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Stephenls
Feb 21, 2013
[REDACTED]

Mikan posted:

the design team seemed actively hostile to the idea of providing good non-combat mechanical systems

How so?

(I guess this might depend on what you mean by good?)

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Mikan
Sep 5, 2007

by Radium

Stephenls posted:

How so?

(I guess this might depend on what you mean by good?)

Last time this came up, all we got was a bunch of posts with stupid pokes at Bureaucracy that gave me no indication they actually understood the problem or the point being made.

EscortMission
Mar 4, 2009

Come with me
if you want to live.
I like a game where everyone has things to contribute in combat and out of combat. I mean, old school combat build/crafting build/stealth build is OK too I guess, but I feel like we've advanced past a point where you need to pick a single thing you're good at and hope the GM is good enough at his job that you can get equal sway in the story.

Its good that we're getting a new edition, but this discussion about "what is the proper role for the crafter in combat" is all just making me want to mod some Exalted into Dungeon World or Fate or Cortex+ or Dread or something where the answer isn't "as far away from the battlefield as possible". Exalted's strengths are absolutely in its setting, not its mechanics, and 3e looks like its shooting for more "fixed, polished version of 1e and 2e that tries to fix the problems in those systems" instead of "brand new thing that does crazy new things that advance the concept of RPGs as a whole".

I still backed though. :ohdear:

Stephenls
Feb 21, 2013
[REDACTED]

Mikan posted:

Last time this came up, all we got was a bunch of posts with stupid pokes at Bureaucracy that gave me no indication they actually understood the problem or the point being made.

Oh! Okay, that makes sense.

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world
I think the team's specific unwillingness to make a Creation-Ruling Mandate or similar zoomed-out metagame doesn't mean that they can't support Crafts, Bureaucracy, and similar "downtime" skills, so long as they're rigorously self-consistent. I.e., if all Melee rolls and Melee charms produce results visible through an over-the-shoulder or first-person camera, so too should all Bureaucracy rolls and Bureaucracy charms. Less stuff about quartering the time required for an Organization to complete a Project, more stuff about on-the-spot creating a distribution scheme that will definitely solve the food shortage, completely fleecing whoever you're haggling with, etc.

Heart Attacks
Jun 17, 2012

That's how it works for magical girls.

A_Raving_Loon posted:

If you're some pissant normal in the real world, it would all take a great deal of effort in advance to make happen.

When you are a legendary architect in a world of myth and wonder you can do better, faster, stronger.

I guess it depends on how much ridiculous SFX you want all over your game. I'm not going to be able to suspend my disbelief over Lightspeed Trench Digging Prana, where the crafter digs a huge hole in the ground in three seconds. There's a lot of stuff I like about Exalted that I don't really want to see go away to streamlining -- like, "Being prepared is better than not being prepared" isn't something I'd like to see die in the face of "I don't want to buy combat-applicable abilities, so I'm going to make Craft let me conjure walls up wherever I want them instantly so I can do stuff."

I'm fine with there being abilities that aren't going to help you in a knife fight. I think if people make characters and are allowed to make characters who only take Bureaucracy and Linguistics and Craft and Sail, maybe they don't get to participate as much as the guy who actually bought combat resolution abilities.

But then, that's why I support closing off the option to just not buy stuff that's relevant in huge swaths of the game rather than trying to make everything relevant in a fight.

Heart Attacks fucked around with this message at 00:44 on Nov 7, 2013

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world
I definitely don't want to see Charms where you move so fast you personally replace an entire passel of laborers or whatever. A Solar architect should want a construction team for a reason besides "it saves me Willpower points".

Patrat
Feb 14, 2012

Crafting and society building can be suitable epic though if done right and (since it is super late here and I have been drinking beer) I will point to literary examples instead of actually explaining myself. Check out Michael Scott Rohan's 'Winter of the World' books starting with 'The Anvil of Ice'. The main character is... A smith. A smith who creates epic magical stuff with cool themes behind it and gets involved in awesome adventures as a direct consequence. He even has a friend and companion who is an awesome sword murdering/chosen king later on but the smith is still very much the main character with a lot of his later achievements based heavily on the Scandinavian mythological Wayland the Smith.

Heart Attacks
Jun 17, 2012

That's how it works for magical girls.

Ferrinus posted:

I definitely don't want to see Charms where you move so fast you personally replace an entire passel of laborers or whatever. A Solar architect should want a construction team for a reason besides "it saves me Willpower points".

