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Ronwayne posted:That's been a good question for all the editions. The answer is probably along the line that mortals are like cockroaches/bacteria.
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Mar 11, 2015 20:55
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ZeusJupitar posted:I think there's an issue that effects a lot of fantasy stuff where we've lost sight of what should be epic action because of spectacle inflation. In the older source material killing a lion or a gorilla bare handed is a feat worthy of a Hero because the audience would understand how impossible that is in reality. Modern games and other geek media have escalated to the point where any animal that's not three times its natural size and made of burning steel feels like small fry. Brb gonna run The Grey as an Exalted one shot.
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Mar 11, 2015 21:03
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ZeusJupitar posted:I think there's an issue that effects a lot of fantasy stuff where we've lost sight of what should be epic action because of spectacle inflation. In the older source material killing a lion or a gorilla bare handed is a feat worthy of a Hero because the audience would understand how impossible that is in reality. Modern games and other geek media have escalated to the point where any animal that's not three times its natural size and made of burning steel feels like small fry. Maybe, but a lot of RPGs go and stat animals as ridiculously powerful compared to trained soldiers wearing armour and wielding weapons. I mean according to the leak a wolf attacks with 9 dice, doing 9 damage. A professional soldier with a spear attacks at 6 dice doing 11 damage. Now I might rate a wolf going 1v1 vs a random individual who lacks weapons but probably not against say a medieval farmer with a knife. A trained soldier with a spear should be orders of magnitude more dangerous unless going up against some special badass wolf or a whole pack or something. In fact now I look it appears a regular eagle attacks with 10 dice doing 11 damage. Eagles should probably not pose a deadly threat to healthy adults let alone be as lethal in melee combat as a Bride of Ahlat.
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Mar 11, 2015 21:40
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I'm really interested to see if any numbers get tuned between the leak and the release, especially if they're going to be shaving antagonists for room.
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Mar 11, 2015 21:51
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Patrat posted:A professional soldier with a spear attacks at 6 dice doing 11 damage. So the moral of this is, don't gently caress around recruiting humans, just recruit a bunch of eagles and miscellaneous wildlife for your world-conquering army?
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Mar 11, 2015 22:16
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Patrat posted:Maybe, but a lot of RPGs go and stat animals as ridiculously powerful compared to trained soldiers wearing armour and wielding weapons. I mean according to the leak a wolf attacks with 9 dice, doing 9 damage. A professional soldier with a spear attacks at 6 dice doing 11 damage. It's the ancient world! A regular eagle probably has a 10 foot wingspan and talons that can rend mammoth hide. They probably call our eagles "crappy, irregular eagles not worthy of note."
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Mar 11, 2015 22:22
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PurpleXVI posted:So the moral of this is, don't gently caress around recruiting humans, just recruit a bunch of eagles and miscellaneous wildlife for your world-conquering army? It certainly helps explain why Lunars are able to defy Realm legions.
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Mar 11, 2015 22:37
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theironjef posted:It's the ancient world! A regular eagle probably has a 10 foot wingspan and talons that can rend mammoth hide. They probably call our eagles "crappy, irregular eagles not worthy of note." Terror birds and Haast's Eagle are cool and all, but considering that humans regularly, thoroughly murder the poo poo out of any predators big and/or brave enough to take us on, their in-game stats *probably* shouldn't outclass those of hardened, trained soldiers.
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Mar 11, 2015 22:41
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Punting posted:Terror birds and Haast's Eagle are cool and all, but considering that humans regularly, thoroughly murder the poo poo out of any predators big and/or brave enough to take us on, their in-game stats *probably* shouldn't outclass those of hardened, trained soldiers. Any eagle that's fighting an actual military detachment (as opposed to one guy sunbathing with his armor off) is probably also a Heroic Eagle(tm, c) and probably is getting a magic rub, formally or informally, from its patron.
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Mar 11, 2015 22:46
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The world would be a better place if a single eagle could kill 30 soldiers.
