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hangedman1984 posted:Out of curiosity, in that last pie chart did you consider Hollowers as part of the Trad slice or Unaligned slice? Unaligned, which is always a sticky issue since Hollow Ones both are and aren't part of the Trads. The charts also don't factor in M20 yet which would change them up quite a bit.
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Jan 25, 2017 17:51
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Ferrinus posted:Surely in the essence wasteland that is the WoD there's just no such thing as a hearthstone, your ability to even store more than a dozen-odd motes at a time is arrested by the incredibly hypotonic atmosphere you live and breathe in, etc. Eh, it's a canonical plot point in Exalted that the Exalted are complete bullshit by the standards of anything in the WoD if they're linked together. They can literally invent new charms (except for Sidereals, who get theirs handed down from the Maidens.) on the fly with enough dedication and hard work. They'd probably find a way. Barring that they'd just hang out outside of reality in all the magic heavy areas like the Underworld, the Shadow, some Supernal realm or pocket dimension, etc, etc unless they had one of the alternate charms that lets them harvest essence in a way that's different from respiring. Or they'd parasitize themselves and leech off of humanity like spirits and the lower realms do. Heck, Abyssals already do that by default when outside the Underworld. Do solars even have charms that let them have alternate means of getting essence in their existing charm set though? If they can't even function inside the living world (Which is low essence as heck for the most part.) then I can't see them hanging around in it for long. The other Exalt types do in a way that'd mostly fit but I can't think of any that Solars have off hand. It'd sure be a way to explain the old New World of Darkness title. Having the Solars taken out of the picture gives the world at least some room to end up as dark and monster filled as it is. They're the only ones that'd explicitly be driven to try to make the world a better place. Archonex fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Jan 25, 2017 |
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Jan 25, 2017 17:53
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I'm not sure that otherworldly is the same as magic-heavy. The Shadow, for instance, is a Darwinian nightmare in which everyone is hungry and looking for their next meal at all times. The astral is imaginary, the underworld is dead and slowly draining... magical resource scarcity and the danger of backlash are present pretty much wherever you go in the world of darkness. And, like I already said, what if existing magic pool maximums for published supernaturals are the best you can do? What if, when you have Essence 1, you can't hold more than 10 motes because the rest just get sucked away into the void? Earth-stranded exalts are only as game-breakingly strong as you allow them to be, is the upshot here.
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Jan 25, 2017 18:00
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Archonex posted:Eh, it's a plot point that the Exalted are complete bullshit by the standards of anything in the WoD if they're linked together. They can literally invent new charms (except for Sidereals, who get theirs handed down from the Maidens.) on the fly with enough dedication and hard work. They'd probably find a way. 2e Solars have a number of ways to gain motes that are independent of their surroundings. Immanent Solar Glory gives you motes for leading, organizing, administrating etc. groups or organizations. Essence Gathering Temper lets you turn being hit into motes. Stunting gives 2-6 motes no matter where you are. And there is absolutely valid design space for custom charms to let you gain motes from doing other Cool Solar poo poo.
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Jan 25, 2017 18:01
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Ferrinus posted:I'm not sure that otherworldly is the same as magic-heavy. The Shadow, for instance, is a Darwinian nightmare in which everyone is hungry and looking for their next meal at all times. The astral is imaginary, the underworld is dead and slowly draining... magical resource scarcity and the danger of backlash are present pretty much wherever you go in the world of darkness. And, like I already said, what if existing magic pool maximums for published supernaturals are the best you can do? What if, when you have Essence 1, you can't hold more than 10 motes because the rest just get sucked away into the void? I guess it really depends on what game you give narrative primacy too. Not like it matters that much beyond nerdy fan wanking anyways. It's been years since there was talk of a crossover book coming out. If nothing else I suppose if you wanted to say so then you could point out that the Underworld is also draining into the void in Creation. It doesn't stop the Abyssals/Deathlords from busting out some insane charms or Arcanoi at a whim. Not that anyone ever uses the Underworld in Exalted. Deathlords are explicitly mentioned as existing in 1e NWoD too, though we have no idea what the hell they are in their NWoD format. Kaza42 posted:2e Solars have a number of ways to gain motes that are independent of their surroundings. Immanent Solar Glory gives you motes for leading, organizing, administrating etc. groups or organizations. Essence Gathering Temper lets you turn being hit into motes. Stunting gives 2-6 motes no matter where you are. And there is absolutely valid design space for custom charms to let you gain motes from doing other Cool Solar poo poo. Oh wow. I totally forgot about them. Now i'm picturing a perpetually aggravated Solar being barred from glory and prestige due to being shackled to some mundane middle or upper management position so he can keep getting his essence fix. He's the best manager the company has ever had! But he accomplishes gently caress all in the grand scheme of things. 
