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To be fair, if you don't find an airship at some point then your ST is clearly a failure of a JRPG designer.
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Jun 15, 2014 06:26
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Kai Tave posted:Sail has always only ever had two real uses in Exalted: What's Rivers?
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Jun 15, 2014 06:27
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Attorney at Funk posted:To be fair, if you don't find an airship at some point then your ST is clearly a failure of a JRPG designer. I'm going to app a character named Cid with Craft, Lore, and Occult favored to every 3e game on these forums.
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Jun 15, 2014 06:28
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A_Raving_Loon posted:What's Rivers? Rivers are a thing you jump across, or Ride giant fish, c'mon it's not that hard.
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Jun 15, 2014 06:31
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Attorney at Funk posted:To be fair, if you don't find an airship at some point then your ST is clearly a failure of a JRPG designer. The obvious solution at that point would be to make airships much more common across Creation instead of just a Haslanti League and First Age/Twilight Caste making poo poo thing so that Sail would be both more broadly applicable and desirable instead of the ability that really only matters if the GM specifically makes a campaign about sailing. Ride is at least a skill you could potentially use across the breadth of Creation instead of 2/5ths of it or so. A_Raving_Loon posted:What's Rivers? Here's an idea for a good Sail charm, it creates a convenient river wherever you want it so you don't feel like you wasted a bunch of XP on a marginally useful ability.
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Jun 15, 2014 06:32
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Kai Tave posted:The obvious solution at that point would be to make airships much more common across Creation instead of just a Haslanti League and First Age/Twilight Caste making poo poo thing so that Sail would be both more broadly applicable and desirable instead of the ability that really only matters if the GM specifically makes a campaign about sailing. Ride is at least a skill you could potentially use across the breadth of Creation instead of 2/5ths of it or so. But Conan Winson, I deploy my Six Hour Probation Voucher from you for this post. Let me know if you deem it used up.
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Jun 15, 2014 06:40
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MiltonSlavemasta posted:But Conan You're right, what was I thinking, that would be way too anime.
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Jun 15, 2014 06:41
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Kai Tave posted:Here's an idea for a good Sail charm, it creates a convenient river wherever you want it so you don't feel like you wasted a bunch of XP on a marginally useful ability. Burden of Willing Water: A Solar captain need not be constrained by petty geography. Each invocation of this Charm summons the nearest appropriately-sized pond spirit as well as his pond to to the Solar's location. This pond spirit is then bound to keep moving his pond so that the Solar's watercraft can sail whenever the Solar wishes. While tipping the spirit when its service is over is not strictly required, it has become customary and poor tippers can expect substandard service in the future.
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Jun 15, 2014 06:43
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Kai Tave posted:Here's an idea for a good Sail charm, it creates a convenient river wherever you want it so you don't feel like you wasted a bunch of XP on a marginally useful ability. Civilizations cling to rivers.
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Jun 15, 2014 06:48
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Kai Tave posted:You're right, what was I thinking, that would be way too anime. They should've just ditched the whole Conan thing for 3e and embraced Autocthonia or one of the other Shards settings.
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Jun 15, 2014 06:49
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Captain Needs No Boat You always count as on a boat.
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Jun 15, 2014 06:49
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Kai Tave posted:Sail has always only ever had two real uses in Exalted: Eh, the East is lousy with ridiculously big rivers (and a new ocean now, whee), there's sand barges and ice ships etc. it's not that hard to make Sail relevant and useful. Balancing it with something you'll use a million times per campaign like Hungry Tiger Technique or even a bread-and-butter Social Charm is a different story.
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Jun 15, 2014 06:59
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Mengtzu posted:Eh, the East is lousy with ridiculously big rivers (and a new ocean now, whee), there's sand barges and ice ships etc. it's not that hard to make Sail relevant and useful. So, I don't know the extent to which you're actually empowered or allowed to answer this so I'll understand if you don't respond... but how often do you get weird situations where, like, A builds up a ton of Initiative by attacking B, and then uses it all to hit C, who'd normally be too well armored to even be threatened by A's weapon?
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Jun 15, 2014 07:07
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Mengtzu posted:Balancing it with something you'll use a million times per campaign like Hungry Tiger Technique or even a bread-and-butter Social Charm is a different story. Well it's a good thing that all available evidence points towards the current crop of Exalted writers being willing to sit down and earnestly reexamine the clunky artifacts and rough edges of prior editions to come up with bold new solutions rather than deciding to stick with them for no apparent reason or that would be mildly worrisome.
