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MiltonSlavemasta posted:
Uh, why wouldn't you just automatically take the second option in all of those choices???
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Nov 7, 2013 09:01
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Heart Attacks posted: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." Yeah pretty much this. I've never understood why systems that call for a billion rolls basically come down to pass/fail. Each roll should have some kind of dramatic outcome. Modern games have taught us that a roll can result in: a.) A terrible failure. b.) A complication. c.) A planned or foreseen positive outcome. d.) An unforeseen but fortunate outcome. These can be combined or dialed up or down in degree. Crafting systems typically require rolls that grant basically none of those, and thus offer almost no tension or drama whatsoever. As long as the rolls inform an event that can make use of that list, we're in business. Otherwise it's stupid bean counting.
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Nov 7, 2013 09:09
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MiltonSlavemasta posted:I think you could actually do something interesting by riffing off this without diverging too far from the core Exalted system. Something like this: Is diverging from Exalted's core system actually a bad thing though? I don't think so. I can't see why producing an inferior product should even be a possibility here. How is that interesting? Whether or not it works isn't the interesting part - what's interesting is the consequences of having built it. Players should be made aware of those consequences in advance of building it, too. Sure they can irrigate their crops, but it's going to mess up the ecology and anger the river gods. More broadly, why even roll for craft? Just abstract failed attempts into the narrative. Look at the workspace move back here: You can make it, but... "• it’s going to take several/dozens/hundreds of tries".
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Nov 7, 2013 09:57
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quote:Is diverging from Exalted's core system actually a bad thing though? I don't think so. We know they're sticking with a bunch of old mechanics/themes* that basically everyone agrees are stupid bullshit just for the sake of continuity, so I wouldn't expect major changes away from the Storyteller system. *BP/XP using different charts, for example, and Martial Arts referring to a dozen different things. Heart Attacks fucked around with this message at 10:30 on Nov 7, 2013 |
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Nov 7, 2013 10:12
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Heart Attacks posted:While it might not be a bad thing, I think it's a pipe dream to expect Exalted 3e to diverge very far from the incredibly simulationist approach of the earlier editions and basically all Storyteller games. Exactly, pretty much all of my excitement for Ex3 has had an undercurrent of "It will still be Storyteller system."
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Nov 7, 2013 19:40
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axelsoar posted:As long as 'kerfuffle' makes it into at least one charm I will be fine. I'll see what I can do.
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Nov 7, 2013 20:07
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Heart Attacks posted:*BP/XP using different charts, for example . . . Why on earth would you want to keep that? It guarantees mechanical unbalance right out of the gate between players who game the system and players who don't bother/don't know how.
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Nov 7, 2013 20:09
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Nobody knows, but Holden seems to believe that because systems like FATE and Nobilis can be gamed to create imbalances between characters, that there's no reason to even attempt to achieve parity between characters at all. He's argued ardently for the BP/XP divide, and I still don't understand why.
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Nov 7, 2013 20:17
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Of course, system imbalance is completely independent of chargen transparency. Like, Nobilis is unbalanced in favor of people with maxed stats (rather than spread-out, balanced stats) whether or not the cost of those stats is or isn't dependent on the time at which you buy them. To paraphrase someone from the White Wolf forums, this isn't about game balance, it's about whether Chejop Kejak is a 2,000 XP character and Chejop Kejak with five extra dots of Ride is also a 2,000 XP character.
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Nov 7, 2013 20:25
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I've said it before (albeit in IRC, where most of you are unlikely to have seen it, and not here) and I'll say it again: how hard would it be to provide a few standard templates for chargen? IE specialty-focused Expert, broadly-competent Generalist, stuff-oriented Noble, technique-oriented Ascetic - a group of builds that can be summarized in a page or two, and all XP-equivalent in play - then add a sidebar with an under-the-hood look at the number-crunching for people more acquainted with the system. Finally, people could see a •• on their starting sheet without feeling like they've hosed up somewhere.
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Nov 7, 2013 21:49
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BryanChavez posted:Nobody knows, but Holden seems to believe that because systems like FATE and Nobilis can be gamed to create imbalances between characters, that there's no reason to even attempt to achieve parity between characters at all. He's argued ardently for the BP/XP divide, and I still don't understand why. This just leaves me going  . Please, for the love of all that's good and holy, someone needs to overrule him.
