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sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth
Lunars has no right to be as good as it is. At least Dragon Blooded was building off an already solid foundation so it's not that shocking it came out real good.

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gourdcaptain
Nov 16, 2012

PurpleXVI posted:


Also I was always annoyed with the Casteless, because in 2E, and 3E if they didn't change it, Lunars basically needed MAGICAL TATTOOS so their AMAZING SHAPESHIFTING POWERS(which generally sucked rear end compared to just boning up on Dex charms/excellencies, outside of a few very good combos, due to shapeshifting heavily favouring Strength and Soak boosts, in a game with Godstat Dex) didn't melt them into that creature from The Thing over time. Those things were called Chimeras, and were protean badasses that were also sadly universally insane so you couldn't play this cool thing, SORRY MAN. JUST LOOK, NO TOUCH.

Becoming a Chimera should have been just as valid an apex Lunar charm tree as their other options.
My "favorite" Lunar thing mechanically in 2e was the amazing shapeshifting had a baked in difficulty to spot the built in Tell giving it away not influenced by your skills or abilities, except you could possibly make it worse I think. Yep, your keen disguise shapeshif just fails worse than Solar disguise from that alone.

There was worse stuff, that just stuck with me for some reason.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

Mors Rattus posted:

You're going to enjoy Lunars 3e when I eventually get there.

Please don't tell me it has playable Chimeras. I want to hate 3E with full fury, it's not allowed to have any good things.

In general, though, just for a teaser, how did they handle Lunars? They always suffered a lot from their main conceit not really being, well, a good fit for Exalted as most people I knew ran it. The authors generally seemed to feel like the Wyld Hunt should be more of a threat than it seemed to be in general, that you should be doing a lot of sneaking and hiding your powers, even in most of the Threshold. So shapeshifting would be a great stealth power and etc. but the problem with stealth in most RPG's is kind of the Shadowrun Hacker Minigames problem: You split one guy off and run a game for him that the others can't play in unless they're also really good at stealth. So in practice it never gets that much screentime. Plus I've yet to meet the Subtle Exalted game that the devs apparently expected. So shapeshifting for stealth tended to be kind of useless, shapeshifting for mobility likewise unless you had a form big enough to bring everyone, shapeshifting in combat, well, as mentioned, shapeshifting rarely benefited your Dex much and unless you had Moonsilver gear you generally had to give your weapons and armor up when shifting...

So Lunars mostly just ended up being the guys who could get a lot of dice into their Dex pools which, when you got right down to it, was kind of the same thing Solars had going for them, except usually better.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Basically the two options for what I do next are either the city-book portions on Nuln and Altdorf, or I can dive into another of the garbage cans of awfulness that came out of the AdEva community with Dungeons: The Dragoning 7th Edition. You kind of have to see that one to believe it.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



Mors Rattus posted:

given that it's explicitly optional and opt-in as written by the new devs, I think this is more on you than anything else
"You're telling me it's like Gilgamesh and Enkidu? What the gently caress is this Final Fantasy XIV bullshit doing in my game?"

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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Exalted 3rd Edition: Making A Character – Wait, What Rules

In the high tradition of White Wolf Organization, chargen happens before any rules discussion whatsoever. But, well, it’s still Storyteller, so we at least know that it’s 1-5 dots, 2 dots average on attributes, etc. This is Exalted, so we kept Appearance as a stat long after other games have ditched it. It’s a poo poo stat. Yes, Lunars 3e will do decent enough stuff with it but it’s still a bad stat. Anyway. Step 1: talk to the other players and figure out your concepts and what caste they belong to. Note down the caste anima effects, which are not in this chapter. You start at 1 dot in each attribute, picking a primary, secondary and tertiary category from Physical, Mental and Social. Still in the realm of normal. You get 8 dots to spend on primary, 6 on secondary and 4 on tertiary. And I am going to flat out tell you right now: because BP is more efficient than XP, it is your best idea mechanically to put whatever you want up to 5 and leave the others at 1, because it is much cheaper to get a 5 this way than to buy it with XP. Because no bad rules even if you want them, I guess. A primary or secondary attribute will cost 4 BP per dot to raise, and a tertiary will cost 3 BP per dot. XP costs, on the other hand, will rise with each dot, so dot 5 is significantly more expensive than dot 2 or 3.

