Newbie Questions - Take #1

[Midwinter]

Hi guys. I've been lurking for a while and taking in as much as I can in preparation for a new, and slightly overwhelming, Exalted game I'm STing soon. I have a few, possibly very simple, questions I was hoping you could help with.


1) Say a character wants to talk to a few village folk, ask around for local information, listen to rumours and that sort of thing. I'm guessing this wouldn't be resolved with social combat but just a straightforward, say, Charisma+Socialise roll?


2) Many examples of Stunts I've seen involve the player describing the death of their opponent. However, since the to-hit and damage dice are, of course, rolled afterwards... there's a chance the opponent won't die. Do you stick with this and kill off said npc/mook (depending on strength), or have a "but no, the wound is not as fatal as it seems!" moment, or try to have people keep stunt descriptions, well, non-fatal describing in the first place?


3) People pray to spirits, spirits (as is my understanding) receive some essence, happiness ensues. Let's say Mr X prays for one hour a day to Spirit #1. If he now starts praying an extra one hour a day to Spirit #2, is the essence Spirit #1 receives reduced? i.e. is there a finite amount of essence a normal person can pray-away per day?


Thanks in advance, more questions to come later no doubt

 

[Jukashi]

1) Just a roll will do. Social combat is more about debate and persuasion rather than just listening for news. In fact, the way you describe it, I'd make it a Perception + Socialise roll.


2) Describing the death of your opponent is really something that can only be done with extras, or in a similar certain-death situation. Otherwise, to prevent the retconning that rolling would cause and the interruption of the combat's pace that that would create, ask your players not to describe death so definitively in their stunts.


3) Naw. People can pray all over the place! In fact, the description of the Priest merit in 1st Edition suggests that there are even "for-hire" priests who wander around seeing to the religious needs of whichever god makes it worth their while. The only limitation is that there are only a certain number of hours in a day that you can spend worshipping. Otherwise, though, you can do what you like. I don't think there are any real monotheistic religions in Creation.

 

[Sherwood]

Jukashi pretty much wrapped that up.  Other than that, all I have to say is, "Welcome to the ECR!"

 

[Flagg]

2) Many examples of Stunts I've seen involve the player describing the death of their opponent.

I don't favor describing any RESULT of a stunt. Players should describe their ACTIONS; The dice and the ST are there to determine the OUTCOME.

 

[Jeppe]

Flagg: I'll second that.


As to the first question you asked, concerning Social Combat, I'd say you don't roll at all. Generally, when the information is trivial, and/or well-known and the guy you're talking to is an NPC, there's no need for a roll, just give your players the information needed for them to make the story interesting.


I haven't been using Social Combat much, so I'm no expert on the matter, but it seems to me that Social Combat is used only when you want a scene played out with a random outcome. In combat, for instance, it's no fun telling in detail and subsequently rolling in order to kill an extra. That's only done for the big, important NPCs, where the result of the fight determines the direction of the remainder of the story. Same thing goes for Social Combat. Only use it when the outcome has a significant effect on the story.


When this is not the case, simply lay aside the dice and roleplay it, and let your players have the information they need. That's how I play, anyhow.

 

[Jakk Bey]

Bingo and thirding.


wordman put out a call for sample stunts a while back. There are examples there. You Stunt the action, HOW  the character is doing things, and the intended effect. Whether or not that happens is still up to the dice.


Stunts are negotiations between players and Storytellers. How a player can affect the dramatic flow. They aren't declarations of what will happen, but what they're hoping will happen, and how to break some of the rules to do so in a dramatic fashion. Stress that to your players. And if the Stunt doesn't work for you, don't allow it, or ask that it be worded differently.

 

[Fruan]

A useful grammatical tool to put together stunts when you have a cool outcome in mind is framing things in an intentionality; Describe what your character is doing, and add a little aside as to what it is they are trying to do. As always with stunts, short and sweet is better than baroque and stilted, and the intentionality technique is really a bit of a cheat, so don't rely on it.


