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AdjectiveNoun posted:1: It is boring and unexciting for one Exalt type to have "Is just better" as their schtick. Unfairness and inequality are absolute cornerstones of Exalted's setting, though. "Is just better" is, I think, a weaselly way to put it - Solars are better in certain ways, with a certain aesthetic, etc - but Creation is massively, massively different, and much less punchy, if there's an expressly egalitarian rather than an expressly unbalanced Exalted host. The Usurpation isn't as impressive if the Solars were politically rather than personally powerful, and the return of the Solars isn't as cataclysmic or threatening to the status quo. "Anyone playing another Exalt type to be flat out /worse/" is not a bug. If you play an adventurer in D&D, you are flat out worse than a dragon. If you play a grog in Ars Magica, you are flat out worse than a wizard. It's an important part of being a Dragon-Blood or a Sidereal or a Lunar that you're a less powerful being than a Solar - it changes the play experience completely, creating problems and challenges where none existed before. It's not actually a problem to be worse, unless your entire goal is "be as powerful as a Solar without being a Solar", which is a weird goal to have for someone who wants to play Exalted. quote:1: Solars having a theme that rewards excellence but not by default - perhaps something based on Virtues, as MiltonSlavemasta and A Raving Loon suggested, as that would be justifiable in-setting since the Unconquered Sun is defined by his virtues more than any other being; allow for Solars to excel at things but not automatically; and provide a nice (and undeniably Human) theme for them. I think the Solar aesthetic should more visibly involve struggle and practical, tangible solutions rather than superhuman physical capacity or flat-out immunity to harm (and that when the latter do happen, it should be in short, expensive bursts). The general idea of making Solars only the best if they're acting in accordance with virtues or leading a unit of mortals or whatever is just a roundabout way of defanging them, though, and not worthy of serious consideration unless you've already accepted that Solars should be on even ground with the other Exalted rather than set above the other Exalted. quote:2: non-Solar Exalts have ways to achieve what Solars can but which require more complicated and/or "consequential" (as in the Apocalypse World-style "you can do this, but as a result [x] happens") means - they're not automatically as good as Solars, but neither are they doomed to second-fiddle status outside of niches. I think this has always been true, at least in the narrative - I know 2E's Essence 6+ stuff gets really silly. Like, what you describe is exactly what the Usurpation was. In fact, let me quote myself from upthread (this was a late-ish edit so I blame no one for missing it): It's important to note that there's also, obviously, nothing that other Exalted can't achieve. For instance, the Sidereals and Dragon-Blooded were able to achieve the total overthrow of the Solar Deliberative at the height of its power. But for them it's slower, messier, and more dangerous. Put another way, if you're not running a Solar game, Solars are potentially apocalyptic hazards and boss monsters - your dealings with them are necessarily about the fact that they're intrinsically superior to you and know it, but that you nevertheless find yourself tasked with finding a way of working with or defeating them. A_Raving_Loon posted:Thank you for this side of the clarification. Rejecting that stuff is the main reason behind a lot of people who want Solars reigned back and put in a place. It get traced back to the stuff about excellence and supremacy, and some decide that means that it needs to change. I'm sorry that I didn't make it clear. I'm not actually practiced in discussing Exalted online, or at least haven't been for years now - I'm dimly aware of how the fanbase is used to thinking about Solars and what kind of rhetoric the fanbase is used to hearing about Solars, but didn't actually associate it with anything I was saying. The human vs. inhuman stuff is my reading of the Exalted setting, incidentally. When I say "Solars defeat Lunars because human effort defeats supernatural power" I mean "One of Exalted's continuing themes is that human effort defeats supernatural power, and the relationship between Solars and Lunars echoes and demonstrates this". In the World of Darkness the opposite is true - humans, no matter how plucky and heroic, are at best going to win limited, phyrric victories and at worse going to be eaten alive if they run afoul of the rest of the world. So, for instance, you can crusade against vampires but will probably just end up turned into a vampire or dead or something. Meanwhile, in Creation, a worldwide effort to eliminate vampires would probably succeed, but, like, way to murder countless people who were just trying to get by, dude.
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Jul 24, 2013 00:34
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Ferrinus posted:Unfairness and inequality are absolute cornerstones of Exalted's setting, though. Could you elaborate on this? You've talked about it in broad strokes, and I can see it's important to your experience with Exalted, but you've not sold me on what makes it key to a better story and a better game than the alternate angles others have discussed.
