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EthanSteele
Nov 18, 2007

I can hear you

PurpleXVI posted:

Getting hit with a mind control mallet, whether rhetoric followed by a social attack roll, or magic/psionic/nanites mind control, feels distinctly different. Because someone's literally reaching in and rewriting my character, something that I have no counter for or way to undo once it's happened. This is now no longer my character, more or less, it's someone else's character that I'm forced to keep playing(unless I decide it's bullshit and get up and leave the table). My decisions and participation for this character have actively ceased to matter and are just a formality for the remainder of the effect(or game, if it's permanent).

That's not how it works. It's fine that you find the idea of a character being able to make you get a Minor Intimacy of respect for the King of the City you're in abhorrent and character destroying, but it isn't objectively so by its very nature. It's clear you've had some really bad experiences with bad GMs doing bad bullshit, but that doesn't mean every social influence thing in every game is bad. Exalted, Burning Wheel, Monsterhearts all have great systems for getting players to do things, some of them even form binding contracts where you all agree that's the result of what went down and now you have to act in accordance with that and if you don't then everyone calls you a huge fucker because you're not playing fair because you all agree that you're going to play the game and abide by the rules and see where that goes. It's not your thing, that's fine, but the idea is not inherently bad.

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Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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



PurpleXVI posted:

Usually death in combat is the result of a series of decisions made in which I have full agency(unless the GM just has someone show up with a nuke and vaporize the entire party on round one, that is also bad GM'ing), at the end I may hit the loss condition of my character no longer being in play. But at no point is the character not mine to play, control and decide what he does. At no point does the GM lean over and go: "Okay, you now have to play out this exact combat strategy. Read from this script I just printed out." And the only thing that happens which isn't under my control is that eventually I die. Though ultimately, to some extent, that character death is also the result of the actions I consciously chose to take, knowing their likely outcomes(even if the likely outcomes were not the eventual outcomes).

Getting hit with a mind control mallet, whether rhetoric followed by a social attack roll, or magic/psionic/nanites mind control, feels distinctly different. Because someone's literally reaching in and rewriting my character, something that I have no counter for or way to undo once it's happened. This is now no longer my character, more or less, it's someone else's character that I'm forced to keep playing(unless I decide it's bullshit and get up and leave the table). My decisions and participation for this character have actively ceased to matter and are just a formality for the remainder of the effect(or game, if it's permanent).
My problem is that I'd like to be able to engage with these systems in order to persuade or affect other non-player characters and social systems in the game space, and I am personally comfortable with the prospect that these could affect my character back. It would be interesting to have a system where this was relatively robust - because usually it is either entirely mother-may-I (which, in a free-form narrative roleplaying situation like a journal game, is fine - I've had many good experiences in them) or because it boils down to "Make a persuasion check," versus the fully realized and robustly-featured combat system.

I don't feel like this desire necessarily indicates all the negative poo poo you're slapping down, although I respect that this is your opinion and that you would obviously prefer not to engage in a game like I am describing. But this game (and I suppose that my mission may be to write it) does not exist, or is present in very basic form as systems such as in Exalted here; probably not much further advanced than basic D&D, if that.

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer
Personally, I'm iffy on anything more complicated or longer lasting than a FATE compel or PBTA social thread. I think it goes back to similar systems in Earthdawn, and (less fairly!) stories where PCs get charmed by big bads and scenes turn into awkward maneuvering around the afflicted character.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

If you will not serve in combat, you will serve on the firing line!




I can't even remember if any of the campaigns I played in featured all that much social combat or not. I had some I think but not very much. Or I just wasn't all that involved that aspect. Which I guess says something about the social combat system I suppose.

Cooked Auto fucked around with this message at 02:10 on Mar 23, 2019

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!

Nessus posted:

My problem is that I'd like to be able to engage with these systems in order to persuade or affect other non-player characters and social systems in the game space, and I am personally comfortable with the prospect that these could affect my character back. It would be interesting to have a system where this was relatively robust - because usually it is either entirely mother-may-I (which, in a free-form narrative roleplaying situation like a journal game, is fine - I've had many good experiences in them) or because it boils down to "Make a persuasion check," versus the fully realized and robustly-featured combat system.

I don't feel like this desire necessarily indicates all the negative poo poo you're slapping down, although I respect that this is your opinion and that you would obviously prefer not to engage in a game like I am describing. But this game (and I suppose that my mission may be to write it) does not exist, or is present in very basic form as systems such as in Exalted here; probably not much further advanced than basic D&D, if that.

I'd be fine with the game you're describing if it was a board game, strategy game, something of the sort. Something more about organizations or nations than characters. If the great Republic of Nessusvania argued the diplomats of PurpleXVIstan into changing our stance on peace or war or something of the sort. Something that's without personal investment in a character, either because there's no specific character or because the whole thing is episodic/short enough that there's no extensive investment of any kind.

And in that case I'd absolutely want it to be a deep system. I just think that outside of a board game and the like, a lot of social interaction stuff doesn't translate well into discrete moves, powers and items in the same way as stuff does in a physical combat system. On the organization level it's easier to abstract, on the personal level it's hard.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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



PurpleXVI posted:

I'd be fine with the game you're describing if it was a board game, strategy game, something of the sort. Something more about organizations or nations than characters. If the great Republic of Nessusvania argued the diplomats of PurpleXVIstan into changing our stance on peace or war or something of the sort. Something that's without personal investment in a character, either because there's no specific character or because the whole thing is episodic/short enough that there's no extensive investment of any kind.

And in that case I'd absolutely want it to be a deep system. I just think that outside of a board game and the like, a lot of social interaction stuff doesn't translate well into discrete moves, powers and items in the same way as stuff does in a physical combat system. On the organization level it's easier to abstract, on the personal level it's hard.
The fantasy here is the prospect that you can convince people to stop being shitheads (or, admittedly, the same reasoning would apply to being some master manipulator) rather than absolutely respecting their freedom of personal agency and choice while murdering them with a magic sword or high-velocity death ray.

IshmaelZarkov
Jun 20, 2013

That Old Tree posted:

It's really not a terrible idea to simplify and unify character creation stuff, but it absolutely is a bad idea to act like "-2 difficulty to fatigue rolls" is the same as "a staff that grows an endless amount of food" or "a stone that you can use to trap a god."


I think the weapon and armor stat numbers are the only things I came up with that are in the published book. (Maybe even just the weapon numbers? I'm not sure.) I had light amounts of input into a bunch of stuff, mostly because dev meetings were wide-ranging and involved a half-dozen or more people.

There's ~20-30k words worth of a half-done equipment chapter that I think would've been pretty good, sitting in my Google Drive alongside the skeletons of like three bureaucracy/social management systems, a couple crafting systems, an the basics of an Evocation system based on a handful of really good ideas they didn't use because, again, ????

Like I'm not even claiming any ownership over a lot of this. After all, there's like a handful of numbers in the game that I came up with and that's it. But there were some very interesting and characterful ideas from the dev meetings that were scrapped and replaced with More Of The Same, and it's loving baffling.

I don't know if there are any legal issues at play, but literally all those things you mentioned are things I'd love to have a look at if you're allowed to share.

