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This is pretty much exactly how the skill section of the core book describes Occult for non-sorcerers. Granted, it could have used some mechanical support. Even something as simple as "use occult instead of lore when you introduce a fact about spirits" would be nice.
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Feb 6, 2023 23:32
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Ham Equity posted:Does anybody know if I put in a pre-order for the Sidereals book now, will I get an early-access copy of the PDF immediately? I missed the Sidereals kickstarter, so am also interested in this.
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Feb 7, 2023 00:36
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PatentPending posted:I missed the Sidereals kickstarter, so am also interested in this. Figuring I was gonna want this eventually, anyhow, I went ahead and bought it, and it does immediately give you a link to the draft.
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Feb 7, 2023 08:20
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Thanks! Off I go then.
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Feb 7, 2023 15:48
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kaynorr posted:I decided that Foundry was worth taking a flyer on, so if you're looking for a big multiyear chronicle with either Solars, Lunars, or Siderials, I've got you covered. I'm interested, but don't have PMs. You can contact me on Discord, NoperQ#0609, if you're still looking for players.
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Feb 7, 2023 20:14
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Rand Brittain posted:Part of this is that Exalted's setting... how should I put this? Before 3e drove a hard wedge in between them, Creation didn't really have a divide between regular knowledge and magical knowledge. It's just facts that you can know; outside of sorcerous inititation, nobody needs to come at magic with a particular mindset or anything like that. At the high end, magic was just science: "motonic physics." I always hated the hell out of mid/late 2E books sliding towards magitech motonic physics soup. We ended up taking the various sorcery schools and expanding them into something similar to Mage paradigms. That safely ensconces magitech into the First Age Devonian school and their inheritors, the Kinetropics, who talk about motonic physics the way 17th century philosophers discuss corpuscles. That leaves room for the Salinan school as their counter, discussing Creation not as a giant mechanism but as a living being. The Silurians are wizard-poets, mapping relationships between symbols and meaning baked into reality by Primordial magic at the dawn of the world; the Theanoans, their off-shoots, forsaking salamander tails and eye of newt for purely abstract relationships and calculations. If we'd gone a few steps further, we'd have decoupled sorcery from Occult entirely. Kinetropics would be Craft sorcerers, Silurians are Linguistics sorcerers, and Salinans are Awareness sorcerers.
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Feb 8, 2023 00:15
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Calde posted:If we'd gone a few steps further, we'd have decoupled sorcery from Occult entirely. Kinetropics would be Craft sorcerers, Silurians are Linguistics sorcerers, and Salinans are Awareness sorcerers. I'm a vigorous proponent of decoupling charms from the abilities and attributes that underpin them where-ever possible, but you're undermining my convictions on that here.
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Feb 8, 2023 22:03
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:I think I'd like ExEss a lot more if: If you don't like the charmset that's fine, but that's definitely not what happened.
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Feb 11, 2023 01:23
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There's so little of it that it's awfully hard to find anything to like e: I would be very curious as to what did happen. If you're not at liberty to say what it was, just tell me I'm wrong if, not being designer disinterest, it was something like "the main team hasn't decided what Liminals can do yet so we don't have anything to write for" or "the licensee won't approve anything but this anemic list of post-it notes, regardless of what we've tried to submit." Chernobyl Peace Prize fucked around with this message at 01:53 on Feb 11, 2023 |
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Feb 11, 2023 01:41
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Like I said, if you don't like the charms that's totally a matter of taste, but Liminals weren't "half-assed," and defining their themes and abilities wasn't a 20 minute spitballing session. I'm not sure where you're getting there being "so little" of them versus the other Exalted types; Essence a hell of a lot of ground to cover, but I got as much space to work on them as the other charm writers did. The split between Universal charms with modes and Exalt-typed charms meant that some (Liminals especially) got shorted earlier in the process, so more got added in post-KS development. I can't speak to those since I didn't write either set, just the Liminal charms, but they certainly received as much effort and time as anything else in Essence or the larger line.
