What should be in a 3rd Edition

[LaFreeze]

It seems to be the popular opinion that 2nd edition exalted, while fun, has noticeable flaws such as the defense heavy combat and the handling of Lunars and there are many house rules build around these issues at least from what I've read on the forum here.


So I was just wondering, if WW were to announce a 3rd Edition and ask for your opinion on what they should do, what advice would you give them, where would to direct their efforts and in broad terms what would you say the need to do?

 

[Kyeudo]

Combat. The largest, most glaring flaws all stem from paranoia combat. You have to gut that thing like a fish and get rid of it.

 

[DasDom]

Mass Combat: Doesn't work. At all.

 

[Teln]

Social Combat needs to be reworked so that getting into an argument with a pretty person doesn't leave your Willpower pool utterly spent.

 

[Captain Hesperus]

So:


The single combat system,


The mass combat system


and the social combat system.


I'd like to throw my hat in and say, a system that allows more use of Bureaucracy beyond social combat.


Captain Hesperus

 

[uteck]

I would like to see more balance in Abilities and Attributes, so some are not required to make a survivable character so everyone has the same maxed out stats and charms, whereas others are specialties that are only useful once in while but yet demand a large amount of XP to be remotely useful.


Reduce the number of pools you have to track. Combat should not revolve around mote attrition, it really gos against all the descriptions of Creation and how awesome Exalts are supposed to be.

 

[Kyeudo]

Combat should not revolve around mote attrition, it really gos against all the descriptions of Creation and how awesome Exalts are supposed to be.

Well, what should it revolve around instead?

 

[uteck]

Combat should not revolve around mote attrition, it really gos against all the descriptions of Creation and how awesome Exalts are supposed to be.

Well, what should it revolve around instead?

Skill and power seems like a good start. Currently combat is just an endurance race, your DV and stunting are the keys to victory.


I would like a system were you could cast charms all day and not have to stunt to regain motes. Essence would limit how many you could do at the same time, which would be a lot easier to track then a bunch of pools that you are adding to and subtracting from.

 

[LaFreeze]

Combat should not revolve around mote attrition, it really gos against all the descriptions of Creation and how awesome Exalts are supposed to be.

Well, what should it revolve around instead?

Skill and power seems like a good start. Currently combat is just an endurance race, your DV and stunting are the keys to victory.


I would like a system were you could cast charms all day and not have to stunt to regain motes. Essence would limit how many you could do at the same time, which would be a lot easier to track then a bunch of pools that you are adding to and subtracting from.

I think a key change which might help that would be have unstoppable attacks and perfect defenses cancel each other out and force a skill based roll off rather then have defense flately trump offense.

 

[Teln]

I've been giving 3rd Edition a bit of thought since my last post, and you know what I'd really, really like to see?


The death of the combat hyperfocus.


When was the last time you saw a Craft Charm that had people besides dedicated craftmonkeys drooling? What about useful Lunar Appearance Charms? Why do people put so much effort into making entire Martial Arts trees, rather than one or two entertaining Larceny Charms that wind up being so fun to use people prefer to activate them even in situations where it's hilariously impractical? I'd rather read a story about a Dragon-Blood who opens a door by using Warm-Faced Seduction Style on the lock's least god than a story about a Solaroid who opens a door by using a Grand Goremaul and a Melee Excellency.


In my ideal 3rd Edition, we'd wind up with something similar to what I've heard tends to happen in the Old World of Darkness: Entire sessions where nobody pulls a weapon, throws a punch, and especially avoids refraining from activating paranoia Combos--and everybody has a blast.


EDIT: Die, evil double negative!

 

[Kyeudo]

In my ideal 3rd Edition, we'd wind up with something similar to what I've heard tends to happen in the Old World of Darkness: Entire sessions where nobody pulls a weapon, throws a punch, and especially refrain from activating paranoia Combos--and everybody has a blast.

I'd love to see that, but the World of Darkness is a very different place than Creation. There are layers of rules holding players back in the World of Darkness. There's a masquerade to maintain, police to avoid aggravating, and so on, making avoiding combat a very appealing option. In Exalted, combat is always a option because almost no matter where you are, you are the biggest, baddest thing around.


Basically, nothing is a true threat to a Solar, so why bother solving problems with talking when you can kill it with a sharp stick?

 

[Teln]

Basically, nothing is a true threat to a Solar, so why bother solving problems with talking when you can kill it with a sharp stick?

Because you get a reputation for being a kill-happy maniac, and if you try to fix that with the easy out of Social Charms, you're a kill-happy brainwashing maniac.


Now that I think about it, the fact that mortals are people too could use some serious playing up.

 

[DireSloth]

^ That, yeah. Feasibly, Virtue checks would keep characters in check, but I find players just tend to give themselves Compassion 1 and assume that lets them do whatever they want.


