What is the slowest single action I can take?

[greasy golem gunk]

I don't have a book handy, but I'm looking to house rule in a "every X tics" sort of event, and I'd like to make it occur every 8 Tics, or 1 tic slower than the single longest unmodified action I can think of (7 tics, or many Simple charms as I recall).


I do not want to count things like Aiming before an action (Action speed +3), being beat up by a Water Dragon Martial Artist (Slowing down my next action), or casting upper circle sorcery (which is a collection of actions, as I recall).


Is there an action that needs more tics than 7 on its own?


Thanks,


-g3

 

[Brickwall]

Simple Charms have an unmodified speed of 6, not 7.


Some artillery such as Very Large sized Essence Cannons have a speed of 8. Note that I mean Essence artillery, as mortal artillery is measured in long ticks. Still, Speed 8 weapons do exist, even if you cannot expect to encounter them.

 

[cdi]

Is there an action that needs more tics than 7 on its own?

Many dramatic actions need far longer than 7 ticks to perform. Sometimes, these are valid actions during a "timed" scene.


-cdi

 

[greasy golem gunk]

Thank you both very much. Despite the magical artillery operating with a speed of 8, I'll carry on the presumption that speed 7 is as slow as unmodified actions can go.


So, if you were wondering what's up,


Was looking at a way of working in some of the mechanics someone else posted on rpg.net, specifically

and thanks to brain cruft for giving me exactly what i wanted a tempo mechanic that doesn't hurt out of combat resource management. Namely essence flow, each round you can spend essence*2 motes without actually dipping into your essence pool.
thanks braincraft

from Exalted: Power Gamers Edition, which has some really big changes to an RPG that sound like too big of a jump for my tastes. But I like the "tempo mechanic", so I'm stealing it.
But giving the world a "refresh" period that I can set temp pools (No doubt that refreshing pools will enable people to go INSANE with cheap charms, that'll be the point), or also remind me to check for setting hazards;

• "say, is that building ready to fall over?",
  "Where's the next guard patrol",
  "how often should the sleeping dynast make awareness checks?"
  

And the like will help me a lot, and giving my players incentive to look forward to the "refresh" period sounds like a great way to keep everyone interested in it. As starting players, they'll be given a pool of 4-8 motes to play with, and one more reason to love high essence scores.


Said pool will be modified by expensive artifacts, and remove the mote reward from stunts. Stunts will still carry a dice bonus (2 or 3 dice) and a willpower reward.


-g3-

 

[Brickwall]

Your method makes Combos of decent strength nearly impossible before really high Essence levels. That's more than a little impractical.

 

[cdi]

I'd be wary of using the "Exaltedower Gamers Edition" as a guideline for game balance. rpg.net Exalted and actual Exalted are two very different things.


Besides, if your Twilight wants to take a 300 long-tick Wyld-Shaping Technique dramatic action during Social/Mass Combat, he probably knows what he's getting himself into.


-cdi

 

[greasy golem gunk]

Your method makes Combos of decent strength nearly impossible before really high Essence levels. That's more than a little impractical.

I think you misunderstand. The motes aren't their entire pool, it's just a few motes that refresh every 8 tics, replace the Motes for Stunts option, and will contribute to anima banner calculations. If you stay within them, fine, but you still have a pool (Of undetermined size so far, Less than Base Total) to draw from on larger actions.


One goal here is to encourage excellencies to be used more often, and another is to give the world a sort of Initiative system that can "Pace" combat. It will help make trivial use of charms make sense for out-of-combat periods, and give people with bad resource management something to draw from if a fight outlasts their ability to plan.


Which is important, since the game I'll be running won't last longer than a weekend, the characters will be premade, and I will need to dive right into the meat of the setting / campaign without giving people too much opportunity to choreograph their characters before game time, so I expect less out of the stunt system for these sessions.


Kinda like a murder mystery with lost tombs & the scavenger lands. And less costuming.


I expect low speed actions (smaller swords) to benefit from this change less than long speed actions (Larger swords), since N/PC's who act more in 8 tics take more actions inside said tics. Every few refreshes, even a slow acting player can take 2 actions inside the refresh, so there will be some tactical adjustment, I hope.


Thank you all for your help on the matter,


-g3-