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Beast Lore.
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Jun 18, 2014 05:51
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ErichZahn posted:Beast Lore. Nah, gotta be one word, and gotta sound like something you can practice actively rather than learn passively.
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Jun 18, 2014 05:53
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Stephenls posted:I'd actually argue that Ride, Sail, and Survival should be shuffled around into Wayfare, Pilot, and Husbandry, with Wayfare covering long-distance journeys and the logistics of such, survival in the wilderness, travel times, etc.; Pilot covering vehicle use of all kinds; and Husbandry covering familiars and riding and also e.g. farming and training hunting dogs or monsters or whatever. This is a bad idea because Husbandry is a stupid name for a skill and try as I might I have never ever been able to think of a better one. (Animal Ken, lol.) It was Animal Handling in 2e D&D, but then 2e D&D didn't have Lunars around to turn basically any ability with "Animal" in the title gross.
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Jun 18, 2014 05:56
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I remain convinced that Husbandry is basically ideal, except for the one gigantic neon blinking impossible-to-ignore reason that it's terrible. I mean, it's working with animals. Not knowing about animals, not having an affinity for animals, but working with animals. It's what you roll if you want to use animals to get stuff done. And it's also unusable, permanently, as a skill name, because of course. Wayfare, too, though. That's way better than Travel, which is what I used to kick around. Stephenls fucked around with this message at 06:02 on Jun 18, 2014 |
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Jun 18, 2014 05:59
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Man, this is easy. You just call it "Martial Arts".
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Jun 18, 2014 06:08
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Stephenls posted:I remain convinced that Husbandry is basically ideal, except for the one gigantic neon blinking impossible-to-ignore reason that it's terrible. It has a gently caress Mudra. You're worried people will snicker at one of the abilities being Husbandry? Do you need a mountain to help you wash down that grain of sand?
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Jun 18, 2014 06:22
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RiotGearEpsilon posted:Stephen, this game has a charm that lets you gently caress someone so spectacularly and competently that their orgasm is so good and so fulfilling that they fall head over heels in lust with you, in three minutes. gently caress Mudra is not on the character sheet at the back of the book.
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Jun 18, 2014 06:34
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Look, if you have enough faith in your audience that you can include Ultimate Sun-Courtesan magic in the book, you can put Husbandry on the character sheet. Or just Wrangling. Wrangling would work.
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Jun 18, 2014 06:36
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You can't call it Wrangling unless you're prepared to write Lasso-based attack charms for it.
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Jun 18, 2014 06:38
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Attorney at Funk posted:You can't call it Wrangling unless you're prepared to write Lasso-based attack charms for it.
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Jun 18, 2014 06:39
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:Finally, we see the wisdom in others systems' Use Rope skill. Plus, Wonder Woman makes a better Solar than Superman anyway.
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Jun 18, 2014 06:41
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Attorney at Funk posted:You can't call it Wrangling unless you're prepared to write Lasso-based attack charms for it. Do you really think they aren't? Do you think I'M not?
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Jun 18, 2014 06:42
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RiotGearEpsilon posted:Do you really think they aren't? Do you think I'M not? This ain't my first rodeo.