Archonex fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Jan 25, 2017 |
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Jan 25, 2017 18:03
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The answer is to throw mummies at them and call it a day. The Exalted can do their poo poo, the mummies throw world shattering cosmic might at them all the live long day, everyone else laughs that they don't have to deal with mummies/the Exalted. e: I mean before they die to the cosmic might the mummies are calling down at least. Mulva fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Jan 25, 2017 |
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Jan 25, 2017 18:31
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Also in plausible actual reality, (n/o)WoD creatures of the current edition (CoD, X20) win over virtually any Exalted group (other than Solars) of the current edition by virtue of the books they appear in actually existing in a tangible, readable form that human eyes will ever see.
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Jan 25, 2017 18:36
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:Also in plausible actual reality, (n/o)WoD creatures of the current edition (CoD, X20) win over virtually any Exalted group (other than Solars) of the current edition by virtue of the books they appear in actually existing in a tangible, readable form that human eyes will ever see. Hey, you can't hold 3E being loving terrible against them.  I'm still amused that they scaled down the power level with the justification of making it more classically "epic" (One of the authors has gone on record as complaining about the Exalted being as powerful as they are. Which was kind of the point of the game?) and still managed to make the game something of a complicated mess. While also just changing the meta game so that Exalted were still as potentially powerful, just in different ways. Talk about aiming for the moon only to end up smacking into the side of a mountain. Especially given how long it took just to get a core book out and how much some of the previews came off as being horrific in that "Beast: The Primordial" sort of way. Edit: You know, Ferrinus, i've seen you post in that thread.
Archonex fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Jan 25, 2017 |
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Jan 25, 2017 18:52
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3E's the best edition of the game.
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Jan 25, 2017 18:56
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Do Exalts actually have any answers to some of the more out-there powers that Chronicles has? What do Solars do against Juggernaut's Gait? Or Just Bruised? Or hell, like 70% of what Demons can get up to which can't be resisted by any means? Or things like Cult of Personality which don't really care too much about what your stats are? Obviously directly comparing game mechanics and doing things like "lol Exalts don't have Composure or Supernatural Tolerance" is navel gazing idiocy, but if we were to compare thematics, what happens when Exalted go up against half stuff nWoD splats can throw around? The gross reality control exhibited by Mages and Demons which genuinely doesn't care who you are, what powers or stats you have or where you came from seems like even Exalts would have to be careful of. And "you take no damge from any source until the start of your next turn" is the kind of rules language that doesn't really leave any exceptions, even for Exalts. Genuine questions. I've never played Exalted.
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Jan 25, 2017 20:28
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Actually they're very well defended against that stuff, almost redundantly so. It's at the point that there are multiple "If someone tries to turn you into a frog, you get this bonus to resist. If the power they use to turn you into a frog doesn't even have a roll, then you immediately force them to MAKE this roll or else you resist. If they succeed anyway then your frog-dom is negotiated such that you turn into Frog from Crono Trigger rather than a regular ole frog" powers and like, no published means to actually turn someone into a frog. Presumably the devs are planning for a lot of future releases.
Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Jan 25, 2017 |
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Jan 25, 2017 20:33
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Doodmons posted:Do Exalts actually have any answers to some of the more out-there powers that Chronicles has? What do Solars do against Juggernaut's Gait? Or Just Bruised? Or hell, like 70% of what Demons can get up to which can't be resisted by any means? Or things like Cult of Personality which don't really care too much about what your stats are? Obviously directly comparing game mechanics and doing things like "lol Exalts don't have Composure or Supernatural Tolerance" is navel gazing idiocy, but if we were to compare thematics, what happens when Exalted go up against half stuff nWoD splats can throw around? The gross reality control exhibited by Mages and Demons which genuinely doesn't care who you are, what powers or stats you have or where you came from seems like even Exalts would have to be careful of. And "you take no damge from any source until the start of your next turn" is the kind of rules language that doesn't really leave any exceptions, even for Exalts. Also, 2e Exalts have at least three charms that say "you take no damage until your next turn, no matter what, this can never be bypassed even by things that say they do"
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Jan 25, 2017 20:35
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Kaza42 posted:Also, 2e Exalts have at least three charms that say "you take no damage until your next turn, no matter what, this can never be bypassed even by things that say they do" lol
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Jan 25, 2017 20:36
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does exalted seriously not have some predefined hierarchy of rule exceptions by category because goddamn
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Jan 25, 2017 20:36
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:does exalted seriously not have some predefined hierarchy of rule exceptions by category Actually, it did/does. In older editions in which "perfect" effects were commonplace, defenses always trumped attacks. In the current edition in which they're way rarer and more limited you don't really need one.
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Jan 25, 2017 20:37
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:does exalted seriously not have some predefined hierarchy of rule exceptions by category They do. "Perfect" effects beat anything else, and if two effects within a classification clash, then defense wins. If there's no clear defender, then they roll off for which is stronger. So it pretty much goes Perfect Defense>Perfect Attack>Imperfect Defense>Imperfect Attack. The reason that perfect defenses are restated as NOTHING BEATS THEM is because at one point in the game line one of the developers added a charm (Zeal) that was supposed to be in a new category all its own that beats EVERYTHING, including Perfect Defenses. This super broke the combat system of the game (already not very good), since the game has very high lethality on anything that actually hits - hence the need for there to be Perfect Defense charms that negate any hit. It was a huge mess that, as soon as each group discovered the Perfect Defense Paradigm (called Paranoia Combat) devolved into a super boring mote-attrition game of "I attack with enough dice to kill you" "I perfectly defend. I attack with enough dice to kill you" "I perfectly defend" and so on until one side hit 0 motes and instantly died.
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Jan 25, 2017 20:43
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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Games > Traditional Games > World of Darkness Megathread featuring Exalted rules minutae
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Jan 25, 2017 20:45
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To be fair, it's not all that dissimilar from Mage-chat.
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Jan 25, 2017 20:46
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Well, my character in a Ancient Roman-styled setting game of mortals went to a cult meeting and got roofied and now he's a cyborg. Truly this is simultaneously the best and worst of outcomes.
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Jan 25, 2017 21:05
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SunAndSpring posted:Well, my character in a Ancient Roman-styled setting game of mortals went to a cult meeting and got roofied and now he's a cyborg. Truly this is simultaneously the best and worst of outcomes. I need to know: Did he get roofied in actual ancient rome and this is somehow a time paradox or no?
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Jan 25, 2017 21:27
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SunAndSpring posted:Well, my character in a Ancient Roman-styled setting game of mortals went to a cult meeting and got roofied and now he's a cyborg. Truly this is simultaneously the best and worst of outcomes.
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Jan 25, 2017 21:28
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Please become a cybergladiator TIA.
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Jan 25, 2017 21:34
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Night10194 posted:I need to know: Did he get roofied in actual ancient rome and this is somehow a time paradox or no? It's a setting inspired by Age of Decadence, so it's a post-apocalyptic setting that went from magical utopia land to terrible Ancient Rome. And I think it was opiates instead of roofies but whatever, my vision is augmented and my spine is brand new.
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Jan 25, 2017 21:35
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SunAndSpring posted:It's a setting inspired by Age of Decadence, so it's a post-apocalyptic setting that went from magical utopia land to terrible Ancient Rome. Are you implanted with a horrifying yet ingenious control mechanism slaving you to the will of the strange God they served? Is the spine an improvement?
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Jan 25, 2017 21:42
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Ferrinus posted:3E's the best edition of the game. Exalted 3E being the best edition of Exalted and also something of a mess is not incompatible, especially given those earlier editions of Exalted.