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Mar 11, 2015 22:49
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Punting posted:Terror birds and Haast's Eagle are cool and all, but considering that humans regularly, thoroughly murder the poo poo out of any predators big and/or brave enough to take us on, their in-game stats *probably* shouldn't outclass those of hardened, trained soldiers. I don't see why not. It's a primeval world. A single eagle might outclass a single soldier, but when do you ever see a single soldier? Eagle doesn't do more damage than three soldiers. Swordsman vs. Polar Bear, I'm still putting my money on the bear, and that's a modern bear. Some legendary era bear with paws like double-sized manhole covers is even worse. Wait, does an eagle also beat a battle group? I might be undone here.
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Mar 11, 2015 22:52
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Nessus posted:Any eagle that's fighting an actual military detachment (as opposed to one guy sunbathing with his armor off) is probably also a Heroic Eagle(tm, c) and probably is getting a magic rub, formally or informally, from its patron. My suspicion as to why animal stats are so buff is that they're meant to be Familiars for Exalts rather than random encounters, and of course your faithful Bloodwing can peck the eyes out of some bandit.
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Mar 11, 2015 22:56
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I'm going to just use these animal statblocks as "Familiar-Quality Animal", and cut everything in half for random wild beasts edit: Beaten like a soldier fighting an eagle
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Mar 11, 2015 22:58
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theironjef posted:I don't see why not. It's a primeval world. A single eagle might outclass a single soldier, but when do you ever see a single soldier? Eagle doesn't do more damage than three soldiers. Swordsman vs. Polar Bear, I'm still putting my money on the bear, and that's a modern bear. Some legendary era bear with paws like double-sized manhole covers is even worse. A battle group is just a single character with +[size] to some traits and a health track that can refill. The system is such that if you can beat a single soldier you've got at least decent odds against 30 soldiers.
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Mar 11, 2015 23:05
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Attorney at Funk posted:A battle group is just a single character with +[size] to some traits and a health track that can refill. The system is such that if you can beat a single soldier you've got at least decent odds against 30 soldiers. That's fine, that's just that inverse-proportionate ninja power thing rearing up. One soldier on a mission is always gonna beat 30 chumps in a line. Unless that one soldier is an eagle.
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Mar 11, 2015 23:11
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Attorney at Funk posted:A battle group is just a single character with +[size] to some traits and a health track that can refill. The system is such that if you can beat a single soldier you've got at least decent odds against 30 soldiers. So wait, does this mean that if you've got a group of 30 guys, they're gonna be more effective if you line them up and send them in to fight, one by one, rather than sending them all in at once as a group?
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Mar 11, 2015 23:15
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theironjef posted:That's fine, that's just that inverse-proportionate ninja power thing rearing up. One soldier on a mission is always gonna beat 30 chumps in a line. Unless that one soldier is an eagle. Yeah, fundamentally invoking the Battle Group rules at all is a declaration of the narrative importance of those soldiers. They're only relevant to the story en masse. By the same token, if a single eagle's stats are relevant to a story... it had better be a scary goddamn eagle. The game wouldn't benefit by having a monster manual style registrar of common woodland animals with 1d3-2 claw attacks and a quarter of a hit die or whatever would have maximum statistical fidelity in a human-on-bird fight. PurpleXVI posted:So wait, does this mean that if you've got a group of 30 guys, they're gonna be more effective if you line them up and send them in to fight, one by one, rather than sending them all in at once as a group?
