General Exalted Thread

[Sucal]

Mortals have a right to have peerless skill as well, you know?.

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They have a right to have peerless skill, but that doesn't mean they have a right to have inhuman/super human skill.

Mortals with 13 dice in their chosen field truly are the greatest of their kind in their chosen arts, and the type of partner/sage that an Exalt might seek out for training or to hire them for a task they themselves cannot do (or simply to offer them a job as their second in command).

 

[Kuciwalker]

Yes, it does, because those circumstances ARE your parameters. Let me break this down for you:

Lets imagine a spitball-system scenario where you want to make a surgery roll on an internal organ (call it Difficulty 3), but you lack proper tools (-2 External for this example), are operating in a dirty field (-1 External), and are trying not to kill this wounded man (need 4 or higher threshold successes to avoid Health level loss from internal bleeding, an Astonishing feat, by 2e post-successes rules). Now, assuming that Medicine worked like this, what can we draw from this?

That a surgeon without access to sanitary conditions and a doctors kit will always be operating at a minimum of Difficulty 4 (Diff 1 with a -3, or needing 8 dice for a coin-flip's chance), and 7 for internal mucking-about before other factors come in, requiring a pool of 14 dice to make his 50/50 chances, and 21 if he wants a more comfortable 90ish. That's a System Baseline created from an action. Which jumps up to Difficulty 11 to avoid blood loss, or 22 and 33 dice respectively, if you're not cutting willy-nilly.

Yes, Charms can offset or nullify these things, and whichever Charm creates tools or offsets the penalty for lacking them will be worth roughly 4-6 dice from an Excellency when you get down to it. But when you write a system, you must always assume an unprepared and unequipped character in the attempt, or else your baseline is a Shitty one which requires characters to be masters in their field with all the trimmings and trappings right out from Chargen to accomplish basic gameplay tasks.

THAT is how you work this kind of system, on the action-and-context level, not by using "how many charms have you purchased" as a measurement. Those Medicine Charms are a moving goalpost and not a coherent whole unless you have All of them to work from initially, which flies entirely in the face of having them be individual-purchase options anyway, while an action must have all its conditions laid out beforehand so that players can engage with it meaningfully. Judging by the way Ex3 loves its Charms, there will Always be more of them to buy piecemeal, so that goalpost doesn't seem to have a capacity for stopping anytime soon either, no matter how "locked" you assume future books will keep it or its dice cap, sight-unseen.

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No, this doesn't work.

Again, the equations are:

Pr[1 die rolls D+ sux] = p1
Pr[2 dice roll D+ sux] = p2
...
Pr[11 dice roll D+ sux] = p11

You have only picked one D. In your example 4.

That D determines the probability that someone with 1 die will succeed.
That D determines the probability that someone with 2 dice will succeed.
That D determines the probability that someone with 3 dice will succeed.
And so on.

You don't get to pick those probabilities independently. They are all codetermined, by the probability curve implied by the Storyteller dice system.

You have not added a variable. You are still trying to solve a system with far more equations than variables.

 

[DayDreamer]

No, this doesn't work.

Again, the equations are:

Pr[1 die rolls D+ sux] = p1
Pr[2 dice roll D+ sux] = p2
...
Pr[11 dice roll D+ sux] = p11

You have only picked one D. In your example 4.

That D determines the probability that someone with 1 die will succeed.
That D determines the probability that someone with 2 dice will succeed.
That D determines the probability that someone with 3 dice will succeed.
And so on.

You don't get to pick those probabilities independently. They are all codetermined, by the probability curve implied by the Storyteller dice system.

You have not added a variable. You are still trying to solve a system with far more equations than variables.

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The point Dif's trying to make, as I understand it, is that multiple different factors go into calculating the difficulty, and charms can as easily interact with those as it can with rolling more dice. So magically sterilizing a surgery doesn't make you roll more dice, but it does make it an easier overall roll.

Which fits into the larger point that, if your goal is to balance things to ensure that people can generate certain numbers of successes at certain costs while preserving the "bonus dice from charms" thing, there are ways to do it that don't involve dice tricks. That said, since combat is the main condition where these things show up, it would require a lot more modifiers applied to the core combat engine to make this work, which I'm not a particularly big fan of.

 

[azoicennead]

No, this doesn't work.

Again, the equations are:

Pr[1 die rolls D+ sux] = p1
Pr[2 dice roll D+ sux] = p2
...
Pr[11 dice roll D+ sux] = p11

You have only picked one D. In your example 4.