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Jun 15, 2014 07:11
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Kai Tave posted:The obvious solution at that point would be to make airships much more common across Creation instead of just a Haslanti League and First Age/Twilight Caste making poo poo thing so that Sail would be both more broadly applicable and desirable instead of the ability that really only matters if the GM specifically makes a campaign about sailing. Ride is at least a skill you could potentially use across the breadth of Creation instead of 2/5ths of it or so. This isn't a bad idea, since you can make "airships" fairly common while keeping high magic and First Age airplanes extremely rare. Maybe with the right jade inlay on the right species of wood you can build a glider that works well enough to transport small loads - say, a Circle of Exalts and their personal effects. They wouldn't obviate ground travel forever the way a First Age airship would since they'd be at the mercy of the winds, have to fly low enough that they'd be in range of e.g. archers, and so on. Since one of the fightin' Charms in the leak gets you into "aerial combat" and something to do with air pirates or something like that, I suspect that kind of thing already exists in 3e.
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Jun 15, 2014 07:17
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Can someone with the leak, or holding actual playtest documents, tell me what kind of bonuses a circle of Exalts can expect if they develop synchronized poses, catchphrases, costumes, etc.
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Jun 15, 2014 07:22
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Dammit Who? posted:Since one of the fightin' Charms in the leak gets you into "aerial combat" and something to do with air pirates or something like that, I suspect that kind of thing already exists in 3e. Hey, if the solution Ex3 presents to "how do we make buying up Sail seem like a good idea in a broader variety of campaigns?" is "throw some more airships in there" then good on'em I say. That would actually be a good way to make it a more relevant and attractive thing to spend a bunch of XP on that could otherwise be going to combat or social stuff. Like, of course you can give the guy with Sail stuff to do in the same way that you can give the Rogue in D&D stuff to do or the hacker in [INSERT CYBERPUNK GAME HERE] stuff to do. The issue is that abilities like that are almost always entirely context-dependent unless you're playing a much more narrative game than Exalted has ever been. And just as with Brawl and Martial Arts existing side-by-side, I also question the value of having both Ride and Sail be separate, distinct abilities.
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Jun 15, 2014 07:30
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If they don't have lil' wooden airships in Ex3 they certainly should, imo.  Exalted as gently caress.
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Jun 15, 2014 07:35
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Tomn posted:Burden of Willing Water: I'd buy it. Every single drat game, that's actually kind of neat.
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Jun 15, 2014 07:46
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Ferrinus posted:So, I don't know the extent to which you're actually empowered or allowed to answer this so I'll understand if you don't respond... but how often do you get weird situations where, like, A builds up a ton of Initiative by attacking B, and then uses it all to hit C, who'd normally be too well armored to even be threatened by A's weapon? I'm not getting into much of anything until this settles down a bit, though I am looking forward to actually discussing some of this stuff on the internets. The extent to which we'll be able to do that before release, who knows? The specific example you cite though, without touching how it's been in play, I think even before the leak this stuff was hashed out in public? It's better than tracking who you've got initiative against individually, promotes looking after your team and is reasonably easy to justify in fiction (e.g. if Invincible Sword Princess' opponent is Cathak Greenhorn and she's beating the tar out of him, she's under essentially no pressure and has lots of options). It might be a bit gamist/abstract/whatever for some people, but 4E D&D is my favourite game so I'm already well divorced from that perspective. If you've actually got the files, keep reading, the combat is legitimately great. There's a reason you've heard positive stuff from playtesters from the start.
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Jun 15, 2014 07:57
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A_Raving_Loon posted:Civilizations cling to rivers. Campaigns don't. Dammit Who? posted:Since one of the fightin' Charms in the leak gets you into "aerial combat" and something to do with air pirates or something like that, I suspect that kind of thing already exists in 3e. The problem with that a bunch of the Charms explicitly assume a boat on water even if you ignore the fluff text, and if you treat the fluff text as actually a literal part of how the Charm works rather than space-filling boilerplate†, a chunk of the remainder only work when on water. For example, Tide-Cutting Essence Infusion's actual mechanical effect is "The ship’s speed is increased by one for the Charm’s duration.", but that's preceded by a 22-word sentence telling you that it works because your anima helps the ship cut through the water††. † I consider this an excellent example of why putting space-filling boilerplate fluff text into every Charm is a bad idea. It just trains people to ignore the first sentence or first few sentences and then they get confused as hell by Sidereals requiring you to actual take it literally for it to make any sense. †† And... what, does that mean my anima is lit the entire time the Charm is turned on? It would be confusing as hell if I didn't already know the "ignore the first sentence of every non-Sidereal Charm" precedent.
