I can't seem to find a good answer to this

Mr.E

Mr.E

New Member
Hi there, I've skimmed / lurked at the forum for a bit, and I'm rather new to Exalted; I have only played in one game before, if you recall MasterOfMalfeasence's game where the PC's killed the Perfect, that was us, but, I digress, so I transgress into my point.


I am new, and I have people interested in playing, with my little core of knowledge, I am the most knowledgeable on Creation and what not, so, I'm probably going to ST. So, my question, how do you scale / design encounters and difficulties for rolls. I've done most of my RPing in D20, so, I'm still pretty new at STing. Is there is a scale? Or do I have to build everything from scratch and add up the EXP until I match the characters? I'm not sure what to through at PC's as far as NPC's strengths / EXP, and social challenge levels.


Is there something I skipped in the corebook for this? Maybe someone can toss me some ideas, links to posts I missed in the forums, or other websites? Really, before I completely design a campaign, I want an idea of how to do it! Thanks in advance.
 
Hmmm, lets just as a easy question.  lol  Take everything I say with a grain of salt, because everyone has their version of the right answer.


This is not an easy problem to address.  Lets assume that you are dealing with Solars.  The write ups in the core book give some starting values to work with.  A good rule of thumb with a fight with a lot of extras is that if the player does three health levels past armor, he's dead.  The typical Dragon Blood will not be a match for a Solar unless he's fairly expierenced.  Also, DB's rarely work alone.  If you are using second eddition stuff, there is a bunch of charms that they have that work better in groups.


Other opponents, such as Lunars or Abyssals, are a tougher fight.  If you are using 2eddition, the Storytellers Handbook has a variety of charms for the Abyssals to be able to put one into play.  The Lunar's book is filled with good stuff.  Either type of Exalt are about on scale with a typical Solar.


Without more info on your game, I can't give you to much more adivce.  Hopefully it helps.  If you tell us some more, we can give you some more depth to what you want to do.
 
You have to make it up. That is the bad news. The good news is, you do not have to look at xp or anything, you are the storyteller. Give the antagonists what they need for the story to be cool and them to be a challenging oppositon. If your abyssal opponent is supposed to be kickass at bureaucrazy and martial arts and you have a bureaucrat and a martial artist in a group he will need double experience to be a challenge to both characters.


I usually use anathema, which can be found at http://anathema.sourceforge.net/ and tremendously speeds up the creation process of NPCs. Just choose the option "convert to experienced" and you are free to give the NPC whatever he or she needs. It calculates defense values and attack pools for you, too. One of the members around here even has a file with all equipment for the program, but I forgot who the person was. It is awesome, get it. Somebody will know ^^


You are in for a learning experience. Tailoring stuff to your group is not easy. I suggest you make notes about what charms they have so you are always on the edge and know what will challenge them and what will overpower them.


Welcome to the board.
 
Sherwood's dead on the ball.  But another thing you could do, is toss out a small group of mortal mooks as first-wave cannon-fodder (say one for each player), backed by maybe a DB or 2.  This shouldn't pose too much of a problem for a typical group of celestial exalted characters.  


From there, you can begin to gauge just how much tougher  the opponent's can get.  Hungry Ghosts, for example, maybe a bit much for a starting group, but tossing one or two out after the first couple of game sessions can give you a taste for what a nastier opponent might do to some of the players.  Note, that Hungry Ghosts make for excellent adversaries later, as well.  They're alot beefier than typical run of the mill mortals, they're expendable... and worse (for the players), they scale.  The Hungry Ghost of important people (like nobles or kings) are actually a bit meaner, and those that come from Exalted can be even nastier.  The 1e Abyssal book goes into depth a bit on how Hungry Ghosts can scale with the Essence of their original body.  Did I mention that since many players conveniently forget to properly dispose of the dead, that having them attacked by the Hungry Ghost of a vengeful DB they slaughtered earlier is a particularly mean (and cannon) thing to do?