Merilan
Mar 7, 2019

god what IS it with exalted and having so many things that indicate whether or not you'll get pregnant if you gently caress

like again with the 15-year old memories even back when i was a teen i knew i was going into uh oh territory when the gm started talking at length about tea that acted as contraceptive pills

Zereth
Jul 9, 2003



Kaza42 posted:

I really wish you had gotten that then. One thing that super disappointed me was that after all the talk of "no sacred cows" and "looking at everything from the ground up" we got the exact same 9 attribute 25 ability 1-5 system as before.
I recall asking a dev (I think holden?) when they were taking questions in the then-current SA exalted thread how they were going to make Bureaucracy a cool-rear end ability to base a character around and they replied with something dismissive and acting like it was a joke.

I believe I replied with something along the lines of "then why are you putting it in the game"

gourdcaptain
Nov 16, 2012

Zereth posted:

I recall asking a dev (I think holden?) when they were taking questions in the then-current SA exalted thread how they were going to make Bureaucracy a cool-rear end ability to base a character around and they replied with something dismissive and acting like it was a joke.

I believe I replied with something along the lines of "then why are you putting it in the game"

My very first Exalted character was "hey, there's a Bureaucracy skill, this is amazing, I should build a character around this" followed by insufficiently investing in combat abilities and just spending an entire first session realizing the ability I'd invested in was mostly useless and I couldn't hit anything with 2 Dex + 3 Melee and almost no combat charms and was in trouble if ever targeted.

thatbastardken
Apr 23, 2010

A contract signed by a minor is not binding!
yeah I haven't looked at exalted for a while but iirc there's nothing for bureaucracy to do.

Zereth
Jul 9, 2003



thatbastardken posted:

yeah I haven't looked at exalted for a while but iirc there's nothing for bureaucracy to do.
I believe solar bureaucracy charms include such amazing effects as speeding things up or slowing them down by an amount based off your Essence score!

without even the vaguest of guidelines for how long things should take normally.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!
One of my biggest issues with Exalted 3e is that they really, really needed to put combat and non-combat options into different silos. I have no idea why they siloed mundane vs. solar charms instead; one of the biggest issues is balancing combat when somebody can just sink everything into Linguistics, Integrity, and Socialize while somebody else is rocking a magic superpowered deathsword that creates miniature volcanoes and a ton of Melee and Resistance charms.

It was already an issue with 2e but it's even worse with 3e because most abilities now have so many charms you can dive deep into them for ages before scraping the bottom.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
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2014-2018

Exalted 3rd Edition: Healthy Competition

Health works as it generally has in exalted. You have a health bar, and each box on it has an associated wound penalty. All of your rolls and static values take the highest penalty of your filled boxes. By default, you have seven boxes: -0, -1, -1, -2, -2, -4, Incapacitated. Charms can give more, and Giant gives you an extra -0. Decisive Attacks can cause damage to your health, as can environmental hazards, poison or other similar effects. Damage is Bashing, Lethal or Aggravated. If your Incapacitated box fills with Bashing, you are unconscious. If it fills with Lethal or Aggravated, you are dead or dying (ST's choice). Bashing damage gets pushed further down your track when you take Lethal - so if you have 3 boxes filled with Bashing, then take two Lethal, your Bashing boxes get pushed down two spaces to make room for the lethal damage. However, if you take Bashing damage while your bar is already full of it, then it starts to upgrade the existing Bashing damage to Lethal, one for one. Aggravated damage is special damage caused, generally, by powerful magical effects. It functions as Lethal damage, but cannot be healed by magic or have its healing speed decreased. Only natural rest and healing will cure it, and it is always the last damage healed, after Bashing and Lethal. It pushes both Bashing and Lethal damage down your track, just like Lethal does to Bashing.

Fast healing is pretty much exclusively the realm of magic. Wounds do heal naturally, but it takes time, and it takes longer the worse you're wounded. Bashing damage heals first, then Lethal damage, then Aggravated, and damage always heals from the furthest health box first. Exalts, gods and other beings with Exalted-scale healing heal at the following rats:
  • A -4 box heals in 2 days (if Bashing) or 5 days (if Lethal or Aggravated).
  • A -2 box heals in 1 day (if Bashing) or 3 days (if Lethal or Aggravated).
  • A -1 box heals in 12 hours (if Bashing) or 2 days (if Lethal or Aggravated).
  • A -0 box heals in 1 hour (if Bashing) or 1 day (if Lethal or Aggravated).
  • Incapacitated heals at a speed determined by the ST. Being knocked out with Bashing usually ends at the end of the scene, but if combat ends before the scene does, the ST may allow it to be faster, or it might take several hours. Incapacitation due to Lethal or Aggravated damage is usually fatal, but the ST may allow survival for several rounds to all characters a chance to attempt emergency medical aid. If this is applied, it may take hours, days, or weeks at the ST's option before the character regains consciousness and heals the Incapacitated box.

Mortals heal significantly slower. A mortal will heal a -0 box at the -1 rate, a -1 at the -2 rate, and -2 at the -4 rate, and a -4 will take one week to heal (if Bashing) or one month (if Lethal or Aggravated). Mortals cannot heal -2 or -4 boxes at all unless they spend all their time resting, and if they take Lethal damage greater than or equal to their Stamina from any single attack, they will begin to bleed to death at the rate of 1L per minute until the bleeding is stopped with a Medicine roll. If a mortal is incapacitated with Lethal or Aggravated damage and somehow recovers, they will almost always suffer a permanent disability of some kind, though it can be minimized by medical treatment.

Essence flows through everything, and every Exalt has an Essence rating, which will in practice vary between 1 and 5. In theory, it can go higher than that I guess? In practice, no Charm with requirements higher than Essence 5 has been written or, per current devs, is ever planned. Your Essence rating helps determine the size of your Essence mote pools. That's how much Essence you have for use at any ghiven time, and it's split into two pools. Your Peripheral Mote Pool is the Essence which floats near the surface of your body, allowing it to more easily escape and ignite your anima banner when used. Your Personal Mote Pool lives in the depths of oyur soul, and is smaller, but can't escape so easily to make glowy lights. When you activate a Charm or power, you can spend from either pool, but all of it must come from the same pool unless that pool would not be enough to pay the full cost. Only if you are literally required to can you split the cost between pools.

In combat, all characters regain 5 motes of Essence at the end of each round. Combat stirs the Essence in the body and makes it regenerate more rapidly. Outside of combat, Essence regenerates at a rate of 5 motes per hour. If a character is totally relaxed, such as asleep, meditating, or just sitting there reading quietly, they double that to 10 motes per hour. The Peripheral pool regenerates before the Personal pool does. A Solar has (Essence Rating*3)+10 personal motes, and (Essence Rating*7)+26 peripheral motes.

As an Exalt taps their peripheral pool, their soul ignites, shining forth via their anima banner. Normally, this is an invisible aura, but when Essence flows through it, it flares with light. Gods and other non-human Essence users do not have anima banners, but Exalts mix mortal and divine, which causes their souls to glow. A character's anima banner reflects their nature in its colors, sounds and images, drawing on their personalits, beliefs and Caste. A Zenith priest, for example, may have a banner the color of the sun at noon, which as it grows takes the shape of a sacred mandala bearing the oaths he's sworn to the Unconquered Sun and to his people, accompanied by phantasmal smoke and the sound of hymns. A Night, on the other hand, might have an anima that flickers like a torch, with long shadows that shift over time into cloaked silhouettes and blades that mirror her movements.

