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axelsoar posted:The problem here is what do the twilights do when combat breaks out? Twiddle their thumbs? Hide behind the Dawn caste? Especially since combat is such a major part of the system you can't have people sit out of it. You don't make craft draw from the same character creation and advancement pool as combat. You give everyone something to do when a fight breaks out, and you give everyone something to do during downtime. It has always been stupid design to make players choose whether or not they have to sit out when action occurs (or when anything occurs.) If you want some particular thing to be a major part of the game, take up a significant part of the focus, then don't make people have to decide to sit that out to do something less exciting. Alternately, the Twilight could just learn Melee, because you know, there's nothing going to stop them except for 2e's stupid Craft system where Craft has as many subskills as the entire rest of the sheet has normal skills. Doesn't really make much sense that mastering a sword means also mastering every other melee weapon but a blacksmith can't figure out how to build a stone wall to save their life. Heart Attacks fucked around with this message at 10:43 on Nov 6, 2013 |
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Nov 6, 2013 10:37
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Heart Attacks posted:You don't make craft draw from the same character creation and advancement pool as combat. You give everyone something to do when a fight breaks out, and you give everyone something to do during downtime. That is a way to do it, yes. Or you could let people do stuff in "Combat Time" other than swing swords. Let the Twilight win fights with his unmatched wits. Not necessarily attack with crafts, but let them do something Twilighty in combat (such as making combat sorcery not awful.)
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Nov 6, 2013 10:43
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axelsoar posted:That is a way to do it, yes. Right, but I'll take this more seriously when someone can tell me what "fights with unmatched wits" actually means, because usually fighting really well falls under the realm of the fighting traits. I don't like "I don't want to invest in fighting but I want to be good at fighting" as an argument, mostly because it suggests that, say, the guy with Craft should be good at Craft and fighting, and the guy who's good at fighting should just be good at fighting. No, let's not let non-combat skills do double duty and make combat skills obsolete, let's just not make being good at one exclude being good at the other. Heart Attacks fucked around with this message at 10:48 on Nov 6, 2013 |
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Nov 6, 2013 10:44
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Yeah, I gotta say that, at least in my own personal experience, "spotlight time divided by action type" (i.e. you have the Combat Guy and the Crafting Guy and the Sneaky Guy etc.) is one of those things that made a lot of sense when I first got into RPGs 15-some-odd years ago but now I look at it and go "this is actually pretty loving stupid." Especially in a game like Exalted, where everybody really ought to have some degree of "can kick rear end" built in by default in a game of larger-than-life mythic heroics and wuxia-influenced combat.
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Nov 6, 2013 10:46
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Heart Attacks posted:Right, but I'll take this more seriously when someone can tell me what "fights with unmatched wits" actually means, because usually fighting really falls under the realm of the fighting traits. Abstract out combat victory away from "Reduce their HP to 0". Make it a generic stress track that can harmed a multitude of ways, Beating them down with swords, Talking them down with words, or backing them into a corner with wits. There are dozens of ways to handle it. Heart Attacks posted:No, let's not let non-combat skills do double duty and make combat skills obsolete, let's just not make being good at one mutually exclusive from being good at the other. Or maybe the Dawn Caste conceptually is stupid as hell, and there is a reason all other castes/aspects in later splats divy up combat stats. "I do the fightans" is not a reasonable character concept in a game where everybody should be fighting, it is the same reason the fighter is as presented in D&D is stupid. Ash Rose fucked around with this message at 10:50 on Nov 6, 2013 |
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Nov 6, 2013 10:47
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axelsoar posted:Abstract out combat victory away from "Reduce their HP to 0". Make it a generic stress track that can harmed a multitude of ways, Beating them down with swords, Talking them down with words, or backing them into a corner with wits. I have never found this to be a very exciting approach. Again, if you're abstracting everything to the point that you can use anything to accomplish anything, why isn't there just one stat called Do Stuff? The hilarious part is that you didn't change Reduce their HP to 0, you just said now you can do HP damage by yelling at people (or apparently by building things.) quote:Or maybe the Dawn Caste conceptually is stupid as hell, and there is a reason all other castes/aspects in later splats divy up combat stats. "I do the fightans" is not a reasonable character concept in a game where everybody should be fighting, it is the same reason the fighter is as presented in D&D is stupid. Is your counterpoint "I agree with you"? It sounds like you're taking an argumentative stance here while you vigorously agree with me. The problem with the Dawn is not that nobody else can fight, though. You don't need to be a Dawn to be good at combat. You just need to not be the Twilight who doesn't invest in any combat skills. Heart Attacks fucked around with this message at 10:53 on Nov 6, 2013 |
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Nov 6, 2013 10:50
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Heart Attacks posted:The hilarious part is that you didn't change Reduce their HP to 0, you just said now you can do HP damage by yelling at people (or apparently by building things.) The point was not against reducing a number to 0 to win, but about fighting being the only way to incapacitate an opponent. Edit: yeah, we are kinda agreeing with each other in an rear end-backwards kinda way, it seems clear to me I like more abstracted games and you like them a little more crunchy, to each their own.