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Jun 18, 2014 06:47
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Stephenls posted:I'd actually argue that Ride, Sail, and Survival should be shuffled around into Wayfare, Pilot, and Husbandry, with Wayfare covering long-distance journeys and the logistics of such, survival in the wilderness, travel times, etc.; Pilot covering vehicle use of all kinds; and Husbandry covering familiars and riding and also e.g. farming and training hunting dogs or monsters or whatever. This is a bad idea because Husbandry is a stupid name for a skill and try as I might I have never ever been able to think of a better one. (Animal Ken, lol.) I can see an everything-to-do-with-animals-in-one-skill skill, especially if that also gives thematic space for Charms related to mastering behemoths and other weird stuff that would otherwise get pigeonholed into Lore or Occult. The point of merging Ride and Sail, though, is so that the person who takes RideSail Charms can use them on boats when on the water and giant battle hamsters when on land and never feel like they wasted a shitload of XP because the game took a hard left turn into the desert and the GM won't give any flying ships. Stephenls posted:(Bit late to implement.) Hey, now, I offered the same rough outline of skill consolidation literally years ago on the WW forums. It's not my fault you didn't all bow down before my genius. Stephenls posted:Also that map adjustment is good but the arc of the islands needs to move just a smidgen north (and maybe a bit east) so that there's a nice arc drawn from the westernmost tip of the penninsular North, across the easternmost edge of the Coral protectorates, down the Neck and Wavecrest, the southernmost tip of which would end up pointing at that island cluster where Bluehaven hangs out. I was thinking of it pointing to the Caul so then you can have secret approaches to it from the islands, with spooky Lunar mystery weather getting in the way of direct approaches from the mainland. That way any Realmites have to go a bajillion miles to try and get there by conventional routes but experienced Lunars can just turn into long-distance sea birds and fly straight east. Roadie fucked around with this message at 07:44 on Jun 18, 2014 |
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Jun 18, 2014 07:32
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Roadie posted:I can see an everything-to-do-with-animals-in-one-skill skill, especially if that also gives thematic space for Charms related to mastering behemoths and other weird stuff that would otherwise get pigeonholed into Lore or something. Yeah basically this. Skills are supposed to represent how a character's basic concept results in a narrative impact on the game. We can try to say that they are a roughly comprehensive list of all the things a real person might be good at but pretty much every skill list is a gameable abstraction. The trouble is some skills are so impactful(Persuasion or Performance are useful literally every time you talk to somebody) or so omnipresent (combat)that it makes other stuff seem stupid. I can use violence, stealth, or my social moves to solve problems in different ways. I can maybe use Ride, occasionally, to solve problems differently than I would have without it. I will never use Sail to approach a problem in a unique direction, because Sail is not what enables me to do that - proximity to water or access to a non-standard vessel are what allow me to do that. Stealth/Social/Combat arenas are different ways to approach an obstacle, Sail/Ride are a tax I pay to not suck at something we do all the time or a useless investment that will have no impact on our most common obstacles. I don't know, outside of social contract, it's out of my hands. I won't be able to use Sail unless I get the GM to agree before the game starts to let me use it. Other skillsets don't have that problem. Also might I add, one of the biggest problems I've always had with Sail isn't just its specificity, but its dullness. If the situations that the 2e Sail tree describes (ship combat, Sail checks) became common enough for my skill set to see use, I think everybody would find that pretty tedious. TLDR; people like finding ways to use their skills to solve problems. Sail/Ride can't be used to solve problems, they're a thing you have to take to be the only person who's good at that thing in the rare case that the GM tells you that you get a moment to shine.
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Jun 18, 2014 07:44
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I haven't looked at them all, but from what I hear the Sail charms are really good. Many of them work on your behalf just by dint of you having a ship back at the docks, or having woken up on a ship that morning, or whatever - there's been a serious, earnest effort made to ensure that a Sail-invested Exalt doesn't get screwed on land, to the extent that a friend of mine who's seen the tree is excited about playing a pirate captain once the full game's actually out.
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Jun 18, 2014 07:46
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Ferrinus posted:I haven't looked at them all, but from what I hear the Sail charms are really good. Many of them work on your behalf just by dint of you having a ship back at the docks, or having woken up on a ship that morning, or whatever - there's been a serious, earnest effort made to ensure that a Sail-invested Exalt doesn't get screwed on land, to the extent that a friend of mine who's seen the tree is excited about playing a pirate captain once the full game's actually out. I had heard the opposite, that some Charms required actual ship stuff to take place and only a handful were applicable out of the water. The net result is still sort of weird though. "I take Sail to be a pirate, even on land" is a cool use of a lovely ability that really ought not to be there in the first place. If I take stealth Charms do I get a sweet gi because that's a thing a ninja would have?
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Jun 18, 2014 07:48
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What I don't get is what the hell Husbandry would even give us. Did anyone feel we were missing out on all those amazing Pig Breeding and Crop Rotation charms? Oh and for those with the Playtest, how does Socialize differ from Presence now? Fans fucked around with this message at 07:58 on Jun 18, 2014 |
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Jun 18, 2014 07:54
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Ferrinus posted:I haven't looked at them all, but from what I hear the Sail charms are really good. Many of them work on your behalf just by dint of you having a ship back at the docks, or having woken up on a ship that morning, or whatever - there's been a serious, earnest effort made to ensure that a Sail-invested Exalt doesn't get screwed on land, to the extent that a friend of mine who's seen the tree is excited about playing a pirate captain once the full game's actually out. Mendrian posted:I had heard the opposite, that some Charms required actual ship stuff to take place and only a handful were applicable out of the water. To my eyes 7 of the 39 Sail Charms are useful when off a ship. - a pseudo-Integrity/Athletics Charm - a pseudo-Integrity Charm that requires you wake up on a ship on water (not an airship) to use it - two pseudo-Survival Charms - a pseudo-Awareness Charm - two pseudo-War Charms
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Jun 18, 2014 08:00
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Roadie posted:39 Sail Charms
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Jun 18, 2014 08:03
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Roadie posted:To my eyes 7 of the 39 Sail Charms are useful when off a ship. Hmm. How shallow in the Sail tree are they?