When a character spends 5 or more motes of Peripheral Essence in a single action, their anima ignites, going up one level per 5 motes spent. Personal motes do not increase it, nor do Peripheral spending that is less than 5 motes. Some Charms require specific anima levels, while others may be able to lower your anima display. The levels (for Solars) are:
  • Dim: Your anima is invisible. This is your default state.
  • Glowing: Your anima glows and pulses, outlining you with color. Your Caste Mark appears on your brow and will shine through any concealing coverings. You get -3 to all stealth and disguise rolls.
  • Burning: Your anima blazes brightly, absorbing your Caste Mark into its glow, though the Caste mark may reappear when you use powerful Charms. Wisps of power roils off your body into the air, and anything that is touched by your anima's light may remain warm for some itme afterwards or bear the lingering scent of summer. Stealth is impossible.
  • Bonfire/Iconic: Your anima ignites in a display of iconic splender, displaying images and sounds representative of the character. The display then collapses into a glowing bonfire of light stretching into the air, visible for miles around. The area is illuminated brightly out to Short range. Your Caste Mark behaves as it did at Burning, and your iconic display may reappear at suitably dramatic moments.
It takes 15 minutes without further ignitions for an anima to recede from Bonfire to Burning or Burning to Glowing, and half an hour to go from Glowing to Dim.

Not all Solar magic is Charms. All Solars have a few innate abilities that are shared by all of them, and another set that are available to them based on their Caste. These are anima effects, and any dice they may add to a roll do not count as dice from Charms, which means they can cause rolls to break normal caps on how many dice you can have.
    All Solars Can
  • Spend 1m to sense the position of the sun relative to themself, learning the exact time of day regardless of their location - even if underground or outside Creation.
  • Spend 1m to cause their Caste Mark to appear on their forehead and remain on display for as long as they want.
    Dawn Castes Can
  • While in Bonfire/Iconic, add (Essence/2), rounding up, to their base Initiative after it resets due to a successful Decisive Attack.
  • Spend 10m, once per day, to automatically reset all combat and movement Charms for usage, regardless of their normal reset conditions. Once used, this ability cannot be used again until the next sunrise.
  • At all times, add (Essence/2) dice to any roll to use social influence based on intimidation, and may use such influence even on targets that normally cannot feel fear, such as automata, golems or mindless undead.
    Zenith Castes Can
  • Spend 1m to cause their anima to leap down their arm to a corpse they are touching, incinerating it utterly. This ensures the deceased's soul will not rise as a hungry ghost. Further, the Zenith automatically senses the strongest Intimacies of the deceased and may choose to accept them, gaining those Intimacies. If they do, they can then spend 1m while touching a target of those Intimacies to pass on feelings of peace, love and assurance, losing the Intimacy in the process. They may do the same while touching an object to cause that object to convey comfort or duty to the subject instead. While touching someone who caused the deceased to suffer, they may spend 1m and make a Presence roll with three automatic, non-Charm successes. If this beats the target's Resolve, the victim suffers the pain they caused the deceased, with the duration and mechanical effects of that pain determined by the ST.
  • Spend 10m and 1 Willpower, once per day, after succeeding on a Decisive Attack against a creature of darkness. This prevents the Zenith's Initiative from reseting to its base value after the attack. If the Zenith is in Bonfire/Iconic, the cost of this is reduced to 5m, no Willpower. Once used, this ability cannot be used again until the next noon. Future Mors notes that 'creature of darkness' is not a system term defined in the core, and will not be defined until the Dragon-Blooded book. Whoops.
  • Spend 7m to make a Presence-based persuade action with (Essence) automatic successes, ordering a dematerialized spirit to manifest. This draws on the authority of the Unconquered Sun, which all spirits inherently recognize, and is treated as if it is taking advantage of a Defining Intimacy. If it succeeds, the spirit must materialize, but needs not pay any normal costs to do so.
    Twilight Castes Can
  • Spend 5m to project a forcefield around themselves for one turn, reflexively gaining 5 Hardness. At Bonfire/Iconic, this effect is constantly active for free. It does not stack with any other magic that raises Hardness, but it can be used during Initiative Crash.
  • Spend 10m and 1 Willpower to cause their anima to flare blue-white and consume their body over the course of the round. Once they do, they vanish into the anima on their next turn, ceasing to exist. If they move or are knocked down before then, the effect fails and the cost is wasted. The Twilight will not reappear until the next sunset, and when they do, it will be at a place of power within 10 miles of the vanishing point, chosen by the ST, such as a temple, demesne, major crossroads or city center.
  • Spend 10m while touching an elemental or first circle demon with Essence 1-3, attempting to bind the spirit to their anima. They make an Occult roll against its REsolve and, if succesful, the spirit is bound to them as a familiar, making it an applicable target for all familiar-boosting Charms. They may reflexively summon a spirit familiar for 3m, drawing it to them out of the world's Essence, and may reflexively banish them for free, sending them to the tides of Essence filling Creation until they are needed. They may have up to (Essence) spirit familiars bound this way at any one time.
    Night Castes Can
  • Spend 2m to cause any Peripheral Essence spent for a single action to be treated as if it were Personal Essence spending instead.
  • Spend 3m to ignore (Essence Score or 3, whichever is higher) points of penalties to a single Stealth check, and any motes spent this way are treated as Personal Essence regardless of which pool they come from.
  • While in Bonfire/Iconic, they become wrapped in their own anima, causing their features and shape to be unidentifiable except as a terrifying glowy silhouette. This effect is perfect, unable to be pierced by any magic whatsoever, even the Eye of the Unconquered Sun.
    Eclipse Castes Can
  • Spend 10m and 1 Willpower to sanctify an oath they have witnessed, optionally flaring their anima if they choose to. Anyone that breaks an Oath sanctified by the Eclipse, including the Eclipse, suffers a terrible curse. The effects are determined by the ST, but ideally will reflect the nature of the broken oath.
  • At all times, have diplomatic immunity when dealing with the enemies of Creation. As long as the Eclipse approaches on some form of legitimate business, undead, spirits, demons and Fair Folk will not attack them or their companions without clear and just cause, and must observe all local rules of hospitality. They may, however, try to provoke the party into breaking the peace, which ends the protection.
  • At all times, may spend XP to learn any spirit, Fair Folk or similar Charm that has the Eclipse keyword, as long as they have a teacher for it.

