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Thesaurasaurus posted:All else being equal, I would prefer Ferrinus' original proposed solution of MA styles being splat-agnostic Archery/Brawl/Melee/Thrown trees, perhaps with specific restrictions on weapons or combos, and to make any XP taxes up-front (ie, multiple Martial Artist MERITS but they can all use the same four Abilities, instead of ONE Merit and each style being its own Ability). Building off of this, I would have expanded it from just Martial Arts to spat-agnostic Secret Arts, which are charm trees that can be keyed to any ability (maybe even multiple ones, depending on the theme). You could wrap Sorcery into it and tier them all like current martial arts (Terrestrial–Celestial–[Splat Exclusive]), giving a coherent foundation to splat-agnostic power sets. It would also help to reduce redundancy in a lot of splat charm design, from what I've gathered. But, as someone who's never played Exalted, I don't know how much that would mess with things. This would probably make Solar Exalts even more bland in their thematics, but who could tell the difference? Fake edit: and holy hell, reduce the total number of charms and separate the mechanics from the flavor text.
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Feb 17, 2015 18:54
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Spiderfist Island posted:Fake edit: and holy hell, reduce the total number of charms and separate the mechanics from the flavor text. Separate the fluff from the crunch, sure - but they've actually done a pretty drat good job of having enough charms and variety to make room for characters with the same abilities but different flavor - so I have no issue with the number of charms in most cases.
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Feb 17, 2015 18:57
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I am totally fine with people stunting their animas for full sensory extravaganzas as well as cool poo poo like your wolf anima biting someone to complement or ax blow, cushioning a fall, or helping them pick up a great load. I don't think I've ever seen someone try to stunt their anima making hologram TV-show-eque visuals as they try to describe someone or something, which is what Phantom-Conjuring Performance in 3e does. Wait, no, one time a fellow PC stunted himself an entire phantom army to help with a melee attack. Which was sorta funny when the attack failed. That guy was sorta crazy with his stunts, in a bad way. Still my point stands. I'd have loved to see Phantom-Conjuring Performance with some hard mechanics, but I can see its usefulness as is. Albeit limited mostly to communicate without speaking or instantly providing someone with a picture of something. Like telling a story of the person who killed your brother and showing everyone exactly what they looked like. What would be an interesting mechanic for that Charm? Maybe have it provide phantom 'equipment', like backup dancers or fancy clothes or an instrument, granting a small equipment bonus. Like Glorious Solar Saber except for Performance.
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Feb 17, 2015 19:07
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Kenlon posted:Separate the fluff from the crunch, sure - but they've actually done a pretty drat good job of having enough charms and variety to make room for characters with the same abilities but different flavor - so I have no issue with the number of charms in most cases. You're right that the current charm trees from what's described have a whole lot of variety, and that's a pretty good thing if multiple people want to occupy the same skill space. My major issue from an outside perspective is that even if you obscure things to the first / second level of charm trees, creating a Solar is really daunting for someone completely new to the game. I'm not going to say anything about the BP/XP divide since plenty of people have a much better handle on it, but in terms of the steps and decisions you have to go through to make a character there's a lot of front-ending of choices in CC, and this kind of explodes when you get to Charms. Compared to other White Wolf splat superpowers that I've seen, Exalted Charm Trees are very ambitious and allow for extremely unique characters, but at the same time are much more difficult to work with, especially in character creation.
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Feb 17, 2015 19:20
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Also, judging from 2E Exalted, you'll invest in something that sounds cool and then not realize it leaves you completely inferior to the rest of the party until about halfway through the campaign.
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Feb 17, 2015 19:33
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It also looks like character creation is once again best done in reverse. Decide what you want to do, then figure out what charms enable you to do that, then fill in the rest from that.
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Feb 17, 2015 19:54
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PurpleXVI posted:Also, judging from 2E Exalted, you'll invest in something that sounds cool and then not realize it leaves you completely inferior to the rest of the party until about halfway through the campaign. Oh Wyld-Shaping Technique, you look so cool but always just do nothing and eventually get traded for more melee charms.
