|
Ferrinus posted:Why would you want to make a permanent choice at chargen as to whether your Dawn is better at fencing or strategy, or whether your Twilight is better at sorcery or artifice, or whether your Eclipse is better at administration or negotiation? Because I'd rather play a fencer than a strategist, or a sorcerer than an artificer-especially-since-I-saw-the-craft-charms. It doesn't need to be anything more complicated than that, and eventually I'll get the higher essence charms for the other trees too. I'm not sure how viable a character who is only specialized for 1 out of 25 things would be. I mean, a Dawn can conceivably solve all his problems by killing anything that looks at them funny, but that sort of hyper-specialized character won't be very fun to play.
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 03:36
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 11, 2024 08:25 |
|
|
Bedlamdan posted:Because I'd rather play a fencer than a strategist, or a sorcerer than an artificer-especially-since-I-saw-the-craft-charms. It doesn't need to be anything more complicated than that, and eventually I'll get the higher essence charms for the other trees too. If you like one kind of charm more than another, you just buy more of that kind of charm than another. Exalted is an obfuscated point-buy game; build and preference-based specialization is built in. That's not actually a good reason to cut the number of abilities a given Solar has it in them to excel at beyond all question down from ten to one, and to make players of Solars choose a single schtick from chargen on.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 03:40
|
|
|
spectralent posted:Problem: People never use abilities over essence 2-3 because games never go that long. Although, frankly, the more I toy with chargen the more it feels like the designers artificially limited the utility and range of of some essence 1 charms in order to make Supernal "feel" better, which is, itself, a chargen problem.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 03:41
|
|
|
Ferrinus posted:Why would you want to make a permanent choice at chargen as to whether your Dawn is better at fencing or strategy, or whether your Twilight is better at sorcery or artifice, or whether your Eclipse is better at administration or negotiation? I still am not sure why you're so mad about that tho. I'm a scrub player and never played 2e or tabletops. i didn't feel restricted at all choosing a sup. but I'm getting the impression from you that anyone that doesn't min max their character to be a perfect combat focus will hate the game. you even made fun of someone that wanted to be a godly crafter. what if they think their character is an amazing otherworldly deity like freaking crafter. Or bureaucrat. tabletop games appeal to me because I don't necessarily have to beat ogres over the head a million times in a row. It's what appealed to me about exalted. so what gives? is it just a lovely game for people that want to min max imaginary anime powers with a rule set that can't support anything else without straining at the foundation?
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 03:42
|
|
|
Ferrinus posted:If you like one kind of charm more than another, you just buy more of that kind of charm than another. Exalted is an obfuscated point-buy game; build and preference-based specialization is built in. That's not actually a good reason to cut the number of abilities a given Solar has it in them to excel at beyond all question down from ten to one, and to make players of Solars choose a single schtick from chargen on. But they can still excel in the other 9 abilities to the same degree they could in previous editions. It's just that they have the option to super-specialize in one of this ten if they're so inclined. People won't choose a single shtick from chargen on because nobody wants to play a guy with only dodge or presence charms or what-have-you
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 03:44
|
|
|
Bedlamdan posted:People won't choose a single shtick from chargen on because nobody wants to play a guy with only dodge or presence charms or what-have-you Supernal is extremly permissive of some character concepts (eg: Melee Dawns), and extremely restrictive of others, (eg; Super-stealthy thieves who are kind of poo poo at stealing, sorcerers who can be knowledgeable or have a badass familiar, but not both, etc). It's a legit problem I've had when making characters in 3e. Old Kentucky Shark fucked around with this message at 03:59 on Jan 27, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 03:51
|
|
|
Bedlamdan posted:But they can still excel in the other 9 abilities to the same degree they could in previous editions. It's just that they have the option to super-specialize in one of this ten if they're so inclined. Actually, they can't. Merely favoring an ability doesn't mean the same thing it used to. It no longer means access to top-tier, bleeding-edge power. A Zenith can't actually be a Dawn-caliber fighter out the gate, or a Zenith a Twilight-caliber exorcist, or whatever. What used to be the best is now just decent. Why is this good? Is it because you just can't trust any game to run for more than three sessions and can't persuade your storyteller to run a high-Essence game out the gate?
