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General Exalted Thread

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Aranfan said:
Now that I have Hope's Last Gasp mostly done, I'm starting to wonder how I'd build Invincible Sword Princess in 3rd.

Obviously Melee would be Supernal, but I'm unsure of the attribute spread.
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It's best to start with the basic fundamentals of swording. Just buy the Melee charms. All of them. That should keep you busy until about... uh... essence 5 or so. Then you'll be ready for more advanced techniques like Draft Animal Constitution... ;)

Now that Miracles of the Solar Exalted added another ten Melee charms, you have about fifty to choose from. More than a few are quite specialized, so you're never going to buy them all, but don't forget the all new Invincible Sword Princess: The Charm!
Victorious Wreath (Against the World Stance)
Cost: 6m, 1wp (+1i per round) Mins: Melee 5, Essence 3
Type: Reflexive Keywords: Perilous
Duration: One scene Prerequisite Charms: Fivefold Bulwark Stance, Ready in Eight Directions Stance
The Lawgiver sees every angle for attack and counterattack, her every parry and strike building on one another to make her unassailable. While using this Charm, every time the Exalt successfully parries, she gains a number of motes equal to the difference between her Parry and the attack's successes plus one. These motes can only be used to fuel Melee Charms, and vanish at the end of her next action. Victorious Wreath has a one Initiative per round upkeep, and if the Solar is crashed, the Charm is broken and the full cost must be paid again if she wishes to reinstate it.

A repurchase of this Charm allows an Exalt using Ready in Eight Directions Stance to keep their Initiative from returning to base at the end of the round, so long as they successfully parry every attack launched at them during the round while using Victorious Wreath.

On Victorious Wreath (Against the World Stance)
The backer wanted a Melee Charm for use by his Solar, the Invincible Sword Princess. He wanted Princess to have a Charm that would help her deal with focus fire from a group of opponents, so I came up with an effect that would defray the cost of continual use of Dipping Swallow Defense or Ready in Eight Directions Stance.

I imagine fighting the Invincible Sword Princess to be like trying to fight someone who is wreathed in Essence and steel and able to move faster than light. Thus you have Victorious Wreath, or the more narrative Against the World Stance.
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Warning: extremely essence intensive. Best used with ISP's trusted companions Indefatigable Scholar Princess(Twilight Lore Reactor Edition) and Inspiring Song Princess(Empowering Shout Edition).
 
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Aranfan said:
But like, assuming core book only, what should the first 15 charms be?
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There's not really a 'right' answer here, but assuming you don't have something specific in mind like building for clashes, counterattacks, or defending other, the 'core' melee package is something like:

Excellent Strike
Fire and Stones Strike
Perfect Strike Discipline
Dipping Swallow Defense
Bulwark Stance
Heavenly Guardian Defense

From here, you can pick up whatever extra effects look interesting. Some extra damage boosters and defense charms might get you:

Rising Sun Slash
Hungry Tiger Technique
Protection of Celestial Bliss

Or you could grab these for big flurries:

One Weapon, Two Blows
Peony Blossom Technique
Iron Whilrwind Attack
Invincible Fury of the Dawn

One of those two sets, and use the remaining charms for dipping into Athletics, Resistance, Dodge, or whatever else.
 
Well, I assume the first 5 charms should be ox body.

-
How's this for stats:

Attributes:
Str 1, Cha 1, Per 3
Dex 5, Man 1, Int 1
Sta 5, App 5, Wit 5

Abilities:
Athletics (Favored): 3
Awareness (Caste): 5
Dodge (Caste): 5
Integrity (Favored): 5
Lore: 1
Melee (Supernal): 5
Occult (Favored): 3
Resistance (Caste): 5
Socialize: 3
Survival: 3

I still have five BP to play with.
 
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There's actually an argument to be made for putting Manipulation to five over Appearance. The Appearance modifier in Ex3 is based on the defender's Resolve, so dumping Appearance to 1 doesn't hurt you there, and Manipulation to 5 helps your Guile. I don't know that that's definitively the right answer, but it's an option.
 
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SerGregness said:
There's actually an argument to be made for putting Manipulation to five over Appearance. The Appearance modifier in Ex3 is based on the defender's Resolve, so dumping Appearance to 1 doesn't hurt you there, and Manipulation to 5 helps your Guile. I don't know that that's definitively the right answer, but it's an option.
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While it's true that Manipulation's tie to Guile makes it arguably the strongest social attribute—though you can simply dump Guile—Appearance is also a rolled attribute in addition to the non-charm bonus dice it grants. Solars can even raise it to eight, though that's rather impractical unless you plan to build your entire character around Worshipful Lackey Acquisition. Perfect for leading Immaculate Monks back onto the path of righteousness.
 