That D determines the probability that someone with 1 die will succeed.
That D determines the probability that someone with 2 dice will succeed.
That D determines the probability that someone with 3 dice will succeed.
And so on.

You don't get to pick those probabilities independently. They are all codetermined, by the probability curve implied by the Storyteller dice system.

You have not added a variable. You are still trying to solve a system with far more equations than variables.

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Okay, now how do those equations account for rerolls/roll alterations based on an opposing roll?

 

[Dif]

The point Dif's trying to make, as I understand it, is that multiple different factors go into calculating the difficulty, and charms can as easily interact with those as it can with rolling more dice. So magically sterilizing a surgery doesn't make you roll more dice, but it does make it an easier overall roll.

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This is exactly what I am saying, yes. Instead of trying to make Medicine Charms give 28 successes while Archery gives a maximum of 15 as imposed by the same set of formulas, you create a baseline system where attempting certain Ability actions have a "Competency debt" in contextual penalties which eat that difference in dice/successes from character pools so they each "average out."

This is Much more mathematically sane and much more easy to calculate than placing the bulk of the basic system assumptions back into the infinitely-growing kudzu tangle that is Charm trees. Which was one of the major defining issues with 2e's handling of just about everything Charm-related after a while, that the "exception-based system" of powers were Informing the lack of certain rules themselves more often than not.

And forcing characters to buy basic gameplay functions as an XP tax, in such a way that some splats may simply have access to flatly Better "Charm subsystems" than other splats without any kind of consistency between them, as the actions themselves are routinely undefined, is just bullshit and slapdash design.

EDIT:

That said, since combat is the main condition where these things show up, it would require a lot more modifiers applied to the core combat engine to make this work, which I'm not a particularly big fan of.

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Also for the record, this series of modifiers largely already exists to some extent, its just that the sources are more veiled than you would think. Lacking a +2 Accuracy bonus on a weapon is often the same thing as having a persistent -2 in your base combat roll, in many situations.

Anything which grants a flat bonus in a single niche can be more accurately seen as giving that instead as a penalty to everyone else who Lacks that particular thing for that niche.

 

[SerGregness]

Alright everyone, so that Skype game I've mentioned a few times has finally gotten off the ground! I'm not the most experienced GM and this is my first time as GM for Exalted, specifically, but rather than questions with the setting or system itself the thing I'm most wanting help with is how to best help my players adjust to playing a game like this. Only one of my players has any experience with Storyteller, and that's mostly with oVampires. The rest come from fairly straightforward D&D backgrounds (one of my players wrote down "fighter" as his concept, for example).

I've already told them that the first few sessions will be very tutorial-esque (session 1 covered topics like 'this is how you construct a dice pool'), and I've got something of a plot in mind because I'm assuming they'll need at least some rails at first, but how do I hammer home stuff like 'how to stunt effectively', 'don't just order mead at the teahouse, you're not in the Forgotten Realms', and 'no, it's not necessary to track every single silver piece you come across'?

 

[DayDreamer]

Alright everyone, so that Skype game I've mentioned a few times has finally gotten off the ground! I'm not the most experienced GM and this is my first time as GM for Exalted, specifically, but rather than questions with the setting or system itself the thing I'm most wanting help with is how to best help my players adjust to playing a game like this. Only one of my players has any experience with Storyteller, and that's mostly with oVampires. The rest come from fairly straightforward D&D backgrounds (one of my players wrote down "fighter" as his concept, for example). I've already told them that the first few sessions will be very tutorial-esque (session 1 covered topics like 'this is how you construct a dice pool'), and I've got something of a plot in mind because I'm assuming they'll need at least some rails at first, but how do I hammer home stuff like 'how to stunt effectively', 'don't just order mead at the teahouse, you're not in the Forgotten Realms', and 'no, it's not necessary to track every single silver piece you come across'?

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Have you ever played the first God of War? The tutorial sequence involves Kratos killing the shit out of a kraken. Its awesome. My advice would be to do something similar: you may just be teaching them how to construct a dice pool, but have it be an in awesome context. Start off with the plot, or whatever key bits need to be laid down before the plot can happen.

So, what I would recommend:
The PCs all know each other. They've been Exalted for a bit, found each other, and are all cool with that. They already have some kind of goal they've agreed upon (your main plot, perhaps). The session starts with a D&D classic: they've settled down into an inn for the night.

