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Bedlamdan posted:or just use bp??? *winks slyly at the rest of the thread, over and over again* BP actually has two problems that a flat XP system wouldn't have. First, charms cost relatively more with BP than with XP. At 5XP per session, you can get a charm every ~2 sessions and have a bit left over to raise other traits or save up for an extra charm every few sessions. Alternatively, you could buy about one ability dot or just over half a willpower or just under two merit dots. If you get 2BP per session, you get slightly fewer charms per session (.5 instead of .625). You're also choosing .5 charms over two ability dots or two merit dots or one point of willpower. It's absolutely possible that you are okay with that, but it's still a departure from the advancement rate/priorities from the base game. Second, there's a lack of granularity. 5XP and 0-4sXP gives you more freedom to precisely price things than 2BP and 0-2 solar BP (I'm not entirely sure how BP systems handle Solar XP, but this seems about right? Or 0-1 sBP?). That's another personal preference thing, though. My Preferred Flat XP costs: Merits: 3xp Favored Abilities: 4xp Unfavored Abilities: 5xp Attributes: 10xp everything else the same, 50xp rather than 15BP at chargen (you can limit chargen charm purchases to 3 if you are bothered by the incentives to purchase charms rather than abilities/attributes at creation) This lets you get a favored ability dot every session with sXP if you hit both bonuses and is pretty easy to save up for bigger things. It also gives very close totals for raising from 0-5 (core vs flat) Favored Abilities: 19xp vs 20xp Unfavored Abilities: 23xp vs 25xp Attributes: 40xp vs 40xp (1-5) Merits are totally screwy in the core, as it apparently costs 45xp for Resources 5, 15xp for Exalted Healing (a 5 dot merit), 42xp for Command 5, and either 15xp or 24xp for Manse 5 (Yes, I know that you don't pay XP for story merits. They were just random examples I picked) so I just put it at 3xp per dot.
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Nov 11, 2015 19:10
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Bedlamdan posted:I'm pretty sure putting it at 3 xp per dot is how it's supposed to be done. Except that's not how the devs (pretty sure it was Holden, but don't remember for certain) explained it on the official forums. Don't have the link on hand, but he said that merit dots have to be purchased in order (new rating * 3xp each), but you can skip paying for dots that don't do anything. That's why a 1-5 merit costs 45xp and a flat 5 merit costs 15xp
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Nov 11, 2015 19:13
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Thug Lessons posted:Not really, mainly because you cannot actually buy any of Merits with dots 1-5 with xp. As has already been mentioned. Mighty Thew 1-3 is Purchased, so costs 18xp to get at 3 dots Quick Draw 1 or 4 is Purchased. It's not clear if you want the 4-dot version if you need to spend 12xp or 15xp (4 dots or 1 dot THEN 4 dot)
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Nov 11, 2015 20:27
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Ferrinus posted:The way I see it, if you can afford a charm every two sessions with a bit left over, you're playing an Exalted game. That's why, using BP, you just give everyone 2.5 BP every session, or 2-3-2-3-2-3, or just 3 because you're feeling generous. ...and that's it, you're done. Yeah, this just comes down to "Which method do you prefer" rather than "OBJECTIVELY RIGHT rules decisions, why are you so stupid?". It would be really easy to have a flat XP table in the book, with a note saying "You can either use this XP system or just give everybody 3BP per session. Here is a short paragraph describing why you may want to do each of these things, plus tips for adjusting things to fit your table"
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Nov 11, 2015 23:47
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I'd say not. It's obviously going to depend a lot on the game, it's hard to show of your super combat powers in a game about society building and diplomacy with minimal combat after all. Then again, your supernal Presence or Sail wouldn't help much in a martial arts tournament, so I guess know your context. One reason it may feel like supernal combat is overshadowed is that most people are going to be competent at combat (due to it being so common) but not everyone will be equally competent at stealth or social influence or whatnot, so the gap feels bigger for those abilities. But I have definitely seen the effect a combat-focused supernal character can have long term, they become the center of combat, who everyone else bases their decisions around supporting.
