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I get that looking back on games that succumbed to a lot of bloat is really bound up in hindsight...when 4E first came out every class got something like four choices per level. Four! And feats, there were barely a hundred of the things to start with. But the thing is that there are plenty of examples of games that went and got bloated with a bunch of stuff to look at and learn from, it's not like all you can do is shrug and go "but who could have predicted it would happen this time?" especially when your last two editions are actually a pretty good example of games that had way too much cruft. So to go into the next edition going "Not only are we going to keep the same system of intricate, branching ability trees for all the various skills, including making entirely new sets for the five or six other kinds of demigod we'll be releasing books on later but we're going to add even more intricate ability trees on top of that right from the outset" strikes me as a bizarre direction to go in. Was this a common complaint? That Exalted didn't have enough charms to choose from?
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Apr 9, 2014 08:02
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This quote from the Onyx Path forums seems on point:Holden posted:Bad question, you're looking at it like a Martial Arts style. That's not how many Evocations Volcano Cutter -has-. That's how many -examples- we've chosen to -display.- Its potential number of Evocations could be much higher.
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Apr 9, 2014 10:19
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So in other words, Evocations come in menus, possibly splat oriented ones, and you can expect options (suggestions?) for building your personal artifacts off of, if I'm reading through the PR-speech right.
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Apr 9, 2014 10:38
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There is, of course, a very easy way for them to disprove any of the rampant speculation as to how their new system of gear-charms actually works in practice, but that would involve actually explaining how this stuff works with examples and previews and things. Still though, 19 evocations is "average-ish" for any given magical sword, apparently. If these are built off a menu and the expectation is that you won't actually purchase all of them then...why do you need 19 of them again? Why wouldn't you just make a smaller menu of options that you know that you (or that the GM knows their player) is likely to want to purchase instead of padding it out with a bunch of other stuff just to take up space?
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Apr 9, 2014 10:46
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Yeah, if they want swords to feel MORE unique than just A Daiklaive Made Of Whatever, how is having a gigantic sprawling mess of evocations to choose from on it going to help rather than a small, focused set?
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Apr 9, 2014 10:56
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Kai Tave posted:There is, of course, a very easy way for them to disprove any of the rampant speculation as to how their new system of gear-charms actually works in practice, but that would involve actually explaining how this stuff works with examples and previews and things. Because this is a premade daiklave. Odds are, a custom-built one will have evocations you'll for sure want at some point. This is pure speculation of course, but I figure it's about right with how artifacts generally function. This was the case with Power Armors for example, they generally had one big selling point and then a bunch of fluff you paid for because eh, why not. Transient People fucked around with this message at 11:29 on Apr 9, 2014 |
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Apr 9, 2014 11:25
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Again though, if the idea is that you simply grab general gear charms off a menu and this particular example is simply meant to illustrate how that works then why did they cram it with 19 powers, half of which you aren't expected to buy, when they could have done the same thing with half as many powers which is apparently a much more realistic expectation? All they've done in this hypothetical case is pointlessly overcomplicate their own example. None of the potential explanations people have come up for this decision make it sound any less dumb.
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Apr 9, 2014 11:32
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Transient People posted:So in other words, Evocations come in menus, possibly splat oriented ones, and you can expect options (suggestions?) for building your personal artifacts off of, if I'm reading through the PR-speech right. No, from the context I think he is saying that there are additional generic evocation trees or pools which exist in addition to and supplemental to the huge number of specific charms each dailave already has. The idea being that you can add more on as part of improving your personal weapon to hand it on to the next exaltation. In short: this is the tip of the charm iceberg.
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Apr 9, 2014 13:08
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My worry is the level of bookkeeping all this is going to involve. I'm pretty bad for forgetting the powers my character has in games like Exalted because they can be so niche and unrelated and so I write down what charms do and their costs/pre-reqs on my character sheet when I can. If 3rd Ed's sheets are going to be even bigger than my already pretty huge 2nd Ed ones I'm going to be getting Character Apps for games that are like minature novels. That I then have to check over to make sure they added it all up right and obeyed all the subsystems in place and OH GOD KILL ME NOW.
