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pospysyl posted:If you find a Lunar-turned-rat, there's no way to tell whether it's the Lunar or just a rat As long as you ignore the silver tattoos I guess.
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Jul 22, 2013 07:07
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I remember back in the 1E Lunars days when complaints were flying fast and thick and there were a lot of arguments that basically revolved around "precisely what percentage should Lunars suck worse in comparison to Solars in a fight?" That is, given equal Essence ratings and XP to spend, by how much should a Lunar not quite measure up to Solars. Because, of course, the idea that Lunars should be the equal of Solars or, even crazier, better than them at a fight wasn't worth considering, Solars were The Best, Period. Looking back on it now, given that the fluff always seemed to describe the Lunars' role in the First Age as "the Solars' number one troubleshooters and general problem-solvers where problems are frequently solved by murdering the gently caress out of them," I wonder what it would be like if, pound for pound, Lunars were actually better at straight smashface than an equivalent Solar. So you would have a combat hierarchy that would go something like: Solars: The best leaders, generals, and strategists. Combined with things like Charms that let them train mortals into badass Tiger Warriors and craft lots of awesome gear and turn bureaucracies to their own ends, the Solars are at their best when leading and managing. They're still good at kung-gu and swords and bows and poo poo, but not as good as Lunars: who are the best in a straight, stand-up fight. Lunars can also lead armies if they need to/want to but aren't as good at it as the Solars, but in terms of raw personal combat prowess Lunars are a nightmare to fight, blending Charms and shapeshifting into an incredibly deadly fighting style. Sidereals: Solars deal with infrastructure and leadership, Lunars deal with the big problems head-on, Sidereals are all about tackling more abstract and metaphysical conflicts that also happen to be kung-fu battles because that's how Exalted rolls. Just charging out to kick something's rear end is more a task best left to Lunars or perhaps a combat-focused Solar and if a Sidereal tries to tackle problems like that they'll likely get spread across the ground, but when it comes to battling Creation's more esoteric enemies then it's a Sidereal you want because their 4-dimensional hyperkung-fu is uniquely suited to dealing with foes that would stymie a Lunar or Solar's typical approach. Dragonbloods: You know the drill here, these guys are the foot soldiers of the Exalted. This shouldn't make them chumps, but if you were to pit a Solar combat guy against an equivalent Dragonblood then the Solar is probably going to win barring stupidity...pit the Solar against two Dragonbloods and suddenly things aren't going to be nearly so easy. And it only gets harder as more Dragonbloods join the fight, not just because of weight of numbers but because the strength of the Terrestrials lies in working together as a unit. Lots of synergistic bonuses for working with other Terrestrials, but also other Exalted as well because everyone is supposed to be working together. Of course you could also try and extrapolate this out into other areas of competence besides "killing mans" if you wanted.
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Jul 22, 2013 07:09
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I'll admit that I don't have mush experience with the actual crunch of the system, but my understanding of the Solar Problem was that the default answer was along the lines of "the Solars as a whole are The Best, but any individual Solar is only The Best at the relatively narrow topic s/he specializes in." Have I been misreading the situation?
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Jul 22, 2013 07:29
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Bedlamdan posted:After looking over the ensuing conversation, I think I'm not particularly invested in the idea of Solars being 'the best' in terms of mechanics. I still like the idea, setting-wise, where they acted as the leaders of the Exalted host before falling into a decline, but there's really no reason to enforce their superiority over the other splat types. I'm really curious as to how or if this will be handled: ideally I'd prefer to see the gaps in power lessened and Dragonblooded/Sidereals/Lunars getting to edge out Solars in certain respects. I'd like to see the gaps lessened too, but let me explain that a bit. It's not that I want to see the gaps lessened so much as I want a combat system that isn't so stupidly binary that it can be reduced to "you must be this tall (dice pools must be this high) for you to ride (why are you even in this fight?)". The problem with 2nd ed. combat was not that Solars were overpowered (although, they kind of were, but that's not the point). The problem was that the best way to beat a Solar was to mash the A button. It's like watching the world championship of Street Fighter and seeing a guy win because he did the same stupid move over and over versus watching Guilty Gear. Bedlamdan posted:The way I've always seen it is that Solars need to brute-force their way into extraordinary effects while the other Exalts get to accomplish it at default. A Sidereal can use fate magic to move the mountain, and make it so that the mountain was in a different spot since, well, forever. Meanwhile a Solar has to uproot the mountain and lug it all the way to where it needs to go. A Dragonblood can take a deep breath and exhale a tornado, a Solar has to make to do with shouting loud enough to blow his enemies away. It certainly doesn't help that Solars, as the default splat, receive the most mechanical support. Prior to all the errata, the Solar charm tree was pretty unpleasant in its own right. One-weapon two-blows was an unbelievably worthless charm. I'm not a fan of the brute force analogy because I find that it leads to people 'brute forcing' their way to deciding that Solars are the best at everything forever. Instead I prefer Solars to stick to a very powerful, perhaps overpowered, purview of 'human ability taken to perfection'. Also, a miles long cobra that poisons the rivers of Creation was one of the etc in my post. I swear. Honest.