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Feb 11, 2023 01:53
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Yeah, the fact that they seem completely isolated from the rest of the book is where my frustration sits, honestly. It makes them feel like they've got their microtargeted niche from their specific charmset (which everyone does! but after you layer on their other unique versions of universal charms), and then....that's it, you get the generic version of everything else, until the post-KS stuff is here.
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Feb 11, 2023 02:00
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RiotGearEpsilon posted:I'm a vigorous proponent of decoupling charms from the abilities and attributes that underpin them where-ever possible, but you're undermining my convictions on that here. It can be cool to use the limitations of linking Ability / Charms to drive inspiration. For us, we loved debating the old fan-theory about how the Sutras for each Ability Charm Tree in 1E Sidereals seem to map to Primordials, so we used to that to inspire a few more failed schools and flesh out the canonical ones a bit. Sorcery is Primordial magic, learned by the Exalted after the great war if myths are to be believed, and it feels right that those playing with fractions of that power should have differing opinions on the underlying rules governing reality. They have the final product, they've broken bits of it to see little truths of how it works, but there needs to be some mystery and debate to make it exciting for use in play. It's the same with Sidereal prophecy and that whole samsara sidebar from late 2E; the Sidereals should have five or six different competing schools of thought around why they didn't see the Great Contagion coming. At least 3 should be dedicating to explaining how they totally did see it coming if you just read my papers and the other schools are merely spiteful losers who spread Contagion in their previous incarnations to make us look bad.
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Feb 12, 2023 03:48
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Ferrinus posted:I'd actually characterize Lore as the odd man out there, since as Roadie points out there's a lot of skills which in principle could be rolled to know stuff in various fields but that Lore rudely shoves aside. If I wanted to keep 25 distinct skills I'd probably reframe Lore as more specifically akin to Academics from WoD games where it's like knowledge of liberal arts, mathematics, library science, and education but not history, geography, or (super)natural science. More strongly supporting Occult with systems and rolls, while breaking Lore up across a couple of abilities and then sectioning off its own utility is something I could support. Lore is Too Big.
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Feb 13, 2023 09:56
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Many-Faced Strangers preview: Thousand Blades Style, for when you want to unleash that storm of flying daiklaves on some poor bastard.
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Feb 17, 2023 18:22
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Mechanically it looks fine, but it's bizarre that they decided to make the ability to attune to twelve daiklaves at once and effortlessly wield them with telekinesis an Essence 1, Ability 1 effect with no cost or prereqs to speak of. Anyone passingly familiar with Exalted who sees that some character has a halo of floating artifact weapons is going to intuitively understand that something extremely alarming must be going on, because normally the attunement costs would be prohibitive and telekinesis is a bizarre, alien power that's largely the tied to certain demons. So how the hell do you activate what should be like 40 motes' worth of artifact weapons and move them around with pure thought? Oh I guess it's a single 1/1 charm with no prereqs whose rules text reads "you may attune as many artifact weapons as you like and move them around with pure thought". I want this in the game, but it should have way higher prereqs and also be way stronger. Otherwise it's like reading a version of Snake Style that has identical mechanics but is flavored as third circle demons briefly materializing to do the moves for you. Edit: On a second glance it does NOT mechanically look fine but I'm still more bothered by the narrative implications. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 06:01 on Feb 18, 2023 |
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Feb 17, 2023 18:57
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I'm not sure that a martial art is the best way to mechanize that. It reads more like a universalizable set of evocations that someone attuned to any weapon might develop than like, a fighting style in itself. Gated to Artifact weapons but not by Martial Artist (though tbh I think and have always thought that's a stupid merit to begin with), totally weapon-agnostic... a buyable-from-chargen martial art just feels like such an odd fit for these design parameters. Doesn't really make a difference except for the setting implications, and the low prereqs make sense from a "this is clearly a character-concept-defining fighting style" perspective. All in all it feels like an adequate homebrew solution for one player's character concept in one game rather than, like, how I'd want people to think martial arts are supposed to work.