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Nov 7, 2013 22:05
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Because the power differences ultimately really don't matter that much in a complex system where different choices have quite different power levels (i.e. 2000xp doesn't really tell you anything about power level or capabilities of a character except in the very broadest sense) and it greatly speeds up character creation vs. a system where everything you get at chargen is based on scaling XP costs? It increases system mastery and has some other negative effects, but that has to be weighted against the combined goals of allowing character generation to be flexible while not causing new players to go "what the gently caress do I do with all these XP points in this new system I don't understand?!" I mean I'm sympathetic to the arguments for the various Karmagen systems made for Shadowrun over point buy or the priority system, but if I was trying to introduce Shadowrun as a new game for my group to play I know I sure as gently caress wouldn't choose Karmagen as the way I had them make their first characters. There are ways around this if you really need a unified chargen and XP system, but within the context of a Storyteller-like system they all would seem to either decrease chargen flexibility or require a non-scaling approach to experience costs. I mean call me crazy, but I think that more people will have a better experience with the game if fast creation and allowing new players enough flexibility to make their ultimate bishie are prioritized over flattening out a brand of allocative inefficiency that generally leads to someone having a few extra ability dots.
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Nov 7, 2013 22:47
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LGD posted:Because the power differences ultimately really don't matter that much in a complex system where different choices have quite different power levels (i.e. 2000xp doesn't really tell you anything about power level or capabilities of a character except in the very broadest sense) and it greatly speeds up character creation vs. a system where everything you get at chargen is based on scaling XP costs? It increases system mastery and has some other negative effects, but that has to be weighted against the combined goals of allowing character generation to be flexible while not causing new players to go "what the gently caress do I do with all these XP points in this new system I don't understand?!" I mean I'm sympathetic to the arguments for the various Karmagen systems made for Shadowrun over point buy or the priority system, but if I was trying to introduce Shadowrun as a new game for my group to play I know I sure as gently caress wouldn't choose Karmagen as the way I had them make their first characters. This is why I think some templates would be a good idea. Templates are even faster than Build Point character generation and can be balanced very precisely to ensure none of the characters are garbage or overpowered. Of course, it's always possible to convert a BP/XP system to a pure XP system after the fact (RIP Etherwind), but I'd prefer not to have to do it.
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Nov 7, 2013 22:51
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LGD posted:Because the power differences ultimately really don't matter that much in a complex system where different choices have quite different power levels (i.e. 2000xp doesn't really tell you anything about power level or capabilities of a character except in the very broadest sense) and it greatly speeds up character creation vs. a system where everything you get at chargen is based on scaling XP costs? It increases system mastery and has some other negative effects, but that has to be weighted against the combined goals of allowing character generation to be flexible while not causing new players to go "what the gently caress do I do with all these XP points in this new system I don't understand?!" I mean I'm sympathetic to the arguments for the various Karmagen systems made for Shadowrun over point buy or the priority system, but if I was trying to introduce Shadowrun as a new game for my group to play I know I sure as gently caress wouldn't choose Karmagen as the way I had them make their first characters. That's about it, yeah.
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Nov 7, 2013 22:55
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LGD posted:There are ways around this if you really need a unified chargen and XP system, but within the context of a Storyteller-like system they all would seem to either decrease chargen flexibility or require a non-scaling approach to experience costs. I mean call me crazy, but I think that more people will have a better experience with the game if fast creation and allowing new players enough flexibility to make their ultimate bishie are prioritized over flattening out a brand of allocative inefficiency that generally leads to someone having a few extra ability dots. Why wouldn't you just assume BP as the baseline for both character generation and in-play advancement? Though ideally, I would love there to be a bunch of Heroic templates in the back that double as NPCs. Pick a template, maybe tweak it a bit, Exalt-ify (hopefully with packages for that), and you play. It'd be pretty great. I'm really not into balance so much as I'm into everyone being really awesome at the poo poo they're supposed to be awesome at. Which is one of the reasons why the previous Exalted editions fell down on the job - not being obvious about that. gently caress, I'm probably going to do that myself, if I like Ex3 enough to bother. BryanChavez fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Nov 7, 2013 |
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Nov 7, 2013 22:55
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BryanChavez posted:Why wouldn't you just assume BP as the baseline for both character generation and in-play advancement? This is actually a really good point. I understand the reasoning is probably something like "We want scaling xp costs after chargen to encourage people to branch out," but that's kind of irrelevant in Exalted where you probably started the game with a couple attributes and abilities already sitting at 5 and your number one form of xp expenditure (charms) is going to have a constant per-unit cost. "Let's make stuff more expensive at higher levels" is really bad in Vampire and Shadowrun and I don't think it makes sense in Exalted either.
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Nov 7, 2013 23:03
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BryanChavez posted:Why wouldn't you just assume BP as the baseline for both character generation and in-play advancement? That would be the "requiring a non-scaling approach to advancement" I mentioned. Which is a totally legitimate approach to take, but has some potential negative consequences of its own- in terms of increasing push towards specialization over general competence (without countervailing mechanics) and the dreaded v-word. I actually like non-scaling costs for advancement, and Exalted is actually a reasonable candidate for it but there are absolutely reasonable reasons people like it in their games.