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 03:52
|
|
|
Mostly when I've gotten to play Ex3 picking my Supernal doesn't feel like 1 door opening, it feels like 24 doors shutting. I wish I got something simpler like the aforementioned -1 essence prereq to caste / favored or anything else that allowed me to make a more rounded starting character.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 03:59
|
|
|
Tarranon posted:I still am not sure why you're so mad about that tho. I'm a scrub player and never played 2e or tabletops. i didn't feel restricted at all choosing a sup. but I'm getting the impression from you that anyone that doesn't min max their character to be a perfect combat focus will hate the game. you even made fun of someone that wanted to be a godly crafter. what if they think their character is an amazing otherworldly deity like freaking crafter. Or bureaucrat. tabletop games appeal to me because I don't necessarily have to beat ogres over the head a million times in a row. It's what appealed to me about exalted. Crafting in particular is a really bad subsystem that has a lot of needless busywork and dice rolling involved. Decision points:resolution ratio is poor. Bedlamdan posted:But they can still excel in the other 9 abilities to the same degree they could in previous editions. It's just that they have the option to super-specialize in one of this ten if they're so inclined. Actually they can only take E1 charms now, and also a lot of charms have been broken up and some of the parts are E2, so you're less good.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 04:01
|
|
|
A better design solution would've been to scrap the old assumptions and build the Charm trees from the ground up with no Essence minimums, or maybe just Essence 1-3. Because Ferrinus is right, there's built-in specialization that already occurs just by the nature of players making characters who are good at some things and not at others. Like, if the game were designed without caste/favored benefits, without supernal, just "here's all the Charms at the same price for everyone" you'd still get natural specialization. Supernal is a band-aid that fixes problems inherent in having a a scale of 1-5 Essence minimums that you slowly get access to over a lot of sessions. It fixes "there's so many cool Charms in the tree but it sucks to have to wait so long to get them" and "if everyone can get a combat ability favored the Dawn sucks at their job." Both of these problems could've been fixed with different, more elegant designs. But Exalted is a game stuffed full of old design assumptions and band-aid fixes for them (and then band-aid fixes for design problems the first band-aid fixes made), like solar xp and the Martial Arts Merit.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 04:02
|
|
|
Old Kentucky Shark posted:But Supernal materially incentivizes people to do just that. Like, sure, nobody is starting with just Presence charms, but there's probably a lot of Eclipses that start with 12 Presence charms and 2 Socialize charms, or vice-versa, because the current system not only encourages you to make that kind of semi-gimpy character, it kind of doesn't let you do anything else within the scope of making a Socialite. I cannot help but pity the Eclipse who doesn't take MA or Dodge because they will be utterly useless in anything outside of their niche. And while people might do such a thing, that's still a conscious choice made with the understanding that they'll be sitting out combat in a game where combat is a solid third of the game. Ferrinus posted:Actually, they can't. Merely favoring an ability doesn't mean the same thing it used to. It no longer means access to top-tier, bleeding-edge power. A Zenith can't actually be a Dawn-caliber fighter out the gate, or a Zenith a Twilight-caliber exorcist, or whatever. What used to be the best is now just decent. Why is this good? It's hardly bad because a Zenith can still be a top tier combatant in spite of that. A person with only Essence 1 combat charms can still contribute meaningfully to combat, unless Crion's example of the Essence 1 circle fighting Octavion was unusual in some way. Ferrinus posted:Is it because you just can't trust any game to run for more than three sessions and can't persuade your storyteller to run a high-Essence game out the gate? I'm not especially invested in the concept of Supernal itself? But I disagree that its influence is anywhere near as toxic or damaging to the game as you argue.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 04:02
|
|
|
You could also BP up Essence to 3 or 4 in previous editions. Not saying that was a necessarily a good thing, but it meant there was a much greater breadth of charm selection in the long run.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 04:05
|
|
|
