Okay? Why is that a bad thing?
On it's own, it isn't. The bad thing is that people tout 3rd edition as being so vastly greater and different from second edition, when in fact it is not.

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.

I am reducing the argument to illustrate the above point that functionally, nothing has changed in context of 2e and 3e. Initiative and it associated mechanics serve the exact same purpose of 'Clock' to ensure that someone will be vulnerable. In 2e, this time was 'When you run out of motes'. We agree this is unfun and was why 2nd edition combat was unsatisfying.

3rd edition combat does the exact same thing, but it does it with unnecessary complexity. This is terrible design.

A totally rewritten Charmset built along a different underlying paradigm

That ended in SEVEN HUNDRED CHARMS, MOST OF THEM UNNECESSARY.

an entirely new social system

This I actually cannot offer a comment toward, save that they did away with Motivation as a concept and included very... Guided mechanics? The social system to my understanding is very regimented, with highly specific actions that do specific things.

an entirely new crafting system

AHAHAHAHAHAHA. More seriously, they tried to copy MMO RPG DESIGN into a tabletop game. It's a fucking grind.

an entirely new sailing system

I'm going to give 3e deserved props for having sail rules in the core book. (2e had them divided amongst WotLA and Scroll of Kings, and they weren't very good either).

Having given them a look over, I am actually quite impressed. Of particular note is equating # of rolls with the size of a hazard, and the Difficulty with how treacherous it is. That's actually quite elegant.

I admit me saying this amidst all this vitriol is going to be jarring, but it's the truth.

deep changes to movement and stealth rules
I can't speak to movement or stealth at the moment, suffice to say that I cannot declare 3e's system as either good or bad, better or worse than 1e or 2e, or any comparable system.

an entirely new combat initiative system

Which is still functionally 'Raw Damage', on top of a stupidly complex interaction.

a new setup for experience spending and Essence increasing

Do not speak of spending experience in Exalted 3rd edition. It is a fucking trainwreck. SOLAR XP. CRAFT XP. SUPERNAL. All of this is shit.

Why is it shit? Supernal exists as a quick-fix bandage for allowing players to specialize themselves out the gate in a single ability. Aforementioned abilities are not created equally nor are they well articulated. Supernal Craft is vastly different from Supernal War from Supernal Lore.

Now, I can appreciate the novelty of Supernal, of being able to get a 'sneak preview' or similar of high-level powers without spending a lot of in-session time, but by the same token, it quickly skews the nature of the game and complicates the experience for everyone.

Exalted needed to be simpler, and they made it more complicated.


Okay, I want you to look at Wonders of the Lost Age or Oadenol's Codex. I want you to think in terms of 'This artifact has a list of powers'. Each paragraph or bulletpoint is effectivey an evocation. They're probably not as evocatively worded or as 'Conditional' as 3e Evocations are, but they illustrate my point-

Evocations are essentially mini-charm trees for artifacts, and organizationally that's actually rather neat! It makes them readable, if you're okay with an Artifact having an entire page dedicated to it. That's fine! The issue is that Evocations are clearly meant to mechanical complexity offloaded onto the players and Storytellers, and there is no training or guideline on how to make them. They rely on players being geniuses and understanding the system completely to even utilize properly. Yes- we're supposed to be getting rules for them eventually...

But that's fucking asinine.

On top of this, you must pay for them. You split your character advancement in a game that already punishes divergence. Remember, this is the same game that has Supernal, which rewards monofocus.

different Caste abilities and powers

While this is true, it's honeslty irrelevant. In 1st and 2nd edition, the anima powers hardly ever came up anyway except the eclipse anima, because it had balance and storytelling impact beyond the other more directly quantitative efforts. Oh and the Twilight Anima, because of essence reactor.

the removal of the old bureaucracy system

We HAD no bureaucracy system, save for Mandate of Heaven (which no one used) and Masters of Jade (which no one used). And oh hey, third edition gave us one in the solar charm tree instead of the core rules. How bout that shit?!

Yes, I'm angry. Yes, I feel like I'm the only sane man in a land of crazy people. Yes, I'm being extremely critical. I'm okay with that, because at the end of the day, I'm not worried about you folks having fun- I'm glad you're having fun. I'm glad you're having fun despite me. I'm however extremely frustrated that you believe my perspective is one rooted purely in negative opinion. I'm deeply annoyed that my perspective is ignored because I'm being critical or using direct language.

