Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

[Valkhir]

Doesn't look important to me.

It only caps social pools where first impressions are paramount or for those who view App as very important.

If read literally we also can't have more dice than 5 no matter what, as thats the maximum of the trait, even with Excellency.

So either it applies rarely or Exce can exceed it, or else its 5 dice max which doesnt seem important to me.

Edit: Honestly it reads like "First Impression" isnt even an Attri+Ability roll somehow, and its a base App roll?

In which case Infernals and Exalts dont care really, and even Lunars cant raise it with App Excellency which is...kind of fucked.

 

[Alratan]

Doesn't look important to me.

It only caps social pools where first impressions are paramount or for those who view as very important.

If read literally we also can't have more dice than 5 no matter what, as thats the maximum of the trait, even with Excellency.

So either it applies rarely or Exce can exceed it, or else its 5 dice max which doesnt seem important to me.

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When you're encountering people for the first time, first impressions are going to be paramount, as they're the only impressions they have of you, unless they already know off you to a fair degree.

And for the likes of svartalfs, who prize physical beauty like dragons do gold, that cap is likely to always be in place.

And there's no reason for the Excellency to exceed it, as it caps the total dice pool, which is what the Excellency is part of.

If you take a dump stat, then you suffer the consequences of dumping it. For an Attribute which determines first impressions, that means you make a crap first impression.

Changeling has another couple of examples of Appearance actions, Appearance + Stealth to fade into a crowd at a party, and Appearance + Leadership to assert yourself as a legitimate representative of a court.

 

[Valkhir]

And there's no reason for the Excellency to exceed it, as it caps the total dice pool, which is what the Excellency is part of.

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So either there is no reason to have more than 3, or Excellency doesnt even work on it as its not an Ability roll. Like how WP rolls are not eligible.

Edit: This is a pretty stupid limitation. If svartalves limited dice pool to App, then they are basically impossible to social for Exalts other than Alchemicals and Lunars if their Diff is raised by something.

And they would limit interactions with eachother too.

 

[Artemis1992]

When you're encountering people for the first time, first impressions are going to be paramount, as they're the only impressions they have of you, unless they already know off you to a fair degree.

And for the likes of svartalfs, who prize physical beauty like dragons do gold, that cap is likely to always be in place.

And there's no reason for the Excellency to exceed it, as it caps the total dice pool, which is what the Excellency is part of.

If you take a dump stat, then you suffer the consequences of dumping it. For an Attribute which determines first impressions, that means you make a crap first impression.

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That rule was made for Vampires, not with Exalted in mind.

It seems absurd that an excellency can make everything better exept a first impression.

 

[Valkhir]

Its absurdity becomes most obvious when even a Lunar Appearance Excellency couldnt raise it either.

Because its dice added by Charm and not base, so your dice pool doesnt expand like that.

 

[Alratan]

So either there is no reason to have more than 3, or Excellency doesnt even work on it as its not an Ability roll. Like how WP rolls are not eligible.

Edit: This is a pretty stupid limitation. If svartalves limited dice pool to App, then they are basically impossible to social for Exalts other than Alchemicals and Lunars if their Diff is raised by something.

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You want to have it as high as possible as then you can use more of your other Social abilities and attributes in first encounters.

There are also Appearance based actions.

And Svartalves may indeed be very difficult to social for Exalts, just as Toreadors focused on physical appearance would be in ExWoD.

That rule was made for Vampires, not with Exalted in mind.

It seems absurd that an excellency can make everything better exept a first impression.

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There are other WoD splats that can throw bonus dice at social actions and they're hit by this limit as well.

 

[DragonParadox]

I mean on the one hand I can see the point for excellencies not applying since it is a very passive experience, they look at you and make a first impression, but on the other hand making all first impressions just about appearance with no ability to overcome the cap even for beings who manifest their soul into physical reality on the regular feels a bit boring.

I think I am going to leave RaW alone, but you can roll for let's say... Second Impression, when you know you are being watched when you have had the time to get the measure of the other person even for just a matter of a minute or two. That is when you can roll your Intimidate+Appearance to scare people though it is not a 1 to 1 replacement of just having the stat high because people are still going to recall their first impression you have to tailor it to either a person or a group. How to look scary to a group of gangsters and a group of Red Court Vampires is different and the same goes for how to look like a peacemaker or how to look clever.