I don't know why people want to get rid of Essence minimums all together. Essence mininums are fine and the existence of Essence 5 superpowers to anticipate unlocking adds to the game.Bedlamdan posted:It's hardly bad because a Zenith can still be a top tier combatant in spite of that. A person with only Essence 1 combat charms can still contribute meaningfully to combat, unless Crion's example of the Essence 1 circle fighting Octavion was unusual in some way. Almost everyone can "contribute meaningfully" to combat. Summoned blood apes "contribute meaningfully" to combat. But they can't excel at it. I always appreciated that in prior editions the Dawn wasn't actually "the fighter" because A) a Dawn could additionally excel at sorcery or stealth or something and B) I could make a Zenith paladin or Night knife-fighter or something and not be clearly and obviously inferior to the "real" fighter when it came to an important aspect of my character. quote:I'm not especially invested in the concept of Supernal itself? But I disagree that its influence is anywhere near as toxic or damaging to the game as you argue. It is exactly as toxic or damaging as I argue, in fact.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 04:08
|
|
|
I do get "nobody ever gets to essence 5", in fairness. You'd probably be fine squashing the game down to 1-3 or something. Make E5 supersaiyan territory and put it in a splatbook.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 04:13
|
|
|
spectralent posted:Crafting in particular is a really bad subsystem that has a lot of needless busywork and dice rolling involved. Decision points:resolution ratio is poor. Ah, so a bad game that nerds will still argue for pages and pages the minutiae of. why do i feel like i just summed up the entire subforum.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 04:15
|
|
|
Tarranon posted:Ah, so a bad game that nerds will still argue for pages and pages the minutiae of. why do i feel like i just summed up the entire subforum. Actually craft is just bad, this argument is about whether a bad category of some otherwise useful and interesting stuff is worth keeping or not. Important minutae to keep track of 
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 04:17
|
|
|
spectralent posted:I do get "nobody ever gets to essence 5", in fairness. You'd probably be fine squashing the game down to 1-3 or something. Make E5 supersaiyan territory and put it in a splatbook. That would be pointless, because you'd immediately have spectralent 2.0 popping up and wishing it was a 1-2 scale because whose games ever reach essence 3, anyway? It's good to have distant, high level powers that you can aspire to, even if many games never reach that stage, because they're still useful for building NPCs, useful for describing the kind of stuff you did in your past lives, and useful for high-powered Essence 5 fewshots. Oh, and they're also useful for actual, successful Exalted games that start at Essence 1 and go on for a long time rather than petering out.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 04:18
|
|
|
Tarranon posted:Ah, so a bad game that nerds will still argue for pages and pages the minutiae of. why do i feel like i just summed up the entire subforum. Welcome!
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 04:21
|
|
|
spectralent posted:I do get "nobody ever gets to essence 5", in fairness. You'd probably be fine squashing the game down to 1-3 or something. Make E5 supersaiyan territory and put it in a splatbook. Well, that's more or less why Essence 6-10 is getting the exact same treatment that you suggested, but I've at least had games where people got to Essence 4. Admittedly, by using a houserule where "your essence automatically goes up after you spend a certain amount of xp" during 2E Ferrinus posted:I don't know why people want to get rid of Essence minimums all together. Essence mininums are fine and the existence of Essence 5 superpowers to anticipate unlocking adds to the game. I don't know either, to be honest. Ferrinus posted:Almost everyone can "contribute meaningfully" to combat. Summoned blood apes "contribute meaningfully" to combat. But they can't excel at it. I always appreciated that in prior editions the Dawn wasn't actually "the fighter" because A) a Dawn could additionally excel at sorcery or stealth or something and B) I could make a Zenith paladin or Night knife-fighter or something and not be clearly and obviously inferior to the "real" fighter when it came to an important aspect of my character. I liked that flexibility in Solars as well, to be honest. I liked that I could play a Dawn with maxed out Larceny while the Night did something else, but at the same time you also ended up in situations where the Twilight, with its anima power, was an undeniably superior swordsman to a Dawn specialized in melee, to the point where if you wanted to be the guy who fights you were *much* better off playing as a Zenith or a Night or a Twilight because they had a more well rounded set of caste abilities while you could just favor the one or two combat skills needed to see your build through. The only point where being the Dawn warrior was preferable to the Zenith Warrior or the Night Warrior was when they introduced the Dawn Solution, and honestly that was so convoluted that I really prefer Supernal. It's a trade-off, yes, but not one that I think is overall to the game's detriment. Bedlamdan fucked around with this message at 04:25 on Jan 27, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 04:22
