[Legends of the North] (Dreamweaver's Hut) To 2.5 or not to 2.5 that is the question

[Feantari]

Ok, as you may or may not know the developers and others have been working hard to try to fix some things about the exalted system. The forum page is here.


If we do go for it it won't be until after the weekend because I'm sure we all need time to read through everything. There would also be a chance to rework charms and such if there were big changes to them.


Yes, eventually means, I probably want to use this system sometime, but after people play around with it more.


Yes, soon means, I want to start using this system ASARP.


No means no foo.

 

[rcuhljr]

Sweet Jesus the exalted site thanks section is an assault on dignity. Here's your greasemonkey fix.


http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/128494


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[Feantari]

Ok, but what do you think about using 2.5? :-P

 

[rcuhljr]

I'll read the errata this weekend and get back to you but generally speaking I'm always in a 'use the newest possible' camp.

 

[NoisyCricket]

I am a fan of the new rules in general. That said, here are my specific thoughts:


General updates: There's a lot of little "We forgot to put this in before, so here's rules for it", such as Coral Snake and Arrow Frog venom. There are also a lot of "Hey, there are actually two sets of rules, use this one, not the other one" that got clarified (such as the Blindness Penalties).


Anima flares: This is a neat little update, nothing amazing, but I like it.


Stunts - Getting stunts at the end of the action is fine, though I suppose it might cause some weird timing issues in edge cases. I approve of changes like this that remove the temptation to stunt every little thing to get back a mote. I also really like that you get the reward whether you succeed or not.


Thaumaturgy - Not really helpful for most of us I think? That said, it's an alright rule I guess.


Defend Other - Clarification on perfects with greater than instant duration is welcome. I can see some abuse if that rule isn't applied.


Minimum damage - Welcome to lessening lethality. This also makes soak a lot more useful (and I believe this gives a decent boost to Ox-Body as well). I am also a fan of this giving Overwhelming tagged weapons a longer lifespan.


Changes to Social Combat - So now I actually get some benefit from a 20 success roll on a social attack? This I like. This also pushes social combat into a faster conclusion. The downside that I'm seeing with this is that we might run into feeling railroaded in social combat a lot more quickly against really focused characters. Natural Mental influence change is pretty awesome. It takes away some potential cheese. UMI change is a really good one. It makes Obvious social charms a little less...odd...


Charm Minima - Kind of important for some of the temporary competence boosts that are around at the Essence 5 level.


Emotion Keyword - This seems relatively straightforward


Holy Keyword - Seems like a loophole-closer.


Charm Roll-offs - This was at least partially slipped in to Glories, but I'm glad to see it out in plain sight.


Impossible actions - I thought this was already a rule, but it might have just been a suggestion from a long time ago by R. Borgstrom. Definitely a good rule to prevent the nasty trick that brought this to light.


Temporary Health Levels - Seems like a good point of clarification, as I can see these being a lot more prominent with 2.5


Combos - This seems like one of the biggest Sacred Cows they grilled up. It's probably also the one that lots of groups houseruled to one extent or another. It's interesting to note how many charms had to be revised just because of this change (there were scattered innate ability creating charms everywhere in charmsets that had to be altered to be worthwhile).


Equipment bonuses and no more perfect equipment - My guess is that this was a change to reduce some edge cases where silly amounts of bonuses were possible without charm uses. It probably hurts mortals and DBs the most.


Weapons - The piercing change is interesting. I believe it was done to help make soak beefier. Requiring Thrusting to do Piercing damage is a little different, not sure if I like it or not yet. Shields being weapons is alright. I don't specifically see a reason for it save to possibly streamline some charms (so now you can smack people with a shield and enhance it with melee charms). The overwhelming tag being added to all of the artifacts is a good change.


Armor - Another really good change, dropping the cost of artifact armors is another almost universal houserule I've seen.


MM Bonuses and Hearthstones - These seem to mostly be some updates on terminology as well as some tweaks to MM bonuses.


Zenith Anima Power - Needed to stay in line with the other Minimum damage changes.


Twilight Anima Power - This seems...alright? The original was overpowered, and more so with the changes they've made to the combat engine. I'm not sure I particularly like this anima power, but I don't see it being an issue.


New Mote weirdness - There are now a new type of mote that you can only use for committing to artifacts...which fade at the end of the scene. They seem really weird, and I personally don't find them all that useful just from a glance. At best, they seem to allow you to haul around more artifacts (which are all super heavy if you aren't attuned to them...) and use them in a battle...then drop attunement immediately after.


Stop Hitting Yourself - Lots of charms now have the "This doesn't work if you try to game the charm by hurting yourself or having a friend hurt you without intending to kill you" rider.


Solar Charms (focusing on ones that I care about/have some knowledge of)


Ability Essence Flow - I enjoy being able to bend dice caps.


Item-Creating Charms - I like how these have been standardized. The old version (definitely for the melee charm), could allow someone to min-max these in horrible, horrible ways. Having them just be artifacts was a really good idea.


