[Emperors of the Fading Suns] [Emperors of the Fading Suns] OOC Thread

Take all the down time you need.


As a side thing, I was considering whether we should kill all Excellencies alltogether.


They are just lame dice adders, they are OTP, don't really bring in much flavour and in general make the combat very grindy.
 
You'd have to change all the armor to reflect that, too. Not to mention most of the time we'd fail outside of combat, as well.


I'd much prefer to not make a massive change.
 
Excellencies are used to garner extra successes on hit, which then translate into added potential damage dice, which the armor then subtracts from. If the excellencies aren't there to get the extra successes on hit, then there's far less chance to overwhelm armor and do more than ping dice damage. This doesn't hurt builds that are supposed to spam light attacks for ping, but it really does hurt builds like Mirror, where you do a few hard attacks and try to get significantly over armor to make those fewer attacks really hurt.


For another example, the "double pre-soak damage" charm in melee also becomes far less useful without the extra successes generated by the excellencies. That charm is built to help get over the armor threshold and do damage - but doubling a low number of extra hits starts making using the charm not worth it, because doubling 1 or 2 extra successes isn't going to get you over armor ping, necessarily.


Actually, it's just straight up hard to hit people without the excellencies. Mirror is optimized and has 15 dice before excellencies; the expected number of successes is 7.5. Exalted can and do have DV and PDV of 8 or better. So unless you want a lot of fights with whiffing and missing, you also have to change how DV and PDV are calculated.


The excellencies are built into the core assumptions of Exalted combat and Exalt vs. Exalts especially - please don't remove them.
 
There's also the very simple problem of high DVs.


Excellencies help you transcend your mortal shell (the maximum of 10 dice rolled) and reach the unreachable.
 
Yes; the Excellencies are the mechanical foundation to setting Exalted apart from mortals. This holds true in non-combat as well; excellencies allow the Exalted to learn/recall more (Lore excellencies) and simply be better than mortals (Art, Performance, Occult, etc, etc.). Take away the excellencies, and all of a sudden, the Exalted aren't necessarily any better than a skilled mortal in many respects; after all, none of the Lore charms actually let you be a better scholar per se, they mainly deal with Wyld Shaping. Excellencies let you be generally good at the skill, which can be very handy if the charm set doesn't actually address things you want to do with a skill. (I've run into this in a couple of skills.) Or really, all you want is to be generally good at the skill, and don't want the bells and whistles of going into the charm tree. (Presence, for Mirror, for example.)


The high DVs also are to set the Exalted apart from mortals; mortals simply don't have much hope of touching an Exalted. Lower the DV caps, and now the Exalted as a whole are not untouchable at all, which is at odds with the setting.


This is why I say that (for Exalted 2 & 1) the excellencies are built into the mechanical core and are what make Exalted truly powerful. Excellencies and high DVs are both important at setting the power level of Exalts vs. mortals, and Exalt vs. Exalt.
 
The problem I have with excellencies is that they are better than any other charm.


They kill any interest in combining charms that give you dice bonus.


And all your reasoning regarding armor doesn't hold, because what is true for attack is true for defense.


You just eliminate the space to use other charms.


The Lore argument is better, but Lore rolls are usually entirely arbitrary anyway, so not much changes.


Yes, it would reduce the power of the Exalts respect to other being.


It would also make the game more interesting than "I activiate Infinity and bang my 10 suxx against the wall enemy until it comes down".
 
The point about DVs still stands. For example, Malek has a terrible MDV of 5, on the very low end of Exalted MDV. Someone would have to be an expert in Presence or Performance (ie, Charisma 5, Presence 5, same App as Malek) in order to approach his crappy-for-an-Exalt MDV 50% of the time (ties go to defender), if there are no Excellencies to give them a boost. Against someone with a respectable MDV 7, you have to 1) be at least as good App, and with Chr 5, Presence 5, you are going to fail often. Even if you manage to apply your specialty, getting to 13d10, you still fail more than half the time, as the expectation is 6.5 and you have to get 8 successes to overcome the MDV 7.


Now look at the Presence tree. Aside from the Excellency, there are no charms that help you overcome an MDV, and yet pretty much all the charms depend on beating the target's MDV.


This is also true of the Investigation tree, and many other trees.


You are supposed to combo your "really neat charm" plus your excellency; the excellency to overcome the MDV, and the cool charm to do its stuff.


So unless you also mess with all the DVs, instead of making the cool charms get more use, you are actually severely undercutting their ability to be useful.
 
Yeah, I'm with Kacie and Cyl. Removing excellencies wont help anything, as they're a very important part of the game engine.
 
We all agree that social combat is a huge cluster fuck.


Anyway, I'm not too invested in the idea.


What about just removing Infinite and equivalents?
 
That would also be a problem when you run in to characters like the Mask of Winters or a Sidereal/Lunar/Dragon Blooded Elder. You need all those dice in order to overcome their DVs. Otherwise if you have to pay for them each time, you're going to get mote-tapped at record speed.
 
