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Der Waffle Mous posted: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. This is a bad derail. "Because White Wolf was historically too lazy to balance things" is not a reason to rule out support for the several character types explicitly designed to work together by the Gods in ancient times from having games where, oh, the players actually play them working together and all have fun. The game line throwing up its hands and saying "They aren't DESIGNED to work together!" isn't an answer, it's a cop-out that won't leave anyone happy except the people who didn't give a poo poo in the first place.
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Jul 22, 2013 23:31
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Seriously, I get that "cross-splat play" and "White Wolf" are usually dirty words when used in the same sentence, but the Exalted writers went and explicitly said that Solars, Lunars, Sidereals, and Dragonbloods were once super BFFs and demigod-bros. Solars and Lunars are loving soul-married. If they didn't want cross-splat play to be a thing then maybe they shouldn't have done that? I mean it seems pretty loving obvious to me that if you're going to bake it into your backstory "one upon a time all these guys were way better at doing their stuff when they worked together and the fact that they aren't anymore is why things are all hosed and broken" that some people are going to want to play mixed groups. And that if that's the case then maybe it's not a super-great idea to make it so that one of those groups' special schtick is "everything you can do I can do better, or at least obviate in some not-too-difficult fashion." I know that the Exalted fanbase has gotten pretty spergy over the course of 2E by trying to turn the mechanics into a physics engine and thus "prove" that fictional things couldn't happen because Mechanic X, Y, and Z say otherwise, but there's a difference between "I'm proven the Usurpation couldn't happen if you'll take a look at my extensive statistical analysis" and "if all these guys were meant to work together than how come there doesn't really seem to be any point in half of them tagging along?"
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Jul 22, 2013 23:44
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I'm just looking at it like I do the WOD, where they're a bunch of discrete games that just happen to share the same setting and rules. If any of them happen to work together its either due to a happy coincidence or heavy houseruling.
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Jul 22, 2013 23:47
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Der Waffle Mous posted: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. Even if you're not playing with other types of Exalt, the other types are meant to be there as allies and antagonists. Many in ways that set them up as natural thematic rivals. If one is at all times unquestionably superior to the other, there is no space for conflict between them. Playing on either side of such an imbalance is completely unsatisfying. Either you're steamrolling over the non-obstacle that is the lesser partner, or being stonewalled by the systemic dickishness of the greater partner. This is not a sound foundation on which to build a game.
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Jul 22, 2013 23:48
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I'm OK myself if they don't like, carefully fine tune each of six or seven systems to fall into a perfect harmonious alignment, especially when five or six of those systems only exist in (occasionally disgusting) draft examples; however, yeah, this needs at least an eyeball towards making things harmonize well occasionally. I actually think a unified XP table/the lack of different Essence equations (or at least making it so those are far less of a constant thing) would take some pretty large steps towards the goal.
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Jul 22, 2013 23:56
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Kai Tave posted:I know that the Exalted fanbase has gotten pretty spergy over the course of 2E by trying to turn the mechanics into a physics engine and thus "prove" that fictional things couldn't happen because Mechanic X, Y, and Z say otherwise, but there's a difference between "I'm proven the Usurpation couldn't happen if you'll take a look at my extensive statistical analysis" and "if all these guys were meant to work together than how come there doesn't really seem to be any point in half of them tagging along?" That's not a problem, the problem is that we get people proving that the rules say that X thing in the setting couldn't happen and then instead of going "and so the rules need to change to allow X thing to happen" they go "and so X thing didn't actually happen". Finding that the rules don't simulate the setting well enough that even the most general backstory elements could have happened in the rules isn't something to mock, but doing so and then refusing to go 'and we should change the rules so it can actually happen'. I don't think there's anything particularly toxic about assuming the rules should define the gameworld in some fashion instead of being pure D&D4E style abstractions with nothing save tangential relations to what's actually happening, as long as people recognize that the rules are still in service to the setting. Hell, if you equalize the power of all the splats and kept only the differing XP tables, Solars would still be better than all other Exalts (and since everyone will use the Solar XP charts to keep all the players on the same level it doesn't affect PCs). It's not super-hard to make Solars better in a way that doesn't make non-Solar characters worse in their own niches. Nessus posted:I'm OK myself if they don't like, carefully fine tune each of six or seven systems to fall into a perfect harmonious alignment, especially when five or six of those systems only exist in (occasionally disgusting) draft examples; however, yeah, this needs at least an eyeball towards making things harmonize well occasionally. I actually think a unified XP table/the lack of different Essence equations (or at least making it so those are far less of a constant thing) would take some pretty large steps towards the goal. I don't think anyone cares if they're not perfectly aligned or balanced, as long as there's a reason to play a Lunar if you want to do X, or a Dragonblood, or an Alchemical, or a Sidereal.
