General Exalted Discussion II: No Longer Mortal

[Reynard]

To answer pretty much all of your questions: Because the Ink Monkeys wrote it. The Ink Monkeys suffer heavily from Sturgeon's Law because they seem to operate on the Monkeys-Flinging-Poo model (throw enough crap at a wall and eventually something sticks).

Not quite fair.

They just need to stop letting the people who have been writing martial arts styles (Hatewheel (who does mostly fluff) and That Dude Who Worked on The Crap Styles From SotM) from writing martial arts styles.

Monkeys! You have TDO now! Use hiiim!

[Jokasti]

Not quite fair.

They just need to stop letting the people who have been writing martial arts styles (Hatewheel (who does mostly fluff) and That Dude Who Worked on The Crap Styles From SotM) from writing martial arts styles.

Monkeys! You have TDO now! Use hiiim!

They are using him, Reynad. For CoCD:Auto-Kun.
And his name is Dean Shomshak or something. He also did Ivory Pestle Style.

[Cyborg Mage]

I am honoured. A Playgrounder writing Autochthon. (I suppose other people are technically honored.)

[Xefas]

The Ink Monkeys suffer heavily from Sturgeon's Law because they seem to operate on the Monkeys-Flinging-Poo model (throw enough crap at a wall and eventually something sticks).

Isn't the whole point of Sturgeon's Law that everything suffers heavily from Sturgeon's Law? Like...90% heavily?

[Teln]

Except not, as you can't use non-form/unarmed weapons with Martial Arts Charms.

I've gone through the core rules, Scroll of the Monk, and the errata for both. Nowhere does it say that, and in fact the practice for Martial Arts Charms seems to be that they enhance unarmed attacks, with form weapons counting as unarmed for that particular Style's Charms.

Cobra Form does not say that unsoakable unexpected attacks are limited to form weapons. As a matter of fact, that particular clause states that any unexpected attacks the martial artist launches are so enhanced (which presumably limits it to Martial Arts-based attacks, since that clause doesn't state that it applies to attacks based on other Abilities). So, going strictly by RAW, Cobra Form is quite possibly more borked than the Ink Monkeys intended.

[Kyeudo]

Isn't the whole point of Sturgeon's Law that everything suffers heavily from Sturgeon's Law? Like...90% heavily?

Yes, but its volume I'm talking about here. One fanfic writer who writes 10 short stories produces 9 crappy ones. An Ink Monkey that produces 50 pages of Charms is going to have 40 of them loaded with useless or broken material.

[SurlySeraph]

Huh. I though it added a 2 willpower surcharge to your activations.

If you read it that way it's slightly more reasonable, particularly in paranoia combat.
Though in paranoia combat you'd probably use Death-Dreaming Flux, make whatever counterattack you want, get to reflexively enter the Form when your opponent perfects that attack away, and then go to the next action because your opponent can't counterattack a counterattack. You would therefore have entered the Form for 1m, with no particular risk to yourself beforehand and no chance of needing to pay the 2wp.
Or, if your opponent attacked first, you would perfect it away, use a counterattack, and enter the form for free when your opponent perfected your counterattack, and have to pay the 2wp. But given the benefits that Cobra Style gives you for having a high Join Battle, I'd expect anyone who used it to have a really high Join Battle.

Christ, I just realized something else about Cobra Form: If we're going strictly by RAW, then that bit about unsoakable unexpected attacks applies to attacks made with all martial arts weapons, not just unarmed attacks/form weapon attacks.

Forget that, it lets you use any dual-wielded swords without the 2 tag as Form weapons. That's nice enough, and while you'd have to argue about whether having Strength high enough to wield 2-handed weapons one-handed actually removes the tag it opens up the possibility of dual-wielding Grand Daiklaves.
Which I don't actually mind, because if someone puts in the effort required to reach 9 Strength, and wants to do snake martial arts while stabbing down with dual giant swords, they've earned it.

To answer pretty much all of your questions: Because the Ink Monkeys wrote it. The Ink Monkeys suffer heavily from Sturgeon's Law because they seem to operate on the Monkeys-Flinging-Poo model (throw enough crap at a wall and eventually something sticks).

Eh, I usually like the Monkeys overall. The Daystar articles could have been half as long, Ivory Pestle Style is an interesting idea with a waaay too powerful pre-Form charm and a Form that made it even better, and I'd like them to show a bit less love for Solars and Infernals and a bit more for everyone else, especially Sidereals. Please. Secret Lesson Revelation was great, the Dawn Errata was almost as awesome for Sids as for everyone else, the martial arts style are decent if often a bit too powerful, the... I'm sure whatever other scraps you threw to the Sids were also great. Please just give us an SMA that isn't entirely broken or entirely about sex. That's all I'm asking for.