Lastly, Experience. At the end of each session, every PC gains 5 XP. Further, players may earn Solar Experience during play. Solar Experience is like normal Experience, except that it cannot be spent on Solar Charms. Anything else, just not Solar Charms. You can earn up to 4 Solar XP per session - one Expression Bonus and one Role Bonus, each of which grants 2 Solar XP. An Expression Bonus is earned by doing any one of:
1. Expressing, supporting or engaging with a Major or Defining Intimacy in a way that reveals something about the PC, develops their personality, or provides an enjoyable character moment for the group.
2. Being significantly challenged, endangered or harmed as part of protecting or upholding a Major or Defining Intimacy.
3. Being significantly impeded, endangered or harmed by a Flaw.
A Role Bonus is earned by doing any one of:
1. Intentionally giving up the spotlight focus of a scene to another PC in a way that makes them get to shine in the role their Caste represents or directly supporting them in a cool or dramatic expression of their Caste function.
2. If a Dawn, defeating a powerful foe, defending a vulnerable party member with martial skill, using martial ability to directly advance a Major or Defining Principle or using martial ability to directly protect a Major or Defining Tie.
3. If a Zenith, inspiring others to uphold one of your Major or Defining Principles in a significant way, enduring great hardship in the name of a Major or Defining Intimacy, accomplishing a great deed that furthers a Major or Defining Principle, or making, defending or advancing some group or institution that expresses or supports a Major or Defining Principle.
4. If a Twilight, learning lost lore of the First Age or similar, learning something that helps advance or protect a Major or Defining Intimacy, discovering the mystic secrets of a supernatural being, solving a significant problem or crisis via knowledge or education, or creating a lasting and meaningful work of mystical power.
5. If a Night, removing a major impediment to your or your party's goals via assassination, blackmail or other criminal means, stealing something that directly furthers your or the party's goals, gaining a significant advantage over a dangerous foe via stealth or infultration, or upholding or protecting a Major or Defining Principle through criminal means.
6. If an Eclipse, bringing two or more parties to an accord in a meaningful dispute, gaining a notable advantage for yourself or the party via diplomacy, successful navigating or thwarting social or geographical obstacles that prevented you or the party from achieving a significant goal, exploiting a cultural tradition or legal system to further a Major or Defining Intimacy, bringing someone else's Intimacies closer to aligning with yours or the goals of the party, or inspiring or helping with the creation or transformation of a social institution.

In theory, training times exist, usually on the scale of weeks to months, or days for Caste/Favored stuff. I have never seen a ST who actually cared about them. You cannot spend experience to raise your Essence directly, which is new and actually something I approve of. Rather, after you spend a certain amount of XP, your Essence increases by 1 automatically in the next dramatically appropriate moment the ST wants or when you get a chance to go and meditate for days to months. Which, again, I don't think any ST will enforce that unless they actually want to be a dick. Note, however, that Solar XP doesn't count for your total XP spent. Only normal XP. This combined with the fact that they actually give strict rules for how much XP you should get per session means it's basically a real-time timer based on how often you play. This is stupid; give out XP based on what is appropriate and how fast you want advancement to come instead.

Next time: The part of the book that explains how dice am.

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

Alien Rope Burn posted:

One of my biggest issues with Exalted 3e is that they really, really needed to put combat and non-combat options into different silos.

As far as raw mechanics go and not feature bloat, definitely.

This game assumes you're murder hobos. warrior barbarians, or soldiers. So should the rules, this game really is as heavy as DnD when it comes to action.

gourdcaptain
Nov 16, 2012

Mors Rattus posted:

In theory, training times exist, usually on the scale of weeks to months, or days for Caste/Favored stuff. I have never seen a ST who actually cared about them.

I have! They also constantly stressed a sense of urgency in the plot, so I ended up with a good half of my XP I earned I couldn't spend. *sigh*

EthanSteele
Nov 18, 2007

I can hear you

Alien Rope Burn posted:

One of my biggest issues with Exalted 3e is that they really, really needed to put combat and non-combat options into different silos. I have no idea why they siloed mundane vs. solar charms instead; one of the biggest issues is balancing combat when somebody can just sink everything into Linguistics, Integrity, and Socialize while somebody else is rocking a magic superpowered deathsword that creates miniature volcanoes and a ton of Melee and Resistance charms.

It was already an issue with 2e but it's even worse with 3e because most abilities now have so many charms you can dive deep into them for ages before scraping the bottom.

The issue with that is you don't try and craft an encounter that challenges the Fight Man because that will always be a thing that wipes the floor with everyone else. You do an organic encounter and if the Fight man wipes the floor with them then he does just that because he made a fight man and that's what they do. The base difficulty of a thing is 1-2 and the average defence of a guy is 2 or 3 and the minmax'd Fight man is rolling 10 die minimum before any of his fancy charms. He's going to win every fight and he should! Just like the other guy should steamroll through his stuff because he's also a super genius poet.

As the Zenith with all the talking skills your fighting ability is that the Dawn is loyal to you.

Forcing people to have their characters be equally good at everything sucks.


gourdcaptain posted:

My very first Exalted character was "hey, there's a Bureaucracy skill, this is amazing, I should build a character around this" followed by insufficiently investing in combat abilities and just spending an entire first session realizing the ability I'd invested in was mostly useless and I couldn't hit anything with 2 Dex + 3 Melee and almost no combat charms and was in trouble if ever targeted.

Was this 3E? Cos that's good enough in 3E. You don't need 5+5 to succeed and someone ran the numbers that a 3 dex, 3 melee guy with 2 melee charms relying on the Excellency could stand with the hardest fight in the corebook and at the very least not die.

The guy with 2 Dex and 3 Melee and two melee charms (the good attack one and the good defence one) can style on the average soldier who is coming in at a whole +1 die and no Excellency or charms.

If the game had a GM advice chapter it would theoretically tell GMs that they don't need to make fights to challenge the Dawn at raw fighting, because they can't. You challenge them with extra objectives where killing the Dawn/the opponent isn't the win condition. This is a game where the average difficulty for a task is 1-2 and you roll 10 die minimum if you're minmax'd at that thing.

Bureaucracy in my experience is super fuckin' strong and amazing and has been one of the standout abilities in a couple of games. Again, GM advice chapter could help!

The not being able to spend XP thing also sucks and in 3E a using the skill counts for training time, you just need to also say you spend an hour each night or whatever focusing on what you've learned. You even train multiple things at once! Train your Dex, Strength, Stamina, Athletics, War and Melee all the same time with sword kata that you do every night before bed.

And that's another thing that would be solved by a GM advice chapter because a lot of the complaints and bad stories people are posting seem completely avoidable if the GM had any advice on what to expect and how to structure and pace the drat game. It's not like DnD where you give them a CR5 encounter to match them and of course Exalted sucks if you play/run it like DnD, you shouldn't even have a fight every session as the default! You can have badass fights, but they don't happen every session. Exalted is a game about steamrolling through 90% of stuff in over the top cool ways with the difficulty being choosing which things you steamroll and then dealing with the fallout.

You see a lot of people complain that Solars are impossible to challenge because they throw 20 dice at every problem and go to max anima flare and then the next day they do it again. People seem to either make everything happen in a week so there's no downtime or make stuff wait for the characters to be at full strength and never suffer any consequences for going all out every time. Beating a dead horse but GM advice chapter would help with this...

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

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

If the desired outcome is 'specialists win at their thing easily every time' why have a complex system? It's a question I keep asking myself every time I hear about Exalted; how much is it getting out of being a system with hundreds of pages of rules when that's what it boils down to?