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Jul 22, 2013 23:58
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The real sticking point here is Lunars really, who have lacked any distinct "reason to exist" for something like two and a half editions now, to the point where the devs have said that they're going to be trying to find some new approach to handle them in 3E instead of the Thousand Streams River or whatever it was called in 2E. Like, people seem to be pretty copacetic with the idea of Dragonbloods who aren't individually as powerful as Celestials unless they're high Essence or using martial arts hax but become much more powerful when working together and Sidereals who have all sorts of powerful but really fiddly and esoteric abilities that they have to use in slantwise ways and are also basically glass ninjas. They have fairly distinct "identities" as groups of dudes that designers can build around. But Lunars are sort of stuck in a drawer labeled "?????" Shapeshifting has, so far, not proven to be a schtick that's so incredibly useful, powerful, or broadly applicable to be a solid foundation for hanging the rest of the Lunars' design on. Plus "shapeshifting" is, sort of by design, pretty nebulous anyway, it's not really a hook so much as a means. I mean, everybody's got a different idea of what Lunar shapeshifting means Lunars should be good at. They find a schtick to give Lunars that really lets them stand out and makes them more than "one step down from Solars only you can turn into animals" and they'll have gone a long way towards dealing with a lot of complaints. I still think that more clearly defining the strengths of Solar Exalts beyond "uh, everything" would also help matters.
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Jul 23, 2013 00:11
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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. One of the running gags for Lunar players is that there are really only 4-5 forms worth bothering with; flight form, fish form, war form, tiny form, and possibly either T-Rex or humanoid, if you spec for them. Which boils down to: you can sneak, you can evade mundane physical obstacles, you can be a combat monster (but not a better combat monster than any other celestial exalt), or you can disguise yourself as someone specific, by jumping through a lot of hoops and possibly murdering them. The latter is particularly weird, because it means that when it comes to social shapeshifting, one of the largest pillars of the whole shapeshifting métier, lunars are worse than solars, infernals, and possibly even sidereals, all of whom can just flex their essence to take on a new persona without beating, killing, or loving anyone. There's a kernel of truth there; while lunars aren't actually better than solars at any of those areas, except possibly certain really specialized areas like squeezing through holes, they can become moderately good at them more efficiently than most other celestials. But, in a party-based TTRPG, being moderately good at a few things is generally not worth all that much, and its certainly not a good enough schtick to hang an entire splat on. Old Kentucky Shark fucked around with this message at 00:17 on Jul 23, 2013 |
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Jul 23, 2013 00:13
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The problem here is that you have to make each splat be able to do everything since you need unique roles for the castes. It's really loving hard to balance a game so each splat can be self-sufficient and give each splat a unique niche. Maybe if they dropped the idea of castes and just had splats. Basically these games can be balanced to allow the castes to all be relevant, or the splats to all be relevant. I don't see how it can do both. EDIT: Also, the fact that Lunars are a thematic wasteland might just mean Lunars need to be written out.
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Jul 23, 2013 00:15
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Okay so first off I want to thank everyone who did so for literally capitalizing "Solar Supremacy" and encourage them to keep doing it. I'm pretty sure my avatar grows a few pixels with each usage and will, after ten on the same page or so, begin visibly crackling with power. The constant D&D analogies are really dumb. D&D pretends that wildly unbalanced character classes are balanced with each other and expressly tells you to play them alongside each other. I don't think anyone's really managed to rebut the basic idea that Solar su- ahem, Solar Supremacy is a thematic cornerstone of the setting. I think it's understandable that people don't really buy it or what Solars represent, because Exalted as it's discussed on the internet tends to crazily oversell what Solars actually do and, more importantly, what Solars look like when they do it. It's not correct to say that Solars do everything. It's correct to say that Solars beat everything; that there aren't obstacles which Solars don't overcome. This is because Exalted is a setting about human accomplishment and the potentially disastrous side effects of human accomplishment. Fundamentally, the supernatural, extraplanar, monstrous, or otherwise inhuman forces of the world can't overcome skill and effort because if they could the Primordial War would never have been won, the Usurpation would never have succeeded, and returning player character Solars wouldn't actually be able to shake up a status quo that's maintained by an entire web of old and powerful supernatural beings. (This is one of the paradox the Solars are faced with - on the other hand, they represent the ability of skill and nerve to triumph over arbitrary amounts of supernatural tyranny. On the other hand, they became supernatural tyrants, but their supernatural power wasn't enough to save them from the skill and nerve of their former underlings) People are getting badly sidetracked by the fact that Lunar mechanics, in specific, have tended to be either middling or awful. It's being ignored that, for instance, the 1e Sidereals and Alchemical charmsets were unique, complementary, and powerful without actually challenging Exalted's setting conceits. Are we having a conversation about Solars being too good, or are we having a conversation about Lunars being too bad? Because I'm pretty sure that turning into a rat is also worse than what Sidereals can do or what Alchemicals can do or even what Dragon-Blooded can do depending on which mechanics you're using. I actually think there's no need for Solars to be able to jump over entire mountains or pick up and throw buildings or whatever - they should be researching spells or building tools if they want to work completely outside the human scale. But asking for them to be best at leading but not fighting is absurd! They're the central heroes of an action game. We actually already have Exalted who are relatively weak when unprepared and trapped in personal confrontations, and who therefore work through students, intermediaries, and disciples: the Sidereals. On the subject of Solars and Lunars specifically: Solars versus Lunars is like Hercules versus the Lernaean hydra. There's a ton of stuff the hydra can do that Hercules can't - for instance, it can sink an entire ship with its weight, or regenerate instantly from almost any kind of wound, or envenom the very land it walks on, or whatever. It's just not going to beat Hercules. If you were on a video game character select screen, there are plenty of reasons you'd want to pick the hydra rather than Hercules as your character, but if that reason is "I'm so big and strong and poisonous and have so many heads that I can beat even Hercules!" you're in the wrong frame of mind. Like I said before, I'm a huge World of Darkness fan and the World of Darkness actually does work by that kind of uncompromising misanthropic verisimilitude - oh, you're going to hunt vampires? Too bad they're stronger and faster and tougher than you and can control your mind, you loving idiot - but Exalted doesn't, so rather than making humanlike characters weakest it makes them strongest. Overall, the comparison of shapeshifting to Solar ____ is doomed on its face because it's always about what goal-oriented, skill-based tasks shapeshifting can be used as a tool to accomplish. But shapeshifting isn't and shouldn't be the flavor text of a stealth charm or whatever. It's shapeshifting! Lunar powers should be stuff like "you have obscene, impossible strength, what are you going to do with it?" not "you hit someone harder in the moment". That kind of atomic task-oriented stuff is just Ability magic with another name. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Jul 23, 2013 |
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Jul 23, 2013 00:17
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I think it would be nice for Lunars to be able to use the innate essence powers of their forms...