From here, we look at Caste Abilities. Each Solar Caste, in past editions, had five Caste Abilities. In 3e, they have eight, and you pick which five your Solar has from their caste. Dawns get Archery, Awareness, Brawl/Martial Arts, Dodge, Melee, Resistance, Thrown and War, for example. (Martial Arts is an ability you can only get if you have the Martial Artist merit, but if you have Brawl as caste or favored, you automatically get Martial Arts the same if you have access to it. Martial Arts are a good investment if you go whole hog on it…but most Solars won’t, because Brawl is mechanically better, as it was Morke’s favorite ability. It’s also just awful to read.) Zeniths get Athletics, Integrity, Performance, Lore, Presence, Resistance, Survival and War. Twilights get Bureaucracy, Craft, Integrity, Investigation, Linguistics, Lore, Medicine and Occult. Nights get Athletics, Awareness, Dodge, Investigation, Larceny, Ride, Stealth and Socailize. Eclipses get Bureaucracy, Larceny, Linguistics, Occult, Presence, Ride, Sail and Socialize. The 8-abilities-pick-5 was meant, in theory, to combat the fact that Caste abilities had a lot of overlap in past editions. The trick is that there’s still a lot of overlap, especially for Dawns, who suffered most from it in the first place. Still, not the worst idea. You then pick 5 Favored Abilities, which can’t be the same as any of the Caste Abilities you picked. The game does suggest you pick at least one combat ability as Caste or Favored for survival reasons, and probably should’ve given them as Caste access to more than one caste.

At this point, you pick one of your five chosen Caste Abilities. This is your Supernal Ability. For this one ability, you ignore Essence prerequisites for Charm purchases. So you can buy Essence 5 Charms at chargen in that one Ability. This is an awful, awful idea. Fortunately, only Solars get one so far. Unfortunately, it is still an incredibly bad idea because…well, Solars start at Essence 1 now, and the idea was Essence 1 Charms should still be cool and good. Except having your Supernal meant the devs could feel free to ignore that, because now you can just buy up to whatever in your Supernal Ability! And then anyone who isn’t Supernal in that ability is just…kind of hosed. This is especially true of combat abilities, and note again, only a Dawn can have an attack ability as Supernal. Also you can pick Martial Arts as your Supernal if you’re a Dawn, but…you won’t.

From here, you get a bunch of points to spend on abilities, but can’t raise any over 3 without spending Bonus Points. All Favored Abilities must have at least one dot. You also get 4 Specialties. A Specialty gives you +1 dice to the rolls where it applies, and can only be taken for Abilities you have dots in. You can never apply more than one Specialty to a roll. That’s fine. You then get 10 points on Merits and…we’ll get into that. Suffice to say that there’s a lot of Merits and weighing which ones are worth your time isn’t going to be easy.

After this, you get 15 Charms. You then select your Intimacies. These are the things your character cares about. They are Ties (people, places or things you care about) or Principles (ideals you hold). You must have at least four. At least one must be Defining, at least one must be Major, at least one must have a positive context and at least one must have a negative context. We’ll explain what that actually means later, because the game won’t do it until we hit the social rules. You also select your Limit Trigger, which is what will cause you to gain Limit. Again, this will not be explained until next chapter.

Finally, we spend BP. I will note, the game does at least tell you that your most efficient use of BP is going to be buying up Favored or Caste abilities or Merits, and that Charms and spells will be least efficient, because buying those with XP is flat cost. You will probably also spend some buying up your Willpower, because otherwise you only have the default of 5 and Willpower is a very important thing to have in any Storyteller game because it’s the points you spend to resist stuff or boost stuff. The game suggests having at least 2-5 combat charms, and probably a purchase of Ox-Body Technique to give you a longer HP bar.

I would be fine with the BP advice if, again, it weren’t for the monumentally stupid decision to make BP and XP work extremely differently, with completely different efficiency. I still have no idea why this became an Exalted sacred cow. I’m not sure anyone does.

Next time: You know what’s a good time to start defining terms? A chapter after you use them a lot.

Tibalt
May 14, 2017

What, drawn, and talk of peace! I hate the word, As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee

Night10194 posted:

Dungeons: The Dragoning 7th Edition.
What.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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PurpleXVI posted:

Please don't tell me it has playable Chimeras. I want to hate 3E with full fury, it's not allowed to have any good things.

