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I mentioned offhand to my friends that I wanted to eventually play an octopus-themed Lunar and learned that in Dreams of the First Age an octopus totem Lunar happened to be the husband of an evil transhumanist Solar who knew Kimbery charms, had tentacles on her face, and was literally named "K'Tula".
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May 31, 2013 07:19
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I always figured manses to be gigantic manifestations of exalted megalomania. You stride into a huge, fantastic landscape that has over the centuries developed a unique supernatural ecology sustained by the natural essence flows of the area, put your fists on your waist, and go "Yyyyep, I'm gonna turn this entire place into +4 dice on my jumping rolls."
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May 31, 2013 17:51
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You need those 4 dice, man, every little edge counts in exalt on exalt combat. Doesn't this sprawling, wondrous ecosystem understand that? Isn't it being just a liiittle bit selfish? Well, whatever, I tried using reason, send in the erymanthoi.
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May 31, 2013 18:06
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:The greatest irony here being that the Alchemical Exalted in their machine cityplanetsystem are in fact the perfect realization of community spirit and togetherness in their utter triumph over the frailties of nature. So Step 3: Profit could in theory be really great. Here's my Solar's plan to thwart the Yozis: act in such a way that when the Infernal Exalted show up, no one will actually notice.
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May 31, 2013 18:17
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I think it's good to link the two, such that your magical death fortress always counts for something even if you're adventuring half a world a way. Also, like I said, the understated nature of a hearthstone's actual benefits makes a fun point about what it means to be powerful. Is it really worth it to unilaterally restructure an entire community and to siphon away the flows of natural magic that may well have sustained that community's livelihood just to provide yourself with a minor portable convenience? The answer is yes.
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May 31, 2013 18:45
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Manses are big deals. They always mean that someone took a demesne - a landscape naturally suffused with excess essence of some aspect, such that it's extra-magical in a way that's probably totally unique - and performed a huge landscaping/architecture project to channel all that essence into a single building which, itself, channels all that essence into a single hearthstone. I know later supplements added lots of rules for extra side things that you could use a manse's power to do, like magical traps or whatever, but the primary goal of a manse is to take the magical power of an entire region and congeal it into a token that you, an exalt, can exploit. That's not the sort of thing you find in every town square - an exalt is lucky to have a manse, unless they're a working Sidereal or otherwise bolstered by an extensive and influential support structure. In channeling all of a demesne's energies into a manse, you're channeling those energies away from whatever they were already doing, so the natural wonders and mutated creatures (which may, in fact, be human beings) developed as a result of the demesne's unique conditions will probably wither away and die. They weren't very important, though.
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May 31, 2013 20:45
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Plague of Hats posted:We've already talked publicly about how it's awful that hearthstones have been "Some random magic rock of +3 self-satisfaction. Oh yeah and I guess a magic house is involved?" Hearthstones will be important in different ways and also not grab bag bullshit. Here's what I hope: you add a Hearthstone's rating to your flat essence regeneration, so that someone carrying the power core of a 5-dot Manse around regains 10m/round rather than 5. But, you still have to bend an entire landscape so it suits your enlightened will to get one.