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Jun 15, 2014 08:00
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Mengtzu posted:I'm not getting into much of anything until this settles down a bit, though I am looking forward to actually discussing some of this stuff on the internets. The extent to which we'll be able to do that before release, who knows? Oh, yeah, no question, the combat system as a whole has seriously impressed me. It feels a little rough around the edges - grappling still seems kind of fiddly, and in general the potential for effects to last "3 rounds" or "7 - stamina rounds" or something as opposed to UEONT or (save ends) does not enthuse me, but I'm really excited to sit down and try it once the book's actually finished. I actually really love the abstraction inherent in Initiative - like, withering attacks respecting accuracy/damage/soak while decisive attacks don't actually care about the weapon you're holding at all makes perfect sense (though, technically, ideological purity demands that a decisive attack also ignore your enemy's equipment-based bonus or penalty to Defense)(I feel like there exist smoother potential terms than "withering" and "decisive" but I don't know what they are offhand). Edge cases where, like, Havel the Rock jumps into the arena and then instantly dies because ISP is just feeling so gosh darn confident still throw me, though.
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Jun 15, 2014 08:18
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Kai Tave posted:Well it's a good thing that all available evidence points towards the current crop of Exalted writers being willing to sit down and earnestly reexamine the clunky artifacts and rough edges of prior editions to come up with bold new solutions rather than deciding to stick with them for no apparent reason or that would be mildly worrisome. The thing is they actually do! Combat is the best example, and it's pretty cool! Why there's stuff like BP/XP apparently coming in the context of the massive overhauls elsewhere I don't know (other than having read the same stuff everyone else has).
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Jun 15, 2014 08:18
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Roadie posted:For example, Tide-Cutting Essence Infusion's actual mechanical effect is "The ship’s speed is increased by one for the Charm’s duration.", but that's preceded by a 22-word sentence telling you that it works because your anima helps the ship cut through the water††. Speaking of superfluous Charm text, anyone else catch that Ride charm that literally invents rules explaining why you need it within its own text? It's like "Putting armor on a horse normally takes several minutes. With this charm you can put some armor on your horse in a turn." It's like, dang it, if you hadn't been in the Charm tree in the first place I wouldn't be having this problem!
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Jun 15, 2014 08:22
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Ferrinus posted:Speaking of superfluous Charm text, anyone else catch that Ride charm that literally invents rules explaining why you need it within its own text? While that might be a boring Charm for a usually boring and definitely infrequent problem, I find it super hard to sympathize with your implicit desire for a horse dress-up minigame to justify solving a problem that would exist even without the Charm being the first place it comes up. This is absolutely not a case of air-breathing mermaids.
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Jun 15, 2014 08:42
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Plague of Hats posted:While that might be a boring Charm for a usually boring and definitely infrequent problem, I find it super hard to sympathize with your implicit desire for a horse dress-up minigame to justify solving a problem that would exist even without the Charm being the first place it comes up. This is absolutely not a case of air-breathing mermaids. It would be a lot better just to have generic rules for "putting armor on a creature of size X" instead of having horse dress-up minigames separate from human dress-up minigames.
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Jun 15, 2014 08:44
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I just figured it'd be easiest to not include the Charm at all, or at least make it simultaneously give your horse a sick armor bonus unavailable to horses that were armored by normal means. Like, it doesn't have to say "horse armor DLC normally costs 3.99, but with THIS charm...!", it can just guarantee that no matter what you can armor your horse up in a round and by the way +3 armor. I guess if I had to register one immediate disappointment with Ex3's combat system, it's that the different combat skills don't appear to differ much in their salient qualities. I was hoping that, say, unarmed attacks had an easier time building Initiative while weapon attacks were more dangerous when it came to spending it, or something like that. As is, since Light weapons aren't categorically worse than Heavy ones or whatever, there's a decent inherent parity between different combat styles but less of a built-in reason to have both Brawl and Melee, say. Of course, the fact that there are per-encounter powers floating around in each tree takes care of that pretty neatly for Exalts, and it's clearly a good idea to have an accurate, low-damage punch as well as a clumsy, high-damage axe on hand, but I was hoping for something a little more bone-deep.
