General Exalted Discussion III: Weddings Are An Act of Villainy

[Fortuna]

I have been tinkering with the fundamental rules of Exalted, and one of the things that I have looked at is the idea of dynamic combos.

These are a few of the ideas that I have been tossing around along those lines. Thoughts?

Spoiler

Show

Lunars can have ‘floating combos’, similar to floating charm slots. These are unrelated to floating charm slots, but may be reassigned as a miscellaneous 3-tick action for three motes per charm, or as a reflexive action for a point of willpower and an additional five motes per charm. A floating combo has a certain ‘capacity’, which limits what charms may be put into it. When reassigning a floating combo the total experience point cost to purchase the combo normally cannot exceed the capacity of the combo. Every three experience points expand the combo’s capacity by two. A single bonus point also expands it by two. All Lunars begin with a single floating combo with a capacity of five. A floating combo requires one week per dot of capacity to train for. Multiple floating combos may be possessed, but activating one does not allow activation of another simultaneously: rather, it disallows it.

Solars and Abyssals are excellent at what they focus on, but aren’t generalists. Therefore, their dynamism is limited largely to their specialties. Solars and Abyssals can spend half again the experience cost of a charm to ‘master’ it, if they know a charm from the same ability with equal or higher minima. By spending a point of willpower, all charms that the Exalt has mastered can be used freely with one another for a single action. Using this ability is incompatible with a normal combo.

Infernals express their power via the Yozis, so their abilities express themselves thematically. The obvious solution is to link it back to the six Excellencies, and say that while acting within the auspices of an Excellency that they possess, they can use dynamic combos of some description. Perhaps make it Essence-based, since everything else is. The obvious answer, again, is to make the Essence rating of the GSP the limit on the number of charms that may be included. Freely combining (Essence) charms is, however, ludicrously overpowered. Instead, make it similar to the Solaroid system. 'Mastering' a charm is cheaper (3 xp, or 4 for unassociated Yozi) and requires no other charms, but you select an Excellency with which to link it, and can only use it for actions that the Excellency could enhance.

Sidereals I refuse to touch with a floating ribbon until the errata comes out. Alchemicals I just can't think of anything.

[TheCountAlucard]

Also, just a thought I'm curious about...

Has anyone actually played a First Age game? How did it go?

[Lix Lorn]

Sidereals I refuse to touch with a floating ribbon until the errata comes out. Alchemicals I just can't think of anything.

Alchemicals have Arrays, so they're fine anyway.

[Yuki Akuma]

Violet Bier of Sorrows Style and Throne Shadow Style are both CMAs, and are the martial arts styles Sidereals have a natural affinity for - VBoS is a martial art designed for them like their charms, while TS is their natural, innate fighting style. Basically it's Sidereal Hero Style.

The only really balanced SMA is Sapphire Veils of Passion Style (GotMH: Maidens), but it's pretty heavily... uh... 'mature'.

Also, just a thought I'm curious about...

Has anyone actually played a First Age game? How did it go?

I have not. But I really really want to.

Is anyone up to STing one?

[Indon]

Also, just a thought I'm curious about...

Has anyone actually played a First Age game? How did it go?

I ran a fairly short first age game some time back, but the players were all young exalts, so the dynamics weren't as wildly different from vanilla Exalted as they could have been.

It went pretty well. I basically ran it as a half-serious Super Sentai parody with the team being a Quick Response team to problems in Creation.

[SurlySeraph]

Dammit. And without those, Sid's don't really have any options. Gah. Time to really loot them over, then.

Sapphire Veils of Passion is balanced.

Jon Chung did a fix for Prismatic Arrangement of Creation. I haven't read it carefully, but I trust him on balance.

Charcoal March of Spiders: the Form is hax, the pre-form charms are very good but not broken, most of the post-form charms are very powerful but not game-breaking, the capstone could theoretically be used to kill everyone in Creation at the same time.

Obsidian Shards of Infinity: the pre-form Charms are salvageable, if you make Ripple in the Silvered Glass less awesome (add a 1m surcharge per attack, note that you can't attack the same reflection more than once without shattering it so the player doesn't sit there stabbing a puddle until his opponent dies, etc.), and Shattering the Balance needs specifics on what you can actually do with it. The Form and everything above are unsalvageable.

Citrine Poxes of Contagion is bad more because the third Charm makes the first two completely redundant and there are few guidelines on making diseases, than because of its power. It's pretty allowable, especially if the player just takes it for the medicine. Also, keep a tight leash on Convulsive Displacement Infectious Atemi; don't let him use it on vital organs, at least not for important characters. Flare of Invulnerability method is "I have all the soak in the world, but will definitely be losing 5 or more motes every action from now on"; it's less overpowered than it looks, especially in paranoia combat. The Form is excessive, but allowing an Integrity roll to resist the mental influence part makes it allowable.