SerGregness said:
There's actually an argument to be made for putting Manipulation to five over Appearance. The Appearance modifier in Ex3 is based on the defender's Resolve, so dumping Appearance to 1 doesn't hurt you there, and Manipulation to 5 helps your Guile. I don't know that that's definitively the right answer, but it's an option.
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Hmm. I dunno. Having ISP be a master social operator strikes me as kinda eh. Her name is invincible sword princess, and I plan to have her intimacies revolve around swords. Maybe it's just that quest I mentioned earlier, but the idea of her being a masterful social operator doesn't really seem to fit.

I am strongly considering burning 4 of my BP to raise her to Strength 2, because ISP should not have noodly arms.
 
Sydonai said:
Rapiers?
Irumi?
Or other Dex-based swords?
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You know she's going to be using a Daiklave of some sword.

As for merits:

Artifact Articulated Plate, Artifact Sword (possibly Beloved Adorei), and Fast Reflexes for the +1 to join battle leaves me with 1 merit dot left. Any thoughts on what I should spend it on?
 
Aranfan said:
I still have five BP to play with.
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If I were you I'd probably kick Athletics up to five and get three more skills at 1.

I don't recommend buying up Strength. It'll cost 4 BP to do it at chargen, and 4 solar XP to do it during play. A bonus point is worth a lot more than a solar experience point.

SerGregness said:
There's actually an argument to be made for putting Manipulation to five over Appearance. The Appearance modifier in Ex3 is based on the defender's Resolve, so dumping Appearance to 1 doesn't hurt you there, and Manipulation to 5 helps your Guile. I don't know that that's definitively the right answer, but it's an option.
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Manipulation 5 is probably a more powerful choice. But being super-pretty seems more ISP-ish than being super-socially-skilled.
 
Sanctaphrax said:
If I were you I'd probably kick Athletics up to five and get three more skills at 1.

I don't recommend buying up Strength. It'll cost 4 BP to do it at chargen, and 4 solar XP to do it during play. A bonus point is worth a lot more than a solar experience point.
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Okay, that's fair. I can't get three more skills at one with five BP if I raise athletics tho. I mean, I have a favored ability to assign yet, but non-caste/favored ability dots cost 2bp
 
Here is my indictment of Exalted 3rd Edition, which is startlingly similar to my indictment of 2.5:

Very little changed, and what did change was merely re-branding.

Functionally, Exaled 3e is still a resource management system. It's got Motes, Willpower, and HLs. It adds to the mix 'Initiative'.

I need you to understand, that for all practical considerations, Initiative is a fluctuating Raw Damage value- exactly equivalent to the mechanic back in 2nd edition of 'Calculate all your modifiers to get your raw damage'.

The only difference in Exalted 3e, is that it tries (and succeeds to given extent), to move this 'Raw Damage' resource into immediate gameplay. This is by no means a bad idea in and of itself... but here's the rub.

Any meaningful interaction in combat boils down to building up your raw damage at the expense of others, and vice versa. This is fine. At the end of the day though, it is still attrition combat, exactly the same as Exalted 2e. The only difference is that unlike 2e, the players do not have absolute control over over their offense or defense (they don't get to spend motes on flat perfect effects).

That lack of absolute control is arguably better for tactical gameplay, yes, but you must acknowledge how little has changed between the editions.
 
Shyft said:
Here is my indictment of Exalted 3rd Edition, which is startlingly similar to my indictment of 2.5:

Very little changed, and what did change was merely re-branding.

Functionally, Exaled 3e is still a resource management system. It's got Motes, Willpower, and HLs. It adds to the mix 'Initiative'.

I need you to understand, that for all practical considerations, Initiative is a fluctuating Raw Damage value- exactly equivalent to the mechanic back in 2nd edition of 'Calculate all your modifiers to get your raw damage'.

The only difference in Exalted 3e, is that it tries (and succeeds to given extent), to move this 'Raw Damage' resource into immediate gameplay. This is by no means a bad idea in and of itself... but here's the rub.

Any meaningful interaction in combat boils down to building up your raw damage at the expense of others, and vice versa. This is fine. At the end of the day though, it is still attrition combat, exactly the same as Exalted 2e. The only difference is that unlike 2e, the players do not have absolute control over over their offense or defense (they don't get to spend motes on flat perfect effects).

That lack of absolute control is arguably better for tactical gameplay, yes, but you must acknowledge how little has changed between the editions.
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I feel like the 'but it's just attrition combat when you boil it down' argument doesn't hold much weight since, when you get down to it, the same is true for Starcraft, but that doesn't stop it from being an engaging experience. In fact, I suspect you could boil a huge number of games down to 'just attrition combat'. As long as the gameplay is deep and satisfying (whether it is or not is a worthy discussion to have), being reductionist about it doesn't get us much of anywhere.
 