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Jun 15, 2014 08:49
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Ferrinus posted:I just figured it'd be easiest to not include the Charm at all, or at least make it simultaneously give your horse a sick armor bonus unavailable to horses that were armored by normal means. Like, it doesn't have to say "horse armor DLC normally costs 3.99, but with THIS charm...!", it can just guarantee that no matter what you can armor your horse up in a round and by the way +3 armor. If the Charm you mention really is seriously just "armor your horse in one turn" then I would agree that it needs to be part of a suite within a larger Charm or forgotten about. EDIT: But then I no longer have a desire to climb around in a massive spiderweb of highly specific super powers anyway, so who gives a poo poo what I think about that. That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 08:55 on Jun 15, 2014 |
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Jun 15, 2014 08:52
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Plague of Hats posted:If the Charm you mention really is seriously just "armor your horse in one turn" then I would agree that it needs to be part of a suite within a larger Charm or forgotten about. It's seriously "Listen up, all of these things normally take several minutes to do: * tightening all the straps etc. on your horse * armoring your horse * putting weapons on your horse But you can do them in one turn. Well, if you pass a diff. 3 Dex + Ride roll. Failure means two turns."
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Jun 15, 2014 08:58
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Ego Trip posted:Captain Needs No Boat No no no no no. You always count as on a boat as long as you own at least one boat. If you own a boat, you're a Captain, and therefore don't need a boat. But if you don't own a boat, you're not a Captain at all and you'd better do whatever you can to get a boat. (And an impressive hat. Naturally.)
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Jun 15, 2014 09:48
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Ratoslov posted:No no no no no. You always count as on a boat as long as you own at least one boat. If you own a boat, you're a Captain, and therefore don't need a boat. But if you don't own a boat, you're not a Captain at all and you'd better do whatever you can to get a boat. (And an impressive hat. Naturally.) Simplify. If you wear a sufficiently impressive hat, you are considered to be on a boat.
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Jun 15, 2014 09:58
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Ferrinus posted:It's seriously "Listen up, all of these things normally take several minutes to do: This really sounds like a microcosmic example of poor charm design coming and going. It's a charm that A). does something that's frankly pretty boring and most groups are likely to just handwave away because who plays Exalted and then goes "oh poo poo wait, how long does it take to get my horse ready for war in minutes, this is crucially important" and B). then forces you to make a loving roll for it anyway. This isn't even a charm, it's a D&D feat. You want less cruft, not more.
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Jun 15, 2014 10:00
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The Exalt performs the body-mudra of sighs and whispers upon a lover, unleashing a torrent of unimaginable ecstasy. This intense lovemaking lasts at least three minutes, inducing a world-shaking climax in her partner. In the afterglow, the Exalt becomes the object of a temporary defining tie of lust that lasts for (Essence) weeks, and gains (Essence) automatic successes to social influence actions targeting her lover for the rest of the scene. Seriously though
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Jun 15, 2014 10:06
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Plague of Hats posted:While that might be a boring Charm for a usually boring and definitely infrequent problem, I find it super hard to sympathize with your implicit desire for a horse dress-up minigame to justify solving a problem that would exist even without the Charm being the first place it comes up. This is absolutely not a case of air-breathing mermaids. If there's one thing I know from my time on the Internet, there is an enormous potential market for horse dress-up minigames.
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Jun 15, 2014 10:28
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Thanatosian posted:I love the setting. And I don't think that "everything sucks." It's just that no place is perfect; you can't point to someplace and say "oh, hey, here are the good guys, the ones who should be in charge!" You have to pick and choose, you have to craft compromises, you have to--at some point--not totally be the good guys. It keeps things interesting. Following this discussion I'm reminded of something 1e did really well in the beginning, but which gradually fell by the wayside as the setting got more detailed: that your characters are explicitly encouraged to be something more than the sum of the setting's influences. For example, when I worked on Manacle and Coin way back, I took a bit of time to explain that even though slavery was largely accepted throughout Creation (with some squeamishness in places about having your tribe get enslaved, or having slaves in your backyard, here and there) that was no reason *not* to develop a universal moral stance against slavery--this would be something new the PCs bring in. Solars were brought back to shake things up not just with powers, but with new outlooks. The Unconquered Sun chose them for that reason. Dragon-Blooded are designed to be conformist by default but that makes the option to choose another path even more dramatic, because you're going up against your family and a system that benefits you. The next edition should really highlight that Nuremberg Defense characters ("My character would be a shithead in a world of shitheads") don't fly solely under the power of a setting rationale and explicitly give players permission to bring new ideas into the world. That good guy gap should be pointed out as a place for your heroes to occupy, even if they can't do it perfectly, and acknowledging that heroic play isn't the only way.