Yeah, I just can't take DC Exalted, where everyone's the Flash because gently caress cooperating with mortals, seriously.

Edit: Somehow, I totally missed the "don't".

Heart Attacks fucked around with this message at 01:46 on Nov 7, 2013

A_Raving_Loon
Dec 12, 2008

Subtle
Quick to Anger

Heart Attacks posted:

I guess it depends on how much ridiculous SFX you want all over your game. I'm not going to be able to suspend my disbelief over Lightspeed Trench Digging Prana, where the crafter digs a huge hole in the ground in three seconds.

If you want a low-FX display, how about knowing by sight the 108 fundamental flaws of structures, through which any mass of earth may be split and scattered with no more than the properly-placed strike of a pin?

Because a truly enlightened engineer knows far more, in the world's designs, that one can take away.

I am all for low-fx powers, especially for Solars when they're meant to be humans dialed to 11. I'm also for a human at 11 achieving mythic results because they're that drat good.

I'm endorsing that all skills be approached with the same mindset that allows a martial artist to have skin hard as iron and explode hearts with a poke because he spent years meditating under waterfalls and playing chess with a cryptic old man between rounds of exercise.

quote:

There's a lot of stuff I like about Exalted that I don't really want to see go away to streamlining -- like, "Being prepared is better than not being prepared" isn't something I'd like to see die in the face of "I don't want to buy combat-applicable abilities, so I'm going to make Craft let me conjure walls up wherever I want them instantly so I can do stuff."
Having the chance to plan ahead would always be better. This doesn't require a lack of prep-time to leave you completely helpless.

Gearhead
Feb 13, 2007
The Metroid of Humor
I could totally see an Exalted Craftsman at least be able to punch a trench into the ground or something.

Or Kung Fu the poo poo out of a wall.

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib

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.

Contentious idea? No it's not, not even remotely. Most mainstream RPGs are going to involve regular bouts of combat. "Wander around and fight these dudes" is like 99% of all tabletop RPG experiences, going back to OD&D where even if the idea was to grab the treasure and leave without fighting you still sure as hell had plenty of combat. It's no coincidence that in most RPGs, the combat rules are the most robust and extensive piece of software between the covers.

The thing that 4E did was it acknowledged this upfront and then went and made a game where everyone was on more equal footing than their last attempt where you could have the shapeshifting, spellcasting, assbeating Druid ending whole fights by himself next to the Monk who was really good at Tumble checks guys, I swear. "Fight Monsters" is an integral part of the D&D experience...sooooo, why would you design a game like that where some people are going to be able to contribute way more to that aspect than others?

Mikan is absolutely right. Exalted is no different from D&D in this regard...it has extensive fight rules and tons of fight crunch, and a setting that strongly encourages kung-fu fights and rear end-kicking. It does have a bunch of non-combat stuff too which puts it a step ahead of a lot of other RPGs which would never even consider having things like Bureaucracy charms, but Exalted is still a very traditional RPG at its heart and I'm willing to bet any amount of money you care to name that most games of Exalted involve combat as a regular activity, far more than any other non-combat thing. How many GMs out there spring a surprise Crafting challenge for the PCs to tackle as opposed to "suddenly, ninjas attack"?

This is a "contentious idea" only in the sense that a lot of gamers get pissy when you show them the man behind the curtain because acknowledging things like "yeah, RPGs are largely about fighting dudes" is anathema to people who've convinced themselves that their favorite RPG isn't some plebeian "hack'n'slash" for munchkin rollplayers but something for real roleplayers to enjoy. Game designers sometimes buy into that idea too all the while writing up even more combat crunch and things for players to fight, but I think that coming to terms with things like this head-on make for stronger games.

No, I don't want Exalted to be solely about combat, but since it's loving Exalted I think you could easily justify giving everybody some baseline degree of "knows kung fu, can fight in fights," then move on to making the non-combat side of things equally robust rather than doing it the same back-asswards way they've done it for two editions now which is "we'll let the players figure it out through trial and error because that always works out so well."

Gearhead
Feb 13, 2007
The Metroid of Humor
In a way I've always felt a little bad for Dawns/Slayers/Dusks, with a Caste gimmick that revolves around 'All the combat skills.'

