Dice Trial by Fire - Exalted 2e OOC

[D. Rex]

My next exalt I might explore all the cool social stuff that can be done.

What about social stuff to buff other haracters in combat? Bard style.

 

[Rykon]

Depends on the edition. I expect this may be the last 2E game we play unless it's Sidereals.

For 3E there's plenty in the Performance trees for this sort of thing. Manato's charms and Artifact will reflect quite a bit of it.

In 2E it's as I said, Demon Wracking Glory and Silver Voiced Nighting Gale Style.

I play a lot of bard-y characters by reflex it seems like. Both in a literal music sense and DnD generalist sense. So I'd be happy to help when the time comes.

 

[D. Rex]

I been liking what I have seen of the 3e system. And so much I wanted to try out Exalted wise.

 

[Rykon]

I been liking what I have seen of the 3e system. And so much I wanted to try out Exalted wise.

The changes are a bit of a mixed bag for me overall, and growing cynicism has significantly soured my enthusiasm overall.

• The core social system is much better in every aspect.
• Other ancillary systems got a lot of love and detail, Ships/Sailing actually made it into the core book!
• Representing armies is a lot easier now
• Artifacts are more than just stat blocks now, though I don't think there's nearly enough of them written to draw inspiration from.
• Solar/Dragon/[Splat] XP really helps with progressing non-magical traits without it feeling like a speedbump or a huge opportunity cost
• Martial Arts are more competitive with native charms across all splats, though mortals lost any meaningful benefit from them
• Dragon-Blooded charms actually had some effort in them this time around, and are very creative
• Having access to only limited perfect defenses makes you think more about legitimate strategy rather than force rolling and paranoia combos
• The workings system for sorcery was much needed and is very well presented
• Stunt bonuses are a lot friendlier to us forum players, as anything past a 1 point stunt can be applied by the ST on the backend without much fuss

But...

• So charms...
  • charms do a lot less now, many of them are very costly in resources and disrupt your excellency limit as well
  • There's also way too many of them and they tend to overwhelm newcomers immensely.
  • Often times it's preferable to forgo a learned charm (XP spent) for simply using a vanilla Excellency (no XP spent for Solars).
  • This amounts to a huge drawback for me since the charms have always said more about an individual Exalted than anything else on a character sheet statistically.
  • This also directly impacts interaction with the fundamental mechanics of the game.
• I am also very conflicted about the baseline combat mechanics
  • Ex: 4 v 4 encounter, 4 players crash 2 npcs, then tend to kill the uncrashed npcs, leaving two crashed NPCs and PCs with little to no initiative, the rest of the fight becomes a bit of a slog.
  • Movement abstraction can be hard to wrap your head around, and I don't think it really helps in the long term.
  • Counterpoint: Gambits are actually very nice, and seemingly underrated at a glance, I need to fiddle with these more.
  • Mounted Combat seems far more workable this time around, again, charm support is kind of hit or miss for me.
• Sorcery really needs more spells than what we currently have writeups for.
• Creating Martial Arts as a 4 dot merit and splitting martial arts into style-specific abilities feels like a needless tax when most of them are almost impossible to combo with anything other than their own style's charms.
  • It also seems like the writers have gone out of their way to avoid writing up evocations on Martial Art compatible weapons outside of a handful.
• Thaumaturgy and Magitech are dead, it seems.
  • Arts of Alchemy and Astrology were nice, no system really replaces them, except maybe Alchemy as a Craft...
• The Crafting system, both in terms of basic mechanics and charm trees (Solars) is way too bloated.
  • The Solar Craft tree is about 4-5 times the average size of other ability trees.
  • Being good at crafting means you won't have much room to engage in anything else in the game, making most of your interaction take place outside the normal scene time as the rest of the party
  • One of the people that got me into the game quit the whole line/edition due to frustrations with this.
• Mortals have very little to distinguish themselves as individual opponents without making them overtly inhuman in nature.
  • They used to be able to awaken essence to use martial arts charms, not the case anymore
  • Gunzosha armor may or may not be a thing anymore? Not really sure how Warstriders and other Magitech trappings of Lookshy are going to fit within the setting now that the focus on sorcery-engineering has nearly been wiped away.
• Some layout issues still exist... like the mundane animal training system being explained within a Solar Charm instead of the general rules area.
• Many Lore changes have been far more aggravating than they should have been to me (putting it lightly), like wiping away the lore of DotFA

I realize my negatives seem to overwhelm what I think they've been doing well at, but I thought I should explain the nature of my complaints rather than come across as petty. Hopefully I've been fair here despite festering cynicism.

