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Valhawk posted: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? Your last sentence is a valid concern, and I do think Solar theme of leadership people are desiring should be expanded to something like "mastery" where Solars are the greatest at commanding not just people, but also knowledge (sorcery) and artifacts on top of a layer of raw competence. The greatest tools in the world were almost universally once their poo poo, and so they are the best at using them. I think Solars should be able to be on par in single combat (or whatever major sort of conflict scenario that comes up in most games) by focusing on what Solars are best at, and the same goes for Lunars and Sidereals. On the other hand, "splat self-sufficiency and spalt niches are two incompatible game-design goals" is only a true statement given the most surface-level reading of it. It goes back to what Rand said about methodologies. The fact that I can have a Lunar warrior, a Solar warrior, a Dragonblooded warrior, et cetera, doesn't make anyone redundant so long as the different splats go about filling niches like "warrior" and "magician" and "spy" in different ways. A Lunar fighter and a Solar fighter should play differently and have their own strengths and weaknesses without either one being lovely. Because the different splats have different general methods for doing things, a member of X splat filling Z niche and a member of Y splat filling Z niche should be similarly effective in a general sense but have distinct strengths and weaknesses and go about doing what they do in a different way. Instead of splats having specific niches they fill, they fill those niches in a unique way.
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Jul 23, 2013 01:58
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Ferrinus posted: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. A. More expansive than actually put forward by any of the setting materials B. Dumb and counter to good gameplay quote: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?" And there isn't any reason they can't still have been the greatest warriors and spies. I don't think I've ever said I think Lunars/Sidereals should be better at those things. I just think there should be an effort towards a level of parity in aspects of "doing things" that Sidereals/Lunars find themselves naturally inclined towards. quote: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: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: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. I see where you're going thematically for Solar story, but the other Celestial Exalted are skilled humans too. And you tend to breeze right over that and the inherent difficulties with characterizing a class of beings that epitomize impossible levels of perfection as the embodiment of humanity. Why should taking your fate into your own hands or being willing to change the very core of your being to overcome all obstacles not enable you to overcome a monstrous paragon of inhuman "perfection?" Solars might be more "classically" heroic, but I think we may actually see more genuine humanity in the other Celestials. quote:Okay, but tell me how you really feel. What are those areas? Because from everything you've said, anytime something becomes "goal-oriented" it has to be something a Solar is going to be the Best at. Combat, Social Interaction, Politics, Sneaking, Magic, etc. I'm saying that leaves no design space left for Sidereals and Lunars. I can manipulate fate to do.. what that a Solar can't achieve better and more easily? I can Shapeshift to do... what that a Solar can't do better and more easily? At the moment, the answer sure seems to be "nothing" unless you go out of your way to put requirements on how something is achieved or make the goal some actual-gameplay-inconsequential thing that relies on certain aesthetics. That doesn't leave Sidereals and Lunars a role beyond "Solaroid underling" in any game where Solars feature in a non-antagonistic manner. quote: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. LGD fucked around with this message at 02:42 on Jul 23, 2013 |
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Jul 23, 2013 02:20
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It's definitely important that Solar charms be limited by the human condition. I don't think Solars should get access to tricks like "cease to be cut by bladed weapons" or "reduce someone's mind to an atavistic, feral state". Even Solar perfection should involve visible struggle rather than easy persistence (which I suspect that perfect defenses in 3E combat will do very well, but I also think it could be worth looking at things like that Charm that just makes you immune to all disease or similar "whatever, just ignore this problem from now on" effects). One big difference between Solars and Lunars should be that Solars overcome problems that Lunars can either adapt to or simply never suffer - holding one's breath prodigiously long versus breathing underwater, remaining standing through sheer will versus regenerating as fast as one is wounded. It's a bit tricky because Athletics involves weightlifting and Resistance involves toughness, but I'd argue that Solars shouldn't be able to exert limitless physical strength or fail to even notice that they've been poisoned or something. That kind of stuff crosses the line from "Wow! Amazing!" to "Is that guy a cyborg?" and doesn't really fit the Solar aesthetic unless you're deliberately writing ridiculous Essence 6+ stuff whose very point is that it breaks its own established boundaries. LGD posted:Alchemicals are explicitly weaker than the other Celestials, and cross-splat play is extremely common and one of the main benefits of having a unified system. The Solars are the "greatest" of Exalts but are supposed to be comparable to the other Celestials in their areas of expertise. You're putting forward an interpretation of this that is quote:"Hell yeah I picked a shapeshifting demigod that was empowered by the gods themselves at the dawn of Creation to kill their primordial masters. I am infinitely mutable and used this to build myself into the ultimate killing machine. What do you mean I'm always inferior to the glowing martial artist with an anime haircut! This sucks!" Hey, if you agree that Dawn Castes are the Exalted host's greatest warriors, Night Castes are its greatest infiltrators, etc, we're all set here. It sounds like you don't, though? quote:And you have ...what exactly to back that notion up? Because being "living weapons" is something you can pretty easily get from first edition fluff. I mean being created to overthrow the creators of the Gods is kind of their whole thing. Regardless of the terminology you want to put on it it's still humans being empowered by external supernatural forces so they can do the dirty work of the Gods. You can't kill a primordial with skill and steel- it explicitly takes magic and has since the 1st edition corebook. I feel like I don't really have to explain the problems with describing Exalted as "weapons" or "killbots" in a world in which A) second edition happened and took that thinking to the very hilt and was terrible and B) we're discussing the thematic purpose of each kind of exalt rather than their literal diegetic in-character means of operation. Obviously, all the Exalted are magic. But what kind of magic? What does that magic represent? How should those representations interact? The other Celestials are humans who've been augmented with inhuman forces, whether abstract and arcane or primeval and visceral. Neither are the Solars "monstrous paragons of inhuman perfection". They are, rather, monstrous paragons of human perfection. If you fight Solars, you are fighting humans, in all their glory and terror. Neither claw and sinew nor fate itself can stand against such horror, not for long. quote:The Sidereal perfects weren't as good as the Solar ones but you could sure as gently caress have one ready to go if your primary persistent defense hosed up. Which it was much less inclined to do than the Solar equivalent because you would have more successes via WSAV. This is sort of what I mean though- parity in many areas achieved through different means. The Sidereal perfects were often not actually perfects, and they were also extremely expensive compared to the tiny store of essence a 1e combat Sidereal would have left over after sustaining charms like Blade of the Battle Maiden, their martial arts form of choice, etc. etc. A lot of people were shocked and angry about Impeding the Flow, but you'll notice that Impeding the Flow prompted not a single alteration of HGD/SSE/AST and that's because it cost too many motes to spam. The Sidereal combat suite was good, certainly - just not that good, not good enough to actually survive a headlong crash into some Flow Like Blood/Fivefold Bulwark/Iron Whirlwind monstrosity. quote:Because it's a videogame and it's an example you introduced. Winning a videogame is usually the point of playing one. Unless it's a sandbox game in which we choose our own goals. Which an table top RPG might be better compared to (though you didn't make that comparison). Even there though we still have goals and things we want to achieve. If basically everything we want to achieve can be done better by one character type over the others then it is clearly a superior option even if you never compete head to head. Cross-party games do happen, and even without them Celestial Exalted are supposed to have areas of focus or expertise that they handle as well or better than Solars. You don't choose the single strongest character to play through a video game, though. You choose the one you want to play, and that offers the gameplay experience you're looking for. This isn't a matter of aesthetics - if I make an all-warrior party in Dragon Age: Origins I will play the game in a very different way than if I made an all-mage party, and if I've already beaten it with an all-mage party and am looking for a fresh approach I'd be pretty stupid if I made another all-mage party because cone of cold is just so gosh darn powerful. Like I said, there are plenty of things the hydra can do that Hercules can't. Can Hercules survive vivisection or grow stronger on the spot as he's wounded? Is he poisonous? Is he gigantic? Is he aquatic? "Divine strongman" and "enormous monster" are two distinct characters that can bring unique capacities to bear even if they're somehow working on the same team - but the latter can't defeat the former in a fight. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 02:48 on Jul 23, 2013 |
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Jul 23, 2013 02:43
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LGD posted:And this is a rebuttal to the notion that the hydra comes down to stylistic and aesthetic choices? Because it sure sounds an awful lot like a defense of Wizard Supremacy- no, you can't defeat them in a fight or contribute on the same level even in the areas in which you're most specialized but you have such deep roleplaying potential! Saying that the other splats can't contribute or be competitive because of Solars being the best specialists is hyperbole. This isn't Wizard Supremacy because splats aren't character classes.