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Nov 7, 2013 23:06
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True enough. I just don't really care about specializing over generalization, you know? I mean, if you want to have a way for a player to have a lot of 'general competencies', chuck enough ability points at them that they can fill out the abilities they want at high rank, so that they can then just look around at all of the other abilities that they wouldn't mind having a few points in. Maybe even establish a line where kicking non-Caste/Favored abilities above a certain level costs extra. Honestly, as far as Exalted goes, I really don't care if everyone in the game has a vast swathe of abilities, at various different levels, just after character generation. There's a Mortal Hero at the back of Ex2 Core, who has 11/6/5 for attributes and sixty-seven points in abilities. And you know, that sounds like a pretty reasonable heroic figure to start out as to me.
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Nov 7, 2013 23:22
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LGD posted:That would be the "requiring a non-scaling approach to advancement" I mentioned. Which is a totally legitimate approach to take, but has some potential negative consequences of its own- in terms of increasing push towards specialization over general competence (without countervailing mechanics) and the dreaded v-word. I actually like non-scaling costs for advancement, and Exalted is actually a reasonable candidate for it but there are absolutely reasonable reasons people like it in their games. The majority of your character-advancing expenses have always been charms, charms have always had flat cost. Flattening the costs of other elements just encourages players to buy things other than charms. They still end up mostly buying charms.
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Nov 7, 2013 23:27
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With respect to crafting and extended rolls and so on, I always kind of thought the "roll and distribute successes" thing in Bliss Stage was promising (though I never got to play it). Planning phase:
Example: Alice is a Twilight Caste in Bob's game, and she wants to build a canyon-spanning bridge, so two cities she loves can trade directly, without having to go around the canyon and through the Guild-controlled market there. She pitches the following wishlist:
Bob doesn't care to split hairs between "quake-resistant" and "wind-resistant", and combines them into "robust against the elements." On the flip side, he thinks "habitable space" is too vague, and splits it into "barracks and guard towers", "townhomes and inns," and "hygenic design" (for running water and efficient handling of yeddim dung). He drops hints that, by putting enough successes into the "townhomes" bit, she might find a location along the bridge suitable for manse-construction. Also, he adds the complications "Bridge needs support on canyon floor" and "poo poo Bob haven't thought of yet." Alice now has 8 bullet points to accomplish, and some of them probably require more than one success to accomplish. She's rolling 11 dice to build this thing, and doesn't want to spread her successes too thin, so she looks to her resources and allies for help. Adventure Time! First, Alice enlists Charlie, her Eclipse Caste friend, to gather money and manpower from the two cities. He goes out and roleplays and nearly raises the money, but the deal falls apart when his Abyssal nemesis spreads rumors that he's been sleeping with wives and husbands all over town, and comes back empty-handed. Next, she goes out to appease the canyon spirits and get their help quarrying for materials. The canyon spirits don't like the bridge, but they don't like the Guild either, so they agree to stay neutral. Bob and Alice agree to say that this lowers the difficulty for elemental robustness from 2 to 1. Finally, Alice goes questing with Danielle, the group's Dawn Caste, to conquer the wyld-spiders and demand vast quantities of silken thread as tribute. This is successful, and Bob decrees that the silk will be enough to guarantee the bridge needn't touch the canyon floor. However, Alice thinks it'd be sweet to have the Guild's mercenaries try to knock down the bridge, so she petitions instead for auto-success on the bridge's breadth. Roll Them Bones Alice finally rolls her dice and, using boosts from Charms and other stuff, gets 9 successes. She distributes them thus:
It's a very handwavey system, but the important thing is that it's negotiated, and thus less arbitrary than GM fiat. Also, it represents concerns that the players care about; if nobody wants the game to be about the miseries of the laborers building the bridge, then it doesn't come up. I'm not sure how I'd represent opposition, either in the die-roll or narratively. Like, if the Zenith-caste in the group wanted to make an issue of slave-labor and cause trouble... then what?
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Nov 8, 2013 00:09
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Attribute pricing has always felt like a failure in the Storyteller system though, because you buy what you want at Char-gen and then just never touch them again. It's an entire subset of character growth you basically toss in the garbage can after the first session. Maybe that's intentional? I don't think it should be. What if I want to start out as an apprentice to a master of punching mans, and I should only logically have 3 or maybe 4 at most strength? I can't, because it's kneecapping the character from the first day. It's really not munchkining to do this either, it's just sensible. I realized it the first time I made a Vampire character when I had never played a tabletop game in my life before, without anyone else telling me it was so. I guess at least it's obvious. It still sucks to start out your stats at the peak with no room for advancement.