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Jul 22, 2013 07:43
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Ithle01 posted:I'm not a fan of the brute force analogy because I find that it leads to people 'brute forcing' their way to deciding that Solars are the best at everything forever. Instead I prefer Solars to stick to a very powerful, perhaps overpowered, purview of 'human ability taken to perfection'. Well my point was, they use human ability taken to perfection to accomplish grand things, i.e. instead of convincing a mountain to walk from one place to another (which is outside of anything within human ability, if only because no human being can successfully debate an inanimate object), they use the human ability of heavy lifting, taken to the biggest extreme possible, to lift and move it. Ithle01 posted:Also, a miles long cobra that poisons the rivers of Creation was one of the etc in my post. I swear. Honest. I believe you! 
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Jul 22, 2013 08:01
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kvx687 posted:I'll admit that I don't have mush experience with the actual crunch of the system, but my understanding of the Solar Problem was that the default answer was along the lines of "the Solars as a whole are The Best, but any individual Solar is only The Best at the relatively narrow topic s/he specializes in." Have I been misreading the situation? Ehhhh sorta. In general no one Solar is going to be omnicompetent at literally everything, but neither is any other Exalt going to possess a much broader array of capabilities either. So while Joe Solar may only be super-awesome at his areas of expertise it's not really illustrative to compare, say, a Solar Bureaucromancer who's all about using word over swords to a Lunar combat-monster, because of course the Lunar will probably win in a straight-up fight. If you're comparing two Exalts with roughly the same purview (a Solar swordsman to a Lunar warrior or a Solar Bureaucracy Dude to whatever the Lunar equivalent thereof is) the party line tends to be that the Solar should always have the edge. Except for kung-fu which is a Sidereal thing because Reasons. Largely the issue is that people really want to cleave to the conceit that virtually anything another Exalt can do a Solar can also do but better (or at least as good in the case of things like Abyssals and other Solar-tier Celestials). If Solars were the only playable Exalts this wouldn't really even be an issue, but A). all the other types are also playable but in addition to that B). the setting lore itself basically says "all of these guys were and are supposed to be working together" and it's kind of lame if the only reason a Solar has to ask a Lunar to do something is because all the other Solars he knows are currently busy with other things. So the issue isn't "any given Solar can literally trump everybody forever" so much as "in a setting where all these different supernatural heroes were metaphysically engineered to be complimentary to one another it sort of undercuts both that premise and can lead to questionable design decisions when the schtick of one group of heroes is Can Be The Best At Anything, And Therefore Must Be Able To Be The Best At Anything."
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Jul 22, 2013 08:03
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AdjectiveNoun posted:And it's hardly some core tenet that mustn't be touched - it's not difficult to replace Solar Supremacy as a theme with Synergy of the Exalted Host and still have a coherent setting. Hey, Solars are still great (but not head-and-shoulders above Lunars and Sidereals great), but the world falling apart isn't because they're specifically missing, it's because the Host is at odds with itself. The source of whatever makes the Solars the greatest of the Exalted could also be something besides "our magic is better than yours so we win." That's not even a fun way to win. I disagree with the thesis that Solars being the best at everything is devaluing to the other Exalts, though -- I think it makes the Solars less valuable as a PC splat. They should be the NPCs that other splats strive against, because it's not very exciting to have all of your striving become, "And then, I used I Win Prana and I won." Heart Attacks fucked around with this message at 13:04 on Jul 22, 2013 |
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Jul 22, 2013 13:01
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Kai Tave posted:Sidereals: Solars deal with infrastructure and leadership, Lunars deal with the big problems head-on, Sidereals are all about tackling more abstract and metaphysical conflicts that also happen to be kung-fu battles because that's how Exalted rolls. Just charging out to kick something's rear end is more a task best left to Lunars or perhaps a combat-focused Solar and if a Sidereal tries to tackle problems like that they'll likely get spread across the ground, but when it comes to battling Creation's more esoteric enemies then it's a Sidereal you want because their 4-dimensional hyperkung-fu is uniquely suited to dealing with foes that would stymie a Lunar or Solar's typical approach. I like the rest of this post, so I'll chip in with my thought on giving Siderials a mechanical theme. Sidereals plan ahead. Through mastery of fate, a Sidereal will take actions with relatively small immediate effects which lead to some greater effect down the road. That future payoff could come over years and generations (for big strategic effects) or in mere seconds (direct combat powers) but always add up to the same thing - A Sid left to their own devices will be loaded up with all kinds of nasty tricks, A Sid caught off guard by some sudden, improbable, irrational force of crazy (Like the sudden return of the burning hearts of the Solars) will be vulnerable until he's able to rebuild his house of cards.
