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Phantom Arrow Technique makes me think you just need a laundry list of "basic things what go with your excellency" to eliminate a lot of niche or "you are no longer restricted by X" charms. (Then again, I'd probably throw out how Excellencies work anyway, as I find them too fiddly, but YMMV.)
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Mar 28, 2019 15:59
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Alien Rope Burn posted:(Then again, I'd probably throw out how Excellencies work anyway, as I find them too fiddly, but YMMV.) How so? Getting rid of the flexible mote pricing?
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Mar 28, 2019 16:18
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Mors Rattus posted:There is a sidebar on Charm design for Solars. It is not especially useful, given it takes half a page to try and define Solar themes and still can’t do it besides going ‘Solar themes are doing everything humans can do, better than anyone else.’ They do mention that Solars can’t use Charms to shapeshift, permanently alter their bodies to effortlessly perform various feats (because ‘effort’ is apparently part of their theme), ... time travel If I remember right, at least two Solar Charms in 3E, unless they've been changed since, more or less do this. One of them can only be read(or at least I only could) as retro-actively making conditions apply and another sprouts magical wings or some such, though since they're ~essence wings~ I guess they avoid being shapeshifting by a very marginal technicality.  You should also post some screenshots of the Charm section because if I remember right the layout is loving horrendous on some of the pages, especially the ones that have the graphical representations of the Charm trees on them.
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Mar 28, 2019 16:24
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I have to ask, for those who have played Exalted 3e in action, does the decision analysis issues that plague some games like D&D 4e with some players come up? That's (4e, Strike, and such) manageable to me since it's one pick per action, but the way you can just stack charms onto an attack is... worryingly complex to me, especially with "which fiddly dice tricks do I want to use on this?"
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Mar 28, 2019 16:45
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gourdcaptain posted:I have to ask, for those who have played Exalted 3e in action, does the decision analysis issues that plague some games like D&D 4e with some players come up? That's (4e, Strike, and such) manageable to me since it's one pick per action, but the way you can just stack charms onto an attack is... worryingly complex to me, especially with "which fiddly dice tricks do I want to use on this?" Not really. Most people take charms that all combo off each other, so you aren't thinking "Which of A B C D E F G should I use?" but rather saying "I use A B C D E F G" every turn, with maybe different combos for Withering vs Decisive. As your motes drop down, people may reduce the size of the combo, but it's all pretty apparent and pre planned
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Mar 28, 2019 16:48
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Kaza42 posted:Not really. Most people take charms that all combo off each other, so you aren't thinking "Which of A B C D E F G should I use?" but rather saying "I use A B C D E F G" every turn, with maybe different combos for Withering vs Decisive. As your motes drop down, people may reduce the size of the combo, but it's all pretty apparent and pre planned Huh. That... also seems disappointing to me in a "all that complexity for a "repeat the same action" result" way.
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Mar 28, 2019 16:55
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A fan has done charm cascades which help a lot and I honestly think they should just hire that person or have it as a stretch goal on kickstarter to get them money and put it in the dang book. On Monkey Leap Technique, I've always taken it as supplemental being it means that you could do that anyway with an Athletics roll, but this charm let's you do it without a roll. I definitely think making it a reflexive charm and it just saying "this replaces your reflexive move for the turn" is the cleanest/most elegant way. My big criticism of it is that it's called Monkey Leap Technique and then it describes you as leaping "with the speed and grace of a striking hawk." how about you leap like a flippin' monkey, you jokers. The two Strength Increasing charms have reason to be different as well. One is for an instant do a thing right now really quickly the house is falling down right now and the other is scene long because its a combat charm that gives you an extra effect beyond just increasing your strength. I think a little sidebar that points out that you don't always have time to turn on all your charms is good, though that would be better handled by a general example in an advice chapter with a little reminder here of "why would I want this?" because the main limitation of Simple charms is they take an action/turn to activate and time pressure is one of the main ways to challenge a Solar, so having a little example of how that as a concept is good. It's bringing up a problem, that as you say most ST wouldn't think about, but it's good that they bring it up for precisely that reason! It's definitely not an Air-Breathing Mermaid thing. Kaza42 posted:Not really. Most people take charms that all combo off each other, so you aren't thinking "Which of A B C D E F G should I use?" but rather saying "I use A B C D E F G" every turn, with maybe different combos for Withering vs Decisive. As your motes drop down, people may reduce the size of the combo, but it's all pretty apparent and pre planned Would be real nice for a theoretical GM advice chapter to say that some players might need help getting their pre-planned combos together so they can go "for 9 motes I do A, B, C and D and that's my standard decisive attack" or whatever so you don't get people trying to remember all the moving parts because some people definitely do struggle with that. My current GM ran a game where 2 of the players, after 6-8 sessions still didn't know any of their basic die pools for withering and damage, let alone what charms they could activate for each thing. gourdcaptain posted:Huh. That... also seems disappointing to me in a "all that complexity for a "repeat the same action" result" way. Maybe the system might not be as super complex as you think! You can definitely get wild with it, combining all the different Martial Arts, for instance, but you don't have to. EthanSteele fucked around with this message at 17:14 on Mar 28, 2019 |
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Mar 28, 2019 17:11
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EthanSteele posted:The two Strength Increasing charms have reason to be different as well. One is for an instant do a thing right now really quickly the house is falling down right now and the other is scene long because its a combat charm that gives you an extra effect beyond just increasing your strength. I think a little sidebar that points out that you don't always have time to turn on all your charms is good, though that would be better handled by a general example in an advice chapter with a little reminder here of "why would I want this?" because the main limitation of Simple charms is they take an action/turn to activate and time pressure is one of the main ways to challenge a Solar, so having a little example of how that as a concept is good. It's bringing up a problem, that as you say most ST wouldn't think about, but it's good that they bring it up for precisely that reason! It's definitely not an Air-Breathing Mermaid thing. That's the thing. They bring it up to solve an issue that would not itself exist if they didn't make a sidebar entirely for that issue. They literally invent and specifically tell STs to make a problem just so the Charm can solve it, because the Charm they wrote was otherwise solving a problem that would never come up.
