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KittyEmpress posted:The best way to kill an Exalt was to cause mass combat to happen, because then they'll die of boredom. It's true, seriously, I did one or two full-on fights there, it's like a six-hour affair. I say that as fact, not exaggeration. There was one where I was playing a Slayer and it's like "oh for gently caress's sake just hurt me already so I can get my dice bonuses to walk all over you with, thanks", and they ran away first, alas. Nessus posted:And she was all out of catgirl sex. I'm not sure she was ever out of catgirl sex. Oh, and nobody was going to use a warstrider! Those things are death traps in 2e in actual Exalt vs. Exalt combat.
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May 28, 2014 01:57
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How do you run out of catgirl sex on a MUSH? 
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May 28, 2014 01:58
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Oh, and nobody was going to use a warstrider! Those things are death traps in 2e in actual Exalt vs. Exalt combat. Good. Good.
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May 28, 2014 02:14
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Seriously though, in MUSH if you find someone trying to make an army, they will always do three things - train the army to have max archery, make bows with super long range, and give them legs that increase their dash speed by a ton. This is because the best way to beat a celestial exalt is to shoot him, make him use a perfect defense, dash away to where he can't get you, shoot him etc etc. Until he is out of notes. Unless their armor has huge hardness, people literally did math that showed that five heroic mortal archers would do better against a Melee/Martial Arts Dawn than 5 Noble Sword Rakasha, Five Dragon blooded, or Five Demons in melee, because the mortals could get like ten rounds if they ambushed him. edit: basically, there is a reason infernal hero style has a charm to give you double dash speed against anyone who hits you at any point.
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May 28, 2014 02:21
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Ferrinus posted:Good. Good. yeah lets not use the mondo sweet death robots..... frick off, m8
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May 28, 2014 02:23
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:yeah lets not use the mondo sweet death robots..... frick off, m8 They can be autonomous supersoldiers or something.
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May 28, 2014 03:07
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Trust me, I wanted to do a functional warstrider build, but it just doesn't exist.  The better way is just to take a suit of power armor, and basically get most of the advantages minus all the drawbacks, slot in your favorite broken hearthstones and go!
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May 28, 2014 03:10
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Did anyone ever do that trick where there was an Artifact that let you surgically mount hearthstones directly to your flesh, avoiding attunement costs and expanding your mote pool? Endgame of that build was walking around like some kind of hearthstone-based Bleeding Tooth Fungus with a four digit mote pool.
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May 28, 2014 03:37
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Trust me, I wanted to do a functional warstrider build, but it just doesn't exist. Don't be silly. Get a five-dot manse with the indestructible and mobile powers and pilot it into battle.
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May 28, 2014 03:44
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Green Bean posted:Did anyone ever do that trick where there was an Artifact that let you surgically mount hearthstones directly to your flesh, avoiding attunement costs and expanding your mote pool? Endgame of that build was walking around like some kind of hearthstone-based Bleeding Tooth Fungus with a four digit mote pool. I had a player try this once as an Abyssal. He took the iron circle necromancy spell that let you convert a ghost into a hearthstone with a rating = ghost's Essence and was buddied up with his friend the Dusk caste general that had Abyssal Command 5 taken multiple times.
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May 28, 2014 05:40
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KittyEmpress posted:Seriously though, in MUSH if you find someone trying to make an army, they will always do three things - train the army to have max archery, make bows with super long range, and give them legs that increase their dash speed by a ton. This is because the best way to beat a celestial exalt is to shoot him, make him use a perfect defense, dash away to where he can't get you, shoot him etc etc. Until he is out of notes. This isn't to say Solars shouldn't be able to do things like that, but you did enter a certain space where we were kind of cleaning up the leftovers after he did that giant barrage.