Exactly as JayTee says.


Scene-longs and Infinites are how Solars are supposed to conserve motes and win against Big Bads.
 
You think the Mask does not have Infinite?


And between Fury and their own Infinite Lunars can get up there without too much sweat.
 
Xarvh, I'll be straight with you. You're taking the exact opposite approach that I've seen literally every other GM take when it comes to excellencies. Whenever a houserule about excellencies comes up all of them have chosen different ways of giving them out for free.


This is because they are both insanely practical, to the point where it's hard to have an Exalted-level character concept and function without them, and very boring. Seriously, motes for dice? It's the most uninteresting idea you can have for a charm. But they're still a key component to how the entire engine works, since it's initial launch as Exalted 2.0. Even when the scroll of Errata came out, they kept excellencies because of how important they were.





Please don't touch the excellencies or their enhancers, they're too game-critical.
 
If you guys want to stick with excellencies, no problem, but honestly, I don't give a fuck about what every other GM on the planet and beyond does.
 
xarvh said:
every other GM on the planet and beyond does.
Click to expand...
I suddenly had an image of the Unconquered Sun as a GM at the Games of Divinity, with the Game themselves being an RPG, and the Maidens and Luna being the PCs


This would explain much.
 
Well I don't want excellencies, but the truth is we need them.


I agree that they are anti climatic, poorly handled and absolutely flavorless and I have nothing but despise for Infinite (Ability) Mastery... but those charms "correct" a flaw in the system.


A syndrome well known to all who have played a lot of WW games over the past 23 years aka "the next one's gotta be bigger than the one that came before".


If you have a 1st ed book somewhere in your shelf or in your hard drive, just take a look at Mask of Winters' stats... and then compare them with 2e... and there you go, you know what I'm talking about.


The thing is, exalted mechanics are based on the human scale - which is a huge mistake if you ask me - and also has to deal with Galactus-like entities.


Confrontation should be measured by dramatic intensity, not the number of dice rolled.


But unless you want to review the whole mechanics, the only thing I can propose for now instead of excellencies is the awesomeness multiplier.


You don't need much to put it in place... just get rid of excellencies and their extensions and simply consider that each stunt die earned multiply the total number of all successes obtained on any given roll.


Essence determines the maximum number of multiplying effects earned through a stunt, and if used to defend oneself, the multiplier can only be used to reduce any stunt effect from the attacker (i.e. if you beat the DV naturally - outside of charms of course - you hit the target).


4 successes (which is close to legendary in mortal standards) on a 10d roll can become 8 at essence 2, 12 at essence 3, 16 at essence 4, 20 at essence 5 if the player's performance is considered fit by the ST.


Essence and imagination would be the only limits to what an exalt can do and they could punch a Deathlord in the nose if they wanted to.


Dunno if one would need to pay motes and xp to unlock and enjoy that kind of effect, probably yeah, but obviously you'd have to set some new rules about stunts & description.


Part of the trick would also be to roll first and make the description after and declare what level of stunt you're looking for.


And if you're afraid it's going to go too far you can still use the old limits: no more than x bonuses per roll


- for solars/abies : att+ab


- for lunars: att


- for siddies: ess


- for DBs: 1/2 att + ab


That way a solar with dex 5 MA 5 rolling 4 suxx on his attack roll could only go up to 10 + number of suxx rolled.


Having a greater essence allows you to become more awesome (provided you put your fingers and mind to good use) and help reducing the mitigation of your multiplier through defensive stunts.


And PDs still apply... of course :D
 
In response to Xarvh's earlier question about parallel threads and Siham's activities, I think I'm going to continue crafting stuff in order to make Cross more capable. Probably some genesis goods to sell to the other nations next door (but with a deliberate half life to make sure they're dependent on us for the goods, thus boosting everyones resource dots to 5 as they pay through the nose for it! :D )
 
Dunno. Do we really need a scene for that?


Maybe Kalak inhaling nitrogen and laughing hysterically while buzzing a saw?


@JayTee: don't feel constrained to Cross, I want you where the action is.


Your mad science won't be penalized, I assume that you can do both.
 
I don't necessarily feel "constrained" to Cross, it just makes sense to me for Siham to lock himself in the lab until he's turned Cross in to a Magitech/Genesis utopia.


That said, if I can do two threads at once, I have no problem with that. (assuming that's what you meant by "both")
 
It's what I meant.


Your call, really.


Depending on Norts, we can have a Cross thread with Mad Science + Mad Surgery.


Also, Feantary, before we move with the surgery you have to tell me the stats of your new arm.
 
In that case, sure. The Science! Thread was fun, and I didn't get half of what I wanted to do done in it :D
 
I'm so glad I decided to see if the bloom was fit for human consumption or not.


EDIT: @Kacie: Now might be an excellent time to bring up the cancer meat idea we discussed waaaayyy back in the day when I first joined. ;)
 
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