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Jul 23, 2013 00:19
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The 3E devs have mentioned that 3E animals are going to have various game-mechanical special attacks (we saw the T-Rex, remember, and it had like an intimidating roar and a ground stomp and so on) that Lunars will expressly be allowed to use. I don't think we need to worry about shapeshifting not being cool, although of course there's plenty of time to screw it up.
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Jul 23, 2013 00:22
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PrinceRandom posted:I think it would be nice for Lunars to be able to use the innate essence powers of their forms... Honestly, going full on Pokemon-powers for Lunars is one of the better ideas to come out of the dev's musings for 3e. Because one of the fundamental problems with "It's shapeshifting! " is that it's another way of saying "It's the ability to turn into a wide variety of things that are weaker and less impressive than any given Exalt!"
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Jul 23, 2013 00:23
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Ferrinus, I have zero problem with the core theme of the paradigmatic Exalted Campaign being "The Solars overcome all the obstacles facing them in order to change the world." My problem is with the mechanics making this something predestined to happen instead of something the players work to bring about. The Solars don't have to be mechanically superior to other splats with similar quantities of experience, dots, and charms for their triumph to be a core theme. All you have to do in order to accomplish that is to make them the default protagonists, and then the story of the triumph of the Solars gets written at every table. MiltonSlavemasta fucked around with this message at 00:35 on Jul 23, 2013 |
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Jul 23, 2013 00:31
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MiltonSlavemasta posted:Ferrinus, I have zero problem with the core theme of the paradigmatic Exalted Campaign being "The Solars overcome all the obstacles facing them in order to change the world." My problem is with the mechanics making this something predestined to happen instead of something the players work to bring about. The Solars do have to be mechanically superior to other splats if they're supposed to be the first and greatest Exalted of the first and greatest god, though. They're default protagonists but not mandatory protagonists, and if you play a bronze faction (or even gold faction) Sidereals campaign then part of the stuff you're supposed to deal with is the fact that the Exalted you're trying to defend against or manipulate are actually more powerful than you are.
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Jul 23, 2013 00:38
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If Solars beat everything, what was the point of making other types of Exalted in the first place? Like, if the answer to any problem ever is "get a Solar to do it" then why even bring other Exalts into the picture? Why couldn't Autochthon just have cranked out 700-1,000 Solars and called it a day? I mean, I'm sure that someone could fanwank up an explanation like "X number of Solars was as many as the Unconquered Sun could imbue with his power before he began to diminish himself," but all that means then is that the reason other Exalts exist is because they ran out of the good stuff and so they had to make do with whatever was left.
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Jul 23, 2013 00:42
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3E explains - whoops, sorry, I mean fanwanks - that bequeathing an exaltation diminishes the god responsible. Presumably no one wanted to dim the sun any further. I mean, what? Seriously? You're asking why they didn't make 1,000 Solars? Why didn't they make 10,000 Solars? Why didn't they make infinity Solars and infinity Lunars and Sidereals and staple twelve exaltations of each type to each woodlouse? I'm sure some fan is wanking up an excuse as we speak 
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Jul 23, 2013 00:46
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Ferrinus posted:The Solars do have to be mechanically superior to other splats if they're supposed to be the first and greatest Exalted of the first and greatest god, though. This assumption poisons the playing field, and is easily adjusted into something that doesn't while preserving its core themes. Being the natural kings of the world who represent the greatest and worst aspects of humanity can be done without building the game such that all of their battles are already won for them because they're the best at everything forever.
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Jul 23, 2013 00:46
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I feel like this entire rolling argument is a good case study on why 'game rules as world physics engine' is toxic.
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Jul 23, 2013 00:50
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Ferrinus posted:3E explains - whoops, sorry, I mean fanwanks - that bequeathing an exaltation diminishes the god responsible. Presumably no one wanted to dim the sun any further. So the explanation really is "the only reason they made other Exalts was because they ran out of the good stuff so everyone else gets to be the second best." Not "they made other Exalts because those Chosen would be badass at other stuff so they had, like, an actual purpose for existing," just "welp, we ran out of premium gasoline, time to move on to regular grade." That's a pretty lovely explanation, really, but I'm glad someone's here to tell us how crucially important it is for one group of character options to be strictly better than the others.