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May 28, 2014 06:16
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Nessus posted:This reminds me of a guy in 1E who had a sort of super-combo which was basically "Destroy Army Attack," considering that it shot an arbitrary number of super-arrows (he had a five dot artifact powerbow... because of course he did). He could drop it three times before running out of Essence, so it was balanced, presumably. I had to explain it to someone in a game I was in once - there are a lot of things and abilities that make sense for existing in setting, and sound cool on paper. However, while it makes sense that your solar archer should be able to machine gun down an entire regiment, that leaves nothing for the other players to do, and is boring. He thought I just didn't want his character to be more powerful than mine (he was playing a dawn caste solar, I was playing a crafting focused Slayer with lots of Mind Hand stuff, so I wasn't even a combat character...)
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May 28, 2014 06:40
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What exactly is it about Exalted that makes people forget that TTRPGs are a cooperative game? I mean, I've certainly seen this mindset in D&D too, but Exalted seems to have a way of convincing people that other-PC-obviating dickwaving is the right way to go about it; that you're playing Exalted wrong if combat hasn't gone fully-degenerate.
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May 28, 2014 15:02
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There's a fine line between "It's okay to have character traits that would normally make you a Mary Sue" and "It's okay to be the Mary Sue of the group in actual play."
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May 28, 2014 15:12
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MiltonSlavemasta posted:There's a fine line between "It's okay to have character traits that would normally make you a Mary Sue" and "It's okay to be the Mary Sue of the group in actual play." Really these are all just symptoms of the exact same problem that's at the root of goddamn near everything: 2E is a broken near unplayable mess.
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May 28, 2014 15:20
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Captain Oblivious posted:Really these are all just symptoms of the exact same problem that's at the root of goddamn near everything: Not so Oblivious, CAPTAIN. What I don't get is why people take WoD games in general so seriously. I've met some weird d&d players (one of them was convinced he was an elf and forced his GF to have an abortion, because half-elves suck) but I know a LOT more dudes that go loving insane for WoD and think they're some kind of vampire otherkin or such. Knew a guy that asked for "the prince of Barquisimeto"(which is a city in my home country) for his permission to enter his domains. The prince refused and the dude won't even go near the city now. The prince is living somewhere else now and doesn't even play RPGs anymore. The other dude? still avoiding Barquisimeto. edit: exalted-obsessed crazies are just a lot more  about this. Mainly because of Anime.
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May 28, 2014 15:39
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I think Vampire is the worst for it because you have this activity, role-playing, which for many people is a fantasy they use because they are unsatisfied with their lives. Then, you have a setting which is essentially the real world, but controlled by a super secret underground of people who can't mesh with regular people because they are special snowflakes with amazing powers who were specially chosen to live forever. A lot of the target audience is susceptible to really, really wanting to believe that poo poo is real.
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May 28, 2014 16:10
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Captain Oblivious posted:Really these are all just symptoms of the exact same problem that's at the root of goddamn near everything: Personally I'm inclined to say that the real reason is that there just aren't a whole ton of reasons for Solars to cooperate in the 'play group' sort of way in the core book. That seems to be the root of it. You might not have a reason to be automatically opposed to another Solar, especially given your collective looming problems, but the "play group" of 3-5 PCs seems a lot less likely than a bunch of singletons who perhaps team up occasionally or stay in touch. DBs and Alchemicals don't have this issue. Abyssals and Infernals at least have bosses who can force them together and have the reasonable threat of massive retaliation - so you may get pass-agg office comedy, but you have less of a reason to go "What?! You made a different call on a moral choice! VENDETTA UPON YOU!" Lunars' tattoos means they at least typically have contact with at least one other Lunar, and Sidereals actually have jobs. Combine this with a large part of Solar thematics being specifically "holy poo poo you are the specialest snowflake that ever sparkled, reality itself is in fact pretty explicitly your play-thing - if you study (and you can take Study++ and invent Magic Adderall to help)" and really the wonder is that it isn't stronger.
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May 28, 2014 16:41
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MiltonSlavemasta posted:I think Vampire is the worst for it because you have this activity, role-playing, which for many people is a fantasy they use because they are unsatisfied with their lives. Then, you have a setting which is essentially the real world, but controlled by a super secret underground of people who can't mesh with regular people because they are special snowflakes with amazing powers who were specially chosen to live forever. A lot of the target audience is susceptible to really, really wanting to believe that poo poo is real. Yeah the sad reality is a lot of roleplayers are broken people who lean on these escapist fantasies as a crutch really really hard. Or at least that's what NWN roleplaying servers taught me.
