General Exalted Discussion XVI: Chej Kejak, Pokegod Trainer!

[horngeek]

Which'll never happen unless the Nocturnals author joins White Wolf/signs over the rights. The legal issues are too hairy otherwise.

[HalfTangible]

Which'll never happen unless the Nocturnals author joins White Wolf/signs over the rights. The legal issues are too hairy otherwise.

True dat, but it might be worth it to wrangle something out. *shrug* Or they could just let the Nocturnals be a fan supplement whose canonicity is in question (which would fit pretty well with what I understand of them) and let the fans put them in if they want.

No seriously, it's an option and not a bad one imho.

[horngeek]

They don't intend to expand on Nox themselves, so it's pretty much already like that.

[Morty]

Making homebrew material people like into canon sounds like a swell idea, but actually doesn't lead anywhere good. If they included Nocturnals, people would ask why not other fan-made projects? They need to draw a line somewhere.

[The_Snark]

I've always felt that Nocturnals are very well-suited to being non-canon. They take advantage of hints and mysterious plot hooks in the books, so they're fairly easy to include, but they don't require you to make sweeping changes to the setting either - they're very modular, essentially, which is a good thing in a fan supplement. Their themes include alternate reality and what-if, cheating, breaking or rewriting the rules. They feel like an intruder from outside the canon setting, but in a good way.

And let us not forget that their corresponding Alchemicals are the Adamant Caste, the one which officially doesn't exist.

[Phelix-Mu]

I am unfamiliar with the Nocturnals homebrew, but it always seemed to me that the representatives of freedom and choice in Exalted are the mortal parts of each Exalt (and, to a lesser extent, mortals generally). Gifted with the capacity to dream and change of mortals, to be heroic beyond their own capacity, and then with an Exalt tacked on to officially remove their limitations, the Exalts are the least system-bound of all the immortal beings of Exalted (though some are more closely tied to the system than others). It is their mortal capacity for free-will (as exemplified by the puny mortals being beneath the concern of the Primordials, who neglected to geas them and let the ants do as they pleased) that the gods wanted, and gave them huge power as part of an exchange of services.

Thus, I'd tend to think that tacking a freedom/anti-system Exaltation onto a mortal would be kind of redundant. But, as I said, I am unfamiliar with the premise. Anyone have a link to a source for said homebrew?

[Qwertystop]

I am unfamiliar with the Nocturnals homebrew, but it always seemed to me that the representatives of freedom and choice in Exalted are the mortal parts of each Exalt (and, to a lesser extent, mortals generally). Gifted with the capacity to dream and change of mortals, to be heroic beyond their own capacity, and then with an Exalt tacked on to officially remove their limitations, the Exalts are the least system-bound of all the immortal beings of Exalted (though some are more closely tied to the system than others). It is their mortal capacity for free-will (as exemplified by the puny mortals being beneath the concern of the Primordials, who neglected to geas them and let the ants do as they pleased) that the gods wanted, and gave them huge power as part of an exchange of services.

Thus, I'd tend to think that tacking a freedom/anti-system Exaltation onto a mortal would be kind of redundant. But, as I said, I am unfamiliar with the premise. Anyone have a link to a source for said homebrew?

In a sense, they are actually a lot more mortal than the others. For example, they don't have an extended lifespan, they regenerate Doctor-style after old age (yes, there is a Charm to use that as as a Perfect Soak). They do quite a bit with being just-another-soldier as well.

[Phelix-Mu]

In a sense, they are actually a lot more mortal than the others. For example, they don't have an extended lifespan, they regenerate Doctor-style after old age (yes, there is a Charm to use that as as a Perfect Soak). They do quite a bit with being just-another-soldier as well.

Can I just say, as a confirmed Whovian since the late 80s, it pleases me to no end that people nowadays use Doctor Who analogies in conversations that have nothing to do with the show.

[Lix Lorn]

While I don't want to stop you enjoying the reference, it's fairly explicit in the charmset. There's a charm that lets you abandon your name in favour of a title.
I once had a nocturnal who was going to take the title the Princess in Chains, but I couldn't play her right.