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Jul 23, 2013 00:52
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I'm still not sure if they were intended to be the best at everything or if it's just lazy writing that assumes that being the leader means being the bestest at everything. Cause being a generic superman is boring and the reason I never wanted to play a 2E Solar. However, being something that is not intrinsically better than the others, but more capable of combining desperate forces together is compelling. I kinda think it would be a little more interesting if Solars were weaker than the other splats off the bat, but with the power of friendship or good kinglyness or whatever they became stronger. PrinceRandom fucked around with this message at 01:00 on Jul 23, 2013 |
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Jul 23, 2013 00:52
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Ferrinus posted:The Solars do have to be mechanically superior to other splats if they're supposed to be the first and greatest Exalted of the first and greatest god, though. They're default protagonists but not mandatory protagonists, and if you play a bronze faction (or even gold faction) Sidereals campaign then part of the stuff you're supposed to deal with is the fact that the Exalted you're trying to defend against or manipulate are actually more powerful than you are. "First and Greatest" doesn't seem to imply categorically superior to me, as I take "greatness" to be a composite which combines ability, achievement, and strength of character. I think the statement "Guan Yu was the greatest warrior China ever saw" is compatible with the statement "With everything equal, Guan Yu could have never defeated Lu Bu in a pitched battle." I think being the greatest means you won enough of the battles you fought that you found a way to reach the top, be recognized, and rule. The Solars unequivocally did that, and there's much fear that they will again. Also tying in with what LGD said, it makes perfect sense for the natural rulers and generals to be considered the Greatest over the monsters, bureaucrats, and footsoldiers. As for the Sidereal campaign, I have no issue with the game having a fresh Sidereal graduate of Yu-Shan training be significantly less powerful than a newly Exalted Solar. It's important to remember the human being we call The Greatest couldn't handle a full six minutes of close-in brawl against his closest competition. He was still the Greatest.
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Jul 23, 2013 00:58
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MiltonSlavemasta posted:"First and Greatest" doesn't seem to imply categorically superior to me, as I take "greatness" to be a composite which combines ability, achievement, and strength of character. I think the statement "Guan Yu was the greatest warrior China ever saw" is compatible with the statement "With everything equal, Guan Yu could have never defeated Lu Bu in a pitched battle." I think being the greatest means you won enough of the battles you fought that you found a way to reach the top, be recognized, and rule. The Solars unequivocally did that, and there's much fear that they will again. Also tying in with what LGD said, it makes perfect sense for the natural rulers and generals to be considered the Greatest over the monsters, bureaucrats, and footsoldiers. Yeah. I mean, similarly Theion is supposed to be the King of the Yozis, but surprisingly his charms in Shards aren't any more powerful than that of any other Yozi. He's the king because kingliness and leadership and attention whoring are the basis of his personality, and all his powers make him the ideal leader. By that same token, I would prefer it if Solars were the leaders of the Exalted host not because they were the most physically powerful, but because they were the best at leading others.
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Jul 23, 2013 01:02
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Ferrinus posted:Okay so first off I want to thank everyone who did so for literally capitalizing "Solar Supremacy" and encourage them to keep doing it. I'm pretty sure my avatar grows a few pixels with each usage and will, after ten on the same page or so, begin visibly crackling with power. quote:I don't think anyone's really managed to rebut the basic idea that Solar su- ahem, Solar Supremacy is a thematic cornerstone of the setting. I think it's understandable that people don't really buy it or what Solars represent, because Exalted as it's discussed on the internet tends to crazily oversell what Solars actually do and, more importantly, what Solars look like when they do it. quote:It's not correct to say that Solars do everything. It's correct to say that Solars beat everything; that there aren't obstacles which Solars don't overcome. This is because Exalted is a setting about human accomplishment and the potentially disastrous side effects of human accomplishment. Fundamentally, the supernatural, extraplanar, monstrous, or otherwise inhuman forces of the world can't overcome skill and effort because if they could the Primordial War would never have been won, the Usurpation would never have succeeded, and returning player character Solars wouldn't actually be able to shake up a status quo that's maintained by an entire web of old and powerful supernatural beings. quote:People are getting badly sidetracked by the fact that Lunar mechanics, in specific, have tended to be either middling or awful. It's being ignored that, for instance, the 1e Sidereals and Alchemical charmsets were unique, complementary, and powerful without actually challenging Exalted's setting conceits. Are we having a conversation about Solars being too good, or are we having a conversation about Lunars being too bad? Because I'm pretty sure that turning into a rat is also worse than what Sidereals can do or what Alchemicals can do or even what Dragon-Blooded can do depending on which mechanics you're using. quote:I actually think there's no need for Solars to be able to jump over entire mountains or pick up and throw buildings or whatever - they should be researching spells or building tools if they want to work completely outside the human scale. But asking for them to be best at leading but not fighting is absurd! They're the central heroes of an action game. We actually already have Exalted who are relatively weak when unprepared and trapped in personal confrontations, and who therefore work through students, intermediaries, and disciples: the Sidereals. And as regards fighting- why shouldn't the empowered concept-slaying killbots of the Moon God and the Star Gods be as good at personal combat as the killbots of the Sun God? If Exalted is an action game it makes tons of sense- everybody gets to contribute equally to the crunchy bits of the game while the Solars can rule supreme over most non-action aspects (which matter more for world shaping than punch-ups do anyway). This makes Solars