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General Exalted Thread

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Kuciwalker said:
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...
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I think, in some ways, you're coming at this problem backwards? The probability curve is pretty much baked into the system, and none of the things your describing will really help mortals, who are the only folk that kind of stuff is realistically going to matter for. Plus, your dice pool is supposed to represent your applied competencies to a given problem: you don't (and realistically can't, outside of a videogame or substantial quantity of systems complexity) give both modular and granular likelihoods of success based on various levels of expertise.
Kuciwalker said:
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.
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This is only true given a number of somewhat related systems assumptions that don't necessarily need to be the case. Exalted could tie more core mechanics to Essence rating, for example, with other stats/Charms adding marginal advantages or allowing more interesting applications of existing things. You can say that particular abilities that should be easier to land get an automatic accuracy bonus. To draw a comparison to Godbound once again, you can have a system that still has significant degrees of customization for combat and noncombat while still making everyone relevant, able to do interesting things in battle, and having some abilities be easier to land than others.
 
Vanigo said:
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.
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At 13 dice you're hitting 5 successes 80% of the time, and jumps to 90% of the time if you stunt and have a basic tool bonus. That sort of batman super awesome is pretty much baked into the system at pre-Exalt levels, especially when you consider willpower expenditure and virtue channeling.
 
Crawling Chaos said:
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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You watched Fury Road and you didn't think of Cecelyne, The Endless Desert? Immortan Joe is so Slayer/Malefactor it hurts.
 
DayDreamer said:
I think, in some ways, you're coming at this problem backwards? The probability curve is pretty much baked into the system, and none of the things your describing will really help mortals, who are the only folk that kind of stuff is realistically going to matter for. Plus, your dice pool is supposed to represent your applied competencies to a given problem: you don't (and realistically can't, outside of a videogame or substantial quantity of systems complexity) give both modular and granular likelihoods of success based on various levels of expertise.
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Which is why in my first post explaining the topic I said that the problem was "ultimately [a] symptom of the fact that Exalted uses the exact same resolution mechanism with exactly the same parameters for every single task". Yes, it is baked into the dice curves. Which is part of why so much of the action happens in places where the dice curves don't matter anymore - charms for abilities with maximized pools - and not in the gap between 4 and 8 dice.

And, yeah, there are basic limits on what you can feasibly do in a game. But you are still going to have issues when you are using the same curves for actions that resolve with one roll representing a week of effort (e.g. crafting) as for actions that involve ten rolls representing about a minute (combat). In order to make combat a fun game you can't actually have one PC with a combat pool of 6 and another with a combat pool of 11, the person with 6 dice will not have any fun.

This is only true given a number of somewhat related systems assumptions that don't necessarily need to be the case. Exalted could tie more core mechanics to Essence rating, for example, with other stats/Charms adding marginal advantages or allowing more interesting applications of existing things. You can say that particular abilities that should be easier to land get an automatic accuracy bonus. To draw a comparison to Godbound once again, you can have a system that still has significant degrees of customization for combat and noncombat while still making everyone relevant, able to do interesting things in battle, and having some abilities be easier to land than others.
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Tying things more to Essence rating is terrible, because "I have higher Essence then you, therefore I Win" is evil and rightly died in a fire.

"Stats/charms adding marginal advantages" is exactly what the little, weak math-boosters do.

And in comparison to Godbound: Godbound uses a d20 system (which already produces flatter odds than Storyteller) and follows that up by ensuring basically every PC will have about the same attack bonus and about the same AC. These will vary according to Str/Dex, and both are super duper easy to get up to 16 or 18 (a difference of +1 to-hit and AC) for any character, and characters can often get the ability to base attacks off of a different stat. Many many words have some kind of "your base AC is automatically 3" Gift. It's clearly intended that characters that make even the most minimal investment in combat will all have basically the same odds of hitting and basically the same odds of dodging any particular attack.

In practice what you see with Godbound is that a character that invests just one Gift into combat (for base AC=3) will have a to-hit within 1-2 of a combat-optimized character and an AC within 3. These are 5-10% and 15%, respectively. Exalted admits far greater disparities.
 
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Crawling Chaos said:
Hmm, how would a more Mad Max Creation work?
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Another possibility again, set it in the world-corpse of the Neverborn who was once Ramethus, who in life reshaped his entire being around the truths that war is everything, might makes right, and the strong get to rule over the weak in preparation for the Aftershock war, and whose death at the hands of the Exalted if anything only vindicated him.