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Mar 11, 2015 23:16
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PurpleXVI posted:So wait, does this mean that if you've got a group of 30 guys, they're gonna be more effective if you line them up and send them in to fight, one by one, rather than sending them all in at once as a group? Significantly. However, I think you're supposed to infer that those guys are so chumply that for them to even have stats at all requires there to be 30 of them. Like if you sent them in one at a time they'd just become connective tissue in a stunt. Attorney at Funk posted:Yeah, if the game rules were the physics engine that the world ran on, it'd be standard practice for smart militaries to abolish uniforms and make sure each soldier had their own discrete haircut, signature weapon, and backstory. It worked for Naruto and friends. The rest of those idiots in that town kept putting on that stupid grey vest/blue shirt combo that guaranteed they'd just die in the background. theironjef fucked around with this message at 23:20 on Mar 11, 2015 |
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Mar 11, 2015 23:18
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It's basically a statement of genre that a 30-on-1 is easier on the lone combatant than a 3-on-1.
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Mar 11, 2015 23:24
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I thought the "personal combat doesn't scale up to War" problem was a know issue with 2e? Like, I guess that you don't want a system that perfectly models the intricacies of personal scale combat but with hundreds of combatants, but it still seems kind of weird. Personally I always thought it was odd how ineffective armies are. Before anybody huffs and says 'But Dynasty Warriors!", consider that like half of the available skills/charms are related to making people like you, training them, equipping them, organizing them, funding them, and then sending them off to battle. I feel like armies should be a thing you want to put together because they're awesome rather than an afterthought that occurs because you're so awesome.
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Mar 11, 2015 23:27
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Attorney at Funk posted:Yeah, if the game rules were the physics engine that the world ran on, it'd be standard practice for smart militaries to abolish uniforms and make sure each soldier had their own discrete haircut, signature weapon, and backstory. G.I. Joe in one sentence.
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Mar 11, 2015 23:29
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It is definitely a Thing, the shittier armies are, the less important everything other than being personally being an unstoppable kung fu demigod finds itself. If one guy can kill two legions by himself over the course of a few hours then the guy who can ride at the speed of the wind to the neighboring kingdom, ally with them, then return leading ten thousand warriors who remain fed despite crossing the Desert of Doom? Ends up becoming distinctly less useful. I have not played around with the new mass combat rules but in 2e it very much favoured the 'be an invincible sword god' option. I remember one campaign where I was playing a Dawn, it was set in the North in the Haslanti League, people were doing politics, etc... Then realization set in that my 30xp Dawn could quite literally kill the entire military of the Haslanti League in a single day if they were all amassed. The whole war that was supposed to be key to the plot? loving irrelevant, a single flying Solar who had taken an excessive number of melee and resistance charms could just sword everything endlessly and wipe out an army of ten thousand in the time it took them to move five miles. Literally the only thing that really mattered was Exalted and their personal ability to murder poo poo. (Explanation, a Person of the Air (so winged) Dawn with a Thunderbolt Shield and regular daiklaive, poo poo tons of melee charms, 2e (not 2.5e) Iron Skin Concentration along with Tiger and Bear Awareness. DV in the high teens from character generation along with the ability to fly, ignore unexpected attacks from non essence stealthed sources, and kill a person or two a second. Fading Sunset Stance (I think?) to allow All The Counterattacks if somebody was stupid enough to try to mob them.) Outside of cases like 'Get a bunch of dragonblooded to turbo charge their troops' that is, dragon blooded with armies in 2e were loving terrifying. Patrat fucked around with this message at 23:46 on Mar 11, 2015 |
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Mar 11, 2015 23:42
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One, it's less that armies are chumps in 3E than that wildlife is loving terrifying (I suspect this is largely but not entirely a concession to Lunars, because nobody wants "turn into something everyone else can kill six of before breakfast" to be their defining feature). Two, this makes combined arms EXCEEDINGLY-dangerous - a lone Dragonblooded or a small army may be at a disadvantage against a Dawn Caste, while a Dragonblooded LEADING a small army is a threat the Dawn has to take seriously, or even retreat from.
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Mar 11, 2015 23:48
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Patrat posted:It is definitely a Thing, the shittier armies are, the less important everything other than being personally being an unstoppable kung fu demigod finds itself. I do think the specific example of the Haslanti League did have some DBs and god-blooded laying around too, who presumably would show up after you'd mutilated a few regiments. (Or you'd find out that that was the next regiment on your aerial mutilation list.)