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Mar 28, 2019 17:16
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EthanSteele posted:Maybe the system might not be as super complex as you think! You can definitely get wild with it, combining all the different Martial Arts, for instance, but you don't have to. If I'm not getting any interesting complexity out of it, juggling/reading through all those charms is even less appealing to me. I think they even mentioned they didn't put charm cascade diagrams in the book because it would have taken up room they used for more charms.
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Mar 28, 2019 17:17
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Mors Rattus posted:That's the thing. They bring it up to solve an issue that would not itself exist if they didn't make a sidebar entirely for that issue. They literally invent and specifically tell STs to make a problem just so the Charm can solve it, because the Charm they wrote was otherwise solving a problem that would never come up. I'm pretty sure its the opposite, it is an issue which should come up and they are making a charm to help deal with that problem. The main way you challenge Solars is time constraints, they can't solve 3 problems because by the time they've done 2 of them it's too late for the last one. It feels like you've looked at the thing and then deliberately read the order of events in a way that makes it stupid instead of the one that makes sense. One version means they're stupid, the other is what makes the game work at all and makes it so players aren't just throwing maximum excellency at every problem and activating all of their charms before they do anything because they're never pressured for time. The designers aren't infallible and there's a bunch of boneheaded moves, but this feels particularly uncharitable and if the designers did it by mistake then they've accidentally done a really good thing so it's fine. Problem: Time constraints. Solution: Charm that does thing quickly. makes sense and makes the designers not really stupid Problem: Charm that does thing quickly is pointless Solution: Time constraints, The place for first mentioning that time constraints are a challenge and a thing that should be considered is definitely not a sidebar in the charm list because it leads to people reading it as you have and going "what the gently caress, there's never any time limit on anything" instead of going "yeah, having a thing that is quicker is good in some situations because time is often a factor". It's only air-breathing mermaid if its a problem that shouldn't exist and time constraints as a problem is the main way of challenging Solars because they will always steamroll their chosen field. Just because most people won't think of applying it as a problem, doesn't mean it shouldn't be a problem and this is the games way of pointing out that time should be a factor. At the same time it's a really loving terrible way of pointing out time should be a factor, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't point it out at all because that would be even worse.
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Mar 28, 2019 17:36
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RiotGearEpsilon posted:How so? Getting rid of the flexible mote pricing? Honestly I'd probably remove excellencies entirely and just raise the overall cap of Exalted attributes / skills, or give them some sort of flat dice bonus, difficulty reduction, or the like. Probably slightly higher for your specialty skills (caste, favored, supernal). Being better just doesn't feel like a thing that needs a surcharge to me. It would require a lot of refiguring - you'd want to increase the cost of charms, lessen motes available, or both. But when I thought of doing an Exalted rework my idea was to have two costs: one being "per turn" and the other being a "per session" sort of pool. I think I called them "motes" and "sparks" respectively. Spending the sparks would lessen the per turn motes available to you, so it lent them towards being used during climaxes and was intended to discourage just using them to alpha strike like you would see in D&D 4th combats.
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Mar 28, 2019 18:33
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^^^^^ One of my suggestions at some point was dicking around with how many dice you get for how many motes because adding dice is boring. Boy was I working on the wrong edition. Night10194 posted:For a game that doesn't want to be an anime game apparently it sure has some anime rear end special attack names. I mean, I wouldn't deny that Exalted can get a little self-serious, but I really don't understand where it's supposed to "not want to be an anime game." Every edition is pretty unapologetically about high drama involving buster swords and long attack names. Aberrant was the game where the dev explicitly said it wasn't about what it was clearly all about. EthanSteele posted:I'm pretty sure its the opposite, it is an issue which should come up and they are making a charm to help deal with that problem. The main way you challenge Solars is time constraints, they can't solve 3 problems because by the time they've done 2 of them it's too late for the last one. It feels like you've looked at the thing and then deliberately read the order of events in a way that makes it stupid instead of the one that makes sense. One version means they're stupid, the other is what makes the game work at all and makes it so players aren't just throwing maximum excellency at every problem and activating all of their charms before they do anything because they're never pressured for time. The designers aren't infallible and there's a bunch of boneheaded moves, but this feels particularly uncharitable and if the designers did it by mistake then they've accidentally done a really good thing so it's fine. It's absolutely air-breathing mermaid bullshit because it's such a minimal difference but it costs you an extra 8XP to "fix" or insure against it mattering, it's incredibly contrived and "time constraints matter" is conveyed one-million percent better by putting actual real thought into a story, and not "well this one Charm takes a turn to activate and this one is instant, therefore ~drama~." This is indicative of a lot of what makes 3E Solar Charms boring even if you like them in a general sense, because there's just a whole bunch of largely-the-same powers but if you want stuff that comes later in the tree or just want to be The Best at something, you've gotta climb through that intensely boring bramble patch.