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Feb 17, 2023 19:05
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Attorney at Funk posted:All in all it feels like an adequate homebrew solution for one player's character concept in one game rather than, like, how I'd want people to think martial arts are supposed to work. 
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Feb 17, 2023 19:22
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Alright with a closer look I have determined that those Charms are extremely NOT fine, but I have the perfect solution to all this style's problems: delete the first Charm entirely. In its place, expand the "Form Weapons" section to explain that unless the character is attuned to multiples of the same class of artifact weapon and somehow capable of manipulating those weapons at a distance so as to strike out to at least Medium range, she cannot actually execute any of the style's charms. That way you actually do have to be a really powerful Infernal or Lunar or something to A) bear the ~20m commitment that Arsenal 5 requires and B) use your psionics or flailing tentacles or similar to be able to whirl a bunch of daiklaves around at people 30 or 60 feet away. And then you've actually earned the ability to surround yourself in a 6-point lethal hazard zone that's also difficult terrain or whatever.
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Feb 18, 2023 06:31
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Yeah, this is literally the most broken martial arts style I have ever seen in any edition. I don't even know what to say.
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Feb 18, 2023 06:37
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This kind of flying-sword panoply isn't unusual in wuxia, and the style may be a direct reference the core fighting style of the main character of one of the most well-known wuxia novels, A Desolate Era. Wuxia novels have overpowered main characters, even by Exalted standards, so the fact that this style is also overpowered is at least explained, if not excused. Edit: This is by no means trying to say the style is OK, just that it's not Attorney at Funk posted:an adequate homebrew solution for one player's character concept in one game rather than, like, how I'd want people to think martial arts are supposed to work. Noper Q fucked around with this message at 07:39 on Feb 18, 2023 |
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Feb 18, 2023 07:22
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What you said just underlines that that's what it is - a genre- and scope-bending mechanical reification that doesn't quite fit Exalted as it stands but is fine if you squint (and especially fine if it just needs to solve one person's specific problem).
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Feb 18, 2023 08:38
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Exalted Gangster-Hitman: As it happens we know certain martial arts which are especially fine at solving one person's specific problem.
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Feb 18, 2023 16:44
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…it is immediately baffling to me that this isn’t structured like a Sidereal Martial Art, which we have recently seen they can write well and make accessible at character creation without being less impressive (though it takes most of your character creation resources). If this were written with that in mind it sounds like a lot of the problems people have would be much less present, and also, it would fit the fact that the only character we’ve seen associated with the style is an elder Lunar with a terrifying reputation.
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Feb 18, 2023 17:02
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I'm just surprised this isn't... in the form charm? 'you enter your special MA form and your swords starts flying' seems like the most natural execution of this sort of thing, perhaps with an attunement-reducer as the prerequisite.
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Feb 18, 2023 17:22
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It seems like the style's problems start with the fact that they took a style that was originally conceptualized as the insane fashion statement of an ancient Lunar with hundreds of trophy daiklaives and nothing better to do, and decided to make it accessible to anybody at character creation. Unfortunately the problems don't stop there, since it appears to be wildly better than any other style I've ever seen or written on every possible front.
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Feb 18, 2023 17:57
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Something I do abstractly appreciate here is that because this is its own martial art with, as a special exception, no prereqs whatsoever (and in fact I 100% support this because the "martial artist" merit is stupid; every MA should be so lucky) you could play a character whose only combat skill, from day one, is Martial Arts (Thousand Blades Style) 5. If you were to try to actually pick up one of your daiklaves with your hands you probably couldn't even be trusted not to hold it by the sharp end! I guess one defense you could raise re: how pushed this style is would be that, arguably, its Charms aren't compatible with those of any other published style, since every other MA assumes you're actually holding your weapons in your hands and moving your body around as you fight. I doubt that's how it's actually meant to work, though, and, of course it won't stop a Lunar. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Feb 18, 2023 |
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Feb 18, 2023 19:35
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Exalted Essence is probably the ugliest book Onyx Path has ever produced, which is saying something. I think between this and Thousand Blades Style (and honestly, I wasn't a big fan of the Sidereal Charmset either), I'm done with Exalted. I'm glad I finished Golden Calibration, but it's pretty clear to me that at this point anything new that gets published is going to be something I can't stand.