super important to the setting in the way they should be, but actually lets you have compelling action. quote:On the subject of Solars and Lunars specifically: Solars versus Lunars is like Hercules versus the Lernaean hydra. There's a ton of stuff the hydra can do that Hercules can't - for instance, it can sink an entire ship with its weight, or regenerate instantly from almost any kind of wound, or envenom the very land it walks on, or whatever. It's just not going to beat Hercules. If you were on a video game character select screen, there are plenty of reasons you'd want to pick the hydra rather than Hercules as your character, but if that reason is "I'm so big and strong and poisonous and have so many heads that I can beat even Hercules!" you're in the wrong frame of mind. Like I said before, I'm a huge World of Darkness fan and the World of Darkness actually does work by that kind of uncompromising misanthropic verisimilitude - oh, you're going to hunt vampires? Too bad they're stronger and faster and tougher than you and can control your mind, you loving idiot - but Exalted doesn't, so rather than making humanlike characters weakest it makes them strongest. And even in a more open role playing game, what is Shapeshifting really accomplishing that a Solar can't do better? Poison the land? Solar medicine or occult or Sorcery does it better (because it has to). Sink a ship? The Solar punches it and destroys it faster than a Lunar crushing it with their weight. Regenerate from any wound? Better to just not take them in the first place, and you're explicitly advocating Solars do better in the kinds of situations where you'd take a wound. If the Hydra's shtick can't accomplish any goals you have in the game more effectively than Hercules then it doesn't really have a shtick- it is an inferior choice that has stylistic and aesthetic differences. That you for some reason like to ascribe hard moral and narrative weight to. Despite the setting being deliberately designed so that it wasn't a simplified morality play. quote:Overall, the comparison of shapeshifting to Solar ____ is doomed on its face because it's always about what goal-oriented, skill-based tasks shapeshifting can be used as a tool to accomplish. But shapeshifting isn't and shouldn't be the flavor text of a stealth charm or whatever. It's shapeshifting! Lunar powers should be stuff like "you have obscene, impossible strength, what are you going to do with it?" not "you hit someone harder in the moment". That kind of atomic task-oriented stuff is just Ability magic with another name. So go gently caress yourself and pick up my dry-cleaning Fighter. edit: That was a little uncalled for. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jul 23, 2013 01:02
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A_Raving_Loon posted:building the game such that all of their battles are already won for them because they're the best at everything forever. are you kidding me Kai Tave posted:So the explanation really is "the only reason they made other Exalts was because they ran out of the good stuff so everyone else gets to be the second best." Not "they made other Exalts because those Chosen would be badass at other stuff so they had, like, an actual purpose for existing," just "welp, we ran out of premium gasoline, time to move on to regular grade." Yes??? Dude, decline, resource scarcity, and improvisation out of limited opportunity are critical to Exalted. The decline from the First Age to the Shogunate to the Age of Sorrows is one long story of "gently caress, we ran out of the good stuff." On the other hand... no!! Obviously, the non-Solar exalted played crucial roles through the Primordial war that the Solars couldn't fill, such as "(relatively) expendable footsoldier" and "seer". It's not clear that 700 Solars would've been better than the combination we got, but it is clear that 301 Solars would've been better than 300, but, welp. Chaotic Neutral posted:I feel like this entire rolling argument is a good case study on why 'game rules as world physics engine' is toxic. "Game rules as physics engine" has nothing to do with "game rules as reflection of game narrative". How sneaky of you to attempt to conflate them! If Solars are the most powerful of the exalted, then the rules should ensure that Solar powers tend to overcome non-Solar powers where appropriate. This has nothing to do with peasants pausing as they pass each other on the street to discuss how many Willpower points they regained from their Conviction rolls this morning. MiltonSlavemasta posted:"First and Greatest" doesn't seem to imply categorically superior to me, as I take "greatness" to be a composite which combines ability, achievement, and strength of character. Colloquially, Solars could still be the "greatest" Exalted because they were the most popular or successful. If they weren't actually the most powerful, though, it would make a joke out of the Usurpation and the problems of the Shogunate and it would reduce the significance of the return of the Solars to, basically, arithmetic: gosh, more Celestials than we had before! Solars as the most powerful has dramatic weight that Solars as the most incidentally successful or the best at administration just plain doesn't.
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Jul 23, 2013 01:05
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Ferrinus posted:Solars as the most powerful has dramatic weight that Solars as the most incidentally successful or the best at administration just plain doesn't.  That said this is ultimately a taste disagreement; however, I think your taste tends to rule out the opposite taste, while the opposite taste doesn't rule out yours.
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Jul 23, 2013 01:10
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Ferrinus posted:Colloquially, Solars could still be the "greatest" Exalted because they were the most popular or successful. If they weren't actually the most powerful, though, it would make a joke out of the Usurpation and the problems of the Shogunate and it would reduce the significance of the return of the Solars to, basically, arithmetic: gosh, more Celestials than we had before! Not really. If they have generative power for leadership, organizing, and creating magical wonders that others lack (Solars Create, Lunars Preserve, Sidereals Manipulate) then the Usurpation was a huge loss for the world. Calling it "best at administration" is a gross oversimplification. It isn't necessary that Solars be guaranteed to be able to whup an equivalently experienced and focused Lunar in hand to hand for this to be the case. I mean call me crazy, but I think the source of most of the beneficial wonders and magic being deliberately removed from the world to preserve it has more dramatic weight than the most baddest badasses ever being poisoned at dinner by some weak jerks who they're going to effortlessly school now that they've woken up because nobody can ever equal them at anything.