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Mar 28, 2019 18:47
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Mors Rattus posted:That's the thing. They bring it up to solve an issue that would not itself exist if they didn't make a sidebar entirely for that issue. They literally invent and specifically tell STs to make a problem just so the Charm can solve it, because the Charm they wrote was otherwise solving a problem that would never come up. Alien Rope Burn posted:Phantom Arrow Technique makes me think you just need a laundry list of "basic things what go with your excellency" to eliminate a lot of niche or "you are no longer restricted by X" charms. Meanwhile with Godbound, there are a bunch of things you can do right off the bat that don't require any special abilities at all (spending Dominion, placing Influence, or leveraging one of your Facts). Any Word you have gives you some passive effects and lets you mimic any NGDBSS fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Mar 28, 2019 |
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Mar 28, 2019 18:59
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Also, on charms: I know this had a effectively less than zero chance in a White Wolf descended project of the mechanics on a power being cleanly broken out, but the mechanics are mixed with the fluff of each charm in a way that makes my eyes glaze over them as I try to figure out what the heck they actually do. Which might be different if the fluff was interesting, but Solars, so for 90% of them it's all peerless Solar accumen over and over again.
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Mar 28, 2019 19:06
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Exalted 3rd Edition: BEHOLD MY FART LIBRARY Awareness starts out with sensory boosters and I am going to note that Surprise Anticipation Method is still a Charm literally everyone needs to get because it pays the costs of other Awareness charms just by making Awareness rolls and more importantly it lets your senses work while unconscious, which read strictly says that you can’t actually hear things while asleep. “Second: her senses function even when she is asleep or Incapacitated, allowing her to use any of her Awareness Charms subconsciously. A threat revealed to the Solar while she is asleep or unconscious automatically revives her, allowing her to defend herself.” So that’s fun. However, this is not the most insane early Awareness thing. Instead I am going to share with you the entire text of Keen Taste and Smell Technique. quote:The Exalt’s senses of taste and smell are capable of flawless identification of flavors, textures, and scent profiles. This Charm represents an array of mechanical benefits, as well as two distinct functions of the senses taste and smell. The Solar can recognize an individual by scent alone, and she can tell older scents from new ones, enabling her to tell how recently an individual was present. Add +2 successes to Survival rolls to hunt for food, track SCENT LIBRARIES serve as a major part of Awareness! You can get special Charms to upgrade your SCENT LIBRARY and so on. Also you can get stupid dice tricks like having your target’s 1s count as 10s for you and their 2s count as 9s for you, which isn’t at all dumb bookkeeping. Also you can eventually learn to add “scentless, tasteless subjects” to your SCENT LIBRARY and TASTE INDEX. Also the ultimate power of Awareness lets you turn off Lunar shapeshifting. Because you’re so good at seeing through disguises that they cease existing. Which, y’know, Future Mors notes that shapeshifting is how half of Lunar Charms work. Also you can combine charms to do this out to Extreme Range. There are 22 Awareness Charms over 7 pages. They’re long and wordy as gently caress. Brawl. Brawl is a ton of numbers tricks. Do you want to get a combat bonus? You can, because Brawl can do all of them. It doesn’t even limit itself to Brawl – you can use Thunderclap Rush Attack to cheat a rush out even before it’s your turn and then make any kind of attack you want. Brawl can do anything!! It can even break the rule that rerolls happen before stuff that cares what someone else rolled, like Reckless Fury Discard does, letting you make the opponent’s 1s into boosts to your Parry or Evasion even if they reroll them. Brawl can even turn off people’s Charms! Essence 3 gives us Cancel the Apocalypse which lets you turn off a Charm of someone you send into Crash. Remember: Solar themes are doing stuff humans can do, but better. Brawl is so long, you guys. You don’t even know. There are so many loving Brawl Charms. They do stuff like, oh, Fire-Eating Fist tries to define “energy attacks” as a thing Solars can punch and absorb. No other effect in the game cares about energy attacks, so what is an energy attack? Whatever the GM says counts as one, though there is at least an example: a burning elemental bolt. At Essence 4 you do get the power to absorb projectiles that aren’t elemental bolts or energy attacks, too. Later you can unleash the charged up energy as a Kamehameha, but normally it just makes your punching nastier. And its ultimate power? Merging with your anima banner to become a dark-skinned glowing super Saiyan who can teleport into anyone whose attack you punch, cannot be Crashed from a distance can jump all over the place. And in case you were wondering: it is Essence 3 when you can learn to wrestle anything of any size, even mountains. There are 48 Brawl Charms over 10.5 pages. Bureaucracy Charms let you do stuff like automatically know the quality of goods or how much money they’ll fetch at a specific market, or can tell if someone intends to betray or cheat you in a deal. Or then you could take Enigmatic Bureau Understanding, if you wish to go completely mad. This is a Permanent Charm, so it’s always on, and what it does is tell you when any member of an organization the Solar leads has their Intimacy towards the organization challenged. Period. Ever. The limits? Well, you have to know they have the Intimacy, and they must be currently functioning in some capacity as part of the organization, so if they’re on their day off you only become aware once they go back to work. You don’t know what kind of influence was used either, you just get the voice in your brain going ‘SOMEONE IS TRYING TO CONVINCE PEOPLE NOT TO CARE ABOUT YOUR GROUP.’ Constantly. Forever. Also, you can learn a Charm that makes organizations work faster by massive scales – century to season, season to month, month to week, week to day, days to minutes. Except there are no effects that care about that anywhere else so again, this is just ‘GM, make poo poo up’ for actual mechanics. You can also make laws that members of your organization are literally incapable of breaking. This isn’t mind control, it lacks the keyword to be mind control. They just can’t do it. Here's a fun one for book-keeping: Subject-Hailing Ideology. This lets you use former Intimacies during social influence, as long as you know about them, even if they no longer exist. It does at least only work as long as your influence is solely intended to make the target act in some direct, official capacity – get someone to fulfill a specific social role they currently or formerly occupied. But it means that now, the ST has to track what the old Intimacies were even after they have ceased to matter, so that this Charm can tap into them still. There are 26 Bureaucracy Charms over 6 pages. Craft Charms are cookie clicker automation, mostly. They expand how many slots you have, reduce the cost of new slots, temporarily convert Craft dots from one Craft to another, spend Craft Experience to gain new Crafts at 5, turn Craft Experience from one type to another, get free Craft Experience…so many of them are just permanent upgrades of your basic craft tech, or cheap stuff you’ll activate in downtime for no real cost to automate crafting. Hell, one of them lets you just poo poo out minor Artifacts for free. At Essence 4 you start getting to do stuff like reduce goal numbers for crafting and increase how many rolls you can make, which is all that makes the higher tier crafting even possible, basically. At Essence 5, you start being able to just pull massive numbers of successes out of your rear end. And remember, Supernal exists so a Twilight can get at this stuff quickly. Well, more quickly. Special mention, however, to Dual Magnus Prana. This Charm is special in so many ways. It’s the first (and to my knowledge only) Charm that officially is two abilities, since it also requires Occult and Sorcery – but you had those anyway, you’re a Solar Crafter. Second, it’s named for The Magnus, who is Morke’s personal OC super genius Solar who was his mouthpiece in the latter days of 2e to reveal Grand Setting Facts and explain how everything really worked and was super awesome and special and you could never be like him. And last, this Charm isn’t a Craft Charm; it’s not even a Solar Charm, thematically. Why? Because here's what it does: When you would die, you can spend 30 WXP to reveal that you were a ROBOT CLONE all along, and the real you is somewhere else, anywhere else you want as long as the ST okays it. You just retroactively shat out a perfect sorcerous clone of yourself that shared all of your knowledge, memories and abilities. Solar Charms! But wait, that was just the efficiency tree! Did I mention that unlike any other Ability, Craft Charms are divided into trees based on what they do? They are! There’s also the Momentum Tree, which lets you earn more points from doing stuff, including a Charm that just drops White XP on you every arc. Then there’s the repair tree, which also lets you blow up random inanimate objects with a touch and improves your point rewards from repairs, lets you force extra Evocations into your Artifacts and entirely rewrite an Artifact’s Evocations. And the Power tree, which is what you use to actually make your dice tricks happen and roll insane numbers of bonus non-Charm dice. It also lets you do stupid poo poo like look for three-of-a-kind matched rolls to turn other dice into 10s. Because stupid, fiddly dice tricks. And again, so much of this is either permanent, low-cost or has only cost in Crafting Experience, which you’re loving drowning in from your cookie clicking shenanigans. There are 53 Craft Charms over 10.5 pages.  I hate this charm. Next time: Dodge, Integrity, Investigation, Larceny
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Mar 28, 2019 19:26
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I'm not sure why Ten Ox Meditation isn't just "2m: You can attempt a Feat of Strength regardless of your Strength score. Increase the difficulty by +3 for each dot you fall short of the minimum." Some of the convolutions in Charm language feel like they reflect some deranged future-proofing against synergies with unwritten Charms - or just a failure to remember the actual base mechanics of the game they were writing for. (It's also peculiar why it's not in the prereq tree of Nine Aeons Thew, but obviously they never imagined you might want to visualize your Charm Trees.) gourdcaptain posted:I have to ask, for those who have played Exalted 3e in action, does the decision analysis issues that plague some games like D&D 4e with some players come up? We haven't had too much play time, but my experience so far at the ST is that mote refresh rates and anima flare put the decision into some clear slots. (This is with the caveat that we aren't running this game with the player who had the most trouble with decision-making when we ran 4e.) You have breakpoints of mote expenditure - do I spend more than I will recover this (time unit), do I spend enough peripheral to increase my anima level, etc. So rather than being "Do I use power X or power Y" it's "is this a Defcon 3 or Defcon 1 situation?" With mote refresh being fairly predictable (and sped up if things get fighty), there's little reason *not* to pitch token expenditures at stuff, and my players have only been spending beyond their projected "mote income" if they think something is really important.