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May 28, 2014 21:26
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I used to play on Exalted MUSHes, so here's how it tended to break down there: No kidding? Did you ever play on River Province or Wine Dark Seas? I briefly administrated River Province. Nessus posted:I remember one fella on one place had a note in his character info saying, basically: "If you lie to my character he will know instantly, and he will kill you." That was me! If River Province sucked for you, that was my fault, so sorry. RiotGearEpsilon fucked around with this message at 16:47 on May 29, 2014 |
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May 29, 2014 16:44
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RiotGearEpsilon posted:No kidding? Did you ever play on River Province or Wine Dark Seas? I briefly administrated River Province. Yeah, I think so on the former, definitely no on the latter.
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May 29, 2014 17:19
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My character looks and sounds exactly like RiotGearEpsilon's, but he will kill you if you don't lie to him.
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May 29, 2014 17:24
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Man, that single anecdote makes MUSHes sound exactly like the old Pocket D in City of Heroes. Just a bunch of total sues standing around broadcasting their backstories like talking podiums at a museum, every backstory so threatening and complicated and self-contained that other players don't even bother trying to RP.
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May 29, 2014 17:33
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Tales of the River Province had real issues with runaway XP totals leading to a handful of massively dominant characters. Most newer games have tried to cap characters at a certain point comparatively, to avoid having the four-digit XP behemoths that dominated previous games. They've gotten better since then, but Exalted MUSHes certainly still have had other major issues from time to time.
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May 29, 2014 17:45
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So the signs are that Ex3 will keep exponential XP costs or have something equally annoying.
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May 29, 2014 18:08
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Holden is a gigantic moron w/r/t experience points and our only hope is for a widespread playtester revolt once advancement systems are actually distributed.
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May 29, 2014 18:27
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Awesome, I can't wait to begin house-ruling Ex3 before it's even out.
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May 29, 2014 18:56
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Same!!! What's completely insane about this, of course, is that the "helix" Charm tree structure John explained some months ago already accomplishes the "it's easy to get started but hard yet rewarding to attain true mastery" thing that scaling XP costs are supposed to. Edit: "Well we've made several brilliant design decisions but we're going to keep some lovely archaic mechanic that aforementioned decisions render totally obsolete for no real reason" is like the story of 3E as far as I can tell. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 19:17 on May 29, 2014 |
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May 29, 2014 19:06
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I actually rather like scaling experience point costs for skills (or abilities, whatever) for verisimilitude reasons. It should be a lot harder, more time consuming, and require more personal investment to become a grand ultimate master swordsman than it takes to pick up absolutely basic proficiency in shooting a bow and boxing. I like that when not buying super powers, it's significantly more character-resource-intensive to master something than it is to dabble in it. If I were to change how trait-purchasing worked, I would, if anything, switch to xp-gen for character creation, rather than flattening advancement costs. That said, I can totally understand flat rates from a game perspective - it makes sense for game-design if not for verisimilitude. Basically, my point is that it's just a matter of taste, and if it proves too problematic, it should prove relatively easy for people from one group to replace xp with bp, and for the other to replace normal chargen with xp-gen. And, of course, plenty will be five just leaving it as is. It's not so cut and dry as to have one clearly-inferior choice. It all comes down to personal preference.
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May 29, 2014 20:07
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It does take more experience points to become a grand ultimate master swordsman than it takes to pick up basic proficiency in shooting a bow and boxing. Because basic proficiency in shooting and boxing takes two dots, while being a grand ultimate master is five dots. Also, "grand ultimate master" implies maximized scores in related attributes and abilities like strength, dexterity, wits, athletics, dodge, etc, all of which factor into winning sword fights. Scaling experience points seem like they aid in creating verisimilitude, but they actually don't at all. Experience points aren't real.
