enough it would pop up in a Storyteller Chapter, doesn't it.
 
Shyft said:
@Revlid - unfortunately I can't offer cited sources, so take this with a grain of salt.

That being said, It's been fairly transparent that 3e is written to a 'game' slant- the crunch is not is supposed to represent in-setting qualities or traits. This was most born out a few months ago when Holden declared that no one would think to counter solar seduction, because 'these aren't objective Charms, but mechanical shorthand for how Solars act in the world.'

So like, he was effectively saying that the Wyld Hunt would not stuff wax in the ears of their mortal armies, as to prevent the dread Anathema from seducing them out from under them.
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This... doesn't even follow logically, though. It's like saying that the Realm won't seek to find counters to Solar swordsmen (like, 'repeated volleys of arrows' or 'fuck it just light the building on fire') because it's just a mechanical shorthand for how they act.

DayDreamer said:
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.
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I don't think it actually serves the end they want, no.

Revlid said:
Honestly, if you're going to go as far as First (Purview) Excellency it seems like you might as well just ditch dice-adding altogether and give her higher base pools with no mote cost attached.
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Yeah, just give her, like, a six-point Seduction specialty or something.
 
greensun said:
From the Compass of Celestial Direction page 132:

All you'd have to do is include a Spirit's total dice cap somewhere in the Antagonist section and you're golden.
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In which Mara is now good at everything in that ability which is not the goal.

You're seriously arguing that rules that limit demons to only being superhumanly good at their particular niche are "boring", and really they should just have broad Ability excellencies in order to save an entire sentence worth of wordcount?

DayDreamer 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.

This is, more broadly, why I'm really not a fan of 3E decision to replace a lot of previously keyworded stuff with entirely natural language write-ups. It adds generally meaningless complexity and makes it much harder to quickly get a sense of what a given character or charm is about.
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Ah, so you think the charm should be less specific about what stuff it covers, and let people argue over whether "1st Excellency (Seduction)" covers just seduction rolls or also other arguably related social influence rolls?

Revlid said:
Honestly, if you're going to go as far as First (Purview) Excellency it seems like you might as well just ditch dice-adding altogether and give her higher base pools with no mote cost attached. Lower her mote pool if you like, to "average out" as representing free low-level Excellency-use. As written, the only reason Mara really needs a mote pool at all is to handle the granularity of combat, which is mainly just Black Claw Style and some Sorcery.
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It costs 15m 1wp, which is hardly a trivial expense even for her mote and willpower pool.
 
Dif said:
Sounds like a distinction important enough it would pop up in a Storyteller Chapter, doesn't it.
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No arguments here. There's a reason I convinced my table to play Godbound instead of 3E and have not looked back.
Kuciwalker said:
Ah, so you think the charm should be less specific about what stuff it covers, and let people argue over whether "1st Excellency (Seduction)" covers just seduction rolls or also other arguably related social influence rolls?
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That shit could be trivially easily resolved by precisely worded actual text of the 1st (Purview) Excellency, and I have no issues with there being a little bit of leeway for a GM about to how interpret that.
 
Stuffing your ears with wax sounds like lousy Anathema-fighting practice unless you know that their voice specifically is compelling. Otherwise they might just bust out an inhumanly beautiful striptease or pantomime or some such.
Kuciwalker said:
Ah, so you think the charm should be less explicit about what stuff it covers, and let people argue over whether "1st Excellency (Seduction)" covers just seduction rolls or also other arguably related social influence rolls?
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I think a decently written "this is how Excellency (Purview) works" section would cut down on a lot of that arguing.

Edit: :ninja:
 
notthepenguins said:
This... doesn't even follow logically, though. It's like saying that the Realm won't seek to find counters to Solar swordsmen (like, 'repeated volleys of arrows' or 'fuck it just light the building on fire') because it's just a mechanical shorthand for how they act.
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Yep! And we pointed that out to him, and he doubled-down on that stuff doesn't happen. Basically he was trying really hard to keep 'Logical Consequences' out of setting/worldbuilding.
 
DayDreamer said:
That shit could be trivially easily resolved by precisely worded actual text of the 1st (Purview) Excellency, and I have no issues with there being a little bit of leeway for a GM about to how interpret that.
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rikalous said:
Stuffing your ears with wax sounds like lousy Anathema-fighting practice unless you know that their voice specifically is compelling. Otherwise they might just bust out an inhumanly beautiful striptease or pantomime or some such.

I think a decently written "this is how Excellency (Purview) works" section would cut down on a lot of that arguing.

Edit: :ninja:
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At this point if you are defining rules for Excellency (Seduction) then... how much wordcount are you actually saving? You aren't going to be writing that many creatures with it, I think. So, like, yay, I guess?