In general, though, just for a teaser, how did they handle Lunars? They always suffered a lot from their main conceit not really being, well, a good fit for Exalted as most people I knew ran it. The authors generally seemed to feel like the Wyld Hunt should be more of a threat than it seemed to be in general, that you should be doing a lot of sneaking and hiding your powers, even in most of the Threshold. So shapeshifting would be a great stealth power and etc. but the problem with stealth in most RPG's is kind of the Shadowrun Hacker Minigames problem: You split one guy off and run a game for him that the others can't play in unless they're also really good at stealth. So in practice it never gets that much screentime. Plus I've yet to meet the Subtle Exalted game that the devs apparently expected. So shapeshifting for stealth tended to be kind of useless, shapeshifting for mobility likewise unless you had a form big enough to bring everyone, shapeshifting in combat, well, as mentioned, shapeshifting rarely benefited your Dex much and unless you had Moonsilver gear you generally had to give your weapons and armor up when shifting...

So Lunars mostly just ended up being the guys who could get a lot of dice into their Dex pools which, when you got right down to it, was kind of the same thing Solars had going for them, except usually better.

Lunars are driven by anger. They are people who cannot sit by while injustices are done to them or things they care about. They often need to learn to moderate their anger and not go off on a hair trigger, but the reason so many of them are down to fight the Realm is that most of them come from places the Realm is actively endangering or oppressing. Others don't give a poo poo about the Realm in the abstract, but are interested in some other issue such as ending slavery or just fighting because RAAR I LOVE FIGHTING. They also play a lot with being the monsters that enforce and break societal rules, with a lot of their stuff giving them a lot of power to lead societies from within or to get away with breaking societal rules without repercussions.

Lunars are extremely good shapeshifters now, and can use it for all kinds of bullshit, because the new devs massively expanded the mutation system to allow it to be really flexible, and shapeshifting is a part of the core abilities they have in literally every stat. It's all Charm-based now. So if you want to be sneaky and good at shapeshifting, you buy up Dex, because that is both the sneaky stat and the one that lets you become animals which are extremely small. But if you want to be huge? You go for Strength. Do you want to be clever? You go for intelligence and this lets you do stuff like gain forms by tricking them out of people. Being an animal is generally helpful for a lot of their charms - for example, there's one that makes people much less likely to break their society's rules if you glare at them, and it gets a bonus if you happen to be in the form of an animal that the society finds important culturally or a person who has authority in that society.

Animals in general have also been buffed quite a bit - a hippo is more than capable of taking on a starting Exalt who hasn't gone all in on combat, because they want turning into an animal to be really cool.

Oh, and the way they make beastmen has changed entirely. Most Beastmen are made either by a Lunar using a Charm to bless someone with mutations, or by a Lunar using another Charm to turn a piece of wilderness into a mystical trial that turns those who pass it into beastmen.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



If the BP/XP divide is a sacred cow, can a Lunar become it?

By popular demand
Jul 17, 2007

IT *BZZT* WASP ME--
IT WASP ME ALL *BZZT* ALONG!


Night10194 posted:

or I can dive into another of the garbage cans of awfulness

Yes please.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.


DtD 7.5 E started out as a joke in an AdEva campaign, where the GM wrote that all existing TT companies had merged into one as a result of 2nd Impact and this was something the pilots in his game played on their days off. It was meant to be a horrible abomination made out of D&D, WHFRP2e, 40kRP, 7th Sea, Planescape, and Exalted. A lot of Exalted. Exalted 2e.

Then, those people being as they are, they wrote a 400 page rulebook for it 'as a joke'. I possess this. It is the most unplayable mess of all unplayable messes, everything about its existence a terrible, dated reference.

Leraika
Jun 14, 2015

Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

Night10194 posted:

Basically the two options for what I do next are either the city-book portions on Nuln and Altdorf, or I can dive into another of the garbage cans of awfulness that came out of the AdEva community with Dungeons: The Dragoning 7th Edition. You kind of have to see that one to believe it.

oh god I've played this, it was kind of a disaster

'hey we should staple R&K to this system' was something said by no good developer ever

e: also iirc it had really creepy catgirls in one expansion book (it had expansion books)

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

Mors Rattus posted:

Lunars are driven by anger.

