The Gaming Den

Exalted doesn't have enough ability churn to make a deck-based WoF worthwhile, especially if you're supposed to draw like 2-3 maneuvers per turn. Seriously. Look at the charm set of an example Essence 4 Solar or Lunar.

I like WoF, but it's only worth doing for games in which you cycle through a huge list of abilities quickly over the course of the campaign. So it's appropriate pretty much for D&D and... that's about it. It could work for Exalted, but point-buy systems have by-and-large interacted extremely poorly with churn and it'd require a complete rethinking of the charm system. The latter of which needs to be done anyway, but even a sensible charm system would have problems with a deck-based or Green Arrow WoF.

DSMatticus wrote:

RadiantPhoenix wrote:unless there's supposed to be a "no arguing allowed" rule.

Welcome to RPG.net.

He's since been banned from participating in any discussions about Exalted at all.

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?757 ... -Topic-Ban

Isn't Jon Chung the main person who developed the entire Paranoia Combo in Exalted 2E?

virgil wrote:Isn't Jon Chung the main person who developed the entire Paranoia Combo in Exalted 2E?

Ayup

virgil wrote:Isn't Jon Chung the main person who developed the entire Paranoia Combo in Exalted 2E?

Yes, Chungian Combat is named after him.

First of all, Exalted is fractally bad, where every part no matter how small is as bad as the entire thing. No fragment or mechanic is individually acceptable even after being tweaked to the point where it is only vaguely recognizable. It all has to go.

If it is your intention that player characters should actually use combat techniques with names like "Cunning Porcupine Defense" and "Stone Rhino Hide" to defend themselves with and "Shell Crushing Atemi" and "Ferocious Biting Tooth" to attack their enemies, you'd better give people a metric fuck tonne of combat maneuvers. Because the idea of having moves that fucking specific and only having three of them makes me want to kill myself. And if you're going to have enough moves on your character sheet that you aren't going to feel extremely silly and bored shouting "Prey Hobbling Bite!" or "Agitation of the Swarm Technique!" you are going to need a fucking sorting algorithm, and that means you're going to want to do some kind of WoF system.

And if you're going to have that many combat maneuvers and still get chargen done in a reasonable amount of time, you're going to have to get your maneuvers in groups. When you select your access to bug strikes, you should pick up "Wasp Binding Method" and "Agitation of the Swarm Technique." And several other bug-related combat strikes. So that if you pick up "Wasp Style" you can perform a different wasp themed maneuver every round. All of these techniques should come with your basic Street Fighter array of a quick attack, a strong attack, a throw, a block, and a special. And of course, you should be able to further specialize by picking up more Wasp Style crap or diversify to get Wolf Style shit instead.

What does this mean? This means that Exalted Does Not Have Enough Charms!



The systems of acquiring, using, tracking, and selecting charms are all wrong from top to bottom. And the charms themselves are way too fucking long. But if you're going to have animal themed shapeshifter kung fu masters, you're going to need to have enough tiger-themed techniques for someone to be a fucking tiger style shapeshifter kung fu master. Like, obviously. And that means that you're going to need hundreds of maneuvers.

That in turn means that you need to be able to get twenty or more maneuvers per page, which means in turn that the upper limit to describe each these maneuvers is 50 words.

And so on. The point is that your design is constrained not by being anything remotely similar to Exalted, but by the initial choices you make when selecting the feel you want. And the instant we start talking about three word maneuvers or maneuver combos, we're talking about a system where your character has a lot of maneuvers. And that constrains design in some pretty profound ways. And most importantly of all: it constrains your finished design to be in basically no way like Exalted. Because Exalted is fucking terrible and every part of it no matter how small is also terrible.

-Username17

Would there be any problems with doing Exalted as a (somewhat powered-up) hack for Tome of Battle?

It fits 207 maneuvers into 48 pages, they are nicely divided into schools, and it's already in a system that has high-powered effects. Also, there's something almost poetic about using the Book of Weaboo Fightan' Magic for Exalted, because that's what Exalted is.

Almost sounds like you might be better off having the charm design be inspired by Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards: Duel at Mt. Skullzfyre.

I've figured it out!