Perfect Defenses - Minimum damage changes, soak being buffed, and PD costs being more than doubled seems to be the trifecta of 2.5. Of all of them, the PD change seems to be the most arbitrary and band-aid-like. That said, there is now much more incentive to let through one or two attacks, soak down to one die of damage, and conserve motes for longer defenses or offense. I'm not totally sure how this will shake out, and this change is the primary 'not sure' in the whole set of changes, and more than likely the one that will get modified due to playtesting feedback in the coming weeks.


Melee - There's an interesting trend in the Extra Actions charms to change them to be similar to extra actions but not quite. I'm not sure how I like this, but some of the specific changes in Melee were good (yay getting rid of two different ways to do extra attacks).


Resistance - This tree has become so much better. I hated the speedbumps before (really, let's have a charm that sets your hardness to 8 against one attack? >.>). Spirit-Strengthens the Skin is one of several charms I noticed that now deals with post-soak damage instead of raw damage. Iron Skin Concentration is almost a mini-perfect, since it removes anything without the Overwhelming tag as a threat if you have a high enough soak (and you're in the Resistance tree...). Adamant Skin Technique is probably the least-hurt of all of the Solar Perfects, since its cost was raised relatively less than the others.


Ghost-Eating Technique - This seems like a weird change. That said, it does seem to be in keeping with their general toning down of essence regen in combat.


Dragon-Blooded - Not much here that I can really comment on. I do feel bad that they lost their trick of free-reflexives, though I suppose they gained a bit with free combos of all types?


Lunars - There are some interesting Defend Other bits in here. I don't know how much is new, but I'm not much with Lunars generally...


Sidereals - I like the Astrology bits. I kind of like the whole 'the maidens can't shut down your powers' change. The Fate keyword being removed seems okay, but there's probably some consequences I don't know about. In general, I can see why you would use some of their charms now, so I would say the change overall seems good. Their Defend Other charm that lets them use Dodge DV is interesting, especially how it works with Avoidance Kata.


Abyssals - I like the section on redemption, especially the Monstrance explosion.


Infernals - Nothing here seems surprising except for So Speaks Yozi's change. There are more charms like it that I recall seeing in my read-through, and I think they'll be welcome changes for most players.


Alchemicals - I really can't comment here, I don't recall enough of their charmset.


The Fair Folk - I glanced a bit at the manual here, and the changes seem interesting and fairly useful. I would want to hear from someone who played a Fair Folk though.


Dreams of the First Age:


General Comments - I really like the few comments in the charms that hint as to why the Usurpation might have happened. If someone ignores their Investigation charm, it's easy to see that they could be caught unawares. I also think that the overall epic and grand scope of the new and revised charms seem more appropriate than the ones they replaced.


Divine Transcendence of Ability - Yet another limitation-breaking charm. It's alright, but I'm not sure how much we need more of these save as neat little handwaves for getting Essence 6-7 charms.


Legend Lives On - This charm, and especially its War equivalent are interesting indicators of how the Primordial War effort wasn't stymied by a General's death.


That's about all I really can give a good comment on. My vote would be to incorporate a good chunk of 2.5, though I can see the Perfect Defense change being a little concerning without some crowdsourced playtesting.

 

[Tikor]

Yes, soon.

 

[Feantari]

Ok, it looks like we will move to this asap. Sorry you don't get anything for your free combos being poofed, but if you spent anything to buy more you can respend those. If you have any charms that were affected and you want to change let me know. I will say we officially change over Wednesday to give folks a chance to change things up if need be.


Pretty distracted today. I'll try to get to posts tonight. >.<

 

[uteck]

I think the changes are bit too late for me to really get worked up over them since I am more interested in running or playing Exalted using FATE rules. The errata highlights just how rules heavy the game is and how little thought went into making the original.


But putting aside my previous thoughts, I like the changes that make the game less lethal since the death spiral was annoying for an epic game, but still had players be rather fragile. Hardness has been ignored in most games I have been in since it was irrelevant, but now it and Soak may serve a purpose now at less then obscene levels that were the norm.


I appreciate the errata team addressing the small annoyances like perfect weapons, artifact armor cost, and most importantly the Twilight anima banner, which never made sense for a craftsman to have. This new banner might come in handy in one game were the Twilight is trying to rebuild a first age city, so I need to see if the ST will accept the change.


Repairing a foundation as damaged and poorly designed as Exalteds is not an easy task without toppling the entire system built on, but it seems like they did a good job despite some obvious props put in place to hold things up.


I'll have to give the new errata a good read, but it would be nice if they could reissue a new core book with all this in place so I don't have to flip between the original and the errata.

 

[Feantari]

And you are posting in this forum because...?


Also it looks like I need my players to post your responses since any random person can vote in the poll.

 

[uteck]

And you are posting in this forum because...?
Also it looks like I need my players to post your responses since any random person can vote in the poll.

Opps! That is a problem with the new forum software, it is flooded with privet game posts that can't be filtered out when I check for new postings. I'll go away now.

 

[rcuhljr]

yes - soon

 

[Feantari]

As it has been decided, so does this thread close. Please convert to 2.5 if you haven't yet. I was start using it immediately.