|
|
|
Okay, but now the Dawn has the anima power that's most immediately useful in combat, while the Twilight anima power is a bunch of wizard tricks. It's no longer true that the Dawn's anima power + ability spread makes them the worst combatants; they are now probably the best, albeit in a way that's pretty subtle unless you've got a lot of charms with outstanding reset conditions. Hell, even when they rolled The Dawn Solution into 2E they did it by rewarding Dawns for having a bunch of different abilities rather than making all Dawns choose one to unlock early.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 04:26
|
|
|
Old Kentucky Shark posted:But Supernal materially incentivizes people to do just that. Like, sure, nobody is starting with just Presence charms, but there's probably a lot of Eclipses that start with 12 Presence charms and 2 Socialize charms, or vice-versa, because the current system not only encourages you to make that kind of narrowly focused, semi-gimpy character, it kind of doesn't let you do anything else within the scope of making a Socialite. That is a problem with Presence having way cooler charms than Socialize.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 04:42
|
|
|
Ferrinus posted:Okay, but now the Dawn has the anima power that's most immediately useful in combat, while the Twilight anima power is a bunch of wizard tricks. It's no longer true that the Dawn's anima power + ability spread makes them the worst combatants; they are now probably the best, albeit in a way that's pretty subtle unless you've got a lot of charms with outstanding reset conditions. What Supernal does is give each Caste a degree of niche protection, where if you want to be the best at Medicine, you have an actual reason to be a Twilight instead of an Eclipse or Dawn with a medicine ability favored. It gives a reason for Caste to exist, whereas in 2E the distinctions were irrelevant and the concept of it might as well have not existed at all, to the point where Walker in Darkness was considered stupid for not realizing that Caste roles were hopelessly blurry. Supernal reinforces an archetype better than anima powers or favored abilities. If you are going to have a bunch of game lines that insists on dividing all its splats into five broad archetypes, you should at least endeavor to make these archetypes relevant. Bedlamdan fucked around with this message at 04:45 on Jan 27, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 04:42
|
|
|
Ferrinus posted:That would be pointless, because you'd immediately have spectralent 2.0 popping up and wishing it was a 1-2 scale because whose games ever reach essence 3, anyway? Sure! And eventually you hit "just scrap essence minimums", because you can already use the fact you have to buy charms earlier in the tree to make it take some time to buy charms at the top of trees, which again, is probably what I'd go for.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 04:53
|
|
|
Sharing from irc just now: Thesaurasaurus: I think Spectralent nails it with "it's a bandaid for a problem that didn't need to exist with the new edition" EchoCian: Yeah EchoCian: It's less that Supernal is horrible, than that it patches over more serious problems without trying to fix them. EchoCian: And once you get used to it, you see the problems it's patching over. EchoCian: Much like my gradual discovery of how my room was held together with staples when I was trying to clean and paint it. EchoCian: And the ants swarming out of the wall when I tried to drill a hole for a curtain rod. Thesaurasaurus: auuuuugh Thesaurasaurus: gently caress ants EchoCian: supernal is the thin wall separating you from the ants EchoCian: right next to where you sleep Thesaurasaurus: indeed Thesaurasaurus: you could take it down for a more permanent solution Thesaurasaurus: but then you have to deal with all the ants before you can go to bed again EchoCian: But loving ANTS
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 04:55
|
|
|
Bedlamdan posted:What Supernal does is give each Caste a degree of niche protection, where if you want to be the best at Medicine, you have an actual reason to be a Twilight instead of an Eclipse or Dawn with a medicine ability favored. It gives a reason for Caste to exist, whereas in 2E the distinctions were irrelevant and the concept of it might as well have not existed at all, to the point where Walker in Darkness was considered stupid for not realizing that Caste roles were hopelessly blurry. Supernal reinforces an archetype better than anima powers or favored abilities. They are, though. They are relevant. Castes determine half your favored abilities and give you role-relevant anima powers. Dawns always have it in them to be good fighters, Zeniths always have it in them to be pillars of their community, etc - a character's caste has been appropriately predictive of their charm selection an therefore capabilities in every edition of the game. It's bad to go further and replace "every Dawn is a fighter" with "Dawns are the best fighters". That limits the other castes