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Nov 8, 2013 00:19
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LGD posted:Because the power differences ultimately really don't matter that much in a complex system where different choices have quite different power levels (i.e. 2000xp doesn't really tell you anything about power level or capabilities of a character except in the very broadest sense) and it greatly speeds up character creation vs. a system where everything you get at chargen is based on scaling XP costs? The problem is that the very fact that XP spent doesn't correlate to power level only makes this worse. A minmaxed character, over the course of a game, will greatly outpace a character made by someone who doesn't do that. And systems with a clear advantage to character optimization at the start tend to produce weirdly distorted characters (willpower in 2e, anyone?) Anything that can be done to minimize the difference between XP and BP should be done, if you aren't willing to scrap BP as a bad idea altogether.
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Nov 8, 2013 00:29
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LGD posted:That would be the "requiring a non-scaling approach to advancement" I mentioned. Which is a totally legitimate approach to take, but has some potential negative consequences of its own- in terms of increasing push towards specialization over general competence (without countervailing mechanics) and the dreaded v-word. I actually like non-scaling costs for advancement, and Exalted is actually a reasonable candidate for it but there are absolutely reasonable reasons people like it in their games. That's nonsensical though. If 1 BP = 1 Skill Dot, for example, 1BP buys you one die, all the time, every time. It doesn't push you towards specialization, because such a system gives zero fucks about how many dice you already have. I'd be more sympathetic to this sort of thing if Charms were like Vampire's Disciplines, which get better the more you buy into them and had scaling costs. Skills don't work like that because a die is a die is a die. But scaling powahs are like that. Except Exalted has always used flat costs for that anyway. EDIT: Scooped.
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Nov 8, 2013 00:33
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Kenlon posted:The problem is that the very fact that XP spent doesn't correlate to power level only makes this worse. A minmaxed character, over the course of a game, will greatly outpace a character made by someone who doesn't do that. And systems with a clear advantage to character optimization at the start tend to produce weirdly distorted characters (willpower in 2e, anyone?) Even with perfectly balanced point buy chargen and advancement, a heavily minmaxed character in terms of Charm selection will still be able to demonstrate much greater competence in her player's choice of field than a generalist or a thoughtlessly constructed character, and will possess greater ability to consistently deal with the world on her own terms, i.e. on the field of her greatest competence. Since we're unwilling to move away from a Charm model and toward something like, I dunno, Wushu, where all characters are balanced in the influence they can exert (because we like Charms and think writing and selecting and using them are fun), this problem will not go away by establishing a uniform XP/BP system. XP parity has never meant balance and will never mean balance under the current Charm model, and we do not believe it's a goal worth changing models over. Kenlon posted:Anything that can be done to minimize the difference between XP and BP should be done, if you aren't willing to scrap BP as a bad idea altogether. You're stating this as axiomatically true, but the trade-offs involved aren't so clear cut. BP brings clear advantages in some fields -- greater comprehensibility during chargen for people new to the game being the most obvious. The question is: "Do the benefit of moving toward a uniform XP/BP system in terms of per-XP character balance outweigh the drawbacks of removing the clearer and (in our judgment) more-fun-to-engage-with BP system from the chargen process?" We judge they do not.
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Nov 8, 2013 00:46
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LGD posted:Because the power differences ultimately really don't matter that much in a complex system where different choices have quite different power levels (i.e. 2000xp doesn't really tell you anything about power level or capabilities of a character except in the very broadest sense) and it greatly speeds up character creation vs. a system where everything you get at chargen is based on scaling XP costs? It increases system mastery and has some other negative effects, but that has to be weighted against the combined goals of allowing character generation to be flexible while not causing new players to go "what the gently caress do I do with all these XP points in this new system I don't understand?!" I mean I'm sympathetic to the arguments for the various Karmagen systems made for Shadowrun over point buy or the priority system, but if I was trying to introduce Shadowrun as a new game for my group to play I know I sure as gently caress wouldn't choose Karmagen as the way I had them make their first characters. While this is a serviceable defense for using the chargen rules as written rather than a houseruled XP generation system in a game of Exalted 2E which you've already had the misfortune of buying the books for, it is absolutely not a defense for putting a BP/XP divide into a new game which is, ostensibly, designed by adult humans for adult humans. XP chargen is the horrible price we pay for trying to get a game using the oWoD style freebie point/experience point dichotomy. A new, good game should, ideally, free us of that bullshit. To reiterate my reiteration, BP vs. XP is not a balance concern. Like, I'm positive that you're wrong that the specific BP/XP differences in 2E as they existed created ultimately negligible differences - couldn't they effectively put you a hundred or so XP ahead of your fellow players, or behind them? Someone either back me up or correct me on this - but it isn't actually on the XP system if one player ends up "stronger" or "weaker" than