|
Ex3 has managed to both speed up combat in comparison to 2E as well as massively slow down combat in comparison to 2E. Though at least when it is slower it is still more interesting than 2/7 combat filters + paranoia defense for hours.
|
# ? Dec 23, 2014 22:06 |
|
|
# ? May 30, 2024 12:57 |
|
Alien Rope Burn posted:This is true, but if players are bogging a game down in that way, it might be good to just remind them not to be jerks about it. Just because a mechanic can be misused is not necessarily a reason to discard a mechanic, its just a question of benefits vs. costs, of course. Is endless florid stunting actually a misuse, and does it make the people doing it jerks? Hard to say. I think really it's just people mistaking bloviating and appropriating pop culture for genuine coolness. If I had a nickel for every time I was able to identify the specific scene from an anime or video game I'm hearing someone's exalt do without it being socially acceptable to say "Yeah, we've all played God of War, move along already"... anyway the point for me is that separating it from a few if not most of the mechanics fixes the problem of people feeling like they need to give a speech every time they pick up dice because otherwise they aren't playing optimally. Granted 3e actually is going to to remove mote recovery from stunting. I personally hope they don't stick something else in to replace it.
|
# ? Dec 23, 2014 22:24 |
|
theironjef posted:Is endless florid stunting actually a misuse, and does it make the people doing it jerks? Hard to say. I think really it's just people mistaking bloviating and appropriating pop culture for genuine coolness. If I had a nickel for every time I was able to identify the specific scene from an anime or video game I'm hearing someone's exalt do without it being socially acceptable to say "Yeah, we've all played God of War, move along already"... anyway the point for me is that separating it from a few if not most of the mechanics fixes the problem of people feeling like they need to give a speech every time they pick up dice because otherwise they aren't playing optimally. Frankly, people make too big a deal over what is a 2-die stunt. People have made stunt dice way harder to get than the book actually recommends. One die should be guaranteed to anyone who's actually engaged in the descriptions of combat. Anyone who helps set the scene and engages with it gets 2 dice, guaranteed. Gonna surprise a dude by leaping over a water buffalo that you just invented in the market square? Instant 2 die. 3 dice is just 'oh, that's clever' or 'oh, that's cool'. Longwinded yammering is rarely cool. Thinking of something the ST didn't but takes one or two sentences to describe? That's cool.
|
# ? Dec 23, 2014 22:29 |
|
Mile'ionaha posted:Frankly, people make too big a deal over what is a 2-die stunt. People have made stunt dice way harder to get than the book actually recommends. Yeah, but nerd social contract means you can't look at your friend that's still regaining his breath and de-white-knuckling the edge of his podium after delivering a magnum opus on firing an arrow and say "Yammering isn't cool, no dice." I mean you have to go for pizza with that guy later. I think the problem is that stunts are too expected and they become a core part of optimal play in people's minds instead of a fun bonus.
|
# ? Dec 23, 2014 22:34 |
|
Yeah, just when I ran Exalted, it was mostly:
If you're a GM, they're a tool to use to guide how you want combat to flow. You do need to be able to tell people no; if you can't be critical of player behavior from time to time, honestly you might want to be a player instead of a GM. That being said, it certainly might be best for some groups to toss the system and give flat 2-die stunts, which is usually the best solution for online games (to avoid that back-and-forth of waiting stunt judgements from a GM, or in situations you don't have a GM at all).