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Jul 22, 2013 13:44
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Kai Tave posted:the setting lore itself basically says "all of these guys were and are supposed to be working together" and it's kind of lame if the only reason a Solar has to ask a Lunar to do something is because all the other Solars he knows are currently busy with other things. Well you know, there were only like 300 of them to begin with, and a bunch of them are dead, currently being hunted down? Like I guess you'd run into more of a "hey, why do we need these other guys" problem if you're running a first age game... but as I think the Usurpation points out, that was an in-setting issue. Cross-splat play doesn't really have to achieve some sort of parity, it's really not the default assumption (and shouldn't be, anymore than Mage: the Awakening needing its characters pared down to be on par with Vampires or Hunters). Exalted isn't a tightly-tuned tactics game, and the only balancing that serves a purpose for the line is making sure every character is fun to play and useful. Undercutting the narrative isn't a benefit.
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Jul 22, 2013 14:36
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Nightskye posted:Undercutting the narrative isn't a benefit. What about when the concern for maintaining Solar mechanical setting undercuts the narrative?
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Jul 22, 2013 14:38
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Heart Attacks posted:What about when the concern for maintaining Solar mechanical setting undercuts the narrative? I guess I don't really see how it does, seeing as the setting sort of centers around the Solars as the bright, crazy center of the universe. To note: I don't really have any issue with Solars beng normalized somewhat, I don't think that gap needs to be massive, or that the other splats shouldn't be great at the things they do. I just think that "the Solars are the pinnacle of Exaltation, as the Unconquered Sun is the pinnacle of the Incarnae" is pretty bound up in the history and a lot of assumptions about how the game works.
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Jul 22, 2013 14:41
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Nightskye posted:I guess I don't really see how it does, seeing as the setting sort of centers around the Solars as the bright, crazy center of the universe. There were points during 2e where the Usurpation was mechanically impossible unless every single Solar present for the big dinner hadn't purchased a pretty straight-forward defensive suite (unlikely, given that many of the First Age Solars would have had enough XP to purchase every single printed Solar Charm, and presumably 60 of them would have been Dawns.)
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Jul 22, 2013 14:46
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Heart Attacks posted:There were points during 2e where the Usurpation was mechanically impossible unless every single Solar present for the big dinner hadn't purchased a pretty straight-forward defensive suite (unlikely, given that many of the First Age Solars would have had enough XP to purchase every single printed Solar Charm, and presumably 60 of them would have been Dawns.) I seem to recall that one part of the solution the devs proposed for this issue was to stop the assumption that the rules are the world's physics engine; the charm suite available to your PCs will not necessarily be the same as the bag of tricks open to NPCs, although they'll obviously share thematic links. (Another part of the solution was the abandonment of Paranoia Combat as the default model of combat).
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Jul 22, 2013 14:57
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Flavivirus posted:I seem to recall that one part of the solution the devs proposed for this issue was to stop the assumption that the rules are the world's physics engine; the charm suite available to your PCs will not necessarily be the same as the bag of tricks open to NPCs, although they'll obviously share thematic links. Right. "Don't use the Exalted system if you expect to tell stories that resemble the Exalted fiction," more or less. Which was my point, wasn't it? The game also says that the Charms used in the book are the most popular, most well-practiced, and most-refined Charms that Solars have available, so the developers' suggestion not only runs contrary to the mechanics of the game, but to the setting as well. Abandoning paranoia combat in 2e, as you may recall, resulted in everyone blowing up into a spatter if giant gibby particles for 90% of the game's lifespan. "Solar would have used Solar Charms" is not using the system as a physics engine; I'm pretty sure that commentary was for people who sat down and discussed how Solars would have devised that the world runs on a dot-by-dot spread and would have discovered this by measuring exactly how many motes they could use to power their Excellencies and insane things like that; not quite on par with "Most 2000 year old Solars would have a perfect dodge and surprise negator." Heart Attacks fucked around with this message at 15:24 on Jul 22, 2013 |
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Jul 22, 2013 15:18
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Well, first, why should the game engine need to be used to represent the world? Exalted has always attempted to have a system more about evoking the feel of epics than telling you how much you can life, despite 2e's verges in simulationism. If the game engine you designed creates fun, thematic, gameplay , but can't accurately model a particular, one-of-a-kind event in the setting's past, I'm absolutely fine with them sticking with the system as is. Second, one version of the game says that about the charms. From what I hear, 3e's charms aren't particular things you can point to in-setting (i.e. every single peony blossom attack looks the same) but are instead mechanics wrapped up with a suggested fictional expression that you're free to reskin. Third, they're not just saying "Hey, don't do paranoia combat any more!" but are instead writing an entirely new combat system to make it no longer a factor, so I'm not sure what relevance the comment about 2e's combat system has. Flavivirus fucked around with this message at 15:46 on Jul 22, 2013 |
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Jul 22, 2013 15:26
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Flavivirus posted:First, why should the game engine need to be used to represent the world? Exalted has always attempted to have a system more about evoking the feel of epics than telling you how much you can life, despite 2e's verges in simulationism. If the game engine you designed creates fun, thematic, gameplay , but can't accurately model a particular, one-of-a-kind event in the setting's past, I'm absolutely fine with them sticking with the system as is. In the case of the Usurpation becoming impossible - it's because the mechanics as they were undermine the lore. The Realm and the Siderals are the default main antagonists of a Solar. These are the people who defeated your previous incarnations at their best, stole your empire, and locked your soul away for ten thousand years. And if they'll do it again if you don't give 'em your all. To make the game live up to that premise, your enemies must be equipped to pose a proper threat to your shiny gold rear end. And, if you play on the other side of that line, you need to have a rat's chance of driving them back. If the conflict is already won because one side is the best at everything forever full stop, then there is no story and there is no game.