Then the inn is attacked by a spirit (or elemental or fae or whatever) riding on the back of a motherfucking dinosaur that breaths flaming acid. It's totally killing the shit out of everyone, and the PCs need to step up to the plate. The first few bits are context establishing, individual rolls to get out of the now-totally-shit inn and save folks, as well as try to figure out what is going on. Encourage them to describe stuff, and then give them bonus dice for doing so–don't explain the rules for stunting just yet, that'll just slow it down. Do some kind of abridged version of the combat engine, however you want to simplify it, or such.

Then, describe the aftermath: the town is totally screwed, they're all glowing with magic, and the survivors are bending down to worship them. That should make it pretty clear they aren't playing D&D anymore.

 

[Imrix]

how do I hammer home stuff like 'how to stunt effectively'

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2e or 3e? Because I find 2e's rules much, much better at this.

 

[SerGregness]

2e or 3e? Because I find 2e's rules much, much better at this.

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3e, sorry. Didn't think it mattered for that question.

 

[Imrix]

3e, sorry. Didn't think it mattered for that question.

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Okay, then my advice to you is to go back to the 2e stunt rules, because they do differ significantly and, while the 2e stunt rules are much more poorly laid out, in my opinion the actual mechanics of them are frankly much better and more newbie-friendly.

The 3e stunt rules give excellent examples, but in terms of adjudicating what is a stunt and what is a given level of a stunt, they're pretty much just 1-dot: cool, 2-dot: cooler, 3-dot: coolest. That's... Really hard for a new player to get their head around; people's idea of what's cool is subjective, and trying for it is one of the easiest ways to make something awkward and lame.

By contrast, 2e's stunt rules are very clear and objective, at least for the first couple of levels. Are you describing your action with more detail than just "I attack them" or "I try to jump the gap"? 1-dot stunt. Are you incorporating the environment into your description somehow, like throwing sand in your opponents eyes or taking a runners crouch and digging furrows into the earth with your toes? 2-dot stunt.

This gives players some clear, objective hoops to shoot for with their stunts, which makes them excellent for easing new players into the habit of stunting their actions.

(If I were writing 3e stunt rules, I'd probably go so far as to make 3-dot stunts objective as well somehow. Perhaps something that resonates with a Major or Defining Intimacy?)

2e also has the mechanical idea of dramatic editing, which I think is also worth re-introducing. It means any time a player gets an idea like "I can escape by sliding down a tapestry!" they explicitly don't have to check if there are any tapestries, they can just invent one. This takes work off the ST's shoulders, and it also aids in player confidence by allowing them to take control of a piece of the story.

 

[SerGregness]

2e also has the mechanical idea of dramatic editing, which is also worth introducing. It means any time a player gets an idea like "I can escape by sliding down a tapestry!" they explicitly don't have to check if there are any tapestries, they can just invent one. This takes work off the ST's shoulders, and it also aids in player confidence by allowing them to take control of a piece of the story.

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But how do I get them to try for narrative editing, is the crux of my question, I think. It's only been one session so far, but I can already tell I'm going to have to be on the cases of one or two of them to get them to remember to stunt at all. I trust they'll get the hang of it eventually, but I was wondering if there was wisdom passed on through the ages I could use to make it easier on them.

 

[Imrix]

But how do I get them to try for narrative editing, is the crux of my question, I think. It's only been one session so far, but I can already tell I'm going to have to be on the cases of one or two of them to get them to remember to stunt at all. I trust they'll get the hang of it eventually, but I was wondering if there was wisdom passed on through the ages I could use to make it easier on them.

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I think you're probably going to have to get the ball rolling yourself, for that.

One technique I saw another ST describe was they would start off being extremely generous with stunt rewards, handing out at least a 1-dot for anything beyond the absolute bare minimum. Stuff that maybe doesn't even qualify by a strict reading of the rules. They'd ease back on it and start enforcing the rules proper once players got into the swing of it, and maybe be a bit more stringent with more experienced players, since they can do better.

So, don't look for what qualifies as a stunt, to begin with. Look for excuses to hand out stunt rewards, and be explicit that they are stunt rewards that X player got for Y thing. This serves two purposes; one, it encourages players by making stunting seem easy, and two, it provides frequent reminders at the table that Stunts Are A Thing, You Can Get More Dice For Them.

 

[Shyft]

But how do I get them to try for narrative editing, is the crux of my question, I think. It's only been one session so far, but I can already tell I'm going to have to be on the cases of one or two of them to get them to remember to stunt at all. I trust they'll get the hang of it eventually, but I was wondering if there was wisdom passed on through the ages I could use to make it easier on them.

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Step 1. Have your NPCs stunt
Step 2. Explain your NPCs stunting and what that does.
Step 3. Reward your PCs for stunting off each other/the NPCs.