Possibly it takes place in a rare pocket of moderate stability secluded in the labyrinth, consisting of corpse-filled bogs, bombed-out cities, and wastelands of ash infested with feral Zombies and Fume-Wights that slipped the leash when a Necromancer tried to bind them to seep into the trenches of his opponents to choke them.

Viable factions include the descendants of a Lost Shogunate Legion, who've grown militarised and utilitarian to an almost barbaric extent;
The demented engineer-sage ghosts whose main stronghold lies where the laboratory complexes of Abhorrence of Life bleed into the wastes, who live for the joy of destruction and constantly try to top each other in building the biggest baddest and spikiest warachines possible;
The murderously insane legion of warghosts and spectres and labyrinth-things shaped by violence, who are loosely united under the skull standart of a great bestial Hekatonkhire embodiment of war;
That one Lunar who keeps messing with things for reasons unknown by anyone but himself, wether for shits and giggles or protect her own hidden tribe;
And the scattered bands of ghosts and ghouls that were somehow unlucky enough to get stuck in this place and try to somehow avoid becoming a slave/trophy/raw material for anyone else.
 
Kuciwalker said:
And, yeah, there are basic limits on what you can feasibly do in a game. But you are still going to have issues when you are using the same curves for actions that resolve with one roll representing a week of effort (e.g. crafting) as for actions that involve ten rolls representing about a minute (combat). In order to make combat a fun game you can't actually have one PC with a combat pool of 6 and another with a combat pool of 11, the person with 6 dice will not have any fun.
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Or you can make there be multiple different "combat pools", such that everyone is capable of contributing in interesting, distinct ways? D&D does a good job making there be a number of extremely different ways you can use core stats to be relevant at fighting, despite its many problems. A lot of the problems that you're describing are pretty solvable through stuff like "taking ten" equivilents or just generally solid design.

Kuciwalker said:
Tying things more to Essence rating is terrible, because "I have higher Essence then you, therefore I Win" is evil and rightly died in a fire.

"Stats/charms adding marginal advantages" is exactly what the little, weak math-boosters do.
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Or... like, you could do something similar to Legends of the Wulin, where the advantages are significant of being higher tier are significant but not insurmountable, and the tricks people get access to (especially Solars) are big gap closers. The problem of the weak math-boosters isn't so much that they exist as that there are three types of them (core stats, excellencies, special charms). If there was only one–or even two–math boosters, and they had other interesting effects, there would be no issue.
Kuciwalker said:
In practice what you see with Godbound is that a character that invests just one Gift into combat (for base AC=3) will have a to-hit within 1-2 of a combat-optimized character and an AC within 3. These are 5-10% and 15%, respectively. Exalted admits far greater disparities.
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I honestly think having a high hit chance for everyone in the party is a good idea–it's what tricks you can throw atop of that hit that separate combat spec'd characters from non-combat. Everyone should be capable of hitting 60% of the time, but combat guys should be able to cleave or power attack or have their attacks ignite enemies in divine fire, while the social guy awes people into submission and destroys the enemy group's coordination.

Especially in a combat engine as complicated as 3Es, and which takes as long as 3Es does to resolve, having such a massive disparity in terms of basic ability to contribute to an encounter seems like a flaw, a trap for people who roll up social characters only to find that 70% of the session time ends up being combat.
 
EarthScorpion said:
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
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Were you trying to ram home how Pokémon elementals really are, here?

Crawling Chaos said:
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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Dynamesmouse said:
You watched Fury Road and you didn't think of Cecelyne, The Endless Desert? Immortan Joe is so Slayer/Malefactor it hurts.
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What they said.
 
@Aleph on Spacebattles there's a bit of confusions over styles, specifically this one:

Crimson Bodhisattva Style (Presence)

There are four truths the Silent Wind teaches her lovers before the end. The first is that freedom lets go. Adherents to this style cultivate enlightened detachment, genuine sincerity and utter lethality. This style is only usually seen among cultists of Adorjan, and a few insane nihilists in the madhouses of Creation who have stumbled upon her twisted enlightenment.

1: +1 to attempts to enlighten those you love to the truths of the world.
2: +1 to locate, track or otherwise find those you love.
3: +1 damage to attacks against attachments held by those you love.
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Does the fact that it's labled as a Presence style mean anything? It doesn't seem to, yet it also feels like it should. Is this legacy code?
 