Reading Borders of Kaleidoscopic Logic gives me a headache, so I can't advise you on it.

Quicksilver Hand of Dreams: the early Charms are perfectly fine, especially if you handwave the annoying "make everyone forget you exist even more than before" part. Not sure about the later ones.

Scarlet Patterned Battlefield: Without Strategy Arrangement is hax. Either require the target to make a Perception + Awareness roll instead of making the attacks automatically unexpected or drop the unexpected attacks part entirely. The Form is annoying to use, and make healing way too cheap and easy; I'd drop everything after the second paragraph, and make all attacks either undodgeable or unblockable so you don't have to check the Virtues of every single thing he attacks. I personally think Singular Escape Strategem is fine, but balance experts frown upon anything that even looks like it overcomes PDs. Great Thinker's Defense Maneuver is basically "Ignore everything with lower Essence unless there are tons of them" + "Free counterattacks against everything." I'd cut it down to lasting [Martial Arts] actions.

[Friv]

I don't have my books on me, but going from memory there are a few things I would like to add to that assessment.

Charcoal March of Spiders: the Form is hax, the pre-form charms are very good but not broken, most of the post-form charms are very powerful but not game-breaking, the capstone could theoretically be used to kill everyone in Creation at the same time.

That's not entirely true. One of the pre-form Charms, can't recall which, does obscene things to your opponents' attacks and defenses, for very few motes. Two of the post-form Charms, Water Spider Bite and the one that turns your target's Essence pool into damage to him, are one-hit kills if they ever land. Oh, and Water Spider Bite is the vehicle for some of the most abusive crap in the game, because you can keep it up forever and use it on godly servants to pick up a few thousand extra free motes.

Reading Borders of Kaleidoscopic Logic gives me a headache, so I can't advise you on it.

IIRC, it's extremely powerful, and a few of the Charms have insta-kill powers, but it's fixable.

Scarlet Patterned Battlefield: Without Strategy Arrangement is hax. Either require the target to make a Perception + Awareness roll instead of making the attacks automatically unexpected or drop the unexpected attacks part entirely. The Form is annoying to use, and make healing way too cheap and easy; I'd drop everything after the second paragraph, and make all attacks either undodgeable or unblockable so you don't have to check the Virtues of every single thing he attacks. I personally think Singular Escape Strategem is fine, but balance experts frown upon anything that even looks like it overcomes PDs. Great Thinker's Defense Maneuver is basically "Ignore everything with lower Essence unless there are tons of them" + "Free counterattacks against everything." I'd cut it down to lasting [Martial Arts] actions.

Singular Escape Strategem is a problem because, as written, it fails to really function. It's built badly. And you missed two of the most problematic Charms in the set - Glance and Stride, which is the best movement Charm in the game as a low-mote Essence 4 no-prerequisite power, and The Empress Lives For All, which allows you to instantly and perfectly kill any person by stabbing their maid in the chest (it moves at Step 10, completely bypassing every form of Charm defense in a hilariously broken and yet legal manner), or murder an entire Realm legion by killing one of its spearmen and spending a few motes and a Willpower.

*EDIT* I feel like Victory of the Cheat also had staggeringly abuseable mechanics, but I don't remember the specifics.

[Mr.Bookworm]

I feel like Victory of the Cheat also had staggeringly abuseable mechanics, but I don't remember the specifics.

For the same reason the last charm in Charcoal March of Spiders is broken, albeit on a lesser scale. It lets you move anyone in your line of sight to anywhere else within your line of sight.

The Form and everything above are unsalvageable.

A good indicator of something being broken is one of the (mechanically-gifted) developers making jokes about it in a sourcebook, yes.

[Tavar]

Huh, scroll of monk is that bad, eh. How bad are the Terrestrial Styles?

[Kris Strife]

Has anyone attempted to stat out Megaman characters as Alchemicals? Megaman, Protoman, Bass, Rush, Treble and all of the Robot Masters.

This came about as someone mentioning a Warstrider made out of wood if you're curious.

[Friv]

Huh, scroll of monk is that bad, eh. How bad are the Terrestrial Styles?

Variable, but leaning towards the good - certainly, Terrestrial styles overall are better than Celestial or Sidereal. The ones that were adapted from 1e mostly survived the transition. Of the new ones, most are fine - I'm a particular fan of White Veil and Golden Janissary. I remember Seafaring Hero being a bit on the weak side, and Fivefold Shadow is all kinds of weird (it tends towards the design goal of "it's not overpowered if most of your enemies can completely ignore it", so it tends to rock-paper-scissors fights). Even Blade, on the other hand, is a bit of a disaster, with messy book-keeping, useless speedbumps in the middle, and some absurdly overpowered top-tier effects.