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Jul 23, 2013 02:52
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LGD posted:Alchemicals are explicitly weaker than the other Celestials, and cross-splat play is extremely common and one of the main benefits of having a unified system. The Solars are the "greatest" of Exalts but are supposed to be comparable to the other Celestials in their areas of expertise. You're putting forward an interpretation of this that is Actually here's the funny thing about Alchemical weakness and what I think is the difference between them and the Celestials being weaker than the Solars. It can be trivially negated by a Storyteller if he wants to. If the Alchemical gets easy handwaved access to vats and upgrades, the Alchemical is easily comparable or possibly even stronger than all other Celestial Exalts, and nears Solar-tier as long as they have preptime and the right charms. The Alchemical weakness is one of infrastructure, and that makes them really easy to use in cross-splat play. Because their weakness, although significant in-setting, is designed in a way which makes it irrelevant to five or six merry Exalts traipsing around Creation righting wrongs and creating a better world. The ST just says "you have a mobile vat that cost 5 artifact dots and needs a hearthstone to activate" and done. Meanwhile, Celestial weakness to Solars cannot be handwaved away so easily. It's inherent to every charm, to their dice caps, to their essence pools. There's no way to minimize its effects.
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Jul 23, 2013 02:57
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Valhawk posted: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? What I think you're missing is that a lot can be covered by an assumed baseline competency. For example, in D&D 4e you could play without a healer type (without a "Leader"): you just took your lumps in combat, and used the baseline healing rules (spend your healing nuggets between encounters, no bonuses to nugget expenditure). What if Solars were big golden heroes, their magic focused on making them brightly shining demigods, and thus they had no Stealth charms at all? Would a Solar be unable to use Stealth at all? No. They'd be able to Stealth at least as well as a Heroic Mortal with a bunch of magic gear, even if they got zero support from their splat-magic. (Solars who lack any Stealth charms actually can get some splat perks at Stealth, though, since they can be great priests who can petition and trade favors with gods who oversee pertinent domains. This can probably make up for a lot of potential holes in the Solar tree, similar to how some people do for Sidereals. Or the Solar can summon a demon or two, there's usually a demon which can help solve any given task.) But let's ignore the gods and demons angle. A Solar with zero Stealth charms could still do things no mortal thief could do, by using Athletics charms to jump into places no mortal could, or to walk across a ledge too narrow for mortals. He could still fast-talk his way out of a jam, or sweet-talk his way into the confidence of someone with the key or password or watch-schedule or whatever. I guess what I'm trying to say is: a splat can be self-sufficient even if it fails to cover every niche. Valhawk posted: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? I assume mixed games will be desired, because that's been my experience. Ferrinus posted: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". I'll even go so far as to say that doing it the 2e way was not a good way to do it. (I know, it's really risky of me to put down 2e in this thread, but that's the kind of no-nonsense talk for which I'm famous.)
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Jul 23, 2013 02:59
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Ferrinus posted:Like I said, there are plenty of things the hydra can do that Hercules can't. Can Hercules survive vivisection or grow stronger on the spot as he's wounded? Is he poisonous? Is he gigantic? Is he aquatic? "Divine strongman" and "enormous monster" are two distinct characters that can bring unique capacities to bear even if they're somehow working on the same team - but the latter can't defeat the former in a fight. Like, I mean, I actually don't see why not. Twist it around: The glowing titan who lives in his cloud-cuckoo kingdom and demands tribute from the lands the floating mountain passes through! But Great Hero Moon Guy seizes the form of the great beast of the fens and goes up to his kingdom, challenging him to battle and becoming, at the last ditch, the great beast, slaying the blinding sun-psycho and freeing his people from their tyranny. The real answer of course is 'it depends which of them is the PC,' but it sounds like you're saying 'divine strongman' should beat 'giant monster' in all cases.
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Jul 23, 2013 03:01
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Dodge Charms posted:It was how they did it in 2e, but that's just one way to do it. , and how they did it in 1e, since it's always been cornerstone of the setting. Solar primacy isn't a recent invention. Nessus posted:Why not? Yes, I am. That's the textual implication of the Exalted hierarchy - inhuman power is trumped by human power. It could be the opposite way around, but it isn't. The Usurpation was interesting because it is what you just described: a situation in which the in-human were the underdogs and had to rely on grit, planning, cleverness, etc. to defeat their vastly superior and super-human opponents. So, both metaphysically and narratively, skill and daring defeat augmentation and transcendence.
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Jul 23, 2013 03:07
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Ferrinus posted:Yes, I am. That's the textual implication of the Exalted hierarchy - inhuman power is trumped by human power. It could be the opposite way around, but it isn't. I mean, I can grant some credence here to Lunars, even if it seems to be saying that these alleged co-adjuncts are literally not people, but how are Solars more human than, say, Sidereals (the ultimate knowledge workers) or Dragon-Blooded, who live lives that seem to come the closest to what a 'normal' human being might live, for all of their element activity? Are Infernals and Abyssals also humans?
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Jul 23, 2013 03:09
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Nessus posted:How come Solars are humans but other Exalted aren't? Well, "human" is a loaded term. Obviously, in the setting, all the Exalted are humans, even Lunars and Abyssals. But the methods and powers of Solars evoke humanity while the methods and powers of Dragon-Blooded or Sidereals or whatever do not. The wild, the fates, and the elements are things humans either avoid, struggle against or attempt to harness, not inherent parts of the human condition or human ideals like virtue and excellence. The Infernals and Abyssals are human failure and corruption - they represent the unnatural and grotesque consequences of human excess, rather than external forces in the natural or supernatural world that humans contend with.
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Jul 23, 2013 03:15
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Ferrinus posted:Well, "human" is a loaded term. Obviously, in the setting, all the Exalted are humans, even Lunars and Abyssals. But the methods and powers of Solars evoke humanity while the methods and powers of Dragon-Blooded or Sidereals or whatever do not. The wild, the fates, and the elements are things humans either avoid, struggle against or attempt to harness, not inherent parts of the human condition. Yes, perfection and virtue as embodied by a four armed sun god is an inherent part of the human condition. 