So I decided to write up a Craft-based Sorcery initiation, inspired partially by @Omicron's Broken Flame writeup and partially by the Kerisgame fusing of Occult and Craft (and Medicine). Gonna admit up front that this is mostly a reskin of Pact with an Ifrit Lord.


Forge-Fire Insight

While working with flame and iron, you have seen some of the true essence of the world. Now, you have gained a measure of the power needed to force raw power into shape between the hammer of your desire and the anvil of your unbending will.

Shaping Rituals:

Whenever the sorcerer takes a shape sorcery action, she may draw an additional (Essence) sorcerous motes from any fire within medium range, coaxing its power into her
spell. This diminishes the flame—a hallway of torches will be extinguished by a single invocation, while a bonfire might die down to small flames after the first, then go out altogether after the second. However, if the sorcerer is fighting near (or in!) a burning building, she has a nearly endless source of sorcerous motes to draw on. She may draw from fire elementals or other spirits of flame as well, draining (Essence) motes from their pools, but only if her shape sorcery roll exceeds their Resolve, and no more than once per scene against any one spirit. When the sorcerer draws Essence to fuel her control spell, flames are not diminished, and spirits do not lose the motes drawn from them.

Fire consumes, but it also transforms. The sorcerer has learned to harness the power given off by the heat and ashes of an object destroyed by flame. Once per day, she may make a craft roll (Intelligence + Craft, difficulty 6 minus the Resources value of any materials offered to the flame) to capture this power. Success grants her sorcerous motes equal to (her Essence + extra successes on the roll). These motes last for the duration of the story, and can be spent towards any spell she casts; however, receiving new motes replaces any granted by past sacrifices. When the sorcerer draws from this pool of sorcerous motes to cast her control spell, she gains an extra (Essence) motes. However, if any are left after the casting, they are wasted and fade away like dying embers.

Initiation reveals to the Sorcerer the essence instilled in items forged by her own hand. When the sorcerer takes the first shape sorcery action to begin casting a spell and stunts it with a description of how she casts the spell with or through an object she has created, she gains (stunt rating + 2) sorcerous motes towards completing this spell. This benefit can only be received once per scene. Stunts to enhance the Sorcerer's control spell do not count against the once per scene limit.

Merits:

Smith's Endurance (Merit ••): As per Unburnt Majesty.

Tools Know Their User (Merit ••): As per The Burning Name, however it may manifest as control over small chunks of metal such as nails or wire as well.

Forge-Master's Command (Merit •••): Both flame and iron answer the call of the master of the forge. Whenever the sorcerer casts a spell that creates or manipulates fire or metal as its primary effect, or summons an elemental related the elements of the forge, its cost is lowered by three sorcerous motes. If it's her control spell, she may also waive a single point of Willpower from its cost once per day.
 
Hey could you boil water using GSNF (Without the enhancements) to get clean water?

If so, What would happen if you boiled water after learning the Green Sun Wasting effect? Cause anyone to drink it to Green Sun Wasting?
 
C.o.S.a.R said:
@Aleph on Spacebattles there's a bit of confusions over styles, specifically this one:

Does the fact that it's labled as a Presence style mean anything? It doesn't seem to, yet it also feels like it should. Is this legacy code?
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Some Styles are easy to pigeonhole into an Ability. Some aren't. This is one of the ones that isn't. I don't recall the exact logic for putting it down as Presence - possibly that it was fundamentally about spreading Adorjan's philosophy rather than murderin' dudes.
 
Matthew G said:
Hey could you boil water using GSNF (Without the enhancements) to get clean water?
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I've seen people use it like regular fire, but personally I'd say no. Malfeas' fires destroy things, not warm them. Pre-primordial war Ligier was said to nourish Creation along with the sun, but now he's toxic and hateful. I like to think of GSNF as a disintegrating or annihilating fire, burning cold and providing nothing of use. For support, the "inflict sickness" charm is called cold-fire desolation brand.

So IMO if you tried to boil water with it, you'd just destroy the water, the pot and the fuel.
 
Matthew G said:
Hey could you boil water using GSNF (Without the enhancements) to get clean water?

If so, What would happen if you boiled water after learning the Green Sun Wasting effect? Cause anyone to drink it to Green Sun Wasting?
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Peanuckle said:
I've seen people use it like regular fire, but personally I'd say no. Malfeas' fires destroy things, not warm them. Pre-primordial war Ligier was said to nourish Creation along with the sun, but now he's toxic and hateful. I like to think of GSNF as a disintegrating or annihilating fire, burning cold and providing nothing of use. For support, the "inflict sickness" charm is called cold-fire desolation brand.