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Jun 18, 2014 08:05
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Fans posted:What I don't get is what the hell Husbandry would even give us. Did anyone feel we were missing out on all those amazing Pig Breeding and Crop Rotation charms? I'm imagining, I don't know, a charm where you are so good with animals you can say a word and animals trained for decades just to obey their riders just listen to you. So you have one Solar, facing down a cavalry charge, and he says "stop", and the entire charge stops, riders thrown off their horses. And he just walks through the carnage. Something like that would be an Animal Husbandry charm.
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Jun 18, 2014 08:23
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You could do some cool stuff with Ride in 2E; it was just fairly gimmicky, and you had to build for it. I had a Solar sorcerer with an imbued Tyrant Lizard mount that could run 200 miles an hour (basically forever) and block for him (using Heavenly Guardian Defense).
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Jun 18, 2014 09:31
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MJ12 posted:I'm imagining, I don't know, a charm where you are so good with animals you can say a word and animals trained for decades just to obey their riders just listen to you. So you have one Solar, facing down a cavalry charge, and he says "stop", and the entire charge stops, riders thrown off their horses. And he just walks through the carnage. Something like that would be an Animal Husbandry charm. This is basically what comes to mind for me, too. And the flipside of the coin, commanding animals to fight for you. Try telling me you would not be totally cool with a Charm that made birds peck your enemies' eyes out, or summoned polar bears in the north so you could ride into battle on them screaming out the lyrics of Immigrant Song. You could have a Charm to send little scouts no one pays attention out who report their findings to you, in the form of birds and squirrels. The possibilities are absolutely endless.
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Jun 18, 2014 09:55
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Fans posted:What I don't get is what the hell Husbandry would even give us. Did anyone feel we were missing out on all those amazing Pig Breeding and Crop Rotation charms?
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Jun 18, 2014 10:03
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NIV3K posted:Playtesters are still under NDAs, so we wouldn't be able to comment on Ex3 material despite it being leaked. I meant the leaked stuff which some people have.
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Jun 18, 2014 10:11
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Fans posted:I meant the leaked stuff which some people have.
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Jun 18, 2014 10:28
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NIV3K posted:The wording of the NDA means we can't comment on the leaked material. You can safely assume I'm not asking you then. Transient People posted:This is basically what comes to mind for me, too. And the flipside of the coin, commanding animals to fight for you. Try telling me you would not be totally cool with a Charm that made birds peck your enemies' eyes out, or summoned polar bears in the north so you could ride into battle on them screaming out the lyrics of Immigrant Song. You could have a Charm to send little scouts no one pays attention out who report their findings to you, in the form of birds and squirrels. The possibilities are absolutely endless. While this is sort of Lunar's shtick in 2E moving Lunar's away from animal charms wouldn't be a terrible thing, I'd quite like it if some of the more fun ones found their way to Solars. Edit: Oh and hey it seems Socialize just gave up and basically became a second Presence, but with a few fun society charms put in there. Fans fucked around with this message at 10:46 on Jun 18, 2014 |
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Jun 18, 2014 10:36
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Twice as many charms in Solar Sail in the core as were in Solar Archery in all of 2e.
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Jun 18, 2014 10:40
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Chaotic Neutral posted:Twice as many charms in Solar Sail in the core as were in Solar Archery in all of 2e. I'm... not sure how to feel about that statistic. On the one hand I am glad they are widening the focus of the game, on the other this system needs less charms, not more.
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Jun 18, 2014 11:06
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I don't think the whole "Books with charms sell an awful lot better" went unnoticed to them. I mean I only bought The Thousand Correct Actions of the Upright Soldier for one reason and it wasn't to get a Dragon Blood themed knock off of the Art of War.