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Jul 23, 2013 03:18
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Ferrinus posted:Well, "human" is a loaded term. Obviously, in the setting, all the Exalted are humans, even Lunars and Abyssals. But the methods and powers of Solars evoke humanity while the methods and powers of Dragon-Blooded or Sidereals or whatever do not. The wild, the fates, and the elements are things humans either avoid, struggle against or attempt to harness, not inherent parts of the human condition or human ideals like virtue and excellence. That said, it's your take - I just think that it's a take which if somehow 'enforced' gets kind of restrictive, while the converse isn't true; a game which is written from a perspective of 'here are the Celestials, who are all about as awesome, each with their own specialties; here are the Terrestrials, which tend to play in the minor leagues but can step up in groups or with special training; here's some of the new weird poo poo as well' does not exclude your thesis, but it also doesn't mean that I'm somehow "doing it wrong" if I have Lunars inspired by Coyote, Anasazi, Raven and Loki get up to didoes comparable to the Solars based on Hercules, Theseus, Gilgamesh and Samson.
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Jul 23, 2013 03:24
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LGD posted:Yes, perfection and virtue as embodied by a four armed sun god is an inherent part of the human condition. Wow, that's a cheap shot. Maybe in a more enlightened Age we wouldn't be discriminating against people on the basis of their arm count. But, anyway: yes! Perfection and virtue are things that humans can strive for and attain, as opposed to functioning wings or fire breath. Nessus posted:Well, I'd say dealing with nature, the elements, fate, corruption and death are also key parts of the human condition, at least as much as supernatural focus on virtue and glowing real hard. Dealing with, yes, but being attuned to, no. Remember, Solars "deal with" nature and the elements plenty, whether through irrigation projects or epic sorcery. But casting Flight of the Brilliant Raptor is a very far cry from actually being a fire-aspected Dragon-Blood and having the very essence of flame course through your flesh and blood. The other Exalted partake of alien/foreign/supernatural/whatever-word-you-like power in a way that the Solars don't. It's not to say that they aren't heroic in the moral sense of the word, but they aren't privileged by Exalted's metaphysics. In many ways this is unfair and even tragic.
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Jul 23, 2013 03:30
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If the giant monster automatically loses, why are there the bones of dozens of heroes littering the giant monster's lair? Medusa killed hundreds of heroes before Perseus came along. Perseus won because he outsmarted her, and had some magic toys of badassness, which is exactly what I think a PC Solar VS. a Lunar elder should do. The Solar shouldn't be able to walk in and auto-win because he is a Solar. That's what you're
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Jul 23, 2013 03:33
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I'm obviously not implying that a PC Solar should automatically defeat a Lunar elder, and in fact specifically used an example of a PC Solar getting beaten by a Lunar elder earlier in the discussion, and the "walk in and auto-win" thing people keep throwing around is complete invention, so frankly I'm happy to irritate anyone who would so flagrantly misread me. In Solar campaigns, the inherent superiority of the PCs to almost any being they encounter is there to raise stakes and spur gameplay. People look at the fresh-faced young Solar and know that in a hundred years' time this being could be ruling an entire direction... so we'd better kill them right the gently caress now. Action! Drama! Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 03:38 on Jul 23, 2013 |
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Jul 23, 2013 03:36
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Ferrinus posted:Wow, that's a cheap shot. Maybe in a more enlightened Age we wouldn't be discriminating against people on the basis of their arm count.  quote:Dealing with, yes, but being attuned to, no. Remember, Solars "deal with" nature and the elements plenty, whether through irrigation projects or epic sorcery. But casting Flight of the Brilliant Raptor is a very far cry from actually being a fire-aspected Dragon-Blood and having the very essence of flame course through your flesh and blood. The other Exalted partake of alien/foreign/supernatural/whatever-word-you-like power in a way that the Solars don't.
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Jul 23, 2013 03:39
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Ferrinus posted:It's definitely important that Solar charms be limited by the human condition. I don't think Solars should get access to tricks like "cease to be cut by bladed weapons" or "reduce someone's mind to an atavistic, feral state". Even Solar perfection should involve visible struggle rather than easy persistence (which I suspect that perfect defenses in 3E combat will do very well, but I also think it could be worth looking at things like that Charm that just makes you immune to all disease or similar "whatever, just ignore this problem from now on" effects). One big difference between Solars and Lunars should be that Solars overcome problems that Lunars can either adapt to or simply never suffer - holding one's breath prodigiously long versus breathing underwater, remaining standing through sheer will versus regenerating as fast as one is wounded. quote:It's a bit tricky because Athletics involves weightlifting and Resistance involves toughness, but I'd argue that Solars shouldn't be able to exert limitless physical strength or fail to even notice that they've been poisoned or something. That kind of stuff crosses the line from "Wow! Amazing!" to "Is that guy a cyborg?" and doesn't really fit the Solar aesthetic unless you're deliberately writing ridiculous Essence 6+ stuff whose very point is that it breaks its own established boundaries. quote:Do you mean my "interpretation" that the Solars are the most powerful of the Exalted or my "interpretation" that Exalted is designed to enable single splat games? quote:Hey, if you agree that Dawn Castes are the Exalted host's greatest warriors, Night Castes are its greatest infiltrators, etc, we're all set here. It sounds like you don't, though? quote:I feel like I don't really have to explain the problems with describing Exalted as "weapons" or "killbots" in a world in which A) second edition happened and took that thinking to the very hilt and was terrible and B) we're discussing the thematic purpose of each kind of exalt rather than their literal diegetic in-character means of operation. Obviously, all the Exalted are magic. But what kind of magic?What does that magic represent? How should those representations interact? quote:The other Celestials are humans who've been augmented with inhuman forces, whether abstract and arcane or primeval and visceral. Neither are the Solars "monstrous paragons of inhuman perfection". They are, rather, monstrous paragons of human perfection. If you fight Solars, you are fighting humans, in all their glory and terror. Neither claw and sinew nor fate itself can stand against such horror, not for long. quote:The Sidereal perfects were often not actually perfects, and they were also extremely expensive compared to the tiny store of essence a 1e combat Sidereal would have left over after sustaining charms like Blade of the Battle Maiden, their martial arts form of choice, etc. etc. A lot of people were shocked and angry about Impeding the Flow, but you'll notice that Impeding the Flow prompted not a single alteration of HGD/SSE/AST and that's because it cost too many motes to spam. The Sidereal combat suite was good, certainly - just not that good, not good enough to actually survive a headlong crash into some Flow Like Blood/Fivefold Bulwark/Iron Whirlwind monstrosity. quote:You don't choose the single strongest character to play through a video game, though. You choose the one you want to play, and that offers the gameplay experience you're looking for. This isn't a matter of aesthetics - if I make an all-warrior party in Dragon Age: Origins I will play the game in a very different way than if I made an all-mage party, and if I've already beaten it with an all-mage party and am looking for a fresh approach I'd be pretty stupid if I made another all-mage party because cone of cold is just so gosh darn powerful. quote:Like I said, there are plenty of things the hydra can do that Hercules can't. Can Hercules survive vivisection or grow stronger on the spot as he's wounded? Is he poisonous? Is he gigantic? Is he aquatic? "Divine strongman" and "enormous monster" are two distinct characters that can bring unique capacities to bear even if they're somehow working on the same team - but the latter can't defeat the former in a fight. I mean I'm sorry to keep going to this well, but you keep making arguments that have been used since time immemorial to justify lovely unbalanced gameplay mechanics for nebulous "roleplaying" reasons. I'm genuinely unsure why "it's better because it's magic!" is different from "it's better because it's Sun Magic!" Because Wizard Supremacy is pretty much a cornerstone of D&D for a lot of people now. edit: Ferrinus posted:Wow, that's a cheap shot. Maybe in a more enlightened Age we wouldn't be discriminating against people on the basis of their arm count. LGD fucked around with this message at 03:56 on Jul 23, 2013 |
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Jul 23, 2013 03:47
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Kai Tave posted: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? The same reason the Incarnae didn't make thousands of Exalted: they each have a finite amount of magical power. In 3e, that's the Law of Diminishment. The Maidens only have 20 Exalted each because, um, it's a mystery (actual canonical reason). Nessus posted:Well, I'd say dealing with nature, the elements, fate, corruption and death are also key parts of the human condition, at least as much as supernatural focus on virtue and glowing real hard. That's...a really good point, actually. In Exalted, sorcery, elemental poo poo, and other weird magical crap are part of the human experience. It's an arbitrary thing to say that this or that is human achievement. The designers have always described the Solar role (inspiration would probably be more accurate) is "pulp/epic hero", but there are tons of pulp/epic heroes that can turn into animals or firebend or such. I don't think a Solar nerf is the way to increase Lunar/Sidereal parity, because the spirit (if not the text) of the rules has always given them parity. They need buffs. My idea for the Exalted is that each one is a heroic mortal, trained to a peak of a particular skillset, and Exaltation allows him to develop it further. The particular kind of Exaltation allows him to develop his already extant talents in particular ways. The Solars managed this idea well, the mechanics of the other splats did not..