 

[Valkhir]

You want to have it as high as possible as then you can use more of your other Social abilities and attributes in first encounters.

There are also Appearance based actions.

And Svartalves may indeed be very difficult to social for Exalts, just as Toreadors focused on physical appearance would be in ExWoD.

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Svartalves wouldnt just be hard to social for Exalts, but any living being basically, except stuff like fae or gods.

Even Odin couldnt do so if his App is low.

Would an Antediluvian with Cha 9, Intimidate 9 but are ugly, such as Cappadocius (ignore the weird hypothetical please), roll 1 dice to intimidate a Toreador...?

 

[DragonParadox]

I would feel guilty to just go with 'all social dice are capped by appearance unless you get to know someone' because I did not know that rule when I started the quest so I could not warn the players which I would have done if I was intending to enforce it like that.

 

[OctarineShrike]

As an alternative approach,

Mage the Ascension Revised has some first impressions running on Appearance+Ability Rolls.

 

[Valkhir]

In Exalted, App worked in a static sense.

You compared App scores. If yours is higher, gain that many bonus dice to social, max 3 or vica versa if yours is lower.

Mage rules would work if Octarine is right.

 

[Yog]

Assuming you view the planet as a prison yes, but that is an rather unusual position to take on the world.

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Honest question - doesn't everyone? It is the destiny of mankind to leave its cradle, after all.

 

[DragonParadox]

As an alternative approach,

Mage the Ascension Revised has some first impressions running on Appearance+Ability Rolls.

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I mean I really do not want to make Mage the baseline for rules, there is some scary stuff in there for the new GM, but that is basically what I was proposing above, allow one to craft a second impression in addition to the first.

In Exalted, App worked in a static sense.

You compared App scores. If yours is higher, gain that many bonus dice to social, max 3 or vica versa if yours is lower.

Mage rules would work if Octarine is right.

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I also do not want to bring exalted rules into this because they would shift the tone.

 

[uju32]

You are really taking it too far.
A basic Appearance plus Intimidate, without the armor, is still 4 dice. That's good for a regular mortal. Average for a professional.

Edit: Besides, it's just a first impression, everything further goes by Charisma.

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I come to the mechanics side of this from Exalted 2E, so disclaimers apply.

But its always been clear to me that a rating of 1 dot in any Attribute or Ability is Poor, that 2 dots is Average.
And that a dice pool of 4 is average. For a mortal. So when ppl were talking about first impressions with an Appearance 1 PC, it did leave me a little puzzled about what they hoped to achieve.

ExWoD is a cross-system game, so the GM has to fudge places as seems appropriate in order to make things fit.
But Molly is really not mechanically built to make good first impressions in a social setting.

That said, softer mechanically. GM can house rule as necessary.

 

[Valkhir]

I don't get why that App rule was used for ExWoD.

Its kind of comical for werewolves too.

If you shift to Warform but are App 1 you fail to intimidate normal humans (excluding Delirium) despite being a huge wolf monster, possiy with good Intimidate due to wolf social stuff using it?

Edit: In WoD, average mortal is 2, 3 is trained professional, 4 is world class and 5 is human maximum. I think in V20.

1 is below average but not crippled.

So that checks out.

Except for the Excellency bit.

 

[OctarineShrike]

I mean I really do not want to make Mage the baseline for rules, there is some scary stuff in there for the new GM, but that is basically what I was proposing above, allow one to craft a second impression in addition to the first.

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Then don't. You can just say we're doing first impressions like in Mage Revised if you want. Though I very much agree with you that Mage is a mess. Especially Mage 20th.

 

[DragonParadox]

I am going to sleep on the whole appearance thing to see if I can find a way between the rock of 'I did not know to warn the players' and the hard place of 'I am not confident in altering a system I am so new to'

 

[Valkhir]

You were already planning to use Dark Ages Vampire for shield rules, so you thats a common sense alteration as well.