The 'Lord of War' idea is nice and all, but it always felt so hard to come up with unique concepts outside of various flavors of beatstick.

MiltonSlavemasta
Feb 12, 2009

And the cats in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man on the moon
"When you coming home, dad?"
"I don't know when
We'll get together then son you know we'll have a good time then."

Kai Tave posted:

No, I don't want Exalted to be solely about combat, but since it's loving Exalted I think you could easily justify giving everybody some baseline degree of "knows kung fu, can fight in fights," then move on to making the non-combat side of things equally robust rather than doing it the same back-asswards way they've done it for two editions now which is "we'll let the players figure it out through trial and error because that always works out so well."

This is one area where I'd really like to see Legends of the Wulin influence Exalted. Like your standard Exalted splat, you've got five archetypes, but they're all essentially equally good at combat. There is a "warrior" archetype for your Dawn, Dusk, et cetera, but that's more about raising and maintaining and leading armies and having brilliant tactical insights. A Scholar or a Priest (i.e. your Twilight or Zenith) archetype is going to be just as good at kung-fuing someone individually, but instead of taking the whole army angle they're going to be proselytizing enemies over to your side or divining the forgotten secrets of how your enemy's artifacts function. That's really how I'd like party balance to work in Exalted, with every caste having generally equal potential in a straight-up wuxia fight and being defined by both how they go about that and their other niches.

2e's Dawn Solution stuff was very mechanically interesting, but I don't think the answer to all castes having basically the same ability to excel at combat is to make one caste uniquely able to excel at combat. Coming from the guy who plays the Dawn/Dusk/Malfean/Full Moon/Chosen of Battles more than he doesn't, I'd prefer combat parity and having more interesting out-of-combat stuff.

Dammit Who?
Aug 30, 2002

may microbes, bacilli their tissues infest
and tapeworms securely their bowels digest

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.

That's because D&D is still basically a wargame, designed to adjudicate fantasy combat and not much else. People will tell you that you can use <some edition> of D&D to play a campaign of courtiers jockeying for power through whispers and lies or something like that, but those people are loving liars. Unless you use the same system for impugning someone's dress sense that you would have for crushing a goblin's skull with an axe, I suppose. That's a hell of a lot of reskinning work though

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib

MiltonSlavemasta posted:

This is one area where I'd really like to see Legends of the Wulin influence Exalted.

I'm reminded as well of Tianxia, a recent FATE kickstarter that's a wuxia game set in Mythic not!China. It's got extensive rules for kung fu and it's, y'know, a wuxia game, so at the start of the section on martial arts it explains that characters in Tianxia all get one extra Refresh beyond whatever else they start with and that the writers strongly recommend that you use that to buy some goddamn kung fu. They don't make you do that, you could not buy kung fu if you really, really wanted to, but it still drives the point home that "this is a game where kung fu fighting is a reality, here is a token for some free kung fu which you should probably take advantage of."

Of course the thing about FATE is that even if you don't buy some kung fu styles even dedicated "non-combat" characters can still meaningfully participate in fights due to a combination of FATE having mental/social combat that effectively works exactly the same as physical combat and allowing anyone to use any skill with sufficient justification to do things like create beneficial aspects for themselves or others to take advantage of.

Exalted isn't FATE though and I highly doubt it's ever going to work the same way, which means that any design is going to have to exist within the framework of "we need this to be recognizable and attractive to people who've played prior editions of Exalted" and "we need to use some form of Storyteller system to do it in."

Calde
Jun 20, 2009

Mikan posted:

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.

This just made me incredibly angry. It revived my wish for some kind of homebrew mishmash of all the best bits from every other RPG released in the last 10 years just to play Exalted. A kitchen-sink mechanical solution for a kitchen-sink setting. Maybe I should give the Cortex+ Exalted stuff some goon made another re-read.

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib
As someone playing a game of Exalted using an MHR/Cortex+ rules hack I'd say it works pretty well.

Old Kentucky Shark
May 25, 2012

If you think you're gonna get sympathy from the shark, well then, you won't.


Kai Tave posted:

As someone playing a game of Exalted using an MHR/Cortex+ rules hack I'd say it works pretty well.

Yeah. I wish we'd used a different rules hack, and parts of the system drive me up the wall as a GM, but overall the core system fills more of the promise of Exalted than Exalted's core system ever did. It lets you do things like fight an infernal who's shintai form is a catchy pop song, using just the normal rules.