This came about as someone mentioning a Warstrider made out of wood if you're curious.

I designed one of those once.

[Sanguine]

Has anyone attempted to stat out Megaman characters as Alchemicals? Megaman, Protoman, Bass, Rush, Treble and all of the Robot Masters.

This came about as someone mentioning a Warstrider made out of wood if you're curious.

I remember a while back Drascin was building a character for an Alchemicals game based on one of the Megaman characters. I don't remember which; though I think it was a Moonsilver Caste.

[Drascin]

Moonsilver Caste, based on MMZ Zero, yes. Not exact to original, of course, because plagiarizing is bad, but the inspiration was there and was obvious.

[SurlySeraph]

The SotM Terrestrial styles vary.
Even Blade is ungood. A bunch of its Charms do slightly wonky things to speed and DV refresh that are annoying to keep track of, and it has some ludicrously powerful charms. Gruesome Wood King Revelry and the Azure Crane and Zu Rat Te conclusions are probably the most abusable parts.
Falling Blossom is bloody useless, even for NPCs.
First Pulse, Golden Janissary, Ill Lily, and Night Breeze all seem good. Ill Lily's possibly too strong for a Wood Aspect, because it turns into "poison everything ever always." Jade Mountain's mostly OK, the Form and capstone are a lot more powerful than the rest of its charms.
I've never cared enough about Orgiastic Fugitive, Fivefold Shadow Hand, or Seafaring Hero to read them carefully.
White Veil is powerful, because unexpected attacks are powerful.
Crimson Pentacle Blade is strong, but I don't feel like rereading it to remember how.

That's not entirely true. One of the pre-form Charms, can't recall which, does obscene things to your opponents' attacks and defenses, for very few motes.

I'm not sure which one you mean. Maybe Dance of the Hungry Spider?

Two of the post-form Charms, Water Spider Bite and the one that turns your target's Essence pool into damage to him, are one-hit kills if they ever land. Oh, and Water Spider Bite is the vehicle for some of the most abusive crap in the game, because you can keep it up forever and use it on godly servants to pick up a few thousand extra free motes.

I forgot about the mote-battery part of Water Spider Bite, yeah. Not sure which other one you mean, though Jumping Spider Strike is a one-hit kill on anyone without a Resistance Excellency.

Singular Escape Strategem is a problem because, as written, it fails to really function. It's built badly. And you missed two of the most problematic Charms in the set - Glance and Stride, which is the best movement Charm in the game as a low-mote Essence 4 no-prerequisite power, and The Empress Lives For All, which allows you to instantly and perfectly kill any person by stabbing their maid in the chest (it moves at Step 10, completely bypassing every form of Charm defense in a hilariously broken and yet legal manner), or murder an entire Realm legion by killing one of its spearmen and spending a few motes and a Willpower.

SES is like... well, like many things in Obsidian Shards, the disease-inventing charms in Citrine Poxes, and a fair amount else. It's basically "You can do cool things with this, your DM decides what" with virtually no guidelines.

Is Glance and Stride that bad? The vision distance rules on p. 135 of core make it really suck in anything but broad daylight, and there are plenty of ways to go really fast by Essence 4. I take your point, though.

I thought The Empress Lives For All only worked by killing someone who's officially the leader of a group, and only knocked other people unconscious, so you could knock an army unconscious by punching its leader to death; on closer reading, it works like you said.

I dismissed Victory of the Cheat as another mass combat effect I'm never going to use, but I can see reading it to let you teleport everyone you can see to anywhere else. It's vaguely worded even by SMA standards.

[Tavar]

Is it normal visible range, or can charms change that? Because, if it's with charms, can't some combo see all of creation?

[TheCountAlucard]

Victory of the Cheat

Victory of the Cheat

Sorry, but this is the only thing I can think of when you guys say that...

[Psyborg]

Sorry, but this is the only thing I can think of when you guys say that...
*image snipped*

So very glad I'm not the only one.

[Yuki Akuma]

Question:

Would a Person of the Air (winged humans) who Exalted as a Lunar with a wingless spirit shape retain their wings in warform?

[Mr.Bookworm]

Is Glance and Stride that bad? The vision distance rules on p. 135 of core make it really suck in anything but broad daylight, and there are plenty of ways to go really fast by Essence 4. I take your point, though.

I'm not very well-versed on my Exalted op-fu, but I'm positive there's a way to boost your perception checks to an insane level. That's how the infamous Charcoal March of Spiders punch-everyone-in-Creation-in-the-face-at-the-same-time trick works.