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Feb 20, 2023 20:05
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Rand Brittain posted:Exalted Essence is probably the ugliest book Onyx Path has ever produced, which is saying something. I think between this and Thousand Blades Style (and honestly, I wasn't a big fan of the Sidereal Charmset either), I'm done with Exalted. I'm glad I finished Golden Calibration, but it's pretty clear to me that at this point anything new that gets published is going to be something I can't stand. All the page numbers being XX is also fairly nostalgic. I've enjoyed reading uglier books though.
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Feb 20, 2023 21:02
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Rand Brittain posted:Exalted Essence is probably the ugliest book Onyx Path has ever produced, which is saying something. I think between this and Thousand Blades Style (and honestly, I wasn't a big fan of the Sidereal Charmset either), I'm done with Exalted. I'm glad I finished Golden Calibration, but it's pretty clear to me that at this point anything new that gets published is going to be something I can't stand. I feel like you're overreacting to things a little bit? It's definitely not an extremely ugly book. The charm formatting isn't super ideal necessarily - I prefer your formatting from Golden Calibration in general although I don't think it would work with how charms work in Essence - but it's certainly not as awful as you are presenting. I don't even really know what you're talking about when you're calling it incredibly ugly (aside from like specifically some of the splat formatting). To be clear, I don't even think that Essence is particularly good - gently caress if I know anything about that - but it's not like, super ugly and awful to look at? shades of blue fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Feb 20, 2023 |
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Feb 20, 2023 23:11
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Is Essence good if you like Exalted but hate the Exalted system and want something simple?
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Feb 21, 2023 01:05
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Covok posted:Is Essence good if you like Exalted but hate the Exalted system and want something simple? it is more simple than exalted but it is still a relatively crunchy game. your mileage will vary here. if a typical white wolf/onyx path game is too mechanically complex, then essence is probably similarly too complex.
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Feb 21, 2023 01:12
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It's not much simpler and there are a bunch of disappointing-to-bad mechanical decisions, although I do like Ventures.
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Feb 21, 2023 01:16
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shades of blue posted:I feel like you're overreacting to things a little bit? It's definitely not an extremely ugly book. The charm formatting isn't super ideal necessarily - I prefer your formatting from Golden Calibration in general although I don't think it would work with how charms work in Essence - but it's certainly not as awful as you are presenting. I don't even really know what you're talking about when you're calling it incredibly ugly (aside from like specifically some of the splat formatting). To be clear, I don't even think that Essence is particularly good - gently caress if I know anything about that - but it's not like, super ugly and awful to look at? Well, okay, let's take a look.  The Charm name headings are extremely ugly and blocky, and on top of that they're uneven, both horizontally and vertically, with more shading below the text than above it and more on the left than on the right. On top of that we have the existing Exalted Ability header, which is an ugly font that's hard to read and isn't actually larger than the subheadings under it, which makes it hard to pick out visually. Then below it we have a bunch of paragraphs, none of which needed to be indented because they're all separate topics with a line of space between them, but are indented anyway. The flavor text isn't justified even though everything else is, and it's a weird color that doesn't look good with the ugly heading. This is on top of the fact that separating out the flavor text just calls extra attention to the fact that the flavor text says absolutely nothing except "this Charm for being good at swimming makes you good at swimming." Someone described Exalted 3e's layout to me as "bloated minimalism" and I can see it. It resembles the layout of D&D 4e powers, but it loses everything that was good about that layout and gains nothing. Ferrinus posted:It's not much simpler and there are a bunch of disappointing-to-bad mechanical decisions, although I do like Ventures. Yeah, pretty much. "It loses everything that people liked about Exalted's chunky system in the name of simplification, but in the end it's not that much simpler, but I guess ventures are nice and they should carry that forward" kind of sums it up.