another. That'll happen because Melee was overpowered compared to Archery or because none of the Bureaucracy charms do anything that Presence charms don't do faster, or whatever. This is about readability and parity. If I run a game, I want to be able to: A) Give my players the same amount of XP, such that they each have the same ability to advance and customize their characters B) Allow my players to take back and redo their character advancement if they're unsatisfied with it BP/XP fails at this completely. Like Raving Loon and other posters have mentioned, there's basically no reason whatsoever why every single trait in Exalted shouldn't have a flat cost. The core unit of character advancement, the Charm, already has a flat cost. Things like Attribute and Essence prereqs do a perfectly fine job of pacing out Charm purchases. The fact that Strength 5 takes 25% longer to buy than Strength 4 does is invisible to the narrative and does nothing but make the game more tedious to play. Stephenls posted:Even with perfectly balanced point buy chargen and advancement, a heavily minmaxed character in terms of Charm selection will still be able to demonstrate much greater competence in her player's choice of field than a generalist or a thoughtlessly constructed character, and will possess greater ability to consistently deal with the world on her own terms, i.e. on the field of her greatest competence. Since we're unwilling to move away from a Charm model and toward something like, I dunno, Wushu, where all characters are balanced in the influence they can exert (because we like Charms and think writing and selecting and using them are fun), this problem will not go away by establishing a uniform XP/BP system. XP parity has never meant balance and will never mean balance under the current Charm model, and we do not believe it's a goal worth changing models over. XP parity isn't a balance issue, straight up. Balance is totally irrelevant here. Experience points in specific, and the executive ability to add things to your character sheet in general, have a social value totally orthogonal to your damage per turn. quote:You're stating this as axiomatically true, but the trade-offs involved aren't so clear cut. BP brings clear advantages in some fields -- greater comprehensibility during chargen for people new to the game being the most obvious. The question is: "Do the benefit of moving toward a uniform XP/BP system in terms of per-XP character balance outweigh the drawbacks of removing the clearer and (in our judgment) more-fun-to-engage-with BP system from the chargen process?" We judge they do not. BP don't do that, flat costs do that. If we know that players don't like breaking their calculators out to determine if they're allowed to increase their Integrity score, why do we ever make them do it? How is it permissible to, like, fool them into thinking they're playing a simple, fun game and then once they've gotten invested to drop the boring accountancy on their heads? Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 00:53 on Nov 8, 2013 |
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Nov 8, 2013 00:50
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Kenlon posted:The problem is that the very fact that XP spent doesn't correlate to power level only makes this worse. A minmaxed character, over the course of a game, will greatly outpace a character made by someone who doesn't do that. And systems with a clear advantage to character optimization at the start tend to produce weirdly distorted characters (willpower in 2e, anyone?) How does it make it worse? Differences in initial abilities very slightly increase the ultimate differences between min-maxed and lacksadaisically generated characters, but your problem there is with what happens in terms of advancement and power level between characters created by players with different levels of system mastery over time, not the initial difference. Also it would be nice to know if you're talking about BP solely in its aspect as a character generation-specific resource, or in its entirety. Because I would argue that it's really the XP system that's more problematic. Mendrian posted:That's nonsensical though. If 1 BP = 1 Skill Dot, for example, 1BP buys you one die, all the time, every time. It doesn't push you towards specialization, because such a system gives zero fucks about how many dice you already have. quote:I'd be more sympathetic to this sort of thing if Charms were like Vampire's Disciplines, which get better the more you buy into them and had scaling costs. Skills don't work like that because a die is a die is a die. But scaling powahs are like that. Except Exalted has always used flat costs for that anyway. Look, a lot of you seem to be taking this as me saying that the BP/XP split is a super great idea. I'm not- I'm just pointing out why it isn't necessarily the devil or something that is really worth getting all that worked up over. There are plenty of ways to address advancement and relative power level in Exalted or an Exalted-like game, but that's a genuinely different conversation than the usual "abolish BP because it's the devil" noise that happens in here. Freaking out about the BP/XP split is 100% missing the forest for the trees.
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Nov 8, 2013 01:09
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Stephenls posted:You're stating this as axiomatically true, but the trade-offs involved aren't so clear cut. You have two systems that handle character advancement - one at chargen, one in play. If they are different in a way that causes one to be mathematically superior for buying certain things, then that is what people will do. Because we are nerds and are unable to help ourselves. The idea that you should minimize the difference in outcomes between the two systems if you aren't willing to scrap having two systems is axiomatically true. LGD posted:Also it would be nice to know if you're talking about BP solely in its aspect as a character generation-specific resource, or in its entirety. Because I would argue that it's really the XP system that's more problematic. If we were to get rid of the XP system as it stands and replace it with something based on the BP system, that would be fine too. It's just having the two, very different, systems that is a problem.