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Mar 28, 2019 19:28
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Dungeons: The Dragoning: 7.5 Edition Bleh Paragons are They also get an ability called Pressure, where they can have up to 3xPower Stat 'Pressure Points' in reserve to add directly to the outcome of rolls. They recover Pressure when they take damage or whenever an opponent uses superhuman abilities related to enemy Exaltations. They also have the least Resource Stat points of anyone else, getting Power Stat+Character Level. They also only recover them at the beginning of each session. Their salvation for their Resource Points comes in their level 2 ability: They get 1 back every time they manage a 2 dice Stunt. Oh yeah, this game has the exact Exalted 2e Stunting Rules and this class relies on them. The book advises making plenty of time for the Paragon to 'be awesome' since they need it for their abilities. Also, all their class abilities are named after the lyrics from Be a Man from Mulan. At level 3, they get Pressure equal to their Power Stat at the start of every turn, in addition to the other times they gain it. At level 4, whenever they're Stunting, their dice explode on 9+ instead of 10. Finally, a 5, whenever they succeed a Stunt, allies trying to do the same thing get a bonus equal to how much Pressure they spent to succeed. So get ready for a shitload of purple prose and gratuitous backflips, the class that needs the lovely Stunting Rules has arrived! Prometheans are robot people, built of mystical metal and supertech. There's really not much else to them. Their whole thing is that they're hard to kill, heavily armored, and can eventually turn themselves into a super robot. Yes, you heard me: They can become loving gundams. They naturally have nothing to do with the deep journey to become human that is the actual game Promethean: They're all about playing Major Kusanagi if she could turn into a gundam (she's their character art). They're immune to all biological status effects, they have to repair themselves with Craft, they get a massive -2k1 social penalty with non-Exalts, and they take no Critical effects until they die. Even then, they only actually die if their 'Gizzards' take the crit that kills them, as limbs just get blown off and head/body just shut them down until repaired. They just get 3xPower Stat Resource Stat. At level 1, they always have armor equal to 3+Power Stat that won't stack with worn armor but has no drawbacks. At level 2, they can start shoving weapons into their casing that they can ready instantly and always hide. At level 3, they get the ability to spend Resource on raising stats by 1 for one round or one check, whichever is longer, with no caps. At level 4, they regain Resource when they take hits from energy weapons. And at max, they can add +3 to all physical stats, double their Size, and add +1k1 to the damage of all Integrated Weaponry as they turn into a giant Warstrider robot. They only do this one scene a day, but you can stack that poo poo with their level 3, too. You want to punch a man through the moon as a giant robot, go ahead. Prometheans are a little dull, but very effective. Vampires are just, uh, White Wolf Vampires. They're also tremendously powerful, but have the most annoying Resource to deal with in the game (as you'd expect). They get 4 extra Background dots at the start because they're old and rich. They only die to E, X, Silver, or Magic weapons. They take 1 wound a turn left in sunlight, but 'a big hat' will protect them fully. The true annoying part of vampires is they have to spend 1 Resource a day to stay conscious and active or they go into torpor. They get Resource exclusively by biting someone (1k1 natural weapon) and inflicting at least 1 point of damage and 1 point of Fatigue. If feeding on a willing target, they don't do the damage but get 1 Resource per Fatigue they inflict. If they inflict Fatigue on an unconscious target more than once, the target dies. So they need blood bags. They can fit up to 5xPower Stat worth of blood inside themselves. At level 1, they can see in the dark and get +1k0 to perception. Meh. At level 2, they can spend 1 Resource to gain Fear 1 for a scene. Good against lesser foes. At level 3 they They can also spend a permanent point of their Power Stat to make a new Vampire who is a full Exalt and probably bound to them. Werewolves...poor, sad werewolves. They, too, are just Werewolf: The Apocalypse wolfies, but deeply confused about what their power set actually does. You see, out the gate they start strong: You can turn into a lovely wolf form that boosts your Dex and penalizes size for free, and you can also turn into a giant angry wolf-person for +2 Con, +2 Str, +2 Size and Crit immunity (unless it will drop you) that can still use guns and big swords which is good because their natural weapons are poo poo (2k1) for a point of Resource for Power Stat+Con rounds. That's a good trick. They're also immune to death from anything but Energy, Explosive, Silver, or Magic damage, but halve their Size DR against Silver. They also don't need to use the 'healing surge' action to spend Resource to heal themselves, and they get a 1 HP a round regen at level 1 from their alt forms. Still, that's a strong trick out the gate; clearly they're meant to focus on physical power and shapeshifting, right? They also get Level+Willpower+Composure Willpower. It's unlinked to Power Stat. Their next powers all have nothing to do with their wolf forms, besides the level 3. At level 2, you can see spirits and poo poo. At level 3, changing shape is faster (Half Action, not Full Action). At level 4, you can spend 6 hours doing a ritual then hunt an animal down and eat its heart, at which point you can always spend 2 Resource to turn into that animal in the future. Depending on how you interpret 'animal' that's either extremely powerful (I ATE A DRAGON HEART) or extremely lame. At level 5, you can 'walk into the Umbra' which is 'a dark reflection of this world but full of demons'. There is no mechanic for why you want to do this, or what you get out of doing this. This is their capstone. Compare it to the Promethean turning into a loving Mecha. Wolfies, you started strong, but just couldn't seal the deal. As you might have noticed, the Exaltations are actually all kind of dull. They don't have much real flavor to them besides just being random power sets and references, like everything else in this game. I mean, yes, there's more fluff attached I could be writing up for you, but if you've read any of the source material for any of these, you already know their fluff because they aren't meaningfully altered. Next Time: THIS IS NOT MY HAPPY CAREER SYSTEM. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 21:19 on Mar 28, 2019 |
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Mar 28, 2019 19:37
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The Promethians in DtD have less to do with the White Wolf Prommies and more to do with the Exalted Alchemicals despite the naming.