We can't salvage the Exalted mechanics if we want anything that works for the Exalted concept/setting/whatever; so in order to keep those MECHANICS, instead of being about Middle Kingdom sun warriors or whatever, the game book is merely a stream of homophobic, anti-Semitic invective.

Exercising editorial oversight is difficult and not worthwhile, because we are drunk and you are stupid. Therefore, in Exalted: Protected by the 1st amendment because it is clearly satire no distinction is made between you the reader, players of this game, and the alter-egos those players portray during gameplay, all of whom will simply be called [EDITED]*t. Welcome, [EDITED]*t, to a world of exciting adventure!
We will, however, make inconsistent use of post-modern gender-less pronouns (zhe, xe, s/he, honored herm, etc.) because you [EDITED]*ts each that shit up.
Each playing group with need at least one Jew. Like in the real world, the Jew orchestrates the entire game and all of its affairs for hir own cruel amusement. The Jew may pretend to consult this rulebook or be guided by precedent, but in the end the Jew will indulge eir base pettiness as the final arbitrator of all game mechanics, rules and disputes.

Then you have the usual Exalted stuff with the broken or useless charms and buckets of ten-sided dice.

People will like this edition, because it will give them the abuse they obviously crave, but still be less offensive that Exalted 3E given that no children are gang-raped by demons.

I thought the child gangrape by demons was a 2.5e thing - indeed Lillun is highlighted as one of the stupid excesses of grimderp that is promised to not be in the actual Exalted 3E.

Exalted is, of course, fractally bad and all of its mechanics must be burned to the ground. I just figured asking what role each of the main mechanics is supposed to play might be enlightening, though I could be wrong about that. Anyway, I've considered going the direction you're proposing here but I've decided against it. Everything you're talking about here -- large numbers of special moves, bundled in packages, with a randomizer to shake up availability --makes sense if you want people to make interesting tactical choices during combat. I've come to believe that that's anthithetical the parts of the exalted premise that interest me.

First off, Exalted is supposed to be a game where a great diplomat, an inventor, or a master thief is an equally valid character as a martial artist. The combat system gets too elaborate that simply won't be true. They tried to create some "fairness" by introducing a "social combat" system that would make talky characters equally complex as fighting characters, but that failed. Not only was the social system they came up with bad and the consequences of including it bad, it's not a valid answer to the original problem. Having two in-depth tactical minigames actually exacerbates the problem, which is that people don't like sitting out while their friends play in-depth tactical minigames.

Second, Exalted is supposed to be a game where fights are influenced by a variety of emotional and strategic factors. On the emotional front, you have mundane stuff like virtue channels, but more importantly you have stuff like flaws of invulnerability that allow you to completely fuck over someone if you can induce a moment of doubt and hesitation by forcing them to fight someone they love, or threatening someome they love while they are fighting, or forcing them to question the righteousness of hteir cause, or whatever. There's no room for any of that in a game with a robust tactical system. Players concentrating on choosing their moves aren't concentrating on thinking up ways to emotionally manipulate the enemy, and even if they were, people feel like it's bullshit if role-playing characterization can override then output of a complex mechanical system. On the strategic side, characters are supposed to have many options to manipulate the circumstances of a fight for an advantage. They can buy ability to trains armies and cohorts, or to craft superior weaponry, or to turn the enemy's minions against them. In addition to using their own abilities, players are supposed to care about finding external advantages like teachers for new martial arts. In the kind of system where each style comes with a huge package of tactically-diverse moves, the whole point is for every style to be able to solve a variety of problems. The players should, through smart play, be able to fight anything except an enemy that's simply too high level for them, in which case the only thing they need to is go away and "level up." If there are hundreds of charms, you never need to track down someone who can teach Water Dragon Style for any reason except that a player thinks it's cool. If there are actually only 2 or 3 options in the game for major functions (2 or 3 "whirlwind attacks", 2 or 3 "perfect blocks", 2 or 3 "armor-negating attacks") then finding someone to teach Water Dragon might actually give you a tool you needed but didn't previously have.

In conclusion: I'm actually totally fine if combat is pretty much deterministic. When you go in against a major enemy, either you have the charms and equipment to break his Praying Mantis Defense and avoid his Head Exploder Punch, or you don't. If you don't, you fuck off and come back when you have a new artifact sword or you've learned a new charm.