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Jul 22, 2013 15:50
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Flavivirus posted:Well, first, why should the game engine need to be used to represent the world? Why should the Exalted system not fall flat on its face the moment it tries to tell a story that resembles the stories told within the Exalted setting? Is that the question you are asking me? I don't need to have characters able to reverse engineer their character sheets. I do need a game where the most significant events in the history of the setting can't rely on, "Well, just handwave that stuff." ... also, you're the one who brought up paranoia combat, not me. But here is my thesis: Exalted is not a good game if the story says, "Dragonblooded are and have always been a threat to Solar supremacy, and have successfully genocided the Solars at the height of their power," and the mechanics say, "All the Dragonblooded in the world cannot kill a Solar who does not want to die." Do you take issue with this? Heart Attacks fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Jul 22, 2013 |
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Jul 22, 2013 16:14
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Heart Attacks posted:Why should the Exalted system not fall flat on its face the moment it tries to tell a story that resembles the stories told within the Exalted setting? Is that the question you are asking me? Fair enough, I'll concede that point. It's important not to get too bogged down on what particular charm suites the solars at the usurpation feasts had and which charms the dragonbloods and sidereals used to defeat them, but it's true that it needs to make sense given what the game system says about solar power compared to everyone else. Given what I've heard about the way mass combats work out now, I'm reasonably hopeful it'll be better this time round than last time. Re: paranoia combat, I said how it's good they're removing it and you responded with how it was a bad part of 2e combat, so...  are we just vehemently agreeing?
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Jul 22, 2013 16:27
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Dodge Charms posted:Yes, this is where I'm coming from. Look, this debate is really immaterial, but this is all wrong. As a rat, the Lunar doesn't necessarily get more dice, but the target number of any search roll is increased directly, effectively adding at least 4 dice. The Lunar doesn't even need to make checks to hide for the reasons I mentioned in my last post. The seekers aren't looking for a rat and wouldn't recognize the specific rat out of the many they would find. If a ST allows the use of Measure the Wind that broadly, it should also find an invisible Solar, or at least force the ST to say, "there's an Essence 4 being in your vincinity". Under that interpretation, the ghost alarm system would work on any Exalted. (Speaking of which, that's cool, but just because you can come up with a crazy situation that counters a specific ability does not mean that the ability is useless). Measure the Wind actually works on a declared target, so if the spirit is paranoid and uses Measure the Wind on every living thing (and has the motes to spare), then I guess that would make sense. If you did manage to capture the rat and have a spirit Measure its Wind, that would work too, but you'd probably have to capture a lot of rats before the one super-intelligent rat that you're looking for. The invisibility charm does exert unnatural mental influence, but I believe the Charm explicitly says that it doesn't cause that influence if there's a already a search out for you. The Charm can't force seekers to forget you were ever there. And again, unless we're talking about comically paranoid seekers, they shouldn't get an Awareness roll to detect a rat, because rats are everywhere. A single person might encounter a hundred rats in a day and most of them aren't plot important. For the "phase through a door" charm, the Solar still needs a door. He can't phase through a wall. Really, he's bypassing the "locked door" system. They can't bypass the "solid wall" system. Rats effectively can. Furthermore, you haven't addressed this point: a Solar who can phase through walls and turn invisible has invested at least fifty experience points for this privilege and is specialized to that end. A Lunar, fresh from Exaltation and without any specialization or experiennce point investment, can turn into a rat and have access to better forms of those charms. pospysyl fucked around with this message at 17:13 on Jul 22, 2013 |
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Jul 22, 2013 17:10
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Flavivirus posted:I seem to recall that one part of the solution the devs proposed for this issue was to stop the assumption that the rules are the world's physics engine; the charm suite available to your PCs will not necessarily be the same as the bag of tricks open to NPCs, although they'll obviously share thematic links. We have a small injoke in our campaign where all the outcaste Dragon-Blooded serving under Yurgan Koneko, led by the traitor Mors Ialden, rose up in rebellion during a great conclave in an attempt to assassinate the Bull. He killed every single one of them. The Usurpation is one of the most important events in the history of Exalted. Similar conflict is bound to occur, again and again, with the return of the Solar Exalted and the current state of Creation. The game rules should not render it impossible to repeat the Usurpation. Whichever dev said that it should be 'handwaved' should admit that was a terrible cop-out. On the topic of Solar Supremacy, you really do need them to bring something to the table to make their return a big deal. They were the lynchpin of the Great Prophecy that spelled the potential destruction of Creation itself; without them the fallen splendor of the First Age is forever lost. I don't think that should make them the BEST AT EVERYTHING EVER but certainly their powers should key off leadership, inspiration, sorcerous undertaking, tool use, or managing empires in ways that the other Exalted do not tap into.