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Mar 28, 2019 20:05
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Mors Rattus posted:Bureaucracy Charms let you do stuff like automatically know the quality of goods or how much money they’ll fetch at a specific market, or can tell if someone intends to betray or cheat you in a deal. Or then you could take Enigmatic Bureau Understanding, if you wish to go completely mad. This is a Permanent Charm, so it’s always on, and what it does is tell you when any member of an organization the Solar leads has their Intimacy towards the organization challenged. Period. Ever. The limits? Well, you have to know they have the Intimacy, and they must be currently functioning in some capacity as part of the organization, so if they’re on their day off you only become aware once they go back to work. You don’t know what kind of influence was used either, you just get the voice in your brain going ‘SOMEONE IS TRYING TO CONVINCE PEOPLE NOT TO CARE ABOUT YOUR GROUP.’ Constantly. Forever. Solars are very, very concerned with branding. Very concerned.
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Mar 28, 2019 20:10
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NGDBSS posted:Going back to talking about Godbound... The rules being pretty light around Godbound powers also helps with house-ruling and creating custom content. I still have to think about how a new Gift or Word fits into the overall story I'm telling, just like with any balancing act, but given that the out-of-the-book powers include stuff like "know all scholarly knowledge in the world" you can get pretty wild without having to do a lot of math.
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Mar 28, 2019 20:36
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“They, too, are just Werewolf: The Forsaken wolfies“ I guarantee they are Werewolf: the Apocalypse werewolves. Nothing from 4chan could be otherwise.
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Mar 28, 2019 21:02
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jakodee posted:“They, too, are just Werewolf: The Forsaken wolfies“ What was edgy/stupid about those wolfs?
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Mar 28, 2019 21:14
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Dungeons: The Dragoning: 7.5 Edition Classless Class Alright, this one can be quick, because there are tons of classes but there are really only 9 classes. That statement is going to make sense in a minute. Your class in DtD determines what you're currently permitted to buy with EXP. Normally, this will be 3 stats, and then a variable number of skills, and then a list of Feats, Swordsman Schools, and Magic Styles. You finish your current class by buying every Feat the class requires (remember, a Feat is actually only 100 EXP; they're dirt cheap) which means every Feat not marked with an *. At an average of 500 EXP a session, this means you'll blow through the 'required' advances for your class like tissue paper. The issue is that your next Class Level for your Class Track is going to require you to meet some pre-reqs. You can only enter a Class if you have those. So for instance, while Kim could basically finish Minstrel after a single session's EXP, he needs Illusion or Enchantment 1, Charisma 3, Common Lore 4, and Performer 2 to enter Bard, the Level 2 class. You can also jump into other Class Tracks if you meet the pre-reqs. Take our buddy Kim: He has Weaponry 3 and Athletics 1, so he actually meets the requirements to jump the rails and go into the first level of the Barbarian or Swordsman Class Tracks at any time. Also note that while your Magic Styles, Swordsman Schools, and Power Stat are all capped to your highest level Class, nothing else is; a level 1 Swordsman can buy Weaponry all the way to 5 with EXP if they want, and has no cap on their stats, they're just only allowed to advance Skills and Stats included in their Class. Why do I say there's only 9 classes despite there being 50? Because aside from Peasant, Ratcatcher, Scholar, Initiate, and Mercenary (which exist to be 0 pre-req classes you can enter at any time to get the requirements for new Class Tracks) the other 45 classes are just 5 tiers of 9 Tracks. The Bard, the Barbarian, the Mage, the Thief, the Paladin, the Cleric, the Guardsman, the Assassin, and the Fighter. If you are playing this game seriously for some reason, you're fairly likely to jump around between Class Tracks a little. However, the only actual difference between tiers within a Track are what Feats you get; you're given the same skill/stat/swordsman/magic access through an entire Class Track and only get access to new ones if you jump to a new track. So, say Kim wants to boost his Str. He'll need to jump to Barbarian or Fighter (or enter Mercenary) and get access to advancing Str from there, because a Bard only gets Cha, Fel, and Dex. Similar if he ever wants to improve at Weaponry. However, as a Bard, he can easily get Arcana and Academic Lore, which could let him jump into Mage and improve his wizbiz beyond his wildest dreams. The ease of completing classes means the Class System is actually much less restrictive than it looks at first. Also, completing a Class gets you a small, permanent bonus: For instance, every tier of Paladin you've done gets you +1 AP whenever wearing armor, or every rank of Bard you complete gets you a free dot in a skill lower than your Level. You will want to balance running around the Classes with climbing up a main Class because you want to gain Levels. This is the only way to gain overall Character Level; your Character Level is the same as the highest rank of Class you've been in. So say Kim is a level 4 Bard some day and only then decides to hop into Level 1 Barbarian; he'd still be Level 4, just he'd have access to the Feats and Schools and Stats and stuff from Barbarian 1 instead. Also, between Classes and before you enter another, you may spend EXP on any of the Skills, Stats, or Optional Feats from classes you've already been. During this 'free study' you can even buy things outside your Classes, but you pay double EXP, so don't do that. Now, I could go into detail on all the actual classes, but I don't care enough. They're Melee Guy, Melee Guy with Light Armor And Frenzy, Gun Guy, Fight Guy With Stealth, Steal Guy, Magic Guy, Healbot, Socialbot and Tank. That's it. Yeah, this one's short, but it doesn't need to be any longer. The class system mostly gets the job done. Next Time:
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Mar 28, 2019 21:18
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jakodee posted:“They, too, are just Werewolf: The Forsaken wolfies“ You're right, I forgot which one was nWoD and which was oWoD. Lemme go change that real quick. You can probably tell I despise this game. Not for being trash like AdEva, but for being dull. Tremendously dull. It makes it much harder to be entertaining about it and man, I see why every prior review gave up. There's nothing to really analyze because so little actual thought went into the mechanics or concepts involved. But I will persist.