Dif said:
Its almost like they wrote too many things without planning for them to be there, that they are forgetting the specifics of their own 900 page tome.

But certainly that wouldn't happen with a top-class editing and playtesting team like they have, right?
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SLS (Editor of EX3) on the Exalted forums clarified a while back that Editor at Onyx Path Publishing is Proofreader elsewhere, and Developer is the title that does any editing. So Ex3 was not edited by someone who did not write it.
 
Indivisible said:
SLS (Editor of EX3) on the Exalted forums clarified a while back that Editor at Onyx Path Publishing is Proofreader elsewhere, and Developer is the title that does any editing. So Ex3 was not edited by someone who did not write it.
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Which certainly explains why the entire book reads like an expansion of 2e rather than a revision, where there is some kind of insane minimum requirement of familiarity (or willingness to have someone explain it all to you, or buy incompatible and outdated books) to even process the majority of the shit which they casually toss at you offhandedly, even before getting into the heavy "make shit up" expectations. And now we have rolling-start errata from the first fucking PDF addon.

It is the ascended form of the three-ring binder of someones campaign houserules.
 
Yep. A lack of editorial oversight is the main thing standing between Ex3 and greatness.

The BlueWinds rewrite did a lot to fix/mitigate the problems, I think. But a proper professional process would've been better than a fan project.

Aranfan said:
Okay, that's fair. I can't get three more skills at one with five BP if I raise athletics tho. I mean, I have a favored ability to assign yet, but non-caste/favored ability dots cost 2bp
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You don't spend BP to buy up non-favoured abilities. You replace free dots that you spent on favoured abilities with it, then you use those free dots to buy up the non-favoured abilities.

Shyft said:
Here is my indictment of Exalted 3rd Edition, which is startlingly similar to my indictment of 2.5:

Very little changed, and what did change was merely re-branding.
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That's not true at all. Ex3 actually changes things a lot more deeply than most edition changes, I think.

A totally rewritten Charmset built along a different underlying paradigm, an entirely new social system, an entirely new crafting system, an entirely new sailing system, deep changes to movement and stealth rules, an entirely new combat initiative system, a new setup for experience spending and Essence increasing, Evocations, different Caste abilities and powers, the removal of the old bureaucracy system...the list goes on.

Some of the changes were bad. But they were changes. Writing all this off as re-branding is ridiculous.

PS: Attrition combat and resource management are not bad things. Most tabletop games have plenty of both, and not because of design mistakes.
 
Sanctaphrax said:
PS: Attrition combat and resource management are not bad things. Most tabletop games have plenty of both, and not because of design mistakes.
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Being deliberate this time does not make it tolerable, however. Because the resource-management in Exalted is a joke, it simply gives you resources to spend and no context for their use, importance, or means for understanding where and how altering the rate of increase or lack of access will fuck up the gameplay model beyond "just never run out of anything."

Why do you still need to manage a granular mote pool when even baseline Charms have alternate costs and "per encounter/daily" uses? What is the balance point of these alternate costs and use-restrictions compared to using motes, if I decide to homebrew something? Why is it important to clamp down on Willpower gain? Because the Charms which use these things are better, and so basically its just Big Motes and Little Motes? Why is the management of Initiative a per-player concern and not a party-wide pool of "Kill A Dude points," and why are the rules overseeing its getting spent left at "don't be a dick and farm weak guys to one-shot the level boss, please"?

Why do players still turn into puffed-up mortals when they run out of motes, and why does Init Crash have a fucking list of penalties to be memorized when the results of "you have been Crashed" and "you're functionally dead" are exactly the same? Why are there no guidelines for building a proper peer-level enemy which isn't "grab a handful of dice and some relevant Charms, maybe it'll be cool" or about creating situations and setpieces which can drain that huge pool of resources by provoking Charm uses from the players over time in small ways that ratchet up tension resulting from having less things to draw on for an upcoming fight?

Other games have done actual resource management systems much better than Exalted has ever approached, and the attempt being made here is a slipshod one because they refuse to actually give the ST any guidelines Why It Does What It Does or even a chapter illustrating how this game ought to be fucking run.
 
Dif said:
the results of "you have been Crashed" and "you're functionally dead" are exactly the same?
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This... isn't really true. It's entirely possible to come back from Crash, despite it being a fairly unfavorable state.

Honestly, and I say this as someone deeply displeased with 3E, I don't think you're giving the system its fair shake, and are highlighting it in the most unfair and unfavorable light possible.
 