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Nov 6, 2013 10:53
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The Dawn Caste is dumb as presented though, there's no two ways about it.
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Nov 6, 2013 10:53
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axelsoar posted:The point was not against reducing a number to 0 to win, but about fighting being the only way to incapacitate an opponent. you posted:Abstract out combat victory away from "Reduce their HP to 0". I can't help if your games have no other win condition than murder. That's a table problem, not a system problem. I do think that violence should generally be the best way to murder people, though, and if you want to murder people well, you should maybe invest in that. I don't think you should invest all of your resources in not-murdering-things and then be upset that when it comes to pass that everyone's got swords drawn, the negotiations have failed, and people are going to murder each other that you can't do it. My solution to this is to make sure that the choice to not have any thing useful to do (because you spent all of your character creation resources on things that are not applicable in a Time To Die situation) simply isn't a choice. You can't spend all of your points on building cars. You have to be able to do something when someone tries to kill you. Heart Attacks fucked around with this message at 10:57 on Nov 6, 2013 |
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Nov 6, 2013 10:54
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HP in the sense of "Hit Points", A number you reduce by hitting them.quote:I can't help if your games have no other win condition than murder. That's a table problem, not a system problem. Could you be any more passive aggressive? There is no system for winning via The mind, and the one that exists for winning via talking is awful. That, and they do not work together at all. Sending players into a corner while combat Chuck fights, or mental Manny thinks is dumb. Ash Rose fucked around with this message at 11:06 on Nov 6, 2013 |
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Nov 6, 2013 10:56
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axelsoar posted:HP in the sense of "Hit Points", A number you reduce by hitting them. Yes. The thing you just said you want to get rid of. And then you explained that you would do this by letting people reduce that number in different ways. Calling it a 'stress track' instead of 'HP' is not a significant distinction! Again: If everyone has a Generic Stress Track that can be targeted by Any Ability, why do we have multiple abilities and not just Do Stuff? I'm not opposed to Do Stuff; I mean, 3:16 has Kill Stuff and Do Everything Else and it works fine. If you're going to have more than just Do Stuff, though, you have to justify that. Heart Attacks fucked around with this message at 11:01 on Nov 6, 2013 |
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Nov 6, 2013 10:58
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axelsoar posted:HP in the sense of "Hit Points", A number you reduce by hitting them. Yeah but then how are you using your not-fight skills to incapacitate someone, exactly? Unless you're looking at the social-fu equivalent of a save-or-die, chances are it's still going to boil down to "roll SKILL until THRESHOLD is reached and CONSEQUENCE occurs." Even Fate works that way with its mental stress tracks. You can abstractly take someone out in all sorts of ways in Fate but it still all basically works like shooting them in the face. The point Heavy Arms is making is that if you're making a game where it's possible for players to pick a full spread of non-combat skills but that game is Exalted which is a game of high-flying kung fu action and crazy battles and stuff, then you've made a game where it's possible for players to accidentally lock themselves out of getting in on the wuxia action. That's dumb. Giving the players who loaded up on all non-combat skills the opportunity to be just as effective at "taking out" people however it happens with their non-combat skills isn't a great solution either though because now the people who invested in combat skills just bought a bunch of limited-application abilities while the Iron Gardner over there is capable of both kicking rear end and building Manses with the same skill, so you've basically reversed the problem. The ideal solution, to me, seems to be the D&D4E approach. Everyone has kung fu, everyone can participate in kung fu fights whether their kung fu is a result of supreme martial talent or scholarly wisdom and pressure points or crazy ninja stealth-kills or I KICK rear end FOR THE LORD or whatever. Then on top of that everybody also gets out-of-combat stuff too.