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Nov 18, 2015 17:20
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The more I think about it, the more I like this approach. I also use a text client for most purposes, and everyone stunts every action anyway. There's also the downside that any action people really really want to succeed will be preceded by a fifteen minute silence as they type up the perfect awesome stunt. This way, they can just tap their Major or Defining stunt and move on. The only thing I'm more conflicted on is removing the +2 dice from stunts. On the one hand, checks against a static difficulty are slightly weakened (your diplomat with 3 str+athletics isn't going to swim across a raging river, but with 5 dice and a willpower tap you just might make it), not that these have likely been calibrated to that precise degree. On the other hand, the most important checks - opposed checks, especially combat - just wash out. On the gripping hand, I'm the ST and I can just lower static Difficulties by 1 if it's that important, and post-action stunts are cooler anyway so that basically settles it. Good idea, Ferrinus or whoever came up with it in case you got the idea from someone else!
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Jan 13, 2016 23:34
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The fun begins when you ride them. If my familiar is a simhata, it's obviously a mount (being the exalted lionHORSE) and it's also a fierce combatant (being the exalted LIONhorse). Mounts don't get their own actions, familiars do. Would my Survival-enhanced Simhata mount familiar get its own initiative score, or would I have to use Seasoned Beast-Rider's approach? For that matter, can I use both Survival and Ride charms to boost my familiar if I am sitting on its back? Because Immortal Rider's Advantage and Resilience of the Chosen Mount make Deadly Predator Method even more ridiculous. (For reference, Deadly Predator Method gives a huge host of powers to the familiar, the most notable of which is that decisive attacks don't reset initiative. The familiar loses one initiative per action, and reverts to normal if they Crash. Immortal Rider's Advantage lets you transfer initiative to your mount, and Resilience of the Chosen Mount lets you negate a significant amount of any damage they take, which doesn't specify as health damage so probably works against initiative damage as well)
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Jan 20, 2016 00:35
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Resplendent Eye of the War-Watching Eagle Prana Technique Approach Method Form Discipline
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Mar 4, 2016 20:08
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Libluini posted:Great! So I guess the book about Alchemicals will be out in 2100, going by that "speed" those clowns are showing. There's still time
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Apr 1, 2016 17:49
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The Sandman posted:Which could have been done by summoning him for an asskicking instead of going into Hell and attacking him on his home turf. AKA taking all the fun out of it
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Apr 5, 2016 22:31
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Covok posted:Is there any place that condenses all of 2.5 into one place without needing to know to ignore poo poo and replace other poo poo? Just curious. Just play 3rd edition. There is no hope of salvaging, condensing or clarifying the terrible mess that is 2e, even 2.5. Nothing you could possibly gain reading 2e stuff is worth it.
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Apr 13, 2016 19:53
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Covok posted:I neither own nor can own 3E at the moment. 2.5 is Not Worth It. Find the leak,  the backer pdf, or just play something - anything - else. 2.5 is bad, and there is no way to salvage it, let alone a condensed easy to use tool to do so.
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Apr 13, 2016 20:00
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Rand Brittain posted:If you had any jokes about it not happening that you were saving, might as well unload them now... I believe they just crossed the 900 day late mark. 
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Apr 19, 2016 02:55
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Attorney at Funk posted:Have the final backer PDFs started going out yet? That should happen tomorrow. They said that the backer pdfs would be updated the same time that they went live for sale.
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Apr 19, 2016 18:05
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Just saying, bearfolk can totally become Solars. A drive for revenge is a classic heroic motivation after all, and it's not like anybody plays Lunars anyway.
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Apr 19, 2016 19:46
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I think that Beastfolk Terrestrials are the most amusing sort, though. Patiently explaining that no, you aren't Anathema, you're a Terrestrial Prince of the Earth that just happens to have fur for the millionth time before snapping and just killing people before being hunted down by the Wyld Hunt.
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Apr 19, 2016 20:04
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Rand Brittain posted:It's been said before that there isn't going to be a Dragon-Blooded KS until the text is done, yeah, and possibly the layout, too. So there will only be a year between the kickstarter's end and the book being released! Of course there won't be a preview or any form of open discussion about the content before its release, why do you ask?
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Apr 20, 2016 05:33
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Design Beyond Limit still references Emerald, Sapphire and Adamant Evocations, and Solar Counterattack is still unclear about how it's resolved if you kill your enemy (unless I missed something) and many sidebars are still in the next ability's charms. What stupid bullshit can YOU still find?