Omegonthesane wrote:I thought the child gangrape by demons was a 2.5e thing - indeed Lillun is highlighted as one of the stupid excesses of grimderp that is promised to not be in the actual Exalted 3E.

No, it was a 2e thing. One author of the Infernals thought that he's writing a herp-derp villain splatbook, the other actually produced playable (sort of) stuff.

Orion - okay, that's a fair point which I would concede. The more complexity you have in the Kung Fu minigame, the more bored people will be who don't focus on magic kung fu.

That said, while your design goals are lofty and noble, in the end I think I will do less harm just by screaming racial slurs at people, because that sounds a lot like:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber_Dice ... aying_Game

Exalted and Scion are heavily derivative of Zelazny, part of why the basic pitches are good, but it's a tall order to make it work. Deterministic wordplay is probably-not the way to go.

I do not think that needing to learn water dragon sword technique in order to defeat an enemy is the kind of plot that is in any way appropriate to a role playing game. Novels yes. Movies yes. Even video games. But that's just way too railroady for a cooperative storytelling game to handle. The players could decide they want to go become leaders of the Jackal Tribe instead or something.

So the fact that a big and deep move list is naturally incompatible with generic plot #37: You must master Hamster Style before you can defeat Bin Feng, is simply not important. That plot is already insulting and bad in a tabletop RPG. Honestly, you might as well just hurl racial invectives at the reader and get the insults and terribleness out of the way.

Now the idea of supporting characters who don't fight is more relevant. Obviously, if you want fighting to be optional, you're going to need to make fighting small. Like how if you want it to be a valid life choice to not have climbing, you're going to need to resolve climbing challenges with a minimum of table time and fuss. But to go that direction you're going to need to not keep track of whether you know Shadow Over Water or Eflusive Dream Defense. Even having a conversation about what three word combat techniques your character knows is more table time than non-combat players should be forced to put up with. If a player ever asks whether they should activate their Ready In Eight Directions Stance, that design goal is already failed.

So if you want fighting to be a thing players can simply not do, the correct number of charms for the game to have is none. Have some entirely simple combat skill + stunt description mechanic for determining how hard you win at combat, and then let the players make up the name of their winning move on the fly.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:I do not think that needing to learn water dragon sword technique in order to defeat an enemy is the kind of plot that is in any way appropriate to a role playing game. Novels yes. Movies yes. Even video games. But that's just way too railroady for a cooperative storytelling game to handle.

Do you think "You must have a magic weapon to fight shadows" is terrible RPG design?

The players could decide they want to go become leaders of the Jackal Tribe instead or something

That seems to be more an issue of what the players and DM expect out of the game than anything else. Some people want sandbox, other people want modules.

Shadows & co. only get a pass in D&D because ghosts are an A-list monster archetype and it'd be embarrassing to formally admit that your fantasy kitchen sink does not have them. Mechanically they're actually nastier than many Gygaxian bullshit monsters.

OgreBattle wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:I do not think that needing to learn water dragon sword technique in order to defeat an enemy is the kind of plot that is in any way appropriate to a role playing game. Novels yes. Movies yes. Even video games. But that's just way too railroady for a cooperative storytelling game to handle.

Do you think "You must have a magic weapon to fight shadows" is terrible RPG design?

Magical weapons help you with a multitude of enemys, and can become a capstone of powerlevels. But the secret manta strike helps you against exactly one opponent. So the point is not that you sometimes need to be this high to ride the ride, but that secret techniques are essentially McGuffins, and should be treated as such. NOT as equipment or skills.

sandmann wrote:

OgreBattle wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:I do not think that needing to learn water dragon sword technique in order to defeat an enemy is the kind of plot that is in any way appropriate to a role playing game. Novels yes. Movies yes. Even video games. But that's just way too railroady for a cooperative storytelling game to handle.

Do you think "You must have a magic weapon to fight shadows" is terrible RPG design?

Magical weapons help you with a multitude of enemys, and can become a capstone of powerlevels. But the secret manta strike helps you against exactly one opponent. So the point is not that you sometimes need to be this high to ride the ride, but that secret techniques are essentially McGuffins, and should be treated as such. NOT as equipment or skills.

So this isn't DR/magic, it's DR/byeshk.