Argas
Jan 13, 2008
SRW Fanatic




Kai Tave posted:

As someone playing a game of Exalted using an MHR/Cortex+ rules hack I'd say it works pretty well.

Mind sharing? I'd still like to play Exalted but I just can't help but sigh at the idea because of the mechanics.

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib
The hack we've been using is here, which is a different hack to the goonmade one somebody here (I forget who) was working on. Like OKS says it's not perfect, but it's vastly more sustainable and less clunky than actually trying to run Exalted using Exalted. We've been playing a Gunstar Autochthonia game with it so we simply establish voidfghters/gunstriders as an "add-on" set of attributes/abilities that people piloting one have in addition to their regular ones and it works out a treat.

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



The way I see it, the problem with balancing Craft focusers is that anything they make can be used by somebody else. They can make a crazy looking sword, but the person focusing on Melee is going to be better at using that sword, so you have that situation where the crafter's going to have to give up his cool looking sword so that the group can have more fun together.

My solution, personally, would be to give Craft Exalts the ability to basically jump their technology level ahead of the rest of the setting. Dawns can use bows and arrows, but Twilights can use frickin' laser beams. That can be a charm, Advanced Laser Beam Method, "you can make a laser cannon, using these numbers" followed by some stat distributions. Only someone with the requisite Crafts knowledge (or enough Intelligence) would be able to figure out how to use a laser beam, because that concept can only be even comprehended by the sufficiently advanced Solar (or Lunar or Sidereal or whatever) mind. If Twilights or other Craft Exalted are the only people in the world to be able to make or even pilot a warstrider, you better believe they're going to be able to contribute something to combat. Kai Tave's right, the process of crafting is boring, but the moment you're done and you say, "Hey guys, I just invented laser beams" is absolutely engaging.

The idea of technology that can't be understood by mortals or even Dragon-Blooded is already part of the setting. The downplaying of magitech might work well with this, because there aren't any laser beams around for the new Twilights' lasers to compete with.

Punting
Sep 9, 2007
I am very witty: nit-witty, dim-witty, and half-witty.

Sorry, pospysyl, but I don't see how 'Craft Exalt makes things, gives things to people who can use it effectively' is any way, shape, or form a problem. Granted, I say this as someone who loves playing crafters and support characters, but I don't craft stuff in games for myself, I make them to make my group more awesome, and quite honestly I doubt that other people who play crafting-heavy characters would approach it much differently. After all, if that wasn't your goal, why play a crafter?

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

Help a hero out!

Punting posted:

After all, if that wasn't your goal, why play a crafter?

This is a tautology, because the only people playing crafters now are people who want that because that's what they do. If I could craft things that bewildered both my party and modern science, and use them with grim efficiency, then I'd play a crafter because the only thing I like more than building poo poo is wrecking poo poo.

Heart Attacks
Jun 17, 2012

That's how it works for magical girls.
It would be cool if some of the more advanced technology was just like modern advanced technology: you can't just put the Dawn in charge of your incredibly complex nuclear missile launcher. They do not have the training and background necessary to understand how to use it correctly.

You can hand it to them, I mean, and they can launch it, but even odds they blow up your house because nobody ever explained to them the nature Motonic Focusing Lenses and they don't even know how the gently caress to read Old Realm coordinate grids.

This doesn't have to be, like, a Charm; lots of science has applications that can't really be utilized by laypeople and demand pretty involved education that people who aren't the crafter likely won't have in Exalted.

Heart Attacks fucked around with this message at 07:26 on Nov 7, 2013

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib
I'm not gonna lie, I love me some warstriders and the mental image of Lookshy Legionnaires in the equivalent of battle suits, and I have a soft spot for the occasional bit of ancient super-magic that resembles technology, but Jesus wept I sincerely hope we never have to see a repeat of Ex2's "everything is magitech all the time" direction shift or ever see the word "motonic" again.

Mendrian
Jan 6, 2013

The only prerequisite for me in a crafting system is the elimination of unnecessary extended actions.

I never understood what extended rolls are meant to inform. We have a perfectly good task resolution system; if how long something takes is an important part of that system you'd think it would be baked into it somewhere. Each roll has no real impact on the next, and it's just a lot of pointless busywork that doesn't need to exist.