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Jun 15, 2014 10:28
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So we can with verisimilitude have a decadent world weary Exalt confide to his younger companion "Putting armour on your horse is a lot like making love to a beautiful women, they each take at least three minutes." Any combo potential off those two charms?
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Jun 15, 2014 10:54
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It's an interesting discussion to have, though, at least, unlike the one that gave birth Brawler Marshal Arts, famed Dawn Exalted. Fundamentally, what you're talking about (and what I'm talking about too) is about letting you play a Hero in the modern sense, a person of unparalleled moral caliber to match his skill at fighting, painting or crafting. What Thanatosian is talking about (even if I feel he is misguided about it) is about wanting to play a Hero in the classical sense. Classical heroes were not respected for their moral character, just their force. Physical, mental, whatever, the respect came from being able to make sure their way was the only way. These two concepts are fundamentally incompatible even though they're based off the same word, and Exalted needs to decide which one's worth sticking with. By this I don't mean that you can't have characters who see things one way in the same game as characters who see things the other, but the fundamental setting assumptions behind them run very deep and you can't mix them. A game of Modern Heroes is fundamentally optimistic, and there's a certain belief that if you can't change the nature of a man, you can at least help him rise over it. A game of Classical Heroes is fundamentally cynical (some people would say 'realistic'. These people are the same ones who would react to an Exalt who was literally Mother Theresa by calling it unbelievable kiddy bullshit. Cynicism has no extra grounding in reality over optimism.), because it assumes force is everything, and that the weak are just toys of the mighty. You can present the sides, you can explain them, but at the end of the day, your setting has to pick a side, because otherwise the way the writers view the world will seep into the writing *anyway*, and it's rather dangerous to leave the key setting conceit up to the whims of every new writer and freelancer. It's something too fundamental to just leave up in the air, and makes the entire game line lack a direction. Or to put it another way, Exalted needs to decide what the aesop you get from reading all of it and playing a campaign really is. It'll help it bunches.
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Jun 15, 2014 11:07
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HidaO-Win posted:So we can with verisimilitude have a decadent world weary Exalt confide to his younger companion "Putting armour on your horse is a lot like making love to a beautiful women, they each take at least three minutes."
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Jun 15, 2014 11:45
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Transient People posted:a Hero in the modern sense, a person of unparalleled moral caliber to match his skill at fighting, painting or crafting. What Thanatosian is talking about (even if I feel he is misguided about it) is about wanting to play a Hero in the classical sense. Classical heroes were not respected for their moral character, just their force. Physical, mental, whatever, the respect came from being able to make sure their way was the only way. These two concepts are fundamentally incompatible even though they're based off the same word, and Exalted needs to decide which one's worth sticking with. Force is the basis of moral character though. A very forceful person comes along, says "this is right and this is wrong", punishes people who do the wrong thing and rewards people who do the right thing. Heroism is about having the power to resist that force and decide for yourself what's right and what's wrong. Edit: And, if you're inclined, to decide for other people too. The hero is a very forceful person. Bigup DJ fucked around with this message at 12:06 on Jun 15, 2014 |
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Jun 15, 2014 11:49
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Bigup DJ posted:Force is the basis of moral character though. A very forceful person comes along, says "this is right and this is wrong", punishes people who do the wrong thing and rewards people who do the right thing. Heroism is about having the power to resist that force and decide for yourself what's right and what's wrong. Not really. I wasn't talking about moral caliber as applied to the world there, just about how modern heroism requires that you have it. It's more about discernment or wisdom than force. Modern heroes tend to cause changes by ripple effect, doing things with a primary goal of preventing or ending suffering and then having the world change on a deeper level as a side benefit. Modern heroes that make permanent moral changes the focus of their lives, as opposed to the commitment of good acts, are a very rare breed and not 'pure' modern heroes, but rather a blend of the modern hero concept and the Übermensch. By contrast, the classical hero is *just* a glorified Übermensch, whose deeds traditionally lack ethics, with scant few exceptions. You could say the classical hero summed up the concept of the Overman before it ever existed, if you think about it, whereas the modern hero transcends it by seeking to adhere to a universal morality that goes beyond his own petty judgements of what is wrong and what is right. It's very interesting food for thought, really. Transient People fucked around with this message at 12:06 on Jun 15, 2014 |
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Jun 15, 2014 12:04
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