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Apr 20, 2016 19:47
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spectralent posted:The Infinite Chakram is still Tira's soul calibur weapon with a tint. And so is the regular Chakram. They actually made the plagiarism worse
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Apr 20, 2016 23:55
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Covok posted:I thought I saw one earlier in the thread. If not and that one had fixes in it, anyone want to divide thd labor and do it together? I'm thinking of doing a roll20+Discord game on SA on Saturdays (or I might play in SunandSprings) and this handout would be super helpful, even if I have to do it myself. There's a rewrite on the Exalted forums that is almost free of any "fixes", apart from the fixes needed to clear up any charms. For instance, any rewrite of Solar Counterattack is going to have to take a stand on whether or not killing attackers stops the damage, which will be viewed as a "fix" by anyone who disagrees with it. Fortunately, that rewrite clearly marks any charms that they changed, so you can just revert to the core version or tackle them on your own as a much smaller project. I'll see if I can find it, and post it here EDIT: Here you go, here's the forum post. Craft is pretty heavily altered, but the rest of it less so. And I REALLY recommend either banning Craft or using some sort of rewrite anyway, since the canon version is just terrible in every way. There are about 130 modified charms in this writeup, out of about 780 total, and most of those modifications that I spot-checked were more Clarifications of Natural Language that might change how it works if you interpreted it differently. For example, Godspeed Steps works the exact same way as before, but the rewrite has it be Supplemental due to tightening up what exactly the Supplemental/Reflexive divide is. Kaza42 fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Apr 25, 2016 |
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Apr 25, 2016 19:31
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Thug Lessons posted:Well, why did the NPC list balloon? In any case I'm not opposed at all to bureaucracy systems, I have a half-finished one that I wrote myself, but I'm still confused as to why you think that character-based nationbuilding inherently creates burden. Let's think through an example scenario. You, as someone in charge of an area - Empress, Prince, Regional Manager, whatever, you have authority here - want to improve the roads. Your current roads aren't terrible, but you envision a grand highway system that will mark your legacy for generations. So, the first thing we'd need from the game, systems wise, is What Do Roads Do. Instead of having a Roads Stat in your Domain that you increment, we could have a simple guideline for travel times (NOTE: I am making up random numbers from here on out as an example of what a system might look like, not trying to accurately portray what a good travel system's numbers would be). People can move 15 miles per day. Rough terrain (rocky hills, woods, light marshland) reduces it to 10 miles per day, while Harsh terrain (mountains, jungle, swamp) reduces it to 5 miles per day. Having any roads at all gives you a +20% bonus (so 18, 12 or 6). Stone roads are +40% (20, 14, 7). Good Quality Roads reduce terrain penalties one step, Legendary Roads negate terrain penalties entirely. There we go, we are now trying to go from Good Roads to Legendary Stone Roads, a meaningful gain in our system. There are a few ways you could handle this. The most abstract way would be to have someone make a few rolls. Maybe an Intelligence+Craft(Architecture or City) check to draw up the plans, then a Charisma+Bureaucracy roll to go through whatever middlemen you need to get it organized, and then perhaps even a Manipulation+Socialize roll to pass higher taxes to fund it. You'd have brief scenes with the Chief Architect, the Foreman or Minister of Roads or whoever, and then maybe a backroom dealing scene with an anti-tax Councilmember to get your law passed. ~1 NPC per roll, and only a handful of rolls. Call it 3-4 NPCs needed, with only one or two being recurring or otherwise notable. If you succeed, you'll get your Legendary Roads in time, and any stories you tell will be about resolving calamities or other obstacles rather than getting it to happen at all. The NPC-facing way of handling things makes getting it to happen at all the story (of course, you can still have the calamity stories afterward). You'd play out a scene establishing the plans with your trusted Aides, and whoever you chose as the Chief Architect will matter here. Are they loyal to you, working furiously to get your vision prepared? Are they apathetic to the idea, or otherwise don't want it to happen? Perhaps they are just making a show of drawing up plans, but without putting the thought and details it would need. Could you spot that? Do you trust them? Or maybe they are actively hostile to you, secretly plotting treachery and so plant flaws in the plans to make you fail or look foolish. But just getting the plans is but the first step. There is stone to be quarried and moved, laborers to be hired, gods to be placated, funds to be acquired. As Head Honcho, you'll need to order all of these things, and every thing you delegate is another person you must talk to and trust. House Stonepeople controls the stone trade in the domain, but they are getting uncomfortably powerful. Do you give them the contract to quarry the stone, knowing that they will both deliver the best quality due to experience and also gain still more power and wealth? Or should you establish a rival to them, placing a trusted friend in charge and hoping they can learn the trade in time? After all, even the most industrious Twilight would be hard pressed to personally mine thousands of tons of stone, let alone transport it all herself. Who is providing the