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axelsoar posted:I hope not, that will make it a requirement for fights. 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!
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Jun 1, 2013 06:40
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Slightly Lions posted:The poll said celestial styles only, though I cannot for the life of me figure why they would want to do that terrible thing. Even Blade and First Pulse were two of the best MAs in 2e, in both concept and execution. I loved the hell out of First Pulse, but the one I'd really be hoping to see in 3E is White Veil Style. Too bad it doesn't exist.
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Jun 2, 2013 03:18
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kthegreat posted:Well that could be pretty cool.  I am on this like white on rice. Anathema made running 2E immeasurably easier.
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Jun 4, 2013 23:53
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axelsoar posted:It is a great tool, but honestly it was only needed because chargen in 2e was such a chore. I kinda hope it isn't needed for 3e, not all of us have a group where everyone has a laptop. The only person with a laptop at our games was me, as the GM. Printed Anathema sheets did the job for everyone else.
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Jun 5, 2013 07:11
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Mikan posted:That's all the more reason not to back the kickstarter and wait for the book to come out, really. (It's also kinda weird when they have previewed things that could be criticized, especially since they are devoid of context.) I've got faith in their ability to produce decent mechanics from the earlier work put out by the writers, so backing the kickstarter was worth it to me. YMMV.
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Jun 7, 2013 02:52
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GreenMetalSun posted:Bonus points for her being fully dressed, too. Man, I don't even give a crap if she looks like Dorthy Gale. I will bet you dollars to donuts that her clothing is intentionally done that way. It looks too deliberate. (Also now I'm going to think of her scythe as Toto.) quote:I hope all the art is like this. Agreed.
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Jun 8, 2013 21:19
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Personally, I think that all the Celestials should be able to match each other in combat, but not in the exact same way. The Solar should be the 'best' - throwing the largest number of dice of any Exalted. The Solars contain the essence of the Unconquered Sun - the epitome of pure excellence in everything he does. Lunars should be just a little behind in terms of raw skill, but have the ability to out-survive the Solar - taking less damage, healing, having enormous health tracks, etc. Sidereals should cheat. In a straight up knock-down, drag out brawl, they lose. But they should have an enormous toolbox for changing the rules of the fight, whether that's target number manipulation, redirection of enemy attacks, simply being able to go "I was never here", etc. The new momentum mechanic could be a really useful way to highlight these differences, without making Charms that simply come down to "I win", like some of the 2e charms. (Dragonblooded charms for sharing momentum between a group, for example. . . )
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Jul 22, 2013 18:48
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Bedlamdan posted:Seriously, fifty percent? Wow. Where did you find that out? Proctonumerology.
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Sep 18, 2013 20:09
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Lymond posted:The fact that your group can make Exalted work past Essence 4 is impressive. My hat's off to you and your table. He didn't say anything about being past essence 4 - it's relatively easy to have 600+ xp characters who are still expanding their charms/skills/attributes while being essence 4.
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Sep 26, 2013 20:23
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It really would be good to start getting some very basic, low level mechanics previews out there. Stuff with no space for the sort of arguments that have happened over other previews, because they would be purely mechanics. How do attributes work now? What's the list of abilities? How does initiative work? What is momentum in a combat sense? Putting out this sort of crunch would help calm things and would, more importantly, give real feedback when it's still early enough to make sweeping changes.
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Nov 2, 2013 21:56
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DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:If your character wants to collectivize agriculture she should be appointing ministers and generals, writing manifestos, showing it all off to visiting dignitaries, etc. Not playing a nested Civilization: Creation mini game. But without actual mechanics, we're back to the same problem we had in 2e: inconsistency. If the only handle there is to move nations is "just roleplay some stuff", it cannot be balanced against the other mechanics in the game, and is wholly up to a particular group's interpretation. This is a Bad Thing, for obvious reasons. Just because there's mechanics doesn't mean that it has to move things to being a 4x game - combat has mechanics to frame and guide what's going on, without it just being, "I hit him."
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Nov 4, 2013 18:21
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Calde posted:I honestly asked for a Bureaucracy spoiler during the Kickstarter. Hatewheel's answers to questions about how they planned to handle things like ruling nations and large-scope social actions sounded a lot like "just handwave stuff" to me. Yep - we had that out earlier in the thread. Most of it felt like "The CRM wasn't perfect, so we won't do anything like it at all," which is unfortunate.