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Jul 23, 2013 01:13
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Nessus posted:I don't know, they seem to be power without balance and coordination. They were starting to move towards creating a world-scale Rapture or Columbia when they got bumped off, and how many evil types of foes of creation have come out of the Lunars, Sidereals, or the Dragon-blooded Host? Lunars, Sids, and Dragonbloods are ruining the world just fine without needing an evil knockoff to help them. 
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Jul 23, 2013 01:16
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LGD, I can't find the posts which you're debutting with these screeds about not wanting the Solars to achieve everything effortlessly. Possibly because no one is saying that???
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Jul 23, 2013 01:18
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Ferrinus posted:Colloquially, Solars could still be the "greatest" Exalted because they were the most popular or successful. If they weren't actually the most powerful, though, it would make a joke out of the Usurpation and the problems of the Shogunate and it would reduce the significance of the return of the Solars to, basically, arithmetic: gosh, more Celestials than we had before! I don't know about that last sentence. In a world of protracted wars, uneasy peaces, and powerful factions aiming for the same thing but opposing one another, three hundred paragons of Generalship, Religion, Industry, Intelligence, and Organization coming in, mobilizing all the discontent spirits, mortals, Terrestrials, Lunars, Sidereals, and taking back all their old toys and knowledge has a lot more dramatic weight for me than three hundred ubermensch who are more uber than the thousands of ubermensch that already exist. All of the Exalted host are superhuman in their own way, and having the Solars just be "most superest" seems like a really juvenile kludge to make people want to use them as protagonists. The problems of the Shogunate exist primarily because the people driving the boat were made to be gunners and rowers and navigators as opposed to captains and secondarily because the infrastructure was made by and for use by the old bosses, and I have no idea why you think any of this trivializes the Usurpation.
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Jul 23, 2013 01:22
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pospysyl posted: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. Oh, and in regards to an earlier point, it turns out Solars who want to fly can do so pretty darn well. 60 mph jumps, so they go 5 miles in 5 minutes, makes them a bit faster than many birds, too. LGD posted:But 2nd Edition rules are generally broken and terrible and a new edition is coming out. While I think we can draw examples from previous editions, I genuinely have zero interest in arguing about 2nd edition rules. - Some people feel 1e and 2e Solars are mechanically better than pretty much everyone else; and - Having Solars be mechanically better than everyone at everything is bad for the game. LGD posted:Splats don't have niches and nobody is advocating 100% typcasting them. This isn't a class based game. Characters have niches (or "roles" if you prefer) within a group. Those niches/roles are created by the areas they choose to specialize in and reinforced by the mechanics of their splat. The mechanics of Solars support choosing any niche/role. The other Celestials have more constrained power sets that are better for some things than for others. This already focuses them towards certain niches/roles. If they're using their power set to its utmost in a "creative," "flavorful" way and are still flat out inferior to Solars in areas of focus then you have a genuine problem, because player characters cannot contribute on an equal level and are constantly in danger of being obviated and deprotagonized the moment a Solaroid takes an interest in their area of focus. To add to that, it's important to realize that Solars can have creative players too. Being "creative" isn't a silver bullet for power discrepancy, it's a step-ladder on which any character can stand. By advocating that the Lunar "be creative", one is merely begging the question: how hosed is the Lunar gonna be when the Solar's player decides to be equally creative? Ferrinus posted:The Solars do have to be mechanically superior to other splats if they're supposed to be the first and greatest Exalted of the first and greatest god, though. They're default protagonists but not mandatory protagonists, and if you play a bronze faction (or even gold faction) Sidereals campaign then part of the stuff you're supposed to deal with is the fact that the Exalted you're trying to defend against or manipulate are actually more powerful than you are. That special something doesn't need to be "better than everyone else", but it does need to be unique to the Solars.