[Phelix-Mu]

While I don't want to stop you enjoying the reference, it's fairly explicit in the charmset. There's a charm that lets you abandon your name in favour of a title.
I once had a nocturnal who was going to take the title the Princess in Chains, but I couldn't play her right.

Aren't half the names in Exalted more like titles than names already? And a charm for it? Seems a bit on the nose, not to mention an expensive effect. Maybe it separates you from the Destiny attached to your old name or something. That would be pretty cool, and useful; I like the Lunar charm that lets you assume the Destiny of someone in your Heart's Blood repertoire.

Is Princess in Chains another reference? I know that almost everything Exalted ever is pretty much an indirect reference to something or other (or at least a derivation of mythical archetypes that are connected to everything ever), but it does sound like a nice, enigmatic title to form a character around.

Most of the npcs/pcs in my current campaign have actual name names, not the words-as-names that the books occasionally use. Those just seem a bit clunky for use in conversation, and no one really got into that bit of setting flavor (so I didn't bother pushing the issue).

[horngeek]

I once had a nocturnal who was going to take the title the Princess in Chains, but I couldn't play her right.

Why does this surprise me absolutely not at all?

[Lix Lorn]

Why does this surprise me absolutely not at all?

NOT IN THAT WAY

Aren't half the names in Exalted more like titles than names already? And a charm for it? Seems a bit on the nose, not to mention an expensive effect. Maybe it separates you from the Destiny attached to your old name or something. That would be pretty cool, and useful; I like the Lunar charm that lets you assume the Destiny of someone in your Heart's Blood repertoire.

Well it's a very short name, like the Doctor or the Master. I forget exactly what it does, but it certainly does something.

Is Princess in Chains another reference? I know that almost everything Exalted ever is pretty much an indirect reference to something or other (or at least a derivation of mythical archetypes that are connected to everything ever), but it does sound like a nice, enigmatic title to form a character around.

It's not meant to be one. The character (named Sierra) was originally a spoilt princess in the threshold, and it was her Destiny to be a marie antoinette figure ('They have no bread? Then eat cake!') and be killed horribly for it. But a sidereal curious about nocturnals decided to nudge the circumstances, and he led to her taking a dot in compassion. When the mob came to her door, she opened it and knelt before them. Her massive, pivotal destiny shattered, she exalted as a nocturnal, and she helped the mob take over the area. If I'd managed to play her right, she would have been a diplomat who always fought for others, a self-sacrificing figure who wore the chains on her wrists proudly.

Sadly, she was a quiet, submissive character, and I'm a quiet, reactive roleplayer. When I play quiet characters, I don't post for three weeks.

Most of the npcs/pcs in my current campaign have actual name names, not the words-as-names that the books occasionally use. Those just seem a bit clunky for use in conversation, and no one really got into that bit of setting flavor (so I didn't bother pushing the issue).

I like them occasionally, and Abyssals can be fun to name, but I default to 'normal' names too.

[horngeek]

I default to simple names, or names that are titles but can be made simple relatively easily.

Withered Blossom of Slaughter, for example, can be shortened to (and often is shortened to) Blossom. Or what she'd call herself once she redeemed herself, Triumphant Rose Guardian.

Or, more simply, Rose.

My view is that the more... poetic... names are as much titles as anything, and often suggest their own little story. Take, again, Triumphant Rose Guardian, which is a holdover from the First Age bearer of the Exaltation- I haven't actually nailed down in my mind what the title/name refers to, but it's fairly easy to thing up possible stories behind it.

Withered Blossom of Slaughter, on the other hand, is a mocking twisting of Triumphant Rose Guardian, in the style of Fallen Wolf from Scroll of Exalts.

[ChaosArchon]

Oh if we're discussing titles that are used as names in Exalted, I have a particularly long one I'm using for an Abyssal: He Who Is Perpetually and Eternally Bound in the Forlorn Chains of Oblivion and Frost Who Heralds Through His Lamentation and Anguish the Fall of a Sun Which Was Hidden Whose Light Shall Not Shine Until Nothing Remains of Those Whose Existence Makes Entropy Weep Have Embraced Their Final Sleep It's been agreed people will just call him Frost.