In fact I hope they remove extended rolls from pretty much every activity that doesn't involve crucial decision making at each roll-point. Multiple rolls in combat work because each circumstance in which a roll is called for is substantial different, arising from a bunch of different circumstances and decisions. With a crafts check, you roll until a certain number of successes are reached or until the whole group suffers from dice fatigue, whichever comes first.

I posit that "this will succeed eventually, let's see how many rolls it takes" is super dull territory.

BryanChavez
Sep 13, 2007

Custom: Heroic
Having A Life: Fair

I will go on a killing spree if this word shows up in any Ex3 work, but the idea of Solar Zhuge Liang being able to employ strange and incredible inventions that nobody else in his circle could even begin to comprehend is really cool.

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world
I don't think a White Wolf game exists in which extended actions couldn't be excised completely and replaced with either a single roll for how long something takes or two rolls, one for how long something takes and one for how effective the result is. As implemented they're basically always flimsy excuses for why some game mechanic or effect hasn't been properly balanced - no, dude, I got like sixty total successes, that's why my summoned minions have twelve dots in every stat and immunity to all forms of damage!

Periodic rolls to build successes to a capped, predetermined total can work in situations in which each roll either causes something to happen or is simultaneous to something happening such that drama would be ruined if you knew when a project would be done. On the whole, though, it's perfectly safe to dispense with them all together.

Heart Attacks
Jun 17, 2012

That's how it works for magical girls.

BryanChavez posted:

I will go on a killing spree if this word shows up in any Ex3 work, but the idea of Solar Zhuge Liang being able to employ strange and incredible inventions that nobody else in his circle could even begin to comprehend is really cool.

I don't want it to be a common idea in the books, but I'm totally fine with Exalted who treat magic as a science and use science-y language for it.

I don't necessarily think it should be the default, but I think mad scientists (and not just mad sorcerers) belong in Exalted.

Heart Attacks fucked around with this message at 07:50 on Nov 7, 2013

MiltonSlavemasta
Feb 12, 2009

And the cats in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man on the moon
"When you coming home, dad?"
"I don't know when
We'll get together then son you know we'll have a good time then."

BryanChavez posted:

I will go on a killing spree if this word shows up in any Ex3 work, but the idea of Solar Zhuge Liang being able to employ strange and incredible inventions that nobody else in his circle could even begin to comprehend is really cool.

I think there's a system for determining what quality/value of equipment or level of artifact you're able to fabricate out of raw gossamer. I would like to see a charm tree or specialized branch of sorcery that lets you make a big Twilight who walks around with an inert lump of orichalcum, a servant with a crate of components, or something equivalent. His power-up sequence lets him point-buy some sort of weapon or contraption only he can use out of his anima banner, brainpower, materials at hand, and these feats get more awesome over time based largely on his or her crafting prowess. The mechanical impact, not the style, is set by the rules, so you can either build a hydroelectric dam that stops a river and collects electricity or have the guy place his big rock in the river very, very carefully at a point which precisely causes all the water elementals to deposit a tiny piece of ambrosia on top of it, then turn around and go back the way they came.

Mendrian
Jan 6, 2013

Ferrinus posted:

I don't think a White Wolf game exists in which extended actions couldn't be excised completely and replaced with either a single roll for how long something takes or two rolls, one for how long something takes and one for how effective the result is. As implemented they're basically always flimsy excuses for why some game mechanic or effect hasn't been properly balanced - no, dude, I got like sixty total successes, that's why my summoned minions have twelve dots in every stat and immunity to all forms of damage!

Periodic rolls to build successes to a capped, predetermined total can work in situations in which each roll either causes something to happen or is simultaneous to something happening such that drama would be ruined if you knew when a project would be done. On the whole, though, it's perfectly safe to dispense with them all together.

Really extended actions would be more exciting if each roll informed some explicit thing; this roll determines how well drilled your troops are, this roll determines how trained they are in the use of spears, and this roll determines their physical fitness. My example is sorta boring because it still boils down to 'how good the troops are' but I'm sure a more creative person could come up with a better example.

As stupid as Skill Challenges were in 4e, there's a nugget to take away from it; the number of successful events is more important and interesting than the total numeric value that success is derived from. In other words, when crafting a sword, it would be interesting to know how the enchantment came out and how sharp the blade is, but knowing exactly how many total successes you got is stupid.

BryanChavez
Sep 13, 2007

Custom: Heroic
Having A Life: Fair

Heart Attacks posted:

I don't want it to be a common idea in the books, but I'm totally fine with Exalted who treat magic as a science and use science-y language for it.

