Comboes [Crearth: The Third Age]

[Dracogryff]

Mentioning Comboing (or the lack of needing to for reflexives as a DB) in the Martial Arts thread reminded me of this. I so rarely end up getting Comboes that I don't tend to remember about their cost. According to Core, you must know all Charms in a Combo to make it, and are unable to add Charms later if you get one you wish to add, instead having to rebuy the entire business with the new Charm added to it.


This seems excessive to me, but I'm also not necessarily fond of the idea of just being able to tack Charms onto the Combo will-he, nil-he just by paying the cost of putting that Charm in the Combo. The first discourages combos until far too late in the game, IMO, and the latter (to me) cheapens the idea that this is a special maneuver you thought up and created through practice and determination. I've thought of a way or two to try to compromise the issues I have, and I'd like to hear what other players think is the best solution to the matter...


One solution that came to me is the make it so adding a charm later doesn't require buying the ENTIRE combo again, but just a portion of the cost of the Combo you've got already (like half or a quarter or a third or something) plus whatever it'd cost to put the new Charm in. It still seems more expensive than it should to me after a sense, but it would allow one to add as many Charms as they wished.


Example: Joe Solar has a Combo that cost him 14 XP to learn. He wants to add a Charm with an ability minimum of 3 to it. Thus he'd have to pay 8 XP, 3 for the ability minimum of the Charm itself, plus one third (this can be argued to a different percentage, just using it for the example) of the original 14, or 5.


The other solution that I've come up with is to make it so that you can come up with the full Combo you want, and when you have a majority of them (Say, two-thirds or three-quarters) you can then purchase that portion of the Combo, and pay to add the other Charms into it as you acquire them (at the cost that it would require to have put them in originally). This means the Combo is no more expensive than waiting, but you're limited in Charms you can add to it, and have to decide them all before you buy it. There is also the question as to whether a player should go into XP debt for finishing the Combo, too...


Example: Dusk the Lunar wishes to have a 12 Charm combo. Once she has eight of the Charms (assuming a requirement of two-thirds), she can declare the full Combo, and spend the XP required to put the eight Charms into the Combo. As she buys the other four, she then can place them into the combo by spending the XP necessary to put them in (IE, their minimum attribute rating).


I prefer the latter, myself, but I'm curious as to what other people think of Combo rules, and method they think is best to purchase them. Anyone have ideas they think are better, I'm open to suggestion, too. Then again, I could be the only one who cares about this, too, for all I know...

 

[Lord Kamina]

What about...


You can add the charms just like that, but still need to spend time training the combo and during that period it's unusable?

 

[Ledaal Kajiri]

On the whole, I'd rather not follow the Just add it, but you need another training time, approach. Downtime periods of required length will certainly happen, particularly when people start raising Essence, or engaging in large scale projects of any sort, such as artifice, or raising armies, or Constitutional Conventions, or what have you.


I would favor of the options so far, the 1/3 cost of the existing combo option, then adding the charm. However, I would suggest allowing the player to then know BOTH versions of the combo, with and without the charm, which may allow greater tactical flexibility, and which makes more sense to me, since I doubt learning a new technique makes on incapable of using an old one without using it.

 

[atma]

I would favor declaring it with all charms when you have... either 2/3 or 3/5, though I'm thinking 2/3 is better. I don't know, 2/3 round down, perhaps. Basically, 2/3 feels just a bit too high. 3/5, on the other hand... is less likely to work out evenly, at least by my gut instincts.

 

[Dracogryff]

Hmm. *ponders editing to add a poll to this* Probably not needed tho...not enough people to make it hard to keep track. So far there's one vote for just add whatever, but require full training time (I'm rather with LK there...with downtime likely to occur, it's really not going to be hard to get combos upgraded without having an impact in game)...one for the partial XP cost, and two for make the combo in advance and buy when you have X percent of the Charms.


Not really a majority anywhere. :/ Must poke ZPE and try to get them to give their opinion....


But, also. Other thoughts on this. On the first option I offered, another thought that has since occured to me is to allow one to upgrade the combo at a cost of 1 XP per Charm in the combo plus whatever it would cost to add the new Charm(s) to it, and you can only add your (Essence) in Charms at any given alteration.


The only way I could see allowing a 'buy whatever at no extra charge but redo the training' is to double or triple the training time, and that seems excessive...

 

[Guest]

How about this idea;


When changing a combo, the XP cost depends of if it is an addition to the combo, or an upgrade of a charm already in it. Figuring that cost will be for those more familiar than I've been with Exalted 2.0. (If this was a 1.0 question it would be easy)


Examples;


Joe the Solar has a combo with an excellency, an attack melee charm, and a dodge charm. He gets a higher essence, a higher dodge charm, and wants to put the more useful dodge charm in place of the old one. He pays X to do so.


Now, a few weeks later, Joe the Solar decides he wants to add his martial art form charm to the combo as well. This is a whole new charm/skill, so it costs X+Y.

 

[Dracogryff]

Well aside from the fact that Form Charms are never Combo-Ok or Combo Basic, I can see what you're trying to say there...not sure how well it would work...it really depends on what you mean by 'similar.' Most Combos are all just a bunch of Charms from the same ability, as only Reflexives don't need to be from the same ability, though can't be used on an action if they're not. Supplementals MUST supplement your action, Simples must BE your action, as must Extra Actions. So...saying it's just the tree would really almost bring it right back to original concept I'm not fond of, which is to say, you can just add more whenever.


Which to me, since this is your signature 'attack of coolness' or whatnot, just being able to alter it pretty much on a whim kind of mauls the feel of it for me. :/ Hmmm....