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Mar 11, 2015 23:54
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Thesaurasaurus posted:One, it's less that armies are chumps in 3E than that wildlife is loving terrifying (I suspect this is largely but not entirely a concession to Lunars, because nobody wants "turn into something everyone else can kill six of before breakfast" to be their defining feature). Two, this makes combined arms EXCEEDINGLY-dangerous - a lone Dragonblooded or a small army may be at a disadvantage against a Dawn Caste, while a Dragonblooded LEADING a small army is a threat the Dawn has to take seriously, or even retreat from. But can I make an army of eagles, genetically enhance my dragonblooded to have wings, and have flaming war eagles, enhanced by my war and survival charms and my dragonblooded commanders? Because if I can't make an army of flaming/electric/whatever eagles, I don't know if I want to even play.
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Mar 11, 2015 23:55
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Thesaurasaurus posted:One, it's less that armies are chumps in 3E than that wildlife is loving terrifying (I suspect this is largely but not entirely a concession to Lunars, because nobody wants "turn into something everyone else can kill six of before breakfast" to be their defining feature). Two, this makes combined arms EXCEEDINGLY-dangerous - a lone Dragonblooded or a small army may be at a disadvantage against a Dawn Caste, while a Dragonblooded LEADING a small army is a threat the Dawn has to take seriously, or even retreat from. Yeah, Command Rolls basically let battle groups toss out dice comparable to an Exalt's excellencies. So a well lead army is a serious danger, while a disorganized mob is pretty much fodder for your Lu-Bu.
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Mar 11, 2015 23:57
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What's hosed up is that an Appearance-based command roll represents leading from the front and charging boldly ahead, but you can't flurry the command action, so I guess you just kind of run at the enemy but stop short and hope that your soldiers overtake you when their tick rolls around.
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Mar 12, 2015 00:01
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And it should be noted that a warmaster with the appropriate charms has one of the most dangerous setups in the game. Being able to more or less freely succeed at a Stratagem that knocks your enemies' DVs to 0 is huge when battlegroups do damage that goes straight to the healthtrack if they crash you, since warmasters can slap down humongous bonuses to rolls by yelling at people. It creates this interesting dynamic where a general schools a lone warrior, who in turn schools a pet from hell, who in turn eats the general's armies for breakfast.
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Mar 12, 2015 00:02
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Dragon Vortex Attack is probably going to make a come-back as the Ultimate gently caress You from a DB leading an army.
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Mar 12, 2015 00:03
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Nessus posted:I do think the specific example of the Haslanti League did have some DBs and god-blooded laying around too, who presumably would show up after you'd mutilated a few regiments. (Or you'd find out that that was the next regiment on your aerial mutilation list.) The god blooded were basically irrelevant vs a Dawn, there was some kind of incident with multiple entities as dangerous as Fae Cataphracts (as statted in the core book) who ended up dead or fleeing after the character in question started loving around and using the severed head of their leader as an improvised projectile weapon. The Haslanti do canonically have like 20 dragon blooded though and given I doubt most of those are chargen level 20ish year old chumps I expect if they did get a chance to mass at all they would have been able to challenge said solar. The Haslanti are not loving idiots though, they also have an Eclipse solar diplomat who is basically fantasy James Bond, who plied said flying Dawn with fine wine and witty banter. This does not really alter the 'tens of thousands of well trained and superbly armed mortal troops irrelevant compared to exalts' thing though. The main problem was the Tear Eaters, who were supposed to be the Big Bad Threat. The only thing that actually made them threatening was the Abyssal leading them but after he lost in a duel and fled it was hard to avoid 'Now the dawn flies around and wipes out their entire army over a long afternoon before stopping to have tea'. MonsieurChoc posted:Dragon Vortex Attack is probably going to make a come-back as the Ultimate gently caress You from a DB leading an army. Dragon Vortex was crazy good and did kind of make all armies not lead by sufficient DBs to shield them just die... That said it was cool to play a DB with solars, be obviously the underdog, then when poo poo got real just turn around and melt a city to the bedrock.