[Recaiden]

That name has something wrong with its grammar. But otherwise, Secret's Neverborn would be proud.

[ChaosArchon]

That name has something wrong with its grammar. But otherwise, Secret's Neverborn would be proud.

Yeah I added the bit at the end shortly before I finished chargen and it does feel a bit wrong to me. But thanks, Secret's full name was a big inspiration

[TheCountAlucard]

It's been agreed people will just call him Frost.

I would have called him "He Who," myself.

[Drascin]

I would have called him "He Who," myself.

That is just going to end up making his party sound like Jack Frosts.

[Eric Minton]

Which'll never happen unless the Nocturnals author joins White Wolf/signs over the rights. The legal issues are too hairy otherwise.

Even if Onyx Path were interested in using Nocturnals fan material, the Nocturnals are, like Slenderman, the work of many hands. It would be impossible to untangle which elements of the fanwork come from which authors.

I know of no interest on the part of Onyx Path to use Nocturnals fanwork, however, so as far as I'm concerned the point is moot.

[Eric Minton]

For those who are interested, by the way, the Exalted 3e developers' Q&A is still going strong on RPGnet. The thread starts here:

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?...he-Developers/

And the summary of answered questions is here:

http://ericminton.wordpress.com/2014...hread-summary/

[Guancyto]

I have to be honest.

With 780 charms (peleps ****ing deled's man-tits in a hot spring, that's a lot), I am extremely worried that the devs don't seem to have given extensive thought to cross-ability and cross-category synergies, enough to give a thorough answer to golden demon's questions about them.

Quite aside from trying to administrate a machine with that many moving parts (and bearing in mind that that number will only increase with new content, how easy will it be to break on accident?

[TheCountAlucard]

I have to be honest.

No you don't. We won't mind.

With 780 charms...

Not counting Evocations or sorcery, IIRC.

Quite aside from trying to administrate a machine with that many moving parts, how easy will it be to break on accident?

I'm assuming that's why they're spending so much time playtesting.

[Exthalion]

I have to be honest.

With 780 charms (peleps ****ing deled's man-tits in a hot spring, that's a lot), I am extremely worried that the devs don't seem to have given extensive thought to cross-ability and cross-category synergies, enough to give a thorough answer to golden demon's questions about them.

Quite aside from trying to administrate a machine with that many moving parts (and bearing in mind that that number will only increase with new content, how easy will it be to break on accident?

What specifically are you worried is lacking? Charms with multiple ability prerequisites, effects in one ability that affect other abilities, both, neither? I know both of those existed in some form in 2E though the first all got errattaed out. Also, I seem to recall them specifically stating that sorcerous workings would interface with other things.

[Lix Lorn]

He's worrying that it won't be any less breakable than second edition.

[Guancyto]

I don't know exactly, having not seen the material.

I guess I'm worried that someone will stumble on a new Creation Slaying Oblivion kick or Paranoia combo by accident because they did something the playtesters didn't think of. Playtesters for D&D 3rd did their job well enough but they were working from a paradigm where clerics mostly healed and wizards mostly blasted and I'm worried that this will be that times a billion.

...I'm also worried about being absolutely swamped by mechanics because that is seriously a lot of things to remember when you're trying to put together characters or antagonists. I'm worried that someone in a pbp game will declare that since they have Posterior Lumber Position they can totally fix everything by pulling trees out of their ass, and there will be such an enormous sea of things exactly like that that no one will even know to question it.

Mostly I'm just worried. Nervous in anticipation, even. It's not precisely a rational set of fears.

[Mewtarthio]

Right, the old "The can't possibly playtest every permutation of Charms, so how do we know the killer combo didn't just slip through the cracks?" problem. It's definitely a legitimate concern, but it can be mitigated with the right design philosophies.