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Jul 23, 2013 03:49
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pospysyl posted:That's...a really good point, actually. In Exalted, sorcery, elemental poo poo, and other weird magical crap are part of the human experience. It's an arbitrary thing to say that this or that is human achievement. The designers have always described the Solar role (inspiration would probably be more accurate) is "pulp/epic hero", but there are tons of pulp/epic heroes that can turn into animals or firebend or such. I don't think a Solar nerf is the way to increase Lunar/Sidereal parity, because the spirit (if not the text) of the rules has always given them parity. They need buffs. As for nerf/buffing I'm seeing it more as giving Solars a purview that is slightly more limited, and then you can more clearly go 'Solars are the best at transcendent mundane skills, Lunars are the best at nature and protean poo poo, Sidereals are best at fate and being goddamn nerds,' vs. now where it feels like Solars' power is that they have every power, but maybe they have to make up a Charm or a sorcery spell to have every power. It's largely a flavor thing - like when they made Superman go from having 'every power, including Super-mathematics' to 'he's strong, tough, fast and really morally upright, with some other neat poo poo like heat vision.'
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Jul 23, 2013 03:58
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Ferrinus posted:I'm obviously not implying that a PC Solar should automatically defeat a Lunar elder... quote: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. Defining a splat by what it cannot do, is one of the reasons 2E ended up like it did. Solars being the best wizards with their Sun Magic, or the best Artifact guys because really, that was their thing is totally fine. Solars just being mechanically better than every other splat isn't even needed, and I don't know why you insist that it is. Why does the Solar need more dice? That's really the question, and there hasn't been a compelling reason given at all.
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Jul 23, 2013 04:00
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Nessus posted:I remember in the 1E manual on heroic mortals and such there was a man who took twenty years of dribs and drabs and built himself a pair of wings to fly away with. You know what I mean!!! quote:Irrigation projects seem as if they are not necessarily strictly Solar-aspected. They would seem to be more water-related. As for your example, is the special magic brought to the Exalted by the Yozis really the best example of the ontological privilege of the Solar Exalted, speaking from an external perspective at any rate? The uniting element here is artifice. Some sort of instinctive will-driven reality shaping (like, whatever the hell the Primordials themselves do - I'm pretty sure they don't use hand gestures and incantations) would never fly as a Solar power, but sorcery, which is the studied skill of manipulating something foreign and external to the user, is something the Solars will naturally shine at. If this were D&D and "sorcery" meant drawing on innate magical talent and supernatural heritage then it'd be a different story. Like I said upthread, I think sorcery, artifact crafting, public works, etc. should be the only means Solars have of actually bypassing human limits rather than struggling through them. Spontaneous, personal-scale Solar magic should be about what you can touch or reach or talk to, although you get enough raw blazing sun in there to e.g. cast bolts of light from your sword or stab a dematerialized spirit. LGD posted:Except that they don't struggle. Part of the Solar thing is that it makes things much easier for you. You learn things you never knew before faster and more easily than a mortal man, and you can literally dictate perfection. There is nothing we've heard about 3rd edition that should make us think it'll be totally different to conform to the external thematics you're insisting are core to Exalted. I think it's fair to guess that 3E's perfect defenses are going to look something like that - the devs have hinted that using one means totally giving up accumulated combat advantage, so presumably Heavenly Guardian Defense is a final desperation move. More broadly, the devs have talked about not thinking in terms of literal "tiers" and reigning in both the scope of Solar charmpower and its instantaneous, perfunctory nature compared to what you find in 2E. You read the previewed social charms, right? They're both less expansive and less of an instantaneous final word than what you got one edition ago. quote:It's how you specifically interpret "mightiest of the Exalted" (and what that means mechanically). And I think the contention that Exalted is designed to enable single splat games is definitely untrue- it's explicitly designed to enable multi-splat games. It encourages single splat games for a variety of reasons, of which power level is only a single one. Well, that's what I'm saying. Exalted encourages single splat games, since each splat generally has its own thematic focus, built-in goals, roster of allies and enemies, etcetera. Unified mechanics mean both that PCs can come out of multiple splats and that NPCs from foreign splats can have complicated and in-depth powers if the Storyteller's tastes run that way, but it doesn't mandate strict balance. "One Solar, one Lunar, one Dragon-Blood" just isn't equivalent to "One Fighter, one Cleric, one Wizard" - the expectation that you're mixing splats isn't there, and when you do mix splats it's with the explicit acknowledgment that someone is going to be playing the underdog or the big gun. quote:Define greatest. Because I do, but probably not in the way you mean. Greatest...? Solar warriors are the smart bet in the gladiatorial arena, Solar spies are the hardest to keep from discovering your crimes against the polity, etc. quote:No, I really, really think you should spell it out. I find describing Exalted as "weapons" extremely useful for thematic purposes. It was their primary function. It's something they all do well. And it justifies everybody getting a seat at the kung-fu asskicking table. But that isn't interesting thematically. What's interesting is what they do besides being a living weapon, or with being a living weapon. Describing Exalted as "weapons" was a sharp distinction between 2E and 1E, which used the Primordial War as the defining element of the Exalted host rather than the epic history of the Exalted host. 2E took an extremely mechanistic approach in which everything about the Exalted looped back to their nature as artificial weapons of war, to the extent that Limit was secretly an ablative psychic damage shields, Dragon-Blooded all had amplified sex drives and spent pretty much all their time loving in their first few generations, and Lunars were slaved to Solars because of some kind of war room power play. Explaining everything about the Exalted in terms of the Primordial war is like explaining everything about humans in terms of caveman dating strategies. It's reductionist, boring, and stupid. quote:Except they've still be augmented with inhuman forces that they channel through their human selves. I genuinely don't understand why the perfect power of the Unconquered Sun channeled through a human form makes what they do totally human, but someone bending fate to make their arm hit a lucky spot totally not. It's an interpretive framework external to the game that you are insisting everyone adopt, and it isn't even a particularly compelling one. You're confusing the diegetic description of Solar power with the thematic description of Solar power. The Unconquered Sun's power amplifies and perfects - humans with Solar exaltations are super-human in the literal sense of the word, because in the Exalted setting the sun represents skill and virtue and faith and inspiration and perfection. In another version of Exalted, Solar exalts could be terrifying, incomprehensible space beings that float through the sky and lay their foes to waste with pitiless bolts of nuclear fire (actually we kind of did get those guys in the exalts of Malfeas) but that's not how the sun works in the Exalted setting as written. quote:It's a multiplayer social game. Your entire reasoning applies to why you'd choose to play a fighter when a Wizard is an option. It's fine in a single