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Nov 6, 2013 11:05
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Kai Tave posted:Yeah but then how are you using your not-fight skills to incapacitate someone, exactly? Unless you're looking at the social-fu equivalent of a save-or-die, chances are it's still going to boil down to "roll SKILL until THRESHOLD is reached and CONSEQUENCE occurs." Even Fate works that way with its mental stress tracks. You can abstractly take someone out in all sorts of ways in Fate but it still all basically works like shooting them in the face. I really don't mind that talking and thinking can be abstracted into the same system as combat. The problem, as I have stated several times, is that there is no way to subdue someone without hitting them with your sword. quote:
Totally! But exalted can be more than just wuxia, and if they still insist on keeping the solar castes the way they are then there should be ways for all the castes to contribute without being diet dawn castes. quote:Giving the players who loaded up on all non-combat skills the opportunity to be just as effective at "taking out" people however it happens with their non-combat skills isn't a great solution either though because now the people who invested in combat skills just bought a bunch of limited-application abilities while the Iron Gardner over there is capable of both kicking rear end and building Manses with the same skill, so you've basically reversed the problem. Right, I would say if you kept the skills the way they are now the non-combat approaches to combat should be less effective. One other solution would be... quote:
...that, or redo the skills so that they happen to be more involved than "melee" or "Thrown".
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Nov 6, 2013 11:16
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Kai Tave posted:To elaborate so it doesn't seem like I'm just threadshitting, the problem with crafting as a Thing You Do is it's largely A). static and B). passive. You're sitting in a workshop making something. That's boring. Most attempts to spice crafting up involve activities that are not sitting around and making something (questing for rare ingredients/parts, having to earn a bunch of money to afford the costs, etc.). In fact, what makes the Apocalypse System work is that it's entirely based around "stuff that isn't actually making the whatever you want to make." The default assumption is that you succeed if you go through the following, more interesting steps, but the actual act of crafting is given no mechanical attention whatsoever. Yes! This is all great. Honestly I think if you've got the right craft proficiency - genesis, earth, air, helltech, whatever - and you could conceivably get access to the right resources, you should be able to build pretty much anything you want. Whether or not a thing works isn't a very interesting question in my opinion. Like you said, the interesting part is the consequences. Exalted isn't about whether or not you were able to make a magic sword, it's about the Great and Terrible Consequences of making a magic sword. I think part of the problem with Craft in Exalted is that you've got dots in it at all - I don't think putting quantitative limits on what you can craft is interesting or useful. I really need to work on this a bit more though! I've been fiddling around with a PBTA Exalted hack, maybe I'll write something up for that. In regards to combat crafting, I remember I wanted to make this move for Solar Craft which was basically "skin the Nemean Lion mid-combat and steal his pelt" or "rip the wings off a Thunderbird mid-flight and glide safely to the ground with them" - basically you could craft magic items out of monster parts instantly. I think combat crafting Charms should basically be "you make a cool useful thing instantly without needing to use the tools or resources you'd normally need to use" - just a variant on Craftsman Needs No Tools. Also, I think Craft Charms should expand what you can use for materials - an Abyssal forges a sword from human anguish, a Solar paints masterpieces from liquid sunlight, builds castles in the clouds. Basically anything which lets you do cool mythical stuff is good.