Since profit is a tired meme, I'll break it off here. That being said, I'm going to compose a mini-essay to help you!

 

[Imrix]

An idea that pops into my head is you might try running your players through a sample scene using bare-bones characters that don't have any stats. Use the normal mechanics, but no Charms or traits so everybody has dicepools of 0, and the only way to do anything is to stunt some dice/successes into your pool.

 

[Dif]

But how do I get them to try for narrative editing, is the crux of my question, I think. It's only been one session so far, but I can already tell I'm going to have to be on the cases of one or two of them to get them to remember to stunt at all. I trust they'll get the hang of it eventually, but I was wondering if there was wisdom passed on through the ages I could use to make it easier on them.

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The easiest way here is by prompting them with casual "who/what/when/where/why" leading questions about the thing they are doing, because most players Do have an image in mind of what they want to accomplish, but are parsing it through stated intentions rather than visuals. When a player says "I attack the guy," you say "Okay cool, what does it look like?" and when they answer with Anything more elaborate than that, give them the stunt. Other good questions would be, "Who else is involved?" "How are you getting over (Obstacle)?" etc. But if they can't come up with something, just nod and let them roll normally, because they will start to pick it up as the rest of the group starts doing it. Not everyone needs to get stunting right away, even within the context of a tutorial exactly about stunting.

Encourage them to build off eachother's stunts when they're at a loss for good ideas, so stunting becomes a shared activity rather than a single-player spotlight, and make partial suggestions for possible stunt-routes under the guise of clarifying the situation or the scene. "There's a lot of chairs in here." "Its pretty dark, you're not sure how well they can see you." "The window near you is open." That kind of thing, but don't prod them too hard in any given direction.

Lastly, emphasize the part how stunts are intended to be Entertaining and Brief foremost, and award higher stunts than usual for people going out of their way to make the rest of the table laugh or get into the spirit of things with simple quips and flourishes. Goofiness and hamming it up is a welcome thing for people unprepared for stunts, since for many people it can be nerve-wracking getting put on the spot to be clever on-cue, so establishing a basis of not taking it all super-seriously can help ease players into the whole process, rather than leaving them thinking they have to method-act out every roll they make or else they'll lose out on an important bonus.

 

[Shyft]

Okay! @SerGregness ! So I have video reference and timecodes! This is the Chun-Li vs Vega battle from the 1990s animated Street Fighter film. It's RIDICULOUSLY stunty. I'm not sure if putting it behind a spoiler tag is necessary, but maybe it will help.

Spoiler: The Video itself

Now, here's the critical caveat: Most 'battles' are not set in environments like this- to the detriment of Exalted as a game. You must level up as a player and Storyteller to think of Exotic Places to Do Battle. Not 'Setpieces' per se, but just interesting places.