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Nov 4, 2013 18:45
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Dodge Charms posted:The thing I want from non-combat skills is mechanical consequences. This. So very much this. Any and all skills should have weight in the system and be able to provide real levers to apply to the world, without being hand-waved. If I want to do it that way, there's any number of systems. Exalted has crunch to it - and if it's written to actually be good in this edition, that would make me a very happy GM.
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Nov 5, 2013 19:28
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Kai Tave posted:"Roll a bunch of dice. Then do it again. And again and again and again until you get enough successes that you can stop. Ignore the rules for crafting time because everybody does, the GM will just say 'enough time has passed' because the other players don't want to sit around for six weeks/months/whatever while you stand over a loading bar, and then you collect your item. The end." You do realize that the whole point of asking them to make crafting, or nationbuilding, or any number of other non-combat things have mechanical weight is so it isn't like that? Saying, "it's not worth spending time on because it has always been boring in the past," is pretty idiotic. Crafting should be as mechanically useful and interesting as other parts of the game. Exalts don't just do things, they make things. Things that outlast them. The game should support it. EDIT: Also, we always used the crafting time rules, since I (as the GM), built in generous swaths of narrative time, jumping forward months or even years, letting the players actually build things up in a long term fashion. And I had to handwave way too much doing it, but it did make the game better. Kenlon fucked around with this message at 07:18 on Nov 6, 2013 |
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Nov 6, 2013 07:15
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Heart Attacks posted:*BP/XP using different charts, for example . . . Why on earth would you want to keep that? It guarantees mechanical unbalance right out of the gate between players who game the system and players who don't bother/don't know how.
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Nov 7, 2013 20:09
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BryanChavez posted:Nobody knows, but Holden seems to believe that because systems like FATE and Nobilis can be gamed to create imbalances between characters, that there's no reason to even attempt to achieve parity between characters at all. He's argued ardently for the BP/XP divide, and I still don't understand why. This just leaves me going  . Please, for the love of all that's good and holy, someone needs to overrule him.
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Nov 7, 2013 22:05
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LGD posted:Because the power differences ultimately really don't matter that much in a complex system where different choices have quite different power levels (i.e. 2000xp doesn't really tell you anything about power level or capabilities of a character except in the very broadest sense) and it greatly speeds up character creation vs. a system where everything you get at chargen is based on scaling XP costs? The problem is that the very fact that XP spent doesn't correlate to power level only makes this worse. A minmaxed character, over the course of a game, will greatly outpace a character made by someone who doesn't do that. And systems with a clear advantage to character optimization at the start tend to produce weirdly distorted characters (willpower in 2e, anyone?) Anything that can be done to minimize the difference between XP and BP should be done, if you aren't willing to scrap BP as a bad idea altogether.
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Nov 8, 2013 00:29
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Stephenls posted:You're stating this as axiomatically true, but the trade-offs involved aren't so clear cut. You have two systems that handle character advancement - one at chargen, one in play. If they are different in a way that causes one to be mathematically superior for buying certain things, then that is what people will do. Because we are nerds and are unable to help ourselves. The idea that you should minimize the difference in outcomes between the two systems if you aren't willing to scrap having two systems is axiomatically true. LGD posted:Also it would be nice to know if you're talking about BP solely in its aspect as a character generation-specific resource, or in its entirety. Because I would argue that it's really the XP system that's more problematic. If we were to get rid of the XP system as it stands and replace it with something based on the BP system, that would be fine too. It's just having the two, very different, systems that is a problem.