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May 29, 2014 20:10
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There are also a hell of a lot of people who take their sweet-rear end time becoming technically proficient at something, but then once they do, they manage to breeze through to mastery of it. I've seen it happen plenty of times in martial arts, for instance, where someone just can't get something really basic, so they're stymied for a long time. But once that finally clicks, suddenly they start cruising through to becoming incredibly good at everything else. So, I mean. Just from personal experience, it's equally in keeping with "verisimilitude" to make it much more difficult to achieve basic competency, and then make each additional step much easier to achieve. Or you can just have flat costs because a +1d is a +1d, and actually mastering a skill in real life does far more than make you slightly better at achieving the same results that a complete beginner could, so making verisimilitude arguments is kind of ridiculous.
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May 29, 2014 20:18
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Ferrinus posted:It does take more experience points to become a grand ultimate master swordsman than it takes to pick up basic proficiency in shooting a bow and boxing. Because basic proficiency in shooting and boxing takes two dots, while being a grand ultimate master is five dots. Also, "grand ultimate master" implies maximized scores in related attributes and abilities like strength, dexterity, wits, athletics, dodge, etc, all of which factor into winning sword fights. I seem to have explained poorly. I'm taking about moving from, for example, 4 to 5 compared to moving from 0 to 1. In the former case, you're the equivalent of, say, an Olympic-tier expert brawler advancing to grand-master status beyond which you can only advance with specialties and general physical conditioning. In the latter, you're going from someone who's never thrown a punch in their life to 'having completed a weekend self-defense seminar.' It makes perfect sense, to me, that the further advancement - squeezing out that last tiny bonus between 'world class' and 'the best' - would require a lot more time, energy, and personal investment, as represented by experience points, than the latter. I'm not saying that either way is right or wrong - in fact, the only thing I'm suggesting is that both have their merits, one from a game-design point of view and one from a place of verisimilitude. My personal preference is for scaling experience because of how much bigger a deal it makes out of going from 4 to 5 than from 0 to 1. It feels better to me. You clearly prefer flat scaling for the equal weight it applies to every +1 regardless of how big your pool already is, because at the end of the day, a +1 is a +1 - or, at least, that's what I assume your perfectly-reasonanle rationale is. But there's no clearly superior/inferior or right/wrong way to handle this between these two options. They both have their merits, and they both have their failings.
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May 29, 2014 20:22
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Ferrinus posted:It does take more experience points to become a grand ultimate master swordsman than it takes to pick up basic proficiency in shooting a bow and boxing. Because basic proficiency in shooting and boxing takes two dots, while being a grand ultimate master is five dots. Also, "grand ultimate master" implies maximized scores in related attributes and abilities like strength, dexterity, wits, athletics, dodge, etc, all of which factor into winning sword fights. And further still that their capabilities sprawl out into things other than attribute and ability scores, like learning moves in fighting styles.
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May 29, 2014 20:22
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Scaling costs are perfectly fine if you don't use a non-proportional secondary resource for chargen. If you do, then it creates larger incentives to optimize (creating idiot savants) and punishes more heavily those who don't.