labor, do you have mercenary craftsmen? Slaves? Government workers? Who manages them, how do you protect them from bandits? Even the mightiest Dawn Caste can't watch a thousand miles of road at the same time. And all of this will take money, of course. Do you have funds available, or will you have to pull them from somewhere else? If the latter, someone was counting on that money and will have to be placated or dealt with. If the former, someone firmly believes they have a better use for that wealth, and will try to stop you or convince you to wait on the roads. Can you simply order the funds diverted, or do you have to go through a senate or other governing body? Of course, the gods and elementals must be dealt with as well. Do you pray to them? Go to their Sanctums and treat as equals? Command them, with threat of violence and destruction should they oppose you? What if they ask that your roads be paved with prayers to them, are you willing to slow your great vision down to earn the favor of the gods? There are many more things that could be either taken care of on screen or delegated away, but you get the point. By now, you've dealt with at least a dozen NPCs, each with their own loyalties and motivations. You may have never rolled Bureaucracy once, but you have surely interacted with an organization. I would say that which you should use depends on the game. If it's a political or intrigue based game, where this organization and its members play a vital role, then go with the second one. Each NPC is actually important, and worth fleshing out since you will be meaningfully interacting with them. On the other hand, if this is a high action adventure game, and one of the players just has a kingdom on the side that they want to see get better, go with the first method and spend the rest of the session/story on action-y stuff. But the problem I have here is that in neither case is Bureaucracy really worth being its own ability. Being a Bureaucracy specialist means that you want to experience stories about dealing with the bureaucracy, you want to deftly maneuver through red tape and opposition, create money seemingly from nowhere and secure the loyalties of all beneath you. In the first system, that's all abstracted away so it's not Cool. Having Bureaucracy skill can be useful, but it's not defining who you are. In the second case, all the Bureaucracy charms are operating at too high a level. The charms are trying to interact with the Organization as some discrete whole, while you are interacting with the people that collectively make up the Organization. It would be far better if Bureaucracy charms were about dealing with those members, instantly gauging loyalties or status, or seeing the clearest path to a goal, or making a compromise seem more lucrative. Unfortunately, that's all Socialize and Presence right now, so you'd have to redefine what the actual difference between the Abilities is unless you want another Lore/Occult problem.
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Apr 28, 2016 23:47
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Ferrinus posted:See, the more I consider the bolded words here - which are a necessary component of the stunt system as it exists - the more I'm convinced they describe a pointlessly lovely situation, one that, if arrived at through any other means, would set off obvious red flags for pretty much everyone on this forum. First of all, you are right that in general, giving +2 and removing a -2 are mathematically the same. However, you are ignoring two points that makes them different in practice. First, the game actually has balance around difficulty scores. If you have 8 dice against a 4 difficulty, you have a 58% chance to succeed. If you give +2 to some people, that boosts their chance to succeed to 75%, while giving a -2 to some people lowers their chance to succeed down to 36%. In the case of awarding some people a +2, you are taking them from "likely to succeed" to "more likely to succeed", so people who don't bother to stunt are still in the Fun range of >50% odds to succeed. If you give a -2 penalty, you are taking people from "likely to succeed" to "unlikely to succeed", which means that you are gating the Fun threshold behind stunting. Of course, you could just lower all difficulties by 1 to mathematically make up for it, but you would have to do so transparently (after all, certain player-facing charms have set difficulties. If you lower all difficulties by 1, you have to tell the players that their charms are 1 step easier to pull off) which means you are mathematically back to the +2 scenario and just calling it something else. Second, people respond differently to gain and loss. If you have someone flip a coin and tell them that you will give them $5 on a heads, they will be less upset on tails than if you had given someone $5 and then told them they'd lose it on a tails, even though they end up with the exact same amount in both cases. (I can provide many citations here if you doubt me, let me know if that is needed). By giving a +2 on stunting, it becomes psychologically a reward. People want to do it, and are more likely to be eager to do it. It becomes fun. If you instead say that failing to stunt penalizes you with a -2, it becomes a chore. Something you have to do to prevent your rightful die pool from being reduced. It's not fun, it's just the game being a pain in the rear end. While I can accept that for you or your group this is not the case, the game was not designed for you and your group specifically. Instead, at least in this case, it was designed for the most common human response to the situation. This holds up anecdotally at least, because I actually implemented your stunt change partway through a campaign I was running. I immediately saw stunting decrease, and people were much less excited by the stunting that was happening. Instead, it was just another tactical resource, and therefore boring. Now, you have somewhat