and, frankly, also limits Dawns. Separately, Supernal does what it tries to do in an incredibly clumsy way - why on earth is a supernal swordsman the best swordsman at Essence 1, but barely better than everyone else at Essence 4 and indistinguishable at Essence 5? - but I'd be just as unhappy with its inclusion as a game mechanic if it were executed well rather than poorly. spectralent posted:Sure! And eventually you hit "just scrap essence minimums", because you can already use the fact you have to buy charms earlier in the tree to make it take some time to buy charms at the top of trees, which again, is probably what I'd go for. Okay, but, no. That would be bad, because essence minimums are good. Not being able to access the mightiest powers right away, even if you have their prereqs, is good. Echo Cian posted:Sharing from irc just now: No, that's wrong. It's a bandaid for a problem that no longer exists with the new edition. There were structural flaws with 1E and 2E that something like supernal might have solved (however, it would've been a much worse solution than some of the stuff we got in 1E and 2E instead), but in 3E supernal is completely superfluous. It doesn't need to be modified, it doesn't need to be replaced - you just remove it, and the game improves. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 05:05 on Jan 27, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 05:02
|
|
|
Ferrinus posted:
Well, there's a hard and soft prevention mechanism there: Hard is just that if you have N slots, and there are N+X powers in the tree, you can't get the mightiest powers straight off, even if you beeline. That'd be fairly easy to set up. The soft prevention is that, if there is no essence minimum for anything, there's no selection bias to invest heavily in the one tree that's uncapped rather than the trees that are. You really can just take what sounds cool. Supernal has the downside of encouraging hyperspecialisation, because pre-requisites are a functional additional cost of high rank stuff and your perk is "you get high rank stuff", by not paying the (opportunity, charm slot) cost for that, you're wasting that advantage. If supernal's not an advantage but is, functionally, the base state, there's no lost advantage.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 05:13
|
|
|
Ferrinus posted:They are, though. They are relevant. Castes determine half your favored abilities and give you role-relevant anima powers. Dawns always have it in them to be good fighters, Zeniths always have it in them to be pillars of their community, etc - a character's caste has been appropriately predictive of their charm selection an therefore capabilities in every edition of the game. It's not necessarily the case that every Dawn is a fighter, though. Speaking in some of my games, I've had situations where the Dawn had more bureaucracy charms than actual combat charms, to the point where I was fairly confused as to why he decided to make a Dawn in the first place. In the same game, the heaviest hitter was the Fiend, who took only martial arts charms and was perfectly clear that he was fine playing an idiot savant who could only express himself through violence. So admittedly, this may be colored by my experiences where I am just way too permissive as a GM and my friends' wacky-rear end characters. I don't know. Ferrinus posted:Separately, Supernal does what it tries to do in an incredibly clumsy way - why on earth is a supernal swordsman the best swordsman at Essence 1, but barely better than everyone else at Essence 4 and indistinguishable at Essence 5? - but I'd be just as unhappy with its inclusion as a game mechanic if it were executed well rather than poorly. This I mostly agree with, but I think the point is to incentivize the person wanting to be the fight guy to make a Dawn at Chargen, and not to establish Dawns as the best fighters. Bedlamdan fucked around with this message at 05:24 on Jan 27, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 05:17
|
|
|
spectralent posted:Well, there's a hard and soft prevention mechanism there: Hard is just that if you have N slots, and there are N+X powers in the tree, you can't get the mightiest powers straight off, even if you beeline. That'd be fairly easy to set up. The soft prevention is that, if there is no essence minimum for anything, there's no selection bias to invest heavily in the one tree that's uncapped rather than the trees that are. You really can just take what sounds cool. Supernal has the downside of encouraging hyperspecialisation, because pre-requisites are a functional additional cost of high rank stuff and your perk is "you get high rank stuff", by not paying the (opportunity, charm slot) cost for that, you're wasting that advantage. If supernal's not an advantage but is, functionally, the base state, there's no lost advantage. That wouldn't actually change anything about the weird behavior supernal abilities encourage because later Charms are still going to be stronger than earlier charms and in a point-buy system like Exalted it's almost always more attractive to keep piling more and more and more points into your already-existing area of specialty than it is to spread out. One of the good things about Essence minimums is that you don't need to invent insane amounts of chaff and padding in order to discourage people from just taking 15 Melee (or whatever) charms. There's a built-in stopping point which will be pushed back later through no special effort of the player's own.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 05:19