Correct me if I am wrong.

Though the thing that hurts me most is that with that rule even maximum we could have is 5 max which is...kind of shit.

Edit: At that point I'd just forget about it, but I can imagine dumping 20 EXP into it and still rolling human maximum as an Exalt with no chance for Exce against Vampires, Fae etc...

 

[DragonParadox]

You were already planning to use Dark Ages Vampire for shield rules, so you thats a common sense alteration as well.

Correct me if I am wrong.

Though the thing that hurts me most is that with that rule even maximum we could have is 5 max which is...kind of shit.

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V20 does not have shields at all so that is not so much of an alteration as using the rules that exist for those physical objects which certainly exist in the world.

 

[uju32]

I don't get why that App rule was used for ExWoD.

Its kind of comical for werewolves too.

If you shift to Warform but are App 1 you fail to intimidate normal humans (excluding Delirium) despite being a huge wolf monster, possiy with good Intimidate due to wolf social stuff using it?

Edit: In WoD, average mortal is 2, 3 is trained professional, 4 is world class and 5 is human maximum. I think in V20.

1 is below average but not crippled.

So that checks out.

Except for the Excellency bit.

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Disclaimer: I havent read Werewolf, or looked hard at their applications.

But in this case, I presume you shift to Warform and acquire a Trait/intimidation bonus for it, obviously.
But an App 1 Warform and an App 5 Warform would be very different things socially.
Or so I think is the intent.

 

[Artemis1992]

I come to the mechanics side of this from Exalted 2E, so disclaimers apply.

But its always been clear to me that a rating of 1 dot in any Attribute or Ability is Poor, that 2 dots is Average.
And that a dice pool of 4 is average. For a mortal. So when ppl were talking about first impressions with an Appearance 1 PC, it did leave me a little puzzled about what they hoped to achieve.

ExWoD is a cross-system game, so the GM has to fudge places as seems appropriate in order to make things fit.
But Molly is really not mechanically built to make good first impressions in a social setting.

That said, softer mechanically. GM can house rule as necessary.

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Dicepool 4 for a key-ability can easily be 8 if we really need it, which comes back to being among the best humans can do.

 

[Artemis1992]

Disclaimer: I havent read Werewolf, or looked hard at their applications.

But in this case, I presume you shift to Warform and acquire a Trait/intimidation bonus for it, obviously.
But an App 1 Warform and an App 5 Warform would be very different things socially.
Or so I think is the intent.

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No, I think Crinos form automatically sets Appearance to 0, just like most of our Shintai.

That makes sense for most regular social interactions, but it really messes things up if you try to apply it to Intimidation.

 

[Valkhir]

Disclaimer: I havent read Werewolf, or looked hard at their applications.

But in this case, I presume you shift to Warform and acquire a Trait/intimidation bonus for it, obviously.
But an App 1 Warform and an App 5 Warform would be very different things.
Or so I think is the intent.

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I don't think it applies any bonuse to Intimidation.

If mortals see you as a Werewolf they check WP for Delirium, but thats an actual magical/genetic memory of all the Impergium genocides Garou carried out that is still carried in every humans unconscious to this day.

It doesn't work on Vampires for instance with those rules even if they see a giant monster barreling towards them armed with a Klaive about to oneshot them and they know it.

Edit: Oh yeah our fucking Shintai, Appearance thing lmao. I forgot about that.

Demon Emperor cant scare anyone.

 

[Goldfish]

I don't know the nuts and bolts of Exalted character creation, but if the low Appearance attribute is going to cause this much of an issue, is there anything that we could reasonably switch around on the character sheet if @DragonParadox was willing to let us do a bit of retconning? If we're ever going to do it, it would be better to do it now, while we're only a few days into the quest timeline.

 

[DragonParadox]

No, I think Crinos form automatically sets Appearance to 0, just like most of our Shintai.

That makes sense for most regular social interactions, but it really messes things up if you try to apply it to Intimidation.

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The same applies to the Abyssal flaw that makes you look like a rotted/desiccated corpse and for that matter the Nosferatu, it really does not feel like those things should make you not intimidating on first impression.