|
# ? Dec 23, 2014 23:20 |
|
Alien Rope Burn posted:This is true, but if players are bogging a game down in that way, it might be good to just remind them not to be jerks about it. Just because a mechanic can be misused is not necessarily a reason to discard a mechanic, its just a question of benefits vs. costs, of course. I think one of the main issues is that Exalted combat is already glacial, and so stunts slow it down further, but really, I think the bigger issue is the overall speed of Exalted combat than stunts themselves. The point I was obliquely making is that the stunt mechanics are wonky because they encourage you to game them...in a way that is very gamey instead of natural behavior (something that has been 'solved' before by other games, too). When the game doesn't actively punish you for not 'covering your bases' with overdescription, it goes away. When the combat is something that interests and thrills, Rock Em Sock Em Robots goes away because either the players are immensely invested in the tactics portion of combat and there's a tension not unlike a chess match's, or they're drinking in the narrative and their roleplay is spontaneously flowing. So the problem is one of bad design, essentially. EDIT: Which is particularly striking because the general 'combat loving sucks' issue got solved. It's the lingering subsystems that haven't quite been polished. Maybe for Exalted 4 in 2020? Transient People fucked around with this message at 00:04 on Dec 24, 2014 |
# ? Dec 23, 2014 23:57 |
|
Mile'ionaha posted:Frankly, people make too big a deal over what is a 2-die stunt. People have made stunt dice way harder to get than the book actually recommends. I checked the Stunt-requirements in Exalted 1E some time ago, and the two first levels are pretty easy to achieve: (Paraphrasing.) 1 die: Player describes action using sensory language. 2 dice: Player describes action involving environment OR own Virtue. 3 dice: Player describes action in a way that leaves everyone around the table impressed. A valid 1-die stunt: "My sword swishes as I swing at him." Another valid 1-die stunt: "I karate-scream and punch him." A valid 2-dice stunt: "My shoes clatter against the cobblestones as I swing my sword at him." Another valid 2-dice stunt: "Filled with righteous fury at the injustice before me, I swing at him." Another valid 2-dice stunt: "I backflip off the wall and scream as I punch him." Requiring much more than the involvement of the scenery, your character's feelings, or a description of what something looks, sounds, or smells like to grant Stunt dice is not warranted by the rules, and seem counter to their intent.
|
# ? Dec 24, 2014 01:31 |
|
The worst part of the stunt rules is that you have to describe stuff before you find out if you hit or not - one day I'd like to try having stunts let you just park the dice in front of you for your *next* roll, so that you can roll, find out if you botched or killed the dude or what, and then describe your action. Maybe it's just that every time a three-dice stunt came up in play the person would then promptly fail...
|
# ? Dec 24, 2014 01:36 |
|
LatwPIAT posted:2 dice: Player describes action involving environment OR own Virtue. This level, in particular, is the most important (IMHO), because it is doing the GM's work for him. It either A) makes the scene more real or B) ties the character into the scene. Basically, if the player cares about the scene, physically or emotionally, they get a reward! I should hope that 2-die stunts are de rigeur at your tables.
|
# ? Dec 24, 2014 08:38 |
|
Yeah, the stunt criteria, particularly those for the two-die stunt, were extremely well-conceived and pretty much the glue that held action scenes together. At no point does stunting ever actually involve or benefit from length, it's just a continuous "yes, I am paying attention and involved" check - there are veils hanging from the ceiling? I come swinging through the veils. You're swinging in a wide arc? I hold my quarterstaff vertically to parry. You parried? Well, I grab the veils I managed to cut through before my blade stopped, and- I think the biggest problem with 1e and 2e stunts was that you had to stop and check if your stunt "counted" before actually rolling out your action, meaning that confirming a stunt could interrupt the flow of a turn. If the reward for stunting wasn't increased success chances on the action itself but some sort of benny you got at the end of the round, I think it'd work more smoothly.
|
# ? Dec 24, 2014 09:10 |
|
I think the biggest problem with 2E stunts was that the examples given in the corebook kinda distorted expectations, because, let's be honest, that prose for the sample 3-die was florid as gently caress. The 1-die and 2-die were shorter, but still way too long for a face-to-face game. Fine for a PbP or IRC game where you're not sucking up other peoples' time narrating your action, but not for IRL.
|
# ? Dec 24, 2014 20:29 |
|
Ferrinus posted:I think the biggest problem with 1e and 2e stunts was that you had to stop and check if your stunt "counted" before actually rolling out your action, meaning that confirming a stunt could interrupt the flow of a turn. In our group I'd say the biggest problem with them for our group is that the more into the action our ST gets the less likely he is to remember to say "2-die stunt" every time something happens. I feel like he just needs a super mode where he hits "enough stunts" and just declares a 2 die stunt on the rest of a scene since he's happy that everyone's into it anyway.
|
# ? Dec 24, 2014 20:38 |
|
theironjef posted:In our group I'd say the biggest problem with them for our group is that the more into the action our ST gets the less likely he is to remember to say "2-die stunt" every time something happens. I feel like he just needs a super mode where he hits "enough stunts" and just declares a 2 die stunt on the rest of a scene since he's happy that everyone's into it anyway. That sounds like a good idea for a Charm! Done something sufficiently-awesome in a scene? Flare your anima to max, count an automatic 2-point stunt on everything now that stunts are no longer tied to crucial resource-recovery.