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Mar 28, 2019 21:19
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Dual Magnus Prana is one of the best charm in the entire Crafts tree because it performs a specific effect, albeit a ridiculous one, instead of interacting with the abomination of a Crafts system. If anything, the problem is that there aren't more charms like DMP and instead we have a shitload of dice tricks and 'solutions' to the problems the Crafts system purposely creates for people who use it. The only charm I can think of that's better than DMP is Craftsmen Needs No Tools.
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Mar 28, 2019 21:29
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Hunt11 posted:What was edgy/stupid about those wolfs? I think WTA hit some good notes; you have a diverse range of opinion and most of the tribes did indeed have distinctive flavor even if sometimes that flavor was bad or dumb. While it was rarely done the idea was also that a given sept (Garou culture-unit) might have three or four tribes out of the thirteen in it, which would allow for stronger and more distinct cultural flavors. They also had a lot of bad and weird ideas. Even so it would be interesting to see something like that rather than just "here are the five types of immutable soul on the elemental magia wheel of your splat-power charts.)
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Mar 28, 2019 21:31
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The thing with the fluffy wolfies in this game is they're a bet that the one great ability you get for showing up is enough to make up for all your other abilities being situational or stupid. And in fairness, as long as you still use a real weapon instead of your lovely claws, the warform is pretty great. You can also take some extra Assets based on Exaltation that I could have talked about, and two of them for the wolfs improve their ability to get stronger pretty nicely. The problem is one of those (being a Black Spiral Dancer) also makes you friendly fire your allies if they get too close and only improves your lovely natural weapons, while Get of Fenris gives +1 Str, Athletics, and Acrobatics (and Acrobatics is used for Dodges) for 1 Resource for a full scene. There's also a Wolf Asset that can give you 1 rank in Transmutation magic, makes it part of any class you're in, and gives +1k1 with casting checks with it forever that might be helpful. Especially as Transmutation A: Has buffing and B: Allows for the Rite of Pants (without the Transmutation Quick Change spell you're going to explode your pants/armor and hurt yourself so most wolfies don't use armor. I am annoyed they did not actually name it Rite of Pants). E: Yeah, the more I look at it, if you play a wolf? Take Silent Strider and pick up the Transmutation stuff to go along with your fight class or whatever. We'll get to it when we get to magic (shudder) but you can both turn power armor into something a giant wolf can wear and buff every single one of your physical stats, and your 1st level spell basically obsoletes and is better than your 3rd level Exalt ability. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 21:44 on Mar 28, 2019 |
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Mar 28, 2019 21:40
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Ithle01 posted:Dual Magnus Prana is one of the best charm in the entire Crafts tree because it performs a specific effect, albeit a ridiculous one, instead of interacting with the abomination of a Crafts system. If anything, the problem is that there aren't more charms like DMP and instead we have a shitload of dice tricks and 'solutions' to the problems the Crafts system purposely creates for people who use it. The only charm I can think of that's better than DMP is Craftsmen Needs No Tools. I will grant you, it does a thing, yes, rather than being Cookie Clicker. E: basically, it's still awful and I hate it for thematic reasons and the fact that it's a Charm trying to be Sorcery, but that doesn't actually mean it's not one of the best Charms in Craft, that's just a really low bar
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Mar 28, 2019 21:41
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Mors Rattus posted:I will grant you, it does a thing, yes, rather than being Cookie Clicker. Yeah, I think it's a bad example, but it's what I'd like to see more out of Craft than "I spend a month hammering out swords so I can then craft one big sword". Craft should be more "Oh, I have this convenient thing" or "my sword is just better" than juggling this bizarre downtime system full of speedbumps designed mainly to keep you from dominating the game by being an airship factory and guhhhh
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Mar 28, 2019 21:48
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Nessus posted:There were 13 werewolf tribes which were typically pretty derivative and strongly rooted in either human ethnicity or in essentially human-oriented political divides, with the exception of the one all-lupus tribe. Yea, one of WtA's biggest failings was almost all the canon septs we saw seemed to be mono-tribal which is not how it should be. The whole thing that made the After School Special Tribe Pile not that terrible was we were explicitly told in fluff that the point is Glass Walkers and Bone Gnawers and Red Talons and Children of Gaia have to get together and talk about what to do to fix things so maybe mr "I got it, let's just eat the humans"and mr "I got it, let's hug the wyrm out of people" have to live together with the same problems and maybe they can figure poo poo out with both voices. Instead almost every example was just 'yea this is a Talon sept, we wanna eat the humans' and maybe your players can talk to them.
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Mar 28, 2019 21:51
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If you hug hard enough in war form that will probably get the Wyrm out of someone at least.