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Jun 1, 2013 06:17
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axelsoar posted:I hope not, that will make it a requirement for fights. We've heard that many fights end before either combatant has spent more than half their motes, so not a requirement requirement. It'd be a huge boost, though, and a pleasantly straightforward one. Remember in 1e and 2e just impatiently flipping past pages and pages of +2 to Socialize rolls bullshit until you finally found the Ice Blade Gem or Seven Leaping Dragons stone or whatever? I'd rather all unique Hearthstone powers be cool stunts and weird utility tricks, and the actual direct fight(or other high-stakes, high-speed conflict)-winning properties of a Hearthstone be obvious and universal. Kenlon posted:It would be interesting if hearthstones do boost mote regen - but only out of combat. In combat, of course, you're regaining them at max rate because FIGHTY TIME! Out of combat mote regeneration should never be important. All limited essence regain does is encourage you to to not do things, and obvious disparities between the same character's capabilities are obtrusively metagamey. Stephenls posted:Also, everybody loves the Manse chapter of Oadenol's Codex. I'm on your side! Fight them! You can do it! Edit: Really, though, it's probably a good idea to make fountains of colored flame and essence-powered golem servitors be an automatic byproduct of a successful manse rather than a wasteful extravagance detracting from the primarily utility of an only partially-successful manse, because when you let people choose between flavor and power in a game in which power is important, they are going to choose power and you will have pointlessly leached the flavor from your setting. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 07:04 on Jun 1, 2013 |
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Jun 1, 2013 06:50
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axelsoar posted:I personally think the best system would be starting with empty mote pools in a fight, makes the pacing way better. Though who knows, the momentum mechanic may do a proper job of pacing. I would be down with this, but given how momentum vaguely appears to work it might be pointless to start players with two different "you start with a bit, now build it up" resources. One thing that you're constantly trying to build and another thing that you can spend either conservatively or flagrantly probably provides more variety, although if Ex3's engine is good enough I bet some tinkering could produce a differently interesting motes-from-zero system.
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Jun 1, 2013 06:59
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On another subject, here is an important reminder: in the current build of Exalted 3rd Edition, whether you know Martial Arts is completely unrelated to whether you know Martial Arts. That's because many Martial Arts don't require the practitioner to have any Martial Arts, while, conversely, each type of Exalt will have access to a tree of Charms that aren't part of the Martial Arts, but that require Martial Arts to use. So, while your character might be a Martial Artist, they might at the same time not be a Martial Artist, or vice versa. I think they've mentioned that a Merit or something might allow you to use your Charms which require Martial Arts but aren't Martial Arts in conjunction with your Martial Arts that require Martial Arts, though I'd guess not in conjunction with your Martial Arts that don't require Martial Arts.
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Jun 1, 2013 07:08
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MiltonSlavemasta posted:Call it Unarmed. Call it Kung Fu. Call it Body. Call it Close Quarters Battle Doctrine. Just call it something that doesn't require me to parse this (and it parses just fine and I totally understand it, damnit.) Some Abyssal Charms require a Marital Arts score, while others-
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Jun 1, 2013 07:40
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Perhaps Language should be a Story merit. After all, what if someone just smugly declares that they've picked up in a month something your character spent years of their childhood learning!
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Jun 2, 2013 15:09
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MiltonSlavemasta posted:I thought that the Story merit doesn't mean that you can't spend XP on it. I thought it meant that you can spend bonus points on it at character creation or XP whenever you're spending XP, but the ST is encouraged to hand it out for free in play if it makes sense for you to have picked it up by now. I think Story merits are only available for build points at chargen or through roleplaying in play. I could be wrong, but the facetious complaint I make in the post you quoted was Holden's exact reasoning for why Tempered By The Elements should be a Story merit in the kickstarter comments. Mind you, Story merits costing XP unless you trick the Storyteller into giving you them for free would probably be even worse than Story merits being only ever being XP-free.
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Jun 2, 2013 22:48
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DB Preview posted:Dragon-Blooded in Exalted Third Edition will still use Ability-based Charms, but we’re going to expand their elemental Yeah. Yeah!! Here's what I'm hoping for, by the way: no Breeding background. Let's just, not have that Background. What if the Terrestrials weren't declining with time. What if that.
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Jun 5, 2013 21:43
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Breeding is a crummy game trait and there are plenty of ways for the Dragon-Blooded to be in decline that don't involve their maximum essence pools dropping by a fraction with each generation!
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Jun 5, 2013 22:02
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Yeah, I should specify that I'm totally fine with the Dragon-Blooded being in decline, but I don't want it to be because the Dragon-Blooded, as a species, are dying out because they lacked the willpower to implement a sufficiently rigorous eugenics program.
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Jun 5, 2013 22:07
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I am pretty excited at the idea of bloodline-specific charms and powers. It's a great way to get across the idea that dragon-blooded bloodlines are changing and diverging from the original template without, like, fingering miscegenation as the downfall of a once-mighty empire. Maybe the ancient dragon-blooded had a bunch of weird, primal elemental powers, but modern-day interbred-with-unExalted dragon-blooded have their own crazy stuff.