I get it, I don't support 3rd edition. I don't read it charitably. A lot of you don't either, that's great. But if you don't stand the fuck up and start telling everyone why it needs to be fixed, then it won't get fixed, or you won't know what to fix at your tables.

3e is an illusion. It is not good, well made or ideal.
 
I am reducing the argument to illustrate the above point that functionally, nothing has changed in context of 2e and 3e. Initiative and it associated mechanics serve the exact same purpose of 'Clock' to ensure that someone will be vulnerable. In 2e, this time was 'When you run out of motes'. We agree this is unfun and was why 2nd edition combat was unsatisfying.
Tell, how should it work then? Because the way I see it, the overwhelming majority of roleplaying systems runs on "if you run out of your defensive resources, you will be very vulnerable to being defeated by one more hit", with various systems using HP, shields, Stress/Consequence boxes, mana that can be spent on defences etc., but the end result tends to be the same.

If you have Not Enough Minerals, you're suddenly very vulnerable because you can't rebuild (nearly) any troops and will have trouble recovering the resource gains too.

Even in Go, if you have few powerful/high-potential/high-influence groups, you generally have more trouble creating more such groups than if you've got a good staging ground worth of 'resources'. And the fewer liberties a group has, the more vulnerable it becomes to getting killed.
 
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Tell, how should it work then? Because the way I see it, the overwhelming majority of roleplaying systems runs on "if you run out of your defensive resources, you will be very vulnerable to being defeated by one more hit", with various systems using HP, shields, Stress/Consequence boxes, mana that can be spent on defences etc., but the end result tends to be the same.

Well, as much as it pains me to say so directly, I don't have a direct solution or mechanical implementation. My point is more "Not much has changed and the demands upon players and storytellers has gotten worse, or, at the very least, has not changed positive or negative.

Like, yes, if you're exhausted, you're vulnerable and then you can get hurt. That's fine. The issue is that Motes-as-HP and Initiative as HP is effectively the same, except the latter is obfuscated.
 
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).

Fucking chess is "attrition combat" in this sense. Mathematically, every single game in the history of everything and in any possible future is isomorphic to "attrition combat". This is a complete nonsense complaint.

3e combat is not like 2e combat. Even if it were "the same as" 2e, unlike 2e combat 3e works as a game.

That lack of absolute control is arguably better for tactical gameplay, yes, but you must acknowledge how little has changed between the editions.

No I don't, because huge things have changed.

I can't speak to movement or stealth at the moment, suffice to say that I cannot declare 3e's system as either good or bad, better or worse than 1e or 2e, or any comparable system.

It looks like someone's making off with your goalposts. Maybe you should try to catch them.
 
So, here's an actual good combination of White Reaper and Righteous Devil: enhancing Caress of Thousand Hells.

COTH is a decisive attack, so we really want to boost it's attack roll to get a good hit with it. We don't need damage-adders, it's already very devastating. Now, Righteous Devil has nothing that enhances decisive attack rolls, other than the reflexive aiming from it's form-charm (which doesn't add more dice than normal aiming). But White Reaper gives us Bleeding Crescent Strike.

The basic combination here is Caress of Thousand Hells (delivered in melee via a firewand-spear), an aim-bonus (+3 dice), a full Excellency (+10 dice) and Bleeding Crescent Strike (gives us (Strength) double 9s). So we spend 21 motes (6 on COTH, 5 on BCS and 10 on an Excellency) and roll 24 dice for an average of 14.4 successes.
This is already good, Bleeding Crescent Strike gave us two extra successes. But if we get some means of using Righteous Devil charms while in White Reaper Form (=while having Halos), such as that merit by John Morke or @Omicron excellent artifact, it gets much better with some preparation.

First of all, with each Halo Bleeding Crescent Strike adds one non-charm dice to our attack (assuming Mastery), and each dice is worth 0.6 successes. Getting the halos can be hard or easy depending on the fight, but it's potentially very potent.
Second, we can use Enemies Like Grass. Well, we can do that without halos - but with halos, it doesn't just give us a decisive attack that hits two enemies, but one that hits (2+ halos) enemies, which is extremely potent.
Third, we can benefit from Snow Follows Winter. It heals damage we've taken so far, negates wound penalties and increases our base initiative after the decisive attack (just in case). But more importantly, with Mastery it gives us Stamina x Halos motes that we can spend on White Reaper Charms or Excellencies. This offsets most of the high most cost we'd otherwise have to pay.

