The Lore ability

[Persell]

It's been bugging me for a while now, that Lore covers so much and is still limited to it's five dots. So I have considered house ruling that Lore acts like Craft. When you pick the ability you determine what field of study you excell in. That could be Lore (first age weapons), Lore (Nexus), Lore (Deathlords) or Lore (Architecture).


Does anyone have some thoughts or comments on this? I'm a little unsure of how to implement this. Especially how to weigh the different fields.

 

[psychoph]

I could have swore abilities coudl go higher than 5 when you have a higher essence, i.e. 6 essence 6 abilities, because the ruels for crafting and ruins of rathless mention 6 lore to fix stuff a lot of times.


that aside to answer the quesiton.  I would say it depends.  Complexity is the problem with the idea.  I personally am not terribly fond of Crafts being turned into a multitude of abilities. Now all o fthe sudden you have a caste with an apitude in more than 5 abilties.  Twilight get all crafts cheapers than other castes do.  So the same thing would happen with Lore.


If you did that I woudl say why not do it for everything.  Make melee have staves, swords, maces, and so on, martial arts you have to pick each martial art, Occult you have to pick fae, ruins, gods, first age.  Survival is artic, water, jungle, dessert.


Basically my point is if you do it to one skill you may as well do it to ever ability you got because it can make sense to all of them.  I think that crafts shodul go back to crafts and then you use specialization to focus on one craft.

 

[MikeOQuinn]

I had always considered a non-specialized Lore to be general knowledge of things forgotten, representing having read and heard a number of stories, legends, rumors, myths, tales, songs, books, and epic sagas of Creation through the Ages.


For the situation you've described, I believe that specializing in Lore for each area of specific study is the best approach to indicating special interest in a particular field.

 

[Flagg]

You could meet things half way and do for Lore what I've done for Crafts in my games.


Instead of having wholly separate Abilities for each Craft, you can purchase additional concentrations for a flat cost of 3 XP.


For instance, say you have Crafts 2 (woodworking) and you'd like to also learn architecture. Spend three experience points, and you now have Crafts 2 (architecture) as well.


Then, if you spend the XP for a third dot in Crafts, it will raise the rating of all of your concentrations.


Does that make sense? It's a little hard for me to describe concisely.


-S

 

[Andrew02]

I could have swore abilities coudl go higher than 5 when you have a higher essence, i.e. 6 essence 6 abilities, because the ruels for crafting and ruins of rathless mention 6 lore to fix stuff a lot of times.

That is the case. It's the same way for Attributes. But, the thing is, you need to be alive for over 100 years to get to Essence 6, and it's supposed to represent a great big paradigm shift and all sorts of other changes in your character that makes it rather impractical. The sense I get is that it's really rather rare for people to get to Essence 5 except when they've been playing for a long time, or they're shooting for Solar/Void Circle.

Does that make sense? It's a little hard for me to describe concisely.


-S

Makes sense to me. It's probably a good way to work Linguistics, too.


Though, I think all the abilities should be as retardedly broad as Melee. It just seems wrong that building a house, a boat, or whatever, would take you three different Craft(x)s to perform. And, well, Craft lacks any retardedly powerful charms at low essence like HGD. You need to go to Sorcerery or your own custom charms if you want to just make a house instantly.

 

[Persell]

I had always considered a non-specialized Lore to be general knowledge of things forgotten, representing having read and heard a number of stories, legends, rumors, myths, tales, songs, books, and epic sagas of Creation through the Ages.

That was actually a rather elegant way of dealing with it. But then the same should be done to Craft, making it a general aptitude in handling tools of various kinds and seing different works through.


I have adapted the nWoD merit system to fit into exalted, so specific Lore of airboats would maybe be a two-dot merit with a one-dot Lore requirement and Craft (weapons) would maybe be a three-dot merit. And so on... Could work.

 

[Persell]

I could have swore abilities coudl go higher than 5 when you have a higher essence, i.e. 6 essence 6 abilities, because the ruels for crafting and ruins of rathless mention 6 lore to fix stuff a lot of times.

That has nothing to do with what I asked.

If you did that I woudl say why not do it for everything.  Make melee have staves, swords, maces, and so on, martial arts you have to pick each martial art, Occult you have to pick fae, ruins, gods, first age.  Survival is artic, water, jungle, dessert.

That would actually fix the WW system. All the abilities are insanely wide. It doesn't make sense that learning to fight with a weapon makes you proficient in all weapons. The difference between wielding a spear and swinging an axe is enormous. And it is equally ridiculous that Survival lets you survive just as well in the icy wasts of the north as in the burning deserts of the south. But as it would be an exceedingly tiresome work to split every ability up in areas of expertise and adapting the charm system to it, I probably will stick to fixing the greatest flaws and let the system be as it is.

 

[psychoph]

Well if you just want to fix the system bit by bit then the idea sounds fine.


I personaly would either do it all or nothing.  It makes no logical sense to me to break out lore and crafts and leave the rest unbroken.  I really don't even understand why crafts is seperated the way it is.  I alwyas thought the ww idea was to generalize to make the game less about complicated mechanics and more about rpging.  If you want complicated mechanics the Hero System is the most through one I have seen to date.