|
|
|
Ferrinus posted:But they can't excel at it. I always appreciated that in prior editions the Dawn wasn't actually "the fighter" because A) a Dawn could additionally excel at sorcery or stealth or something and B) I could make a Zenith paladin or Night knife-fighter or something and not be clearly and obviously inferior to the "real" fighter when it came to an important aspect of my character. Right, Dawns were WORSE at being the fighter because you weren't rewarded for having more than one Dawn ability. Then they brought out the Dawn Solution, which made Dawns better at fighting than everyone else if they wanted to be, something no other caste could do with spending a lot of their Favored resources, and even then the Dawn still had advantages in their anima The problems you complain about with Supernal (particularly re:combat) were very much alive in 2e, your argument only works if you forget that. Mile'ionaha fucked around with this message at 05:25 on Jan 27, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 05:23
|
|
|
I'm in games with a Dawn that's really an Eclipse, and a Dawn that's really a Zenith, and am playing a Zenith who chumped an Abyssal in two hits. Which is to say that I am totally fine with removing supernal because it doesn't really mean anything even when it's there. I've become more annoyed with supernal than the idea of not having them when I make characters lately because I feel like my characters NEED to focus on their Supernal, which means a character can only feasibly work 2 or maybe 3 things into their concept. Example: A Social-focused character wants at least Integrity, Presence, and Socialize. What if they're also a singer? Add in Performance. One of those is your Supernal so you'll want more to get key charms, which means needing to buy prereqs to unlock them (sometimes a lot of prereqs which should just be mashed into one charm with Essence tiers), and then you want stuff from the other four to supplement it. But you also want to not be useless when combat happens, so you at least want Dodge, and there are a couple charms that are basically necessary, and then some charms for a weapon, and... Remove Supernal, limit options to only Ess1, it becomes much faster to make a character because I don't have to skim through several different trees to decide which is best to Supernal. And I can fit more into the character concept if I'm not feeling driven to invest my starting options heavily into that one ability. (I made a character forgetting Supernal even existed. I was happier before I remembered.) In the end, one of the biggest problems is how far you have to delve into prerequisite charms for charms that are already gated behind Essence, making some Supernal choices massive starting charm sinks to actually take advantage of them. To the point where ignoring it entirely is just easier and less of a headache. And if you ignore Supernal, that problem is still there, just over a longer span of time. Echo Cian fucked around with this message at 05:30 on Jan 27, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 05:25
|
|
|
Bedlamdan posted:It's not necessarily the case that every Dawn is a fighter, though. Speaking in some of my games, I've had situations where the Dawn had more bureaucracy charms than actual combat charms, to the point where I was fairly confused as to why he decided to make a Dawn in the first place. In the same game, the heaviest hitter was the Fiend, who took only martial arts charms and was perfectly clear that he was fine playing an idiot savant who could only express himself through violence. That's weird, but it's fine by me, and it's not like anything stops your weird friends from picking Dawn, choosing supernal Brawl, and then buying nothing but Bureaucracy and Socialize charms anyway. There are, after all, enough charms in the game that even if you restricted yourself only to Essence 1 stuff you'd never actually run out of powers valuable to your archetype before your Essence went up on its own. quote:This I mostly agree with, butI think the point is to incentivize the person wanting to be the fight guy to make a Dawn at Chargen, and not to establish Dawns as the best fighters. The effect is that they are, though, until wayyy later in the game when they're suddenly not (or maybe are but in a really abstruse and subtle way based on the fact that they were able to pour a greater fraction of their XP into high-essence Melee charms in specific before anyone else could do likewise, although this is highly dependent on how many total charms are available, etc) Mile'ionaha posted:Right, Dawns were WORSE at being the fighter because you weren't rewarded for having more than one Dawn ability. Uh, not at all. In fact, I suspect that you couldn't even summarize what the problems I complain about with the supernal ability rules are.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 05:26