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Feb 17, 2015 19:58
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PurpleXVI posted:Also, judging from 2E Exalted, you'll invest in something that sounds cool and then not realize it leaves you completely inferior to the rest of the party until about halfway through the campaign. From looking at 3e, that doesn't seem to be the case. The 2e trap charms were pretty easy to see after having lived in that design space for so long, and 3e does not have those. Spiderfist Island posted:You're right that the current charm trees from what's described have a whole lot of variety, and that's a pretty good thing if multiple people want to occupy the same skill space. My major issue from an outside perspective is that even if you obscure things to the first / second level of charm trees, creating a Solar is really daunting for someone completely new to the game. I'm not going to say anything about the BP/XP divide since plenty of people have a much better handle on it, but in terms of the steps and decisions you have to go through to make a character there's a lot of front-ending of choices in CC, and this kind of explodes when you get to Charms. Compared to other White Wolf splat superpowers that I've seen, Exalted Charm Trees are very ambitious and allow for extremely unique characters, but at the same time are much more difficult to work with, especially in character creation. Exalted is crunchy. It's sorta the point of the game - there's plenty of things out there for good system-light games, but not so much out there with good crunch.
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Feb 17, 2015 20:12
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Kenlon posted:From looking at 3e, that doesn't seem to be the case. The 2e trap charms were pretty easy to see after having lived in that design space for so long, and 3e does not have those. There are definitely some good crunch games out (like FantasyCraft), but they generally don't have a hook like Exalted does which puts it a step above the others. It would be interesting to see what the would come up with in terms of a simplified and streamlined Exalted. Alternatively, I can go back to figuring out how Legends of the Wulin works since it's a few steps from being a streamlined Exalted.
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Feb 17, 2015 20:23
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theironjef posted:Oh Wyld-Shaping Technique, you look so cool but always just do nothing and eventually get traded for more melee charms. I'm pretty convinced at this point that Wyld-Shaping Technique should be an action you can attempt rather than a charm you can buy, use, and automatically succeed with.
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Feb 17, 2015 20:59
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Kenlon posted:From looking at 3e, that doesn't seem to be the case. The 2e trap charms were pretty easy to see after having lived in that design space for so long, and 3e does not have those. Considering that all we've got so far is playing the game in "theory," I'm going to say that we probably have no idea what the "traps" are, if there are any. Mind, Solars weren't really the worst for "trap" charms in 2E Exalted, either. It felt way easier to gently caress yourself over as a Lunar or a Dragonblood.
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Feb 17, 2015 21:05
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MiltonSlavemasta posted:I'm pretty convinced at this point that Wyld-Shaping Technique should be an action you can attempt rather than a charm you can buy, use, and automatically succeed with. You'll probably be pretty pleased by 3e's Wyld-Shaping, then, since it's pretty much it's own little system now. PurpleXVI posted:Considering that all we've got so far is playing the game in "theory," I'm going to say that we probably have no idea what the "traps" are, if there are any. A handful of dice and some testing goes a long way.
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Feb 17, 2015 21:38
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theironjef posted:Oh Wyld-Shaping Technique, you look so cool but always just do nothing and eventually get traded for more melee charms. What? Wyld-Shaping Technique was literally the single most broken system/charm in all of 2e. You could walk into the Wyld for a year, and walk out with an army of ten thousand ubermensch, all with awakened essence and artifact equipment. Like yeah, if the game took place on the Blessed Isle it's worthless, but in any game that let you enter the Wyld, it was so broken that STs would outright ban it in my experience. It completely made crafting, raising armies, building societies, etc trivial, compared to actually using the systems.
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Feb 17, 2015 21:38
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Charms that are tied to specific places in the setting, and which are completely useless in like 90% of the mapped setting, seem like a pretty terrible idea, though.
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Feb 17, 2015 21:45
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KittyEmpress posted:What? Wyld-Shaping Technique was literally the single most broken system/charm in all of 2e. You could walk into the Wyld for a year, and walk out with an army of ten thousand ubermensch, all with awakened essence and artifact equipment. Hey ST can my character walk into the Wyld for a whole year? "No." Oh, okay, can I trade this whole thing for Dodge tree stuff? "Yes." or Hey ST can my character walk into the Wyld for a whole year? "Yes." Sweet! Okay I break the game. "No." You decide!
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Feb 17, 2015 21:48
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theironjef posted:Hey ST can my character walk into the Wyld for a whole year? "No." "Hey ST, can my character hang out in the Wyld for this two months of downtime we need so Joe can raise his essence anyways?" 'Sure' "Cool, I now have new artifact weapons and armor for everyone." There's a big difference between a useless mechanic that is never useful, and one that's so good you're generally going to be limited in how you use it by your ST.
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Feb 17, 2015 22:09
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KittyEmpress posted:"Hey ST, can my character hang out in the Wyld for this two months of downtime we need so Joe can raise his essence anyways?" 'Sure' My experience is that the answer to your question there is generally no. Going to the edge of the Middlemarches isn't downtime because it's really far away and ludicrously dangerous. So you instead have to wait for an adventure in the wyld. It's like the Sail problem, only more focused on an even less likely setting.