So IMO if you tried to boil water with it, you'd just destroy the water, the pot and the fuel.
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I have absolutely no way to know if it would work, but maybe you can use Kimbery's waters/tainted water, and/or other Yozi elements/Tainted elements?

In real life there are poisons that counteract the effects of each other, so it shouldn't be impossible to apply it to essence powered poisons/poisonous elements.
 
Matthew G said:
Hey could you boil water using GSNF (Without the enhancements) to get clean water?

If so, What would happen if you boiled water after learning the Green Sun Wasting effect? Cause anyone to drink it to Green Sun Wasting?
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To this, we look at the text of the Charm in question.

The Infernal's blows spark and seethe with the acid-green
radiance of Malfeas's heart, burning opponents. Green Sun
Nimbus Flare may enhance any physical attack whose target
is (Essence) yards or less away. If the attack inflicts any levels
of damage, this Charm then inflicts two additional levels of
unsoakable lethal damage from fiery tongues of Primordial
Essence erupting from the wound. This damage is applied
after the damage for the wound transmitting it, but still in
Step 10 of attack resolution.
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Firstly, we must technically question what "doing a level of damage" to water is - and whether that concept makes sense. I'm not sure that it does. Like, how does one "damage" water?

But ignoring that for the moment, GSNF is not a charm which burns things - it's a charm which aggravates existing damage by essentially making the wound explode from within. Don't think of it as a fire thing, think of it as a bunker-buster thing.

Certainly, though, if you only have Cold Fire Desolation Brand and do not have Gifts of Invisible Flame, use of GSNF on water will not convey enough of the toxic essence of Malfeas to cause Green Sun Wasting if the water is then consumed. Because if that was the case, you could avoid having to buy Gifts of Invisible Flame.
 
GSNF makes things explode. Given how low the damage is, it doesn't make too large of one, but you might think of it like setting off a cherry bomb inside the thing you hit.
 
Giygas said:
I have absolutely no way to know if it would work, but maybe you can use Kimbery's waters/tainted water, and/or other Yozi elements/Tainted elements?

In real life there are poisons that counteract the effects of each other, so it shouldn't be impossible to apply it to essence powered poisons/poisonous elements.
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Well, Kimbery doesn't actually have water, or at least she didn't originally. Gaia created water, which Kimbery then moved around into great depths. Kimbery is an ocean of poison and acid. The elements of Fire, Water, Earth, Air and Wood are things the Yozis made from chaos, not copied from themselves.

Basically, anything you find in Creation is going to be subtly different from what you find in a Yozi.

Walker of the Yellow Path said:
Well, what if you struck a hunk of wood with a GSNF enhanced attack? Would you light the wood on fire, or would something else happen?
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I'd say that the part of the wood you hit takes the damage and effects of your attack. If you know World-Weathering Incandescence, then you can destroy an entire object by lighting it up with GSNF.
 
In 3E, are Ambushes Withering or Decisive, and if Decisive, how much damage should they be doing?

Say I have Solar Stealth Guy attacking Solar Fighty Guy. Stealth Guy manages to be unaware, and shoots Fighty guy with an Unexpected Arrow. Will Fighty Guy manage to dodge it so that it just clips his face (Successful Withering Attack), or will he get an arrow to the back of the neck and die (successful Decisive Attack).
 
Walker of the Yellow Path said:
In 3E, are Ambushes Withering or Decisive, and if Decisive, how much damage should they be doing?

Say I have Solar Stealth Guy attacking Solar Fighty Guy. Stealth Guy manages to be unaware, and shoots Fighty guy with an Unexpected Arrow. Will Fighty Guy manage to dodge it so that it just clips his face (Successful Withering Attack), or will he get an arrow to the back of the neck and die (successful Decisive Attack).
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They can be either. You roll Join Battle before you attack, so if you make a Decisive that's your raw damage.
 
They can be either.
Ambush-attacks treat the targets defense as 0, so there's no chance of dodging. Though note that this is only if your opponent is completely unaware of you, so it can't be done by re-establishing stealth in combat.

Plus, look at the damage the decisive attack would do.
Even with maximized Join Battle (say, 22 dice) you'll have a starting Initiative of 14. Without something to add to decisive damage, that's not on average enough to kill someone (since 10s aren't doubled on decisive damage rolls), and with Ox-Body Technique the target is likely to survive (if heavily wounded).
 
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