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Jul 24, 2013 01:25
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Creation is hugely unfair to its inhabitants. It's always contained arbitrary and undemocratic power structures that benefit the top at cost to the bottom, and those power structures have been maintained by objective power disparities between the rulers and the ruled. This echoes all the way down from the primordials ruling the gods to the dragon-blooded ruling over mortals. No one, like, votes on this stuff, and the Solar Deliberative wasn't the result of a popular political movement or ideology - the Solars ruled just as the primordials did, because they were strongest. In a really vague and colloquial sense the Exalted earn their power, but properly speaking there's no way you get to have superhuman powers and a three thousand-odd year lifespan just because you happened to stay when I ran - or, even, just because you happened to stay just at the same time as I did but got lucky because there was only one exaltation to go around rather than two. Exalting is a disruptive event that seriously upsets social relationships because it sets people above their former peers into positions of massive power and privilege, whether it's a random celestial exaltation out in the threshold or a lucky terrestrial exaltation in the middle of the realm. But the rub is, even exaltation doesn't free you from the utterly unjust hierarchies of power that run through Creation top to bottom, just as being the ultimate god of gods didn't free the Unconquered Sun from slavery to the primordials. Exalted is practically about what happens when some people are way, way stronger than others, and even the social relationships of the Exalted themselves are premised heavily on the fact that some Exalted are stronger than others, whether "way, way" or otherwise. The heady rush of suddenly acquiring supreme, unmatched privilege is a huge part of both being and playing as a Solar, and it in turn informs how the other Exalted think about both Solars and themselves. "Yes! I'm an Exalt!" doesn't go as far as "Yes! I'm the mightiest kind of Exalt!" in terms of inspiring you to go out and change the world, and the former likewise doesn't make you as terrifying a villain as the latter.
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Jul 24, 2013 02:07
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While I do see unfairness and inequality as cornerstones of the setting, I don't think I would want unfairness and inequality to occur between the various players at the table in a multi-splat game. I wouldn't want violence to occur between the players (or even the characters, usually) in a violent game, and a Leverage-esque game about deception and misdirection for the greater good doesn't require the players to be lying to each other. I agree with the actual sentence Ferrinus wrote, but I'd never let that setting motif get in the way of the various players being able to contribute equally to the success of the group. Ultimately, the goal is for everyone to have fun.
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Jul 24, 2013 02:08
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In a lot of ways, the game is fundamentally designed in a way that makes cross-splat play hard. There would need to be a serious refocusing that I don't think the current crew would be willing to make in order for it to not be terrible. If you really like Cross-splat I guess start lobbying for that change in Exalted 4E, I guess?
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Jul 24, 2013 02:16
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When narrative superiority is expressed in terms of core statistics and specific effects rather than a chorus echoing from each and every purchased charm, I think multi-splat games can work fine. I want to see dynamics like the one I described with Solar vs. Lunar combatants above, where Solar superiority means that if something is really important and everyone's pouring the absolute maximum amount of power they can into it, the Solar is probably going to get their way because victory is scribed into their souls rather than just being something they happen to want - but there's really no need for each and every action a Solar takes to be 50% better than each and every action a DB takes, or for Solars to violate their own thematic premises and perform feats that would properly require a castle-sized giant to accomplish in one action. My Hercules vs. the hydra example from pages ago was completely sincere - I think there's a lot of stuff a hydra can do that Hercules can't, even if it isn't actually better at beating single enemies in a straight-up fight in the abstract zoomed-out %chance to win sense. (It probably is better at fighting an entire army, unless that army knows what's up and brought some torches) I'd be perfectly happy if Exalted 3E had "here's about how much bonus XP you should give a Dragon-Blood to make them even with a Lunar" charts, although I could see the developers arguing that that constitutes pulling the curtain too far back/would be impossible to quantify anyway. I do think it's important for someone who plays a DB in a Solar Circle or vice versa and who doesn't therefore take some kind of XP consolation prize to get a "genuine" Exalted experience - until their social standing, political connections, or elemental skills become important, they should feel a bit like a twelve year old hanging out with a bunch of teenagers that keep getting into trouble. One point that keeps coming up in threads about XP disparity resulting from poor chargen rules is that a lot of people genuinely do like playing the oddball underdog, even to the extent of making their character a heroic mortal or something, and Exalted is a loose enough kind of game that it doesn't actually suffer if one PC is the bumbling, constantly-in-trouble sidekick of another if that's what they purposely signed up for.