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Jun 5, 2013 22:10
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I seem to remember one of the devs posting that they won't be charging people a willpower point to use multiple charms together, which isn't the same thing as them not charging people experience points to buy combos in the first place... Then again, combos as specific XP-costing elements that differentiate one character from another could be cool in a system that allows you to freely retrain combos you're getting tired of and that isn't trivially solvable such that there's one megacombo that every single character wants to be running at all times.
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Jun 6, 2013 02:45
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If you ask me, the black mark in Nephilpal's record is his attempt to introduce target number manipulation to the World of Darkness for no loving reason whatever. I've always liked his Abyssals and Alchemicals stuff, though I've never read Infernals. Didn't he also do the Mountain Folk?
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Jun 6, 2013 05:44
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Yeah, John's explanation doesn't actually make any sense and sounds like a cover for him either being unsure of how to handle things or stubbornly dug in. Siloing is a great idea, but it's really Charms themselves that need siloing if you want to keep up inter-character parity if the system is anything like 1e and 2e were. If we both know forty charms, and thirty five of my charms are for combat, and five of your charms are for combat...
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Jun 6, 2013 18:11
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QuintessenceX posted:I disagree. I understand the desire to give a genuine apology and he's just saying that anything he says right now will be perceived as disingenuous. Uh, why. Why would it be. It'll be a bid for money either way, since his answer will determine the future popularity and status of Exalted among people who object to rape ghosts. Oligopsony posted:This is what Style XP is, no? As currently described, Solar XP is there to give you an extra pool of points to buy anything but Solar Charms(and Essence, I guess?). Your Solar Charms themselves aren't siloed, and because Charm trees are going to be bigger than ever, it seems like there'll be even more ability for one character to buy completely into an area of specialty that another character hasn't even begun to touch. It's one of the problems with GMC combat as it stands - it's not that any particular option is overpowered, it's that the more total XP you make possible to pour into a given area of expertise, the more strongly you segregate characters who specialize in that field from characters who dabble in that field. mistaya posted:That's not really a big deal as long as you can't use like, 5 more charms than I can on a turn, even if I have less combat charms overall it just means I have less options when it comes to combat, not that I'm totally ineffective. Same as for non-combat things, where I'll have more options than you. If the root-charms are solid, and can cover a wide enough range of fight-mans situations, it's all good. Yeah, it depends on how many charms are straight upgrades rather than side-grades, so to speak. If it took like five charms to max out your ability to make attacks, and then five other charms to max out your ability to make a different and totally exclusive kind of attack, etc, it could work out.
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Jun 6, 2013 18:31
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Yeah, my feeling is that my group might end up implementing some kind of gentleman's agreement about total investment into particular charm trees or kinds of charm trees if the system is really 2E-ish. Like I've said before, though, my absolute biggest concern is that combat is fast to run - the big draw of 3E for me is that it'll finally allow me to play Exalted without having to deal with a load of slow, tedious bullshit in the process. The rest is kinda gravy.
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Jun 6, 2013 19:01
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Nightskye posted:Well I mean, if that's your feeling going into it, doesn't seem like there was any apology he could have made at any point that you'd accept. I don't know why people keep saying this. Of course there's an apology he could have made: "Sorry, the charms were in poor taste, we will not be printing them in the actual book."
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Jun 6, 2013 19:22
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QuintessenceX posted:It's possible that other people won't come to the same conclusion as you, or think in such an objective fashion. An apology means less to some people if the apology is being done while in the middle of a huge drive for funding. If the apology is given when there's not an immediate ask involved, it might strike some as more sincere. It's not that this is wrong or right, it's just his take on it. His statement basically amounts to "If I apologize now it might not be sincere enough. I want to wait." That's stupid, though. As BryanChavez says, apologizing doesn't cost you anything.