|
|
|
Opportunity costs trump everything else the end. -Ferrinus We get that this is the hill you want to die on but holy cow you yammer on.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 05:43
|
|
|
Mile'ionaha posted:Opportunity costs trump everything else the end. -Ferrinus That's what I thought.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 05:49
|
|
|
I've always just thought that Dawn Caste was a stupid idea to begin with. 3e just exacerbated it. I mean if you look at it it used to be way easier to call out what each caste was best at. Night was stealth and guile but now they're sharing that. Twilight was sorcery and ingenuity but now they're sharing that. Zenith was leadership and resilience but now they're sharing that. Eclipse was bureaucracy and ...well honestly leftovers but now they're sharing that. Dawn is combat and now it is still exclusively Dawn apparently. How the hell did that happen? If Dawns are so reliant on their one big thing that they can't share it without becoming a devalued caste, then I'd say they're just a poo poo design from the get go, since apparently all the other castes can do it. Maybe "Just real good at fighting" wasn't a great idea and it's not worth tying a game into pretzels to defend it.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 05:51
|
|
|
theironjef posted:I've always just thought that Dawn Caste was a stupid idea to begin with. 3e just exacerbated it. I mean if you look at it it used to be way easier to call out what each caste was best at. The Supernal Ability's good or bad regardless of whether the Dawn Caste exists, it's just everyone's arguments about Solars always revolve around the Dawn Caste because Exalted fans are split between people who want to beat you up and people who are paralytically afraid of being beaten up.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 05:55
|
|
|
Ferrinus posted:That's what I thought. You are literally complaining that instead of 10 silver stars to put on your character sheet you get 9 silver stars and one gold. You can *still* pick Favored abilities that make you suddenly able to steal worship from the gods themselves and smite experienced Dragonblooded. That didn't go away. There have been oodles of people talking about how you can take a handful of charms in [Area] and suddenly be scarily competent in [area]. But now you can look at all the powers at chargen and say "Hey, I really want my character to do this one [Awesome high Essence Thing]" and do it at chargen instead of being basicaly turned down flat by RAW.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 06:04
|
|
|
Attorney at Funk posted:The Supernal Ability's good or bad regardless of whether the Dawn Caste exists, it's just everyone's arguments about Solars always revolve around the Dawn Caste because Exalted fans are split between people who want to beat you up and people who are paralytically afraid of being beaten up. If Supernal was instead replaced by some kind of interestingly thematic boost to anima banners, to the point where each caste was not just a little bit, but unmistakably better at their Caste Things than the other castes, would it still be this divisive? I don't mind a little niche reinforcement.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 06:08
|
|
|
Mile'ionaha posted:You are literally complaining that instead of 10 silver stars to put on your character sheet you get 9 silver stars and one gold. No, that is not what I am literally complaining about, but I'm satisfied to see that you have to tell lies about it in order to even appear to engage. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 06:08
|
|
|
Mile'ionaha posted:If Supernal was instead replaced by some kind of interestingly thematic boost to anima banners, to the point where each caste was not just a little bit, but unmistakably better at their Caste Things than the other castes, would it still be this divisive? I don't think Exalted benefits from having rigid character classes and expansive point-buy character creation and advancement. Your Caste shouldn't actually be flatly determinative of your character concept any more than your Clan in Vampire or your Path in Mage. Niche should emerge from playstyle, party dynamics and power selection, rather than be handed down by fiat.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 06:12
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 11, 2024 08:25 |
|
|
The Supernal ability doesn't make a huge difference in the game, but to the extent it does it just encourages weird monomaniacal characters whose personalities don't reflect the sort of legendary god-kings and sorcerer-queens you read about in things like Tales of the Flat Earth. The biggest change it is going to make is that people specialize even harder, which doesn't really benefit the game. By the way, those Tanith Lee books were hard to find! But they are really cool and weird.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2016 06:13
|
|