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Apr 9, 2014 13:12
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The ideas is with enough Charms, nobody will be able to find the scant creepy sex ones before their boner deflates like a Warhammer player checking his bank account. I don't think you guys are looking at the big picture here.
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Apr 9, 2014 13:41
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From the way this is being presented it sounds like you are not supposed to design an artifact with all the evocations planned out ahead of time. It sounds like you are supposed to grab a sword and as you use it you buy powers that seem relevant and cool. In this way you only end up with 20+ charms on an artifact if you run a campaign for a number of years and the effects slowly stack up. This could be a cool way to add some more differentiation between two or more melee users in the group when they all buy the same melee charms.
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Apr 9, 2014 14:39
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Basically there is no more choice during chargen between a low-rent 2-dot daiklave and a five-dot Soul Mirror. All the swords start out at 2-dot daiklave, and every sword can be pushed up to Soul Mirror if you keep putting XP into it. Most people aren't wielding Soul Mirror because most people don't put that much XP into their swords, dudes what are happy to use their 2-dot daiklave and put their XP toward other stuff can put their XP toward other stuff. Ages ago Geoff said "Realistically there shouldn't be generic 2-dot daiklaves, every one of them should be named and storied and unique, but we need to let people buy their swords at chargen, so welp." We found a way around that.
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Apr 9, 2014 14:54
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Stephenls posted:Basically there is no more choice during chargen between a low-rent 2-dot daiklave and a five-dot Soul Mirror. All the swords start out at 2-dot daiklave, and every sword can be pushed up to Soul Mirror if you keep putting XP into it. Most people aren't wielding Soul Mirror because most people don't put that much XP into their swords, dudes what are happy to use their 2-dot daiklave and put their XP toward other stuff can put their XP toward other stuff. So does this mean you can no longer buy Soul Mirror at chargen since it now would require X amount of evocation purchases? Or does buying a higher dot version of an artifact means it starts with more evocations pre-learned? Basically, are you literally going to make all daiklaives 2-dot artifacts and differentiate them based on how you invest in later evocations? If so, then that's pretty cool.
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Apr 9, 2014 15:10
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I guess you can... spend starting charm purchases on evocations? I mean, I don't know, I'm just guessing. That's literally me just going "How would I solve that?" Like how in previous editions you spent charm purchases to buy spells. I assume there's some way to start with a more powerful sword by spending resources there and not elsewhere, because if there weren't, that would seem like a really odd omission. But yeah, we're not gating "Can eventually buy more evocations" behind an initial higher purchase cost; that'd be redundant.
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Apr 9, 2014 15:15
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So my guess is that threw will be a set of general evocations for daiklaves, and one for weapons including orichalcum, and for weapons including red jade, and some for weapons in general, and some other ones for miscellaneous themes, and whatever else so if your storied sword of legend is an orichalcum and red jade daiklave of the elephant lord you'll have like ten different trees available of different tiers to build it. So my question is, are evocations always character specific? If the macguffin of a given story is a legendary daiklave, does it turn into a two dot artifact when a PC picks it up? I'm assuming not but it sure would be nice to have some idea how stuff works.
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Apr 9, 2014 15:41
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Plague of Hats posted:(PS Ferrinus, please shut the gently caress up about the martial arts thing already. At least until there's something new to talk about. It's even worse when one plows through a bunch of pages.) Hey, what?! There was! Last we'd heard from the playtesters, the developers were testing out a variety of systems via which the Dawn caste could be handed a sixth skill. The latest update suggests that they're done and whatever goofy compromise between good and bad they've settled on is the one we're stuck with. Similarly, I'd been given to think that they were going to be playtesting character advancement mechanics, rather than just jumping them into the Traits chapter and yelling "Print!"