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Jun 6, 2013 19:53
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Bedlamdan posted:Will an apology really be taken as anything other than intentional obfuscation before secretly doubling down on rape ghosts? Uh, yes? It depends on the content of the apology. You might recall that this thread was pretty down with John, Holden, and the rest of the team after the first day of the Abyssal pdf's release, and then went sour again only after the stupid doubling-down "clarification" came out. The actual content of their statements matter. QuintessenceX posted:Sure, but people have their own ethics. Yes, stupid ones.
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Jun 6, 2013 20:04
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Bedlamdan posted:The "clarification" was already posted. It cannot be unposted, and by and large it's already sufficient evidence for some people that the dev team is lying and will continue to lie. Holden was banned the last time he came to listen to us and apparently try to do straight talk about the Abyssal charms, I don't think that he's going to be jumping at the chance to do so again. They don't have to come back here, they can release something on the kickstarter or their own forums. This is by no means beyond their power to fix, they just don't feel like it. Lymond posted:I don't want or need an apology. I found the Charms tasteless and niche, but I didn't read rape in them and wasn't offended. The only thing that's annoyed me is the vague responses and the passive-aggressive "you guys are over-reacting and make Lunar fans seem tame by comparison" tone from Holden. So long as the books themselves treat the audience with respect and they don't do any weird crap like sex-only Charms, I'll be satisfied. Your blindness shouldn't be Exalted's problem.
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Jun 6, 2013 20:33
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Lymond posted:I agree. I didn't read rape in the Charm preview, but I do sympathize with those who did. I don't want to see those things in print any more than you do. Yeah, I'm sorry, I think I came off too harsh there - I agreed with the rest of your post. It's just amazing how many people squint at the preview for a second, shrug impassively, and then turn around to explain how important it is that Thousandfold Courtesan Calculations should be the top of a twenty-charm cascade or else Exalted isn't truly for mature roleplayers.
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Jun 7, 2013 00:28
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Bedlamdan posted:And when all they can say is that they'll do that, that won't be taken as sincere. As for the paywall thing, people have been reposting what Holden's been saying here on places like rpg.net all the time. Everyone knows what's up, which is why you have creeps on White Wolf forums defending the rough draft charm design. That's not true. When they implied they'd do that here, they were taken as sincere. When the "These apparitions are not for rape. They are for haunting, and seduction." disclaimer came out a day later, that was taken as sincere - but it's confused because apparently it was some kind of rush PR mandated by Rich Thomas who hasn't actually been handling any of the talking-to-the-public stuff. Holden came back here and clearly understood the problms with the Lover charm tree as presented, although he was recalcitrant about getting rid of sex magic as a general thing (but sounded like he was convinced or at least given pause by a big post Milton wrote on the matter). If they were to show up and say "Yo, we hear you, and we're not going to weigh the Abyssals book down with sex magic", there's no reason they wouldn't be taken as sincere, because in general they haven't been sneakily presenting different faces to different slices of their audience. They've just been clamming up completely on this subject, which sends a single and obvious message.
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Jun 7, 2013 01:15
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Holden rightly points out on the White Wolf forums that tabletop RPG powers that use sex as the vector for a game-mechanical bonus rather than a game-mechanical attack are still skeevily coercive, since, gosh, I guess the only way for you to be cured of your fatal poisoning is for you to have sex with me, what are the odds of that, well I suppose there's nothing we can do, etc. When "kill someone by loving them" and "buff someone by loving them" are both off the table, all you've got left are, like, mechanical representations of how good your character is in bed, and who exactly needs that? Don't we literally have a long post by Holden or John or someone explaining precisely why the game shouldn't be going to great lengths to mechanically track how strongly you follow your stated sexual orientation or whatever?