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Jul 22, 2013 17:26
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pospysyl posted:Furthermore, you haven't addressed this point: a Solar who can phase through walls and turn invisible has invested at least fifty experience points for this privilege and is specialized to that end. A Lunar, fresh from Exaltation and without any specialization or experiennce point investment, can turn into a rat and have access to better forms of those charms. Fifty experience points? Specialized for that end? What are you on about? I can make a Solar character that outclasses that Lunar aside from very specific instances straight from CharGen, without being specialized for this. Seriously. Night Caste, Stealth 4, Easily Overlooked Presence Method (pop that at the start of a scene, and people won't have cause to suspect you, any more than they would a rat - that's the whole point of the charm). If you really want to be sure, pick up Mental Invisibility Technique. Larceny 3, Lock Opening Touch (automatically opens mundane locks, gives you two automatic successes if there's a magical lock). That's two/three out of ten charms and 7 out of 28 Ability points, before using Bonus Points. Hardly specialized or XP-intensive. Now, you're right, this Solar can't phase through walls or turn invisible. But he doesn't need to - he can go around them without arousing suspicion, and just open the door to that room when he finds it. He also still has seven/eight charms and 21 ability points (possibly more if he uses his Bonus Points) to specialize in other things where he will definitively beat the Lunar. So... congrats to the Lunar's defining Exalt characteristic for being able to make them marginally more effective at their supposed niche than a freshly Genned Solar.
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Jul 22, 2013 18:27
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Personally, I think that all the Celestials should be able to match each other in combat, but not in the exact same way. The Solar should be the 'best' - throwing the largest number of dice of any Exalted. The Solars contain the essence of the Unconquered Sun - the epitome of pure excellence in everything he does. Lunars should be just a little behind in terms of raw skill, but have the ability to out-survive the Solar - taking less damage, healing, having enormous health tracks, etc. Sidereals should cheat. In a straight up knock-down, drag out brawl, they lose. But they should have an enormous toolbox for changing the rules of the fight, whether that's target number manipulation, redirection of enemy attacks, simply being able to go "I was never here", etc. The new momentum mechanic could be a really useful way to highlight these differences, without making Charms that simply come down to "I win", like some of the 2e charms. (Dragonblooded charms for sharing momentum between a group, for example. . . )
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Jul 22, 2013 18:48
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Personally, I think Solars suck and people who like Solars, up to and including line writers and developers, should be resented eternally. We Lunars have suffered at their hands for far too long!
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Jul 22, 2013 18:57
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I think the whole tunnel rat lunar thing brings up a bigger point, that the incredibly crunchy game too often delves into binary win-lose situations instead of the core rolling dice thing. The solar can get an absurd stealth roll but the lunar can turn into a rat. What does this do for the lunar? Is it a bigger bonus, or do we have to back up and start asking questions like does the person searching even question the presence of a tunnel rat, does he understand what those silver tattoos on it mean, is a tunnel rat native to this area, etc. It stops being the same game everyone else is playing and turns into 'mother may I' with your ST.
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Jul 22, 2013 19:17
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AdjectiveNoun posted:Fifty experience points? Specialized for that end? What are you on about? I can make a Solar character that outclasses that Lunar aside from very specific instances straight from CharGen, without being specialized for this. Seriously. Night Caste, Stealth 4, Easily Overlooked Presence Method (pop that at the start of a scene, and people won't have cause to suspect you, any more than they would a rat - that's the whole point of the charm). If you really want to be sure, pick up Mental Invisibility Technique. Larceny 3, Lock Opening Touch (automatically opens mundane locks, gives you two automatic successes if there's a magical lock). That's two/three out of ten charms and 7 out of 28 Ability points, before using Bonus Points. Hardly specialized or XP-intensive. I'm pretty sure you're not ACTUALLY thinking that a starting Lunar's entire gimmick is going to be "rat form," but the wheels are coming off of this analogy the further you try to drive it.
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Jul 22, 2013 19:25
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Nightskye posted:I'm pretty sure you're not ACTUALLY thinking that a starting Lunar's entire gimmick is going to be "rat form," but the wheels are coming off of this analogy the further you try to drive it. No, I don't think a Lunar only has "rat form" as a gimmick, this is just one particular example of how their shapeshifting gimmick as a whole still doesn't make them any more useful than a Solar even moderately focused on a particular task. The same basic idea could be used for "bear form" vs. a freshly-Genned Solar with a few Athletics and Melee/Martial Arts charms, for instance.
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Jul 22, 2013 19:35
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AdjectiveNoun posted:He also still has seven/eight charms and 21 ability points (possibly more if he uses his Bonus Points) to specialize in other things where he will definitively beat the Lunar. So... congrats to the Lunar's defining Exalt characteristic for being able to make them marginally more effective at their supposed niche than a freshly Genned Solar. Infiltration/disguise/stealth isn't the Lunar niche, it's just something their actual niche makes easier.