So, the Ultimate White Devil Friendship Declaration:
We stock three halos. We get into melee range, take an aim-action, then activate Snow Follows Winter (healing three health levels of damage, ignoring three points of wound penalty and gaining 15 motes) and strike with (Caress of Thousand Hells, Bleeding Crescent Strike and a full Excellency). This costs 6 motes, two willpower so far. If there are more than one enemy within melee range, we can hit them all (well, up to five) via Enemies Like Grass (costing 10m, 1wp).
If we can stunt this as a two-dice stunt (and this is really a great opportunity for this), we roll 29 dice for an average of 17.4 successes (+1 success with spending willpower).
Every enemy hit must either accept a Defining Tie, a Major Intimacy and stop fighting - or take three levels of aggravated damage that also inflict a -3 crippling penalty. Plus the damage from the attack itself, of course.

Yes, I feel this is a worthy combination for the White Devil.
 
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Yes, I'm angry. Yes, I feel like I'm the only sane man in a land of crazy people. Yes, I'm being extremely critical. I'm okay with that, because at the end of the day, I'm not worried about you folks having fun- I'm glad you're having fun. I'm glad you're having fun despite me. I'm however extremely frustrated that you believe my perspective is one rooted purely in negative opinion. I'm deeply annoyed that my perspective is ignored because I'm being critical or using direct language.

I get it, I don't support 3rd edition. I don't read it charitably. A lot of you don't either, that's great. But if you don't stand the fuck up and start tellingeveryone why it needs to be fixed, then it won't get fixed, or you won't know what to fix at your tables.

3e is an illusion. It is not good, well made or ideal.

Shyft, I suppose I can't speak for everyone else, but you're not being ignored, you're being disagreed with. It's an important distinction.

My war charms, however, are getting ignored for more fucking edition wars.

There's basically no one here calling Ex3 ideal. There are many, many valid criticisms of the project (the baffling lack of editorial oversight from just a few pages ago, their idiotic response to the leaks, stance on playtesting and feedback, lack of clear writing in charms exacerbating the natural language issue, etc.), but none of that changes the fact that trying to argue that nothing substantial has changed from prior editions is absurd.
 
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But like, assuming core book only, what should the first 15 charms be?
Well, I assume the first 5 charms should be ox body.
Planning on getting hit? What kind of ISP does that? Beyond that, buying more ox bodies has diminishing returns. I'd only grab one or maybe two to start. You'll be better off with more defensive Melee charms, especially since you have Heavenly Guardian Defense to mitigate early HL damage.

Here's a defensive build focused on counterattacks:

Dipping Swallow Defense
Bulwark Stance
Fivefold Bulwark Stance
Heavenly Guardian Defense
Hail-Shattering Practice (optional)
The core Melee defensive set. They're all quite potent and efficient, though HSP doesn't make Dodge cry with inadequacy until Essence 2+.


War Lion Stance
Now all those awesome defensive charms can protect your more fragile teammates.

Excellent Strike
Perfect Strike Discipline
A full excellency for a mere expenditure of will and an act of murder. If you haven't realized it already, Melee eats willpower like candy.

One Weapon, Two Blows
Peony Blossom Technique
Extra withering attacks are very hard to come by. OWTB can really turn a fight around, while PBT potentially allows a coveted reflexive withering clash attack. As a bonus it also offers an easy way to instantly dampen your anima banner.

Solar Counterattack
Flashing Edge of Dawn
Ready in Eight Directions Stance (optional)
A wide variety of counterattack options, though all can strike down an attacker before he can wound you.


Victorious Wreath (Against the World Stance) x2
Not a core charm, but it is an obvious next step in Melee for this build.

Iron Whirlwind Attack*
Invincible Fury of the Dawn*
Generally the fastest way to kill something, though never the cheapest. This really wants to be enhanced with a giant pile of attack enhancements.

Fire and Stones Strike*
Rising Sun Slash*
Hungry Tiger Technique*
These are what makes the above truly deadly.

Resistance:
Ox Body Technique
I am contractual mandated to include this charm.