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Jun 7, 2013 01:47
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Bedlamdan posted:When did he point that out? Was this before or after this whole thing? http://nishkriya.theanathema.com/Threads/Details/77703
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Jun 7, 2013 01:56
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MiltonSlavemasta posted:I agree. It works in Apocalypse World and Monsterhearts, but those aren't games where mechanical advantages are nearly as sought-after as in Exalted, and they're a specific cordoned-off section of the rules than can be detached. In Exalted, even if you write your sidebar, you're throwing them in the pot with everything else. I was just going to mention those games on the White Wolf forums when a mod there yelled at me, actually. Monsterhearts is a game about high school interpersonal drama, so no duh it'll have something in the rules about two characters hooking up (and, as you say, that stuff's modular in case you want to play PG-rated Monsterhearts). Exalted is a pulp fantasy adventure game. Now, it's one of Exalted's strengths that the same setting and system can handle loads of different genres (for instance, you can run a Dilbert-themed game using the Mountain Folk chapter of Fair Folk), so in principle some kind of sexy soap opera Exalted supplement could come out featuring Really Great Blow Job Prana or something, but the corebook of a major character type?
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Jun 7, 2013 02:05
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"Defense from Anathema" both granting you defense thanks to your anathema buddies and, coincidentally, defending you against your anathema foes is pretty funny. Also, new thread tag, y'all. We doin' this.
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Jun 7, 2013 04:45
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Attorney at Funk posted:Really most of the things I'd point to as missteps of the current developers are areas where they haven't been smugly confident enough that they could do better. This is exactly how I feel. Where the team's been timid or cagey about either the fanbase or the old rules, the game has looked lamer for it.
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Jun 8, 2013 15:42
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These fields are not for pillage, fair folk! They are for sowing, and harvesting.
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Jun 9, 2013 01:41
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BryanChavez posted:If a strawmaiden defending her fields - empowered by her God and the Unconquered Sun, with a great and mighty god-scythe and a pure heart - is able to fight against desperate odds and come out victorious against a Fair Folk raid, it ruins Exalted forever. Not at all. It's only ruined forever if a Solar Exalt in the same position couldn't achieve the same victory at least minutely more efficaciously. Now, imagine yourself chuckling politely at my apparent joke but quieting nervously as you notice my intense and unblinking stare.
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Jun 9, 2013 01:45
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Look, correct roleplaying game protocol means remaining at 100% effectiveness and safety at all times, and therefore always carrying your triple-specialized grand daiklave around, always searching for traps, etc. No one in their right mind would step off the field that gives them +1 die on attack rolls! Technically there's a shred of value in "oh, so she's powerless when not on a wheat field?!" hysteria because favored terrain type bonuses can be pretty boring and restrictive when implemented poorly. It could get tiresome if water-aspected dragonblooded were constantly trying to shift confrontations to the lakeside, or whatever. BryanChavez posted:And yes, the Solar can do it for one mote less. drat STRAIGHT THEY CAN
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Jun 9, 2013 01:54
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MiltonSlavemasta posted:I think that a large part of the issue is that many posters literally cannot comprehend a battle-grouping that works in a way other than them swarming Janest with optimal tactics and fighting until every last one of them is dead. Hmm, you know, the Battle Group rules mean that optimal tactics in 3E creation is for each and every one of your soldiers to adapt a different hair style, outfit, weapon, etc. The key is for each soldier to differentiate themselves from their fellows enough that they cross the threshold that transforms them into a separate character rather than a member of the same aggregated battle group - that way you've got way more independent rolled attacks, willpower points, etc. on your side than theirs.
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Jun 9, 2013 02:03
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I'm looking forward to infernal exalted having bat wings and horns and stuff and no I'm not joking. Give me a skeletal abyssal also.
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Jun 9, 2013 15:45
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Attorney at Funk posted:What color fire in their empty eye sockets? It'd match their anima highlights, which are probably crimson, pale silvery-blue, toxic green, or deep blue-violet, but I can tell you this for sure: their eyes would be, ahaha, smoldering. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 16:50 on Jun 9, 2013 |
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Jun 9, 2013 16:44
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Since you mention it, I really hope it's Abyssals rather than Liminals that allows me to make a character who's a skeleton who summons up lots of other skeletons and merges with them into a giant skeleton monster that gets bigger with each person it kills and incorporates into its skeletal warframe.
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Jun 9, 2013 17:54
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