Well, I would argue that all Exalted who care about thinking about magic at all should treat it as a science, no matter whether they're a shaman, priest, or scholar. They're all going to be going by testable results based on their understanding of Lore, Occult, and so on. I get what you mean, though: mad scientists and their scientific takes on magic should totally be present, it's some great pulp poo poo. I just have a problem with 'motonic' as a word, more than anything, and its presence in second edition. I also want to never see the word 'Prana' again as long as I live.

Stephenls
Feb 21, 2013
[REDACTED]
Motonic is unlikely to show up again but I have what you'll probably take as bad news about prana....

BryanChavez
Sep 13, 2007

Custom: Heroic
Having A Life: Fair
Ehh, you know, I think I can take it. I mean, as long as there aren't any Approaches. I don't know what'll happen to me if there's even a single Approach.

MiltonSlavemasta
Feb 12, 2009

And the cats in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man on the moon
"When you coming home, dad?"
"I don't know when
We'll get together then son you know we'll have a good time then."

Mendrian posted:

Really extended actions would be more exciting if each roll informed some explicit thing; this roll determines how well drilled your troops are, this roll determines how trained they are in the use of spears, and this roll determines their physical fitness. My example is sorta boring because it still boils down to 'how good the troops are' but I'm sure a more creative person could come up with a better example.

As stupid as Skill Challenges were in 4e, there's a nugget to take away from it; the number of successful events is more important and interesting than the total numeric value that success is derived from. In other words, when crafting a sword, it would be interesting to know how the enchantment came out and how sharp the blade is, but knowing exactly how many total successes you got is stupid.

I think you could actually do something interesting by riffing off this without diverging too far from the core Exalted system. Something like this:

If it's too much for your PC to make with one craft role, then it gets split up into components. For example, let's say you capture a facility and want to make a warstrider. To make an item with components, you must make several rolls at once. For our warstrider, let's say it has a chassis, benedictions, flight system, weapon, and AI.

Roll for chassis. Many successes means bonus armor. Too few means structural weakness.
Roll for benedictions. Many sux means a sort of good luck ability, bad means it's cursed.
Roll for flight system. Good roll means perfect flight. Bad roll means malfunctioning flight or limited gliding.
Roll for weapon. Good roll means you have a giant artifact, bad means it's just a big mundane hammer.
Roll for AI. Good is helpful, bad is HAL 9000 copilot.

You have to make the rolls for all your components at once and allocate your motes and WP accordingly, as well as those of any of your assistants, because these projects need someone like you and can't be done piecemeal. Fixing it after the fact requires a new macguffin. I think something like this would make crafting big epic things dangerous and exciting instead of slow and boring. Best of all, it's not time-delayed, it's skill-limited, but you still get to use some of the prioritization involved in making a huge project in real life. You have to allocate your time and energy to the most important parts and just hope others go okay.

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world
Or, you could make one roll and distribute the successes, because actually rolling a billion times to see what happens during downtime sucks.

Ash Rose
Sep 3, 2011

Where is Megaman?

In queer, with us!

BryanChavez posted:

Ehh, you know, I think I can take it. I mean, as long as there aren't any Approaches. I don't know what'll happen to me if there's even a single Approach.

As long as 'kerfuffle' makes it into at least one charm I will be fine.

MiltonSlavemasta
Feb 12, 2009

And the cats in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man on the moon
"When you coming home, dad?"
"I don't know when
We'll get together then son you know we'll have a good time then."

Ferrinus posted:

Or, you could make one roll and distribute the successes, because actually rolling a billion times to see what happens during downtime sucks.

That's fair and gets mostly the same end result, though I kind of like the gambling element of allocating your energy in the form of extra dice to different tasks and seeing which one turns out okay. I don't feel as though it would make that much of a time difference here where you're talking about 5-6 rolls to do your big thing. I mean, just rolling one dice pool to represent a simultaneously vast and intricate crafting project beyond the stuff you casually throw together oesn't seem to give you your due if that's your main shtick. That said, I rarely mess with actual dice these past couple of years.

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Heart Attacks
Jun 17, 2012

That's how it works for magical girls.
If each roll affects further rolls down the line, that can be fun. It's just boring when it's "roll ten times, count and add the successes together, determine standard pass/fail."

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