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Jul 24, 2013 02:28
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Ferrinus posted:I'd be perfectly happy if Exalted 3E had "here's about how much bonus XP you should give a Dragon-Blood to make them even with a Lunar" charts, although I could see the developers arguing that that constitutes pulling the curtain too far back/would be impossible to quantify anyway. If the power scale is smooth enough that you can reasonably shift from one tier to another with a simple XP bump, why not slide the baseline for player characters that far over, and note that a PC of that type represents someone well above the norm?
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Jul 24, 2013 02:41
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Ferrinus posted:When narrative superiority is expressed in terms of core statistics and specific effects rather than a chorus echoing from each and every purchased charm, I think multi-splat games can work fine. I want to see dynamics like the one I described with Solar vs. Lunar combatants above, where Solar superiority means that if something is really important and everyone's pouring the absolute maximum amount of power they can into it, the Solar is probably going to get their way because victory is scribed into their souls rather than just being something they happen to want - but there's really no need for each and every action a Solar takes to be 50% better than each and every action a DB takes, or for Solars to violate their own thematic premises and perform feats that would properly require a castle-sized giant to accomplish in one action. My Hercules vs. the hydra example from pages ago was completely sincere - I think there's a lot of stuff a hydra can do that Hercules can't, even if it isn't actually better at beating single enemies in a straight-up fight in the abstract zoomed-out %chance to win sense. (It probably is better at fighting an entire army, unless that army knows what's up and brought some torches) I'm pretty much down with all of this and think it would probably be the best thing that would actually end up happening, given the developers' stated stance on the issue. An added advantage is that if "superiority is expressed in terms of core statistics and specific effects" then it'd be pretty visible what needed to be done to make an Exalt from another type who is really on the level of whatever bigger Exalts they are rolling with. The little brother option being there is great for people who want it, and because I don't think "A Dragonblooded who can hang with Lunars" or "A Sidereal who's as useful as any of our Solars" are unreasonable requests for a player to make in many games (though they are unreasonable in some), being able to see where the core statistics diverge and what special effects are there would make it pretty easy to make whatever you need to suit your players, i.e., a Dragonblooded with the undiluted blood of Our Empress Kerensky, a Sidereal with access to lost techniques, or whatever. A_Raving_Loon posted:If the power scale is smooth enough that you can reasonably shift from one tier to another with a simple XP bump, why not slide the baseline for player characters that far over, and note that a PC of that type represents someone well above the norm? If the developers are able to make the power scale that smooth, I'll be pleasantly surprised.
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Jul 24, 2013 02:43
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A_Raving_Loon posted:If the power scale is smooth enough that you can reasonably shift from one tier to another with a simple XP bump, why not slide the baseline for player characters that far over, and note that a PC of that type represents someone well above the norm? To an extent, I feel like the 1e books did stuff like this because they made default Solar characters only two or three years Exalted, but made default DB characters established dynasts with the ability to start with tons of artifacts, or whatever. I think it'd be weird, though, if cracking open the chargen rules and running them straight gave you either a fresh-faced Solar, a newly-blooded Lunar or finally-gotten-their-own-cubicle Sidereal, or a veteran Terrestrial, though. I think it serves the setting better if all chargen systems defaulted to "recently established" or some equivalent, so that players and storytellers both had a baseline of what kind of power they could expect from other characters of their own splat and of others. Remember, one of the biggest purposes that fully compatible rules for different Exalt types serves is it allows STs to construct complex antagonist characters. What I mean is, like, in Vampire you start with three dots of Disciplines - so if you run into a vampire with thirty dots of Disciplines, you're like, holy poo poo, I'd better not gently caress around here. Chargen systems are part of the way a game teaches its setting.