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Nov 8, 2013 01:14
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Of the two, BP's definitely superior to XP. Actual problems happen when you try to use the two together, but I'd just give out BP from session #1 to session #infinity rather than making people build their characters out of raw XP in an Exalted game. When you cut out scaling costs entirely, and just trust stat prereqs and narrative appropriateness to guide power choices, you not only make it vastly easier to build and advance characters (for instance, it becomes possible at all to just tell people to make an advanced or experienced character without worrying about all the math they're going to have to do) but you also open yourself up to new game mechanics. For instance, in the World of Darkness right now there's a rule that says that if something makes you lose a Merit dot, you can hold onto that dot and put it somewhere else later. That wouldn't be possible if each Merit dot cost a different amount of XP based on its number.
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Nov 8, 2013 01:20
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MiltonSlavemasta posted: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. This may be my favorite bit in Legends of the Wulin. The game acknowledges that its purpose is to tell kung fu stories, so everyone is equally good at kung fu. You can't spend XP to raise your "fight" skill at the expense of social skills. Hell, raising your social (or medicine, or prayer, or tactics) skills means you are stronger in combat too. And there's even a completely separate XP track so that everyone can purchase narrative involvement without gimping their kung fu ability. The result: you get a group of people who can all participate at the same level in combat, have their particular niches and shticks that they can invoke out of combat, and spend XP on narrative involvement. This is amazingly convenient when you want to design a game that's consistently fun for all your players. Exalted's design feels prehistoric by comparison. Having a Martial Arts skill in a game that emulates Wuxia is silly, allowing players the ability to segregate themselves between combatants and non-combatants is silly (a chunk of your table will end up taking naps regardless of what you prepare each session), having skills that only work during down-time is silly. On that note, the Craft skill would make a lot more sense if it was structured around giving the player the ability to create temporary tools to solve a problems and that you can whip up in a (very) short period of time, a la Girl Genius. Making permanent stat-boosting gear or works of magical infrastructure should have some kind of resource cost—perhaps XP, or perhaps each Exalt type gets a certain number of Miracle Points per X amount of downtime, which they can then spend on things like boosting armies, changing popular opinion, cutting deals with local spirit courts or establishing spy networks. You want to structure play incentives so that everyone has things to do in and out of combat, and no one has the incentive to stay home making invincible robot armies for free. "Sucking in scene but eventually churning out invincible robot armies during downtime" is not the kind of tradeoff your game should encourage! Lymond fucked around with this message at 01:38 on Nov 8, 2013 |
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Nov 8, 2013 01:23
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System mastery? Perish the thought! But I guess Pathfinder still sells.
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Nov 8, 2013 01:30
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Ferrinus posted:While this is a serviceable defense for using the chargen rules as written rather than a houseruled XP generation system in a game of Exalted 2E which you've already had the misfortune of buying the books for, it is absolutely not a defense for putting a BP/XP divide into a new game which is, ostensibly, designed by adult humans for adult humans. XP chargen is the horrible price we pay for trying to get a game using the oWoD style freebie point/experience point dichotomy. A new, good game should, ideally, free us of that bullshit. quote:Like Raving Loon and other posters have mentioned, there's basically no reason whatsoever why every single trait in Exalted shouldn't have a flat cost. The core unit of character advancement, the Charm, already has a flat cost. Things like Attribute and Essence prereqs do a perfectly fine job of pacing out Charm purchases. The fact that Strength 5 takes 25% longer to buy than Strength 4 does is invisible to the narrative and does nothing but make the game more tedious to play. edit: Which you acknowledge above. I don't think we're that far off opinionwise, I just think I may have a higher tolerance for system mastery bullshit than you do and regard the BP/XP split as an acceptable price to pay to avoid the full horrors that could be inflicted upon us by the decision to use a scaling advancement system. Default XP gen is a fate worse than what the BP/XP split has wrought. quote:XP parity isn't a balance issue, straight up. Balance is totally irrelevant here. quote:BP don't do that, flat costs do that. If we know that players don't like breaking their calculators out to determine if they're allowed to increase their Integrity score, why do we ever make them do it? How is it permissible to, like, fool them into thinking they're playing a simple, fun game and then once they've gotten invested to drop the boring accountancy on their heads? LGD fucked around with this message at 01:52 on Nov 8, 2013 |
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Nov 8, 2013 01:40