Once you get a good grasp of what you can throw at people, you can begin creating bigger baddies to challenge them.  Powerhouse Essence 5-ish Chimera for the Essence 3 to 4 group of 4+ players, for example.  Or another fiendish example, a group of about 3 Nemessaries, in a crypt filled with dead bodies.  It may take your players some time to realize what exactly is going on, if they don't have some sort of Essence sight.   :twisted:
 
Keep a close eye on what your PCs capabilities are. For example, if they have perfect defenses, that requires different adversaries to be challenging. Conversely, if they lack some ability, you can exploit this. I accidentally nearly killed my whole party with a single semi-powerful ghost, because it had the ability to attack while dematerialized, but none of the circle had bothered to learn charms to attack unsubstantial targets.


Also, a note about dragon-blooded: they are overall weaker than solars, but not immediately weaker. What I mean by this is that their ability to use reflexives without combos usually lets them go toe to toe with a solar of the same Essence level, right up until their essence pool runs out (which will happen long before the solar runs dry). Then they are really screwed. This takes a little getting used to when trying to tune the power level of a game.


One other thing to track (although this mattered more in 1E than Second Edition) is to know exactly how your NPCs defend. Do they parry, dodge or soak? Some combination? Answering that single question ahead of time will lead to development of better adversaries and will save time during play.
 
Yeas...DBs are tac nukes...they can be really effective, but have a short fuse. Once they're out...they're out. It's likely they'll start off with a bit of probing to get a feel whether they can get their attacks past a foe's defense...since they can't afford to waste a heavy combo on someone with perfect defenses...so they need to learn if their enemy HAS such. Of course, this is basic combat planning for anyone, but it's more important with DBs, who have small essence pools. Still, don't discount what they can do before that pool runs out...I've seen groups of experienced Lunars and Solars taken down by SMALLER groups of less experienced DBs because they underestimated them.


One important thing is definatelly to scale things a bit to the group...or if you don't, make sure there is some way for them to realize when they are outclassed outside of people dying. As for overestimating foes...well, occasionally it can be amusing when someone realizes they just used their uber combo of bloody death on an extra...and the real threat is the fellow over to the left...oh wait, right behind you now...oh, shit.


Hungry ghosts too much for a starting group?! Of what? Db's Lunar, Solars, Heroic mortals...uhm, yeah. I've yet to see a group that couldn't handle the basic hungry ghosts. Now, a hungry ghost of some long dead powerful person from the First Age...that's another question. But even heroic mortals can often handle a similar size group of hungry ghosts...if they use their heads...and have say, armor and weapons. Sure, a group of peasants is likely screwed...but even a group of armed heroic mortals should do pretty darn well...more if they include Terrestrial Martial Artists or Thaumaturgists.
 
I used to fidget with numbers trying to find the perfect balance, then decided to screw it and throw what felt like fun at them. Sometimes they waffle-stomp it. Sometimes it smacks them around and they have to regroup, replan, and retry.


They're Solars, if they can't overcome something, they should have access to something that can, or at least be able to go looking and try to gain access.
 
Also, Exalted's mechanics have a couple of situations where a single point in something might move an attack from "has no effect" to "deals fatal levels of damage", with no intermediate steps.


As an example, consider someone with a high DV but a low(ish) soak (call him Schmendrick), up against a bunch of adversaries with a high damage weapons (grand daiklaves, say). For the sake of the example, assume all the adversaries are equal, except that each one has an attack pool one die higher than the next. You might expect that, as the attack pools get gradually larger, the damage done would also get gradually larger, but it doesn't work like that in this case. Instead, there is a big leap from "none" to "lots". Person A can't beat Schmendrick's DV, no damage. B (with one more die), same story. And so on. As the opposition gets better, eventually one will have an average roll that beats Schmendrick's DV and will completely ravage him. Adversaries prior may get lucky and do the same, but there will probably not be one that does just a little damage. In this case, it's likely to be all or none.


This sort of "quantum leap" effect makes gradually scaling the power of your NPCs harder that it might sound. It also can cause issues you don't expect when, say, an NPC tuned to fight PC A (perhaps twinked to get through A's insanely high soak) ends up attacking PC B.


Lastly, something more esoteric: Exalted has a number of ways for munchkin players to devise attacks that might seem game-ruining. This is sort of in theme for the game, but if it becomes a big issue, before doing anything drastic to the rules or the player, consider using opponents with counterattacks, particularly those that can redirect or reflect incoming damage. In many cases, counterattacks play merry hell with a lot of munchkin strategies. (One example of this is the "infinite rate" rules hack.) Won't always help, but it's worth considering if you have such a problem in your game. Likewise, consider the counterattacks your PCs might make.
 
my ST is currently fiddling with SAS it's apparently a white-wolf pdf that helps with that.