This thread sounds a lot like someone might just want to play Legends of the Wulin. It's a fantasy-themed game with lots of techniques whose flavor is similar to what's being described here. Now I could be completely off here, because I have no idea what Exalted is actually supposed to be. I have only ever heard people talk about its setting and its mechanics, which are so confusing, self-contradictory, and tonally dissonant that I am completely unable to work backwards from those and construct a back-of-the-cover blurb, which is sort of part of the problem with Exalted, in that if you write anything on the back cover that isn't incoherent wailing and gnashing of teeth you have written a lie. But something was written on the back cover and whatever it was sounds like it might be emulatable with minimum revisions to Legends of the Wulin.

Yeah, Legends of the Wulin would be a great alternative if it were playable at all.

Orion wrote:Yeah, Legends of the Wulin would be a great alternative if it were playable at all.

My experience with this statement is entirely the opposite. LotW is playable. I have played it. It just isn't very good or interesting once you look past the flavor text.

I am unfamiliar with Legends of the Wulin. It's supposed to be based on Weapons of the Gods, right? I wasn't very impressed with Weapons of the Gods.

As for Exalted, the second edition back cover text was indeed offensive bullshit. They managed to squeeze in some creationist science denying and some muddled self-contradictory themes. As I mentioned before, Exalted trips on its dick the moment they get away from the short pitch and try to do any world building or game mechanics at all.

Here's the short pitch:

• All around you, the age is falling into chaos and ruin. You are one of the Exalted: blessed with the power of a demigod and the will to overturn fate. What legends will they tell of your deeds?
  [Insert Weeaboo Art]

Pretty much anything you wrote cold from that starting point would probably be better than anything that Exalted actually included in its real books that they honestly sold to people for real money. Actually attempting to learn what design decisions and story choices the White Wolf authors actually made in bringing this game to market will only make you sad.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:I am unfamiliar with Legends of the Wulin. It's supposed to be based on Weapons of the Gods, right? I wasn't very impressed with Weapons of the Gods.

Yes. It was a legitimate second edition, scrubbed of the original's IP, and much better presented. Also there were some mechanical changes of varying quality (not tracking at least 5 resource pools, good; bogging down action sequences by letting people do fiddly things with their initiative roll, bad). But the dice mechanic is still a crime and the social/medicine/magic system is still entirely about farting around with uninteresting bonuses and penalties.

I think that if you did make combat small, it would be more acceptable to have the knowledge of specific charms make a big difference, up to winning/losing the fight automatically.

In fact, if you made that a primary element of combat, you could do something like:
* When you initiate combat, declare a technique you're using.
* Opponent declares a technique in response, which must be able to counter your technique (based on keywords). Depending on the technique, it either automatically wins or would go to an opposed roll of some skill.
* If you don't like the result, you can throw down your own technique to counter it. Continue until someone can't or doesn't declare another technique (no repeats), then resolve that.

So for example:
Bob Shadow: I'm unseen, therefore Death from Behind (auto-win).
Lava Troll: Amorphous Body (counters [Precision], resolution is now Brawn vs Brawn)
Bob Shadow: Flickering Candle Flurry (counters single target, resolution is now Reaction vs Reaction)
Lava Troll: Eruption of Inner Heat (counters flurry, auto-win)
Bob Shadow: Shadow Step (counters [Area], allows other to be attached) + Creeping Darkness Infestation (resolution is now Alchemy vs Fortitude).
Lava Troll: ... (has nothing that can counter that)
Both roll, Bob wins.

Don't know if that's ideal for Exalted, but it would allow making combat short enough to support non-fighting types, and the counter vs counter thing could have some interesting strategy, including making information a potent factor.

I think a solution would to have each power have both social and combat utility.

So "ultimate golden sword" can both be used to shoot laser beams that burn your targets to a crispAND impress a crowd.

While "clever deduction observation" would have the primary use of noticing lies and discover somebody else's true intentions, but would also allow you to detect a weak point in an enemy that you can strike for massive damage even if you're a weakling scholar.

So basically the scholar would be able to stand up in a fight with brain over brawn, confusing his enemies with complicated speeches while analyzing and predicting their patterns, while the warrior dude would be able to "socialize" by flexing muscles and looking all confident and intimidating, so he doesn't need fancy words.