addressed this second point, by calling it dishonest. Calling it dishonest doesn't make it so, however, and you have not at all explained how designing a game with human psychology in mind to make it actually fun is dishonest. It's not even mathematically dishonest, as shown in the first point. The facts remains that 1)Unless you rebalance all difficulties in the game, there is an actual mathematical difference between +2 and -2, especially in a die pool system and 2)Most people view gaining a +2 for doing an action as more fun than avoiding a -2 by doing the same action. Because of those two facts, I am of the opinion that tying stunting to a mechanical reward is good game design, in the sense that games should reward player behavior that furthers the experience and themes the game is aiming for. As a related point, here are a few other games that reward roleplaying behavior and how World of Darkness games restore willpower whenever the Virtue or Vice of a character is furthered. This would not be the same as penalizing them by 1wp at the end of each session they failed to pursue either. Dungeons and Dragons gives EXP for roleplaying (even if many groups ignore this rule, it has been in the game for a long time). This is not the same as penalizing people EXP for failing to roleplay. Artesia gives XP for OOC actions that make the game more fun, such as bringing humor to the table. This is not the same as picking the most boring player each session and docking them XP. FATE games award fate points for roleplaying out your aspects. This is not the same as docking people fate points for poor roleplaying. Mouse Guard awards bonus experience each session for the player or players that roleplayed the best (which cannot be given to everyone). This is not the same as voting on who roleplayed worst and docking them experience. Golden Sky Stories lets people reward each other for good play - whether that's good roleplaying, being amusing, being nice IC or OOC, or really any other reason. This is not the same as letting people dock rewards from each other for various reasons. In all of these cases, giving rewards for good play is good game design, while the presented inversion would be bad game design, in the sense that offering rewards is more fun and more successful than penalties or docked points.
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May 4, 2016 16:09
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Cubicle 7 has been releasing one One Ring book every 6 months or so for the last five years so it's at least possible. They don't seem like a big company from the quick look I did, and they've got a lot more than one game line to worry about
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Oct 12, 2016 23:54
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Bedlamdan posted:All it required was the strength of character to keep their content 99% unchanged in spite of all the criticism, leading to a rapid and efficient development time. No need to go back to the drawing board for another six months. A model for all developers. Except that Beast is terrible, and people pointed out the ways it was terrible in the open playtest and ignoring said feedback (or rather, making only minor changes while ignoring the biggest issues) was the second worst decision they made. Furthermore, the changes they made were almost all positive, and so a Beast with open playtest is better than one that didn't have the open playtest. It's just not as good as a Beast where they had the open playtest and actually listened to people pointing out how incredibly terrible it is.
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Oct 19, 2016 22:00
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My advice for running antagonists is to crank the QC system up. Get rid of enemy mote pools and willpower, it does not matter. Give them one or two attacks that they can spam, the equivalent of spending 5m or so. Give them a few special defenses - again, no motes just some stuff they get for free. Then plunder DND 4e systems. The enemy has a few minor effects they can use at will (one at a time), one or two more they can use every couple actions, and one power they can use once. Important enemies get special effects, like powers they use once they take damage the first time, or environmental stuff that happens around them. They also get to "spend willpower" to add a success to important rolls or defenses. Do not actually track willpower. Basically, enemies do not have to use the same tools and systems that players do. The devs almost figured that out with quick characters, but fell short.
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Dec 26, 2016 16:12
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Covok posted:Are they working on the next sourcebook yet? Like Dragonblood, Lunars, etc.? If so, what is known about it? When is the release date, if publicly known? They have announced that Dragon-Blooded: What Fire Has Wrought (the Terrestrial book) is in "Second Draft" according to a kickstarter announcement in late December. It's been there for months, and there is no news or information on what that means or where development is at or what's going to be in it (aside from "rules for Terrestrials"), and definitely nothing that even looks like a release date. I believe there was talk of doing a Kickstarter once the book is near/actually complete, but I haven't heard any news or update on that front either. The last concrete(ish) news is that Arms of the Chosen was scrapped almost in its entirety and started over because someone had a really cool idea about how to do it. No, they have not said what that idea was or what they replaced to use it or anything else that sane modern developers (including the rest of Onyx Path) do. Basically, I'll be pleasantly surprised if we get Arms of the Chosen (the small, easy book that was supposed to shortly follow the core) in 2017. I will be astonished if we get a full splatbook.