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Nov 8, 2013 01:14
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Stephenls posted:Once you introduce nerds to the idea that a particular category of things is rife with special cases, they're positively eager to demonstrate their nerdy superiority by memorizing all the exceptions. If we had three or four skills that were as unusual in structure as MA, I'd worry; as it is we're fine. For certain values of 'fine', perhaps. If you have a skill called Martial Arts, then Martial Arts Techniques/Charms become linked to that one skill to the exclusion of others. Any Martial Art using some other base skill will be an exception, in the minds of players and in the minds of freelancers who join the writing team later. Think I'm exaggerating? Look at the rest of the system. Specifically, look at other skill oriented Charms: Dodge Charms use the Dodge skill. Athletics Charms use the Athletics skill. Bureaucracy Charms use the Bureaucracy skill. And so on and so forth all the way down the line. Unless you are radically changing how Charm trees work in 3e, players will assume and expect Martial Arts Charms to be linked to the Martial Arts skill. This misses an opportunity to make Exalted better. Instead of looking at Martial Arts as "kung fu", approach it from another angle. Martial arts as "the Arts of War". They already are something that is available cross splat, and can be learned by mortals under certain circumstances. Some are organized teachings, with Sifus and ranks and Dojos and such, but they don't have to be. If you make the unarmed combat skill into Brawl or just call it Hand-to-Hand, it opens up tons of options. Sword styles? Are Martial Arts using the Melee skill (and with a weapon restriction). Traditional punch face Martial Arts? Martial arts using the Brawl skill. Zen Archery? Martial Arts, using Archery. But because you've decoupled them from a single skill, you have a ton of options for further arts that are suddenly thematically viable. An Exorcist Martial Art? Have a handful of skills using Brawl for punching, and have ghost destroying/demon banishing charms keyed off of Occult. A Martial Art taught only inside the Realm Legions? Athletics charms to allow marching further and faster, Resistance charms for dealing with adverse conditions, War charms augmenting combat skills when working in formation. A Martial Art used by hunters in the eastern wilds? Awareness charms aiding tracking, Stealth charms for camouflage, Archery or Thrown charms affecting striking from ambush. I understand the desire to have the skill name not sound as crude as 'Brawl', but that really isn't a good reason for making things confusing and inconsistent.
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Nov 16, 2013 05:25
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And, just to digress for a bit, I wanted to say something about how SA has responded to dev posts as compared to places like the WW forums. We know you guys can do good rules, and good fluff. The reason you heard backlash on the Abyssal stuff, and the reason people have been complaining about things like the BP/XP split and the lack of information actually come from the same place. You can do better. And we know it. Ink Monkeys kept Exalted alive when it should have been dead, and we're all here posting because we like the game and want it to be better. So when you come out with a charm preview full of very questionable things, we're going to call you on it. When there's mechanical issues, we're going to make noise about it. And it won't be particularly deferential, since that's not something that really happens here, but it will be honest and will usually try to contain ideas on how to make things better. As I recall, the first posts commenting on the Abyssal Charms were more along the lines of "this could be done way better by making it about obsession, not rape", rather than the firestorm the thread later became. We want to help make Exalted better. If you open up and give out details about the system, you'll get tons of feedback from us (and other players) that could help. Hell, limit it only to people who backed the kickstarter and have already paid for a pdf or physical copy, if you want, but please, please stop shrugging off the useful playtest info we could be giving!
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Nov 16, 2013 05:52
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Stephenls posted:EDIT: I think some of the disconnect here is that people assume I want them to love Ex3 already, so they find it off-putting when I ignore complaints. That's not me thinking the complaints are unworthy of addressing; that's me not having an objection to that complaint at this time. No, we're frustrated because we're seeing you make some of the same mistakes as 2e all over again, and for no good reason. Onyx Path is obviously not averse to sharing information about other products, and as can been seen from various other successful RPG kickstarters, getting player feedback - and listening to it - can greatly improve products. Sticking your fingers in your ears and saying "lalalalalalala I can't hear you" when people are trying to offer constructive, reasonable ideas is not winning you any support. Kai Tave posted:Realistically I don't think anyone here expects our feedback...or any feedback...to change anything in Exalted 3E. The overriding feeling I've gotten from things since the Kickstarter is that Ex3 is going to be whatever Holden and John want it to be and if you like it great and if you don't tough poo poo. Sadly, that's about where I'm at too. I'm reminded of Verant back in the day - remember all the dumb things in Everquest that were justified by "The Vision"? I feel old now. Kenlon fucked around with this message at 14:27 on Nov 16, 2013 |
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Nov 16, 2013 14:24
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Stephen, The Ex3 devs really have only a couple viable choices here: Option 1, Avoid interacting with players (outside of the WW forums echo chamber), letting people form whatever opinions they may in the meantime, relying on the quality of the final product to win them back. Option 2: Start communicating for real. Put out previews. Show that they're listening to feedback. Run screaming from the skeevy bits that have been (unintentionally - not attributing to malice, here) shown in the 3e previews so far. I would really, really love for you guys to take option 2. Because the current approach of "we'll talk to you, but then show that we have no intention of listening," is the worst of both worlds. EDIT: I didn't want this post to sound as abrasive as it came out, but there's no way to say what needed to be said otherwise. I know that you guys can do better than you have so far - I just want Ex3 to be as good is it could be! 