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Jun 18, 2014 11:09
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Fans posted:I don't think the whole "Books with charms sell an awful lot better" went unnoticed to them. I mean I only bought The Thousand Correct Actions of the Upright Soldier for one reason and it wasn't to get a Dragon Blood themed knock off of the Art of War. Something that could be healthy for the line is to not drop a hot mess of 1,000 Charms in the core book. This gives you time to revise them as problems emerge from wider/longer play experience, and also you hold back material that can make later books sell. EDIT: Maybe this is even what they are doing. They don't necessarily have to put any of the leaked Charms into the core book, but it's nice to get them into playtesting as early as possible. That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 12:47 on Jun 18, 2014 |
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Jun 18, 2014 11:14
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Its going to make character gen for new players a bit of a pill too. "Now choose thirteen charms from this list of several hundred. Oh and you can't get some unless you meet prerequisites so if you really want it you have to go back and change around your dots" Players who like to fiddly with their character sheet before play to make it 'perfect' should have a character sheet done for me before the sun goes out. Hopefully.
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Jun 18, 2014 12:45
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The most daunting thing for me as someone who has read the books and is interested in the setting but never played in the game is the idea (not sure how true it is outside of my gaming group) that one or two charms are so superior to the rest that it is a mistake not taking them. I'm leaning towards the idea that Violet Bier of Sorrows Style is not the ultimate, top of everything, have-it-or-die thing I've heard it mentioned to be in most games of Exalted but try to keep the idea in mind when fooling around with games myself. It is cool to have powerful things in a game but never fun for the player to be "wrong" for not making a specific choice due to imbalance.
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Jun 18, 2014 12:59
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Fans posted:What I don't get is what the hell Husbandry would even give us. Did anyone feel we were missing out on all those amazing Pig Breeding and Crop Rotation charms? Actually yes. I have specific complaints on the lack of mundane-ish charms in the game. My solar should be able to walk through a farmland and naturally cause it to grow as if I was using specially designed super crops, I should be able to touch a pregnant animal and make its baby come out twice as big and growing at ten times speed. If my solar wants to, she should be capable of feeding a nation with hundreds of thousands of people on her own, or at least close to. I mean, go look at 2e, there's like... 3 charms and two spells related to that kind of thing, in a game where everyone is expected to run an empire starting game at least once. What better way is there to run a idyllic empire than using your amazing magic to make sure everyone has food at night? I am boring I guess, because these are charms I would legitimately find enjoyable to use
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Jun 18, 2014 13:43
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KittyEmpress posted:I mean, go look at 2e, there's like... 3 charms and two spells related to that kind of thing, in a game where everyone is expected to run an empire starting game at least once. What better way is there to run a idyllic empire than using your amazing magic to make sure everyone has food at night? You are awesome and I would play in games with you or run by you where I could try to play Eva Perón preforming attention grabbing miricles feeding small villages to distract from the rest of my group's failed empire. Kitty Empress for 4E.
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Jun 18, 2014 14:27
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KittyEmpress posted:Actually yes. I have specific complaints on the lack of mundane-ish charms in the game. My solar should be able to walk through a farmland and naturally cause it to grow as if I was using specially designed super crops, I should be able to touch a pregnant animal and make its baby come out twice as big and growing at ten times speed. I can see two obstacles in this and the other Husbandry thing. One is simple. It is that a lot of what you list out here are, hilariously, minor for the general area the Exalted seem to stand on. Even the Terrestrials probably wouldn't be blessing every pregnant pig (though they might bless a prize animal or a warsteed or something directly). While I suppose you can make a philosophical point that perhaps the Solar Exalted SHOULD be fondling every pig and getting dirty instead of playing the game of thrones, it's pretty small potatoes. What I would do is have a permanent 'blessing of my presence' sort of Charm which would have the ancillary effects you describe, which are particularly potent if the Solar lives in an area on a regular basis. (Possible downside: It becomes marginally easier to pursue them, because you can probably guess what's causing all those footprint-shaped clusters of blossoms.) You could then have some more specifically "restore the blighted crop, bless the herds" Charms as well, possibly requiring a dramatic action of some kind. As a handy side note, in this particular speciality I think Wood-aspect DBs should be at parity with Solars. This leads me into the other obstacle with the animal wrangling idea which is that at a certain point you seem to be gobbling up the Lunar mandate, not so much with Supreme "Whoa" Prana as with animal spies. There's probably some finagling to be done there, and I don't think it's awful if there are power parity overlaps (see above) in some fields or something, but the occasional special thing is an important flavor decision. Maybe Solars can command animals and shepherd them but Lunars can actually communicate with and commune with them, etc. etc. whatever. We also miss the obvious question, which is "What good will my Husbandry Charms do me when we all end up in Autocthonia which is the only cool place any more"  Well, I suppose there are rats. and mortals