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Jul 24, 2013 02:54
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Ferrinus posted:Well, I think a lot more people are on the same page at this point in the discussion rather than yesterday, so there are two senses in which it might be read as a problem, one which I agree with and one which I don't: If your argument is that the Solar is a better 'fighter' overall but the Lunar or Alchemical or Sidereal can do individual things that fall under the purview of fighting (like crush armies, or survive grievous harm, or 'create a subtle and masterful entrapment strategy' or 'fight a battle inside the toxic world-body of the Primordial of decay and renewal') better than the Solar, I think that's actually a lot more reasonable than what I thought you were trying to say. Sorry for misunderstanding you as saying #1, because that's the most common kind of 'Solar Supremacy' you see.
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Jul 24, 2013 03:08
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Segueing into a different topic, with Solar Hero moving into the realm of Brawl Charms, I wonder what an iconic Solar Martial Art would be like. It would seem natural to maybe make something like the "Four Golden Arms" style where practitioners learn how to use all of four iconic weapons at once.
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Jul 24, 2013 03:41
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The iconic Solar martial art should be some sort of pankration. Grappling rules  (Solar Hero kinda sorta flirted with this but was more "punch things real strong, also smash stuff, occasionally have something to do with throwing dudes.")
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Jul 24, 2013 03:51
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Kai Tave posted:The iconic Solar martial art should be some sort of pankration. Grappling rules I'd like the Solar Brawl charms to be full of pankration, especially because I really want them to have that Greek hero vibe. I'd also love to be able to play a grappling fighter without having to interact with a stupid grappling subsystem.
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Jul 24, 2013 03:54
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In spite of everything else I've said I keep imagining some kind of pinnacle charm where your anima actually coheres into two extra arms and you also develop a nigh-inescapable gravity well that crushes and burns nearby enemies. Edit: Important reminder that before you learn Martial Arts you should check whether they use Martial Arts, since some Martial Arts don't use Martial Arts but certain non-Martial Arts charms are based off your Martial Arts
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Jul 24, 2013 03:58
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MiltonSlavemasta posted:Segueing into a different topic, with Solar Hero moving into the realm of Brawl Charms, I wonder what an iconic Solar Martial Art would be like. It would seem natural to maybe make something like the "Four Golden Arms" style where practitioners learn how to use all of four iconic weapons at once.  OK homosex wrestling can stay.
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Jul 24, 2013 03:59
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Bedlamdan posted:Yeah, at the very least I don't think it's going to be an open and shut thing when a Solar fights a Lunar anymore, which I like. Ideally, I'd like to see a Solar Blademaster looks at a Lunar in its giant Kaiju form, and think to himself "I could really die here." Given that Hatewheel said earlier that a farmboy with a knife might be able to kill a trained swordsman, or that a Solar might have a tough time against five heroic mortals, I think that a Lunar might have better odds when squaring off mono-a-mono with a Solar in 3E. Mono-a-mono translates into monkey-to-monkey, making this the awesomest visual image for Exalted that I've gotten in a while.
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Jul 24, 2013 04:39
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Backed away from this thread for a while since people like Loon and Nessus were speaking my mind and I did not want to cheerlead but I think now I have a point of my own I would like to articulate. The 'Solar Supremacy' thing is kind of a symptom of a greater problem in Exalted. That being, a general lack of the ability to see the forest for the trees, among devs and fans alike. See, I like the Exalted setting. Kind of. When I was first introduced to this game, it really floored me. An amazing world that held elements of the fantasy genre I likes (swords, sorcery) but WASN'T Lord of the Rings. It was honest to god fantasy, crazy places with strange features and fauna that looked vastly different from most of the fantasy fare in the market. Until they zoomed in. In second edition especially, they had a problem of over-explaining, of killing the mystery, and just telling you everything instead of letting your group find/make-up things as they went. Gethaname is just a powerful raksha, the empress is engaged to the Ebon Dragon, the list goes on. So how does this tie into Solar Supremacy? Because it does not stop at the setting. They get hyper specific about the mechanics, and tie those mechanics into the hyper specific setting, and so with all these complicated moving parts, there are tons of stress points and more ways for the whole to fail instead of a sturdier simpler design  .And so the statement "solars are the first among equals" is a thing that echoes throughout all of those mechanics, and it's mucked up the whole balance and flow of the game because not only do we need to worry about this lunar charm working in line with the mote economy, action economy, and the specifics of the 10-step combat system, it also needs to be better than similar dragon blooded charms and worse than similar solar charms. See, I can live with Solar Supremacy, I would prefer it not be there, but I can live with it. The problem comes with how it is implemented in this stupidly complicated dumb elfgame. So we come back to the devs being unable to see the forest for the trees, instead of making the exlats fun to play which should be job #1 in a loving tabletop rpg, they are too busy wanking off to the setting. Long story short, the game suffers terribly because instead of embracing 'less is more', the game is super complicated and too busy focusing on the meaning of a mote or the specifics of magic ipods in the first age instead of, you know, making a fun and engaging game.