|
# ? Dec 24, 2014 20:57 |
|
Thesaurasaurus posted:That sounds like a good idea for a Charm! Done something sufficiently-awesome in a scene? Flare your anima to max, count an automatic 2-point stunt on everything now that stunts are no longer tied to crucial resource-recovery. That sounds like an awkward mechanic, since you means you're buying a Charm for the sole purpose of being allowed to use your improvisation skills to maybe get a reward for it. The advantage of the 1 and 2-dice stunts in 1E was that they were fairly well defined; if your ST denies you your +1 dice for describing how your sword swooshes, they're simply doing it wrong. It's easy to evaluate whether something uses sensory language or involves the environment or a Virtue. Determining whether something is "sufficiently awesome" to warrant +2 to all rolls for the rest of the scene is a whole lot more subjective, making the whole effort a game of Mother May I with the ST. Mother May I that you paid for in XP. xiw posted:The worst part of the stunt rules is that you have to describe stuff before you find out if you hit or not - one day I'd like to try having stunts let you just park the dice in front of you for your *next* roll, so that you can roll, find out if you botched or killed the dude or what, and then describe your action. That runs into a dependency-issue though; if you get the bonus for describing the action before you describe the action, how do you know whether what you're about to do is a 2 or 3-dice stunt? You can't know whether you'll leave the entire table impressed with your description before you've told it to anyone. Ferrinus posted:I think the biggest problem with 1e and 2e stunts was that you had to stop and check if your stunt "counted" before actually rolling out your action, meaning that confirming a stunt could interrupt the flow of a turn. If the reward for stunting wasn't increased success chances on the action itself but some sort of benny you got at the end of the round, I think it'd work more smoothly. There's already Essence/WP return from stunts, thought that was in addition to the dice bonus.
|
# ? Dec 24, 2014 21:20 |
LatwPIAT posted:That runs into a dependency-issue though; if you get the bonus for describing the action before you describe the action, how do you know whether what you're about to do is a 2 or 3-dice stunt? You can't know whether you'll leave the entire table impressed with your description before you've told it to anyone.
|
|
# ? Dec 24, 2014 21:32 |
|
Yeah, exactly. This also lets you stunt failures properly! One glaring weakness of the stunt rules as they stand is you never get to do neat descriptions of how you fail at things, which is lots of fun.
|
# ? Dec 24, 2014 22:03 |
If you're worried about this nerfing opening attacks, you could just say everyone's first action gets the old-style stunt bonus too. Alternately you have the intro FMV, where everyone's pulling their daiklave or executing their ambush plans immediately before starting the fight. From there, rollin' forwards. Seems like a good plan! And of course for non-combat actions (or similar sequential situations) you just use the old rule.
|
|
# ? Dec 24, 2014 22:42 |
|
Thesaurasaurus posted:That sounds like a good idea for a Charm! Done something sufficiently-awesome in a scene? Flare your anima to max, count an automatic 2-point stunt on everything now that stunts are no longer tied to crucial resource-recovery. I don't want it as a charm on an individual level, it's meant to fix the grumbles that brew when the ST gets deep into the game and forgets to keep saying "2-die stunt" over and over again. I'd think it'd be better of as just a houserule that if like the last 10 rolls have all be 2-die stunts, put the game in cinematic mode and every future roll for that scene is also a 2-die stunt for everyone.
|
# ? Dec 24, 2014 22:51 |
|
What I think I'd do is largely ignore one die stunts, make three die stunts purely a matter of narrative rather than description (does the entire table love your idea, not did you describe your idea prettily), and make two die stunts - the ones that involve riffing off something already going on in the scene - a tactical choice linked to the combat momentum/initiative system. That is to say, if your action explicitly takes someone else's action/immediate environment into account, that lets you somehow build initiative or partake of the initiative they're building. If your action constitutes an attempt to ignore or disengage from someone else's action/context, that somehow reduces your initiative but also reduces the ability of others to leverage initiative against you.
|
# ? Dec 24, 2014 23:15 |
|
Didn't do full thread reading, ignore.
gourdcaptain fucked around with this message at 07:00 on Dec 27, 2014 |
# ? Dec 27, 2014 06:40 |
|
Nessus posted:Yeah, but Exalted 3rd edition is too busy beating its wife to manage that! I thought the domestic abuse charms were in the first age books.
|
# ? Dec 27, 2014 21:49 |
|
Ronwayne posted:I thought the domestic abuse charms were in the first age books. No, they were in Glories of the Most High.
|
# ? Dec 28, 2014 01:25 |
|
Rand Brittain posted:No, they were in Glories of the Most High. Ride Specialty: Luna.