I feel like I'd like this more if it was rephrased as passion, because if it's anger then it feels like they can only ever really be focused on tearing something down. If it's passion then they can also be passionate about creating something new afterwards. Having it be anger also feels like it robs them of a lot of power of subtlety.

Mors Rattus posted:


(Cool stuff)


gently caress yooooooooooooooou a lot of this stuff sounds neat and I enjoy that Beastmen are no longer the results of literal dogfucking. I also like that it sounds like they made Lunars actually, you know, have some interesting social/intelligence niches now, rather than just BIG NUMBER BREAK THING HOORAY EAT HEART. But again it also feels like it makes the Lunars really only fit into a game with either a very present Wyld Hunt or a game filled with other Lunars.

Actually, speaking of that, crossing over splats in 2E was clearly intended to happen but was in practice a hot loving mess because "lol what is game balance" even if you ignored the Dragonbloods and other non-celestial Exalts who were intended to be a power step lower than the rest. How does 3E handle it so far by the looks of it?

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Leraika posted:

oh god I've played this, it was kind of a disaster

'hey we should staple R&K to this system' was something said by no good developer ever

e: also iirc it had really creepy catgirls in one expansion book (it had expansion books)

God, I don't have the expansion books. I know they exist, but I don't have them.

I think at the point where you've written 400 pages you can no longer hide behind 'it is a joke' to excuse it.

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth

PurpleXVI posted:

Please don't tell me it has playable Chimeras. I want to hate 3E with full fury, it's not allowed to have any good things.

In general, though, just for a teaser, how did they handle Lunars? They always suffered a lot from their main conceit not really being, well, a good fit for Exalted as most people I knew ran it. The authors generally seemed to feel like the Wyld Hunt should be more of a threat than it seemed to be in general, that you should be doing a lot of sneaking and hiding your powers, even in most of the Threshold. So shapeshifting would be a great stealth power and etc. but the problem with stealth in most RPG's is kind of the Shadowrun Hacker Minigames problem: You split one guy off and run a game for him that the others can't play in unless they're also really good at stealth. So in practice it never gets that much screentime. Plus I've yet to meet the Subtle Exalted game that the devs apparently expected. So shapeshifting for stealth tended to be kind of useless, shapeshifting for mobility likewise unless you had a form big enough to bring everyone, shapeshifting in combat, well, as mentioned, shapeshifting rarely benefited your Dex much and unless you had Moonsilver gear you generally had to give your weapons and armor up when shifting...

So Lunars mostly just ended up being the guys who could get a lot of dice into their Dex pools which, when you got right down to it, was kind of the same thing Solars had going for them, except usually better.

Lunars in 3E are good because they finally realized Lunars being 'the other' are why they're good in a world like Exalted. Their shapeshifting is now not only as central as it should be but also deeply thematic. You can shapeshift to steal memories and bonds, you can just straight up /become/ something or someone else, but at your core you can never not be you. I think they even used it as a preview but one of my favorite charms they used to show this is 'Heart Drinking Allure', which lets you do a Sacred Hunt on a human you have a major tie of love or lust to but instead of taking their blood and killing them you seal it with an act of passion like a kiss. It's a really minor charm, not that useful crunch wise, but it sets a tone for what Lunar are now. You don't need special charms to steal a human shape either, you just can, and there's a lot of charms like Heart Drinking Allure that give you alternate ways to get their 'heart' instead of killing them. It's now very possible to play 'sneaky' Lunars without being murderhobos.

Lunars are now about anger and passion, not 'savagery'. They're not dumb barbarians, they're incredibly powerful exalted that The Realm is actively harming and oppressing. They don't just want to burn down creation because 'rawr city big and scary me dumb animal' it's because that city is probably loving evil and they want to build a new, more just (to them, Lunars aren't inherently noble after al) system in its place, so you get charms that focus on both creation and destruction.

Plus animals suck way less now. Like, in 2e and all they were useless except for, like 'I turn to a mouse to sneak away' or any given bird for scouting. Now animals have merits and stats that actually are useful and situational if you wanna go full Beast Boy

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth
Oh right I forgot Beastmen aren't products of raping animals, because OF COURSE THEY SHOULDN'T BE

Leraika
Jun 14, 2015

Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

Night10194 posted:

God, I don't have the expansion books. I know they exist, but I don't have them.