• 0:48 - The Storyteller asks for a Wits+Awareness roll. Chun-Li's player creates a +2 stunt by invoking the environment (the shaking lampshade).
• 0:50 - Vega, having already established surprise for an ambush, drops from the rafters (+2 stunt on his attack due to environment)
• 0:52 - Chun-Li stunts a dodge by rolling across her bed (+2 stunt for invoking the bed/environment)
• 0:54 - Chun-Li stunts a sweep or similar attack by pulling the sheets off her bed, sending Vega tumbling to the floor (+2 stunt)
• 1:12 - The Storyteller adds the ringing phone to the scene
• 1:19 - Vega earns a +2 stunt for driving Chun-Li through a closed door
• 1:24 - Vega knocks Chun-Li to the floor, and attacks again. Chun-Li stunts a dodge against the second attack, declaring Vega hits a bookshelf and spills the contents all over the floor. (+2 stunt)
• 1:28 - Chun-Li dives away and readies an improvised weapon (the standing lamp ) as a +2 stunt.
  • As far as 2e is concerned, I don't think you're allowed to stunt ready weapon actions to be faster or reflexive, but I personally would allow it.
• 1:37 - after an exchange of blows (possibly represented as a single attack), Vega pins Chun-Li's head to the wall before trying to skewer her. (+2 stunt)
  • It's worth noting that you can totally stunt multiple attacks with a single attack roll, they just won't have mechanical weight like a proper flurry. Nor are you obligated to say every time you lay hands on an opponent, it has to be a clinch. The key is to describe an awesome fight.
• 1:42 - Vega stunts a dodge by flopping back onto the floor like the spanish ninja he is. If his player invoked the floor as part of the description, it would count as a +2 stunt.
• 1:50 - Vega knocks Chun-Li into the end table and knocks the phone off the cradle.
• 2:10 - Vega holds Chun-Li up by her hair, but she stunts her defense by grabbing his wrist as a fulcrum and sweeping his leg. (+2 stunt for invoking the environment, which includes Vega)
• 2:17 - 2:42 - The battle pauses so vega can trash talk. Allowing for these lulls is important I feel, but don't assume that talking is a free action, or that it requires a full action and bogs the scene down. A clever ST could say he's trying to make his opponent roll Valor and panic/run.
• 2:35- 2:43 - Chun-Li psychs herself up for a +2 stunt, or even a +3 stunt. She likely channels Valor to THROW THE COUCH.
• 2:55 - 3:00 - Chun-Li stunts a called shot to Vega's face.
• 3:44 - Vega tries an ambitious leaping attack, but Chun-Li dodges! He then leaps into the rafters (+2 stunt). The rafters are now in play.
  • Strictly speaking, this cannot be mechanically represented in Exalted 2e without Charms, but it's still a good example.
• 3:46 - Chun-Li runs up the wall to attack Vega. She joins him on the rafters. +2 stunt.
• 3:54 - Chun-Li attacks from high ground (the rafters). +2 stunt.
• 3:55 - Vega parries with his feet- because it is so well described, it's a +2 stunt.
  • This is also not something that usually can happen in Exalted. People do not Get or Like the idea of meaningful, tactical Stuff happening during roll resolution. So the action described here, of Vega catching Chun-Li with his feet and kicking her away, that doesn't happen nearly as often as it should/could. Most people think CHARMS are how you do it.
• 3:58 - 4:05 Chun-Li is sent flying, and she catches herself on the Rafters to stay away from Vega.
  • Note how the rafters have been used at least three times, but in different ways. Platform to attack from, means to dodge, etc.
• 4:08 - Chun-Li kicks off the wall to smash Vega. +2 stunt.
• 4:21 - Chun-Li gears up for the final assault. She kicks Vega into the wall, beats him silly, so hard that he goes INTO the wall. Then she winds up and drop-kicks him THROUGH the wall.

And with that the battle concludes.

Now: A crucial mistake people make when stunting (or playing Exalted in general) is trying to homage or adhere to existing media directly. Of trying to make SPECIFIC SCENES happen instead of breaking them down into parts and tools. Please do not take this as a step-by-step 'Awesome Fight Scene' guide.

 

[EarthScorpion]

The Five Sisters and the Mother

A product of early Shogunate geomantic engineering, the Five Sisters and the Mother were built before the long slow decline of the most advanced tools had really begun to tell. As part of the third Fifty Year Plan, this cluster of manses was built over several hundred square kilometres of ocean with the dual purpose of both aiding in sea navigation and extracting power from Creation to fuel the vessels of the South-Western Fleet.

The five lesser manses, known as the Sisters, take the form of lighthouses built on poles of black jadesteel sunk into the seabed, surrounded by a star-shaped artificial island-dock. Each Sister was built to identical specifications, and hence they are wonderful exemplars of early Shogunate architecture, with broad, ornate bases and the classic 'Dragon's Eye' style of essence-light within their pagoda-chambers. At present, the beacons are deactivated, but with the right codes they could shine once more in theory.

However, the individual power of each Sister is lessened by their presence in the geomantic web that feeds the Mother. They are effectively geomantic acupuncture needles in the dragonlines of Creation, re-directing it towards the central manse and so only some power pools around them. It is said that even this is an inefficiency, and in the High First Age great jade towers were built to channel the works of the Solars without sapping them.

The Five Sisters and the Mother have not been maintained since the Great Contagion, and as a result the geomantic web is heavily damaged. One of the Sisters is destroyed, a second has torn loose from the dragonlines and a third has been polluted by the shifting essence flows of the world. The Mother is substantially weakened by this. It would take extensive work from a trained geomancer to restore full functionality to this manse network.

Similar set-ups of five lesser 1-dot elemental manses all of a single element boosting a central manse to a four or five dot manse can be found all over Creation. The fundamental design of these things was well-known to the early Shogunate as they sought to compensate for the lack of Celestial brilliance, though as time passed such workings grew rarer. The considerable amounts of pure jade from the elemental poles that these arrangements required grew prohibitively expensive as the Shogunate destabilised.

The First Sister
Manse 1 (Water 1) - still connected to geomantic hub

The First Sister stands in shallow waters close to the volcanic archipelago of Musraha. On a clear day, it is easily visible from the shore. The tall black tower has been claimed by the local spirit court, and the harbour surrounding the lighthouse is bedecked with shrines, votive offerings and prayer tablets.