|
# ? Dec 28, 2014 05:59 |
|
If the stunts haven't changed much since the leak, all stunts give a flat +2 dice, while higher levels also give successes. I plan to have people roll first with the plus 2 dice, then stunt based on the result and apply the automatic successes after. If you're going to fail either way, you can stunt your failure. If you succeed, you stunt your success and try to get more threshold successes. If you're only 1 or 2 away, you stunt your heroic attempt to turn failure into success and hope you get a good enough stunt to win. Also, this way people can know how many dice to roll before the stunt, and the next person can set up their action while the first person is stunting. Of course it assumes everyone will get at least a 1 die stunt, but I hope that's not an unreasonable expectation
|
# ? Dec 28, 2014 19:35 |
|
Kaza42 posted:If the stunts haven't changed much since the leak, all stunts give a flat +2 dice, while higher levels also give successes. I plan to have people roll first with the plus 2 dice, then stunt based on the result and apply the automatic successes after. If you're going to fail either way, you can stunt your failure. If you succeed, you stunt your success and try to get more threshold successes. If you're only 1 or 2 away, you stunt your heroic attempt to turn failure into success and hope you get a good enough stunt to win. Obvious problems:
What you've basically done is turn stunting into a mechanic that can turn marginal failures into marginal successes (and add threshold successes). In all other situations, stunting has no effect. And all dice pools are inflated by +2. Mechanically, you're not encouraging the use of descriptive language except in the case of marginal failures and where threshold successes are important. 1E/2E stunting rewards stunting in all situations.
|
# ? Dec 28, 2014 22:57 |
|
LatwPIAT posted:Obvious problems:
|
# ? Dec 29, 2014 08:08 |
|
When is this coming out again?
|
# ? Jan 1, 2015 22:55 |
|
Next tuesday.
|
# ? Jan 1, 2015 23:03 |
|
2017.
|
# ? Jan 1, 2015 23:04 |
|
tatankatonk posted:When is this coming out again? Estimated delivery: Oct 2013 for the lower tiers offering copies of the Ex3 PDF. If you haven't received yours yet, maybe you had a higher reward tier? Those will take until Dec 2013, so you should adjust your gaming plans accordingly!
|
# ? Jan 1, 2015 23:04 |
|
Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:Well, the Kickstarter does say https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ED81B_PSN5E
|
# ? Jan 1, 2015 23:11 |
tatankatonk posted:When is this coming out again?
|
|
# ? Jan 1, 2015 23:13 |
|
How the hell did they ever think they were going to finish it by October 2013, given that they apparently didn't have the core system stuff or any of the Charms even close to ready when the Kickstarter launched?
|
# ? Jan 1, 2015 23:48 |
Roadie posted:How the hell did they ever think they were going to finish it by October 2013, given that they apparently didn't have the core system stuff or any of the Charms even close to ready when the Kickstarter launched?
|
|
# ? Jan 1, 2015 23:53 |
tatankatonk posted:When is this coming out again? Oct 21, 2015. By which time we should also have flying cars and hoverboards.
|
|
# ? Jan 2, 2015 00:35 |
|
Roadie posted:How the hell did they ever think they were going to finish it by October 2013, given that they apparently didn't have the core system stuff or any of the Charms even close to ready when the Kickstarter launched? They didn't!
|
# ? Jan 2, 2015 01:13 |
|
Roadie posted:How the hell did they ever think they were going to finish it by October 2013, given that they apparently didn't have the core system stuff or any of the Charms even close to ready when the Kickstarter launched? They didn't. They freely admitted once the kickstarter was over that they only made that date up because they were worried that someone else would take the game from them and do it wrong.
|
# ? Jan 2, 2015 03:19 |
Stallion Cabana posted:They didn't. They freely admitted once the kickstarter was over that they only made that date up because they were worried that someone else would take the game from them and do it wrong.
|
|
# ? Jan 2, 2015 03:46 |
|
Stallion Cabana posted:They didn't. They freely admitted once the kickstarter was over that they only made that date up because they were worried that someone else would take the game from them and do it wrong. who would even want to take the game
|
# ? Jan 2, 2015 03:52 |
|
|
# ? May 30, 2024 12:57 |
|
And that right there is why I -- a lonely basement-dwelling neckbeard superfan who threw many hundreds of dollars at the Exalted kickstarter -- have declined to support any other of the Onyx Path kickstarters.
|
# ? Jan 2, 2015 03:54 |