I think at the point where you've written 400 pages you can no longer hide behind 'it is a joke' to excuse it.

I've got the one with thri-kreen/kobolds/dryads in it, but not the other one.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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PurpleXVI posted:

I feel like I'd like this more if it was rephrased as passion, because if it's anger then it feels like they can only ever really be focused on tearing something down. If it's passion then they can also be passionate about creating something new afterwards. Having it be anger also feels like it robs them of a lot of power of subtlety.


gently caress yooooooooooooooou a lot of this stuff sounds neat and I enjoy that Beastmen are no longer the results of literal dogfucking. I also like that it sounds like they made Lunars actually, you know, have some interesting social/intelligence niches now, rather than just BIG NUMBER BREAK THING HOORAY EAT HEART. But again it also feels like it makes the Lunars really only fit into a game with either a very present Wyld Hunt or a game filled with other Lunars.

Actually, speaking of that, crossing over splats in 2E was clearly intended to happen but was in practice a hot loving mess because "lol what is game balance" even if you ignored the Dragonbloods and other non-celestial Exalts who were intended to be a power step lower than the rest. How does 3E handle it so far by the looks of it?

I mean, the Wyld Hunt is going to be a thing in a lot of games because they make good antags. Lunars are designed to play well with Solars if they want to, but I wouldn't suggest playing as Solars. DBs are weaker than Lunars and Solars are - I'd say about 3 to 1 is the appropriate matchup for equivalent combat focus, honestly. Someone apparently ran a test combat of 3 combat focus chargen DBs vs a resilience-focused chargen Solar and it was literally interminable, with neither side able to effectively harm the other. DB teamwork stuff is real good at helping even the field that way, actually.

We don't have any other playable groups so I can't say how crossover will be handled. Overall, conflict is more likely than teamups, but teamups are explicitly not off the table, they're just less common in the setting.

Lunars are definitely passionate and angry about making things better, yes. They have some really good tools to do it among their charms. Just, they are also pushed into conflict often by seeing something that pisses them the hell off.

I would say that Exalted does expect you to be okay with the fact that one party member may hare off to go sneak into someone's house while the rest go negotiate with a guy or fight a guy, tho.

Vox Valentine
May 31, 2013

Solving all of life's problems through enhanced casting of Occam's Razor. Reward yourself with an imaginary chalice.

Oooh, please do Dungeons: The Dragoning 7th edition because it's just a bad pop culture mashup I really wanted to learn at one point.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Hostile V posted:

Oooh, please do Dungeons: The Dragoning 7th edition because it's just a bad pop culture mashup I really wanted to learn at one point.

Well, I guess that settles it. It makes a good compliment to Exalted, anyway.

Of course, this means I have to read and remember how the drat thing works besides 'it doesn't.'

Vox Valentine
May 31, 2013

Solving all of life's problems through enhanced casting of Occam's Razor. Reward yourself with an imaginary chalice.

Night10194 posted:

Well, I guess that settles it. It makes a good compliment to Exalted, anyway.

Of course, this means I have to read and remember how the drat thing works besides 'it doesn't.'
Aw c'mon it's a piece of cake. It's just Storyteller attributes and skills where you roll a pool of d10s equal to Skill+Stat, take the highest results equal to your Stat, add them and compare that to the TN which is usually 15 unless it's a fighting skill which has a different resolution metric. Oh also you have an Exaltation and can buy new upgrades like Merits from Storyteller but you can only buy them along a Warhammer career path and then there's the magic system which uses the D&D schools of magic artfully taped to the Perils of the Warp mechanic from 40K and this entire thing takes place on Sigil which is a big ol' ringworld in a big space ocean. And sometimes you get exploding dice.

It's that simple, sheesh.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Hostile V posted:

Aw c'mon it's a piece of cake. It's just Storyteller attributes and skills where you roll a pool of d10s equal to Skill+Stat, take the highest results equal to your Stat, add them and compare that to the TN which is usually 15 unless it's a fighting skill which has a different resolution metric. Oh also you have an Exaltation and can buy new upgrades like Merits from Storyteller but you can only buy them along a Warhammer career path and then there's the magic system which uses the D&D schools of magic artfully taped to the Perils of the Warp mechanic from 40K and this entire thing takes place on Sigil which is a big ol' ringworld in a big space ocean. And sometimes you get exploding dice.