player game or a game in which everyone is playing fighters. It sucks rear end as soon as you have a party in which multiple humans are playing characters of different classes. Exalted explicitly supports this kind of play. It wouldn't be that hard to make Solars actually have a defined area in which they are the Best that isn't "Everything" that is compatible with the setting as it has existed for two editions (much less a revised setting). Why not do it? Because of some specious thematics? If you think Exalted's thematics are "specious" you should probably play another game. They're critical to the experience. The analogous situation in D&D isn't playing a wizard alongside a fighter, it's playing a level 12 wizard alongside a level 7 wizard. Yeah, the rules allow for it, but they don't assume it and in fact it's very important to the rules that higher level characters have the edge over lower level characters. quote:And again when do those capacities ever achieve a better result when your goal isn't merely having the capacity itself or achieving an end in a particular way? The Fighter is a totally distinct archetype from the Wizard and can easily beat out a Wizard when it comes to opening locks with Strength checks when neither has any magical aid. How does that work out for him in play? If you're concerned with "achieving results", play a Solar. pospsyl posted:That's...a really good point, actually. In Exalted, sorcery, elemental poo poo, and other weird magical crap are part of the human experience. It's an arbitrary thing to say that this or that is human achievement. Solars practice sorcery the same way that humans practice thaumaturgy. If Solars existed in a sci-fi setting, they wouldn't have sorcery, but they'd probably be the best hackers and engineers. Remember, dealing with weird magical crap is part of the human experience in Creation. Being magical, living a life in which weird magical crap is part of your own body and soul, is not. mistaya posted:Defining a splat by what it cannot do, is one of the reasons 2E ended up like it did. That's not what I'm doing. quote:Solars being the best wizards with their Sun Magic, or the best Artifact guys because really, that was their thing is totally fine. Solars just being mechanically better than every other splat isn't even needed, and I don't know why you insist that it is. That's a lie.
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Jul 23, 2013 04:14
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I think Ferrinus is right, really. If the Solars are not the peerless warriors that were more powerful than the other Celestials... then where's the tension in them returning in ones and twos? I mean, if they're equivalent to the other Celestials even, much less the Terrestrials, then why was the Usurpation such a big deal, and why did the Sidereals work so hard to keep them down? Why did they need treachery to put down a host of Exalts who were less numerous than their assembled forces? It just doesn't stack up, in my opinion. I don't know that the mechanics should be "no one can ever be better than a Solar at anything ever", but Solars as a rule should probably be generally more straightforwardly powerful than their other Exalted counterparts. If they're not, a lot of the past story (which presumably is being kept) doesn't make sense.
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Jul 23, 2013 04:21
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Ferrinus posted:If you think Exalted's thematics are "specious" you should probably play another game. They're critical to the experience. The analogous situation in D&D isn't playing a wizard alongside a fighter, it's playing a level 12 wizard alongside a level 7 wizard. Yeah, the rules allow for it, but they don't assume it and in fact it's very important to the rules that higher level characters have the edge over lower level characters. quote:If you're concerned with "achieving results", play a Solar.  quote:Solars practice sorcery the same way that humans practice thaumaturgy. If Solars existed in a sci-fi setting, they wouldn't have sorcery, but they'd probably be the best hackers and engineers. quote:Remember, dealing with weird magical crap is part of the human experience in Creation. Being magical, living a life in which weird magical crap is part of your own body and soul, is not.  Zarick posted:I think Ferrinus is right, really. If the Solars are not the peerless warriors that were more powerful than the other Celestials... then where's the tension in them returning in ones and twos? I mean, if they're equivalent to the other Celestials even, much less the Terrestrials, then why was the Usurpation such a big deal, and why did the Sidereals work so hard to keep them down? Why did they need treachery to put down a host of Exalts who were less numerous than their assembled forces? As for why they got stamped down, their vaunted peerless sorcery might have looked like it was going to turn the world into some kind of Hellscape as I recall.  I gather 3E at least is going to make the Lunars a much less marginal force as well, but I don't have any issues with saying 'Lunars are worse than Solars at nationbuilding and raw generalship,' and a situation where the Sidereals and pals are effectively stalemated with the Lunars - and oh dear, now here come a bunch of Solars, GOD DAMMIT - seems to have that same cataclysmic tension. It's just not the tension of 'I accumulate 200 XP and I am now literally unfuckable.' Nessus fucked around with this message at 04:30 on Jul 23, 2013 |
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Jul 23, 2013 04:24
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Zarick posted:I think Ferrinus is right, really. If the Solars are not the peerless warriors that were more powerful than the other Celestials... then where's the tension in them returning in ones and twos? I mean, if they're equivalent to the other Celestials even, much less the Terrestrials, then why was the Usurpation such a big deal, and why did the Sidereals work so hard to keep them down? Why did they need treachery to put down a host of Exalts who were less numerous than their assembled forces? Ask all of these questions about Caesar.
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Jul 23, 2013 04:27
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I'm really confused about this whole argument. Exalted is, at it's core, a game about hubris and Greek tragedy wrapped up in an anime shell. The Gods supposed they should rule Heaven, the Solars supposed they should rule Creation, and their underlings had enough of that crap and kicked the Solars out of power. The struggle of weaker powers against more powerful ones is a central conceit, with a diminishing of Creation after each cycle. The game 'needs' Solars to be the most powerful in many arenas for that struggle to make any kind of sense. The Solars weren't just the most charismatic or the most leaderly of the Exalted. That reduces the Usurpation to nothing more than the impeachment of corrupt politicians. You could change the story and make it so that Solars ruled Creation for some other reason (because they're the best leaders, I guess), or you could drastically change the story and change the Usurpation to something else entirely, though I think that does the game a disservice. It really changes the impact of the Solar return though. It goes from, 'ah okay we can maybe fix or ruin things once and for all' to, 'ah, reinforcements, I guess'. Niche protection in this way is basically impossible without reducing the meta-splats to character classes. At the end of the day niches aren't about methodology, they're about results. Who hits the hardest, who sneaks the best, etc. 2e tried to deal with this issue by giving each meta-splat its own minigame to play in order to differentiate it from other Exalts but that didn't really have the intended effect. If you cut whole Skills out of each Exalt (such as, Solars can't be competitive Meleeists or Solars are the best at Archery, but not other forms of combat) you wind up with some wonky results. I think I'd be content to see Celestials roughly equalized and leave the massive power differentials to hypothetical high-Essence games that will rarely be played. It's an interesting side note, in this hypothetical, that Solars may eventually outshine Lunars at Essence 8 or whatever, but down here on the ground level the differences are not pronounced enough to be mechanized.