[Xefas]

Yes, but its volume I'm talking about here. One fanfic writer who writes 10 short stories produces 9 crappy ones. An Ink Monkey that produces 50 pages of Charms is going to have 40 of them loaded with useless or broken material.

Wouldn't that make them less affected by Sturgeon's Law? Because that would only be 80% of the stuff they write, which is significantly lower than the 90% the Law implies.

(Also, I know what you mean, I'm just messing with you. )

[Kyeudo]

Now that I think of it more, Sturgeon's Law isn't about the volume of crappy work produced by any given author, but by the volume of crappy material produced by all authors as a whole.

[Teln]

Forget that, it lets you use any dual-wielded swords without the 2 tag as Form weapons. That's nice enough, and while you'd have to argue about whether having Strength high enough to wield 2-handed weapons one-handed actually removes the tag it opens up the possibility of dual-wielding Grand Daiklaves.
Which I don't actually mind, because if someone puts in the effort required to reach 9 Strength, and wants to do snake martial arts while stabbing down with dual giant swords, they've earned it.

9 Strength nothing, just take Dual-Slaying Posture from Glories: Luna (the Solar counterpart to Deadly Mantis Practice) and dual-wield your golden/silver surfboards at Essence 2, Melee/Strength 4!

[Mr.Bookworm]

I'd like them to show a bit less love for Solars and Infernals and a bit more for everyone else, especially Sidereals. [/SIZE]

You really should read the Ink Monkey threads over on the White Wolf forums sometime. They're good reads, and all of the various Monkeys are active to a certain extent in the threads. They answer a lot of questions like that.

The Sidereals aren't getting any love, for instance, because they have some fundamentally broken stuff that needs to be addressed, and there's no point in adding to that until ETP releases the Siddie errata. Same reason we haven't gotten any Sorcery love.

[SurlySeraph]

So did Dawn Castes (well, OK, only in comparison to other Solars), and Dawn Castes got pages and pages of awesomeness. Just some patches on the SMAs from Scroll of the Monk, or even "Hey, have you read that fix that such-and-such made for this SMA? It's pretty good." Anything official, because I love Sidereals and their martial arts and want them to work.

Also, I was under the impression that that ETP wasn't going to do anything on Sidereal errata until CoCD: Autochthonia came out, but I may be wrong.

9 Strength nothing, just take Dual-Slaying Posture from Glories: Luna (the Solar counterpart to Deadly Mantis Practice) and dual-wield your golden/silver surfboards at Essence 2, Melee/Strength 4!

Oh, that's easy then. Though I still honestly have no problem with it. Anyone who can come up with a good description of how they could effectively fight while wielding two swords taller than themselves in a knife-fighting sabre grip deserves that power.

EDIT: Totally irrelevant, but I just read this on the White Wolf forums and loved it:

I still maintain that Panther and Strength-Of-Many should have been revealed to be each other's Solar/Lunar mates. They could fight slavers and injustice together, beat up random jerks, chest bump afterwards, and we would've gotten a different (but not THAT different) spin on that SOM/Sulumar picture in RotSE.

[Xefas]

I have a White Wolf account now. I'm hoping I'll stop getting so many "This forum has undergone a critical error! Oh snap. Contact the forum administrator immediately!" errors whilst trying to find the blags now.

EDIT: Nope.

[Urpriest]

Oh, that's easy then. Though I still honestly have no problem with it. Anyone who can come up with a good description of how they could effectively fight while wielding two swords taller than themselves in a knife-fighting sabre grip deserves that power.

Why you use them as stilts of course!

[Tavar]

Hmm. Anyone know where those articles where they had the Yozi as children in a mental health facility? I know they were on both a forum and a wiki, but I can't find them on Google.

Edit: also, there's the game There Is No Teacup, which is currently recruiting.

[SurlySeraph]

Here. Man, I love those. Especially Malfeas, because I never thought of him as so... well, nice. I really like the idea that he can be a protector and leader to small children while also being the dancing punch-tyrant we all know.
The Ebon Dragon is so much like a sociopathic child already that portraying him as such shouldn't be hard, but it's certainly done beautifully.

[Kris Strife]

Who is the first one in the Others category about?

[Xefas]

Who is the first one in the Others category about?

It sounds a bit like Plot Hook Man, the unnamed Primordial that fled the Primordial War and is still out there, lurking; biding his time until a Storyteller feels the need to flesh him out and give him a reason to jump into the fray.