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LGD posted:Actually BP/XP works fine for A. They've had exactly the same opportunity to advance and customize their characters, some just did it more effectively. That difference isn't interesting, and that's bad, but nothing about BP/XP stops you from doing A. It does make doing B something of a bitch if you haven't kept track of the total XP a player has received. Dude. Dude, no. Don't do this. Stop. No. quote:I'm not opposed to flat costs at all. I agree that it would be nice to be free of the bullshit, and it would be a real improvement over the current situation. But every time I see you talking about this it's in terms of "Death to BP." What is the intended implication here? Because it has rarely sounded like a pure call for unified creation and advancement mechanics. I mean it doesn't need to be treatise every time, but attacking BP as the problem really strikes me as wrongheaded. Lack of transparency and some imbalance is the price we play for having non-painful chargen in a system with scaling XP costs. I think those are prices worth paying if we're keeping an advancement system with scaling costs. If we're moving on to a different scheme of advancement great, but the proper rallying cry/public argument for that isn't "death to BP" or "I won't buy Ex3 if it has BP in it." That's not true. Why are you making a weird tone argument about bonus points? What? It's OBVIOUSLY a call for unified creation and advancement mechanics. That's the problem with BP/XP. They're not unified and create stupid incentives and accountancy problems. The World of Darkness has unified creation and advancement mechanics now and is vastly better for it. quote:And the BP/XP split interferes with that in a way that is meaningfully felt by your players? In a manner that doesn't implicitly implicate balance? I mean the badly optimized character can add just as many 1 dot abilities as the other guy if he spends his experience that way rather than picking up that ultra-interesting 5th dot of melee skill. I'm not telling you that it isn't lovely, I'm just saying that the counterarguments always seem to implicate balance concerns. Actually, it seems to be defenses that raise (and dismiss) balance concerns. Those who complain about XP disparity might have a story about one player killing all the others because he effectively had twelve more charms or something, but the problem isn't the ability to have more charms than someone else, the problem is the ability to have more XP than someone else. Equal XP isn't the same as, and doesn't guarantee, equal character power. It has its own value. And it's much, much easier to guarantee outright! quote:Because the boring accountancy is quite easy when you're dealing with saving up at most a dozen or so experience at a time and actually in game where you have some idea of where you want to be taking your character? And horrific when you're confronted with hundreds of experience with which to fill a blank page? It's not really the same ask at all. So this thing sucks and is boring but it's okay to force it on people in small helpings. Consequently, of course, it's basically impossible to start a game with experienced characters in it, because, oops, now you're doing XP-based chargen despite your best intentions. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 01:56 on Nov 8, 2013 |
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Nov 8, 2013 01:50
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There is almost no reason to keep XP as a system except legacy. It slows down character progress along specific avenues somewhat, and is therefore good for simulation; but that's about it. Like, it shows us that advancing from 4 dice in Strength to 5 takes much longer than advancing from 2 to 3. This is literally the only advantage I can see to keeping it. We have a host of reasons to drop it. When you're writing a new edition, I think it's best to assume everything is non-essential and then add things into the mix because you know how good it is. Don't presume that systems are baseline just because that's the way it's always been, which is really the only reason I can conceivably think of to keep the system we had from 2e, even superficially.
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Nov 8, 2013 01:57
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Heart Attacks posted:While it might not be a bad thing, I think it's a pipe dream to expect Exalted 3e to diverge very far from the incredibly simulationist approach of the earlier editions and basically all Storyteller games. Oh yeah, of course. I'm just saying it's a bad system and if we're trying to replace mechanics ourselves we shouldn't feel the need to stick to the core. Lymond posted:This may be my favorite bit in Legends of the Wulin. The game acknowledges that its purpose is to tell kung fu stories, so everyone is equally good at kung fu. You can't spend XP to raise your "fight" skill at the expense of social skills. Hell, raising your social (or medicine, or prayer, or tactics) skills means you are stronger in combat too. And there's even a completely separate XP track so that everyone can purchase narrative involvement without gimping their kung fu ability. The result: you get a group of people who can all participate at the same level in combat, have their particular niches and shticks that they can invoke out of combat, and spend XP on narrative involvement. This is amazingly convenient when you want to design a game that's consistently fun for all your players. This is really cool! The question then is what to do with the Dawn Caste - could you just say they're really good at tactics, logistics, training and so on and leave it at that, or should they be better at kung fu than the others?