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Jul 22, 2013 20:28
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Ithle01 posted:Infiltration/disguise/stealth isn't the Lunar niche, it's just something their actual niche makes easier. No, but Shapeshifting is, and infiltration/disguise/stealth are areas where it should be unambiguously useful. A niche is some useful role that you can fill or perform in a game. "Sneaky spy guy" is a niche. "Can physically turn into a rat" by itself isn't. If a Lunar's Shapeshifting ability (potentially supplemented by charms) lets them fill that "sneaky spy guy" role competitively with a Solar then they have an actual niche in the game. If a Solar of equivalent essence can unambiguously beat out Lunars even in situations when they're using their "thing" (Shapeshifting) to maximal effect then Lunars don't have a real niche in any kind of mixed game.
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Jul 22, 2013 21:14
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LGD posted:If a Solar of equivalent essence can unambiguously beat out Lunars even in situations when they're using their "thing" (Shapeshifting) to maximal effect then Lunars don't have a real niche in any kind of mixed game. Isn't this only true if a Solar of equal rank is currently unambiguously beating out Lunars at the Lunar's thing? Like, if my character is a social Lunar, and nobody else in my group is especially sociable, then who cares?
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Jul 22, 2013 21:20
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bartkusa posted:Isn't this only true if a Solar of equal rank is currently unambiguously beating out Lunars at the Lunar's thing? Part of the problem is that for you, being a social character might be the focus of your character, and a Solar's "just took a few social charms to round things out" build might still outshine you. Because they're the Best At Everything. And their Charms are cheaper and they get more of them. Unless you're doing the pretty kitty thing or whatever; Lunars can be crazy-good at social stuff. The point is though that a lot of a Solar's strengths are such that they casually overshadow specialists of other splats. Heart Attacks fucked around with this message at 21:39 on Jul 22, 2013 |
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Jul 22, 2013 21:26
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LGD posted:No, but Shapeshifting is, and infiltration/disguise/stealth are areas where it should be unambiguously useful. A niche is some useful role that you can fill or perform in a game. "Sneaky spy guy" is a niche. "Can physically turn into a rat" by itself isn't. If a Lunar's Shapeshifting ability (potentially supplemented by charms) lets them fill that "sneaky spy guy" role competitively with a Solar then they have an actual niche in the game. If a Solar of equivalent essence can unambiguously beat out Lunars even in situations when they're using their "thing" (Shapeshifting) to maximal effect then Lunars don't have a real niche in any kind of mixed game. I agree with this. Shapeshifting should totally allow Lunars to fill the role of "the best spy" assuming significant investment in spy stuff, and if it doesn't pan out that way in the game because they can be easily detected, the powers that make it easy to detect them are bullshit. guy posted:@MiltonSlavemasta: I really like the idea of Solars being the best leader-types. Can the best General lead from the front? Sure, but he's probably not the best one-on-one fighter in his army. Dragonbloods might be able to beat up Solars, but a squad of heroic mortals led by a Solar might be able to take out a squad of Dragonbloods, albeit at ruinous expense to the mortals -- and a squad of Dragonbloods led by a Solar, watch out! I can dig the Solars being the best leaders. While a Lunar might be able to create a rampaging horde from wild beasts and a Sidereal might be able to make up the best battle-plans, the Solar should be the best at actually leading and holding the organization together. As an extension of their role as "Masters of Creation," I think that in order for them to go toe-to-toe successfully with an equivalent Lunar or Sidereal should require them to draw on the resources of Creation, whether that's through learning Sidereal Kung Fu, mastering Evocations and using the ancient artifacts like no one else can, or rediscovering ancient sorceries lost for thousands of years, or by simply converting and leading the inhabitants of Creation and inspiring in them a new hope which has been lost for eons. It seems obvious to me that the best reason for Solars to be allowed to be able to master Sidereal Kung Fu, Artifacts, Sorcery, and Generalship in ways no one else can is for that to be necessary to defeat the enemy. Mastery over external things is an interesting theme which serves as a sharp contrast to the Lunar's mastery over the internal, the Sidereal's ability to manipulate things without acting so directly, and most strongly, the Dragonblooded's theme of ultimate power through unity.
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Jul 22, 2013 21:27
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Ithle01 posted:Infiltration/disguise/stealth isn't the Lunar niche, it's just something their actual niche makes easier. My apologies for being unclear, LGD and Heart Attacks explained it better than I did. EDIT: I'm gonna shut up now, because I'm just being confusing at best and irritating at worst. AdjectiveNoun fucked around with this message at 21:55 on Jul 22, 2013 |
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Jul 22, 2013 21:41
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"Niche" is probably the wrong word, because the game isn't actually designed to give any particular group a guaranteed mechanical niche. Splats are designed around methodologies and ways of doing things rather than having a specific thing they all do. The best place to see this where it's actually working is Alchemicals. Alchemicals don't really have any particular niche or a specific Thing Alchemicals Do, but they do have a way of doing things (modularity providing facility with many tasks but only one at a given time) which determines the shape of their Charmset.
