Exalted!

While the intro chapters were horrific shit, I always found the actual charms to be quite nice at lore-n-crunch integration.

Hi. Quick 2E question: Is it possible to buy upgrades for an Alchemical charm with bonus points during character creation? Just kind of confused on that matter. >__>

Yup, should be.

edited 30th Apr '16 9:18:21 PM by DrTentacles

So a german Anime TV Station is marathoning Sengoku Basara

...is this basically Exalted set in the Sengoku era?!

Remember the Splat Marks I made for "What Breaks If: Removing Castes". I think it was here that Sid mark was criticized. I listened, made a whole new one.

Here, side-to-side with the old one, plus the new line-up. Flipped over the Infernal Mark because HAIL SATAN.

I like the new Sidereal one. And the Solar and Abyssals. I feel like the Infernal and the DB one should look more..runic? Natural? Occulty?

I also thing that removing castes for Solariods is a pretty good idea. If I were rebuilding Exalted from scratch, only Sidereals and D Bs would have a caste of any sort. Lunars affinity would change with the lunar cycle, Abyssals and Solars would simply have a grab-bag of abilities, with the existing anima power incorporated into charms, and Infernals would have two "patron" Yozi.

There are no Splatmarks for the DB's. It's Sid, Inf, Aby, Sol and Lun.

On the Onyxpath, it was suggested I try something like this.

edited 16th May '16 11:13:06 PM by God_of_Awesome

For some reason, no matter how you arrange the Maiden's symbols I just get reminded of this◊.

So, my group of friends are fast approaching our Exalted campaign (IRL) after dozens of set backs. We're doing a softened version (mixed with FATE features like Aspects and Fate Points) so for the most part I'm letting them brew together their own Charms and what not, and from what I can gather everything looks more or less stable.

I have two players inquiring about a specific idea though- Steven Universe style fusion. They presented a pretty sound lore-based proposal for it, but I'm trying to think of suitable mechanics to make it worth while but not overly complicated. Any ideas?

There's a spell that does exactly that in first and second edition: Unity of the Closed Fist. It's probably going to make a comeback in third.

It's Solar Circle though, so not available at character generation.

You could use the mechanics for your lore-based charm or whatever though.

edited 17th May '16 4:45:47 AM by Elfive

Heh. Every time I think I've got a general grasp of the Exalted mechanics something obscure is always lurking to remind me I know shit all.

EDIT: At a glance Unity of the Closed Fist doesn't seem that stable to begin with- it's got some interesting pros to it, but it's got weird deficiencies and blind spots that don't make it that useful. It's also kind of complex for Exalted Newbies. It also doesn't allow for the Party Lunar either.

I suppose I can mine it for what works, and try and compress it down.

edited 17th May '16 4:59:23 AM by LMage

Alchemicals also have a version of that.

Because having alchemicals that can't combine would be an utter travesty. It works more or less exactly the same though.

edited 17th May '16 6:11:36 AM by Elfive

I've been poking my own group toward playing as well. We've got a couple sheets made up (a weaponsmith Twilight, a combat-heavy Zenith, and a merchant-prince Eclipse) but haven't actually set anything in stone yet, partially because cat-herding, and partially because we've just been messing with the rules trying to learn the system.

I didn't realize quite how crunch-heavy Exalted is. We're most familiar with D&D, and reading through Exalted 3e, it seems like they gave basically no thought to ease or speed of play. D&D isn't exactly a quick-and-dirty system, but Exalted makes it look lightweight. There's a lot more to keep track of just for basic attacks (instead of attack, defense, and damage, Exalted also has soak, hardness, and initiative, plus miscellaneous stuff like onslaught penalties, initiative crash/break/shift, etc) and variations of rules for different things that are hard to keep track of (withering attacks and decisive attacks have different damage formulas, battle groups have different health rules, etc) and it's just a lot to keep in mind at once. Some of it is stuff that we'll get used to as we use the system, but it's enough to be a barrier and it's turning off one of my players already. (And he's the guy who *likes* playing with new systems as a rule!) The fact that the rules aren't presented particularly well doesn't help, either. Seriously, try reading the introductory section on charms — it's two and a half pages long, which is about a page and a half longer than it needs to be. The first two range bands are "short" and "close" — really? That's not at all confusing. (The first official houserule I declared was that the lowest range band is "melee range" while "short range" and "close range" both refer to the range between melee and medium.)

And this is just looking at the basic skill system and combat. I haven't even gotten into social influence or other subsystems like crafting, sorcery, martial arts, etc.

I wouldn't really call Martial Arts a subsystem. It's just another combat ability.

Or, well, a whole bunch of them, each with their own short charm tree.

Sorcery is pretty chill. Crafting is going to murder you.

Exalted 3e is badly written when it comes to mechanics, so that doesn't help. They persist in thinking that making an incredibly crunchy system with loose, informal language that blends fluff and mechanics is a good idea.

edited 17th May '16 12:24:54 PM by DrTentacles

* Literally read through everything once and understood it just fine.*

It's not that it's particularly difficult to understand (isolated stupid bits like "close range" and "short range" being different things aside), it's just that there are a lot of rules — more than there really needs to be. It feels like they were writing rules for a computer game where all the math is done for you instantly and automatically, rather than taking into account that this is a tabletop game where the players have to remember all these rules and apply them correctly every time. I did a mock-fight with one of my players and we spent the entire time going "whoops, forgot to add weapon accuracy to my dice pool. Whoops, forgot my specialty bonus. Whoops, withering damage gives [1 + damage successes] to the attacker but only takes [damage successes] from the target, the extra one comes from nowhere rather than being stolen from the target." etc etc etc. The rules are clear enough (for the most part) while you're reading them, but hard to keep in mind all at once while you're applying them.

Granted, a lot of this is just because none of us have really used this system before, but still. It definitely could have been designed for better ease of play.

edited 17th May '16 1:21:51 PM by NativeJovian

Well, 3e was kinda targeted towards 2e players - certainly they'd be the ones putting up the bulk of the kickstarter dosh - and they tend to have, of necessity, a higher-than-normal tolerance for loads of crunchy bits to deal with.

@God of Awesome: Here's a thought. What if instead of trying to get all of the Sidereal astrological symbols mushed together, you grabbed some other astrological symbol to represent the Fivefold Fellowship in general? This asteroid is apparently supposed to be a scepter topped with a star, which seems appropriate.

edited 17th May '16 2:42:56 PM by rikalous

Yeah, I mean, 2e players looked at 3e and were all "Wow, that's way simpler. Well done guys."

That was not my first reaction, but sure, we'll go with that.

"Hey guys we're simplifying combat resolution by removing all those scary steps! Except the only step removed is that you check hardness OR soak, not both on every attack. And removal of steps creates potential ambiguities in charm timing. And rerolls on every attack roll draw in more time than those steps ever did."

It's supposed to be cinematic. Avoiding "roll-stab-die" is the entire point.

Cinematic combat is provided by the storyteller. I do think, generally, the new combat system has vastly better pacing than 2.5e or 2e. However, it's very, very far from perfect. Charm effects are not clearly and precisely described.

(Also, I never had a roll-stab-die problem in 2e. I had the problem where fights with any serious opponent lasted 2 sessions.)

edited 17th May '16 3:19:59 PM by DrTentacles