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Feb 17, 2015 22:19
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I've always played creation as such a wild place that you can probably find some border marches or Middlemarch in between any two cities states if you get off the beaten path a little.
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Feb 17, 2015 23:41
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Mile'ionaha posted:I've always played creation as such a wild place that you can probably find some border marches or Middlemarch in between any two cities states if you get off the beaten path a little. Consuming Fair Folk Freeholds to power Wyld-Shaping is always fun.
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Feb 17, 2015 23:52
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Mile'ionaha posted:I've always played creation as such a wild place that you can probably find some border marches or Middlemarch in between any two cities states if you get off the beaten path a little. I asked a friend how close this hewed to canon, and he told me it was pretty canon that there were a good few Wyld pockets inside otherwise stable parts of Creation, but I feel like I've never seen that written in the 2E books, and he can't remember which book he found it in. Anyone got any idea where this is detailed?
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Feb 17, 2015 23:55
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PurpleXVI posted:I asked a friend how close this hewed to canon, and he told me it was pretty canon that there were a good few Wyld pockets inside otherwise stable parts of Creation, but I feel like I've never seen that written in the 2E books, and he can't remember which book he found it in. Anyone got any idea where this is detailed? It might be in a Fair Folk book, since those are expressly written to deny you any memory of having read them.
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Feb 17, 2015 23:58
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Isn't there a Wyld pocket in the middle of goddamn Nexus?
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Feb 18, 2015 00:14
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bartkusa posted:Isn't there a Wyld pocket in the middle of goddamn Nexus? In 2E, yeah, Firewander district was littered with them IIRC. Dunno if it's changed for 3E.
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Feb 18, 2015 00:18
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Finally getting into the setting chapter of the book. All this new Southeastern real estate looks very, very cool.
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Feb 18, 2015 00:19
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zeal posted:Finally getting into the setting chapter of the book. All this new Southeastern real estate looks very, very cool. My favorite part after really getting into it is how the grip of the Realm is emphasized, even in places as far Southeast as that. In this edition they're making it clear that when they said in 1e that the Scarlet Empress had "her fist clenched around the windpipe of the world," they weren't kidding.
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Feb 18, 2015 00:25
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LimitedReagent posted:I am totally fine with people stunting their animas for full sensory extravaganzas as well as cool poo poo like your wolf anima biting someone to complement or ax blow, cushioning a fall, or helping them pick up a great load. I don't think I've ever seen someone try to stunt their anima making hologram TV-show-eque visuals as they try to describe someone or something, which is what Phantom-Conjuring Performance in 3e does. To be perfectly honest I think the most useful part of Phantom Conjuring Performance is that it's not a prerequisite for any other charms, so you can safely ignore it.
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Feb 18, 2015 00:41
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PurpleXVI posted:I asked a friend how close this hewed to canon, and he told me it was pretty canon that there were a good few Wyld pockets inside otherwise stable parts of Creation, but I feel like I've never seen that written in the 2E books, and he can't remember which book he found it in. Anyone got any idea where this is detailed? Middlemarches were rarer but not impossible to find, especially as you got out into the boonies where Celestial Exalts were likely to stomp around what with the lower incidence of kung fu monk police. You'd probably have to go on a real quest to hit the deep Wyld or utter chaos. By contrast, back before everything, you could go from "totally normal" to "total Chaos" in two days' march at the outer edge of Creation. Welp that's my
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Feb 18, 2015 00:47
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I believe somewhere in early 1e --Scavenger Sons? Savage Seas? -- it was asserted that basically the whole Western Ocean, or at least the 99.9% of it that was out of sight of land, is Wyld-touched. Though that was walked back after they decided what that would actually mean, iirc.
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Feb 18, 2015 02:46
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drunkencarp posted:I believe somewhere in early 1e --Scavenger Sons? Savage Seas? -- it was asserted that basically the whole Western Ocean, or at least the 99.9% of it that was out of sight of land, is Wyld-touched. Though that was walked back after they decided what that would actually mean, iirc.  That would either be completely irrelevant (if it was just weird undersea features), would render most ocean travel impossible without significant magic, or would render most ocean travel impossible without an Exalt and/or necromancy.Of course, using 2E's Wyld system (and with a full acknowledgement that a Wyld rating system is an ironic thing to have) you could easily have some scattered and relatively small bordermarch/middlemarch patches, possibly ones that move around somewhat, and would be able to produce a shitload of cryptids, sea serpents, and deep-sea weird sightings without actually rendering the ocean a titanic mass of formless maelstrom chaos. 