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Jan 25, 2017 21:51
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Kaza42 posted:The reason that perfect defenses are restated as NOTHING BEATS THEM is because at one point in the game line one of the developers added a charm (Zeal) that was supposed to be in a new category all its own that beats EVERYTHING, including Perfect Defenses. This super broke the combat system of the game (already not very good), since the game has very high lethality on anything that actually hits - hence the need for there to be Perfect Defense charms that negate any hit. Naw, it was already like that from the very beginning of 2e. Zeal was a terrible Charm not just because it was designed to break the central conceit of the combat system over its knee just because it could, but because it didn't actually do the thing it was trying to do. The person writing it didn't understand that the "this defends against anything, even against things that can't be defended against" rule would have primacy over any kind of "this can't be defended against even by things that can defend against things that can't be defended against" rule.
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Jan 25, 2017 21:58
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SunAndSpring posted:Well, my character in a Ancient Roman-styled setting game of mortals went to a cult meeting and got roofied and now he's a cyborg. Truly this is simultaneously the best and worst of outcomes. Found a picture of your character. 
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Jan 25, 2017 22:00
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Rand Brittain posted:Naw, it was already like that from the very beginning of 2e. Zeal was a terrible Charm not just because it was designed to break the central conceit of the combat system over its knee just because it could, but because it didn't actually do the thing it was trying to do. The person writing it didn't understand that the "this defends against anything, even against things that can't be defended against" rule would have primacy over any kind of "this can't be defended against even by things that can defend against things that can't be defended against" rule. I have just had an epiphany: Exalted is a stupid game.
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Jan 25, 2017 22:03
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Enola Gay-For-Pay posted:I have just had an epiphany: Exalted is a stupid game. It was honestly a pretty reasonable rule decision on Michael Goodwin or whoever's part back in the days when "let's write bullshit invincible superpowers into this tactics game" was a fun hobby for writers and there was no developer around to stop them.
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Jan 25, 2017 22:04
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Enola Gay-For-Pay posted:I have just had an epiphany: Exalted is a stupid game.
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Jan 25, 2017 22:10
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gourdcaptain posted:Exalted 3E being the best edition of Exalted and also something of a mess is not incompatible, especially given those earlier editions of Exalted. Oh it's a loving clown show, don't get me wrong. But if you wanted to play Exalted you'd be better served with it than its predecessors. Well, unless you wanted to play Exalted without having to do fiddly mechanics conversions every time you lifted rules from a supplement.
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Jan 25, 2017 22:13
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Optionally you just play Godbound.
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Jan 25, 2017 22:47
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Exalted is a game that actively wrote "Bang! I shot you!" "Nuh-uh, no you didn't, I have magic armor!" "Oh yeah? Well I have magic armor piercing magic-er bullets!" back into the mechanical system of a roleplaying game when the implicit first principle of any ruleset is to avoid that exact situation. If you want to enjoy Exalted, you must know this among other faults, and embrace the trash heap that lies festering at its heart.ProfessorCirno posted:Optionally you just play Godbound. Or this. This is the better move.
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Jan 25, 2017 22:49
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Some of the guys in the Viking Werewolf game I'm in at the moment are Exalted 2e players and it's a running joke at the table that 2E Werewolves got given a Perfect Defense (the Hit and Run facet of Gift of Evasion) and it's even got a flaw built into it like Exalted 2e Perfect Defenses apparently do (anything that would still hit you once you've moved your Speed away) so we've been getting a good laugh out of it. Also we all bought it ASAP because, you know, Perfect Defense.
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Jan 25, 2017 23:51
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Yawgmoth posted:I have had no less than five people try to sell me on the system and every time it sounds like the dumbest goddamned thing ever. It sounds like the hideous mutant child-beast of oWoD, 2e D&D, and a bunch of 4 year olds playing cops and robbers, all blended in a bucket filled with water from Flint, MI. I mean, don't get me wrong, I have a near-complete collection of Exalted 1st edition books and I love the game, but it is pretty much exactly that. Exalted has a ton of wonderful story hooks built into a fantasy setting and a game that is built to respond to ridiculous overpowered requests from players with "sure, why not." It's D&D, but you skip the lovely low level gameplay and go right to the part where you slap gods around and conquer empires. At the time it was released, there weren't a lot of other games encouraging that playstyle so it was pretty novel. None of that changes the fact that it is, in many ways, dumb as all hell and every edition of the game mechanics is, in one way or another, an absolute garbage fire. If I ever run it again I'll definitely use something other than the official rules. I've got a copy of Marvel Heroic Roleplaying that I think would be a really good fit with some minor hacking.