Also, my ST Bill (who can be found at the Exalted Wiki by his name) has some interesting concepts on a character's capability. You determine their best roll, say... Dex and Performance are both at 5, and those are the character's highest abilities. This generally signifies this is their best action, and the option of failure in minimal, at a ST one would paraphrase how they succeed without the need for rolling dice, they have a 10 die pool, unless it's something out outrageously hard they're going to pass with at least a moderate success. For combat it's similar, you take their best roll, say their Dex is 5, their melee is only a 3, that's an 8 die pool, generally they're supposed to get only so many successes on average. You take that average and make it the opponent's DV, and then they'll have an "average" chance to hit.


Off the top of my head I can't recall the "average success amount per die" or what-have-you, but I know it's out there and one can find it.
 
Two dice are, on average, equivalent to one success. Demonstration of this (sort of) here.


I like your ST's approach, BTW.
 
SAS seems useful, if only they had Exalted! How sad.


But from their outline, I get a little bit of an idea what it takes.


The only ST I have ever had, never had characters rolled up for NPC's, he always just had rough ideas in his head for things such as "NPC's name is XX, XX has about 50 total essence to spend, he's a water aspect monk, his anima looks like this... his charms are some what like this" and then they'd grab a rough dice pool "his melee attack is about 12 dice" and sometimes he'd go "oh no, he's going to use an excellence, 'xx's anima glows brigther!', and then he'd scoop up some more dice" So, you are are suggesting something similar for most combats? Just fudge the stats a bit? Adjust up and down dynamically?


I also like the idea of creating the average defenses off of "average" PC stat lines.


I may have missed emphasizing a point that I'm looking for, I'm looking something that I can go "well, based on the fact that have 15 exp; they should be able to match challenges similar to this" If you play D20 systems, I'm looking for a way to tell a challenge rating basically. I'm looking for a way to know, if, what I make is appropriate for them to face just by looking at the stats and numbers.


Can anyone toss me an example encounter they have used? I don't mean just combat alone here either. I mean, trying to haggle with a merchant over a price (I guess that really only applies to recent Exalts, or heroic humans,) trying to talk the PC's way past a guard, a number of success to track the escaping slavers into the woods.


I do appreciate all of the help and advice so far! I haven't gotten to play with the Anathema website yet, but, I will be tonight! (It's after 1am here already, got a few hours of work here with the web :wink: )
 
Can anyone toss me an example encounter they have used?
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You might take a look at the ones in Forgotten Suns. It's First Edition, though. Looking at them now, the encounters in there might be a bit on the weak side, generally speaking, especially if you have more than two or three players. The Tyrant Lizards, for example, look scary but got totally shredded when I ran it.
 
White Wolf's intro adventure has some encounters that are fairly well balanced for the pregens it uses. My players are a bit more tactically minded, so I had to bump up the numbers here and there.
 
The core book has a small section where it talks about hazard ratings for various foes (pg. 247). It isn't extremely useful though.


The problem with any sort of challenge rating system for a White Wolf game is that progression is not linear. You can give the same pregen to two different people and ten sessions later have one character that's a combat beast and another that likes to build things.


The only way to truly gauge something's challenge level is in comparison to the PCs for that campaign.
 
wordman said:
Looking at them now, the encounters in there might be a bit on the weak side, generally speaking, especially if you have more than two or three players. The Tyrant Lizards, for example, look scary but got totally shredded when I ran it.
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Yeah, Tyrant Lizards aren't that tough. I ran a combat with a couple of Tyrant Lizards - and Wyld Tainted Tyrant Lizards at that, so they were a bit tougher than even normal Tyrant Lizards - and my groupwiped the floor with them. Having said that, the lizards did meet a full circle. But there you go. It's been my experience that the opponents, if facing Celestial Exalts (and by Celestial Exalts, I only have experience with Solars), only have a chance if they can channel Essence. At least in a straight up fight. Mortals can make excellent adversaries if they're played smart and are able to pick their battlefields. It does take time to be able to do this. I haven't had any experience in doing this yet. But if you're talking a straight up fight, an opponent needs Essence to be a challenge.
 