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Jul 23, 2013 01:24
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LGD posted:Yeah I can't see any similarities between that and a game where character types that are supposed to have the same origin and be on about the same level are played together, and a vocal group of people online who insist that it's ok for one group of characters to be unambiguously the better choice in all circumstances. Hey, you just lied! They're not supposed to be on about the same level. In fact, the books make it clear that this isn't the case, and primarily enable single-exalt-type games. Even the exalts who broadly are equally powerful (Lunars, Sidereals, and Alchemicals, say) aren't really designed to be members of the same circle. quote:Really? Because I haven't heard any compelling arguments for why Solar Supremacy in all things is necessary for the setting to be as it is. For the setting to work as written Solars basically need to be the best at creating magical wonders and organizing/leading. You know, Lawgiving. There is nothing in there that requires them to be unambiguously forever The Best at roles the other Celestials find themselves good at. Nope, they also have to be the greatest warriors and spies. There, we've mentioned all five castes! If Solars weren't themselves peerless fighters the setting wouldn't make sense and would also, incidentally, suck. "Hell yeah, time to play this kung fu action game as the primary character type - what do you mean I lose to werewolves?" quote:This is a highly ideosyncratic interpretation that I don't think people are just going accept. I'm genuinely unsure how a game about the living weapons forged by one inhuman force of reality at the behest of the gods seeking to overthrow their primordial masters is about mortal accomplishment. The primordial war wasn't won with the power of friendship and heart exhibited best by the Solars- it was won by the application of brutal, inhuman magical force that cannonically had huge and instrumental contributions by the "less human" Celestial Exalted. No, we're done with 2nd edition. Exalted are "living weapons" in metaphor, not in reality. There was, certainly, plenty of brutal and inhuman magical force being thrown around by the Exalted host... but the pinnacle, that was skill and steel. quote:Sidereals were better in a fight than 1st edition Solars. This was something that actually got a lot of Solar Supremacists bitching about how Solars needed to always be #1 or the setting didn't work. Lunars just come up a lot in this conversation because unlike Sidereals they have a working 2E charm set, and they lend themselves well to examples where using their shtick falls far short of what a Solar can achieve with little effort and people are defending this as totally ok. They fixed that with power combat. Sidereals (and Abyssals, more importantly) were largely superior to Solars out of the gate because the 1e Solar charmset was written in an extremely conservative mode that, for instance, made it cost 15 motes and 3 charms to eliminate a suit of armor's mobility penalty. Sidereals couldn't layer reflexive perfect defenses and had teeny tiny essence pools given the massive number of scenelong buffs they were expected to walk around with. quote:And as regards fighting- why shouldn't the empowered concept-slaying killbots of the Moon God and the Star Gods be as good at personal combat as the killbots of the Sun God? If Exalted is an action game it makes tons of sense- everybody gets to contribute equally to the crunchy bits of the game while the Solars can rule supreme over most non-action aspects (which matter more for world shaping than punch-ups do anyway). This makes Solars super important to the setting in the way they should be, but actually lets you have compelling action. Again, this isn't 2nd edition, so these aren't "killbots". Your entire mode of thinking is flawed. Why should human skill defeat monstrous strength and forecast destiny? Well, that should be obvious. quote:Again, you're reading some bizarre narrative about human nature that Exalted does not actually support. Like, at all. And what reasons would I pick the hydra in a video game? I almost certainly have a goal of beating the game. Hercules is the best choice unless I'm in love with Hydra aesthetics or am deliberately gimping myself to make it more challenging. Okay, but tell me how you really feel. Seriously, though, like I said, your entire mode of thought here is flawed. Look at your own language! Why should you pick anything but the best if you want to win? Well, you're right. If you want to "win", you pick the thing that's the best and strongest. But that's not actually the mode that exalted games are approached in, except in some kind of bizarre free for all arena mode in which everyone's explicitly invited to choose any kind of exalt type they like, kludge those exalts together into an adventuring party, and then overcome a series of combat encounters. In reality, there's a ton of reasons to play as the mythological monster rather than the mythological hero. Being the hydra is very different from being Hercules - you approach the game in a different, novel way. However, "defeat the mythological hero in a fight" cannot be one of them.
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Jul 23, 2013 01:27
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MiltonSlavemasta posted:I don't know about that last sentence. In a world of protracted wars, uneasy peaces, and powerful factions aiming for the same thing but opposing one another, three hundred paragons of Generalship, Religion, Industry, Intelligence, and Organization coming in, mobilizing all the discontent spirits, mortals, Terrestrials, Lunars, Sidereals, and taking back all their old toys and knowledge has a lot more dramatic weight for me than three hundred ubermensch who are more uber than the thousands of ubermensch that already exist. All of the Exalted host are superhuman in their own way, and having the Solars just be "most superest" seems like a really juvenile kludge to make people want to use them as protagonists. Because the Usurpation was insanely hard. The Solars were the world's greatest warriors and had been accumulating ever greater power for centuries. They were impossibly, unimaginably, unbeatably powerful, each one of them a match for pretty much any other single being (or, in many cases, group of several beings) in Creation. Assassinating a tyrannical Superman is much scarier than assassinating a tyrannical Lex Luthor, and running into the potentially-vengeful reincarnation of Superman is much scarier than running into the potentially-vengeful reincarnation of Lex Luthor. You can see, right in this very thread, the kind of anxiety that the raw personal power of the Solars causes and how much easier people would sleep if Solars were just unparalleled administrators rather than unparalleled administrators and unparalleled slayers of men. If a gold faction Sidereal is only afraid of being outwitted, and not also of being snapped like a god drat twig, something is missing. Dodge Charms posted:Solars need to have something which nobody else has. Their return has to be a Big loving Deal with setting-scale impact. Yeah, but it is, and it being "better than everyone else" has a lot more setting-scale impact than JUST "better at sorcery than everyone else" or "more inspiring than everyone else". Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 01:34 on Jul 23, 2013 |
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Jul 23, 2013 01:31
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Nightskye posted:LGD, I can't find the posts which you're debutting with these screeds about not wanting the Solars to achieve everything effortlessly. Possibly because no one is saying that??? I can't find any part of my posts where I refer to them wanting to achieve everything effortlessly, except my last post which cannot fairly be characterized as a screed (unlike my previous post!). In that case I thought it was a pretty obvious rhetorical flourish. "Effortless" is definitely not quite what I mean, but "will school now that they've woken up because (as you have it) ultimately there is no force that can oppose them." seemed a bit unwieldy. Or at least the initial version in my head did. Chalk it up to imprecise language. The broader point really has nothing to do with "effort" though- it's that even within an action setting you can usually get better themes working for you than "I'm the biggest badass" and that such settings work better more credible opposition exists and that such settings work better as games when there isn't one single unambiguously best character option from several you can pick (that the setting implies might reasonably work well together).