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Feb 21, 2023 01:25
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Well, that's the level of care I'd come to expect from Essence.
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Feb 21, 2023 01:37
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yeah, I was really hoping Essence was going to be meaningfully simpler, but after looking at it I didn't really see much point in using Essence over the actual 3E rules and concluded I'd much rather run/play Blood and Fire (the fanmade Cortex adaptation) or Exalted vs. World of Darkness (even with its different premise) and while Cortex is one thing given its design philosophy (and with due acknowledgement that it's possible I'm entirely doing a grog thing and discounting the myriad flaws of a system I've got greater familiarity with), I think it's a really loving bad sign that the "simplified"/"streamlined"/"written of ease of play" rules feel as though they're comparing unfavorably (or, heck, comparably) to "oh yeah we're going to hack the Exalted splats into a full-bore crossover oWOD campaign, that's a sensible choice a person might make"
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Feb 21, 2023 02:46
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LGD posted:"oh yeah we're going to hack the Exalted splats into a full-bore crossover oWOD campaign, that's a sensible choice a person might make" I don't have the core books to check for myself, but I've been told ExWoD pulls mostly from 1e Exalted, which wasn't so distant from oWOD's storyteller system.
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Feb 21, 2023 02:52
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Schwarzwald posted:I don't have the core books to check for myself, but I've been told ExWoD pulls mostly from 1e Exalted, which wasn't so distant from oWOD's storyteller system. oh as someone who enjoyed/played a lot of Ex 1E (and oWOD) I can confirm it very clearly does (with appropriate attention paid to later developments - i.e. dice adders being condensed into consistent excellencies rather than the more ad-hoc way 1E did things), and that's sort of why I need to be cognizant of the fact that some of its appeal definitely comes from how easily that pre-existing system knowledge lets me easily parse the mechanics (since they're basically a simplified/refined "greatest hits" of 1E Exalted, and its usually fairly clear how to add anything that might be missing or tweak things more to my liking - i.e. I'd probably extend the caste attribute/ability immunity to 1s to anything enhanced by a non-caste excellency) but even taking that into account, I really feel like if I was trying to get people unfamiliar with the system onboard I'd have a much easier time with ExWoD than Essence, because of a confluence of the "greatest hits" nature of it + a few things that really cut down on eye-glazing confusion (namely the organization is better, with splats largely self contained so you can go concept->character mechanics much more easily and without need to be constantly flipping through the book, and [for better or worse] the oWOD rules are more "traditional"/charms aren't trying to interact with nearly as many well-defined subsystemss/etc. and consequently I think are much easier to parse on an initial read [and subsequent reads for that matter])
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Feb 21, 2023 03:28
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I think I mentioned it a few pages ago, but at some point Holden Shearer is putting out an "Exalted Demake" which is basically an EXvWoD-complexity system but for Exalted proper.
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Feb 21, 2023 03:39
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Ferrinus posted:I think I mentioned it a few pages ago, but at some point Holden Shearer is putting out an "Exalted Demake" which is basically an EXvWoD-complexity system but for Exalted proper. you did, and I'm actually interested in it/downloading what appears to be the current WIP version
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Feb 21, 2023 03:58
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Ferrinus posted:I think I mentioned it a few pages ago, but at some point Holden Shearer is putting out an "Exalted Demake" which is basically an EXvWoD-complexity system but for Exalted proper. What makes us think that this time he’ll give us the bad rules we think we want?
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Feb 21, 2023 05:01
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