EthanSteele
Nov 18, 2007

I can hear you
The book tells you to not feel like you have to take a 5 in a stat to be competent. The game is designed so you can make a guy who isn't Literally The Most Dexterous Man and still have a good time because you got to put those points into other stuff to be more well-rounded. It's not that the game is designed so specialists crush everything, it's that you don't have to be a specialist to be successful. Sure, if you want to be Lu Bu you take 5 in the stat and have an int of 1 but Liu Bei? He's not hitting above a 4 anywhere, but he's not going to be below a 3 either and the game is built to handle not being minmax'd, unlike a lot of games where if you don't take Cure Light Wounds or the equivalent you might as well not play.

gourdcaptain
Nov 16, 2012

EthanSteele posted:


Was this 3E? Cos that's good enough in 3E. You don't need 5+5 to succeed and someone ran the numbers that a 3 dex, 3 melee guy with 2 melee charms relying on the Excellency could stand with the hardest fight in the corebook and at the very least not die.

The guy with 2 Dex and 3 Melee and two melee charms (the good attack one and the good defence one) can style on the average soldier who is coming in at a whole +1 die and no Excellency or charms.

If the game had a GM advice chapter it would theoretically tell GMs that they don't need to make fights to challenge the Dawn at raw fighting, because they can't. You challenge them with extra objectives where killing the Dawn/the opponent isn't the win condition. This is a game where the average difficulty for a task is 1-2 and you roll 10 die minimum if you're minmax'd at that thing.

Bureaucracy in my experience is super fuckin' strong and amazing and has been one of the standout abilities in a couple of games. Again, GM advice chapter could help!
2e. 3e failed the test of "can I bring myself to read this interminable morass of a charm section enough to actually build a character?"

That, and anyone I knew who wanted to play Exalted I'd already cut ties with due to an incident arising out of an Exalted 2e game that went to badly (although rooted in existing issues) that my entire social life was basically destroyed for most of a year.

EthanSteele
Nov 18, 2007

I can hear you

gourdcaptain posted:

2e. 3e failed the test of "can I bring myself to read this interminable morass of a charm section enough to actually build a character?"

That, and anyone I knew who wanted to play Exalted I'd already cut ties with due to an incident arising out of an Exalted 2e game that went to badly (although rooted in existing issues) that my entire social life was basically destroyed for most of a year.

Dang, that sucks and I hope you're doing better!

And yeah, from what I've heard 2E was 5 and 5 and the perfect defence charms or you die and I'm glad I never played it.

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



EthanSteele posted:

Dang, that sucks and I hope you're doing better!

And yeah, from what I've heard 2E was 5 and 5 and the perfect defence charms or you die and I'm glad I never played it.

2e with errata was... more manageable, but much like D&D 3.5, 2e in general relied on a gentleman's agreement to not break the system. I do not know of any actually system-breaking exploits or, worse, systematic flaws like perfect defenses in 3e, which is nice.

gourdcaptain
Nov 16, 2012

EthanSteele posted:

Dang, that sucks and I hope you're doing better!

And yeah, from what I've heard 2E was 5 and 5 and the perfect defence charms or you die and I'm glad I never played it.

To be entirely blunt, most of the people I severed ties with were awful people and I'm better off not knowing them, and I hang with better people now. Pretty much every example of awful Exalted GMing I'm giving is the same person, who also once declared that my hacking attempt in Shadowrun took long enough as an extended VR action I was in next Tuesday or something and couldn't affect the rest of the session that took place prior to then. Or the next session after that. It was basically a month of that.

I'm still skeptical of "anything that is combat doesn't challenge the Dawn who needs other goals" because that sounds like utter hell to GM for me, but at this point I'm less in the market to play Exalted then as someone with some deep personal issues rooted in it, a grudge against the edition itself for a couple of reasons (I'm actually listed in the acknowledgement section of the book as "I do not wish to be listed" or such, which is hilarious) and who shuts up about the new books and hopes they work out for the people who can still enjoy it.

EthanSteele
Nov 18, 2007

I can hear you
Going back to the "why a complex system" thing, the book does say that if a fight isn't important enough to play out, have the character roll their combat skill vs a difficulty of 3 or whatever. The complex system is for when the fights do need to be complex and crazy, which isn't every single fight.

gourdcaptain posted:

I'm still skeptical of "anything that is combat doesn't challenge the Dawn who needs other goals" because that sounds like utter hell to GM for me,

That's good that you got out the bad situation though!

It's basic stuff like why the fight matters in the first place. Who are the players/bads protecting, what they after, how long until the fight becomes untenable, choose between taking down a bad guy or saving some innocents. Basically anything to make it so a fight isn't just "kill or be killed" because it's rare a wuxia fight is ever just that. Even just encounter design of throwing in some archers to force the Dawn to run up a building to get to them (or the Zenith to smash it down). Again, the sort of thing covered by a dang GM advice chapter!

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!
The problem with the setup that is "The Dawn is Fight Man, everyone else is Other Stuff Man." Is that you end up splitting the game so that literally only one character is really relevant at once. It's fine if the spotlight shifts from time to time, it should shift from time to time, but everyone should be able to contribute something to every situation. If the Dawn literally can't do jack poo poo when no one's being murdered, and the rest can't do jack poo poo while murdering is going on because everything has to be adjusted for the Dawn's extreme power disparity at murdering things, the game balance has failed.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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



PurpleXVI posted:

The problem with the setup that is "The Dawn is Fight Man, everyone else is Other Stuff Man." Is that you end up splitting the game so that literally only one character is really relevant at once. It's fine if the spotlight shifts from time to time, it should shift from time to time, but everyone should be able to contribute something to every situation. If the Dawn literally can't do jack poo poo when no one's being murdered, and the rest can't do jack poo poo while murdering is going on because everything has to be adjusted for the Dawn's extreme power disparity at murdering things, the game balance has failed.
I don't know if it's still the case but the traditional specialized skills sortings for DBs meant everyone had a combat ability, and while you could get some out-of-aspect favored (so a Wood aspect, whose default bonus was Archery, could also pick up Melee) it was like, out the gate: Here. This is your fight power.

I feel like a lot of design lessons from Exalted in general went into Scion 2, which I am sure has numerous critical flaws rendering it complete poo poo, but does manage to land in a middle ground between PBTA and... this, while being considerably simplified and being able to handle broadly similar power types with way fewer moving parts.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

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

Also, a small detail I forgot to mention in the property rules in Old World Armory: They mention plenty of Adventurers can make a profitable business buying tainted or haunted property and then adventuring until it's clean, then flipping it. So you could have a campaign where you de-ghost, de-demon, and clean up old spooky manors for huge profits.

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack
I feel like there was something I was supposed to be doing for the last two and a half months...Oh, that's right! I was supposed to be doing a write-up of...



The Wilderlands of High Fantasy | Part VIII: The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Wilderlands

So, today we're covering a fair bit of content, all of it consisting of write-ups of the mid-sized and minor cities scattered throughout the Wilderlands. In the interest of keeping a brisk pace I'm going to spend maybe a few sentences at most on any given city...

Actun (Altanis): Elf poo poo.

Antil (Altanis): Has a temple to the sky god.

Armagh (City State): Ruled by an rear end in a top hat Druid. Has nice hot springs.

