Scared of Moonsilver Warstriders

P

Persell

Ten Thousand Club
I'm a big mecha fan (as if my Xenogears avatar didn't give it away), so I have an unhealthy interest in Warstriders, even though I'm convinced I'll never get to pilot one in-game. That said, I enjoy making them on occasion.


Recently, however, I realized how ridiculously broken a Moonsilver Colossus Warstrider could be, assuming Warstriders get the same Magical Material bonus that armor does. Colossus Warstriders usually have a mobility penalty of -10, to balance out how ridiculous they are; however, Moonsilver removes the mobility penalty, which means that a Moonsilver Colossus would have absolutely no downside! In fact, it'd be even more manuverable than the average Royal Warstrider, or even a Reinforced Buff Jacket!


How would you deal with a Moonsilver Warstrider (assuming you'd use them at all)? Would you just halve the mobility penalty, so that there's at least a bit of sluggishness from its sheer size? Or would you allow it to do all of the ridiculous acrobatic stunts that a Jade of Orichalcum Warstrider just wouldn't be capable of, thanks to the fluid nature of Moonsilver?
 
Even with the mobility handled, remember that there will be the size issues and weight as a balancing factor, still. Acrobatics are wonderful, but when what you land on can't handle the weight of a Warstrider...oops. Remember that pretty much any terrain you touch is effected as if you were using half your Strength+Athletics total trying to destroy it. In a Colosus, that's going to break rather a lot. You also have to manage the maintenance, which is huge for any Warstrider. Moonsilver also doesn't remove the huge fatigue either. While charms can help with such, fatigue is not fun. A Colosus also has pretty heavy commitment, more if you are cross-materialing it. (Though 5-fold Harmonic Regulators or whatever they are called can remove that, the disks that let you pretend to be another type for attunement purposes with an artifact) Does the Moonsilver armor ability rock? Yes. It lets you use your Dodge DV without penalty, which is a significant advantage in high essence combat. It also lets you move incredibly fast in that Warstrider. This alone can be a huge difference against any close combat based foes... strike and move, strike and move, and never let them close...forcing them to use Aim or Guard actions and wait for you...or just use a bow or some such and keep out of reach.


Of course, Warstriders must be used carefully in any game. Generally, I'm thinking its best that such only be used by PCs if most of the group has their own or something similar, as a Warstrider can really change combat, and having one person in a Warstrider and the rest outside such can be particullarly problematic. Some day I'd really like to actually run a Lookshy Warstrider chronicle, but not all in my group are likely to be interested...so the idea sits on a back burner.


Of course, it's always fun to fight a Warstrider armed boss type while outside such. The character name I use as my name here got to play around that way a bit. Taking blows from Warstrider weapons when outside such is less'n fun. Thank the Dragons for Five Dragon Fortitude, even if it eats motes like candy.
 
I'm really sure that it have been establisted that Warstriders only are made of a MM for the look, and that they doesn't get any MM bonus.
 
Looks like WW left it out of 2nd ed. Just read through the warstrider chapter of WotLA and couldn't find any mention, but it was written in one of the 1st ed books.
 
Alright, my bad y'all. Must have been an old house rule or something. I had to go all the way back to Bo3C, but on page 127 it says "Attunement to an Exalt of the appropriate type has the same effect on a warstrider weapon forged from the Five Magical Materials as it has on a normal-scale weapon."


Thats the only MM refrence I can find, so one can assume that both the warstrider itself and any weapons gain a MM bonus.
 
I can't give a page reference. As I remember it it was a dev on the ww forum that answered to a question about it, but I'm not 100% sure.
 
Whether or not it says it canonically shouldn't matter.  This is situation in which good judgement comes into play.  If you allow MM bonuses to affect Warstrider armor, consider the ramifications.  You make the bonuses provided by Moonsilver and, to a slightly lesser extent, Jade several magnitudes better than those provided by Orichalcum, Soulsteel, and Starmetal, which several inbalances things.  For me, it makes far less sense to allow MM bonuses for Warstrider armor than to simply not have them.  We've also adopted this stance in the Clashing Waves game on the Patternspider PbP site.
 
And the reference in the passage quoted said the MM bonus applies to warstrider weapons, not armor. There's a huge difference there. When wielding that weapon, you get the same benefits as if wielding a daiklaive. Otherwise, you treat the warstrider with all the appropriate benefits and drawbacks as detailed in WotLA.
 
fhgwdads05 said:
Whether or not it says it canonically shouldn't matter.
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Ok, so there are no rules and you no longer have a game.  Enjoy that one, as it makes absolutely no sense.
fhgwdads05 said:
This is situation in which good judgement comes into play.  If you allow MM bonuses to affect Warstrider armor, consider the ramifications.  You make the bonuses provided by Moonsilver and, to a slightly lesser extent, Jade several magnitudes better than those provided by Orichalcum, Soulsteel, and Starmetal, which several inbalances things.  For me, it makes far less sense to allow MM bonuses for Warstrider armor than to simply not have them.  We've also adopted this stance in the Clashing Waves game on the Patternspider PbP site.
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This is more sound than the rest of it.  Just reduce the bonuses for Jade and Moonsilver to half or something and leave it alone.  There's no reason to just junk the entire bonus because you don't like how one bonus works.
Besides, it say that Warstriders are esentially considered the same as armor IN EVERY WAY. (WotLA, page 138, Paragraph 2 and 3)
 
Ok' date=' so there are no rules and you no longer have a game.  Enjoy that one, as it makes absolutely no sense.[/quote']
Way to read what I wrote in the most literal sense possible. -_-


This is exactly what I was talking about.  There are numerous things written throughout all of the Exalted releases that are misguiding or ambiguous.  It's common knowledge (at least with nearly every roleplayer I've ever spoken with in some way) that one should not always apply the rules in the strictest, word-for-word way.  You need to use common sense and judgement when determining what these things mean.  The spirit of the rules should be most important, not "how does the text exactly say this."  