Presence 5:
Harmonious Presence Meditation
Tiger's Dread Symmetry
ISP isn't just about fighting, she's also about looking cool while effortlessly terrifying everyone and everything, even things fundamentally incapable of understanding or even experiencing fear.
 
Tell, how should it work then? Because the way I see it, the overwhelming majority of roleplaying systems runs on "if you run out of your defensive resources, you will be very vulnerable to being defeated by one more hit", with various systems using HP, shields, Stress/Consequence boxes, mana that can be spent on defences etc., but the end result tends to be the same.
Those resources do not typically swing wildly because of uncontrollable factors in most well-made games. If you're dependent on HP, you do not get hit with a range of 1d6 to 30d6 damage, nor do critical attacks drop you instantly to just 1. If you have stress boxes, you do not arbitrary fill them all if an opponent hits exactly 3, not 2, not 5, higher than your result. Which is to say, it doesn't feel like a total crapshoot, but an incremental loss. And "incremental" is vital for a game to actually seem to have a tug of war over who has the upper hand rather than a DPS race where you made one mistake and you hit a death-spiral.

How should it work? That's above my pay grade to answer, but here is how you start: You figure out whether Exalted wants to derive success out of Actions or Resources Spent to advance. If its Actions, then you toss the resources factor, you limit Charms instead by activation conditions like "once per combat" or once per roll" and leave the bean-counting elsewhere, because now you are looking at a game which cares about how many things you can successfully pull off and play against other actions to maximize benefits before you win, not how much juice is left in your tank. If motes absolutely need to stick around for legacy reasons, they refresh to maximum every turn and only serve as a hard cap on the number of Charms you can throw out at once.

On the other hand, if you decide Resources Spent is the route you want to take, you have to address the fact that motes are now the "operational lifetime" of your PCs, and you rejig your entire combat and encounter structure around that. Resources refresh consistently, in ways characters can activate. Threats exist to be targets of Charms, rolls exist to get modified by Charms to chip away motes as PCs gamble on passing without spending more than they have too. Specific action-types with a strict process are now negligible, since everything is instead derived from a single roll with Charm attached to it in order to change the context of the roll or assure success.

You must build potential scenes out of how many motes the party has access too, which means both Charm uses and rolls until failure, measuring opponents and challenges by how many of each they can eat/must be invested until a character takes them down. Its up to the character to get lucky and shave off a couple motes which might be useful later, or take risks by hording motes and hoping that turtling up doesn't make them more likely to not do anything worthwhile.

Either way could work here, but that'd require actually designing a system using planning to see how it interacts with resource management as a goal, not adding yet another number for the player to track about rolling more dice until you get more dice until you get MORE dice and then you have the most and you win.
 
Those resources do not typically swing wildly because of uncontrollable factors in most well-made games. If you're dependent on HP, you do not get hit with a range of 1d6 to 30d6 damage, nor do critical attacks drop you instantly to just 1. If you have stress boxes, you do not arbitrary fill them all if an opponent hits exactly 3, not 2, not 5, higher than your result. Which is to say, it doesn't feel like a total crapshoot, but an incremental loss. And "incremental" is vital for a game to actually seem to have a tug of war over who has the upper hand rather than a DPS race where you made one mistake and you hit a death-spiral.

How should it work? That's above my pay grade to answer, but here is how you start: You figure out whether Exalted wants to derive success out of Actions or Resources Spent to advance. If its Actions, then you toss the resources factor, you limit Charms instead by activation conditions like "once per combat" or once per roll" and leave the bean-counting elsewhere, because now you are looking at a game which cares about how many things you can successfully pull off and play against other actions to maximize benefits before you win, not how much juice is left in your tank. If motes absolutely need to stick around for legacy reasons, they refresh to maximum every turn and only serve as a hard cap on the number of Charms you can throw out at once.

On the other hand, if you decide Resources Spent is the route you want to take, you have to address the fact that motes are now the "operational lifetime" of your PCs, and you rejig your entire combat and encounter structure around that. Resources refresh consistently, in ways characters can activate. Threats exist to be targets of Charms, rolls exist to get modified by Charms to chip away motes as PCs gamble on passing without spending more than they have too. Specific action-types with a strict process are now negligible, since everything is instead derived from a single roll with Charm attached to it in order to change the context of the roll or assure success.