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Nov 8, 2013 02:06
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Mendrian posted:There is almost no reason to keep XP as a system except legacy. It slows down character progress along specific avenues somewhat, and is therefore good for simulation; but that's about it. Like, it shows us that advancing from 4 dice in Strength to 5 takes much longer than advancing from 2 to 3. This is literally the only advantage I can see to keeping it. The real fucker here is that that, itself, doesn't actually simulate anything. It feels vaguely like something that makes sense, but, actually, would make just as much sense the other way around. Like... what is a dot of Strength? What is it? Is it anything at all? Is a "dot" a real thing? No. Scaling costs make a lot of sense for important, game-defining traits that are supposed to be really hard to get, so for instance I support scaling costs for raising your permanent Essence or maybe the fifth dot of each Attribute or something, but by default it's useless noise, cargo cult verisimilitude. If your goal is to slow down vertical advancement, there are lots of less math-intensive ways to do that - you could make it impossible to have a 4 without first having two 3s, for instance. Frankly, though, there's just no point in doing that - Attributes and Abilities are ultimately a gating mechanism for Charms, they themselves being gated accomplishes nothing.
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Nov 8, 2013 02:09
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Ferrinus posted:Dude. Dude, no. Don't do this. Stop. No. quote:That's not true. Why are you making a weird tone argument about bonus points? What? quote:Actually, it seems to be defenses that raise (and dismiss) balance concerns. Those who complain about XP disparity might have a story about one player killing all the others because he effectively had twelve more charms or something, but the problem isn't the ability to have more charms than someone else, the problem is the ability to have more XP than someone else. quote:So this thing sucks and is boring but it's okay to force it on people in small helpings. Consequently, of course, it's basically impossible to start a game with experience characters in it, because, oops, now you're doing XP-based chargen despite your best intentions.
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Nov 8, 2013 02:13
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Bigup DJ posted:This is really cool! The question then is what to do with the Dawn Caste - could you just say they're really good at tactics, logistics, training and so on and leave it at that, or should they be better at kung fu than the others? In Legends of the Wulin, at least, the Warrior's Art is the Secret Art of Battle. They're able to adopt Approaches which grants them bonuses when they fight in a certain way, but those who recognize the Approach they're using can counter it by exploiting its weaknesses. They're no better at actual kungfu-ing, they're better at battlefield manipulation and controlling how the fight is actually fought. All of the other Arts can be used in combat as well, like the pressure-point secrets of the Doctor's Art, so it's not a big advantage for the Warrior - but other Archetypes need to invest more to easily use their Arts in the immediacy of battle, whereas that's the Warrior's bread and butter.
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Nov 8, 2013 02:17
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LGD posted:What about that is untrue? Both had the same character resources to spend. Someone ended up with fewer dots on their sheet. Is that especially noticeable given the difference in power level the rest of the system has? Is that especially noticeable when different post-creation choices would have resulted in initially identical characters having different numbers of dots on their sheet depending on their areas of focus given the scaling XP costs? Could somebody please, PLEASE report this troll? quote:Because I've read this thread? And until I brought it up I don't think that it was obvious to a casual observer that what was really happening was you and others were issuing a clarion call for unified advancement mechanics that eliminate scaling? Especially since the system you're championing has a "unified" character creation system that still causes allocative inefficiencies between characters (due to distribution of initial points) and after that uses XP gen? BP exacerbates the problem, but nWoD has exactly the same ones as Ex1/2 do on a smaller scale. No, it doesn't. The World of Darkness uses flat experience point costs now. The bad old days are over. quote:What is the inherent value XP has beyond its ability to increase character power and options? A measurement of the GMs personal esteem for you? Because we're not talking about actual XP differences here but effective ones, so that doesn't really apply. We're talking about one player having more power to advance and customize their character than another. The fact that this is often hidden well doesn't stop it from being a problem.
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Nov 8, 2013 02:18
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Ferrinus posted:No, it doesn't. The World of Darkness uses flat experience point costs now. The bad old days are over. It's really crazy how the World of Darkness is doing a lot of pretty amazing things that I guess Ex3 is just breezing right the hell past. I'm still not sure about some of the changes they've made, but hell, it's still really impressive.
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Nov 8, 2013 02:20
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Ferrinus posted:To reiterate my reiteration, BP vs. XP is not a balance concern. Like, I'm positive that you're wrong that the specific BP/XP differences in 2E as they existed created ultimately negligible differences - couldn't they effectively put you a hundred or so XP ahead of your fellow players, or behind them? Someone either back me up or correct me on this - but it isn't actually on the XP system if one player ends up "stronger" or "weaker" than another. That'll happen because Melee was overpowered compared to Archery or because none of the Bureaucracy charms do anything that Presence charms don't do faster, or whatever. Willpower in 2e is the go-to example of this. Costs 1bp at creation, 2x[Current Rating] in play. You can spend 5bp to get 70xp worth of points on your page. Those 5bp could buy you one charm. Those 70xp could get you eight.
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Nov 8, 2013 02:20
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