For instance, Creation-Slaying Oblivion Kick is actually a problem with one Charm: The Charm that lets you attack anyone you can see with potentially infinite range. That alone is a pretty ridiculous power; the fact that you can combo it with a Charm that makes it even more ridiculous is just icing on the cake. We've already been told that high-Essence effects are severely toned down, so we're much less likely to see such ridiculous effects in the first place.

Chungian paranoia combat, on the other hand, is a problem endemic to the combat system itself. The 1e and 2e systems both have very high lethality; it's extremely easy to one-shot an opponent (either with lots of damage dice or a "save-or-lose" effect built into the attack). Paranoia combos became necessary because anything less invited destruction. The 3e combat system has apparently been well-received by playtesters, so high lethality probably isn't built into the system. High lethality can also be kept out of the system so long as the devs resist the temptation to start throwing in additional save-or-die effects (I'm obviously oversimplifying, but my point is that this is something you can plan to mitigate).

Of course, there's no real way to prevent insane edge-case combos from breaking the game, such as the Locate City Bomb from D&D*. Still, that level of theoretical optimization just doesn't happen in practice. I have never heard of anyone using Pun-Pun in an actual game, for instance, while paranoia combat is something that really does effect actual games.

*(To sum up: Locate City is a spell that detects all cities in a very large area -> a particular feat lets you turn all your spells into Cold spells -> another feat lets you add some special effects to your Cold spells, including some token Cold damage -> another feat lets you convert Cold damage spells into Sonic damage spells -> another feat lets you add a save-or-be-stunned effect to all your Sonic damage spells -> a final feat causes your save-based area spells to violently throw anyone who fails the save to the edge of the spell's area -> Locate City now detects all cities in a very large area and annihilates them)

[Morty]

I don't think being swamped by lots of Charms is a real risk. Unlike D&D spells, which are thrown at players' faces in giant lists, Solar Charms are segregated by Ability. As long as you know what you want your Solar to be heroically good at, you know where to look and where not to look. And only some of them can be taken right away at Essence 1, so there's that too.

[Guancyto]

I really do hope they've gotten lethality right. I really do.

Exalted really wanted fully-realized characters with unique motivations and backstories and all that, but in places it had a level of lethality more commensurate with early D&D-esque mass-produced cipher characters.

High lethality's not inherently a problem, but high lethality combined with a highly-involved character generation and heavily character-driven game is ****ing bonkers no matter how realistic or artsy it might be.

There will always be broken combinations, sure, but the Locate City bomb is not a combination you stumble upon by accident. I'm more worried about someone missing the combo of "never get knocked down on my ship" and "knock everyone down every action including me" and suddenly I, Garland, will knock you all down!

I dunno. 780+ moving pieces. It definitely gives me hope that TDO (a writer of said charms) can and has answered questions about how different trees might interlock (in the reddit AMA). It definitely worries me that hatewheel (the guy whose job it is to see the big picture) will only say "we're playtesting it" even if that's probably the best answer he can give under the circumstances.

That being said, I'll definitely be acquiring this thing, and I am hella happy that it is finally coming together. It's one of those "oh my god this game looks like it will be awesome oh god please please please don't suck thank you brain for providing me an itemized list of why it might suck you are so helpful" things that I get when, say, Watch Dogs or Starcraft II is about to release.

[Morty]

I never played Exalted 1e and 2e, so I don't know about lethality. But the combat system they described for 3e sounds extraordinarily promising and I can't wait to see if it lives up to it.

[Sith_Happens]

He's worrying that it won't be any less breakable than second edition.

As someone who plays a lot of D&D 3.5, I'm not nearly as concerned with how breakable it is so much as in what ways it's breakable.

For example:

the combo of "never get knocked down on my ship" and "knock everyone down every action including me" and suddenly I, Garland, will knock you all down!

Given what I know about Exalted, this is exactly the kind of "brokenness" I hope there is.

"I'm completely unkillable for twenty rounds with minimal build investment," on the other hand, is far more degenerate and in a way most definitely not good for the game.