It's that simple, sheesh.

If you thought AdEva had a lust for subsystems, people, you are in for a loving treat.

Also Syreneth from 7th Sea are here.

Wrestlepig
Feb 25, 2011

my mum says im cool

Toilet Rascal
How does exalted handle cross-splat stuff? I know WOD had lots of different power levels that weren’t balanced against each other, but that’s fine since they weren’t supposed to be. But here there’s a bunch of radically different sorts of exalted that all interact with each other, and some are explicitly the Best or weaker while others have completely different focuses and agendas.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

Wrestlepig posted:

How does exalted handle cross-splat stuff? I know WOD had lots of different power levels that weren’t balanced against each other, but that’s fine since they weren’t supposed to be. But here there’s a bunch of radically different sorts of exalted that all interact with each other, and some are explicitly the Best or weaker while others have completely different focuses and agendas.

In the case of 2E it consisted mostly of pretending that all the non-DB, non-minor Exaltations were essentially equal while Solars and Infernals laughed at everyone else and had all the most powerful stuff in general, though Sidereals and Lunars had probably the most interesting stuff. There were a few official guidelines along the lines of "give the DB more XP!!!!!" which didn't really matter because the extra XP he got couldn't match up to what Celestial exalts could spend their XP on.

Solars and Lunars were clearly intended to be able to play together, with the occasional Abyssal/Infernal/Sidereal/Alchemical guest star, but it just never worked.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
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Wrestlepig posted:

How does exalted handle cross-splat stuff? I know WOD had lots of different power levels that weren’t balanced against each other, but that’s fine since they weren’t supposed to be. But here there’s a bunch of radically different sorts of exalted that all interact with each other, and some are explicitly the Best or weaker while others have completely different focuses and agendas.

Solars are strongest but broadly on par with the other Celestials, ish. Terrestrials are broadly meant to Ben on par with each other. It’s pretty easy to come up with reasons why specific folks on the same rough tier are working together, but by and large the different slat-wide groups usually don’t get along super well.

That said, the only playable groups are Solars, Lunars and DBs, and of those, Solars are badly done and DBs are weaker.

E: DBs don’t play well with non DBs, generally, specifically because a lot of their stuff is meant to interact with other DBs for teamwork benefits.

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth

Wrestlepig posted:

How does exalted handle cross-splat stuff? I know WOD had lots of different power levels that weren’t balanced against each other, but that’s fine since they weren’t supposed to be. But here there’s a bunch of radically different sorts of exalted that all interact with each other, and some are explicitly the Best or weaker while others have completely different focuses and agendas.

Solars/Lunars are meant to be a mixed group obviously. I've personally found that while Solars should be either all or nothing (or Lunar mixed) everyone else mostly plays well together. Even Lunar/mixed parties can be perfectly fine as long as everyone's on the same page that yea the magic moon mammoth man is gonna be kinda a step higher than 'I am VERY good at spitting fire' but it feels like 3e has smoothed a lot of that. I've not played a mixed game yet but I think a DB/Lunar team can work well. I'd still be a little shy of Solars just because their literal entire thing is 'I am, objectively, the best at my specialty. This is my actual thing, I'm the actual best at it' and while in a group it's actually likely fine for it to be Lunars/DB and, I dunno, the best weapons crafter in Creation, if it's that team and the best punchman in all Creation you may wind up with some players wondering why they're bothering.

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth
the secret of Exalted is no matter which version you're playing Solars are always the least fun option, which is why they get it out of the way as the default.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Solars just seem like a bad idea in general.

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth
it really is amazing they're the 'default' and not DBs, I genuinely don't understand why that is other than my joke about them getting Solars out of the way quickly and being able to refine ideas for the 'real' choices.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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Night10194 posted:

Solars just seem like a bad idea in general.
Part of the idea was probably that they would avoid power creep by starting with the most powerful people, and there is perhaps some value in having the most generic major splat be in the core so you can have more pagecount for worldbuilding and poo poo.