Kenlon fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Nov 16, 2013 |
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Nov 16, 2013 19:50
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cenotaph posted:There's a real, fundamental flaw with point buy xp systems where you ostensibly gain xp for the actions you take and then can spend that xp on whatever the hell you want. Training times make it even more absurd. You just successfully negotiated a treaty so now you have enough xp to take three months of downtime pumping iron for that new dot in Strength. You can do wishy-washy GM fiat "justify your xp expenditures" type stuff but that's too fuzzy to really be a rule and if you print it in a book it just leads to rear end in a top hat GM syndrome. We maintained a "dual track" system, where XP spent on Charms/Essence had a seperate training time from XP spent on Skills/Attributes. Worked pretty well, and helped to keep player advancement diverse. We still did instant training for caste/favored skills, though, leading to moments like a Night caste going from Presence 2 to Presence 5 in a heartbeat, blowing a pile of willpower on channels and such, and using it to intone the proper command words to detonate a small army of Soulsteel-boned zombies.
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Dec 3, 2013 11:29
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axelsoar posted:There are dozens of potential ways of streamlining the system. Because the system is used for things other than the Exalts? You need to have room for other levels of skills. And one of the draws of Exalted for me is the relatively crunchy system - not all games need to be simplified. Stuff like the BP/XP split is a problem because you have two systems that provide very different incentives when it comes to character design, but not all complex design is bad design.
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Dec 4, 2013 23:59
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mistaya posted:But the thing is, I don't want My Character to have to eat people to perform a basic function of her Exaltation. Especially when other splats can perform that exact same function without eating people. That's one of the major issues with 2E Lunars. 'Be this specific human being' isn't really a core Lunar function. Lunars having the choice between just being really good at disguise or being able to actually be that person at the cost of doing a horrible thing actually sounds like a place where interesting story could come from. Lunars need disguise charms that will allow them to be very good at pretending to be someone else without eating them, though, and the 'face stealing' needs to be more powerful (perhaps including some element of taking the victim's fate as well as their form, for example.) Setting the baseline to "not eating people" rather than "you must eat people to have an effective disguise" solves the largest part of the problem.
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Feb 3, 2014 19:36
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Stephenls posted:The baseline for disguise remains "Make a mundane disguise and use a dice-adder." That leaves the Exalt who should be best at disguise as the worst at it, though. And having a baseline of "You suck compared to everyone else," doesn't work. Players want to be good at things. Especially things that are strongly within a character's schtick. So instead of being a real choice, having a Lunar who eats people becomes the norm, and that's wrong. Let the moral choice have a solid weight to it, rather than being a checkbox that players ignore to get to mechanical parity. MJ12 posted:So you have this guy who you need to interrogate or his cult will activate a devastating first age superweapon to cleanse the Realm from the lands (as well as thousands of other innocent people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time). Do you use normal interrogation methods and possibly fail? He's a fanatic, after all. This.
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Feb 4, 2014 00:04
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Stephenls posted:IT KEEPS HAPPENING This may be because you, collectively, keep doing it. There's nothing wrong with changing things based on feedback, and watching devs pick the bizarrest hills to die on is disheartening. You don't have to have "And then Raksi ate the babies!" to have her be creepy - implying it would work even better for that!
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Feb 4, 2014 08:40
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Stephenls posted:Those are just the things I can talk about. You know how secretive we are. Yes, and it's infuriating.
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Feb 4, 2014 18:52
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Stephenls posted:. . .and we're not prepared to reveal context yet. That's the problem, not that people might talk about what they're playtesting. You already have a pile of sales already from the kickstarter - you have our money. What does it hurt to actually allow comments and discussion on the changes you've made before it's all finalized and locked in? Let people see what you're actually doing, and while you'll get complaints still, they will at least be based on the actual text and not on supposition and half-true rumor. Look at the discussion over Raksi eating babies - there was actual useful discussion that was able to frame the problems people had with Raksi so you could understand it better. Without opening up to players, you won't get that sort of useful feedback.
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Feb 5, 2014 18:06
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I've been one of the ones saying that the game can still be good - hell, I was one of the people defending the initial Abyssal preview as "They can't actually mean it to be as bad as how it's being interpreted." But it makes it a hell of a lot harder to keep faith in that when a) there seems to be a desire to keep bad bits of game design simply because it's easier (BP/XP split), and b) we're not getting any view into what's going on with the rules. We never got a revised Abyssal preview that would help show that the writers had understood the problems with the first one, for example.