For example (and forgive my lameness of example, please) rather than "I swing my sword at his neck in a decapitating blow that sends my opponent's head spinning through the air", which would break the flow of combat if, say, you failed to actually do any damage with that attack, something like "I swing my sword at his neck in a mighty blow, hoping against hope that this will remove the vile cur's head" works narratively if the attack is fatal or not.

 

[Jakk Bey]

See, for me, that wouldn't even qualify as a Stunt. Great, you cut a head off. Wow. That was amazing, eh?  


A Stunt, is the blow decapitates a foe, and sends the head careening into advancing force, the face of their Captain screaming striking fear and freezing them with fear.


Stunts are cheap ways to reproduce effects that Charms could pull off, but with no where near the consistency or reliability, but a a good Stunt could have a character leaping from treetop to treetop, without the aid of Charm, cleaving a ballista bolt in twain as a parry without a Charm, or hitting a dozen Extras with a single attack. And you don't have to just Stunt attacks, but likewise you can use Stunts on other actions as well, again, they might not work, but that they're trying to do more than say, "Imma rolling my attack".

 

[Fruan]

See' date=' for me, that wouldn't even qualify as a Stunt. Great, you cut a head off. Wow. That was amazing, eh?  [/quote']
Ditto that. Hence my apology for lameness; I was too lazy to come up with a better example - I was just trying to show how an outcome dependent stunt can easily be turned into an outcome independent stunt.


However, by the book,  anything more interesting than "I make an attack" is a one die stunt. Most experienced players (like you and I) will want to set the bar a little higher of course, but for groups new to Exalted it probably isn't such a bad idea. 2 die stunts of course need to be much more interesting.

 

[Sherwood]

My friend Patrick was running a Lunar in my last game.  I had them running thru some tunnels and up against a nasty critter when he described a awesome strike.  He jumped up into the air, spun around to strike the top of the cave with her feet, then push off with a massive Essence-fueled strike down onto the critter's head.  I gave him two bonus dice, and in that one stirke he decapitated it and feasted on its heart.  It felt so much better than "I use my Daiklave and this Charm to do lots of damage to it.  Did I kill it?"

 

[Mr.E]

I just find that last line amusing, "did I kill it?"


I often end up as a 'fighter' in most parties, regardless of genre, just because, it's easy to play, archetypes are common, it fits my personality, and every group needs AT LEAST one. That happens to be one of my favorite lines "did I kill it?!" I hate when someone kill-steals from me with the finishing blow.  :cry:

 

[Vanman]

I gave him two bonus dice, and in that one stirke he decapitated it and feasted on its heart.  It felt so much better than "I use my Daiklave and this Charm to do lots of damage to it.  Did I kill it?"

I don't mean to nitpick but.......I'm going to nitpick.





Technically, you can't just feast on any critter you kill in combat in order to gain its shape. You have to ritually hunt it, complete with chanting, candles and whatnot. Otherwise, I think Lunars would just get too stupid if they could eat the heart of every critter he kills in every combat. See pp. 128-129 of the MoEP: Lunars for further clarification. If that's what you allow in your game, more power to you. But, canonically, it doesn't quite work that way.....

 

[Persell]

You can feast on a heart killed in normal combat, it just doesn't count as a ritual killing. It doesn't look like he had the kill count for that (although it may have been part of a hunt and so counted).


We go by a strict book interpretation for how many dice a stunt is worth. More than "I attack" is 1-die. More than "I attack" and including the scenery is 2-dice. Everyone agreeing it was cool is 3-dice.


We've never had a 3-die stunt.

 

[Mr.E]

I agree with the books version of stunts... except on two notes.


1. It takes a little more than just saying "I attack it" it get a 1-die stunt, that's just too easy. But, doing something a little extra, "I whip the spear around in a circle, then slap the butt end to the ground to make a trip attempt" that's more like a 1-die. Instead of "I'll try to crack his ribs with the hammer" nope, no dice for you.


2. If the stunt is really complex or hard, they can earn 3 dice, even if everyone doesn't go "wow," however, they are still rare, and every is usually watching when the guy does it   whether say say "wow that's cool" or not.