[Arcanoi]

It sounds a bit like Plot Hook Man, the unnamed Primordial that fled the Primordial War and is still out there, lurking; biding his time until a Storyteller feels the need to flesh him out and give him a reason to jump into the fray.

More likely, it's the Aftershock Primordial.

[Xefas]

More likely, it's the Aftershock Primordial.

Pfft, those two are pretty alike anyway. I like to think they were buddies. Like, they probably came over to each others' house and wrassled and watched Seinfeld.

Maybe they accidentally kissed once. But, I mean, that happens sometimes when you wrassle a lot.

And now one's dead. ...

[vegetalss4]

I have a White Wolf account now. I'm hoping I'll stop getting so many "This forum has undergone a critical error! Oh snap. Contact the forum administrator immediately!" errors whilst trying to find the blags now.

EDIT: Nope.

you are getting those messages because they are in the mid of a forum shift right now and the blogs aren't up yet.

[ShadowFighter15]

Posting the table again. Like I said; I'll do this every few pages or so til we're on the new thread, then I'll just post it once (hopefully on the first page) and edit it from there. Probably stick a link in my sig, though Jukashi may need one in his since I don't post too often.

Check your line of the table, if there is an asterisk in one of the cells, tell me what to put there instead either by posting here or PMing me. ST is a Yes, No or Maybe question and Favoured Game Style (as the new note in that column's head should indicate) means the game styles found in the core book on page 262. Feel free to use acronyms if necessary.

[TheCountAlucard]

Well, we had our second Exalted session; here I am, trying to keep things interesting for them, but nonetheless we got dragged off-track about every three minutes on average.

Also, we literally had a five-hour gap between when the first players showed up, and the last players showed up. This meant the first two hours had us watching humorously-cutting reviews of nostalgic TV shows and movies as we waited, which while not a terrible way to pass the time, would've been fun to game with. I realize that these people have schedules and all, but even awesome things have a way of becoming tedious when they're being used to keep you from going insane from waiting. Even if he remembers it so you don't have to!

This next thing's a bit of a minor nitpick, but two of the PCs in the group seem to be, well, jaded toward the Dragon-blooded... by which I mean they don't even acknowledge them as a threat. I realize that the two players have some experience when it comes to playing high-powered Exalts, but this is an introductory game, with starting characters. It... it just bugs me, y'know?

"They're just Terrestrials" should be akin to a starting Gangrel saying, "It's just a SWAT team," as far as I'm concerned.

EDIT: Okay, yeah, I'm done complaining, for now. I still had some fun at the game, so that's something to be grateful for.

[Lix Lorn]

Posting the table again. Like I said; I'll do this every few pages or so til we're on the new thread, then I'll just post it once (hopefully on the first page) and edit it from there. Probably stick a link in my sig, though Jukashi may need one in his since I don't post too often.

Check your line of the table, if there is an asterisk in one of the cells, tell me what to put there instead either by posting here or PMing me. ST is a Yes, No or Maybe question and Favoured Game Style (as the new note in that column's head should indicate) means the game styles found in the core book on page 262. Feel free to use acronyms if necessary.

It'll have to be ST: No for now then, and 'any' for favoured game style.

[IcarusWings]

Check your line of the table, if there is an asterisk in one of the cells, tell me what to put there instead either by posting here or PMing me. ST is a Yes, No or Maybe question and Favoured Game Style (as the new note in that column's head should indicate) means the game styles found in the core book on page 262. Feel free to use acronyms if necessary.

Put "maybe" in my ST column then.

[Sanguine]

-snip-

I guess put maybe under ST then.

[Weimann]

ST: Maybe

Player: Maybe

Favoured game style: None

[Arcanoi]

This next thing's a bit of a minor nitpick, but two of the PCs in the group seem to be, well, jaded toward the Dragon-blooded... by which I mean they don't even acknowledge them as a threat. I realize that the two players have some experience when it comes to playing high-powered Exalts, but this is an introductory game, with starting characters. It... it just bugs me, y'know?

Wyld Hunt arrives. Threshing Floor Method them seven times in one round. More jade than they can handle. Problem solved!

[Tavar]

Once again proving my great mechanics reading skills, is there a problem with the Lunar charmset? I've seen several people mentioning wanting a fix, but if so, what's the issue?

[Reynard]

It massively restricts Lunars to two kinds:

Smashysmashy natural attack users.
Prettypretty mindrapers.

Sure, you can build a Lunar that uses weapons, or a socialite that DOESN'T just blow everyone's brains with obscene amounts of Appearance, but it's really, really hard to do it and not suck.