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Jul 24, 2013 08:19
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Ferrinus posted:To an extent, I feel like the 1e books did stuff like this because they made default Solar characters only two or three years Exalted, but made default DB characters established dynasts with the ability to start with tons of artifacts, or whatever. I'll admit that if the curve is indeed smooth enough to make such shifts feasible, you can set the baselines anywhere and have things work out. They'd just need to be open and transparent about how far off each one is. So, now that I've sat back and let you explain yourself (quite well), I'd like to try to paraphrase so I can be sure we're on the same page. Solars, who embody excellence, are unparalleled in their expression of human skills. In a situation that comes down to a direct contest of skills, a Solar will trump a non-solar because straightforward throw-skill-at-problem is the Solar's thing. (And aside, you would see this implemented in a compact and elegant mechanical form than has been done in prior editions of the game) However, opportunity would limit how many skills any one Solar can push to these extremes, and the various non-Solars have ways to contest the Solar by making the situation into something other than a direct clash of skills. Examples given so far being things like ignoring the consequences of being struck by your opponent's expert blows via regeneration, and defeating an army by commanding the forest they're marching through to spring to life and attack them. The application of such abilities should be potent enough in effect to threaten and challenge the Solar. Is this all sounding reasonable so far? Aside, since it's been brought up here, how would you feel about adding grand physical manipulation of one's environment to the Terrestrial portfolio? Earthquakes, Hurricanes, Firestorms, and Tidal Waves have always struck me as natural weapons for high-end elemental warriors, but the game as written to date has preferred to lock such things away deep in their movesets without so much as a taste of it until you've thrown down a lot of exp.
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Jul 24, 2013 18:15
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I agree with pretty much everything you've written there. I don't actually know how big an earthquake is appropriate to how many dots of Essence for an earth aspect since of course none of us actually know any of the benchmarks for supernatural scope 3E is using, but I'm right there on the picket line vis-a-vis giving the Dragon-Blooded more obvious and direct pyro/hydro/aero/geo/dendrokinesis.
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Jul 24, 2013 18:22
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I want to be able to write a Dragonblooded general called Mnemon's Meteor who floats above the battlefield on a piece of rock he controls, out of sight to only the airborne and most observant. When you've think you're pushing back his forces, creating a salient into his lines, he crashes to the ground and begins the encirclement himself, on foot, opening chasms beneath the poor individuals trapped between him and his forces. This parable is here because while the grand physical manipulation of one's environment is good, especially for Elders, the small manipulation of one's environment opens up a lot of space for Dragonblooded to be awesome in their own right and able to use cleverness to compensate for not being a Celestial.
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Jul 24, 2013 18:28
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That's pretty neat. I like that sort of thing. Anything much more than The Last Airbender-style 'bending' I probably would rather have in Sorcery, though, as it kind of feels too far removed from the human scale if the normal scale for Terrestrials was actually in the "shape terrain" for Charms.
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Jul 24, 2013 18:54
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Ferrinus posted:I agree with pretty much everything you've written there. I don't actually know how big an earthquake is appropriate to how many dots of Essence for an earth aspect since of course none of us actually know any of the benchmarks for supernatural scope 3E is using, but I'm right there on the picket line vis-a-vis giving the Dragon-Blooded more obvious and direct pyro/hydro/aero/geo/dendrokinesis. This is good to hear! The main drive behind my wish to see Solars balanced comes down to wanting a good setting in which to play games, which for me comes down to presenting the players with a wide variety of potential conflicts to get involved in, with a variety of ways for them to resolve. To that end, each element brought into the setting should bring something to the table. If it's a potential ally, it should have something of value to offer. If it's an enemy it should be able to put up a credible challenge. Otherwise, why are they even there? The way that Solar Supremacy has been implemented in the past has tended to play out anti-conflict. Building someone who is The Best At X would quickly render X irrelevant to the campaign because there would exist nothing which could challenge them in that field. If the situation called for your skill of choice, you'd push your little magic buttons and watch the problem drown in dice. When you're fresh off other games that make you fight tooth and nail every step of the way that's great fun! That quickly fades when you realize that investing points in your favourite thing to do means, in practice, you don't get to do that any more. From what you've said now, and agreed to from my last post, I see that you don't want the game to wind up that way. But it really sounds like you do when you say things like, "If you want to accomplish goals, be a Solar!" when what you mean may have a bit more nuance than that.