I think I have seen the Hazard Rating before. Does anyone have any other general guidelines that they use? I have seen what 3 solars could to several Imm. Monks and DB's with a cast of extra... the solars were exhausted, but, everyone else was dead.


The players that will be here, have 1. Never used Story Teller before 2. Have glanced through the rulebook for Exalted. So, they don't know too much yet, I don't want to just have them being chased by the Hunt at every turn. Because then, it's really just like "OK, next big goal is in that city, because we can't stay here, they're after us" It's a lot of just going from city to city, or safehouse to safehouse; until they get enough EXP to just trash a 'normal' hunt. Then, it becomes a race for power and EXP. That's why I'm trying to find ways that I can form actual encounters, and make things other than just the Hunt coming after them! =)
 
Hungry ghosts too much for a starting group?! Of what? Db's Lunar, Solars, Heroic mortals...uhm, yeah. I've yet to see a group that couldn't handle the basic hungry ghosts. Now, a hungry ghost of some long dead powerful person from the First Age...that's another question. But even heroic mortals can often handle a similar size group of hungry ghosts...if they use their heads...and have say, armor and weapons. Sure, a group of peasants is likely screwed...but even a group of armed heroic mortals should do pretty darn well...more if they include Terrestrial Martial Artists or Thaumaturgists.
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Please note, that I said 'maybe'.  I never said they're definitively too much.  I've seen plenty of starting players capable of taking down hungry ghosts with no problms.  And I've seen one almost kill an Essence 4 character with little to no problem. :roll:   All I was commenting, was generally they're better than a typical 'extra', and can be quite lethal to a group that's not ready for one.
 
Flyck said:
All I was commenting, was generally they're better than a typical 'extra', and can be quite lethal to a group that's not ready for one.
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True, but that can be said for just about anything. If the group isn't prepared for a threat, that threat has the potential to be quite lethal.....
 
Like housecats vs unarmored Sorceror's in the middle of a spell. ;) Even Exalted spellcasters must be careful about the house cats... :P
 
Like housecats vs unarmored Sorceror's in the middle of a spell. ;) Even Exalted spellcasters must be careful about the house cats... :P
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EVERYONE must be careful about housecats, even the unconquered sun.
 
... these aren't shape-shifted Lunar house-cats we're discussing is it? Hmm... maybe I should try that.... I once used a house cat that could magically change into a dire tiger... that was D&D though...


Before I degenerate into madness, and join the rest of the crazy folks here.... is this any other advice you guys can offer? Any at all?


I think I am at the very least going to have them run through Return to the Tomb of 5 Corners. Stunt the heck out of them, and blow essence like mad, so they're all starry-eyed and like "Wow!! Cool!!" then, shift them into a custom Heroic Mortal campaign =D X.X Evil! I was going to make them Exalt during the course of the campaign, into something I see fitting as it all occurs.


What is the status quo for someone Exalting? What is the process (behind the scenes, and in front)? Should I just describe it, and then go "OK, you're now an XX type exalt, you can now spend your EXP like an Exalt"? or, should I give them extra dots and stuff, and maybe starting charms? Maybe not give them any experience, or just a little bit, and when they burst into happy demi-god mode, go "Congrats, here's 30 exp, go sit in the corner until you've used that." Would it be too off to have them Exalt one at a time? would through the power balance of PC's off?


What about reading material? I have the RT5C, and the Corebook, and ST Companion... anything else recommended to start with?


As always, thanks!
 
Exalting in play is covered in the main book, I think.


Essentially, you instantly give them whatever they need to be equivalent to a starting Exalt. So they generally get their starting allotment of Charms right away (if there's multiple templates for a starting character, like for DBs, use the weakest; usually superior starting templates are the result of additional post-Exaltation training), along with a bunch of free Caste/Aspect/Favoured Ability dots and some free Attribute dots. There may also be a limited number of Backgrounds they can get for free on Exaltation as well, such as Breeding if they're a Terrestrial.
 
What I was thinking about doing... was looking at Template E (Exalted) and Template H (Heroic Mortal).... E-H = B (Bonus -What they get with the exaltation,) regardless of what they currently have in dots and such. Make sense?
 
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