Bisgen (Altanis): Has nice horses.

Blackspell (Elphand Lands): Halfling ship-building village. Has a seaweed problem.

Borsippa (Tarantis): The "capitol" of the Jarmeer Province. Totally nondescript.

Breem (Valon): More Elf poo poo.

Bress (Elphand Lands): Town founded by a bunch of Dwarven iron miners in the middle of the woods.

Bridshin (Southern Reaches): A frontier town with some stuff actually worth mentioning: There's an academy for fighters here and "a City Hall where citizens can debate politics or philosophy. To prevent fistfights, a contingent of amazons is stationed here."

Byrny (City State): Named for the Fighter who founded it (Presumably so he could get away from his parents who obviously hated him) that is famous for its smiths who make chainmail coats, also called "Byrnys". Byrny is apparently the setting's equivalent of "smurf". Has a longstanding Orc problem, who I suspect are being paid by Gargamel so he can turn the local Byrny into gold.

Caer Cadwen (Viridistan): A citadel of the Viridian Empire ruled by the tyrannical Shah; Shaw Satyrbis. He will totally have you hanged if you make fun of his redundent name.

Chim (Ghinor): That one city that used to be part of Kelnore, got abandoned and then was resettled by Dwarves. Noted for being the setting's only source of rubber.

Croy (City State): A Skandik splinter city that is only nominally allied with them. Has rad craftsmen who can make anything thanks to a lost library to the god Odin.
Damkina (Elphand Lands): Their free market is the backbone of the regional economy, with folks coming from all over to trade their. The Lord of the White Throne (Who runs the place) won't tolerate no violence at his market.

Dorel (Ament Tundra): Boring town only notable for its magicum mine (Or is that amisprint and it's supposed to be "magic cum"?)

Dragonsaddle (Southern Reaches): A minor market town.

Dragonscar (Isles of the Dawn): Another market town founded when a bunch of Skandiks got shipwrecked there. The Skandiks almost accidentally wiped out the local Elves with their various Viking diseases. The remnants of the local Elven civilization fled to the southern tip of the island and are still pissed at the Skandiks for almost killing them all. Elven ghosts apparently haunt the local hills.

Flaking (Isles of the Blest): Viridistan merchant outpost. They make ships. The temple of Armadad Bog has been trying to use this place to gain a foothold to spread to the Viridian Empire.

Greenswabs (Valley of the Ancients): Even the book thinks this place is a boring dump. The only notable thing is its location at the mouth of the River of the Ancients, which makes it a major disembarking point for folks looking to explore tthe valley. The fact that it's been taken over by mercenaries gets barely an offhand mention.

Greenwax (Isles of the Blest): City that was built next to the ruins of the ancient, Orichalan city of Sotur. While Sotur is said to be filled with rad poo poo the locals claim it's also full of monsters so few people go in there. There's a magic tree North of the city that Druids like to worship. The city has a ton of taverns and gambling halls but the book notes a dearth of "halls of ill repute".

Grimlon (Viridistan): A Viridian town built around a castle and a common stopover for traders. Three two-headed giants hang around to keep the peace. There's a suit of magic armor hanging in the main hall with a froo-froo poem etched into it. The description notes: "The open air market at the center of town is busy with negotiations for such items as sacks of beans or chests full of swords." which is weirdly specific.

Brindwell (Desert Lands): Another minor market town that's mostly a stopover for people looking to explore a more interesting, nearby location (In this case the Underwing Jungle or the Holy Cities).

Grita Heath (City State): Crappy little town that's too small to even show up on maps. It's notable for being right next to the marshes where those Witches hang out and for being the only source of Thirnya Spice, which is the best food preservative ever. The population is weirdly monotheistic.

The Holy Cities (Desert Lands): Actually consist of 5 separate villages and the winding underground caverns there-under that get a (comparably) huge write-up in the book. This is the home of the Mycretians, who you may remember as those religious folks whose poo poo got wrecked by the Green Emperor when he rose to power, and things have been pretty tough for them for the past 150 years; they've just now gotten back to the point where they can send missionaries out to the surrounding areas. The locals are said to "live gently, practicing their spirit gifts and traveling in all directions to spread their beliefs to all who will listen." when they're not making "Desert wine" thanks to "the expertise of the hundred or so orc slaves"...Mixed signals here, game. The Holy Cities are economically sustained by trading the ore they mine as well as a particular species of mushroom native to the caverns that has aphrodisiac qualities.

Kauran (Altanis): Town full of Druids and Elves. When the Skandiks came trouncing through the area the locals just sort of collectively shrugged and figured they'd throw their lot in with those guys because why not?

Lenap (Lenap): What used to be a crappy, little nowhere town in the old Kelnore Empire is now the only real town of note in the area! Not notable enough to get any interesting tidbits in its write-up though!

Lightelf (City State): Actually contains few to no Elves. This is actually Gnome town that was named after a vision the founder had (Which presumably involved light and/or Elves)

Longbottle (Sea of Five Winds): Yet more Elves! These ones have longboats!

Ludgates (Isles of the Blest): Evil Elf poo poo! The Amiondel Elves were a bunch of dorks who "delved too far into uncovering the secrets of the earth and now desire not to work with the earth but to master it". They set up shop in the area a century ago and have been conquering and enslaving nearby settlements ever since. pretty much the only thing the Invincible Overlord and the World Emperor agree on is that someone should probably do something to stop these jerks...

Malikarr (Valon): Trading hub where alchemists go to get all their good, black market poo poo. It's also a place where outlaw qizards like to hang out to lay low. Overall it's not a place for well-mannered folks, it's even rumoured there are Orichalans living here who aren't shunned as pariahs!

Millo Fortress (Viridistan): Used to be a stronghold against invaders from the desert, now a layover for visitors to the Holy Cities. A bunch of werebears have been getting up in their business lately.

Modron (City State): After 62 pages of references to it we're finally told how this place is supposed to be pronounced (You say it as "Maw-drun", and not like it rhymes with "moron" as I assumed). Used to be a thriving port city that fell to civil war and Orcish raiders, got refounded recently to protect merchants based out of the City State. There's rumours of sunken treasure in the bay as well as rumours of "a river of incandescent lava beneath the wavelets, sea-bats, a Triton Treasure House, sea-frogs and deadly clouded water".

Mysk (Altanis): Another trade hub given far too much of a write up to say far too little.

Onhir (Altanis): The Elves keep comin' and they don't stop comin'. These ones like gems or something...

Ossary (City State): A surprisingly well-populated city state on the "Pagan Coast" controlled by several dozen Skandik clans that are always fighting everyone. The Invincible Overlord has beef with these guys and they are always duking it out.

Renth (Altanis): You like making ropes? The people that live here sure do!

Revelshire (Ebony Coast): Elf poo poo...But actually interesting this time! This place is a tree-top city a bunch of ELves built around a Treant to "protect" it (No word on how down the Treant was with a bunch of Elves building houses all over him...). Once trade routes started to become a thing in the area the Elves started to interbreed with the human merchants and, before you know it, the whole place was crawling with Half-Elves. The Elves, probably egged on by their equivalent of Alex Jones, up and moved out of the place when the non-Elves started to outnumber them. Remember kids: Elves be racist!