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Jan 16, 2017 21:41
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drunkencarp posted:Has anybody already done a variant character creation system that would let you trade in Ability points for more Attribute points? This would be for a one-PC game so it doesn't need to be balanced beyond vague tummyfeels, but I don't wanna do work somebody else has already bashed together. I'd suggest just allowing them to trade in ability dots for BP (or XP if you're using flat XP costs like a sane person) and then just purchasing the attribute dots with those BP/XP. Solars get more out of Abilities anyway, and since it's a solo game, that should be close enough to balanced to work with.
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Feb 2, 2017 17:15
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Clash initiative loss is done after damage is rolled, so presumably soak wouldn't apply. It's a good thing that they used natural language. Imagine how confusing this would be if they had clear categories of initiative loss and technical terminology for how they would interact with defenses and charms.
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Feb 17, 2017 20:40
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SunAndSpring posted:In other news, the quick-start has hit first proof, so it'll probably be out next month or 3 months if Holden and friends gently caress up yet again Quick start, 2020
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Feb 17, 2017 21:37
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Attribute 8xp Favored Ability 3xp Unfavored Ability 4xp Specialty 2xp Merits 3xp per dot Willpower 6xp Favored Charm 8xp Unfavored Charm 10xp Evocation 10xp 50xp instead of BP
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Feb 18, 2017 04:19
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Crion posted:A fun thing is when you turn your horse into a familiar and realize that now you need a full character sheet for it with attributes/abilities, because Bestial Traits Technique buffs them directly in ways that the QC blocks for animals don't allow -- and then when you try to backsolve your horse into a full character sheet framework, you realize the only way it could possibly have Evasion 3, Parry 1 is if all horses are Dexterity 1/Dodge 5 characters. What if a Horse has Dex 4, Dodge 1 but hooves count as Heavy weapons and therefore give a -1 parry penalty? Also yeah, I've run into that same issue, QCs are impossible to directly convert and it's a pain in the rear end.
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Mar 28, 2017 17:53
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Attorney at Funk posted:Yeah it's one of the areas where they could afford to spill some wordcount describing how to use the system. Maybe a Storyteller's Guide, but a dev blog or something similar might be less hassle. https://ericminton.wordpress.com/2015/10/29/exalted-3e-sample-basic-projects/ https://ericminton.wordpress.com/2015/10/27/exalted-3e-the-basicmajor-project-divide/
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Mar 28, 2017 19:42
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Thesaurasaurus posted:I mean. From the books and the writers' commentary, I sort of gathered that Exalted was meant to channel the myths and legends of antiquity about entitled demigods with frankly-sociopathic levels of ambition where power is its own justification and brutal conquest, subjugation, and exploitation are just accepted facts of life. I try to play this up as a BAD thing and something to be fought against in my own games, but PCs gonna PC. I start each of my games off with a recap of the previous session. They tend to end with "And that is why the Usurpation happened" or "Kejak is absolutely right about you"
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Apr 5, 2017 20:15
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I've found that for most powers, the Solars are about as powerful as they were before. What was (mostly) removed were the crazy instant-win buttons for everything. Socialize used to be able to reshape an entire society in a few minutes, for instance. Now that that's mostly gone, it's a lot easier to tell stories, since half the potential obstacles are no longer just ignorable. Of course, being Solars they're going to blast through most of those obstacles anyway, but at least they get to look cool while doing so instead of just talking to a janitor for five minutes. I think it's telling that the ability with the least mechanical support - bureaucracy - still has the most large-scale perfect effects going on. A low-essence Solar can easily grind any organization to a halt by making everything take ~10x longer to do, and there's basically jack poo poo anyone can do about it. Of course, the effects of that are up to ST fiat because there's no rules regarding it, so it's just a bit frustrating all around.
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Apr 6, 2017 16:32
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Plutonis posted:So Vance said that DBs aren't getting free excellencies and will instead have to buy charms that act like it? What you guys think of it? Where did he say that? I'm hoping it was more of "this is something we're testing" rather than "this is something we've decided on". Buying excellencies is the worst, and making them come free was the second best thing they could have done other than just get rid of them entirely.