This just seems like a totally out-of-proportion reaction to what's at most a tiny sin of writing a one-sentence math-booster with clear, straightforward mechanics.
 
Kuciwalker said:
At this point if you are defining rules for Excellency (Seduction) then... how much wordcount are you actually saving? You aren't going to be writing that many creatures with it, I think. So, like, yay, I guess?

This just seems like a totally out-of-proportion reaction to what's at most a tiny sin of writing a one-sentence math-booster with clear, straightforward mechanics.
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Except that it gives a clear framework for GMs looking to make their own demons and spirits in a way that doesn't currently exist. It might end up being roughly the same in terms of total word count, but it makes for clearer underlying assumptions and cleaner actual write-ups, which are almost always going to be valuable to a GM.
 
Perhaps I should just be pleased that I started a discussion, and not gripe too much over what everyone else decided the topic of that discussion was.

Whatever, it's 2am. Too tired to bother trying to drag the conversation back to "how powerful are Seconds Circles (intended to be)".
 
Revlid said:
Perhaps I should just be pleased that I started a discussion, and not gripe too much over what everyone else decided the topic of that discussion was.

Whatever, it's 2am. Too tired to bother trying to drag the conversation back to "how powerful are Seconds Circles (intended to be)".
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Sorry Revlid, I dragged the conversion this direction.

I blame exam stress, I shouldn't have gotten so heated.
 
Revlid said:
Perhaps I should just be pleased that I started a discussion, and not gripe too much over what everyone else decided the topic of that discussion was.

Whatever, it's 2am. Too tired to bother trying to drag the conversation back to "how powerful are Seconds Circles (intended to be)".
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When assessing the power of the Second Circles in 3e, it probably helps to remember that cheap and easy access to perfect defenses and excellency extenders of any sort is no longer a thing.

So yes, the 2CDs may have much more limited dice pool caps, but they also have nice bases and don't have to run themselves dry butting up against a wall of perfects and I(A)M. So...first calibrate your sensors for the lack of those things, then reassess?
 
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Revlid said:
Perhaps I should just be pleased that I started a discussion, and not gripe too much over what everyone else decided the topic of that discussion was.

Whatever, it's 2am. Too tired to bother trying to drag the conversation back to "how powerful are Seconds Circles (intended to be)".
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I don't know about Mara, or Sigereth. But I do know about Octavian.

I was in a game where I played an Awareness/Single Point Dawn. I was the heaviest hitter in the circle - we ran duels between our characters and I came out on top. I even OHKO'd our resident Supernal Melee master.

For fun, we decided to test my Dawn against Octavian. He utterly crushed me, it was pathetic. Dude's a monster.
 
Revlid said:
I feel like I'm overlooking a sidebar telling me that all spirits have innate dice-adders or something.
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As a category, spirits actually don't have innate dice-adders. The more powerful spirits have personalized dice-adders with limits as befits their nature. Ahlat can add dice in combat, Mara in seduction, etc. The broad-reaching superhuman competence of excellencies, however, appears to be limited to the Exalted.

Well, the Exalted and Octavian, apparently:
Infernal Might Unleashed (2m+; Reflexive; Instant; Essence 4): Octavian may add up to three successes to any roll at a cost of two motes per success. If he is either upholding an Intimacy, spending Willpower to add a success to the roll, or paying for a Charm that enhances it, he may instead purchase up to five successes.
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He must have stolen the excellence of that Solar he killed...
 
Kuciwalker said:
At this point if you are defining rules for Excellency (Seduction) then... how much wordcount are you actually saving? You aren't going to be writing that many creatures with it, I think. So, like, yay, I guess?

This just seems like a totally out-of-proportion reaction to what's at most a tiny sin of writing a one-sentence math-booster with clear, straightforward mechanics.
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What I was thinking is that you define rules for Excellency (Purview) in general, not Excellency (Seduction) in particular. You give a guideline for whether it covers just [Purview] rolls or also other arguably related rolls, address what other problems might need clarification, illustrate with examples as needed, and assuming you didn't fuck it up you should be able to replace the one-sentence math-boosters with couple-word math-boosters for every god, demon, and elemental published for the rest of the line. Use it for Exigents, with changes to dice caps if necessary, and you can trim down there, too. May or may not save you wordcount on the corebook specifically, but should certainly help with future books.
 
This is probably going to be something of a controversial opinion, but here is the thing about Excellencies and other general "Math" mechanics: They aren't meaningful powers, by the means Exalted defines itself. An additional die is a tick up on a percentage point, an automatic success on a roll is a slight bump on the minimum threshold to pass. But the thing is, "can do things they intended to do a good portion of the time" is not an Exalted-scaled superpower, its something Mortals have to be concerned for, as they have smaller single-digit pools to worry about.