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Jul 23, 2013 04:28
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Nessus posted:I really do not think the thematics specifically require Solars to have the same degree of mechanical supremacy they do now. Your argument seems to be 'it has been done this way, or at least, seems to have been done this way; therefore, it is essential and key to the game, not just in my own taste, but in general.' What does "they do now" mean here? My understanding is that Solars have a substantial but non-insurmountable edge over Lunars and Sidereals as of Exalted 2.5e combat, and that the game's social systems are pretty much a huge wash. I'm by no means an expert on 2E's current state of balance, though - I stopped following it a while ago, and only read up on some of its supplements out of curiosity recently. We could talk about the degree to which Solars are superior to non-Solars in broad categories like "combat" or "persuasion" - obviously, I don't expect the former to automatically beat the latter in all cases and with no effort or uncertainty, and it sounds like 3E's not doing that either - but at the moment it seems like we're still stuck on the issue of whether Solars should be the most powerful at all. quote:Oh, so suddenly that nice elkman who lives near the stream and Grandfather Wong's ghost aren't the human experience, huh?? Woah, they totally are! And if they exalted as a Solar they'd find that humanity magnified and supercharged, whereas it's as a Lunar that they'd probably learn to turn their antlers into deadly silver weapons or whatever. A_Raving_Loon posted:Ask all of these questions about Caesar. Caeser was easy to kill and wouldn't pose anyone a great threat if he reincarnated.
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Jul 23, 2013 04:29
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Zarick posted:If the Solars are not the peerless warriors that were more powerful than the other Celestials... then where's the tension in them returning in ones and twos? Radio is not a better information archiving system than print, but a radio station can cause some tension in a world ruled by newsprint. Solars can be disruptive without being better than everyone at everything.
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Jul 23, 2013 04:39
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Ferrinus posted:I think it's fair to guess that 3E's perfect defenses are going to look something like that - the devs have hinted that using one means totally giving up accumulated combat advantage, so presumably Heavenly Guardian Defense is a final desperation move. More broadly, the devs have talked about not thinking in terms of literal "tiers" and reigning in both the scope of Solar charmpower and its instantaneous, perfunctory nature compared to what you find in 2E. You read the previewed social charms, right? They're both less expansive and less of an instantaneous final word than what you got one edition ago. quote:Well, that's what I'm saying. Exalted encourages single splat games, since each splat generally has its own thematic focus, built-in goals, roster of allies and enemies, etcetera. Unified mechanics mean both that PCs can come out of multiple splats and that NPCs from foreign splats can have complicated and in-depth powers if the Storyteller's tastes run that way, but it doesn't mandate strict balance. "One Solar, one Lunar, one Dragon-Blood" just isn't equivalent to "One Fighter, one Cleric, one Wizard" - the expectation that you're mixing splats isn't there, and when you do mix splats it's with the explicit acknowledgment that someone is going to be playing the underdog or the big gun. quote:Greatest...? Solar warriors are the smart bet in the gladiatorial arena, Solar spies are the hardest to keep from discovering your crimes against the polity, etc. quote:Describing Exalted as "weapons" was a sharp distinction between 2E and 1E, which used the Primordial War as the defining element of the Exalted host rather than the epic history of the Exalted host. 2E took an extremely mechanistic approach in which everything about the Exalted looped back to their nature as artificial weapons of war, to the extent that Limit was secretly an ablative psychic damage shields, Dragon-Blooded all had amplified sex drives and spent pretty much all their time loving in their first few generations, and Lunars were slaved to Solars because of some kind of war room power play. quote:You're confusing the diegetic description of Solar power with the thematic description of Solar power. The Unconquered Sun's power amplifies and perfects - humans with Solar exaltations are super-human in the literal sense of the word, because in the Exalted setting the sun represents skill and virtue and faith and inspiration and perfection. In another version of Exalted, Solar exalts could be terrifying, incomprehensible space beings that float through the sky and lay their foes to waste with pitiless bolts of nuclear fire (actually we kind of did get those guys in the exalts of Malfeas) but that's not how the sun works in the Exalted setting as written. quote:If you think Exalted's thematics are "specious" you should probably play another game. quote:They're critical to the experience. The analogous situation in D&D isn't playing a wizard alongside a fighter, it's playing a level 12 wizard alongside a level 7 wizard. Yeah, the rules allow for it, but they don't assume it and in fact it's very important to the rules that higher level characters have the edge over lower level characters. quote:If you're concerned with "achieving results", play a Solar. LGD fucked around with this message at 04:45 on Jul 23, 2013 |
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Jul 23, 2013 04:43
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LGD posted:Sure, but are they a sure bet when compared against another (original since you keep bringing Alchemicals into things) Celestial Exalted? Because you've been saying "yes." That's a lie. quote:This makes no sense. They don't have the same powers. They don't work the same way either thematically or mechanically. They wouldn't be on the same level if given the same amount of experience, and you're the one insisting this is the case. What are you on about? In D&D, character level is an incredibly important concept that mediates almost everything else that happens in the game. Increased character level always means increased power. If someone told you they wanted to play D&D with you, but they wanted to play a lower level character than yours, but that they wanted their lower level characters to be just as strong as yours was, you'd be forced to sigh and shake your head and take them aside and explain that they've misunderstood the fundamental premises of Dungeons and Dragons and change their approach to the game. quote:Ok and that counters out the Solar exaltion generally making everything you do easier... how? Because those changes carry through to everyone and have much more to do with making the game playable than anyone caring about "Ferrinus Thematics." All right, it's time to put up or shut up. Explain what's wrong with my description of Exalted's governing themes and substitute one of your own that better fits the setting.
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Jul 23, 2013 04:48
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Dodge Charms posted:Nerve gas is not a better rifle than a rifle. And yet, it can cause some tension in a world ruled by rifles. To add to this, Solars would cause a fuss anyway— when you have only three celestial Exalt types, and one has been banished for centuries, their return is going to be Big News even if they aren't unquestionably superior to everyone else.
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Jul 23, 2013 04:49
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So's the appearance of the Exigents and the invasion of the Alchemicals. Solars are more important. It's not and can't be "oh, it's those guys again" or even "wow! it's those guys again!" - the Exalted corebook did not succeed as it did because it was about playing just one of many equivalent types of supernatural creature.