I don't really have anything constructive to add to 3rd ed...except pie. I think if the gamebooks came packaged with pie, we'd see a huge spike in sales figures.


Of course, they're mainly doing PDF sales nowadays, so it'd have to be E-Pie or something.

 

[Kyeudo]

Because you get a reputation for being a kill-happy maniac, and if you try to fix that with the easy out of Social Charms, you're a kill-happy brainwashing maniac.

And that doesn't describe the Solars of the First Age accurately?


The reason that combat is generally avoided in WoD and not in Exalted is because in the WoD combat causes more problems than it solves. In Exalted, combat solves at least as many problems as it causes.


Problem: The Deathlords are invading Creation to snuff out all life! Solution: Kill them.


Problem: The Yozis are invading Creation to turn Creation into Hell! Solution: Kill them.


Problem: A Wyld Hunt is attacking! Solution: Kill them.


Problem: Gem is an eyesore! Solution: I'll give you three guesses what goes here.

 

[LaFreeze]

Are you saying then that Solars shouldn't be the mechanical default for Exalted but rather one of the less powerful Exalts so the players have the Solars as very real threats over their head? So like have something like the Sidereals be the hunted heroes and Solars as crazy lords of creation ready to drop the hammer on the other Exalts? (I'm not saying thematically just relative power level between the default PCs and their more common nemeses.)


Sort of akin to hacks vs agents in the matrix? Hackers are strong compared to a human but an agent is still a whole different level forcing the hackers to be crafty and smart with their super powers at least until Neo shows up.

 

[Kyeudo]

No, no, no. Nothing like that. I mean that if you want combat to not be the top of the solution list, you have to have factors in place that make combat a worse solution to common problems than other options.


Think about how a vampire in WoD might deal with problems with a mob boss. He could probably just kill everyone involved, as he has supernatural advantages over all of the mere mortals making up the mob enforcers and what not, but that would lead to massive murder investigations and possibly breaking the masquerade, which would be bigger problems than the mob boss ever was. So instead, he might drop some tips to the FBI about a drug deal or arms shipment the mob boss is involved in to get the cops to deal with the problem for him, or he might frame the mob boss for a hit on his superior, or any number of more complicated schemes because the end result has fewer complications.


In Exalted, an Essence 3 Solar can beat the crap out of anything less than a combat specced Second Circle demon. Unless he is being attacked by dozens of coordinated foes, he will slaughter whole armies and emerge unscathed. How can the complications of a battle ever really trouble this guy? Anything less than the Wyld Hunt or a Sidereal death squad showing up can not bring real repurcussions down upon his head.


If you want the solution to a local wayward god to be bargaining or diplomacy, the setting needs to be able to make killing that wayward god more trouble than it is worth. The setting needs to make slaughtering a horde of invading hobgoblins more work than convincing the raksha noble who commands them to pull back. Players will always seek the path of least resistance, so that path should not always be combat.

 

[DasDom]

Actually, what you describe isn't a rules problem in my book, but one of the setting, and more specifically, the way the game is run.


In my games at least, players are as likely to resort to social combat as they are to resort to physical combat. Since I use a slight fix on the social combat system (as can be seen in my fixmix-post), it is as hard or easy for a player to convince someone to leave him alone as it is to kill them. But they are less likely to use other skills to solve their problems. Why is that so?


In my experience, player thrive on direct confrontation. Direct conflict with an enemy where important thingy like your life or your social standing are at stake creates tension, and this gets players excited. Solving a faceless problem like a draught using craft skills can make for an interesting story, but it won't rise the same tension. It also lacks the same immidiate tangible results.(like dead enemies or convinced people) Therefore players are less likely to use this route, and won't be as interested in those stories.


This is actually the reason why most roleplaying games' rules are mostly combat centric. Exalted IS already an exception because it has stuff like sail-charms.


If you want your player to engage in non-violent solutions, making the enemies harder to beat isn't going to cut it. Down that path lie only more combat-maxed characters.


What you can do is make alternative solutions as tense and rewarding as combat, and include ingame repercussions for trigger-happy characters.


Example: They can kill the god, and maybe even destroy it. But then is domain is going to act all wacky in absence of an overseeing god, and people are suffering. And they lay the blame squarely at the feet of the heroes. The heroes now reinforced the beliefs of the locals into the myths of the anathema, hurting their reputation even further.


Killing the raskha noble will scatter his army and will free the behemoths he had under control. The heroes would need to stay in the area for a long time, hunting down scattered hobgoblins which prey on the human population. The population will severly suffer from this.