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Jul 22, 2013 21:43
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Rand Brittain posted:"Niche" is probably the wrong word, because the game isn't actually designed to give any particular group a guaranteed mechanical niche. Splats are designed around methodologies and ways of doing things rather than having a specific thing they all do. I get that. I think the thrust of what people are arguing is that other methods (i.e. Lunar Shapeshifting) shouldn't be categorically inferior to the Solar methods of doing things for every interesting or noteworthy task.
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Jul 22, 2013 21:49
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LGD posted:No, but Shapeshifting is, and infiltration/disguise/stealth are areas where it should be unambiguously useful. A niche is some useful role that you can fill or perform in a game. "Sneaky spy guy" is a niche. "Can physically turn into a rat" by itself isn't. If a Lunar's Shapeshifting ability (potentially supplemented by charms) lets them fill that "sneaky spy guy" role competitively with a Solar then they have an actual niche in the game. If a Solar of equivalent essence can unambiguously beat out Lunars even in situations when they're using their "thing" (Shapeshifting) to maximal effect then Lunars don't have a real niche in any kind of mixed game. MiltonSlavemasta posted:I agree with this. Shapeshifting should totally allow Lunars to fill the role of "the best spy" assuming significant investment in spy stuff, and if it doesn't pan out that way in the game because they can be easily detected, the powers that make it easy to detect them are bullshit. And that's exactly how it works under 2e rules. We've already shown that Lunars are, in fact, better than Solars at sneaking without any Charm or essence commitment, marginal or otherwise. There are some ways to ferret out a hiding Lunar, but more ways to do the same to a Solar. There are countless other examples where Lunars find things much easier because of shapeshifting, again without Charm or essence commitment. No one has demonstrated the "Solars are the best at everything" line at all. (Although if there are Charms that bypass the Tell system, I will gladly join you in calling that bullshit. Still, it wouldn't render the Lunar's abilities completely irrelevant) Of course, Lunars are one of the better splats mechanically (a sad commentary indeed). In the fluff, Sidereals also have their own things going for them. People literally forget a Sidereal's identity five minutes after he leaves the vicinity, which is a great spy power that Solars don't have. They also get those astrological role disguises that cosmologically turns them into a completely different person, which even the best Solar disguise can't do. However, none of that stuff actually works for players, which might be where all this is coming from. Neither the Sidereals nor the Lunars are especially built or limited to sneaking, though. When the debate originally came up, it was mainly just an illustrative example of one particular thing that the Solars supposedly outclassed the Lunars at. It's not the only thing shapeshifting can do! Sidereal fate manipulation can do tons of stuff aside from disguise creation. While advising players of Lunars and Sidereals to be creative with their unique abilities might seem like a grog telling a 3.5e fighter to "be creative" with his, there's a fundamental difference, since the Lunars and Sidereals have a fundamentally different toolset that Solars just don't have access to. It's not a settled question whether Solars can accomplish a given task more effectively than a Lunar or Sidereal, unless it's something like turning into a snake or giving a target bad luck juju, because both of those things a Solar is definitely worse at. If it's something like shooting a bow, well, I suppose a Solar would be able to shoot it farther and harder, but a Sidereal can shoot intangible ideas with a bow, which I think is pretty impressive in its own right. It depends on what you think is the best Archery display. Creating splats to fill "niches" is unequivocally bad design, because you can never build a character in that splat that doesn't fulfill that narrow focus. It's the same problem that D&D had before 4th edition. Rogues could only be good at finding traps. Fighters could only be good at swordplay. Coming up with a good splat is a matter of balancing a flavorful focus without confining them to a single role. For all the problems Exalted has, its current splat set up works fine in theory and fluff. The mechanics of the non-Solar splats have failed to back this up. edit: Sorry, AdjectiveNoun, I didn't see that you had bowed out. MiltonSlavemasta posted:I get that. I think the thrust of what people are arguing is that other methods (i.e. Lunar Shapeshifting) shouldn't be categorically inferior to the Solar methods of doing things for every interesting or noteworthy task. Right, this. I think this is actually the case, but, again, we have no idea how 3e is doing anything. pospysyl fucked around with this message at 22:03 on Jul 22, 2013 |
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Jul 22, 2013 21:59
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pospysyl posted:And that's exactly how it works under 2e rules. We've already shown that Lunars are, in fact, better than Solars at sneaking without any Charm or essence commitment, marginal or otherwise. There are some ways to ferret out a hiding Lunar, but more ways to do the same to a Solar. There are countless other examples where Lunars find things much easier because of shapeshifting, again without Charm or essence commitment. No one has demonstrated the "Solars are the best at everything" line at all. (Although if there are Charms that bypass the Tell system, I will gladly join you in calling that bullshit. Still, it wouldn't render the Lunar's abilities completely irrelevant) And I genuinely don't find those examples compelling, because "will be forgotten by people who don't matter to the game's narrative several minutes after leaving" isn't a legitimate tradeoff vs. "being the most awesome at everything." quote:Neither the Sidereals nor the Lunars are especially built or limited to sneaking, though. When the debate originally came up, it was mainly just an illustrative example of one particular thing that the Solars supposedly outclassed