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Apr 9, 2014 17:10
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Theoretically finalized chapters in the way we are discussing them now are still open to change based on playtest feedback, Ferrinus. "Finished," in this context, means they're written and blocked out and presented with full prose in the manner of a chapter one would expect to go to print, sensible hierarchical header structures and principle-illuminating examples and hopefully-catchy-titled sidebars et al. This is a step after design, where everything is written up as a prototype and in shorthand and it works but looks about as attractive as steel scaffold and you'd never want it in a slick, professionally-produced text. "The traits chapter is finished" means "The traits chapter is finished, unless playtest reveals we need to change some of the specifics." ...in which case, changing the specifics will probably be a matter of re-writing half the sentences in a paragraph or something. I don't know where you're getting the idea that "We are putting XP in the traits chapter" means "We won't be playtesting XP!" (EDIT: And yes, if playtest reveals we need to do more substantial changes, we do more substantial changes, lest you want to interpret this as "I guess it's locked in so if your foundations are terrible we're SOL, better hope they're not!") Also, what? Sixth skill? What reaching did you do to come to that conclusion? I mean, I know you're deliberately interpreting the teaser material in as obtuse a manner as possible in the hope of squeezing out more teasers for clarification, but that's stretching it even for that. Stephenls fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Apr 9, 2014 |
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Apr 9, 2014 17:20
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I was originally going to suggest that maybe the 18ish charm tree posted in the update was for a Soul Mirror or similar as opposed to a "regular" daiklave, but not only are there not supposed to be "regular" daiklaves but the update also calls that out as an example of a regular-relatively-speaking elemental daiklave. I think this actually is something that'll sink or swim based on how easily it can be customized. If there's direct support for just grabbing half of one daiklave's tree together and gluing it onto half another daiklave's tree, or if there's a grab bag of generic/interchangeable evocations that can safely be assumed to exist on most artifacts, it'll be a lot easier to drop an artifact into a PC's hands without buying a supplement about it first. Edit: So, really, the slightly confusing part of the diagram in the update is how specific the prereqs are. It makes it look like the evocation cascade is carefully calibrated for game balance as opposed to something that's more freeform and therefore easily-homebrewed. Stephenls posted:Theoretically finalized chapters in the way we are discussing them now are still open to change based on playtest feedback, Ferrinus. "Finished," in this context, means they're written and blocked out and presented with full prose in the manner of a chapter one would expect to go to print, sensible hierarchical header structures and principle-illuminating examples and hopefully-catchy-titled sidebars et al. This is a step after design, where everything is written up as a prototype and in shorthand and it works but looks about as attractive as steel scaffold and you'd never want it in a slick, professionally-produced text. I read much more literally into "a done deal" (as opposed to "ready for testing" or similar). That might just be my mistake! I know you folks are ready to tear, I don't know, the Melee charms up by the roots and replace them if they turn out to be poorly balanced, but it's always sounded like the opposite is true for scaling XP costs, but if the latter's actually up for grabs, great. quote:Also, what? Sixth skill? What reaching did you do to come to that conclusion? I mean, I know you're deliberately interpreting the teaser material in as obtuse a manner as possible in the hope of squeezing out more teasers for clarification, but that's stretching it even for that. "Martial Arts and Brawl are separate abilities with dots apportioned separately." -Bedlamdan, upthread Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Apr 9, 2014 |
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Apr 9, 2014 19:12
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mistaya posted:Can I just say that I vastly prefer having sword skills be on the sword like this rather than last edition: "300 types of martial arts some tiny number of which can be used with swords" clusterfuck? Actually, Martial Arts styles are still a thing (though some will not actually require the Martial Arts ability, and there will also be Brawl Charms that will use the Martial Arts ability, which will be referred to as Brawl if you have only Brawl Charms and no Martial Arts Charms, and there will also be Martial Arts techniques that are not Charms that may or may not refer to the ability as either Martial Arts or Brawl). Ferrinus posted:a rule where you literally have to decide whether you have a Brawl rating or a Martial Arts rating, or divide a single pool of dots up among both skills, or something  Bedlamdan posted:They're totally separate. From what I remember you can have Brawl and Martial Arts at the same time.  theironjef posted:It really seems like this evocation model is going to heavily favor players carrying one sword, one suit of armor, and so on with whatever has evocations. Did you want to wield two one-handed swords and sometimes get a bow out? Great, pick from between 50 and 60 new evocation