Sacred Rock (Southern Reaches): We're told this is a crowded town, but the editor seems to have forgotten to include a population like the other listings. Because of the geography there's little room to expand, so the locals just keep building on top of the existing structures as more people move in.

Sae Laamer (Viridistan): The mercity where the merfolk live. Currently subjugated by the Viridian Empire. The Queen is a "guest" at the World Emperor's palace at the moment...

Sea Rune (City State): A city built on top of a ruined harbour of an ancient civilization discovered by Amazons three thousand years ago. Skandik raiders eventually showed up and conquered the town, driving the Amazons into the ruined Markrab fortress nearby (Where they still hang out to this day). The Overlord kept trying to drive the Skandiks out, but the last time he tried to do so, Thor himself came down from the sky and wrecked poo poo up.

Sotur (Valon): Formerly a major city of the Orichalan Empire, this palce got its poo poo wrecked when two Orichalan wizards decided to duke it out...with MAGIC!!! The place is now filled with magically conjured monsters and treasure, but before you pack up your things to go grave-robbing you should know about the "rotting plague" that's affecting the place: Anyone who stays inside the city for more than 12 hours starts to melt into a puddle of green goo. As a result that city has been abandoned for ages and is reportedly full of treasure and powerful artifacts...and probably a lot of green goo.

Sunev (Ghinor): A town whose populace has a thing for the ostentatious. We're told "Slavery is common, but slaves are treated well to ensure their loyalty".

Tak Shire (Viridistan): The description opens by telling us this place is "Located between trolls and quarrelsome pigherders" and ends by telling us "Twenty gaseous bodies haunt the moat". The rest of the description is nowhere near as interesting but apparently the ruler is a rad little fat guy with a weakness for "fine women". Now if you'll excuse me, I have a vacation to plan...

Targnol Port (Viridistan): Another decadent city within the Viridian Empire, this one has a bunch of rich people poo poo scattered around. During the description of the grand hall we're told "Tears shed in the Garden of Tears have been known to change to diamonds" with no further context or explanation...

Tarsa (Elphand Lands): Mostly Elf poo poo.

Tarsh (Valley of the Ancients): Pretty much the biggest settlement in the Valley of the Ancients, this place was built on top of the ruined "capitol" of the Tenifell Lords. The book hasn't had a great track record with capitol vs. capital thus far so I'm not sure if this place was built on top of an important city, or just the building where the Tenifelil Lords met and got poo poo done. The Tenifell Lords were a group of long lived humans who "[appeared] as flesh colored normal humans", I like they had to specify that they were "flesh-colored". The place has been slowly growing in power lately, maybe one day it'll be as big a deal as the actual city states?

Tegel (City State): Tiny-rear end farming village that's only mentioned because it was the site for a popular Judges Guild module back in OD&D days: Tegel Manor. The titular manor is owned by the illustrious Rump family, whose crest is the Golden Hind (tee hee).

Tell Qa (Viridistan): Capital city of the treacherous Smyrsis Province; its ruler (Shah Kijdawr Aenekosii) is the token good guy in the Viridian Empire and "An enemy to all that is evil". The surrounding forests are lousy with Kobolds; not your post 3rd Edition lizard dudes but "spry, ugly, wizened, shaggy and ragged little creatures, not unlike hairy, bent old men who wear pointed hats". The phrasing makes it unclear if the Kobolds wear pointed hats or are just similar to people who wear pointed hats...

Thunderhold (City State): Founded by a band of Dwarves who had been driven out of their home in "Majestic Fastnes" by the backstory to The Hobbit, this palce is a close ally to the City State of the Invincible Overlord.

Tlan (Sea of Five Winds): Formerly the Southernmost portion of the Empire of Kelnore and later a Ghinor Successor State, Tlan was repeatedly hosed by the Child-King and later the Maid of Wonder. People still live here, but it's a pretty major dump.

Warwik (City State): The actor who played Wicket in Return of the Jed-I mean a fairly major city that was founded by exiled nobles from the CIty State of the Invincible Overlord.

Wenglor (Elphand Lands): Elf and Dwarf poo poo: Together at last! Known for jewelry crafted by the local Elves from the silver mined by the local Dwarves. Teamwork makes the dream work!

Wortess (Desert Lands): Town at a fork in the major Viridistan roads. The people here are dicks but they make nice boats. There's a bunch of whales that live in the nearby waters but something's been eating them lately.

Yakin Ley (Viridistan): Populated mainly by Hill Giants who keep "Evil blink dogs" as pets. The giants themselves are apparently okay, even if they're " warty, blubbery and shy sort".

Zothay (Altanis): A town that was formerly allied with the City State and the longest-standing holdout in the area against the conquering Skandiks. The Skandiks finally conquered the palce a century ago thanks to some help from the Redrock Orcs, but there's been a growing underground movement led by worshippers of Athena to kick the Skandiks out and reclaim the town.

And that's all of them! Next up we continue with basically the same thing, only for geographical features!

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

EthanSteele posted:

Forcing people to have their characters be equally good at everything sucks.

The main point is that if combat is going to be a highlight of the game - and it certainly is in Exalted - everybody should be able to participate and have fun. That doesn't mean people need to be equal per se, but it does mean they need to have some comparable level of competency. The notion with scenes or activities being like locks that require a given caste or character type to "slot into" and "unlock" is great for whoever gets the spotlight, but is potentially boring for everybody else. And given combat gets a brighter spotlight than everybody else, everybody should be able to participate meaningfully. Otherwise, it needs to as quick and brief as a Stealth and Larceny check to slip in a back door.

But it isn't. It really is not. It's this potential labyrinth of rolls that only gets deeper the longer the game goes on. The Dawn as it is certainly doesn't need the sort of niche protection it got in Exalted 2nd with its hideous "Dawn Solution" that rendered Dawns the be-all end-all of combat. Ideally, characters don't need to be equal at fights, but they should be good enough, and Exalted doesn't even try to ensure that. Which is a problem. The "key and lock" class design is a remnant of games like D&D. The thief is around to pick the locks. The cleric is around to play medic. And that's not to say everybody needs to be able to do anything, but the locks need to quick little highlights, not something that sucks the time out of the session. If something is the core mechanical focus of the game, everybody should be able to participate meaningfully. And if they can't, people are going to be bored. And that's one of the worst possible outcomes of RPG design.

EthanSteele
Nov 18, 2007

I can hear you

PurpleXVI posted:

The problem with the setup that is "The Dawn is Fight Man, everyone else is Other Stuff Man." Is that you end up splitting the game so that literally only one character is really relevant at once. It's fine if the spotlight shifts from time to time, it should shift from time to time, but everyone should be able to contribute something to every situation. If the Dawn literally can't do jack poo poo when no one's being murdered, and the rest can't do jack poo poo while murdering is going on because everything has to be adjusted for the Dawn's extreme power disparity at murdering things, the game balance has failed.