This is what people mean when they say Excellencies are "boring," because placing the focus of "character power" on successfully clearing the roll to make your effect happen, rather than the internal intricacies of that effect and its outcomes, is equal parts randomizer gambling and RPG legacy code for the power-level and narratives Exalted is trying to enforce. Making "adjust your chance to Do Anything" powers into something which must be purchased with character resources and are split among several exceedingly niche areas simply to bump a 84% chance to avoid the game locking you out of influencing anything into a 90% is not a meaningful gameplay feature here, its playing X-Com with rookies dressed up as supposed demigods.

Hashing on about how many dice whoever gains in what area during what time of the year, in light of the fact not having a set level of dice simply defaults to "Inactive Participant" in the scene at certain thresholds, is all about as worthwhile as arguing about the color of a missing roadsign.
 
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Dif said:
This is probably going to be something of a controversial opinion, but here is the thing about Excellencies and other general "Math" mechanics: They aren't meaningful powers, by the means Exalted defines itself. An additional die is a tick up on a percentage point, an automatic success on a roll is a slight bump on the minimum threshold to pass. But the thing is, "can do things they intended to do a good portion of the time" is not an Exalted-scaled superpower, its something Mortals have to be concerned for, as they have smaller single-digit pools to worry about.

This is what people mean when they say Excellencies are "boring," because placing the focus of "character power" on successfully clearing the roll to make your effect happen, rather than the internal intricacies of that effect and its outcomes, is equal parts randomizer gambling and RPG legacy code for the power-level and narratives Exalted is trying to enforce. Making "adjust your chance to Do Anything" powers into something which must be purchased with character resources and are split among several exceedingly niche areas simply to bump a 84% chance to avoid the game locking you out of influencing anything into a 90% is not a meaningful gameplay feature here, its playing X-Com with rookies dressed up as supposed demigods.

Hashing on about how many dice whoever gains in what area during what time of the year, in light of the fact not having a set level of dice simply defaults to "Inactive Participant" in the scene at certain thresholds, is all about as worthwhile as arguing about the color of a missing roadsign.
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So you're saying that dice-adders... what, shouldn't exist? I disagree. A lot of times, all you need is to be ridiculously amazing at what you do. And not letting exalts be ridiculously amazing at what they do leaves an odd gap between "very skilled" and "using actual super powers" - when you're either rolling a mortal-ish diepool or casting a spell, it's a lot harder to sell the spells as an expression of your peerless skill.

Or if you're just saying that you shouldn't have to buy your excellencies, well, that's exactly what they did.
 
Vanigo said:
So you're saying that dice-adders... what, shouldn't exist? I disagree. A lot of times, all you need is to be ridiculously amazing at what you do. And not letting exalts be ridiculously amazing at what they do leaves an odd gap between "very skilled" and "using actual super powers" - when you're either rolling a mortal-ish diepool or casting a spell, it's a lot harder to sell the spells as an expression of your peerless skill.

Or if you're just saying that you shouldn't have to buy your excellencies, well, that's exactly what they did.
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What I am saying is that the only thing you gain by having 15 dice rather than 12 is an 87% to exceed Difficulty 5 rather than a 72%, and the difference between having 17 post-roll successes rather than 18 is a baked in non-issue for many huge chunks of the system which only care about passing the roll at all, rather than the degrees therein. Having your most powerful ability still subject to a random Yes/No result is not enabling "ridiculously amazing" displays of skill, it is a form of binary action resolution with a resource tax attached to it so you can tilt it further towards Yes I Do Something. Ridiculously amazing is what happens after an action works, because you can actually influence the scene now with the effects caused by that action. Making the roll at all says nothing here, no matter what size your pool is or how many numbers are given a reroll attempt.

Math powers are the game's way of telling you a 53% chance against Difficulty 5 to Do Nothing despite having invested into 10 dice in your pool is a reasonable expectation for a demigod. Actions, charms and other forms of magic are where the Actually amazing things happen, because those actively involve choices being made beyond "I spend limited resources to perhaps do what I intended," and not reacted too.

That is the baseline assumption which Must be addressed before trying to dictate the usefulness, application, or breadth of die-tricks for a game like Exalted.
 
Revlid said:
So, question that came up while writing Smaradugro - am I missing something, or did Second Circle Demons get much weaker in Third Edition?