This is more sound than the rest of it.  Just reduce the bonuses for Jade and Moonsilver to half or something and leave it alone.  There's no reason to just junk the entire bonus because you don't like how one bonus works.
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Than what? My first sentence? :lol:  


Anyways, even reducing it to half still leaves you with an inbalance.  No, it honestly makes MORE sense for you to either keep it entirely or scrap it.  Since I think keeping it promotes and inbalance in the game and severe munchkinism, IMO the best idea is to remove it entirely.  BTW, I bet I can think of more logical, non-mechanical reasons to junk it than you can think of to simply have the bonus halved. :P

Besides' date=' it say that Warstriders are esentially considered the same as armor IN EVERY WAY. (WotLA, page 138, Paragraph 2 and 3)[/quote']
So? In that same area WotLA also says how they simply made Warstriders this way because it provided for a simple way to implement them into a game.  It goes on to mention how these rules listed here are pretty much bare-bones and how you should feel free to modify and/or rework those rules as you see fit.   :)


And... Just because they are considered the same as armor doesn't mean that the MM bonus should be given.  Hell, since we're on the topic of armor, you should consider the fact that nearly every other suit of Magitech armor listed earlier in WotLA doesn't apply MM bonuses (ie: Dragon Armor, which is strictly made out of Jade yet doesn't get an MM bonus).
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May I quote a wise player? Well, I will, nevertheless.

Flagg said:
"Common sense is supposed to guide interpretation of the rules." - Michael Goodwin, Exalted author
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fhgwdads05 said:
Arthur said:
May I quote a wise player? Well, I will, nevertheless.
Flagg said:
"Common sense is supposed to guide interpretation of the rules." - Michael Goodwin, Exalted author
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So THAT'S where I got that. I remember now. :P
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More or less. It's the description of the Mechanics subforum.
 
I'm running two games with lots of Warstriders, and I'd like to point out that I usually just don't give Warstriders the MM bonuses. For armour, yeah the bonuses are balanced. But for Warstriders? Nope, the Moonsilver one becomes ridiculously overpowered. So rather then tinker with them, I simply rule they don't apply, as with most forms of Magitech armour. It removes the vast disparity that would otherwise result, and there isn't a clear ruling with either way in the book itself.
 
Just to clarify, on the White Treatise pg 72 there is a spell called God-Forged Champion of War, that creates a common warstrider. It specifically says that the caster can spend 5 extra motes to use the material bonuses of the MM associated to his type of exaltation, and it also exemplifies a case where Lunars use it.
 
I too was about to suggest that if you do use MM bonuses for armor on Warstriders, that you just halve the Jade and Moonsilver.  Otherwise, as an ST, you can always buff the others.  Nothings to say that Orichalcum and Soulsteel wouldn't provide a much larger benefit to soak, if you the ST feels it needs to be done for balance.
 
I guess the big problem is that the bonuses from Starmetal, Soulsteel, and Orichalcum (SSO) ain't scalable like the Jade and Moonsilver (JM) are.


as the rules are now, the heavier the armor the less atractive it is to have it made of SSO.


Take a chainmail, JM are completely useless, and SSO are clearly prefered.


Take a Superheavy armour and it's the other way around.


If you wan't to "fix" the MM armour bonuses you will either have to make the bonus from SSO liquid like they are for JM, like for Starmetal: reduce postsoaked damage with 1 for each 10 lethal soak levels the armour have. For Soulsteel and Orichalcum: +2B/L (or what it is) soak and +1 hardness for each 10 soak levels the armour have.


Or make JM not liquid, like for Jade: -3 from fatigue. For Moonsilver: +3 mobility.
 
All bow to the great skafte!


He thought of it before anyone else.


If he keeps this up, I may nominate him for a special title.
 
Hey, don't make me add on to that Martial Art I made, to make it usable in a Warstrider...  Actually... hmm...   :twisted:
 
There's only a single passage in WotLA which talks about warstrider's ancillary systems:

WotLA said:
(...) While these systems generally require the use of
magical materials and sometimes combine different materials, they do not give any particular bonus for attunement, and so, the attunement cost of a given ancillary system is not doubled for Exalted of the wrong type as it is for the warstrider itself.
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By that wording, attunement to the wrong type of material is doubled for Warstriders.


But the only reason you pay double is to gain the MM bonus for that item.  Otherwise, you just pay normal cost to attune and don't get the bonuses applied by the specific Mystical Metal.


Therefore, the MM bonus would apply to Warstriders, so going against that is breaking cannon. :cry:
 
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