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May 29, 2014 20:25
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jagadaishio posted:I seem to have explained poorly. I'm taking about moving from, for example, 4 to 5 compared to moving from 0 to 1. In the former case, you're the equivalent of, say, an Olympic-tier expert brawler advancing to grand-master status beyond which you can only advance with specialties and general physical conditioning. In the latter, you're going from someone who's never thrown a punch in their life to 'having completed a weekend self-defense seminar.' But that's true in a system with flat costs, because "it is impossible for me to get better beyond this point" requires not only the 5th dot in Brawl, but also the 5th dot in Strength, the 5th dot in Dexterity, the 5th dot in Stamina, the 5th dot in Dodge, the 5th dot in Athletics, the 5th dot in Resistance, the 5th Dot in Wits... quote:I'm not saying that either way is right or wrong - in fact, the only thing I'm suggesting is that both have their merits, one from a game-design point of view and one from a place of verisimilitude. My personal preference is for scaling experience because of how much bigger a deal it makes out of going from 4 to 5 than from 0 to 1. It feels better to me. You clearly prefer flat scaling for the equal weight it applies to every +1 regardless of how big your pool already is, because at the end of the day, a +1 is a +1 - or, at least, that's what I assume your perfectly-reasonanle rationale is. See, that's how you can tell I'm right about this: I have the convictions to confidently claim that there is a clearly superior, right way to handle this between the two options, because the option you're defending does not, actually, have merits. The things you claim it accomplishes are already accomplished by the game system we're discussing, in ways that aren't harmful to character design. Brawl 5 costing 10xp instead of 8xp is invisible to both gameplay and narrative - it means nothing, since experience points themselves don't exist within the fiction of the game. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 20:31 on May 29, 2014 |
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May 29, 2014 20:29
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jagadaishio posted:I seem to have explained poorly. I'm taking about moving from, for example, 4 to 5 compared to moving from 0 to 1. In the former case, you're the equivalent of, say, an Olympic-tier expert brawler advancing to grand-master status beyond which you can only advance with specialties and general physical conditioning. In the latter, you're going from someone who's never thrown a punch in their life to 'having completed a weekend self-defense seminar.' What's the benefit of quadratic XP costs for linear improvements to character skill? Do you feel Exalted would be improved by quadratic XP costs for Charms based on how deep they are within Charm trees?
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May 29, 2014 20:36
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Exalted effectively has scaling Charm costs because of the way Charm trees are being designed. Since mid-tree Charms are (supposed to be) highly specialized and marginal in effect, someone trying to master a particular skill will be paying more and more XP for less raw return as they continue to invest. It's only once they've paid their dues that they'll unlock a second tier of huge game-changers comparable in effect to the starter charms. If you wanted to make it look like you were spending more and more resources just to grind out a marginal advantage that no one else has, you could do the same thing with Abilities themselves: Melee 0 means you attack with (higher of Str and Dex), Melee 1 means you attack with (Str + Dex), Melee 2 through 4 give you a series of tangential advantages/powers like resistance to being disarmed or quickdraw, Melee 5 finally gives you a flat bonus to accuracy and damage. But... why? Who cares? Abilities aren't the interesting part of this system.
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May 29, 2014 20:42
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Scaling costs make the greatest Exalts go to the players who are best at math and metagaming, essentially. If you want to reward math and hideously lopsided starting statblocks (how many 5s can I pack into one sheet?), scaling costs are perfect for that.
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May 29, 2014 21:12
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Scaling costs aren't necessary because going from 1 through 5 in an ability is just the beginning for a true specialist, and anything past that point tends to have serious issues of diminishing returns and opportunity cost; The first Melee charm gets me a free excellency along with whatever it does, but getting more and more melee charms that I can't combo together at the same time means there's some serious potential for redundancy if I keep specializing. Similarly, the best mortal sage almost certainly has Int 5 and Lore 5; Beyond that, he can only improve by specializing in a particular field (hence specialties, if they remain.)
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May 29, 2014 21:20
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RiotGearEpsilon posted:That was me!  What really drove me off was how it seemed like it was "Bitching About The White Wolf Forums, with the occasional brief session of RP, which half the time was apparently just a private Nobilis game because everyone hated what the game was actually about and complained about it incessantly." Really it is terribly frustrating - I am not going to claim Exalted is a ball-droppingly astonishing game system, or that it is the best thing ever as a game setting despite its great peaks of brilliance, but other than a couple of in-person campaigns and apparently that Abyssals game in the pbp forum, people just bitch and bitch and bitch and bitch about it, instead of, like, playing it. Hell, I remember from earlier threads here, it sounded like half the time people tried to play it and instead started recreating the rules. Surely SOMEONE out there actually plays this loving game occasionally! Maybe they're just too busy resolving Sidereal martial arts to post. Nessus fucked around with this message at 21:27 on May 29, 2014 |
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May 29, 2014 21:23
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