The setup isn't that though, you've just decided it is. You've just stated a scenario where only one can contribute at a time in a scene and yeah, that scenario is bad, but that's not the scenario in play unless you gently caress up.In 3E you can go against the toughest guy in the core book with 3 dex 3 Melee and the two lowest charms in the tree. It's trivially easy to make someone that can contribute meaningfully to fights (2 dex, 3 melee, 1 resistance with 2 melee charms and an ox-body +excellency is competence, so 3 charms and up to 3 skill pips at chargen and you're set for a very long time) and the game advises you to not specialise with such laser focus. You have 5 things from your caste which are all the fight things for Dawns and then you get 5 favoured which are literally anything else that you have to put at least one point in. Every other caste can do the same with one of the favoured picks being a fight move. The scenario where one guy picks literally no fighting ability and the other picks nothing but fighting ability is one where the players and the DM have messed up because they've all created their guys in isolation and haven't made something appropriate for the game they're going to play. Same thing would happen in DnD when they show up with a Ranger and a Druid with 8 Cha in a city based politicky talky game.

And like I said before, you don't adjust for the power disparity because that's how you get lovely games where only people that have gone all in on whatever the challenge at the time is can contribute. Talk to your dang players so they don't make guys that can only do one thing and if they do, after they see how super strong they are at the thing you can try to convince them that maybe they don't need a 17th combat charm. And if they still doing it after that and then complain, then they did it to themselves and it doesn't matter what game they're playing they were going to gently caress it up.

"Hey dude, you made a guy that can't fight, there are going to be fights, are you ok with that?" "No" then they fix it. "Yes" then they don't. Same with the Fight Man. You can even do a game where the fights become about protecting the princess that can't fight at all as long as everyone is down for that.

I'm not saying Exalted doesn't have an issue where players can trend towards hyper specialising and that the system allows that in a way that DnD and other games doesn't, like you have to try to make a Wizard or Druid with absolutely no fight ability, but one of the few pieces of advice the book does give is to not do that and I don't feel "talk to each other about the game you're about to play" is too much of a barrier of entry for having a game where everyone can contribute every scene or everybody is ok with not doing that.

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!

EthanSteele posted:

The setup isn't that though, you've just decided it is.

Someone literally just described the game turning out this way for him.

For your next trick are you going to tell me that 3rd ed BESM is actually a perfectly balanced and good system because people can just choose not to break it?

Night10194 posted:

Also, a small detail I forgot to mention in the property rules in Old World Armory: They mention plenty of Adventurers can make a profitable business buying tainted or haunted property and then adventuring until it's clean, then flipping it. So you could have a campaign where you de-ghost, de-demon, and clean up old spooky manors for huge profits.

Also oh man I would absolutely play a 2e WFRP castle-flipping campaign. The quest for fabulous new curtains. The adventure of dealing with that creaking noise in the attic. The dreadful dungeon of plumbing.

ChaseSP
Mar 25, 2013



"Found a coffin in the basement. Tune in next episode as we stake a young vampire!"

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

raid a vampire's keep for some absolutely fabulous tapestries that would just tie the room together.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

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

I should also note that's another thing that marks Old World Armory as an 'early' book. It has a lot of ideas that can be adventures in it, but unlike later books it doesn't have many that are explicitly Adventure Seeds.

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



PurpleXVI posted:

Someone literally just described the game turning out this way for him.

For the record, they were I believe talking about Second Edition, which had a significantly higher floor for 'doesn't die instantly in any combat' because of a meaningfully different system, meaningfully different incapacitated/dead rules.

Also, a general question for the thread, and I really don't mean this as a gotcha: In a game with involved subsystems (Ex3 obviously has a bunch, but let's just say there's enough there to be crunchy at combat, social maneuvering, and crafting, as three avenues for player skill) and point-buy characters, do you consider it possible to make a game that is well-constructed and won't lead to players being sidelined or unhappy in that way?

Basically, it seems like part of [not all of, obviously] the issue for Ex3 in this thread is that its goal (characters built with a wide range of competencies to be involved with various mechanical subsystems, and thus, being variably powerful and involved in those subsystems) is one that some posters just don't agree is viable or desirable at all. Since that particular design goal is one reason I do like Exalted, I'm curious how people feel about that kind of game generally. One of the strengths in my opinion is that you the GM can say 'hey this game of Exalted is not intended to have much if any combat' and while I agree that means ignoring a decent chunk of the book, it's a plurality, not a majority, of the content*.

*I'd need to check page count to be certain of this, and it's certainly the case that the game clearly expects you to have some combat elements, but it's a very different situation than 'D&D without combat' or 'Spire without combat.'

IshmaelZarkov
Jun 20, 2013

Joe Slowboat posted:

Also, a general question for the thread, and I really don't mean this as a gotcha: In a game with involved subsystems (Ex3 obviously has a bunch, but let's just say there's enough there to be crunchy at combat, social maneuvering, and crafting, as three avenues for player skill) and point-buy characters, do you consider it possible to make a game that is well-constructed and won't lead to players being sidelined or unhappy in that way?

Personal opinion; games with that sort of crunchy sub-mechanics can work fine. The downside is it places more pressure on the GM to be open and honest up front about what the game is going to be, puts pressure on the players to work within those guidelines, and requires all parties involved to keep to those general brackets as the game progresses. It's easier to make a sub-mechanic heavy game focus too hard on one player over another than it is to make it feel balanced for the entire group.

Source: loving up badly in this sort of game balance for years before getting a better grip on it and only loving up occasionally.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!
Combat competence disparity is issue I've seen in both 2nd and 3rd, and I've played them plenty. Putting the blame on players or GM when it would have been a relatively simple issue to fix in design seems rear end-backwards to me, especially when the game isn't particularly great about guidance on encounter design in general.

Also, 3rd has an issue where basic maximization can make two characters worlds apart in terms of general competence (like, to the tune of 50+ XP different) because they decided deliberately to leave those tricks from previous editions in the game because... tradition? Cussedness? I have no idea.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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

IMO this is anothe area where the Supernal Ability is rearing its ugly head, because it mechanically incentivizes Solars to go all loving in on a single ability, which exacerbates the specialization issue and the issue of only one person being relevant to a situation.

mllaneza
Apr 28, 2007

Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1993-1952




Alien Rope Burn posted:

And that's not to say everybody needs to be able to do anything, but the locks need to quick little highlights, not something that sucks the time out of the session. If something is the core mechanical focus of the game, everybody should be able to participate meaningfully. And if they can't, people are going to be bored. And that's one of the worst possible outcomes of RPG design.

When I'm writing PbtA playsets I try and make sure every playbook can have an "I got this" moment every session or so; sneaking into someplace inaccessible, the pirates are our friends now, wired a claymore mine into the desk the Big Bad is standing in front of; that sort of thing. It's easier in PbtA, relying on the fiction for the stuff most games mechanize with an over-broad skill list let's anyone try anything.

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megane
Jun 20, 2008



The 'buckets' I talked about a few pages back are a way to fix this. These points are for buying combat stuff. These are for buying social connections and similar. Now every character can contribute in combat and everyone has family or a house or whatever. The problem is a) allowing players to dump all their power into this one specific thing, but more importantly b) encouraging them to do so or punishing them if they don't. If you want well-rounded characters, you need a low "competency floor" so that even guys who dipped into whatever area it is can actually hope to contribute and succeed.

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