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Nov 6, 2013 11:22
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Bigup DJ posted:Yes! This is all great. Honestly I think if you've got the right craft proficiency - genesis, earth, air, helltech, whatever - and you could conceivably get access to the right resources, you should be able to build pretty much anything you want. Whether or not a thing works isn't a very interesting question in my opinion. Like you said, the interesting part is the consequences. Exalted isn't about whether or not you were able to make a magic sword, it's about the Great and Terrible Consequences of making a magic sword. I think part of the problem with Craft in Exalted is that you've got dots in it at all - I don't think putting quantitative limits on what you can craft is interesting or useful. I really need to work on this a bit more though! I've been fiddling around with a PBTA Exalted hack, maybe I'll write something up for that. It might work to make Craft work like a pseudo-Background sort of thing. In terms of pure "what can I make?" higher dots in Craft means you can make progressively more and more complex things but you don't even need to check for failure because rolling Craft dice over...and over...and over is as boring as anything involving repetitive dice-rolls without any meaningful depth. Do you have Craft 1? Okay, you can make basic artifact stuff...no-frills daiklaves and armor and trinkets. Do you have Craft 3? Warstriders. Craft 5? Your own floating island fortress. What keeps someone from buying a dot of Crafts and making infinite daiklaves is something like the Apocalypse World thing where crafting is a matter of "You succeed BUT" and you have to deal with the "but," all of which is designed to be interesting. Having more dots in Crafts lets you make lower-level stuff with less onerous "but" getting in the way. A guy with Crafts 5 making a 1-dot daiklave doesn't have to quest all the hell over Creation to make a basic magic sword, but a guy with Crafts 1 making that same sword has to deal with the equivalent of "the GM picks 3 things, better get cracking smart guy." Maybe players can add extra bonuses or frills to whatever they make but in doing so they risk piling on the consequences or making existing consequences harder to fulfill, so crafting then becomes "how much hassle am I willing to go through for this sweet-rear end sword?" Rolling Crafts as a skill then becomes a function of Charms which let the Crafts-oriented character do cool stuff like, as you say, insta-crafting stuff in the field or doing crazy poo poo like crafting with abstract concepts or other things. Kai Tave fucked around with this message at 11:41 on Nov 6, 2013 |
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Nov 6, 2013 11:38
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quote:Could you be any more passive aggressive? I'm going to expand on that first point, because I didn't aim for passive aggression, but I've had a few drinks so maybe I'm coming across that way. It's not what I'm after. A lot of times, especially discussing Exalted, changing the 'victory condition' is a popular solution people suggest. Make it about doing something else, something other than hitting people with a club. Usually, these alternatives are things that people accomplish through what they do, not what skill they do it with; force the death knight to surrender by beating her within an inch of her life, save the prince by running away with the prince. You're right that Exalted doesn't feature "talk them out of it without hitting anyone with a hammer" and that's a problem. I guess our solutions come from different angles: My angle is, "Make sure that these two characters can both talk, and they can both fight, and their focuses within the realms of talking and fighting should vary." Yours seems to be "Allow both talking and fighting to end a conflict equally, possibly at the same time." But I don't want you to be able to roll Melee to do an elegant ballroom dance, so I'm shaky about letting you roll Performance to contribute equally to the swordfight -- especially if the goal in mind actually is "kill this guy until he's so dead that he never, ever, ever, ever comes back." I don't think that you should be able to Know How To Build A Bike your way out of either. Heart Attacks fucked around with this message at 11:45 on Nov 6, 2013 |
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Nov 6, 2013 11:43
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Heart Attacks posted:Alternately, the Twilight could just learn Melee, because you know, there's nothing going to stop them except for 2e's stupid Craft system where Craft has as many subskills as the entire rest of the sheet has normal skills. Doesn't really make much sense that mastering a sword means also mastering every other melee weapon but a blacksmith can't figure out how to build a stone wall to save their life. Man, this made so little sense, especially in a game that already has a specialty mechanic. The local blacksmith has Craft 1 (blacksmithing +3). Your Solar has Craft 4 and can craft anything using that. Done.
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Nov 6, 2013 11:50
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Games which require skill specialties that only apply to certain skills and not others are as dumb as D&D's fixation with class-based skill lists.
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Nov 6, 2013 11:53
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That is all fair, and I get where you are coming from, especially in that last paragraph. Its just for me, I find it more of a problem that you can make a character that does only combat, instead of it being a problem that you can make a character that can't do combat. I don't find the Dawn caste as written very compelling, and I think if exalted is going to stick to combat as it exists in the game now, it needs to make it so everybody gets some combat, and everybody gets more than JUST combat. Ideally I would prefer a more abstract system period, but lets be honest: that isn't going to happen. Ash Rose fucked around with this message at 11:56 on Nov 6, 2013 |
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Nov 6, 2013 11:53
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I keep sort of pondering some sort of 'broad skill' based solution, ala Feng Shui or the Wild Talents version of the Kerberos Club. If you have melee skill, you -also- roll it to fix and make melee weapons, and to know master duelists, either personally or by reputation, or to appraise someone else's sword style. Unfortunately I'm not sure it would work well with Exalted, exactly.