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Jul 23, 2013 01:33
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Ferrinus posted:Nope, they also have to be the greatest warriors and spies. There, we've mentioned all five castes! If Solars weren't themselves peerless fighters the setting wouldn't make sense and would also, incidentally, suck. "Hell yeah, time to play this kung fu action game as the primary character type - what do you mean I lose to werewolves?" I don't think this makes sense at all. It's the role of the GM to make your adversaries strong enough that you can overcome them, but only with the amount of planning and effort that fits the difficulty curve your group likes to use. Lunars-as-protagonists might be better at the niche of one-on-one combat, but the default and possible power levels for Lunar protagonists say nothing about how easy or difficult it will be to defeat Lunar antagonists in a Solar or mixed-splat campaign. Even if Solars were mechanically superior, a GM could still just throw complete bullshit elders at them whenever they fought Lunars or Sidereals or Dragonblooded and make Solars suck anyway. The mechanics of Lunar protagonists are only really relevant in games where you either want to play Lunars or play Lunars and other splats side-by-side. Antagonists can be powered-up or depowered as needed because they don't have to follow the rules.
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Jul 23, 2013 01:34
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MiltonSlavemasta posted:I don't think this makes sense at all. It's the role of the GM to make your adversaries strong enough that you can overcome them, but only with the amount of planning and effort that fits the difficulty curve your group likes to use. Lunars-as-protagonists might be better at the niche of one-on-one combat, but the default and possible power levels for Lunar protagonists say nothing about how easy or difficult it will be to defeat Lunar antagonists in a Solar or mixed-splat campaign. Even if Solars were mechanically superior, a GM could still just throw complete bullshit elders at them whenever they fought Lunars or Sidereals or Dragonblooded and make Solars suck anyway. The mechanics of Lunar protagonists are only really relevant in games where you either want to play Lunars or play Lunars and other splats side-by-side. Antagonists can be powered-up or depowered as needed because they don't have to follow the rules. I said "to werewolves", not "to THIS werewolf". In 1e and 2e, the corebook tells you straight out that you, the player, are going to play a Solar! The mightiest of Exalts! Unmatched in both peace and war, inspiration and scholarship! Now get out there and slay 'em, kid! Woah, this Lunar's beating you? poo poo, he must be some kind of bigass elder or something! You make a very good argument for why inherent Exalted power disparity, combative or otherwise, doesn't interfere with the Storyteller's ability to run an interesting, challenging game. So, it's kind of weird to see people talking about boring foregone conclusions, etc.
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Jul 23, 2013 01:38
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Why are people ignoring the fact that a huge part of the reason the splats don't play well together is because splat self-sufficiency and spalt niches are two incompatible game-design goals? How do you make each splat unique and necessary when you have to account for the fact that most games are all solars or all DB or all Alchemical? The books are written from the assumption that the PCs will all be from the same splat, it's why there will only be rules for Solar PCs in the core. If there was a real focus on cross splat compatibility then the only real way to accomplish that is to carve them out niches, which not only pigeonholes each splat and obviates castes to a certain extent, it makes running uni-splat games more difficult. Also, the people calling for Solar to focus on being leaders, how do you have 5-6 players in a game all do that in a way that's not boring or stepping on each others toes?
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Jul 23, 2013 01:41
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Ultimately, the fact is that no matter how much you cry and try to justify it, making one character type unquestionably better than all the other character types accomplishes nothing of any value and does not have to be part of the setting, either mechanically or narratively. I mean, let's look at it this way. Do we mix our exalt types? If yes, then the splats should be roughly balanced, able to contribute something unique. "They have to be weaker than the Solar!" makes no sense as an argument because it's not as fun to play or to balance for— after all, if you're balancing something to be beatable by your non-Solars, your Solar will blast through it easily given any kind of effort at all, and if you're balancing it to be a challenge to the Solar, your Celestials are left in the dust (or exploded into gibs). So, let's pretend it's WoD and not mix them. If no, then the splats should be roughly balanced, because there is no reason for them not to be. "It has to be weaker than the Solar!" makes no sense as an argument if you're running an all-Lunars game— why not have all the Lunars in the game be as strong as a Solar? (If your answer is 'because the antagonists will be Solars that I design using the game mechanics exactly, equip using only charms from the books, and play with no unique gimmicks or narrative flexibility in any way' then please leave).
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Jul 23, 2013 01:42
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Hey guys! Please stop getting mad over this dumbass game, or at least if you are getting mad be marginally more civil about it. Thus endith the admonishment. Carry on.
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Jul 23, 2013 01:49
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Editing per admonishment, hang on. Working... EDIT: I think we can expand the competencies of other Celestials by examining how they do what they do and what their limitations are. I have no problems with Solars being the bestest, but playing by the rules of mortal excellence has its price. Skills have very discrete niches and so Solars are forced to specialize somewhat if they want to be the bests at a given task. Lunars are explicitly generalists, and Sidereals have much broader conceptual limitations. I'm not saying the only answer to Solars is to have everyone else generalize, but rather to showcase that being a Mortal-but-Way-Better has certain costs associated with it just as it has certain rewards. Mendrian fucked around with this message at 01:58 on Jul 23, 2013 |
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Jul 23, 2013 01:56
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