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Jan 26, 2017 00:28
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ProfessorCirno posted:Optionally you just play Godbound. Yeah they're both games about similar things but the underlying rules are very different and if something likes the crunch of Exalted then they will be sad.
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Jan 26, 2017 01:37
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Kaza42 posted:Also, 2e Exalts have at least three charms that say "you take no damage until your next turn, no matter what, this can never be bypassed even by things that say they do" Unless that person is a Midnight or Zenith caste. Then you can just go get hosed while they spam their caste ability that does unblockable agg damage at you. Also they have some great perfect defense charms in 2E, so you can get hosed if you're dealing with a high essence exalt of that caste too. Tuxedo Catfish posted:does exalted seriously not have some predefined hierarchy of rule exceptions by category Exalted really doesn't do balance in the traditional concept. The best way I can think of describing it is that playing one of the most powerful Exalt types is kind of like the tabletop equivalent of nuclear warfare. Everyone's got insanely powerful abilities that'd outright squash most things in other games/have them be the end boss for an entire campaign. Then they just keep getting more powerful. And when two beings of equivalent levels of power clash then poo poo just gets wrecked for potentially miles in every direction until someone fails their perfects or runs out of essence and gets annihilated since everyone at every character at the top level of power can spam perfect defenses but usually not perfect attacks. See my post about what an Abyssal gunman can do to get an idea of the kind of insane power they can put out later on. It's kind of telling that the vast majority of actual listed charms in 2e capped out at around Essence 6 or 7 despite the fact that charms and Exalt's can go up to essence 10. It was an old meme that at essence 6 a properly combat specced Dawn caste in 2e could potentially pick up a continent sized eldritch abomination, shake it like a ragdoll, and then hurl it into the sun like he's Superman. That's about when they stopped trying to figure out how stupidly powerful the Celestial exalt's could get and just said "homebrew this poo poo if you want to go further i don't loving know". Though the game even points out that any Exalt that gets to essence ten is par on par with the beings that literally invented existence and could probably even outdo them on that front given enough time. And the blurb that describes what Exalt's do at each essence level implies that an essence 8 or 9 exalt could just go make their own existence and gently caress off to it. So I guess I can't blame them for never trying to conceptualize what the gently caress a top tier Exalt would look like in print. 3e tones this down. Or at least tries too. But it runs into the same problem 2e had when it first came out. They haven't really classified what the later essence levels look like charm wise (and it's still a mess mechanically) so to keep things escalating it'll have to get similarly apocalyptic and head-ache inducing to play. The Exalted 3e thread went into that recently, in fact. Edit: Aside from all that it helps to know that Exalted started out as a super powered prehistory for the WoD. Despite the fact that they keep saying that the settings are their own thing (unless you want, evidently) now they're still putting analogues for new lines into Exalt and vice versa too. Or well, they're planned for Exalted because the Exalted team is pretty terrible at actually getting books out. Hell, even the NWoD/CofD is getting into it with a lot of crossover game lines and similar name drops in many of their game lines and both 2e and 3e Exalted. Pretty much no one knows what the gently caress is going on there and there's a lot of fan theories that haven't been helped by years old talk of a crossover book from the devs too. TL;DR: It's a glorious clusterfuck and really needs to be seen to be believed. Archonex fucked around with this message at 04:41 on Jan 26, 2017 |
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Jan 26, 2017 04:07
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Exalted joins the ranks of other games like Shadowrun that have interesting settings but have pretty much universally been bad games. And that's basically it. People might keep coming back because the setting is interesting [Or they might not, 3E really poo poo the bed on that one], but it doesn't change it's a bad game.
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Jan 26, 2017 04:14
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We have a thread for Exalted, guys.
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Jan 26, 2017 04:14
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Yeah, I just figured i'd explain the concept behind Exalted since he asked. Either way it's probably a good idea to bring questions about it up in there instead of here. Ask them about the Abyssal charms preview from way back!
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Jan 26, 2017 04:16
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