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Nov 6, 2013 11:56
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Just kill the Dawn Caste as it exists and divvy the combat skills around, then reshuffle the non-combat stuff. They figured that out with Dragonbloods, I mean come on. Eclipse gets Martial Arts/Brawl/Whatever we're calling it this week since it fits with their "learn things other people know how to do" aspect, Night gets thrown because all Night Caste are ninjas at heart, Twilight gets Archery because that has a "refined and intellectual" stereotype sort of thing going for it, Zenith gets Melee because that's all that's left, and then Dawn gets War. Then give Dawn Castes a special caste discount on buying other combat skills, maybe not to the degree of doubling their favored skills but enough that you can still pretty easily make a Dawn that kills a bunch of dudes. Or actually gently caress it, go ahead and double their favored skills because "I can buy ALL THE COMBAT SKILLS" is still pretty useless even if you can do it so whatever.
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Nov 6, 2013 12:00
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I'd probably give Twilight War (Because C'mon, Zhuge Liang is totally a twilight concept) and Dawn melee, but yeah.
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Nov 6, 2013 12:03
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Dawns are supposed to be the generals though, that's been a thing all the way since 1st Edition which didn't even have War as a skill, but that's a portrayal that's rather at odds with the whole "so they know ALL the ways to murder someone" shtick they inevitably get saddled with. 2E helped with War although mass combat was apparently a mess and I'm willing to bet that like 90% of Exalted games invariably boil down to a glowy, higher-powered version of D&D anyway.
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Nov 6, 2013 12:06
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Kai Tave posted:It might work to make Craft work like a pseudo-Background sort of thing. In terms of pure "what can I make?" higher dots in Craft means you can make progressively more and more complex things but you don't even need to check for failure because rolling Craft dice over...and over...and over is as boring as anything involving repetitive dice-rolls without any meaningful depth. Do you have Craft 1? Okay, you can make basic artifact stuff...no-frills daiklaves and armor and trinkets. Do you have Craft 3? Warstriders. Craft 5? Your own floating island fortress. Measuring crafting capability quantitatively is bad firstly because you've got to got to assign a number to literally everything anyone wants to craft and secondly because you're locking people out of doing fun stuff - someone wants to make a warstrider but they've only got 2 dots. What to replace that with is a difficult question and it's too late at night for me to write anything on it though! You need some way of determining what Exalts can do that regular people can't.
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Nov 6, 2013 12:23
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Kai Tave posted:Dawns are supposed to be the generals though, that's been a thing all the way since 1st Edition which didn't even have War as a skill, but that's a portrayal that's rather at odds with the whole "so they know ALL the ways to murder someone" shtick they inevitably get saddled with. 2E helped with War although mass combat was apparently a mess and I'm willing to bet that like 90% of Exalted games invariably boil down to a glowy, higher-powered version of D&D anyway. Yeah, it's just that in a lot of the Wuxia and Fantasy China stuff that Exalted draws one side of its inspiration from, "Strategist" and "General" are different concepts entirely. Strategist: Weedy nerd who comes up with cunning plans and starts to explain them at the chapter break". General: Dude in charge on the field who implements said cunning plan, often dubiously despite having seen previous cunning plans work perfectly. Also I think sadly '90 percent' is probably an underestimate.
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Nov 6, 2013 12:30
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Bigup DJ posted:Measuring crafting capability quantitatively is bad firstly because you've got to got to assign a number to literally everything anyone wants to craft and secondly because you're locking people out of doing fun stuff - someone wants to make a warstrider but they've only got 2 dots. What to replace that with is a difficult question and it's too late at night for me to write anything on it though! You need some way of determining what Exalts can do that regular people can't. I'd say the answer to this would be "you can build something that's higher rated than your Crafts skill but instead of the regular hassles you have to deal with some serious poo poo." If a guy that's Crafts 1 wants to build a floating island fortress then he should be having to get into some real "powered by an orphan's soul" territory to make up for his own personal lack of aptitude. You can brute force your way into making stuff that's way outside your pay grade but at a certain point it might honestly be easier to simply start ranking up your skill.