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Feb 5, 2014 18:14
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Bedlamdan posted:Kenlon, they have about 300 separate playtest groups giving them feedback right now, speaking as yet another person involved with a group of playtesters. They've got enough people giving them opinions on the game that they can reasonably sort out, and some of these people have absolutely no reason to shill for the game. They've got all the feedback they can reasonably sort through already, and a Pathfinder style Open Beta is going to do gently caress-all in terms of sorting out useful feedback from the white noise. They don't have to try to listen to all the discussion that would come from opening the text up to backers FATE Core or Demon: The Descent style. The writers can keep listening to the playtesters for 99% of the feedback, and use the larger context to understand how people are viewing the game. Not to mention that it would turn those 300 groups into a counterbalance to the "it's all gonna suck!" since they could give examples from actual play. Not to mention all of us who would immediately start games using said preview, and if it's good we'd sure as hell say so. . . Bedlamdan posted:No, we got an update in the kickstarter talking about the preview which said 'the ghosts are special effects, there's no raping that was never our intent' which really only served to make things worse. Which only emphasizes the problems with trying to manage public opinion by giving little dribbles of information.
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Feb 5, 2014 18:31
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Mikan posted:Critical is a far better word than negative. Exactly. There's not much "It's awful and we hate it because we hate it!" Rather, there's "This thing? It is a problem. Why are you not fixing the problem?" See the whole BP/XP discussion from earlier, or the desire for real previews to give us something to dig into rather than being stuck hearing "Oh, it'll be great, we promise." The latter issue is as much focused on us wanting to help make it better as much as anything else, at least for me.
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Feb 5, 2014 18:52
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The one real concern that I have, systemically, is whether they have built in a way to mechanically represent leading/influencing large groups of people, in a non-combat sense. This was brought up in an earlier incarnation of the thread, and the writer commenting didn't seem to see it as important for Bureaucracy to have the same mechanical weight as stuff like combat skills. Could we get a bit a of view into how you guys are designing that bit, stephenls?
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Feb 5, 2014 20:11
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Attorney at Funk posted:No. The answer is no. We can have a view into the following things: Hey, let's give him a chance to show differently, on a subject that doesn't have a big argument wrapped around it already (like the Abyssal preview stuff or Lunar baby eating.)
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Feb 5, 2014 20:19
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Stephenls posted:We want a system where "You, in a room, discussing policy with your subordinates" is as much an interesting conflict as "You, on the battlefield." This is difficult to do if the system abstracts away the dealing-with-subordinates and just lets you choose what your organization is doing. I love Reign, and I ranted to John at length about how he needs to check out Reign (and he did), but ultimately our concern with systems like that is Tywin Lannister doesn't get to deploy Cersi, Jamie, Tyrion, and the Mountain as assets and just watch as they accomplish his goals remotely. When the game gets to the point where it's about you at the head of an organization, it needs to be about you at the head of an organization, not you using the organization as one tool among many to accomplish goals unrelated to that organization. Okay, this is excellent. The player deals directly with giving orders, and then there's a system behind it for working out the results in practice? Is that about right?
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Feb 5, 2014 20:32
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Bedlamdan posted:No it sounds like you need to. Look, here you go. Martial Arts and Brawl are separate abilities with dots apportioned separately. Oh hey, another bit of good news. Looks like they aren't fixated on maintaining the exact ability spread from 2E, then, which is more good news. (Even though I like the huge pile of abilities and the charms to go with them. Fiddly bits are part of why I like Exalted.)
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Feb 5, 2014 22:55
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Strength of Many posted:They want to keep an XP system but do not wish to test it. I see. It may be something that's just not finished yet, and thus isn't in the playtest rules. 
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Feb 5, 2014 23:01
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Stephenls posted:So, if Raksi is Lunar Mengele, what does that mean? It means that people are thinking of the mythical Mengele, not the real one. And thus, the actual historical person is irrelevant to what they're asking for.
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Feb 6, 2014 00:38
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Sionak posted:So basically, Exalted started in a golden age, then slid into darkness and depravity following a huge upset, and now a few individuals are trying to pull it out of the muck even though almost no one believes it can be done? I never meta-joke I didn't like, after all.
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Feb 6, 2014 17:53
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Personally, I always based the survival of the Solars in a world containing Chejop off the fact that killing Solars is illegal - the broken Mask alone won't conceal things if an Elder Sidereal bounces down to Creation and waxes a bunch of them. The fact that the Gold Faction would gladly use any such move as a reason to crucify any Bronzes they could pin it on counts for a lot, too. Being entrenched in the Celestial Bureaucracy comes with some downsides.
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Feb 7, 2014 07:06
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