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Jul 24, 2013 18:54
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A big part of the Solar Supremacy problem is one of misguided scope. 2e was infamous for this. Solars are so badass they can chew on nails and spit them so hard that they break the sky! When a Solar swings his sword, Creation shifts off its moorings! When a Solar speaks, the very physical concepts that form the universe quake in fear! Etc. (I don't think any of those are actual Charms, but I think most people agree that's where high Essence game discussions tend to head towards). I think the trick is to just take normal things people can do and crank up the numbers. People can run fast, so a Solar can run faster. People can throw far, so Solars can throw further. Dump Solar flight. Seriously, drop flying, it's stupid, that's something Lunars should be able to do. Things get grayer when you're talking about things that are impossible on Earth but common in creation - Thaumaturgy, Wyld-manipulation and prayer, for instance - but I think you could still extrapolate up from mortals. Yeah. Earthquakes should not be a property of Solars, nor sentient fires, nor flight, nor the ability to manipulate Fate (even if they punch Fate really, really hard).
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Jul 24, 2013 19:16
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From an outsider's perspective on Exalted, the way I see it is that Lunars are pulled in too many conceptual directions to have a coherent theme or place in the setting. I'm not a big fan of Lunars, but I think this has to do with their execution rather than anything else about them. From the top of my head, you have four different concepts:
So what would I do to fix Lunars? I'm not comfortable enough to really say, and probably a lot of these suggestions are already implemented or buried in the fluff, but I think there are a few things they need to do. First, make Rage Against The Heavens the splat's main theme: they're people who have a bone to pick with society or gods, which can also tie into the fact that Lunars get their exaltation from surviving the impossible. This doesn't have to be actual anger, but there's generally going to be a lot of animosity with established authorities in heaven and earth for the average Lunar, between constant Wyld Hunts and petty gods who still remember when their ancestors used them as footstools. Arnold's rendition of Conan and the Count of Monte Cristo should both be supported character archetypes. The second thing that I'd do is probably the most controversial: remove shapeshifting as a required aspect of being a Lunar. Shapeshifting should be easily available for Lunars, and they should have the best charms relating to it (aside from the Infernal's This Isn't Even My Final Form ones, which are more limited in scope), but there should be support for Lunars that don't want to have shapeshifting aspects. When I originally heard about Lunars, I was expecting something like Enkidu, who has bestial features but doesn't actually turn into an animal and hangs out with his God-King bro in a city (who he beat up in a wrestling match to stop his reign of terror). It sounds like they're already planning to do this in a roundabout way. Speaking of which, ditch Tells and all that. It's absurd that the Shapeshifting Exalt That Is Good at Shapeshifting can immediately be recognized based on tattoos and vestigial animal traits. Third, and this is more of a general design goal for any splat, I'd make each of the three Lunar castes do something that no other caste or splat can do. We've got three castes which boil down in concept to warrior, trickster and shaman. The 2E abilities for Full Moons and Changing Moons are pretty good in general theme, though ranged combat lunars aren't supported well by the Full Moon anima power. Changing Moon / Trickster should be the caste that is the most focused on shapeshifting, so that's a useful one still. The No Moon / Shaman could have an ability that is kind of halfway between an Eclipse and Twilight, where they have diplomatic immunity with Elementals and can impress lesser ones into service like Diet Demons. And this brings me to a cool reimagining of what Lunars did back in the First Age: they helped to bridge the gap between heaven and earth. Lunars have skills that make them absolutely great at controlling elementals and other natural creatures, but they also helped the Exalted coordinate with each other (which makes those Lunar Bond abilities applicable to more than just Solars). Rather than simply being the partner-consorts of Solars, Lunars acted more like the trusted advisor, spymaster, bodyguard or general of a Roman Emperor, adept in all sorts of tasks. Luna's close relationship with Gaia also gave them special dominion over her creatures, whether elemental or mortal in nature. They were caught between three masters: Gaia, Luna, and the UCS, and helped to administer and troubleshoot a vast and dangerous terrestrial realm with