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Jul 23, 2013 04:55
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The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of Tiering-as-Class-Features. Like where whatever widget that owes to Solar dominance is expressed as a basic 'feature' of being a Solar rather than something baked into all their charms. Then at least it would be simple to 'turn it off' and everything would be an even playing field. 2e's problem stems from building Solar dominance into every single Charm. Not just Solar Charms, mind you; if a Lunar had something even remotely equivalent, it had to be weaker or cost more or both. That would make everybody happy, right? If all the Charms start out on a level playing field, you can either layer features on top of that or not.
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Jul 23, 2013 05:12
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Ferrinus posted:In D&D, character level is an incredibly important concept that mediates almost everything else that happens in the game. Increased character level always means increased power. If someone told you they wanted to play D&D with you, but they wanted to play a lower level character than yours, but that they wanted their lower level characters to be just as strong as yours was, you'd be forced to sigh and shake your head and take them aside and explain that they've misunderstood the fundamental premises of Dungeons and Dragons and change their approach to the game. Ferrinus sez: "Sorry Dave, it's Mythologically Accurate that Enchanters are always two levels above Necromancers." quote:All right, it's time to put up or shut up. Explain what's wrong with my description of Exalted's governing themes and substitute one of your own that better fits the setting. Exalted is also not restricted to conforming to some lovely knockoff-Greek-tragedy narrative where Man (as embodied by Solars) is in an eternal cosmic struggle against Monstrosity and Cruel Fate as embodied by the other Celestial Exalted. Also the struggle is stacked in Man's favor because..? That doesn't fit the background of the game universe, doesn't fit the setting as players find it, and frankly just isn't very compelling. The Celestial Exalted were also created to work together for a purpose. They each had some unique and vital role to play. That role was not "lovely substitute Solar varieties A & B." Making the Solar best at accomplishing All Things goes against this and totally diminishes the importance of the other Exalted because they become essentially superflous, except as they interact with and serve our (mandatory) protagonists, the Solars. Exalted is a big, exciting, wide open setting that benefits from not being entirely about the Solars and their personal drama. Making them an integral and hugely important part of the setting is fine and is fun. Making the setting and the game totally about them diminishes it. LGD fucked around with this message at 05:24 on Jul 23, 2013 |
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Jul 23, 2013 05:12
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Mendrian posted:The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of Tiering-as-Class-Features. Like where whatever widget that owes to Solar dominance is expressed as a basic 'feature' of being a Solar rather than something baked into all their charms. Then at least it would be simple to 'turn it off' and everything would be an even playing field. Yeah, that's my preferred mechanism. Obviously you'd separately want the mechanics to express differences in a satisfying way (Solars either avoiding blows or shrugging off wound penalties versus Lunars happily taking hits and regenerating, etc) but hard-coded superiority should be baked into a combination of core stats and unmatched special techniques. This is actually something that first occurred to me not on the topic of Solars charms vs. Lunar charms but on the topic of Solar charms vs. Martial Arts charms. Remember "Style XP", the conceit that kinda-sorta still exists because it's kind of assumed that MA charms just have to be shittier than Solar charms? Well... why? Why can't Solar superiority live elsewhere, so that Solars don't feel dumb for doing kung fu in a kung fu flick? LGD posted:Whoa! But you're playing an Enchanter and they're playing a Necromancer! You both draw power from the same arcane sources. Maybe they could be the same level? You're still missing the point. It's mythologically accurate in Exalted that one power source is categorically superior to another. Exalted's Incarna are D&D's levels - they're fundamental premises of the game. quote:Nope. But here are a few areas where you're going wrong- Solars aren't in any way "more human" than other Exalted, are not "more heroic, and do not somehow expend "more effort" than other Celestial Exalts when they channel essence. This is not mandatory for the setting, or written out anywhere in any of the books, nor implied, nor does it really come from anywhere but your own head. It diminishes the heroism of the other Celestial Exalted and also diminishes what it is for a character to be granted the life changing, inhuman and godlike power of the Unconquered Sun's Exaltation. You have the power to change the world, what do you do with it? Stop right there. Back all that up. I've explained how Solar power is more "human" than that of the other Exalted, something that flows thematically out of the human condition rather than is used to augment and transform the human condition. I've explained why the Unconquered Sun's power is godlike but decidedly not "inhuman", except in the blandly superlative sense that Shakespeare was an inhumanly good writer. Where's your theory? What are Solars in relation to the other Exalted? Are they just yellow instead of blue? Is "killbots" all you have? quote:Exalted is also not restricted to conforming to some lovely knockoff-Greek-tragedy narrative where Man (as embodied by Solars) is in an eternal cosmic struggle against Monstrosity and Cruel Fate as embodied by the other Celestial Exalted represent. That is stacked in Man's favor. That doesn't fit the background of the game universe, doesn't fit the setting as players find it, and frankly just isn't very compelling. What? Whaaaaaat? Exalted doesn't echo Greek tragedy narratives? Exalted doesn't put mankind up against impersonal cosmic forces? Are you serious? This is your gameplan in this discussion? quote:The Celestial Exalted were also created to work together for a purpose. They each had some unique and vital role to play. That role was not "lovely substitute Solar varieties A & B." Making the Solar best at accomplishing All Things goes against this and totally diminishes the importance of the other Exalted because they become essentially superflous, except as they interact with and serve our (mandatory) protagonists, the Solars. Exalted is a big, exciting, wide open setting that benefits from not being entirely about the Solars and their personal drama. Making them an integral and hugely important part of the setting is fine and is fun. Making the setting and the game totally about them diminishes it. So, you keep, like, making stuff up and using crazy hyperbole here? "lovely substitute" and "totally about them" is your own baggage, I don't have any obligation to deal with it. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 05:28 on Jul 23, 2013 |
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Jul 23, 2013 05:26
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Ferrinus posted:What? Whaaaaaat? Exalted doesn't echo Greek tragedy narratives? Exalted doesn't put mankind up against impersonal cosmic forces? Are you serious? This is your gameplan in this discussion? And I don't think THAT is legitimate. It would be like taking the old World of Darkness and boiling it down to being 'about the struggle for the young to assert themselves against their elders;' true, but incomplete.