 

[Teln]

What you can do is make alternative solutions as tense and rewarding as combat, and include ingame repercussions for trigger-happy characters.
Example: They can kill the god, and maybe even destroy it. But then is domain is going to act all wacky in absence of an overseeing god, and people are suffering. And they lay the blame squarely at the feet of the heroes. The heroes now reinforced the beliefs of the locals into the myths of the anathema, hurting their reputation even further.

Solution: Mass brainwas Social Charms!

Killing the raskha noble will scatter his army and will free the behemoths he had under control. The heroes would need to stay in the area for a long time, hunting down scattered hobgoblins which prey on the human population. The population will severly suffer from this.

Solution: Use some downtime to train up a batch of tiger warriors and have them clean up our mess since we can't be arsed to take care of it ourselves. They won't be nearly as good at it as a proper circle, but they're protecting extras anyways so who cares? Yeah, we could do better things with those tiger warriors, but this gets the high-Compassion types off our backs.

 

[DasDom]

Of course you can find ways around this...that's how the solars stayed in power in the first age. (Just read the writeup on Desus).


If you have players who enjoy running wild and solving everything with applications of daiklave, let them have their fun! (They might just be happier playing Deathknights or GSPs)


But for anyone who likes to roleplay ethical conflicts and who lets their characters act in a responsible manner, brainwashing isn't going to cut it. (Just showing my players the level of assholes they were in the First age brought them weight morale issues on a whole other level)

 

[Teln]

Tell that to the dev team, who have cheapened human life to the point where you're either a one-in-a-thousand heroic character and therefore potentially useful to an Exalt, or you're a nameless, worthless extra who can be butchered en masse with no real consequences.


I support the concept of "Heroes Matter", but I despise the concept of "Only Heroes Matter".


EDIT: On another note, when did unnatural mental influence (read: brainwashing) become what Social Combat is all about? Oh yeah, it was when people realized that those pesky mortals could just spend two Willpower and nullify a Lawgiver's Righteous Decree to betray his god and his country. Can't have those extras getting too uppity!

 

[wordman]

If WW were to announce a 3rd Edition and ask for your opinion on what they should do, what advice would you give them, where would to direct their efforts and in broad terms what would you say the need to do?

They need to do only two things:

1. Clearly define exactly what an Exalted story should be like.
   
2. Write mechanics that actually help make that happen at the table (as opposed to just saying that the mechanics do this).

Personally, I'm pretty sure White Wolf just doesn't know how to do this. They haven't done this once in their entire existence. So, here is what I'd settle for instead from White Wolf: Make Exalted 3 an electronic-only, setting-only product line, with no mechanics whatsoever, released under a new semi-open license that allows people to build and release (but not necessarily sell) their own rules built against the setting IP. Then, be a fan of, and support the crap out of, the hacking community that would arise. If they did this, they would get a lot of my money.

 

[Thorn Darkblade]

One suggestion for 3rd ed?


FIX THE FUCKING FAE!

 

[chalicier]

I occasionally wonder what kind of game everyone else is playing. My Solar players spend a great deal of their time trying to find ways of dealing with problems that don't involve slaughtering everything in sight, mainly because with the exception of two characters they seem to be really into the whole "slowly re-awakening god king" thing and haven't gone remotely optimal with their Charm selections. (And of those two, one is a craftmonkey and the other got surprise-shivved hard in the guts by Shoat Of The Mire before he managed to buy a surprise negator.)


I think part of it was that the first two places they went to ended up on fire with mass deaths (not entirely their fault, but certainly partially so), which led to massive in-party ructions, which in turn led to the Compassionate characters ending up somewhat dominant. Either way, I've found that they've spent a great deal of time and effort on not doing anything that might mark them out as Solars.

 

[cyl]

A decent realm building / managing system.


Solars are supposed to take the reins of Creation, and I'd have killed for a decent system for the Mandate of Heaven...

 

[Kyeudo]

I occasionally wonder what kind of game everyone else is playing. My Solar players spend a great deal of their time trying to find ways of dealing with problems that don't involve slaughtering everything in sight, mainly because with the exception of two characters they seem to be really into the whole "slowly re-awakening god king" thing and haven't gone remotely optimal with their Charm selections. (And of those two, one is a craftmonkey and the other got surprise-shivved hard in the guts by Shoat Of The Mire before he managed to buy a surprise negator.)
I think part of it was that the first two places they went to ended up on fire with mass deaths (not entirely their fault, but certainly partially so), which led to massive in-party ructions, which in turn led to the Compassionate characters ending up somewhat dominant. Either way, I've found that they've spent a great deal of time and effort on not doing anything that might mark them out as Solars.

Well, I tend to play Dawns, Full Moons, and other combat-specialized characters. It is very easy to be good at combat and you know what they say - "When all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail". If there is any combat optimized characters in the group, they want to fight. It's what they do best. Looking for a way to not fight is like looking for a way to be bored and ineffective - it's almost counterintuitive.