You must build potential scenes out of how many motes the party has access too, which means both Charm uses and rolls until failure, measuring opponents and challenges by how many of each they can eat/must be invested until a character takes them down. Its up to the character to get lucky and shave off a couple motes which might be useful later, or take risks by hording motes and hoping that turtling up doesn't make them more likely to not do anything worthwhile.

Either way could work here, but that'd require actually designing a system using planning to see how it interacts with resource management as a goal, not adding yet another number for the player to track about rolling more dice until you get more dice until you get MORE dice and then you have the most and you win.


Okay, one thing you're missing here is that the vast majority of 'once per interval' charms have reset conditions which give you little tactical goals that incentivize you to play in specific ways. Generally, in ways that are synergistic with the charmset itself to give you higher highs when you're able to play within that set of constraints, but also gives your opponents counterplay if they're able to disrupt your pattern. Essence-Gathering Temper in Resistance resets from you tanking hits without taking damage (which the rest of Resistance conveniently helps with), but if someone can consistently put damage on you, the loop breaks and you have a vulnerability. Stealth has charms that incentivize the 'surprise attack from concealment, ice a dude, back into concealment, repeat' loop that you can break by foiling its reset conditions. Seven Shadow Evasion's reset condition wants you to be in the thick of the fight, and on and on. Certain of these charm cooldowns are a resource in the way you describe (Perfect Strike Discipline being fairly typical of the type), but the majority are not.
 
Those resources do not typically swing wildly because of uncontrollable factors in most well-made games. If you're dependent on HP, you do not get hit with a range of 1d6 to 30d6 damage, nor do critical attacks drop you instantly to just 1. If you have stress boxes, you do not arbitrary fill them all if an opponent hits exactly 3, not 2, not 5, higher than your result. Which is to say, it doesn't feel like a total crapshoot, but an incremental loss. And "incremental" is vital for a game to actually seem to have a tug of war over who has the upper hand rather than a DPS race where you made one mistake and you hit a death-spiral.

How should it work? That's above my pay grade to answer, but here is how you start: You figure out whether Exalted wants to derive success out of Actions or Resources Spent to advance. If its Actions, then you toss the resources factor, you limit Charms instead by activation conditions like "once per combat" or once per roll" and leave the bean-counting elsewhere, because now you are looking at a game which cares about how many things you can successfully pull off and play against other actions to maximize benefits before you win, not how much juice is left in your tank. If motes absolutely need to stick around for legacy reasons, they refresh to maximum every turn and only serve as a hard cap on the number of Charms you can throw out at once.

On the other hand, if you decide Resources Spent is the route you want to take, you have to address the fact that motes are now the "operational lifetime" of your PCs, and you rejig your entire combat and encounter structure around that. Resources refresh consistently, in ways characters can activate. Threats exist to be targets of Charms, rolls exist to get modified by Charms to chip away motes as PCs gamble on passing without spending more than they have too. Specific action-types with a strict process are now negligible, since everything is instead derived from a single roll with Charm attached to it in order to change the context of the roll or assure success.

You must build potential scenes out of how many motes the party has access too, which means both Charm uses and rolls until failure, measuring opponents and challenges by how many of each they can eat/must be invested until a character takes them down. Its up to the character to get lucky and shave off a couple motes which might be useful later, or take risks by hording motes and hoping that turtling up doesn't make them more likely to not do anything worthwhile.

Either way could work here, but that'd require actually designing a system using planning to see how it interacts with resource management as a goal, not adding yet another number for the player to track about rolling more dice until you get more dice until you get MORE dice and then you have the most and you win.
Does Ex3e actually work as unpredictably as you described compared to other systems? (I don't know it well enough to tell.)
Because, for the HP example, a single attack may not necessarily be '1d6 to 30d6', but it is common to have attacks ranging from 1d6-2 (punch) through 2d6+2 (pistol) to 7d6 (the heavier rifles) against a target who has a 50%ish chance to dodge an attack, has a 50%ish per-second chance of falling unconscious after suffering 10 HP worth of damage even once per combat (after armour subtraction, with armour potentially going all the way to the modern Type IV armour equivalent of damage resistance), and can spent a precious resource (that doesn't regenerate in combat at all) to boost the dodge chance. That's a GURPS example.
If anything, the recent question about a crossbow bolt to the skull in Ex3e and the answers given seems to indicate that Ex3e combat isn't prone to drastic differences in effectiveness of attacks, and achieving a one-hit kill seems extremely difficult even when the deck is stacked in favour of the attacker to a truly, truly outrageous extent.
 