effects! And split your progression currency amongst them! Kai Tave posted:but holy poo poo that chart looks like a parody of someone's Exalted homebrew. It also makes me think about power balance. If a Solar and a Dragon-Blooded have access to the same Evocation Charms, it'll potentially have the same problem as MA style power levels in 2e. KittyEmpress posted:Any chance 3e is gonna turn down the creepy sex charms and abilities? I haven't followed it at all, due to the bad experience sort of turning me off the game completely. One of the first previews was for some Abyssal seduction and/or spooky ghost rape Charms. Kai Tave posted:This is something I've noticed throughout the mechanical snippets and preview stuff that we have seen so far, running all the way from rapeghosts to Bigger Dog Methodology, which is that the people writing this stuff seem really, really married to specifics...this charm about obsession only works with sex, this charm right here makes your familiar bigger in 20% increments, etc...rather than leaving things more open-ended which seems like it would be a vast improvement. It makes me think of Exalted's initial desire to be a tabletop card game with Charms as your cards, except that having My Dog Is Bigger Than Your Dog Prana that gives Dog creatures you control +1/+1 doesn't really work without having 59 other mechanically interacting pieces you can use to make your Dog creatures actually matter. Also it would be pretty funny to try and get, like, Chirality Prohibition Index edited to fit on a Magic-sized card. Roadie fucked around with this message at 19:49 on Apr 9, 2014 |
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Apr 9, 2014 19:34
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Ferrinus posted:"Martial Arts and Brawl are separate abilities with dots apportioned separately." -Bedlamdan, upthread Last I heard in the playtest, Martial Arts and Brawl are entirely separate abilities. Martial Arts consists of the styles you learn from a sifu somewhere and anyone can learn those. The associated charms were Tiger and Snake style.. Brawl is about punching people in the face without needed to study in a dojo for ten years, and its charms are a redone version of Solar Hero Style. Only a Solar gets those charms. They're totally separate. From what I remember you can have Brawl and Martial Arts at the same time. It's still kind of a gray area and they weren't sure if they wanted to keep it like that, but that's how it worked in early 2014. Also why is there still an unmarked link to anime pedosmut in Strength of Many's AV?
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Apr 9, 2014 19:45
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Roadie posted:It also makes me think about power balance. If a Solar and a Dragon-Blooded have access to the same Evocation Charms, it'll potentially have the same problem as MA style power levels in 2e. I would guess that's why they're doing it by tiers...like, Dragonbloods can only buy Emerald level Evocations while other Celestials can buy Sapphire stuff and only Solars and/or Abyssals can buy Adamant-tier stuff. Or maybe they're doing something else entirely, who loving knows. "Here's a list of 19 Evocations for a single sword with no context" is all we've got to go on at this point.
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Apr 9, 2014 20:29
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Bedlamdan posted:Last I heard in the playtest, Martial Arts and Brawl are entirely separate abilities. Martial Arts consists of the styles you learn from a sifu somewhere and anyone can learn those. The associated charms were Tiger and Snake style.. Brawl is about punching people in the face without needed to study in a dojo for ten years, and its charms are a redone version of Solar Hero Style. Only a Solar gets those charms. Better question, why is that hosted on SA? Fake Edit: And to be more on-topic, this doesn't mean there's Martial Arts dots and Brawl dots, as I read it. It means Brawl is the Punchmans Skill and Martial Arts are the Punchmans Splat-Agnostic Techniques. There's no sixth skill, just splat-locked charms and splat-open charms.
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Apr 9, 2014 20:30
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Kai Tave posted:I would guess that's why they're doing it by tiers...like, Dragonbloods can only buy Emerald level Evocations while other Celestials can buy Sapphire stuff and only Solars and/or Abyssals can buy Adamant-tier stuff. Or maybe they're doing something else entirely, who loving knows. "Here's a list of 19 Evocations for a single sword with no context" is all we've got to go on at this point. it also appears to have something to do with the Magical Material your splat more easily attunes.
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Apr 9, 2014 20:57
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Nope. There's an eight-Charm branch based off of Call The Blade, which is a Solar Charm. Looks like Dragon Tongue Retrieval modifies Call The Blade so that it Wakes The Flame whenever you Call The Blade, Lingering Flame Shroud sounds like it extends duration. 
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Apr 11, 2014 02:11
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but do you Kindle the Flame or let it die to awaken the Age of Man?
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Apr 11, 2014 05:32
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I posted this before, but the underworld is totally where the medieval European aesthetic in Creation needs to live. The 3E team's trying to figure out how to spice up the realms of the dead? Just straight up make them Dark Souls. Straight up.