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Dif said:
Why do players still turn into puffed-up mortals when they run out of motes, and why does Init Crash have a fucking list of penalties to be memorized when the results of "you have been Crashed" and "you're functionally dead" are exactly the same?
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Personal anecdote, but crashed doesn't mean nearly as much as the guy doing the crashing picking up a deadly amount of initiative to perform a decisive with.

And in a bigger fight, a crashed opponent's top priority is to hit someone on YOUR team with a withering attack if they already have a low initiative, as it means they can immediately recover.
All Crashed really means is "you can't kill dudes", which is a given considering you got no initiative to do it with.
 
notthepenguins said:
This... isn't really true. It's entirely possible to come back from Crash, despite it being a fairly unfavorable state.

Honestly, and I say this as someone deeply displeased with 3E, I don't think you're giving the system its fair shake, and are highlighting it in the most unfair and unfavorable light possible.
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My point was not that Crash is Super Terrible, but that Crash by itself is an unnecessary and overengineered mechanic, because Lacking the resources to properly remove or provide an answer to an opponent is often its own problem in systems like this, its not usually something you need to double-down on where you are ineffectual if your Do Cool Stuff hits zero and things like wound penalties are still a thing which exist for some reason.

And to be entirely honest, I gave Ex3 a fair shake for three years to right its wobbling course, and it did not, and in some cases actively twisted the wheel to avoid doing so. If it still has glaring flaws and retreads back across longstanding issues which can be highlighted in a negative manner after three years and over six hundred thousand dollars, then certainly they can only deserve that kind of judgement.
 
Dif said:
My point was not that Crash is Super Terrible, but that Crash by itself is an unnecessary and overengineered mechanic, because Lacking the resources to properly remove or provide an answer to an opponent is often its own problem in systems like this, its not usually something you need to double-down on where you are ineffectual if your Do Cool Stuff hits zero and things like wound penalties are still a thing which exist for some reason.
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Why did you say that Crash was functionally equivalent to death if what you meant was just that it was overengineered? That seems like a weird thing to say by accident.

Dif said:
And to be entirely honest, I gave Ex3 a fair shake for three years to right its wobbling course, and it did not, and in some cases actively twisted the wheel to avoid doing so. If it still has glaring flaws and retreads back across longstanding issues which can be highlighted in a negative manner after three years and over six hundred thousand dollars, then certainly they can only deserve that kind of judgement.
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"Which can be highlighted in a negative manner" are you even listening to yourself, dude?

Anything can be highlighted in a negative manner, that's how language and rhetoric works. You can make being fair-minded and reasonable sound terrible if you put your mind to it, but that doesn't make it actually a bad thing.
 
Well, and some of the defensive charms.
Brawl only loses Reckless Fury Discard (which raises Defense, but costs Initiative),
Dodge loses Reed in the Wind (which costs Initiative), Flow Like Blood (main function only works on enemies with lower Initiative anyway, though it disables the small Initiative-gain from not getting hit) and Refinement of Flowing Shadows (which grants extra Initiative, but is disabled anyway if you get hit by an attack, so the perilous-keyword is mostly there for people who crash themselves or get crashed by poison or such)
Melee only loses Heavenly Guardian Defense (which costs Initiative anyway).
Resistance loses part of Spirit Strengthens the Skin (which only works against withering attacks anyway, so you barely care), Front-Line Warriors Stamina (so you can't gain Initiative during crash to get yourself out of it that easily), Essence-Gathering Temper (costs Initiative anyway), Willpower-Enhancing Spirit (Same) and Aegis of Invincible Might (which would otherwise make you way too though to injure)
Note that being crashed barely hurts your defense. You still have most of your Defense-adders and your Penalty-negators and even two perfect defenses. So unless you're also out of motes (and remember, you gain 5 motes per turn) you can still throw yourself into defense until your crash is over, assuming there is no opponent you can crash.
Other than that your hardness is set to 0, which sucks if you rely on hardness a lot, but not everyone does.

So @Dif , you're utterly wrong here.
And the Crash-mechanic does have a point:
- It provides a recovery-mechanic (you do recover to base initiative after three turns), because an enemy can't just keep pushing you into negative Initiative (or keep you at 0 Initiative as easily, if we declare that the limit).
- It provides clear moments where to start with decisive attacks, due to Initiative Break (+5i for crashing someone) and setting hardness to 0.
- In one-on-one fights, it makes decisive attacks much riskier due to Initiative Shift - if you crash an enemy, land a decisive attack and he then crashes you, he can not only roll Join Battle (potentially gaining 10+ Initiative) but also gains a second action that round.
So the special state of "crashed" as opposed to just "has no Initiative left" does have it's points, and they're pretty evident if you actually look at the system (just the basic combat engine, not even the charms).
 
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