I'm looking at the demon section of the Ex3 core and seeing that the sample Second Circle Demons all have dice pools of around 10-14 dice in their area of specialty. Sigereth has 14 in gaming, Mara has 12 in sorcery, Alveua has 12 in crafting hellish wonders, Octavian has 12-14 in toughness and strength, and so on. These seem pretty much like the dice pools I'd have expected from Second Circle Demons in previous editions.

The issue is, those demons had Excellencies, and these don't seem to.

Checking one of the books I actually have on me at the moment, for example, Gebre is a Second Circle Demon who specializes in astrology, and has a total dice pool of 14 for astrology-based actions... but he also has a First Occult Excellency, allowing him to add seven dice to these rolls. He has an effective Astrology Pool of 21. Octavian's War pool is 9 rather than 7 in 2e, but he also has a First War Excellency, bumping him to 18 when he needs it.

Now, I guess this is a clear return to First Edition, where Second Circle Demons didn't have Excellencies. In fact, they were more barebones overall. Back then, Alveua just had a Craft pool of 13, an undetailed magic hammer, and Creation of Perfection - and she was damned grateful even for that!

As I understand it, though, no-one else had Excellencies back then either. Solars had to delve into countless different dice-adders and so on in order to boost their base pools past that of a heroic mortal, which is why 2e standardized it into preset Excellencies. Ex3 has returned the different dice adders (in the form of X-again, re-rolls, lowered target numbers, etc), and kept the Excellencies, but removed them from Second Circle Demons? Is that correct? Are Second Circles just deliberately less powerful in this edition, or am I missing something?

It just seems really odd that Mara, the dark seductress of Hell, has a social influence dice pool of 10, which a dedicated Solar can more than double at chargen. Hell, it can be bettered by the sample Exigent of a City-Father in the core, and she's not even specialized in that direction. Certainly, Mara has special powers to boost the effectiveness of her pool, but so can the other two. I feel like I'm overlooking a sidebar telling me that all spirits have innate dice-adders or something.
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Spirits are less standardized this time around. I think that's mostly a good thing, but it does lead to some weird oversights. So I don't think Second Circles are weaker overall, but I do think some of the sample ones are missing Charms that they really should have.

Octavian has a universal excellency with a cap of 3-5 successes. Sigereth has no excellency at all. So while in theory Sigereth is a brilliant gamer and Octavian isn't at all, in a challenge between the two I'd bet on Octavian.

Shyft said:
Wow, Mara's powers are... boring. Like, they're putting me to sleep.
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She's got interesting Charms too.

Siphon Soul (10m, 4i; Simple; Instant; Decisive-only; Essence
5): Mara draws forth a mortal's soul with her kiss. She may
steal the soul of a sleeping character or anyone who willingly kisses her, or as a decisive gambit against an enemy in
a grapple she controls, expending all rounds of control and
adding them as bonus dice to her Initiative roll against a difficulty equal to that character's Resolve. A siphoned soul
emerges in the form of a tiny creature that Mara swallows
and can bring forth intact, either to nourish another with it
using her Soul Feeding Charm or to return it to its original
body, which remains alive but inanimate until it dies of deprivation. She may also devour souls to gain sorcerous motes
from them, as per her shaping rituals. Once per scene.

...

Soul Feeding (10m, 2wp; Simple; One month; Essence 5):
Over a period of weeks, Mara nourishes a mortal with fragments of stolen souls. This grants the recipient improved
traits as a training effect, depending on their existing level
of competence. A peasant boy taken as a lover might gain
dots of Attributes and Abilities; a mortal sorcerer who binds
Mara for this service might learn new spells or gain dark
powers as supernatural Merits. The recipient also gains a
Major Principle of "I take pleasure in death and suffering."
Gathering souls and feeding them to the recipient occupies
her for approximately eight hours per day, and she may
only use this Charm on one recipient at a time.
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So, having gotten my TOME OF LARGE HUGENESS in the mail today, I've spent some time looking into things, and the Charms section isn't any less daunting in my hands than it was on the PDF. So that's a concern.

But ignoring that for a moment, I've noticed that the term "dice trick" gets thrown around a lot, and I'm not sure what that term means? What does a dice trick consist of?
 
Dark Abstraction said:
So, having gotten my TOME OF LARGE HUGENESS in the mail today, I've spent some time looking into things, and the Charms section isn't any less daunting in my hands than it was on the PDF. So that's a concern.

But ignoring that for a moment, I've noticed that the term "dice trick" gets thrown around a lot, and I'm not sure what that term means? What does a dice trick consist of?
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Basically, anything unusual with the dice rolling process- rerolling certain numbers, doubling others, removing successes from your opponent's roll if they rolled 1s, etc. The term is usually used negatively by people who don't like the busywork and complexity of using several of these at once.
 
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