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Mar 28, 2019 21:55
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also, just to be clear: I also hate it because I hate the Magnus, the character, and his job of being The Mouthpiece of Morke
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Mar 28, 2019 21:56
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Hey now! Craft isn't the only one that has subheadings, Performance also has the trees split up by subheadings! I wish more were. Athletics has Movement/Strength, Brawl General/Strikes/Grapples, Socialise Utility/Persona etc. It'd make everything much more manageable.That Old Tree posted:It's absolutely air-breathing mermaid bullshit because it's such a minimal difference but it costs you an extra 8XP to "fix" or insure against it mattering, it's incredibly contrived and "time constraints matter" is conveyed one-million percent better by putting actual real thought into a story, and not "well this one Charm takes a turn to activate and this one is instant, therefore ~drama~." That's not what I meant to say it was, sorry if I didn't convey that. I did say it could have been conveyed a million times better, though, which is my main criticism of the book and its a pretty huge one when its a rulebook for a thing. I absolutely agree that its a terrible way of getting STs to think about time constraints, especially because some people will see the example and only think of immediate time limits instead of larger ones that, as you say, are better done with actual thought, but its better than having absolutely no mention of time as being a thing you should be concerned with at all. I disagree that having something instantly happen as a result of stuff that needs an immediate solution is an especially egregious contrivance, like sometimes things happen that need immediate response? I don't think that having a different type of Get Stronger for long term vs instant is an inherently terrible design decision and certainly not because its "incredibly contrived" to have to do things immediately sometimes. Not letting Goku power up is fine sometimes. I do, however, think it would be better if the Instant version was just an alternate mode for the Simple charm, or something you get at certain essence or repurchase or whatever, because yeah, 8xp tax on being able to do a thing you do, but fast and less efficiently is a bit much! There are bunch of charms that do double duty in that way, like all the Resistance charms that have different things vs Withering or Decisive attacks. I'm sure then there'd be complaints that the charms are too complex, but its tough to have your cake and eat it on this one. Alien Rope Burn posted:Craft should be more "Oh, I have this convenient thing" or "my sword is just better" than juggling this bizarre downtime system full of speedbumps designed mainly to keep you from dominating the game by being an airship factory and guhhhh Good news! There are a bunch of Lunar charms that are all about going "ah-a! I made one earlier!" and getting a bunch of craft points for craft related things. It's so much better.
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Mar 28, 2019 21:56
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Mors Rattus posted:also, just to be clear: I also hate it because I hate the Magnus, the character, and his job of being The Mouthpiece of Morke What's Morke excited to have a mouthpiece about?
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Mar 28, 2019 21:58
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Night10194 posted:What's Morke excited to have a mouthpiece about? The Magnus' job in the tail end of 2e was to be Morke's in-character persona to write giant meandering blog posts about setting lore and how awesome the Magnus was
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Mar 28, 2019 21:59
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Mors Rattus posted:The Magnus' job in the tail end of 2e was to be Morke's in-character persona to write giant meandering blog posts about setting lore and how awesome the Magnus was So not even some crazy political ideology or something? Just 'This character is awesome, and also he says Morke is right about all the setting stuff?'
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Mar 28, 2019 22:01
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Hunt11 posted:What was edgy/stupid about those wolfs? Many of the Tribes are based on real-world oppressed groups, and they all practice some form of shamanism. Even worse, it was the 90s. So right off the bat you've got a lot of Problematic fantasies about playing colonized people with magic powers, and 90s Neopaganism with all its foibles including ahistoricity, cultural appropriation, a fairy tale understanding of feminism, and borderline fascism. Even worse, some of the Tribes also have nasty associations that are presented in a neutral tone, like the Red Talons (who want to cull the human population), Black Furies (see "fairy tale feminism" above), and the Get of Fenris, who have a Nazi problem. It's very much shaded by that vague attitude of "Christianity and modernism and technology are bad and evil, New Age mumbo-jumbo is liberation" attitude you also see in Mage and even Vampire to some extent. It's the perfect game for a white dude with a Dances With Wolves fantasy who is explaining to you that it's not bestiality if you are also a wolf.
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Mar 28, 2019 22:01
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Night10194 posted:So not even some crazy political ideology or something? Just 'This character is awesome, and also he says Morke is right about all the setting stuff?' Well, I mean, some of the setting material had political stuff in it, like the declaration that binary gender was inherent to existence.
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Mar 28, 2019 22:06
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Mors Rattus posted:I will grant you, it does a thing, yes, rather than being Cookie Clicker. I don't have a problem with it thematically because it's just straight up stolen from comic books and 'stuff Doctor Doom does' sounds appropriate for solar craft charms and that's really all that matters to me. So, sure, it raises some questions, but *hand-waive-y motions* whatever it's fine for me. I generally don't ask too many questions about rpg effects implications, for me they're there to tell a story, but I can see this bothers some people and I guess that comes down to game style. I think the root of the problem here is that DMP is so out of place compared to the rest of the charms it's just jarring because it doesn't even remotely look like it's supposed to be here. That and the fact that even the guy who wrote DMP thinks it shouldn't be here. For me the solution isn't to make DMP sorcery, it's to make craft less .... whatever it is. Ithle01 fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Mar 28, 2019 |
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Mar 28, 2019 22:06
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Mors Rattus posted:Well, I mean, some of the setting material had political stuff in it, like the declaration that binary gender was inherent to existence. See, that's the stuff I was expecting!
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Mar 28, 2019 22:07
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