I dismissed Victory of the Cheat as another mass combat effect I'm never going to use, but I can see reading it to let you teleport everyone you can see to anywhere else. It's vaguely worded even by SMA standards.

It pretty explicitly says at the end that you can use it in non-mass combat situations. Still very poorly worded, yeah.

Would a Person of the Air (winged humans) who Exalted as a Lunar with a wingless spirit shape retain their wings in warform?

Not unless you pay the 6 points of mutations, no. Sort of like if a vanilla human has a spider spirit shape, they don't automatically gain spider legs in their warform just because they have the shape.

[TheCountAlucard]

Trying to let one my players have a custom artifact. How's this sound?

The Thundering Foecleaver
Constructed by a Solar craftsman in the low First Age, this seven-foot blade of orichalcum is inlaid with blue jade. When the wielder of this grand daiklave successfully strikes an opponent, he can spend one mote to send electrical Essence coursing through his opponent, dealing an additional 8 dice of bashing damage that ignores armor.

What do you think it should be worth? Four dots of Artifact? Five?

[Indon]

Trying to let one my players have a custom artifact. How's this sound?

The Thundering Foecleaver
Constructed by a Solar craftsman in the low First Age, this seven-foot blade of orichalcum is inlaid with blue jade. When the wielder of this grand daiklave successfully strikes an opponent, he can spend one mote to send electrical Essence coursing through his opponent, dealing an additional 8 dice of bashing damage that ignores armor.

What do you think it should be worth? Four dots of Artifact? Five?

5 would be playing it safe, but it wouldn't be too broken as a 4-dot artifact.

1 mote for 8 armor-ignoring damage is a pretty powerful effect, though honestly if I were making the weapon I'd tone down the effect (perhaps to (Essence) damage) and add some other electric-themed powers (ex - you can hold the blade aloft in a storm and spend a point of WP to roll Wits+Melee+Essence, replenishing your successes in motes as lightning strikes the blade) to make it a 4-5-dot artifact. IMO, higher-end artifacts should have a range of themed powers.

Edit: Other secondary power suggestions include,

-You can shoot a bolt of electricity - 3 motes sounds like a good activation price for that.
-You can create a field of electricity about you, increasing your DV and inflicting damage on the next person to strike at you in combat. 3-4 mote cost.
-You can transform into a bolt of lightning in a jump, multiplying your jump distance by 10 and making you traverse the jump's distance instantly. 4-5 mote cost, and this power's really tweakable.

[Tavar]

What are it's normal stats?

Also, remember, artifact activated powers are the same as charm activations.

[Indon]

Also, remember, artifact activated powers are the same as charm activations.

Wait, artifact activated powers count as charm activations?

[TheCountAlucard]

What are it's normal stats?

Speed 5, Accuracy +3, Damage +12/4, Defense 1, Rate 3, Mins Str 3, Attune 8, Tags 2, O, P, R. In other words, as per a normal grand daiklave + orichalcum magical material bonus.

Also, remember, artifact activated powers are the same as charm activations.

Where's that rule?

[Indon]

Mind also that higher-power Exalted artifacts tend to have higher attunement costs. The Grand Daiklave's normal attunement cost is pretty high already, but increasing the weapon's attunenent cost could still make a difference on the rating of the artifact.

[Tavar]

Oadenol's Codex, can't give exact page number, AFB at the moment.

[Yuki Akuma]

Oadenol's Codex, page 12...

Says the exact opposite, so I'm not sure where the hell you got that idea.

Artifacts do not count as Charms. Activating an artifact’s powers does not interfere with the use of an Exalt’s Charms, except inasmuch as the actions conflict (one cannot use a simple Charm and a miscellaneous action simultaneously). Likewise, bonus dice gained from an artifact do not count against the limit of dice gained from Charms (see Exalted, p. 185).

[Sanguine]

Question:

Would a Person of the Air (winged humans) who Exalted as a Lunar with a wingless spirit shape retain their wings in warform?

Not unless you pay the 6 points of mutations, no. Sort of like if a vanilla human has a spider spirit shape, they don't automatically gain spider legs in their warform just because they have the shape.

But the character has already paid for the mutation. Why would they need to pay for it a second time? That's neither fair nor fun.

It's ultimately an ST call, but I would say you keep the Wings.

[Morph Bark]

But the character has already paid for the mutation. Why would they need to pay for it a second time? That's neither fair nor fun.

It's ultimately an ST call, but I would say you keep the Wings.

Could get into some yummy yummy abuse though.

[Reynard]

Could get into some yummy yummy abuse though.

Not really. Jumping is easier to abuse, and probably faster than flying.