Does Ex3e actually work as unpredictably as you described compared to other systems? (I don't know it well enough to tell.)
He is hyperbolizing, but it is a somewhat spiky system at its core, and becomes extremely so once Charms get involved. That's one of my primary criticisms of the dice trick charms; they drastically increase the spikiness of resolution.

One-shotting, however, is extremely difficult.
 
Theres generally plenty of room to flee, surrender, or turn the tables due to how it works, barring extra action/extra attack/damage booster charms. It also varies by how much soak and more importantly hardness the opponents have, and if there is an initiative pinata on the field(this being someone with relatively crap defenses on the field who gets crashed early and gets used as an ammo pickup).

If it's a fight between peer opponents it would take a while of no lasting damage before suddenly one of them being horribly gibbed. And the ability to absorb damage into crippling injuries makes it possible to turn things into "Only Mostly Dead".
 
On it's own, it isn't. The bad thing is that people tout 3rd edition as being so vastly greater and different from second edition, when in fact it is not.

I am reducing the argument to illustrate the above point that functionally, nothing has changed in context of 2e and 3e. Initiative and it associated mechanics serve the exact same purpose of 'Clock' to ensure that someone will be vulnerable. In 2e, this time was 'When you run out of motes'. We agree this is unfun and was why 2nd edition combat was unsatisfying.

3rd edition combat does the exact same thing, but it does it with unnecessary complexity. This is terrible design.
You want to argue 3e exhibits some bad design decisions, I'll be right there with you, but this is absurd.

Remember the old 2e saw, "Don't fix perfects until you've fixed lethality?" 'Course you do. Well: 3e largely fixed lethality, and then it fixed perfects. Fights swing. Advantage shifts. People get hit, and yet they do not end the fight as chunky salsa.

I had a player in actual play take 5L, get poisoned, and then declare, "Okay, but this isn't serious enough yet for me to spend any peripheral motes." Did you ever - ever - see that happen in 2e?

The things you're deriding as trivial changes make an enormous difference in what combat-on-the-table actually looks like.
 
There's a larger issue with designing an extremely complex combat engine around resource management/attrition-based combat. It does a terrible job of capturing the feeling of being a demigod, someone who can, with a tiny exertion of will, change the world. Demigods don't (or at least shouldn't) be caring about things on the level of the individual mote, because that runs in direct contrast to the overarching themes and myths of being a demigod.

To draw up another comparison to Godbound, Effort fulfills the same root function as Essence/Willpower, but does so much more organically and effectively. You spend it for various durations to fuel various levels of awesomeness: an epic strike might make you commit Effort for a single round, an impossible dodge might need Effort for the entire Encounter, and undertaking a massive project to remake a city in your own image might require committed effort for the entire duration (well, actually probably not, but that's a separate system). It works, because there are a very small number of very meaningful things to track.
 
If it's a fight between peer opponents it would take a while of no lasting damage before suddenly one of them being horribly gibbed. And the ability to absorb damage into crippling injuries makes it possible to turn things into "Only Mostly Dead".
I dunno. Peer-to-peer fights... it can be a good idea to just gib them, but sometimes you want to take your chances and inflict HLs. Depends on the opponent and your Charms; if you're up against Octavian, you should probably gib him once you crash him (or, well, you should just do however much damage you can once you crash him), if you play with Single Point, you should probably gib everyone you kill because of how its Charms work, but it's definitely reasonable to focus on dealing relatively low-level plink damage to start stacking up their wound penalties. A -1 or -2 for the rest of the fight is nothing to sneeze at (especially if they don't have a defense penalty negator like FLB).
 
In 2e, if you Combo Arrow Storm Technique and Accuracy Without Distance, does Accuracy Without Distance apply to all attacks made with Arrow Storm Technique, or just one of them?
 
I dunno. Peer-to-peer fights... it can be a good idea to just gib them, but sometimes you want to take your chances and inflict HLs. Depends on the opponent and your Charms; if you're up against Octavian, you should probably gib him once you crash him (or, well, you should just do however much damage you can once you crash him), if you play with Single Point, you should probably gib everyone you kill because of how its Charms work, but it's definitely reasonable to focus on dealing relatively low-level plink damage to start stacking up their wound penalties. A -1 or -2 for the rest of the fight is nothing to sneeze at (especially if they don't have a defense penalty negator like FLB).
True, the issue with Hardness is mostly that you either go big or go home, which is a bit of a downer if you already had to build up a lot of init...why not overkill eh? For opponents without hardness, the big concern is timing it right so you don't leave yourself open to being crashed so they can maul you back.