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Mar 12, 2015 00:06
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Patrat posted:The Haslanti are not loving idiots though, they also have an Eclipse solar diplomat who is basically fantasy James Bond, who plied said flying Dawn with fine wine and witty banter. This does not really alter the 'tens of thousands of well trained and superbly armed mortal troops irrelevant compared to exalts' thing though. The main problem was the Tear Eaters, who were supposed to be the Big Bad Threat. The only thing that actually made them threatening was the Abyssal leading them but after he lost in a duel and fled it was hard to avoid 'Now the dawn flies around and wipes out their entire army over a long afternoon before stopping to have tea'. Of course, an Abyssal leaving a few thousand psychotics who are dangerously unstable right where a Solar can murder them sounds like a really clever stratagem from a certain point of view. You know what happens when you murder a few thousand people in a single afternoon, don't you? 
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Mar 12, 2015 00:12
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Transient People posted:And it should be noted that a warmaster with the appropriate charms has one of the most dangerous setups in the game. Being able to more or less freely succeed at a Stratagem that knocks your enemies' DVs to 0 is huge when battlegroups do damage that goes straight to the healthtrack if they crash you, since warmasters can slap down humongous bonuses to rolls by yelling at people. It creates this interesting dynamic where a general schools a lone warrior, who in turn schools a pet from hell, who in turn eats the general's armies for breakfast. None of this follows at all. You don't use stratagems against lone combatants and there's no reason a lone combatant would be uniquely suited to killing a superpet but not an army while the superpet can defeat the army.
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Mar 12, 2015 00:12
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theironjef posted:It's the ancient world! A regular eagle probably has a 10 foot wingspan and talons that can rend mammoth hide. They probably call our eagles "crappy, irregular eagles not worthy of note." This is definitely my assumption. That any animals worthy of being statted are 'loving dangerous versions, yo.' Animals weaker than that follow the extras/unworthy opponents rules - which are broad and universally applicable to extras and unworthy foes, including punk bitch versions of animals.
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Mar 12, 2015 00:17
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Patrat posted:It is definitely a Thing, the shittier armies are, the less important everything other than being personally being an unstoppable kung fu demigod finds itself. What was your war rating?
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Mar 12, 2015 00:17
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jagadaishio posted:This is definitely my assumption. That any animals worthy of being statted are 'loving dangerous versions, yo.' Animals weaker than that follow the extras/unworthy opponents rules - which are broad and universally applicable to extras and unworthy foes, including punk bitch versions of animals.
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Mar 12, 2015 00:18
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Ferrinus posted:None of this follows at all. You don't use stratagems against lone combatants and there's no reason a lone combatant would be uniquely suited to killing a superpet but not an army while the superpet can defeat the army. Except that it is in theme and amusingly enough charms help reflect that, of course. And you certainly can use stratagems against lone combatants in a pinch.
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Mar 12, 2015 00:20
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It is not in theme, Charms do not reflect that, and you cannot use stratagems against lone combatants. How do you keep doing this? The mind boggles.
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Mar 12, 2015 00:22
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Nessus posted:I dunno, a big ol' dog with a mohawk would probably be dangerous even if it's a girl dog. Touche. Having played Shadowrun, I'm forced to agree.
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Mar 12, 2015 00:29
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Ferrinus posted:It is not in theme, Charms do not reflect that, and you cannot use stratagems against lone combatants. 'Lone hero beats great beast' is not in theme for mythical fantasy OK
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Mar 12, 2015 00:32
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The idea that strategems can be used against individuals is both against RAI and RAW. Strategic Warfare: quote:What follows is a simple system for strategic conflict for use whenever a battle between two quote:Each has a listed threshold—a number of successes Transient People posted:'Lone hero beats great beast' is not in theme for mythical fantasy
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