the Lunars at. It's not the only thing shapeshifting can do! quote:Sidereal fate manipulation can do tons of stuff aside from disguise creation. While advising players of Lunars and Sidereals to be creative with their unique abilities might seem like a grog telling a 3.5e fighter to "be creative" with his, there's a fundamental difference, since the Lunars and Sidereals have a fundamentally different toolset that Solars just don't have access to. quote:It's not a settled question whether Solars can accomplish a given task more effectively than a Lunar or Sidereal, unless it's something like turning into a snake or giving a target bad luck juju, because both of those things a Solar is definitely worse at. If it's something like shooting a bow, well, I suppose a Solar would be able to shoot it farther and harder, but a Sidereal can shoot intangible ideas with a bow, which I think is pretty impressive in its own right. It depends on what you think is the best Archery display. quote:Creating splats to fill "niches" is unequivocally bad design, because you can never build a character in that splat that doesn't fulfill that narrow focus. It's the same problem that D&D had before 4th edition. Rogues could only be good at finding traps. Fighters could only be good at swordplay. Coming up with a good splat is a matter of balancing a flavorful focus without confining them to a single role. For all the problems Exalted has, its current splat set up works fine in theory and fluff. The mechanics of the non-Solar splats have failed to back this up. The Lunar stealth example is perfectly illustrative of this- what role do Lunars reasonably play beyond "Solar Minion" if they can't also be The Best at something that perfectly fits their natural power set? Telling them they need to use their powers "more creatively" in a way the game doesn't support is exactly the 3.x grognard cop out. And this toxic notion of Solar omni-Supremacy is part of the reason* the other splats have "bad mechanics"- if they had "good mechanics" they'd violate the oh so important Cornerstone of Design that says Solars Gotta Be The Best At Anything Mechanically Definable. *terrible editing dwarfs it to be fair
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Jul 22, 2013 22:46
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LGD posted:No, but Shapeshifting is, and infiltration/disguise/stealth are areas where it should be unambiguously useful. A niche is some useful role that you can fill or perform in a game. "Sneaky spy guy" is a niche. "Can physically turn into a rat" by itself isn't. If a Lunar's Shapeshifting ability (potentially supplemented by charms) lets them fill that "sneaky spy guy" role competitively with a Solar then they have an actual niche in the game. If a Solar of equivalent essence can unambiguously beat out Lunars even in situations when they're using their "thing" (Shapeshifting) to maximal effect then Lunars don't have a real niche in any kind of mixed game. The thing about shape shifting is that it's so broadly applicable that although a Solar can beat a Lunar at one particular area there's still going to be at least one, and probably several, other areas that the Lunar is still better at. Lunars were intended to be excellent generalists in comparison to Solars and in play I've noticed that they perform this incredibly well. A player of mine was a Solar in one game and a Lunar in another game that was running simultaneously. He found the experience for both satisfying because he didn't focus on one role when playing as the Lunar. If you want to think in terms of roles Lunars aren't a great option for you compared to Solars.
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Jul 22, 2013 22:58
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Ithle01 posted:The thing about shape shifting is that it's so broadly applicable that although a Solar can beat a Lunar at one particular area there's still going to be at least one, and probably several, other areas that the Lunar is still better at. Lunars were intended to be excellent generalists in comparison to Solars and in play I've noticed that they perform this incredibly well. A player of mine was a Solar in one game and a Lunar in another game that was running simultaneously. He found the experience for both satisfying because he didn't focus on one role when playing as the Lunar. If you want to think in terms of roles Lunars aren't a great option for you compared to Solars. Some of my best friends are Fighters. They can fill all kinds of roles in a party that the Wizard can't be bothered to deal with right then.
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Jul 22, 2013 23:12
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I think it's pretty irrelevant to say that because Lunar shapeshifting lends itself to multiple things, it's fine for Lunar specialists to be worse than Solar specialists. Every Exalt type naturally lends itself to doing multiple things; This is why Ability Exalted get multiple favored abilities. Especially in 3e where Solars get free excellencies in all favored abilities, caste abilities, and any other ability where the Solar has a charm, it stands to reason that Solars are going to be natural generalists, extremely competent at a full 40% of the abilities in the game from the start, bare minimum. To restrict Lunars from being specialists by way of making it non-viable or to restrict some other splat from being able to be a generalist would be placing unnecessary restrictions on the splat. A Lunar who refuses to wear anything other than their war form until they have taken revenge on everyone who participated in the genocide of their tribe should be able to specialize in direct combat and pull out wins against Solars with a similar investment in direct combat if that's their poo poo. As for the Tell, it's piss-easy for anyone notable to overcome and there are no charms to make Lunars as competent at impersonating someone as a Solar or Infernal, period, despite the fact that the Lunars do it in the most thematic way.
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Jul 22, 2013 23:24
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It's almost like there was a reason cross-splat play was not assumed to be the default mode of play and outright discouraged most of the time.
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Jul 22, 2013 23:27
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