 

[psychoph]

Stillborns idea is similar to how deadlands does a lot of its skills.  When you buy shooting you get rifle, or shotgun or pistol.  Then you can spend 3 exps and you can get one of the others at the level that you have the original skill at.

 

[Jakk Bey]

Still--That sounds like a workable system to me. I really dislike the idea of breaking Craft down to seperate Abilities--it's too much book keeping for my taste. That is an elegant way of dealing with it, and if you felt that you needed to break down Lore further, that would seem the way to go.


Me, I just lump Lore as book learning. Not specifics, just a general field like Academics. Specifics can be handled by Specializations--Fae, Deathlords, Lunars, Wyld, Dragon Blooded, the Usurpation, ect.


Is it wide and broad? Yup. That's how the system runs. Larceny covers everything from picking pockets to confidence scams, as well as forgery. It's one of the things that I like about the system, is that it cuts down on the endless additions to Abilities that WW was getting consumed with for a long while. New book comes out, new Talents, Skills and Knowledges. Phooey on it. I rather like the broad strokes, as opposed to the endless minutia--seen too much of it between Rolemaster and other games.


At Lore 1 you've read a little bit. You can read. Big step.  You can even recognize other languages that you can't read, but at least you're familiar enough to know where it might be from, if it's in common use.


Lore 2, you're educated. Not enormously, but you've read the classics, you can quote a few verses, you can even recall bits and pieces of tales and even use them in everyday situations.  You might even be able to at least recognize First Age script, and you might even be able to read the manual.


Lore 3, you're a scholar. Well educated. Not a savant perhaps, but in training or at least have seen the inside of good libraries, and you've picked up a lot. You know the history of your land, and others that are close, or have some interest to you.


Lore 4, you are a scholar. A savant. You are one of the learned, with exposure to books and scrolls that others don't even know exist. You're studied, well read, and can even use this knowledge. You can operate some of the more complex devices of the First Age, and not even break a sweat.


Lore 5, you are one of the most learned of the Age. Others are in awe of the breadth of your knowledge. You're a walking encyclopedia, and you can probably read, write, and even compose First Age Sonnets, as well as manuals for War Striders.


If you want to get more technical complex, I would go with Still's system, rather than breaking it down into seperate Lores, because that is a nightmare of book keeping and it's going to limit the usefulness of the Ability. Specializations cover what you're looking at already, but if you feel the need to get more precise, then expand the idea of Specializations a bit, rather than new Abilities.

 

[Flagg]

Stillborns idea is similar to how deadlands does a lot of its skills.

It's actually directly stolen from there. When puzzling through how to "fix" Crafts, I thought, "Hey, what about using the rules from Deadlands?"


-S

 

[Flagg]

It's one of the things that I like about the system' date=' is that it cuts down on the endless additions to Abilities that WW was getting consumed with for a long while. New book comes out, new Talents, Skills and Knowledges. Phooey on it. I rather like the broad strokes, as opposed to the endless minutia--seen too much of it between Rolemaster and other games.[/quote']
Agreed. The Exalted system does sacrifice a lot of realism on the altar of not being a total pain in the balls. I think that's a good thing. It helps keep the story moving, and the numbers to a workable minimum.


-S

 

[Relic]

That would actually fix the WW system. All the abilities are insanely wide. It doesn't make sense that learning to fight with a weapon makes you proficient in all weapons. The difference between wielding a spear and swinging an axe is enormous. And it is equally ridiculous that Survival lets you survive just as well in the icy wasts of the north as in the burning deserts of the south. But as it would be an exceedingly tiresome work to split every ability up in areas of expertise and adapting the charm system to it, I probably will stick to fixing the greatest flaws and let the system be as it is.

Well, you and I have discussed this on countless occasions and as usual it's a matter of choosing That Which Sucks The Least, since anything we come up with is either lacking or proving to much work.


Another observation (I'm not saying this is how I would do it myself) would be that all the skills are meant to be cinematic in nature and therefore it is OK that you know so many different things instead of only a special field. This argument goes equally for larceny, mêlée, lore, linguistics, crafts, etc.


One could argue that this makes some skills more versatile/useful than others and one would be right. This can be rectified by the storyteller by making stories than rely on more than just a lore check. A somewhat crude argument but I think you get my meaning.

 

[psychoph]

One could argue that this makes some skills more versatile/useful than others and one would be right. This can be rectified by the storyteller by making stories than rely on more than just a lore check. A somewhat crude argument but I think you get my meaning.

You just pointed out something I completely hadn't realized yet, but white wolf does that with exalted.  In the Ruins of Rathless they make you have occult and lore to fix stuff, to craft weapons you have to have craft, lore, and occult to design an artifact in game.

 

[Persell]

Well, you and I have discussed this on countless occasions and as usual it's a matter of choosing That Which Sucks The Least, since anything we come up with is either lacking or proving to much work.

*Sigh* Sadly you're right. The artsy part of me is struggling with the nerdy part. The first wants to tell beautiful stories and be all intuitive about the system, the last wants the system to have meaning and flow smoothly at all times. A neverending conflict... quite epic, actually. But anyways, I'm sidetracking. I think you're right, that a generalized craft and lore would work and learning new areas of expertise is reflected by spending three xp and gaining the new field at the same level as the first one. Will work on that. Thanks all. You've been helpful.