 

[Psychie]

Well, when they came out with the Dragon Blooded book, there were more Sorcery spells in it, so we can hope for more in the Lunars book when it comes out next year.

 

[Rykon]

Well, when they came out with the Dragon Blooded book, there were more Sorcery spells in it, so we can hope for more in the Lunars book when it comes out next year.

There are 3 new Terrestrial spells in the manuscript they gave us backers and a handful of celestial ones I think.

Still, we need a white codex, and a hint about what necromancy looks like for opposition. To be fair, saying we want/need more shouldn't be a complaint per se, but the lack is a bit of a drawback presently.

 

[D. Rex]

That sure is a lot of things! Lol well, I'm not experienced enough to see the changes.

I have noticed some focus changes, and the bog potential of the combat system. And I remember you saying something about charms having a bit less impact in this one.

Some of the stuff, I'm hoping create charms can allievate that a little.


Also, couldn't a ST just customize the mechanics a bit to fix things to preference?

 

[Sherwood]

Of course. That is the Golden Rule. If a rule is not good for your game, change it.

 

[D. Rex]

I like the Golden Rule.

 

[Psychie]

Yep! That rule is a great one for Storytellers, especially new ones like me.

 

[Rykon]

The good news is that the game has a workable balance even if the bloat can be frustrating.

I'd want to come up with my own way to lean things up at some point, but for now I rather enjoy spending my free time gaming with you all =P

 

[Sherwood]

Thanks! I enjoy gaming with you fools, too!

 

[Rykon]

I think rather than invest the time in homebrew, since my buddies and I have sunk a lot of time into Ark: Survival Evolved, I've been looking at the Predation setting for Cypher.

This is a bit of an oversimplification, but imagine modern military tech for a bunch of people that got sent back to the age of dinosaurs with the expectation that the comet is coming.

From a system perspective, the rules are very clean and lean. It can sometimes be a bit too simple though if you crave more mechanical meat, like what Exalted or Palladium offers. I'd not be grabbing the book for probably a year though.

 

[D. Rex]

I think rather than invest the time in homebrew, since my buddies and I have sunk a lot of time into Ark: Survival Evolved, I've been looking at the Predation setting for Cypher.

This is a bit of an oversimplification, but imagine modern military tech for a bunch of people that got sent back to the age of dinosaurs with the expectation that the comet is coming.

From a system perspective, the rules are very clean and lean. It can sometimes be a bit too simple though if you crave more mechanical meat, like what Exalted or Palladium offers. I'd not be grabbing the book for probably a year though.

That sounds awesome.

 

[Rykon]

Ah, I should've clarified, the players are human survivors in that setting.

 

[D. Rex]

That's still cool. Makes me think of Turok.

 

[Sherwood]

I like the T-Rex flying the F-14 . . .

 

[Rykon]

This is why we need a First Age Lunars game Sherwood

 

[Sherwood]

Oooooh! Now I'm tempted to make one up.

 

[Sherwood]

Damnit, now my mind is in overdrive thinking of game ideas.

 

[Rykon]

We do have Warstrider rules for 3E... Lunars almosts has layout done... let the procrastination consume you...

 

[D. Rex]

I would throw my full support behind that game.

 

[Rykon]

Extra bonus points from me if the start is pre-usurpation.

 

[Sherwood]

The Lunars game that I have planned is not a First Age one, sadly enough. But it will totally rock once the 3e book comes out and the two of you are in my game.

 

[Psychie]

I hope you will include me in this, too!