The local tide goddess demands the most handsome young men from the local fisher-clans in return for favourable currents, and when she tires of them they make up the priesthood here - at least when she doesn't offer them as sacrifices to her superiors so that they turn a blind eye to her actions here. Because of this, the locals know that when a newborn child washes up in the tides harming them risks their goddess' wrath. Divine blood has entered the tribes and now they grow more aggressive, turning their tidal powers towards the conquest of other island tribes.

The Second Sister
Manse 0 (Depowered) - originally Manse 1 (Water 1), disconnected from geomantic hub

The Second Sister is dead and cold. The geomancy of Creation has warped enough that the demesne underneath the manse withered and died. Now the manse sits inactive, a tower with no mystical power or light. Seabirds have colonised it and the layers of guano are metres thick in places. It is nearly impossible to tell that it was built by human artifice.

To restore her would be a difficult undertaking, for land is far away and most geomancers cannot hold their breath long enough to do the delicate work on the surrounding seabed. Still, the dragonlines have not departed this region entirely. The Second Sister could be restored, if a suitable individual could be found who could work in these conditions. The tribe of orca beastmen may also be a problem in such a work, though they could also be an aid.

The Third Sister
Manse 1 (Wood 1), Demesne 1 (Wood 1) - originally Manse 1 (Water), disconnected from geomantic hub

Choked with sargasso and kelp and coral, the Third Sister was corrupted by the surge that flowed down the dragon lines of Creation when the Pole of Wood reconnected with the Loom of Fate after the end of the Crusade. The resilience of the Shogunate design withstood the shift in its nature with only moderate damage, but the Wood essence channeled through a structure built to channel Water essence has had dramatic effects. Sargasso chokes the seas around the Third Sister for miles around, so thick that fruit trees and grasses carried in bird droppings have colonised it. From an outside point of view, it looks like a sizable flat island, green and lush and verdant, built around a vine-choked spire.

The power pooling here is more than the site was meant to handle, and thus the wood essence bleeds out into the world around it. The wildlife that has made its way to this false island become infected by the nature of wood. Lizards have bulbs growing on their backs, insects lose themselves to parasitic fungi and there are species of birds who have leaves in place of feathers. Several shipwrecks have stranded humans sailors here, and their shambling descendents with bloated fungal blooms in place of heads still reside here with no hope of escape - for the ships that docked put down roots and their masts blossomed.

The Fourth Sister
Manse 1 (Water 1) - still connected to geomantic hub

The Fourth Sister sits in the remnants of the raised uplands of a landmass destroyed in the war between the gods and the primordial titans who built the world. The blasted basalt still contains the half-exposed petrified remnants of the ancient pre-human races who died in this cataclysm. In a feat of irony, the bastard children of the Lintha have claimed this manse, and use it as a dock. Their sleek pirate ships anchor here, far away from shore. The kindly currents make it a rich fishing zone and there is fresh water here.

As a result, the signs of the Lintha are clear here. They have hung their sail-banners from the high places and their castrated slaves live on ramshackle jail-rafts that are anchored on a nearby coral reef. It is a useful place for them to bring stolen ships and slaves, and a source of hearthstones to bribe corrupt gods or offer to their infernal masters, nothing more. They know nothing of the power that this place was meant to channel, for the Lintha make nothing, knowing only how to steal and sail and fight. They are blind to the geomantic artifice in place here.

The Little Sister
Manse 0 (Destroyed) - originally Manse 1 (Water), disconnected from geomantic hub

The Little Sister shattered during the Balorian Crusade. The chaostide swept up the water and the seabed together, bringing them to crash against the jade supports of the then-Fifth Sister. It fell. When the First Empress called down iron and thunder from the heavens, she calcified the entire region. The chaostide formed land around the seed nucleus of the jade tower - which called to other things of that ilk. Around them formed the twisted island of Sorame, that is bigger on the inside than the outside.

Sorame is a madhouse unfit for mortal men. Caves eat men who step into their mouths, while flocks of houses migrate across the landscape, settling in places with scenic views. Things that might once have been creatures of Creation but are now wyld-beasts stalk the land. Fate holds weakly in this place, and what is hard elsewhere is simple here - and vice versa. The sun never shines on this island truly, a dome of fog shielding it from the Sun's hateful glare. A single hole in the top of the shield lets light at midday shine down on the ruins of the Fifth Sister, embedded at the peak of the central mountain - along with several sunk Shogunate warships, the melted-wax corpses of their fully armed Terrestrial captains, and a fortune in jade.