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Jun 18, 2014 16:20
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Plague of Hats posted:EDIT: Maybe this is even what they are doing. They don't necessarily have to put any of the leaked Charms into the core book, but it's nice to get them into playtesting as early as possible. Yeah, if they aren't doing that, they should seriously consider it. HINT HINT, STEPHEN
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Jun 18, 2014 16:49
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Nessus posted:I can see two obstacles in this and the other Husbandry thing. Part of this ties back into an issue I have with the horse armoring charm which is something that I've had an issue with all the way back to 1E, and that's the fact that occasionally charms get made that seem like they'd be much more simply and elegantly handled as nothing more than a simple "okay, roll [STAT] plus [RELEVANT SKILL]" check instead of being made to buy a charm (and then having to make a skill check on top of it). A concept that even 1E Exalted espoused was that an Exalted's skill roll wasn't the same thing as Joe Mortal's skill roll even if it was notated the same, that when an Exalted rolled +Whatever that the overall measure of success was shifted several categories higher on the scale. In other words when an Exalt rolls, I dunno, Performance and gets three successes that result means something much more impressive than a regular guy's three successes. And so the game already has a system in place for these sorts of minor effects that maybe aren't worth paying the full XP cost of more broadly applicable or tangibly useful charms. I was serious when I compared that horse armor charm to a D&D feat...it's a charm that creates an issue that didn't really exist up until the moment the charm came into being (I guarantee that virtually nobody playing Exalted gives a poo poo about how many minutes it takes to armor a loving horse), then charges you character resources to solve it, and even then it still takes a skill roll. And like a lot of feats, it's more about telling the players what they can't do than what they can. It's cumbersome design, and it could be handled much more cleanly and elegantly by simply telling the player "you're a supernaturally empowered demigod, go ahead and roll Dex + Ride if you want to get your horse ready to go in time to join the cavalry charge already in progress, call it X successes. You made it? All right, go get'em," that is if you absolutely have to take the measure of how quickly they can put armor on a horse. And likewise with some hypothetical Husbandry skill...if a Solar wants to do things like ensure this year's harvest is a magnificent bounty or ensure a village's livestock all turn out healthy and extra-large, that's awesome and I agree with KittyEmpress that it's the sort of thing a wandering demigod ought to be able to do, but I also think that it's the sort of thing that's more simply handled simply by asking for a skill roll instead of requiring the character buy a charm first. This would require that some serious thought and consideration be given to the various skills and what X degree of success on each of them means to various stripes of Exalted as well as guidelines for where the effects of supernatural skill end and something that requires a specific charm begins, but I can't imagine that would be a more onerous task than, say, 39 different Sail charms or magic weapons with 19 Evocations, and doing so would allow you to cut down on your charms, in particular crufty little things like "you armor your horse fast."
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Jun 18, 2014 17:48
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Plus, imagine the Solar war horse breeder. Who needs some gross wyld creature when you friend can, in three weeks, breed up six generations of horses that oh hey, they are as strong as yeddims, as fast as cheetahs at full sprint, and so well tempered that nothing drives them to flee the battlefield. Sure, you say, can't Ride make a normal horse do all that? Well, yeah, but now you can use Ride to further enhance the uberferd (note, took one year of German in freshman year of highschool, not sure what horse version of ubermensch would be) You can probably tell, but only three of my characters ever have not been crafters. Plus, some sort of wrangling tree could be hilarious, with charms like the before mentioned Cavalry Stopping Method, where the solar causes even animals that would not listen to her to stop from full sprint, sending their riders flying, but also with poo poo like Behemoth Breaking Prana, where I ride that behemoth until it wants to let me ride it on its own will. Possibly some lasso charms, that could be funny. I don't know. Edit: see, I think that this kind of thing can be broad enough to encompass stuff that should have charms. I don't want to bless a single harvest, I want to make it so that the weather in an area is perfect for planting all year long, so that everything grows ten times as fast and ten times as big. If I want a single field to feed my army of ten thousand, it should do so, because I am a Solar, and I make it so. I don't want minor effects that could be handled with thaumaturge recipes, I understand that 'farming' is hilariously small for an exalt to do personally. But I think it is actually quite a bit larger than people expect. You could even extend it to applying to non crops, such as trees. No need to worry about lumbering and angering forest gods or running out of wood, when the trees you plant grow to full maturity in less than a year. KittyEmpress fucked around with this message at 18:05 on Jun 18, 2014 |
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Jun 18, 2014 17:50
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