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Jul 23, 2013 05:35
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Ferrinus posted:You're still missing the point. It's mythologically accurate in Exalted that one power source is categorically superior to another. Exalted's Incarna are D&D's levels - they're fundamental premises of the game. quote:Stop right there. Back all that up. quote:Where's your theory? What are Solars in relation to the other Exalted? Are they just yellow instead of blue? Is "killbots" all you have? quote:What? Whaaaaaat? Exalted doesn't echo Greek tragedy narratives? Exalted doesn't put mankind up against impersonal cosmic forces? Are you serious? This is your gameplan in this discussion? quote:So, you keep, like, making stuff up and using crazy hyperbole here? "lovely substitute" and "totally about them" is your own baggage, I don't have any obligation to deal with it. The "making the setting about them" thing is just an extrapolation of your actual views. But a pretty reasonable one- for example the other Celestials only seem to exist as narrative foils that the Solars will inevitably overcome in the mono-narrative that comprises Exalted. LGD fucked around with this message at 05:48 on Jul 23, 2013 |
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Jul 23, 2013 05:38
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Ferrinus posted:So's the appearance of the Exigents and the invasion of the Alchemicals. Solars are more important. It's not and can't be "oh, it's those guys again" or even "wow! it's those guys again!" - the Exalted corebook did not succeed as it did because it was about playing just one of many equivalent types of supernatural creature. It succeeded as it did because it was a breath of fresh air compared to D&D, with a more interesting society and background than just "Copy-paste Tolkien endlessly", and had a bunch of hype for the people pumped up for a WoD prequel to go with it. I think it succeeded as it did because it was fundamentally cynical about fantasy tropes without being entirely hopeless. "Yes, all those things that are normally good in fantasy are actually a pretty poo poo way to make a functioning society." On the flipside, you had "But it's theoretically possible to fix it all. And you have the power to." It wasn't because Solars were Always The Strongest At Everything. In fact, 1E if I remember right, allowed other characters to exceed Solar power in narrow areas as long as Solars were strongest overall. Alchemicals had solar-tier or beyond Solar-tier combat suites if you went all tentacle stabby action, but required infrastructure, got visibly inhuman at essence scores above 3, and had social charms generally worse than Dragonbloods. Sidereals had a ton of fun weird effects that let them fight on a Solar level. Angry Werewolf Man was comparable to Solars and Lunars were a gigantic mess of terrible charm design in general. That's all the Celestials. In fact, the real Solar advantage was outside of combat. Sure, Alchemical McFacestab could eviscerate a fighty Solar by virtue of being a walking tank that runs a scenelong Strength 12 Dexterity 12 and has 5 independent +5 accuracy death stabs and a persistent parry, but that was all he could do. He couldn't do it subtly, he couldn't fit through a wall while loaded up like that, and he sure as hell couldn't also make the world love him. There's no contradiction with "Solars are the strongest Exalts" and "A Celestial with equal XP expenditure can match or exceed a Solar in a fight". Because there are other advantages than just raw killy, and if the Lunar needs to transform into a multi-headed hydra Tyrant Lizard with bat wings and acid blood to beat a Solar, the Solar can still be the strongest. The Solar can fight at 100% inside a palace with enchanted indestructible walls, or a cavern you don't want to collapse. The Lunar can't. The Solar can fight at nearly 100% without ever letting anyone know he's anything more than a very lucky mortal. The Lunar, if shapeshifting is where most of his combat capability comes from, can't. The Solar, if blindsided, is completely ready for battle. The Lunar needs to take actions to power up and manifest all those horrific inhuman mutations. On the flipside, the Solar could 'power up' by bringing soldiers and better weapons and gear, which the Solar's overall stronger and more general charmset means he's better at doing than the Lunar. So the Solar can win even if the Lunar is prepared... by taking his own preparations. But one on one? The Solar can lose against an equally invested Lunar. And that's not a problem.
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Jul 23, 2013 06:00
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I have played exalted using D&D rules just fine, where the mixed-splat group contains a level 10 freshly-exalted Solar, a level 10 middling DB, and a level 10 extremely powerful mortal. As someone said earlier, if you unify the power stat then balanced mixed-splat groups just fall out of that for free.
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Jul 23, 2013 06:02
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Nessus posted:Would you say that Greek tragedy is the ONLY thing you can do with Exalted? I get the feeling off a lot of your stuff that you really like that flavor - and that's cool, and that's legitimate. However, I also feel like you're saying (basically) 'If you aren't on board with this reading, you're actually reading the material wrong and aren't understanding it right.' Has ANYONE said that Greek tragedy is the only thing you can do with Exalted? Where are you getting this stuff? Should I have used St. George and the dragon rather than Hercules and the hydra? I don't care about your feelings - if you think there's something wrong with my explanation for Solar superiority, tell me what it is. LGD posted:So they're different classes that won't ever be on the same level. Because they do different things differently and it is a fundamental premise of the game that they're unequal. That sounds a lot more like classes to me than an adjustable power stat. Sort of like it's a fundamental premise of D&D that Wizards are Superior because they have The Best Magic. No, they're not, because in D&D classes aren't supposed to lead to power differentials but levels are supposed to lead to power differentials. Why are you having trouble with this? quote:And I'm supremely unconvinced because you didn't actually make a good case? Interesting theory. I think the evidence supports that I did make a good case, though, because thus far you've refused to even attempt to rebut it. quote:The grandest, most broadly powerful Exalted that embody the drive towards an inhuman standard of perfection in all of their endeavors? Support "inhuman standard of perfection". We have lots of references to inhuman perfection in Exalted - the fair folk exhibit it constantly, the Lunars and Alchemicals less often. It's not part of Solar thematics. quote:No. Exalted echoes lots of Greek mythology. Exalted put mankind up against impersonal mythological forces. It doesn't force you into a single (bad) psuedo-Greek narrative. The impersonal cosmic forces are not embodied in the other types of Exalted, who are not in eternal opposition to the Solars. -You just made up "force you into a single (bad) pseudo-Greek narrative". I know why you made it up, but you shouldn't delude yourself about being able to get away with it. -Impersonal cosmic forces are embodied in other types of Exalted and I've explained why. Actually rebut me or admit that you can't. -I never said the other types of Exalted are in eternal opposition of the Solars, so you made that one up, too. quote:What's made up about the notion of them all being made to work toward a purpose that has already been accomplished? That poo poo is explicit. So is the notion that they were somehow all necessary. But you're insisting anything they can "do" that's "goal-oriented" Solars can do better. That makes them lovely subsitutes for a Solar unless their cosmic purpose is sitting around being an incontinent Hydra. So, here's the thing, I mentioned that the hydra can sink ships, ignore mortal weapons, poison fields, etc. You said a Solar could use super attacks to sink ships, use super defenses to ignore mortal weapons, use medicine or sorcery to poison fields - all of these were correct! The thing is, those are all specific Solar characters. If you want to be the ultimate, peerless, unmatched field poisoner, you can build Dr. Blight the Solar mad genius who studies toxic sorcery, builds horrible smog-belching terraforming engines, etcetera, and just horribly poisons everything in their vicinity. In fact, for any abstract goal you name (infiltration, assassination, evangelism, dueling, exploration, military strategy, medicine...) you can design a Solar character who achieves that goal better than anyone else. But, like, you have to design a Solar that does that. They have to be a specialist. Pooh-poohing any given task a Lunar (or Sidereal or etc.) can do with "Yeah well a Solar would just ___!!!" is stupid. A Solar wouldn't just ___. They'd either have that capability or they wouldn't, same as anyone else. There's a ton of poo poo the hydra can do that Hercules specifically can't. MJ12 posted:But one on one? The Solar can lose against an equally invested Lunar. And that's not a problem. Yeah, dude, duh. Solars remain the most powerful of the Exalted even when they're capable of losing a fight through poor planning, bad luck, inexperience, or being deliberately countered or thrust into inopportune circumstances. But they are and should be the most powerful - Solars as administrators and technologists of the Exalted hosts absolutely fail to cut the mustard compared to the standard already set up.
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Jul 23, 2013 06:12
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| # ? May 31, 2024 11:17 |
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As someone who only very recently got interested in Exalted thanks to the kickstarter, Ferrinus is doing a really good job in making the game seem like the least fun and interesting game ever designed from a fluff and mechanics perspective.
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Jul 23, 2013 06:14
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