The Mother
Manse 2 (Water 2) - originally Manse 5 (Water 5), only two of five manses connected to it

At the centre of the tattered geomantic grid of the Sisters sits the Mother, resting on the seabed. Should her commander decide, her terrible bulk of jade can rise up upon the currents to breach the surface of the water. Within her, she has the facilities and the tools to maintain and repair Shogunate vessels, though with her geomancy so critically disrupted these facilities are offline. Two great cargo vessels of this lost era still wait within the docks, still manned by the plague-dead corpses of their crew.

Built to harsh Shogunate lines, time has not softened its edges nor has coral colonised the Mother. Within her halls stand the deactivated forms of her automated golem-crew. Only a few can activate with the flow of power reduced as it is, but they are enough to maintain the station and - as protocol demands - raise the facility once every ten years to ensure that all things function as they should.

Even in her lessened state, the Mother would be worth a fortune if she were to be rediscovered. In full functionality, it would be a treasure with few rivals in modern Creation. As a manse, she was built for the efficient production of fuel for naval vessels - and above that, she is full of Shogunate tools which were once commonplace, but which are now rare. Were the Realm to find her, the mightiest forces of the Imperial Navy would be sent to claim such a dock, sparing few expenses for such a wonder. If the Lintha discovered it, the degenerate spawn of Kimbery would eventually ruin it - though before that they might be able to strike a crippling blow to the Southern Fleet.

 

[Roadie]

So, what I would recommend:
The PCs all know each other. They've been Exalted for a bit, found each other, and are all cool with that. They already have some kind of goal they've agreed upon (your main plot, perhaps). The session starts with a D&D classic: they've settled down into an inn for the night.

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Make it a hotel or friendly temple (in a city) or a caravanserai (outside of one) if you really want to emphasize it being "not D&D". "All travelers always stay at pub-style inns" is one those really pernicious D&D-isms.

Another simple thing to do would be to give each character a half-dozen hangers-on who take care of the horses, do the laundry, manage traveling supplies and so on. Then, ask each player where they got their followers and what they did to earn their loyalty and pay their keep.

 

[Chloe Sullivan]

Lizards have bulbs growing on their backs, insects lose themselves to parasitic fungi and there are species of birds who have leaves in place of feathers.

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I see what you did there.

 

[Crawling Chaos]

Hmm, how would a more Mad Max Creation work? I'm thinking that during the Usurpation something happened to the Essence flows leading to a gradual decline of Essence and those who rely on it. Yu-Shan stands empty, Malfeas all but a corpse, and Creation is a wasteland. Those who roam the wastes travel seeking the last few wellsprings of Essence to eke a few more months of survival. Word has spread of Golden Deities and for the first time their is hope in an Age where it had long since died out. Ancient monstrosities stir, woken by the promise of a new dawn and only time will tell if comes to pass.

Overall, much less powerful and travel would play a major factor.

 

[Roadie]

For a Mad Max version of Creation, just set things right after the Balorian Crusade, when the world is still freshly thaumo-nuked by the Realm Defense Grid.

 

[DayDreamer]

Make it a hotel or friendly temple (in a city) or a caravanserai (outside of one) if you really want to emphasize it being "not D&D". "All travelers always stay at pub-style inns" is one those really pernicious D&D-isms.

Another simple thing to do would be to give each character a half-dozen hangers-on who take care of the horses, do the laundry, manage traveling supplies and so on. Then, ask each player where they got their followers and what they did to earn their loyalty and pay their keep.

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That's why you blow it up! Its a great "we aren't in Kansas anymore" moment, especially for a group without much non-D&D experience: it let's you frame the new narrative in an understandable context.

Having minions might work, but it requires that the PCs have already bought into the central conceit already. Also, it can act as an annoying constraint to later narratives, depending on what the end plotline the GM wants to tell is.

 

[Salty]

Hmm, how would a more Mad Max Creation work? I'm thinking that during the Usurpation something happened to the Essence flows leading to a gradual decline of Essence and those who rely on it. Yu-Shan stands empty, Malfeas all but a corpse, and Creation is a wasteland. Those who roam the wastes travel seeking the last few wellsprings of Essence to eke a few more months of survival. Word has spread of Golden Deities and for the first time their is hope in an Age where it had long since died out. Ancient monstrosities stir, woken by the promise of a new dawn and only time will tell if comes to pass.

Overall, much less powerful and travel would play a major factor.

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Mad Max Creation is really much more of a where than a when.