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Nov 6, 2013 12:38
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Heart Attacks posted:Right, but I'll take this more seriously when someone can tell me what "fights with unmatched wits" actually means, because usually fighting really well falls under the realm of the fighting traits. Traps. Trenches. Barricades. Decoys. Demolitions. All the ways one can gain advantage in a battle which are not "I hit the man". For all the fiddly bits in Exalted's combat engine, it has never done much to encourage these sorts of indirect attacks with tangible benefits. Systems for creating and overcoming obstacles other than being stabbed in the face would create space for notfight skills to contribute to a fight without just making them straight substitutes for fight skills.
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Nov 6, 2013 14:47
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A_Raving_Loon posted:Traps. Trenches. Barricades. Decoys. Demolitions. So something like Cortex+ Marvel? So you can use the non-fighty skills to create assets that aid in the fighting. (Give bonus dice, reduce defense, etc, etc.) I can see there being a design space for that, particularly since they've already said they've got plans to use talky actions in combat, for instance.
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Nov 6, 2013 16:02
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Hugoon Chavez posted:Legends of the Wulin is basically a WotG 2.0, have you checked that one? As far as the mechanics go, it is absolutely WotG 2.0. The way information is structured is decent, the system is fun to play, and most of the rules are explained in a way that's easy to parse. It even accommodates for different play styles: there is no One True Build. As far as systems go, I would recommend it. Unfortunately, while the work of Arik ten Broeke and Jerry Skold on mechanics for LotW beats Brad Elliot's work on WotG, they substituted Jenna Moran for a dude called David Ramirez, and his work blows. Weapons of the Gods had some of the most amazing short stories to illustrate setting or mechanics bits; Legends of the Wulin recycles a lot of the information but replaces the good writing with really mediocre poo poo. Some of the stories read like embarrassing anime fanfiction. Lymond fucked around with this message at 19:42 on Nov 6, 2013 |
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Nov 6, 2013 19:40
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A_Raving_Loon posted:Traps. Trenches. Barricades. Decoys. Demolitions. 4/5 of these are things you prepare before a fight, not alternatives to fighting once the action starts (and that brings us back to the start: Crafting is what you do when you're safe, not what you do when people are trying to kill you.) I guess you'd probably prepare a decoy in advance too. If you're doing it during a fight, like running around knocking things over to get in peoples' way, you don't need a Crafting People To Death system for it, we have rules that work fine for pushing bookcases over and throwing grenades at people and don't really demand a 'I want to be able to kill people with Wits!' system. I don't have anything against games where the nerd character in the group can be like, "Don't worry guys, I prepared for this," and then declare off-the-cuff how they rigged the fight in their favor before the player knew the fight was going to happen, but I'm not sure that that's the right kind of design for Exalted. Heart Attacks fucked around with this message at 20:06 on Nov 6, 2013 |
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Nov 6, 2013 19:57
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Heart Attacks posted:4/5 of these are things you prepare before a fight, not alternatives to fighting once the action starts (and that brings us back to the start: Crafting is what you do when you're safe, not what you do when people are trying to kill you.) I guess you'd probably prepare a decoy in advance too. If you're doing it during a fight, like running around knocking things over to get in peoples' way, you don't need a Crafting People To Death system for it, we have rules that work fine for pushing bookcases over and throwing grenades at people and don't really demand a 'I want to be able to kill people with Wits!' system. I dunno, I personally don't like that being the crafty/brainy guy requires you to have planned ahead as a player. Not saying I want direct combat applications for craft, but the more I think about it, a "I came prepared!" system would be kinda neat.
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Nov 6, 2013 20:11
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Craft (and other noncombat skills) need direct, narrate-able feedback. They don't reaaaallly need to be able to inflict hitpoint damage or destroy enemy weapons or have other combat application (although it'd make plenty of sense), but they do need to give you concrete things you can declare that your character accomplishes immediately that you definitely couldn't have accomplished without them. Whipping out your hammer and chisel and carving a door through a wall in a matter of seconds, crashing two objects together to jury-rig them into a gadget that combines and/or exaggerates the effects of both, whatever. You need cool, immediate tricks. Long-term crafting systems in video games tend to be satisfying when they allow you to make use of stuff you'd find on the course of adventuring anyway to access new objects or bonuses you couldn't otherwise obtain. "Divide crafting time by an integer" should be a single charm at most, but stuff like "Alchemically distill steel's hardness and imbue it into your robes" is another story.