their adaptability. And suddenly their masters abandon them and they are betrayed by Terrestrials and Sidereals alike. Unfortunately for them, the very skills that made Lunars such effective troubleshooters for the Solars also made them the most dangerous threat to the new order. Their Warriors could cause entire rebel phalanxes to shatter with a single battle roar and smell the others ten miles away. Their Tricksters could be in two places at once, disguised as two different creatures. Their Shamans could disrupt all the essence lines in a manse and release bound elementals with but a word. Heaven and earth may be against them, but they won't go so quickly unlike the Solars. Man, I didn't even like Lunars until I wrote this loving wall of text. I guess the whole "three masters" thing also keeps the problem that Lunars have too many disparate concepts, but maybe explicitly acknowledging it and accounting for it can make it better. Spiderfist Island fucked around with this message at 20:12 on Jul 24, 2013 |
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Jul 24, 2013 20:10
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I'm a supporter of werewolves + transhuman beasts, of course. I don't think that all Lunars absolutely have to be shapeshifters or rely on war forms to win high-stakes fights, but I think the natural aesthetic of Lunars is one of bestial, primal, and supernatural power. One Lunar might come off like a werewolf, but another might be a psychic and a third some kind of bioengineered metahuman. I've never actually read the Argent Witches project and have no real intention of doing so, but my understanding is that they ended up getting really Infernal-y with their Lunar charms and made Lunar powers do weird, abstract, and metaphorical things. I think Lunar superhumanity should work in basically intuitive and """natural""" ways - you don't get strong enough to punch through concepts, but you do get strong enough to punch through steel, at-will. While Solars should be visibly and undeniably superhuman in bursts of essence-driven effort, Lunars should enjoy superhumanity in their default, resting state and their active magic should involve expanding on or evolving their intrinsic powers - growing new heads, sharpening an aura of allure into a beacon of irresistible obsession, etc.
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Jul 24, 2013 20:52
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I would like for them to spend a little more on the "Lunars as Shepard of the Fae". In 2E it was basically just mentioned that "Hey, they can also use Fair Folks Graces", and I think it could be nice thematically to give them so more building up in that direction for those who don't wanna be literal Werewolfs, they can play with Chaos Sorcery. Edit: My general feel for how the balance between Solar and Lunar is supposed to go is that Lunars should be stronger, tougher, smarter and more P\perceptive than Solars. But, Solars are better fencers, better sailers, better engineers etc. But it seemed like the writers in 2E were too hesitant to actually say that "Yes a Lunar can be smarter than a Solar" and it was hard to represent Attributes as separate from Abilities. PrinceRandom fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Jul 24, 2013 |
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Jul 24, 2013 21:04
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Have there ever been Exalted miniatures? For that matter, has White Wolf ever done miniature lines for any of their games? I know they're not really games designed for miniatures, but since I started messing around with my Bones figures, it came to mind. I wonder what it's involved with making that kind of thing happen; I guess there's a reason they've never done it before.
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Jul 25, 2013 18:14
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Heart Attacks posted:Have there ever been Exalted miniatures? For that matter, has White Wolf ever done miniature lines for any of their games? Anima miniatures work extremely well as Exalted miniatures. Anime and all that. But it fits rather well with a decent paintjob. Found a great Knight piece that has a giant, daiklave-eque sword.
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Jul 25, 2013 19:21
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Heart Attacks posted:Have there ever been Exalted miniatures? For that matter, has White Wolf ever done miniature lines for any of their games?
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Jul 25, 2013 21:38
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Zest posted:Anima miniatures work extremely well as Exalted miniatures. Anime and all that. But it fits rather well with a decent paintjob. Found a great Knight piece that has a giant, daiklave-eque sword. I actually bought a set of Anima figures with intent to convert them into our Dragon-Blood PCs. We even found this to use as a simhata, though I haven't gotten around to ordering one yet.