Hell, a Mortal game in the Deep South would be similar enough to what you're describing.

 

[Vanigo]

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.

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A while back, I saw someone say something along the lines of "Batman is peak human, but he's the kind of comic book peak human where anything a world-class expert in his field could do under ideal circumstances once or twice in his career, Batman can reliably pull off whenever he wants". That's a totally legitimate form of "ridiculously awesome". And baked into the concept is the understanding that yes, someone with 13 dice could maybe pull it off - but you can do it casually. Difficulty 5 is hard.

You know how, a few months back, you kept hearing about how Ben Carson became famous for successfully separating a pair of conjoined twins who were joined at the skull? (Well, maybe you didn't, if you weren't following the Republican primary - but if you were it was all over the place.) That's somewhere in the Difficulty 5-7 range. Ben Carson can do it, and Dr. McNinja can do it, but when Ben Carson does it, it's a huge risky procedure requiring world-class facilities and a large team of expert assistants. Dr. McNinja can do it alone, working out of his office, and it'll work basically every time. That's not a small thing.

 

[Kuciwalker]

The point Dif's trying to make, as I understand it, is that multiple different factors go into calculating the difficulty, and charms can as easily interact with those as it can with rolling more dice. So magically sterilizing a surgery doesn't make you roll more dice, but it does make it an easier overall roll.

Which fits into the larger point that, if your goal is to balance things to ensure that people can generate certain numbers of successes at certain costs while preserving the "bonus dice from charms" thing, there are ways to do it that don't involve dice tricks. That said, since combat is the main condition where these things show up, it would require a lot more modifiers applied to the core combat engine to make this work, which I'm not a particularly big fan of.

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This is exactly what I am saying, yes. Instead of trying to make Medicine Charms give 28 successes while Archery gives a maximum of 15 as imposed by the same set of formulas, you create a baseline system where attempting certain Ability actions have a "Competency debt" in contextual penalties which eat that difference in dice/successes from character pools so they each "average out."

This is Much more mathematically sane and much more easy to calculate than placing the bulk of the basic system assumptions back into the infinitely-growing kudzu tangle that is Charm trees. Which was one of the major defining issues with 2e's handling of just about everything Charm-related after a while, that the "exception-based system" of powers were Informing the lack of certain rules themselves more often than not.

And forcing characters to buy basic gameplay functions as an XP tax, in such a way that some splats may simply have access to flatly Better "Charm subsystems" than other splats without any kind of consistency between them, as the actions themselves are routinely undefined, is just bullshit and slapdash design.

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No, this is still not a solution and y'all are still not apprehending the problem with variables & equations.

Look. Let's say you have some kind of task. Under some particular set of conditions, with some particular set of equipment, etc. all these different situational modifiers baked in, you want someone with 10 dice to succeed 75% of the time. So you set the difficulty to 4 (74.96% chance, close enough). And you think someone with 8 dice really ought to succeed two-thirds of the time, so... hrm. Their actual odds are 58.01%, not sure how to change that. Eh, close enough? And someone with 6 dice, you think, should succeed half of the time, so - wait, dammit, at difficulty 4 the chance is only 35.85%! That's not even close! Maybe I'll change the difficulty? But that'll set the 10-dice probability out of whack...

This is what it means, that you have only one variable and many equations, and therefore cannot satisfy them all at once.

Now as I mentioned Exalted actually doesn't solve this, because it can kind of assume that if you are doing something really important that it wants to control mechanically rather than kinda-sorta-fudge-solars-autowin-anyway then you probably have a maximized dice pool. Thus it can control the actual probabilities of an Exalt succeeding at some kind of stupendous superhuman task by modulating the power of the charms.

Sometimes this is by granting new particular abilities (like Judge's Ear Technique) but particularly in situations with opposed rolls, or rolls opposed by a defense, you actually need some math-boosting charms to represent increasing puissance with increasing investment.

In these oppose situations, the actual benefit granted by the math-boosting charms has to calibrated to the ability in questions, and nowhere is this more important than in combat. It's just absolutely critical that even a character with only a small combat investment - maxxed dice pools and a few charms - be able to hit at least 40% of the time and preferably a lot more often. (The designers of D&D 4e found that about a 60% hit rate seemed optimal.) That means that the math-boosting charms (at least, the ones that boost accuracy or parry) need to be pretty restrained.

This is, again, not particularly a defense of dice tricks which I don't actually like, but it is a defense of not standardizing and codifying math-boosting charms the way Excellencies are - because each ability has its own limits on how powerful those charms should be.