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Feb 18, 2015 19:25
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2e's Wyld system was interesting in theory but seemed self-defeating in practice. It is neat that the Wyld is metaphysically organized in terms of narrative significance, that its geography is composed of plot points and travel montages. But... what is the significance or difference of this to the players, when montages summarizing downtime between plot points is how the entire game is presented to them...? eta: In other words, if I as a GM were to describe to the players the journey from Nexus to Lookshy, it would not be very different from describing the journey from one waypoint to another: summary punctuated by interesting things happening. GunnerJ fucked around with this message at 19:52 on Feb 18, 2015 |
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Feb 18, 2015 19:49
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drunkencarp posted:I believe somewhere in early 1e --Scavenger Sons? Savage Seas? -- it was asserted that basically the whole Western Ocean, or at least the 99.9% of it that was out of sight of land, is Wyld-touched. Though that was walked back after they decided what that would actually mean, iirc. As I understand it, back in 1E "Wyld" meant "Anywhere outside our nice, safe bubble of proper civilization", and applied to pretty much any part of the Threshold that wasn't a satrapy. It just happened to get wackier and elf-ier as you got further from settled lands or closer to Creation's rim, before the Wyld was codified as something that lay beyond Creation rather than partly-within it.
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Feb 18, 2015 19:50
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Nessus posted:
A major point of West culture were the Storm Mothers and Sea Gods, so major searoutes are probably all maintained properly. Maybe there'S also first-age artifacts long-buried underground that maintain reality in major areas, kinda like the reality engines in the North.
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Feb 18, 2015 20:42
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MonsieurChoc posted:reality engines Now there's a 2eIsm that can die in a fire.
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Feb 18, 2015 20:50
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Wow, I just realized the reroll mechanic is terrible. To actually use it, you need to keep track of your dice pool and your number of successes so far separately (or, if you're using Unbroken Image Focus, two separate numbers of successes). You can't just add up your dice at the end, because there are Charms that reroll specific numbers, including successes, and you can't just add more dice to the pool, because there are Charms that depend on having specific numbers or sets of numbers in your (or your enemy's) results pool.
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Feb 19, 2015 00:15
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A_Raving_Loon posted:Now there's a 2eIsm that can die in a fire. But the idea of building a device which literally and explicitly enforces laws of reality in a given area of some kind seems Solar as gently caress. Frankly, it seems like the logical end point of all this Crafting horseshit. You become able to make a device that enforces the laws you choose to write into it - in a sense, you have become a Primordial. The question becomes what happens when one of these maniacs realizes there's no reason to stick to the Creation factory default.
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Feb 19, 2015 00:29
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I like Reality Engines, but then again I also like Auto-kun and all that so what do I know. Old-School mtg with Urza and Mishra is very Exalted to me.
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Feb 19, 2015 00:32
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MonsieurChoc posted:I like Reality Engines, but then again I also like Auto-kun and all that so what do I know. Old-School mtg with Urza and Mishra is very Exalted to me.
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Feb 19, 2015 00:35
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Reality engines are a lot cooler to me if you remove the unified nature and the technological nomenclature attached to them. Here is a pocket world in a wardrobe, sustained by the ontological inertia of a single perfected word of OM, held by the linguistic chains of the thousand libraries of a long-dead Solar. Here is a floating city, driven aloft by the crystallized dreams of one of the Fair Folk, who fashioned them into ten million beating wings; within its borders, everything can fly. Here is a ship of the First Age, once lost in the currents of the Wyld, with a stony root of the Imperial Mountain laid into its keel. Where it passes, it glides through the earth, and flowers poisonous to the Wyld bloom in its wake.
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Feb 19, 2015 00:40
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A_Raving_Loon posted:Now there's a 2eIsm that can die in a fire. Reality engines were from Ruins of Rathess in 1e. One thing that drove me mad over 1e's lifespan was this kind of thing, where you'd have a weird evocative bit of setting added in one book, and then three books later you'd have that cribbed and expanded into a setting feature and all the interest and mystery gets beaten out of it. Dragon Kings were a great example - in RoR they're basically a mystery for you to solve and a potential ally for your Solars if you do well. But then they spewed out thousands of words on them in the *Players Guide*, instead of doing something else new and interesting. Exalted's setting mysteries need to be broader, not deeper - sure, it's easier for a freelancer to pick a favourite bit from the corebook and write 20,000 words of fanfic filling in all the details, but it's incredibly boring.
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Feb 19, 2015 00:42
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Roadie posted:Reality engines are a lot cooler to me if you remove the unified nature and the technological nomenclature attached to them. I always imagined reality engines as being just monoliths, a la 2001. Maybe white or gold or whatever instead of black. But then to me they're an object of conceptual horror.
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Feb 19, 2015 00:57
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