Counterbalanced by Legendary Size, which caps maximum kill regardless, though I notice a Melee focused Dawn still goes through anything easily. But it's supposed to I guess.
 
@Shyft, I like you well enough and I mostly agree that 3e isn't a great system, but you started this argument by asserting that 3e is not substantially different from 2e, and now I'm seeing a lot of dismissing substantial changes to the system that 3e made, on the basis that they're bad changes. I don't want to call it shifting the goalposts, but I don't think you're being fair here.
 
@Shyft, I like you well enough and I mostly agree that 3e isn't a great system, but you started this argument by asserting that 3e is not substantially different from 2e, and now I'm seeing a lot of dismissing substantial changes to the system that 3e made, on the basis that they're bad changes. I don't want to call it shifting the goalposts, but I don't think you're being fair here.

The intent of my argument, in either direction, was to prompt thought. Because I wanted people to think about what they were seeing and feeling. Maybe I failed, probably did.

But the thought I wanted to provoke, to illustrate, was that 3rd edition has been supported because it's new, not because it's good. I want to tear down that facade of newness and novelty that blinds people to its flaws. Yes, people here have already agreed that there are flaws, but there are just as many who don't know.

Remember the old 2e saw, "Don't fix perfects until you've fixed lethality?" 'Course you do. Well: 3e largely fixed lethality, and then it fixed perfects. Fights swing. Advantage shifts. People get hit, and yet they do not end the fight as chunky salsa.

I had a player in actual play take 5L, get poisoned, and then declare, "Okay, but this isn't serious enough yet for me to spend any peripheral motes." Did you ever - ever - see that happen in 2e?

The things you're deriding as trivial changes make an enormous difference in what combat-on-the-table actually looks like.

3e did not fix lethality. It merely moved it, just like 2.5 did with Overdrive. Now I'm totally aware that aesthetically- how that makes you feel as a player is important, and that feel is critical when making an enjoyable game experience.

To your second point- any example I could give would be non-indicative; it doesn't matter if I've seen or or not (yes, in games I've run), because I'm an outlier and not a representative sample size.

I have to call the changes trivial, because if I didn't, you wouldn't stand up and try to argue with me, or look at things with a critical eye.
 
3e did not fix lethality. It merely moved it, just like 2.5 did with Overdrive. Now I'm totally aware that aesthetically- how that makes you feel as a player is important, and that feel is critical when making an enjoyable game experience.
I'm gonna have to disagree here. The necessity of building up a store of Initiative before launching a Decisive attack, increased potency of Ox-Bodies, reduction in damage dicepools and lack of several books worth of inflation means that hyper-lethality really doesn't seem to be as much of a problem. It's certainly not at the 2.5 "one good hit and your character is so much strawberry jam" level.
 
I have to call the changes trivial, because if I didn't, you wouldn't stand up and try to argue with me, or look at things with a critical eye.
This is arrogant, insulting, and more importantly just plain wrong.

You don't need to shock people into listening to you. They have perfectly good eyes that they can use to evaluate arguments that are actually good on their own. You don't have to act like the aggrieved genius, coming down from on high to tell everyone how they are foolish and wrong while spewing your clear hatred for the system. You don't have to act like things that are blatantly counterfactual are true just because it will provoke a response.

But more importantly, you shouldn't, because, as should surprise literally no one, being an asshole doesn't actually encourage people to listen to you. And neither, for that matter, does throwing out absurd claims like how 3E is literally the same as 2E. When you throw out arguments clearly motivated by anger, shamelessly move the goalposts, or make assertions that are simply ridiculous, people just... factor that into their evaluation of your opinions. This usually means that they discard your assertions, because you've already shown that they aren't trustworthy objective evaluations.

Seriously, you're getting me and @Imrix contradicting your points, and last I checked "highly critical" was the politest possible way to frame our opinion of 3E. When you're getting people who nominally agree with you to step in to contradict your arguments, it's probably time to reevaluate either your stance, your rhetoric, or both.
 
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