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Jul 26, 2013 21:27
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So how many of you folks think this thing will be out in October? I personally feel at earliest it will be November. I remember how slow it took to get the Kickstarter up by itself. Then of course the equipment book will probably be pushed back too. Sigh, the bad part of an entirely new edition is having to buy all those books again and at a very slow pace. I would like to run something darker like Abyssals, but I guess ill be running Solars again.
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Aug 16, 2013 20:20
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Run Abyssals using solar charms, refluffed to be evil. Hey, it worked for most of 2E! For a given value of worked, mind.
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Aug 16, 2013 21:26
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I don't see any point in expecting it during 2013. I mean, if they decide to give out the .doc draft like Chuubo or other games did, we might see that this year? Maybe? But probably not.
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Aug 16, 2013 21:54
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For those whose only source of Exalted news is this thread: Onyx Path Release Schedule, Aug 2013-Aug 2014 Ian W posted:October 2013 So much for the theory that they would release the splats in the same order as last edition. It's anyone's guess as to the release order now. And my wallet is not looking pleased at the prospect of two more Deluxe KSs in the first half of 2014. Edit: Went WW Forum diving for your pleasure. Holden posted:I suspect Rich may have squinched the releases together unrealistically for the sake of getting more books on there for you guys to see. Holden posted:Up until about a month ago, we still had both lethal soak and bashing soak as separate things. Then we decided it would make everyone’s life easier to just revert to one unified soak (Lethal and Bashing remain as damage types, but they only matter to your Health Track, not your armor). This necessitated combing through everything we’d already written to tweak it into compliance, redefining how Stamina interacted with soak, etc. NIV3K fucked around with this message at 08:59 on Aug 23, 2013 |
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Aug 23, 2013 08:43
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NIV3K posted:So much for the theory that they would release the splats in the same order as last edition. It's anyone's guess as to the release order now. And my wallet is not looking pleased at the prospect of two more Deluxe KSs in the first half of 2014. Well, the deluxe KS are aimed to people that really like the Exalteds in that specific splat. You can still save money and just buy the pdf, but if someone is a BIG fan of DragonBlooded, he can get a fancy book to show it. Oh man, October! Just two months away/still two freaking months away! I'm really looking forward to this. I'm also glad that Dragonblooded and exigent are the first splats, since they are the more common exalted in the world, and I really like DB campaigns. It's interesting that the first setting book is so far away from the core. Hopefully the later can provide enough setting material.
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Aug 23, 2013 08:57
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That's an, uh, ambitious release schedule.
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Aug 23, 2013 08:58
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Hugoon Chavez posted:It's interesting that the first setting book is so far away from the core. Hopefully the later can provide enough setting material. Well technically the first setting book is the Realm one, which is the third book. But that's only so useful to most games. And I'm one of those big Exalted fans who wants all the pretty Deluxe books, though I likely don't have the income for it. Attorney at Funk posted:That's an, uh, ambitious release schedule. I can almost guarantee they will not meet it. At least with regards to the splat books.
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Aug 23, 2013 09:16
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NIV3K posted:
True, and it deals with the Threshold, too, so that might be plenty of content. I just associated it so close to the Dragonblooded, I skipped it! Yeah the schedule is kinda crazy, but consider this: Arms is probably well into development right now, as I'm sure a big part of it is content that didn't fit in the corebook. The realm and dragonblooded are so close together that they probably can work on both at the same time, too. So those first three supplements might get done faster than you think. What bothers me is this: they keep promising that it's going to be the most playtested game from WW, ever (which isn't setting the bar that high, honestly), but are 2 months enough to playtest things like the Exigent, which doesn't even have a base on previous game mechanics? Hopefully, it is, because I would hate for the game to become a clusterfuck of bad mechanics, again.
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Aug 23, 2013 10:20
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Backer update. Looks like even the team is realizing that October was too ambious. Currently it is on a wait and see. Still aiming for October but unlikely. Holden is apparently rewriting the Dodge Charms right now.
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Aug 24, 2013 03:44
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| # ? May 29, 2024 14:29 |
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We really are going to be shooting for Old-Timey White Wolf levels of release density once the corebook is out—that was six to eight releases per gameline per year, although in this case it's just the one gameline. Those numbers were doable back in the day.
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Aug 24, 2013 04:26
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