EXCEPT... that instead they gave them over seven hundred prolix magic powers that you have to pick out from a list.

Dawgstar
Jul 15, 2017

If somebody put out 'build guides' under the Storyteller's Vault so I didn't have to comb through said lists I would probably buy them.

gourdcaptain
Nov 16, 2012

Nessus posted:

Part of the idea was probably that they would avoid power creep by starting with the most powerful people, and there is perhaps some value in having the most generic major splat be in the core so you can have more pagecount for worldbuilding and poo poo.

EXCEPT... that instead they gave them over seven hundred prolix magic powers that you have to pick out from a list.

I was tempted to run/play Exalted 3e after it finally came out so I could actually comment on it from a position of having played it in forum discussions.

I couldn't read the charms chapter enough to actually build a character. It's just too much repetitive dice stuff.

SirPhoebos
Dec 10, 2007

WELL THAT JUST HAPPENED!

Is there a way to salvage Solars? I've never played Exalted (though I bought a bunch of 2E books for some damned fool reason), but what if you redefined them away from "Solars are the best at everything." to something more defined, like "Solars were created to destroy the Primordials, and that's it"? A Solar is the personification of The Nuclear Option, and their arc isn't about getting stronger, but learning to temper their world shattering power.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

I mean, step one is ‘scrap like 250 pages of charms.’

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Mors Rattus posted:

I mean, step one is ‘scrap like 250 pages of charms.’

Isn't that step 1 for all of Exalted though.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

Night10194 posted:

Isn't that step 1 for all of Exalted though.

I mean, I legit like the DB and Lunar sets. There’s something fun about being a thief who can make evidence they leave behind explode, or being able to turn into an army of bees.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Mors Rattus posted:

I mean, I legit like the DB and Lunar sets. There’s something fun about being a thief who can make evidence they leave behind explode, or being able to turn into an army of bees.

I know this is how it often was in 2e and is for the Solars, but for them is it still 'I take the TURN INTO BEES power' or are they much more general?

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth

Mors Rattus posted:

I mean, I legit like the DB and Lunar sets. There’s something fun about being a thief who can make evidence they leave behind explode, or being able to turn into an army of bees.

Yea that's the core issue. All Exalted do suffer from power bloat, but at least DB/Lunar stuff is like 'I have five different very interesting and thematic ways to hide my evidence of my thievery' while most of Solar is 'I have five different 'get bonus dice to your thief check' generic powers with different triggers and then I can steal the very concept of potatoes from a city after I take those'.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

Night10194 posted:

I know this is how it often was in 2e and is for the Solars, but for them is it still 'I take the TURN INTO BEES power' or are they much more general?

Basically the Charm lets you turn into a swarm of tiny animals of any kind, and then you can get a Charm that branches off it that lets you just turn into a mass combat unit composed entirely of clones of yourself.

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Five Eyes
Oct 26, 2017
Thanks for the Exalted readthrough. I am currently meandering my way through a single-story game of it and have been dependent on people's rewrites of the Solar Charm set to make things more manageable.

Do people who backed the Kickstarter or who have spoken with the devs have more vision on the design stages? It feels as though the Charm sets reflect different phases of the design process (I have heard the Martial Arts were written in an earlier draft?), especially when you compare the avocado-slicer iterative small benefits of, say, Dodge with the philosophy behind the low-Essence Sail or Larceny Charms.

SirPhoebos posted:

Is there a way to salvage Solars? I've never played Exalted (though I bought a bunch of 2E books for some damned fool reason), but what if you redefined them away from "Solars are the best at everything." to something more defined, like "Solars were created to destroy the Primordials, and that's it"?

Nothing about the setting really necessitates the Solars being stronger than other Celestial-tier Exalts. The Solar "thing" could be Supernal, Solar Sorcery, and easy unlocking of Evocations, while keeping their Charms and access to MA on-par with Lunars and Sidereals. This would make them immediately disruptive (Solars get up to speed faster than others, but have roughly the same upper limit, and can reclaim their legendary artifacts and wield them as they once did) in the same way their Almighty Superiority is supposed to.

Exalted should never be so blasé about the power of "mere" non-Solar-level Celestial Exalts that 200 new ones cropping up wouldn't completely upset the status quo.

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