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Apr 13, 2017 21:33
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Thesaurasaurus posted:Onyx Path forums, here and here. Different Ability cascades for DBs will have different dice-adders with their own quirks, special features, and idiosyncrasies instead of a one-size-fits-all Excellency like Solars have. God DAMMIT people, that's one of the things that 2e improved on over 1e. It's possible that they'll do it way better and I'll be amazed, but somehow I think it will just end up as boring speedbumps that are harder to remember because they work in 25 different ways
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Apr 13, 2017 21:53
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Kestral posted:Let’s talk about battle groups. When is it appropriate to split up a large force into more than one smaller battle group, and when is it appropriate to condense several individually powerful characters into their own group? Here's how I've handled it: All units who are operationally the same stick to the same battlegroup. So a unit of spearmen and a unit of swordsmen are going to be the same group because they're all medium troops with medium weapons. Small numbers of elites or otherwise somewhat different troops serve to enhance existing battlegroups rather than form their own. So your example of zombies mixed in with conscripts, I would treat as one battlegroup with enhanced magnitude but otherwise breakable morale. Magic or otherwise enhanced forces lower than Exalted either A)Form their own battle group if there's a lot of them or B)Join other battlegroups as an abstract Might increase Exalted or otherwise heroic individuals who aren't really important to the story get attached to battlegroups. They don't act separately, but instead act as a constant source of Orders. Where possible, give them each a charm-equivalent or two to enhance the battle group (so a Fire Aspect could have a charm that boosts their damage output, or a Wood Aspect could give a bonus on the charge or whatnot). This serves to make Exalted incredible force multipliers (battlegroups+Orders are about twice as powerful as regular battlegroups) without bogging down initiative. So, in your case I would have the players command a size 5 battlegroup of their regular soldiers, and a smaller battlegroup for their elite ninjas. The enemy should have two size 5 battlegroups, plus a Warstrider fang battlegroup that is the real threat. Important enemy Dynasts should act separately, but the others should be folded in to the regular forces as sources of Orders, Might and Charms. Same for your Ghost-Blooded allies and Lost Eggs. If the "Human Wave" conscripts are seriously 0 threat, don't represent them as battlegroups. Instead have them be a custom Stratagem. Something like: Human Wave (Difficulty 1) - Enemy forces start the battle with half of their initial magnitude (rounded up) lost, and suffer a -1 wound penalty to all actions. Your forces are demoralized by the slaughter, however, and suffer a +1 difficulty to all Morale checks.
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Apr 21, 2017 22:19
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Green Bean posted:For those mechanical experts out there, what's the build that's most adept at facing a Battle Group one-on-one? Since they've basically got bigger stats and nothing but Withering attacks, I figured some kind of heavy soak focused build, but I must admit to not being terribly experienced with combat. Soak heavy build plus decisive attacks. Decisive attacks get bonus levels of damage against battle groups, and you get +5 initiative for every point of size you remove. Attorney at Funk is right about Death of Obsidian Butterflies, but Flight of the Brilliant Raptor is also really good. Have a high passive defense and then only use motes to boost your shape sorcery rolls and the Death of Obsidian Butterflies attack roll. Don't spend willpower on anything, since that lowers your Raptor damage. Open off the battle with a Raptor to set the battlegroup on fire, bonfires do hella good damage every turn to battlegroups. Then each turn cast Death until you build up your initiative to 15 or so, then do a Raptor again. Repeat until you're out of enemy battlegroups.
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Aug 26, 2017 18:12
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Ze Pollack posted:it is important to realize that for most sidereals factional politics are office politics, and are treated accordingly Also imagine political arguments. A lot of people get into heated debates about politics, which they firmly and fiercely believe in. And then the boss comes around and they get back to work, or they go home and watch TV or whatever. Very few people actually get involved and work to implement their vision. That's how I see Sidereal factions: you probably have really strong opinions about it but you're going to do the job at hand rather than try to start a secret solar training/killing cult or whatever
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Sep 30, 2017 01:47
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Kestral posted:Speaking of Sidereals, Exalted thread, help me conceive of a sufficiently terrible yet interesting and playable price for Sidereal intervention on behalf of a Solar Circle. One day of absolute service each, after which their memories of said are erased. Not called in immediately, just sort of hanging over their heads until one day they wake up and they lost a day and they have to figure out what did they do
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Oct 2, 2017 21:46
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