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Apr 11, 2014 05:45
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Ferrinus posted:I posted this before, but the underworld is totally where the medieval European aesthetic in Creation needs to live. The 3E team's trying to figure out how to spice up the realms of the dead? Just straight up make them Dark Souls. Straight up. Yeah, I've been saying this for years. The Underworld is totes gothic fantasy, except in the places where it's gothickque fantasy or possibly goffic fantasy.
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Apr 11, 2014 06:02
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So is what I'm hearing right here that my desire to play Abyssal El Cid is even more reasonable than I thought it was?
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Apr 11, 2014 08:15
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I am loving the ideas that now my Orichalcum Diaklave is no longer a 2 dot artifact but instead can be The Relentless Typhoon of the Golden Age, bolstering my attacks with the strength of the wind and the power of unrelenting waves. I can build up the power in the weapon to a crescendo where I can push all my opponents back and smash them with the power of a hurricane! That is what Exalted should be about. Legendary Heroes, Legendary Weapons.
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Apr 11, 2014 08:56
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What's occurred to me is this: a single daiklave probably has about as many charms in it as does a single martial arts style. Evocations are supposed to be a third pillar of advancement equivalent to martial arts and sorcery, so you actually do want your most distinctive artifact to have a huge pile of charms locked away inside it because otherwise you'd have to deck yourself out in like twenty different trinkets in order to get the same buyable character traits mileage as your circlemate has in, like, two or three different styles he happens to study.
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Apr 11, 2014 09:00
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Ferrinus posted:What's occurred to me is this: a single daiklave probably has about as many charms in it as does a single martial arts style. Evocations are supposed to be a third pillar of advancement equivalent to martial arts and sorcery, so you actually do want your most distinctive artifact to have a huge pile of charms locked away inside it because otherwise you'd have to deck yourself out in like twenty different trinkets in order to get the same buyable character traits mileage as your circlemate has in, like, two or three different styles he happens to study. This is actually pretty insightful. I just hope nothing is like 2e Celestial/Terrestrial martial arts where a huge number of the charms were fiddly boring stopgaps that kept you from getting the charm that does a cool thing too early.
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Apr 11, 2014 09:03
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I kind of like the idea of evocations, it's not bad.
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Apr 11, 2014 14:06
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Ferrinus posted:I posted this before, but the underworld is totally where the medieval European aesthetic in Creation needs to live. The 3E team's trying to figure out how to spice up the realms of the dead? Just straight up make them Dark Souls. Straight up. Undead burg but even more undead? Interesting!
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Apr 11, 2014 14:10
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With all this progress. I am hoping for a full PDF release in August. Please? Maybe even my golden book of justice in December?
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Apr 12, 2014 12:34
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At the time of this post being created, the Onyx Path Schedule says we can expect the PDF to be out in June. I leave that without commentary other than this sentence.
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Apr 12, 2014 16:30
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Few kickstarted RPGs deliver on time, though. Guess it's wait and see then.
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Apr 12, 2014 16:50
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At this point we have gotten probably about 2/3 of the play testing material, so it is within the realm of possibility to have the PDF released by June. More realistically I would say sometime between July and August.
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Apr 12, 2014 18:28
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NIV3K posted:At this point we have gotten probably about 2/3 of the play testing material, so it is within the realm of possibility to have the PDF released by June. More realistically I would say sometime between July and August. Are you having a good time with the new material? What's your overall opinion so far?
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Apr 12, 2014 22:36
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QuintessenceX posted:Are you having a good time with the new material? What's your overall opinion so far? I'm enjoying it so far. I'm sure that people will find things to complain about when they get the material, but I'm fine with the changes the new edition is bringing so far.
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Apr 13, 2014 00:05
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NIV3K posted:I'm enjoying it so far. I'm sure that people will find things to complain about when they get the material, but I'm fine with the changes the new edition is bringing so far. How "solved" would you say combat tactics are? What tends to determine the winner of a fight? If it's not build, does it come more down to luck or down to rock-paper-scissor style opponent-reading and fakeouts? How critical is focus fire? If three people fight three people, is it better for them to pair off or to should each team ignore two members of the other team?
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Apr 13, 2014 01:12
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