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Nov 6, 2013 20:17
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Ferrinus makes a good point. The problem with non-combat as it relates to combat is that they are resolved entirely differently. If the system had them all direct mechanics, or all "roll dice and beg the ST" it would be alright, but they are not, and you use the same points to buy real intimidate game changing power fight charms, as you do nebulous esoteric non-fight charms. There are two ways to fix this. 1. Give everybody some combat capability and don't have it be purchased via the same resource as everything else (4e cough cough). 2. Make it so combat is not the only mechanical way to accomplish things in game, and make it so when you buy stuff that lets you fight, it does more than that, it also lets you do stuff outside of combat as well.
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Nov 6, 2013 20:26
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People keep saying 4e was great for giving everyone equal combat capabilities, but in my experience, making everyone a fighter means that the game is suddenly all about fighting. And that's a pretty contentious idea for any RPG, and Exalted especially.
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Nov 6, 2013 20:41
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realbrickwall posted:People keep saying 4e was great for giving everyone equal combat capabilities, but in my experience, making everyone a fighter means that the game is suddenly all about fighting. And that's a pretty contentious idea for any RPG, and Exalted especially. As a guy that played and ran a lot of 4e, let me be the first to tell you that yes, most everything worth resolving in 4e devolved into fighting, but this was because the developers made a stellar combat system and then kinda stopped. Check out Sacred BBQ for a system with 4e style combat and a neat out of combat resolution system. Or check out 13th age. The point is that 4e does not focus around combat because everyone is combat able, but because the combat system is really fun, and the non-combat resolution is really not.
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Nov 6, 2013 20:50
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axelsoar posted:Ferrinus makes a good point. The problem with non-combat as it relates to combat is that they are resolved entirely differently. If the system had them all direct mechanics, or all "roll dice and beg the ST" it would be alright, but they are not, and you use the same points to buy real intimidate game changing power fight charms, as you do nebulous esoteric non-fight charms. But... that's not what I said. I don't actually think combat has any bearing on this at all. It's just important to establish what basic declarative power succeeding on a Craft check gets you, and to make sure Craft charms do something besides "assume you got more successes on your Craft check". This could translate into shattering enemy armor, but could as easily translate into toppling buildings or making robots or something. It just has to do stuff so that both the unfolding action of a given scene and the overall story is noticeably different than it would be if you didn't have Craft.
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Nov 6, 2013 20:52
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Ferrinus posted:But... that's not what I said. I don't actually think combat has any bearing on this at all. It's just important to establish what basic declarative power succeeding on a Craft check gets you, and to make sure Craft charms do something besides "assume you got more successes on your Craft check". This could translate into shattering enemy armor, but could as easily translate into toppling buildings or making robots or something. It just has to do stuff so that both the unfolding action of a given scene and the overall story is noticeably different than it would be if you didn't have Craft. That is what I said though, just from another angle. Combat does things that are discreet and immediately and obviously helpful. Stuff like craft, not so much.
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Nov 6, 2013 20:55
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Exalted is already a combat simulator that pretends to have support for other actions - the difference between it and 4e is that the combat mechanics aren't all that great. I'd love to have an Exalted that gives cool mechanical support for non-combat stuff (in the vein of Meikyuu Kingdom's kingdom building, WotG/LotW's great game stuff, Cortex+ and relationships, etc) but I don't see it happening and the design team seemed actively hostile to the idea of providing good non-combat mechanical systems so I won't get my hopes up.
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Nov 6, 2013 20:56
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Heart Attacks posted:4/5 of these are things you prepare before a fight, not alternatives to fighting once the action starts (and that brings us back to the start: Crafting is what you do when you're safe, not what you do when people are trying to kill you.) I guess you'd probably prepare a decoy in advance too. When you are a legendary architect in a world of myth and wonder you can do better, faster, stronger. quote:If you're doing it during a fight, like running around knocking things over to get in peoples' way, you don't need a Crafting People To Death system for it, we have rules that work fine for pushing bookcases over and throwing grenades at people and don't really demand a 'I want to be able to kill people with Wits!' system.
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Nov 6, 2013 20:59
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| # ? May 28, 2024 20:08 |
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As an aside. Catching up on 3E is a goddamn rollercoaster. I've been under a rock.
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Nov 6, 2013 21:15
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